Nikki Haley is No Moderate, Americans Feeling the Full Employment Economy & the Hero IRS Leaker Faces Jail (Roundup #3)
Nikki Haley Plays a Moderate - but Is in Many Ways the Most Rightwing Republican in the Race
Haley took a beating in Iowa - but since we can expect to see her in the future, it’s worth pushing back on the idea that she is any kind of moderate, even relative to Trump or DeSantis. While both of the latter are each loathsome and authoritarian in their own way, on actual policy Haley outflanks them on the right.
Take unions. There is arguably no top-elected leader in the nation who self-identifies more as anti-union. As Governor, she proudly helped Boeing go non-union in its SC plants, boasting about being a union buster.
Her corruption should also be an issue for the media, since Nikki Haley gave Boeing massive subsidies to move plants to non-union South Carolina- and then the company gave her a lucrative seat on their board of directors, where she received over $300,000 for less than a year of time on the board, which is decidedly not a full-time job.
As Boeing planes have suffered an ongoing run of safety problems, including the dramatic blowout of the window on Alaska Airlines, the media should have connected her to that mess, since low-wage, bottom-basement production is Nikki Haley's brand.
On government spending, Haley has explicitly outflanked Trump on the Right by calling for large cuts in Social Security - and criticizing Trump for too much spending while President. Trump has even run ads attacking Haley for her plan to raise the retirement age for younger workers.
On Gaza, Haley has staked out the pro-genocide position in the race by endorsing ethnic cleansing of Gaza and applauding Israel seeking to expel Gazans to other countries.
When Haley comes back in four years, don’t let the media memory hole her extreme right-wing record.
Americans Feeling the Full Employment Economy - and They Like It
The “vibes recession” looks over as Americans increasingly are expressing optimism about their finances. In a recent Axios-Harris poll, 63% of Americans rate their current financial situation as being “good,” including 19% saying it’s very good.
But most striking is what they say about their job security at work:
Employer power is based on fear and Americans just aren’t feeling the fear, which bodes well for demands for wage increases in the coming year. The drumbeat of corporate voices demanding more and more rate increases to crash the economy was all about avoiding this exact result.
The IRS Leaker is a Political Hero - but Faces Serious Jail Time
It turned out the stories detailing Trump’s record of tax evasion and other news stories detailing corporate tax evasion by large corporations all came from an IRS contract worker at Booz Allen Hamiliton, who used the company’s access to IRS data to hand the New York Times its blockbuster stories on Trump’s tax evasion and leaked tax records from billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to ProPublica for their stories on “How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax.”
That Trump was able to abuse the courts to avoid Congressional access to his tax returns is the real crime, but the IRS whistleblower Charles Littlejohn is the one facing five years in jail for his leaks.
Little known is the fact that early on when the income tax was only recently enacted, Congress passed a law to make all tax returns public, precisely to ensure scrutiny of the wealthy trying to evade the tax. But wealthy taxpayers revolted and in 1926, Republican President Calvin Coolidge pressured Congress to end public disclosure of tax returns. Information on the taxes paid - and more importantly, not paid - by the rich and powerful should be public knowledge - and it shouldn’t take someone risking prison to make that information available.
You're probably right about the "see her in 4 years" thing. The most amazing thing about the GOP race has been the fact that The Donald is easily the most moderate on policy since Christie left, but the press plays him as the most right-wing. I know presentation counts, but DeSantis made a conscious decision to run far to the right of Trump and as you pointed out, Haley is actually ferociously right-wing on economic policy. Good stuff, Nate.