Kamala Harris is one of the worst people ever to attain national office, and since this seems to be the week that the mainstream press is turning on her, it seems like a great time to start a megathread.
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Kamala Harris Megathread - Let's hear it for our lovely and gracious Vice President!
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Kamala Harris is one of the worst people ever to attain national office, and since this seems to be the week that the mainstream press is turning on her, it seems like a great time to start a megathread.
murgatroid
kiwifarms.net
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That's quite a cackle.
I gotta hand it to her though she has nice teeth and probably takes good care of them. I don't think they are veneers because they have tiny little irregularities natural teeth should have.
- Joined
- Sep 10, 2021
Harris says Americans under the pressures of student loan debt 'are literally making decisions about whether they can have a family, whether they can buy a home'
- Vice President Kamala Harris said the White House was seeking a way to "creatively" address student debt.
- The Biden administration in December announced student loan payments would be halted until May 1.
- Harris said "we have to continue to do what we're doing and figure out how we can creatively relieve the pressure that students are feeling."
"I think that we have to continue to do what we're doing and figure out how we can creatively relieve the pressure that students are feeling because of their student loan debt," Harris told CBS News' Margaret Brennan during an interview on "Face the Nation."
Harris said that Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona was "working on what we can do and must do frankly to relieve the pressures of student loan debt."
"Graduates and former students across our country are literally making decisions about whether they can have a family, whether they can buy a home," she said, adding that she previously had student loan debt.
"And it's no small matter, and we need to figure out a way to relieve debt. So it's a fair issue in terms of the seriousness of the issue,"she said.
The administration of President Joe Biden in December extended the federal pause on student loan payments, allowing borrowers to avoid paying until May 1 as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus causes COVID-19 cases in the US to rise.
"Voting we've discussed, it is a very big issue, and what I believe we must do is continue to be vigilant and fighting for folks who have a right to be seen and their circumstances to be heard and understood because we have the ability to actually alleviate the burdens that people are carrying that make it difficult for them to get through the day or in the month," Harris added.
"This additional extension of the repayment pause will provide critical relief to borrowers who continue to face financial hardships as a result of the pandemic, and will allow our Administration to assess the impacts of Omicron on student borrowers," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a December 22 statement.
"As we prepare for the return to repayment in May, we will continue to provide tools and supports to borrowers so they can enter into the repayment plan that is responsive to their financial situation, such as an income-driven repayment plan," he added.
Some Democratic lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have called on the Biden administration to go futher than delaying debt payments, asking the president to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt.
During his 2020 campaign for president, Biden pledged to forgive "a minimum" of $10,000 of student loan debt per person.
"Young people and other student debt holders bore the brunt of the last crisis. It shouldn't happen again," he said in a March 22, 2020 tweet.
So far, he hasn't followed through on that promise.
Harris says Americans under the pressures of student-loan debt 'are literally making decisions about whether they can have a family, whether they can buy a home'
Harris said the administration had to "figure out how we can creatively relieve the pressure that students are feeling because of their" debt.
Harris: Biden Administration Looking to 'Creatively' Address Student …
archived 27 Dec 2021 08:40:18 UTC
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2019
Someone here on the farms the other day said: "Remember, your debt is someone else's savings". A simplification to be sure, but an effective turn of phrase that could do with being more widespread. When Democrats talk about student loan cancellation, that's money that other people via the intermediary of the bank have lent to the borrowers. If cancelled well that has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is the government borrowing in turn. It's just shifting the debt around but the difference is the government will pay off that debt by either inflation (which devalues people's savings) or higher taxes (which punishes the tax payers who saved). Either way, it's a lie to pretend this doesn't punish people who have worked and saved their money.Harris says Americans under the pressures of student loan debt 'are literally making decisions about whether they can have a family, whether they can buy a home'
Vice President Kamala Harris in an interview that aired Sunday said the Biden administration was working to find a way to "creatively" address student debt, citing the pressures it causes for Americans.
- Vice President Kamala Harris said the White House was seeking a way to "creatively" address student debt.
