Aug 16, 2024
Right-Wingers LOSE IT Over Harris' Price-Gouging Ban
Vice President Kamala Harris have right-wingers on their heels with her anti-price gouging proposals.
- 13 minutes
She's basically going to bash businesses.
She's going to accuse businesses once
again of price gouging and excess margins.
And I just want to say
these charges by Biden and Harris
[00:00:15]
are now three and a half years old plus,
and there is no evidence of corporate
price gouging or excessive margins
or something called corporate greed.
I love adding that at the end from Larry
Kudlow, like like he already is lying
[00:00:32]
by saying there's no evidence of like the
excessive margins or the price gouging,
but also there's never been
any evidence of greed.
Yes, they're very charitable
and they keep very slim margins.
CEOs tend to drive
10 to 20 year old domestic cars.
I've noticed that, too.
Larry Kudlow but why is he saying that?
[00:00:50]
Well, he's saying that because earlier
today, Kamala Harris announced that she
is going to be doing as one of her first
priorities when she gets into office,
fighting back against price gouging.
One of the things that has been driving
the increase in prices over the last
few years, and I love that right wingers
are losing their mind over this,
[00:01:05]
because for several years now they've
been saying Biden made the prices higher,
the prices are too high,
inflation, this inflation
that you guys have got to get them
out of there because the inflation.
So then when the Dems are like,
well, let's do something about it, they're
like, no, the corporations, because that's
of course who their that's their donors.
[00:01:23]
That's who they care about.
They need to whip people up
into a frenzy about inflation
so that they can get in office.
And then once they're there,
they can protect donors
from any actual change to the status quo.
Well, Harris does want
to change the status quo
at least a little bit in this area.
And here she is describing that.
[00:01:38]
I want more than $1 billion for consumers.
So believe me, as president,
I will go after the bad actors.
[00:01:59]
And I will.
Work to pass the first ever federal ban
on price gouging on food.
My plan will include new penalties
for opportunistic companies
[00:02:16]
that exploit crises and break the rules.
And we will support
smaller food businesses that are trying
to play by the rules and get ahead.
And as a part of that second thing,
she also says that she is going
to direct the government to to put
[00:02:32]
more scrutiny on proposed mergers
when it comes to supermarkets
and food producers coming together,
limiting choice,
which has driven up costs.
So we're going to get into a lot of this,
including the evidence,
just in case Larry Kudlow is watching
of not just evidence of the price gouging,
but CEOs of these companies
bragging about the price gouging.
[00:02:50]
But first, we want to make sure
that you know how much the right
wingers are freaking out.
It's not just Kudlow.
Here's a few more examples.
I think if Kamala Harris
is going to run on I prosecuted
corporations for price gouging.
Okay.
If you're going to vilify corporations,
the Republicans got to come back and go,
let me just explain to you, these
corporations who they employ, what they've
[00:03:08]
done, and their profit margin is so low.
You have stop and shop's going
out of business every day.
Supermarkets are having trouble making
ends meet, so they're not the problem.
And Kamala Harris, she wants to take us
to the Soviet grocery stores.
Continue to play cut.
119 Kamala Harris is hearing the concerns
[00:03:27]
of the American people.
Her pollsters say you got to do something
about this grocery problem,
this price, this price problem.
So Kamala Harris is going full Soviet.
Now, Kamala is reportedly proposing
communist price controls.
She wants price controls.
And if they worked,
I'd go along with it too.
[00:03:44]
But they don't work.
They actually have the exact
opposite impact and effect.
But it leads to food shortages, rationing,
hunger, dramatically more inflation.
None of that makes any sense.
And she's not proposing price fixing.
She's proposing a stop on arbitrary price
gouging to increase profit margins.
[00:04:03]
In times where we have the difficulty
that we have over the past few years,
that's literally it.
And again, I you talked in the prior
segment about you go on the offense.
They have to go on the offense.
We'll look at how their
their tune has changed.
They're talking about high prices,
high prices, high prices.
Now they're telling their audience,
including conservatives
[00:04:21]
who are struggling,
stop being so mean to the corporations.
Aren't they great to you.
And so I love to see it.
Hey don't scroll away.
Come back, come back.
Because before the video continues,
we just want to urge you
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[00:04:37]
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Again let's break it down.
Politics and policy.
So I'm going to come back to why this is
logical and good policy and what it means.
And it doesn't mean communism.
But first the politics John is 100% right.
[00:04:53]
Look at them flailing on defense.
So my favorite out of all those clips.
I mean, kudlow's the funniest.
I'll come back to him.
But Kilmeade was my favorite
because he's like, we we Republicans
have to defend corporate power.
Corporations are great.