- The Biden administration in December announced student loan payments would be halted until May 1.
- Harris said "we have to continue to do what we're doing and figure out how we can creatively relieve the pressure that students are feeling."
"I think that we have to continue to do what we're doing and figure out how we can creatively relieve the pressure that students are feeling because of their student loan debt," Harris told CBS News' Margaret Brennan during an interview on "Face the Nation."
Harris said that Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona was "working on what we can do and must do frankly to relieve the pressures of student loan debt."
"Graduates and former students across our country are literally making decisions about whether they can have a family, whether they can buy a home," she said, adding that she previously had student loan debt.
"And it's no small matter, and we need to figure out a way to relieve debt. So it's a fair issue in terms of the seriousness of the issue,"she said.
The administration of President Joe Biden in December extended the federal pause on student loan payments, allowing borrowers to avoid paying until May 1 as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus causes COVID-19 cases in the US to rise.
"Voting we've discussed, it is a very big issue, and what I believe we must do is continue to be vigilant and fighting for folks who have a right to be seen and their circumstances to be heard and understood because we have the ability to actually alleviate the burdens that people are carrying that make it difficult for them to get through the day or in the month," Harris added.
"This additional extension of the repayment pause will provide critical relief to borrowers who continue to face financial hardships as a result of the pandemic, and will allow our Administration to assess the impacts of Omicron on student borrowers," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a December 22 statement.
"As we prepare for the return to repayment in May, we will continue to provide tools and supports to borrowers so they can enter into the repayment plan that is responsive to their financial situation, such as an income-driven repayment plan," he added.
Some Democratic lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have called on the Biden administration to go futher than delaying debt payments, asking the president to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt.
During his 2020 campaign for president, Biden pledged to forgive "a minimum" of $10,000 of student loan debt per person.
"Young people and other student debt holders bore the brunt of the last crisis. It shouldn't happen again," he said in a March 22, 2020 tweet.
So far, he hasn't followed through on that promise.
Harris says Americans under the pressures of student-loan debt 'are literally making decisions about whether they can have a family, whether they can buy a home'
Harris said the administration had to "figure out how we can creatively relieve the pressure that students are feeling because of their" debt.www.businessinsider.com
Harris: Biden Administration Looking to 'Creatively' Address Student …
archived 27 Dec 2021 08:40:18 UTCarchive.md
Full Interview - Vice President Kamala Harris On 'Face The Nation'-1.mp4
I wish some people could get it into their heads that the government doesn't have money. It has $23trn in debt and whenever it proposes something like this it's borrowing more, taking out a loan on behalf of the American tax payer they have no choice in.
At the root of this are young people encouraged to go to university and disregard any cost because the loan will cover it. It seems to me, though correct me if I'm wrong, that there's little competition between universities based on cost. It's all based on how cool they are and their reputation.
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2019
Why Kamala Harris' cozy relationship with corporations is worrying
The vice president's corporate-influenced migration policy exemplifies why her hobnobbing should worry us.
By Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC Opinion Columnist
Vice President Kamala Harris is increasingly leaning on big corporations to come up with ideas and enact policy. It’s a practice that has allowed her to take action on issues such as migration into the U.S. and expediting business loans without relying on a constantly-gridlocked Congress, but it’s also a disquieting development — it means partnering with powerful and ruthlessly self-interested organizations that can sabotage broader policy goals and shape the Biden administration’s thinking to their liking.
www.msnbc.com
archive.md
Elect a neolib and then act SHOCKED I SAY when she turns out to be a neolib.
The vice president's corporate-influenced migration policy exemplifies why her hobnobbing should worry us.
By Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC Opinion Columnist
Vice President Kamala Harris is increasingly leaning on big corporations to come up with ideas and enact policy. It’s a practice that has allowed her to take action on issues such as migration into the U.S. and expediting business loans without relying on a constantly-gridlocked Congress, but it’s also a disquieting development — it means partnering with powerful and ruthlessly self-interested organizations that can sabotage broader policy goals and shape the Biden administration’s thinking to their liking.
According to a new report from Bloomberg News, Harris has “increasingly turned to corporate executives from Wall Street and Silicon Valley to serve as informal advisers, policy allies and political boosters,” and has sought out CEOs from companies such as Microsoft, Cisco and Citigroup for phone conversations and strategy meetings. Bloomberg also reports that corporate leaders have used these intimate settings “to push Harris on their own priorities, lobbying against changes to the tax code or for legislation that could prove a boon to their companies.”
Harris’ corporate-influenced migration policy investment plan is a prime example of why her friendliness with corporate behemoths should worry us.
Harris has a sprawling policy portfolio with priorities like voting rights that are difficult to make progress on without congressional involvement, and it’s evident that hobnobbing with the private sector has allowed her to achieve some tangible results. For example, she successfully lobbied Wall Street executives to provide more loans to small businesses, in part by helping streamline their coordination with federal government agencies in identifying lending risk.
But achieving results isn’t the only thing that matters. One must also pay attention to what kind of results are achieved and the process by which they’re conceived and implemented. And Harris’ corporate-influenced migration policy investment plan is a prime example of why her friendliness with corporate behemoths should worry us.
Let’s zoom in on the formation of Harris’ migration policy, per Bloomberg:
In a series of phone calls in the spring, Harris quizzed executives -- including Microsoft’s Smith, Chobani Inc. CEO Hamdi Ulukaya, and Mastercard Inc. Chairman Ajay Banga -- about what she could do to address poverty, climate change and corruption wreaking havoc on Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
The corporate executives told Harris what they saw as some of the core issues driving the migration surge. But they also talked about unorthodox ways the federal government had been able to influence foreign policy crises in the past, from the Cold War through the Arab Spring, through the funding of nongovernmental organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy. …
The talks resulted in more than $1.2 billion in pledges to open new facilities, establish job training programs and expand Internet access across Central America. Already, more than 100,000 central Americans received technical and digital skills training from Microsoft, while Nespresso is for the first time sourcing coffee from farms in Honduras and El Salvador.
The idea is that these corporations, working alongside some charities, can use economic development as a way to discourage migration to the United States by improving the economic situation in Central America. I asked a couple of experts what they thought of the plan, and they raised a number of questions and concerns.
Michael Paarlberg, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies Central America, told me that the very premise of this policy might be misguided — that literature on migration suggests that higher incomes in the impoverished region could initially cause an uptick in migration to the U.S.; people who always wanted to journey to the U.S. but didn’t have the money to do things like pay coyotes to help them migrate could be empowered to do so with extra cash from better-paying jobs. He expressed concern that the administration could learn the wrong lesson by viewing improved economic outcomes in the region as a failure if they increased migration flows.
Paarlberg also noted that there are recent “bad precedents” in the region when it comes to agreements meant to attract foreign investment. Honduras’ economic development and employment zones, which were authorized by a law passed there in 2013, have created spaces that are exempt from taxes and local laws, including labor and environmental regulations, and their admission rules allow them to discriminate based on political beliefs, criminal background and socioeconomic status. They’re controversial in the country. That exact kind of arrangement won’t necessarily be repeated with Harris’ plan, but the concern is that U.S. corporations — whose sole goal is to maximize their profits — will extract major concessions from governments in return for their investment in an unstable region. Those concessions can undermine local sovereignty and legal protection from exploitation. And if they’re unpopular or fail to help the most vulnerable people in the region like deportees or people who have gone through the criminal justice system, they undermine the very premise of Harris’ policy.
Alejandro Velasco, a historian of Latin America at New York University, told me he was struck by the report that CEOs were mentioning the Cold War as a guiding light — it was an era during which the U.S. partnered with murderous dictatorships across Latin America which pursued free market fundamentalist policies, like in Chile. Given that big business favors stability for investment and is unconcerned with politics per se, Velasco wondered whether CEOs spitballing with Harris might find the idea of working under El Salvador’s authoritarian and Bitcoin-obsessed president particularly attractive — undermining the Biden administration’s purported commitments to democracy promotion. He also noted that there are questions of whether proprietary restrictions surrounding tech investment in the region will will hamper the spread of knowledge and usable technology for the local population.
And there are also questions about who isn’t in the room when Harris is creating corporate brain trusts: “The Central American community in the U.S. is the most important player when it comes to economic development in Central America,” Paarlberg told me, pointing out that the diaspora, which sends a tremendous amount in remittances, has a better understanding of local conditions and needs than corporations that have no local constituency or connections.
Unlike grassroots groups or civil society organizations, corporations are not thinking about how their actions shape human welfare or society's trajectory.
None of this it to suggest that a surge in foreign investment isn't a bright prospect for an economically struggling region. But there is reason to ask questions about how it will be executed give the history of foreign involvement in the region, and reason to be skeptical given how reportage suggests that the plan was born of a corporate meeting of the minds who looked at Cold War influence as a precedent.
Reflecting on all the potential pitfalls of Harris’ migration policy should raise bigger questions about what it means for the vice president to depend on and allow her thinking to be shaped by corporations. Unlike grassroots groups or civil society organizations, corporations are not thinking about how their actions shape human welfare or society's trajectory — they’re structurally designed to care as little as possible about those matters. But what they will do is help create a world that’s more conducive to their own operation.
There are long-term concerns as well here. Harris is a major 2024 contender should President Joe Biden decline to run for re-election. These kinds of practices signal a certain kind of worldview to corporate donors and party elites, and, if she runs, they could shape a policy platform that’s more corporate friendly through positions on issues like corporate taxes or regulation of Wall Street. The issue isn’t just being friendly with them now, but the costs of maintaining that friendship in the future.
Harris’ corporate-influenced migration policy investment plan is a prime example of why her friendliness with corporate behemoths should worry us.
Harris has a sprawling policy portfolio with priorities like voting rights that are difficult to make progress on without congressional involvement, and it’s evident that hobnobbing with the private sector has allowed her to achieve some tangible results. For example, she successfully lobbied Wall Street executives to provide more loans to small businesses, in part by helping streamline their coordination with federal government agencies in identifying lending risk.
But achieving results isn’t the only thing that matters. One must also pay attention to what kind of results are achieved and the process by which they’re conceived and implemented. And Harris’ corporate-influenced migration policy investment plan is a prime example of why her friendliness with corporate behemoths should worry us.
Let’s zoom in on the formation of Harris’ migration policy, per Bloomberg:
In a series of phone calls in the spring, Harris quizzed executives -- including Microsoft’s Smith, Chobani Inc. CEO Hamdi Ulukaya, and Mastercard Inc. Chairman Ajay Banga -- about what she could do to address poverty, climate change and corruption wreaking havoc on Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
The corporate executives told Harris what they saw as some of the core issues driving the migration surge. But they also talked about unorthodox ways the federal government had been able to influence foreign policy crises in the past, from the Cold War through the Arab Spring, through the funding of nongovernmental organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy. …
The talks resulted in more than $1.2 billion in pledges to open new facilities, establish job training programs and expand Internet access across Central America. Already, more than 100,000 central Americans received technical and digital skills training from Microsoft, while Nespresso is for the first time sourcing coffee from farms in Honduras and El Salvador.
The idea is that these corporations, working alongside some charities, can use economic development as a way to discourage migration to the United States by improving the economic situation in Central America. I asked a couple of experts what they thought of the plan, and they raised a number of questions and concerns.
Michael Paarlberg, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies Central America, told me that the very premise of this policy might be misguided — that literature on migration suggests that higher incomes in the impoverished region could initially cause an uptick in migration to the U.S.; people who always wanted to journey to the U.S. but didn’t have the money to do things like pay coyotes to help them migrate could be empowered to do so with extra cash from better-paying jobs. He expressed concern that the administration could learn the wrong lesson by viewing improved economic outcomes in the region as a failure if they increased migration flows.
Paarlberg also noted that there are recent “bad precedents” in the region when it comes to agreements meant to attract foreign investment. Honduras’ economic development and employment zones, which were authorized by a law passed there in 2013, have created spaces that are exempt from taxes and local laws, including labor and environmental regulations, and their admission rules allow them to discriminate based on political beliefs, criminal background and socioeconomic status. They’re controversial in the country. That exact kind of arrangement won’t necessarily be repeated with Harris’ plan, but the concern is that U.S. corporations — whose sole goal is to maximize their profits — will extract major concessions from governments in return for their investment in an unstable region. Those concessions can undermine local sovereignty and legal protection from exploitation. And if they’re unpopular or fail to help the most vulnerable people in the region like deportees or people who have gone through the criminal justice system, they undermine the very premise of Harris’ policy.
Alejandro Velasco, a historian of Latin America at New York University, told me he was struck by the report that CEOs were mentioning the Cold War as a guiding light — it was an era during which the U.S. partnered with murderous dictatorships across Latin America which pursued free market fundamentalist policies, like in Chile. Given that big business favors stability for investment and is unconcerned with politics per se, Velasco wondered whether CEOs spitballing with Harris might find the idea of working under El Salvador’s authoritarian and Bitcoin-obsessed president particularly attractive — undermining the Biden administration’s purported commitments to democracy promotion. He also noted that there are questions of whether proprietary restrictions surrounding tech investment in the region will will hamper the spread of knowledge and usable technology for the local population.
And there are also questions about who isn’t in the room when Harris is creating corporate brain trusts: “The Central American community in the U.S. is the most important player when it comes to economic development in Central America,” Paarlberg told me, pointing out that the diaspora, which sends a tremendous amount in remittances, has a better understanding of local conditions and needs than corporations that have no local constituency or connections.
Unlike grassroots groups or civil society organizations, corporations are not thinking about how their actions shape human welfare or society's trajectory.
None of this it to suggest that a surge in foreign investment isn't a bright prospect for an economically struggling region. But there is reason to ask questions about how it will be executed give the history of foreign involvement in the region, and reason to be skeptical given how reportage suggests that the plan was born of a corporate meeting of the minds who looked at Cold War influence as a precedent.
Reflecting on all the potential pitfalls of Harris’ migration policy should raise bigger questions about what it means for the vice president to depend on and allow her thinking to be shaped by corporations. Unlike grassroots groups or civil society organizations, corporations are not thinking about how their actions shape human welfare or society's trajectory — they’re structurally designed to care as little as possible about those matters. But what they will do is help create a world that’s more conducive to their own operation.
There are long-term concerns as well here. Harris is a major 2024 contender should President Joe Biden decline to run for re-election. These kinds of practices signal a certain kind of worldview to corporate donors and party elites, and, if she runs, they could shape a policy platform that’s more corporate friendly through positions on issues like corporate taxes or regulation of Wall Street. The issue isn’t just being friendly with them now, but the costs of maintaining that friendship in the future.
Opinion | Kamala Harris' corporate-influenced policy exposes a problem
The vice president's corporate-influenced migration policy exemplifies why her hobnobbing should worry us.
www.msnbc.com
Why Kamala Harris' cozy relationship with corporations is worrying
archived 31 Dec 2021 03:54:33 UTC
Elect a neolib and then act SHOCKED I SAY when she turns out to be a neolib.
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2020
>Harris has “increasingly turned to corporate executives from Wall Street and Silicon Valley to serve as informal advisers, policy allies and political boosters,”
>allowing a wine mom karen to get anywhere close to silicon valley and anything tech/internet related
SURELY this will go well
>allowing a wine mom karen to get anywhere close to silicon valley and anything tech/internet related
SURELY this will go well
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2021
After this was mentioned in the Biden thread I knew a bunch of people were going to rush over to stake a hipster claim of being here before she was prez. (As I did precisely that.)
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2020
I got some articles of her comparing the riot at the capital to 9/11
the families of 9/11 victims call her out on it
of course snopes runs simp op for her
the families of 9/11 victims call her out on it
of course snopes runs simp op for her
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2020
God, her voice STILL sounds like she just wants to burst into tears at any moment.
>Kamala Harris has new team of aids to help with interviews
If/When Biden croaks, they better assign like 100 of them around this bitch, because she WILL slip up. There is no question about it.
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2020
She is degrading worse as or more than hiliary
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2020
At least with Hilary everyone shut the fuck up and payed attention to her.
Harris had to wait fucking 10 minutes up on her podium until everyone decided to giver her attention. Harris.. the VICE President, and yet literally no one gives a shit about her.
I was expecting her to pull a Karen move and announce her presence but she didn't even do that, which was shocking.
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2020
Yeah that creeped me out to
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2017
Reagan taught the jounoslime to pay attention when he walked out.
The fact that they think they can ignore the Vice President speaks both to the journalists hubris and her non-entity status.
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2020
OH BOY U GUISE!!! This bitch is jumping on the Biden Russia/Ukraine bandwagon
Article: https://longisland.news12.com/vp-harris-on-ukraine-world-at-a-decisive-moment-in-history
Archive: https://archive.md/Fp0EY
---------------------------------------------------
MUNICH — Vice President Kamala Harris warned Russia on Saturday that it will face “unprecedented” financial penalties if it invades Ukraine and predicted that such an attack would draw European allies closer to the United States. The world is at “a decisive moment in history," she told Ukraine's president, who said he just wants peace for his nation.
Harris spoke at the annual Munich Security Conference the day after President Joe Biden said he was “convinced” that Russia's Vladimir Putin has made the decision to invade neighboring Ukraine.
“Let me be clear, I can say with absolute certainty: If Russia further invades Ukraine, the United States, together with our allies and partners, will impose significant, and unprecedented economic costs,” Harris said.
Harris aimed to make the case to a largely European audience that the West has “strength through unity” and that an invasion would likely lead to an even bigger NATO presence on Russia’s doorstep.
Later, at the start of a meeting with Ukraine's leader, Harris called it “a decisive moment in history" and told Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “Any threat to your country we take seriously.” He responded: “We clearly understand what is going on. This is our land. We want peace.”
He also said he needs Western allies to take “specific steps,” alluding to Ukraine’s requests for even more military and economic assistance. Zelensky also noted that with Russian troops at his country’s borders, Ukraine’s army is in fact “defending all of Europe.”
Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula in 2014, and pro-Russia separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces in the country’s east for almost eight years. The United States and the European Union previously sanctioned Russia over its seizure of Crimea.
Western fears of an invasion have escalated in recent months as Russia amassed more than 150,000 troops near Ukraine's borders.
Harris said the Biden administration, along with its allies, had tried to engage with Moscow in good faith to find a diplomatic resolution but that effort was not reciprocated by the Kremlin.
“Russia continues to say it is ready to talk while at the same time it narrows the avenues for diplomacy,” Harris said. “Their actions simply do not match their words.”
Harris credited European allies for speaking with a largely unified voice as the latest Ukraine crisis has unfolded. The vice president said Republicans and Democrats in Washington — who rarely agree on many major issues — are generally in agreement on the necessity of confronting Putin.
“We didn’t all start out in the same place,” Harris said. “We came together and are now speaking with a unified voice. And that voice was a function of not only dialogue and debate, some concessions, but also the practical realization of the moment that we are in, which is that we are looking at a sovereign nation that may very well be on the verge of being invaded yet again.”
Harris on Friday met in Munich with the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who stressed that a U.S. increase in its troop presence on the eastern edge of NATO is necessary.
The White House has not yet said whether it will fulfill those requests, but Harris suggested in her address on Saturday that an invasion could lead to a bolstered American presence.
“The imposition of these sweeping and coordinated measures will inflict great damage on those who must be held accountable. And we will not stop with economic measures,” Harris said. “We will further reinforce our NATO allies on the eastern flank.”
Biden and other U.S. have offered increasingly dire warnings that the window for diplomacy is narrow.
Biden told reporters Friday that he believes Putin has decided to invade in the coming days, taking military action that could go far beyond the disputed Donbas region in eastern Ukraine and include the capital of Kyiv.
The vice president was scheduled to meet later Saturday with Germany's chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
Harris noted in her remarks that “not since the end of the Cold War” has the Munich conference “convened under such dire circumstances.”
---------------------------------------------------
Article: https://longisland.news12.com/vp-harris-on-ukraine-world-at-a-decisive-moment-in-history
Archive: https://archive.md/Fp0EY
---------------------------------------------------
MUNICH — Vice President Kamala Harris warned Russia on Saturday that it will face “unprecedented” financial penalties if it invades Ukraine and predicted that such an attack would draw European allies closer to the United States. The world is at “a decisive moment in history," she told Ukraine's president, who said he just wants peace for his nation.
Harris spoke at the annual Munich Security Conference the day after President Joe Biden said he was “convinced” that Russia's Vladimir Putin has made the decision to invade neighboring Ukraine.
“Let me be clear, I can say with absolute certainty: If Russia further invades Ukraine, the United States, together with our allies and partners, will impose significant, and unprecedented economic costs,” Harris said.
Harris aimed to make the case to a largely European audience that the West has “strength through unity” and that an invasion would likely lead to an even bigger NATO presence on Russia’s doorstep.
Later, at the start of a meeting with Ukraine's leader, Harris called it “a decisive moment in history" and told Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “Any threat to your country we take seriously.” He responded: “We clearly understand what is going on. This is our land. We want peace.”
He also said he needs Western allies to take “specific steps,” alluding to Ukraine’s requests for even more military and economic assistance. Zelensky also noted that with Russian troops at his country’s borders, Ukraine’s army is in fact “defending all of Europe.”
Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula in 2014, and pro-Russia separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces in the country’s east for almost eight years. The United States and the European Union previously sanctioned Russia over its seizure of Crimea.
Western fears of an invasion have escalated in recent months as Russia amassed more than 150,000 troops near Ukraine's borders.
Harris said the Biden administration, along with its allies, had tried to engage with Moscow in good faith to find a diplomatic resolution but that effort was not reciprocated by the Kremlin.
“Russia continues to say it is ready to talk while at the same time it narrows the avenues for diplomacy,” Harris said. “Their actions simply do not match their words.”
Harris credited European allies for speaking with a largely unified voice as the latest Ukraine crisis has unfolded. The vice president said Republicans and Democrats in Washington — who rarely agree on many major issues — are generally in agreement on the necessity of confronting Putin.
“We didn’t all start out in the same place,” Harris said. “We came together and are now speaking with a unified voice. And that voice was a function of not only dialogue and debate, some concessions, but also the practical realization of the moment that we are in, which is that we are looking at a sovereign nation that may very well be on the verge of being invaded yet again.”
Harris on Friday met in Munich with the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who stressed that a U.S. increase in its troop presence on the eastern edge of NATO is necessary.
The White House has not yet said whether it will fulfill those requests, but Harris suggested in her address on Saturday that an invasion could lead to a bolstered American presence.
“The imposition of these sweeping and coordinated measures will inflict great damage on those who must be held accountable. And we will not stop with economic measures,” Harris said. “We will further reinforce our NATO allies on the eastern flank.”
Biden and other U.S. have offered increasingly dire warnings that the window for diplomacy is narrow.
Biden told reporters Friday that he believes Putin has decided to invade in the coming days, taking military action that could go far beyond the disputed Donbas region in eastern Ukraine and include the capital of Kyiv.
The vice president was scheduled to meet later Saturday with Germany's chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
Harris noted in her remarks that “not since the end of the Cold War” has the Munich conference “convened under such dire circumstances.”
---------------------------------------------------
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2013
Thanks for reviving this. I was going to post about how the Biden administration are trying use Harris to start the war a couple of days ago but DDOSing trannies got in the way.