We should make a defense of corporations.
Oh, please listen to Brian Kilmeade.
Please make that mistake right.
[00:05:12]
Oh my God, who's running this campaign?
This is amazing.
So I look, I thought getting rid of Joe
Biden was going to be a huge win.
We would have because we would
have a candidate who could speak.
I didn't know that she
could speak and strategize.
This is gigantic. Win.
[00:05:28]
Unbelievable.
So look again, if you if you don't follow
American politics that closely,
to have Democrats running
correct strategy is just shocking.
So so she puts them on the defense.
[00:05:44]
And now they're saying
communism Soviet Union.
Nobody believes that. You know why?
Because they're the boy who cried wolf.
They've called every Democrat
a communists.
They said that Barack Obama was a Marxist.
We lived through eight years
of Barack Obama.
He did the bank bailouts.
[00:06:00]
You know, when we had
the economic recovery, 93% of
the economic recovery went to the top 1%.
What kind of Marxist is this?
Okay. So that's going to fall flat.
In fact, as he was showing the Russian
store, grocery store behind him or next
to him, Charlie Kirk, I thought, is
Tucker Carlson going to show up anymore?
[00:06:17]
He was literally doing an ode
to Russian supermarkets like a minute ago.
Right? So none of that's going to work.
Back to Kudlow. I wrote it down.
There's no such thing
as something called corporate greed.
[00:06:33]
Oh, please run the entire.
Campaign
on defending corporate greed, please.
Oh, the Republicans are toast, man.
Now, look, I'm moving up.
Kamala Harris's chances of winning,
like, dramatically every single day.
I have not seen someone
gain this much ground.
[00:06:51]
This quickly
in a long, long time, if ever.
Okay, so now let's turn to the policy.
By the way, before I do a Kudlow,
when he says there's no such thing
as corporate greed,
it reminds me of Baghdad Bob, you know.
So that was the Saddam's spokesperson
and the American tanks.
[00:07:08]
He would say he'd get on TV and he'd be
in the middle of Baghdad and he'd be like,
there are no Americans in Baghdad.
And you'd see American tanks behind him.
Okay.
And that's the same thing with Kudlow.
He's like, there is no corporate greed.
It's like flashing screens
of corporate greed behind him on CNBC
[00:07:25]
and and Fox and all the places he's been.
All right.
So on the policy end, everybody
is saying this is price controls.
And by the way, you know,
corporations are freaked out
because it's not just right wing media.
All of a sudden Washington Post columnist
on cable news on CNN,
[00:07:41]
MSNBC going, this is wrong.
This is bad. This is price controls.
Wait a minute.
She didn't say price controls
because if she said price controls,
I'd be out here telling you
that's a bad idea They're not wrong.
The price controls don't work,
in my opinion.
Okay.
And I could have a fight
with a leftist on that.
[00:07:56]
But that's not fundamentally
correct economic policy.
It does have counterproductive.
But she didn't say price controls.
So I read it carefully to make sure
that I understood what she was saying.
And granted, like the minutia
of the of the policy is not laid out.
[00:08:11]
There's no bill yet. Right.
But based on what she said, she's going
after price gouging and and and enabling
the government agencies to do that.
Wow. That's so radical.
That already exists. That exists.
So, for example, when there's a natural
disaster, like a hurricane, sometimes what
[00:08:29]
they'll do is they'll jack up the price
of water because you have limited supply.
So they'll be like, oh, supply and demand.
Now you really, really need this water.
So I'm now going
to I used to charge a buck.
Now I'm charging $200 for it.
Now what are you going to do.
Okay.
You're going to let your you know
you're going to die of thirst.
No, that's price gouging.
Can the government do something about it?
[00:08:47]
Of course they can.
So she's just saying, hey take the thing
that we already do for natural disasters
and modify it for this situation.
You know, is the devil in the details.
How do you modify it?
Can it go overboard?
Sure can go overboard.
And I would tell you if it did.
But right now this proposal is smart
politically and from a policy perspective
[00:09:06]
could work as well.
Larry Kudlow is totally right.
There's no such thing as corporate greed.
Come on. What are you talking about, guys?
It's not like people are
going around in these.
You give you give you
give CEOs more money.
They're going to give it
to everybody else.
They're not going to go buy yachts
and private jets.
[00:09:23]
And I mean, it's the most ridiculous thing
for these guys to be defending
these corporations the way they are.
I thought of Gordon Gekko and greed is
good and from Wall Street and actually,
Larry Kudlow looks like he could
have been in the movie Wall Street
[00:09:38]
as like the CFO with those, you know,
the white collars he's got.
He looks like a really greedy,
perfectly greedy person.
So yeah, all of that to say, you know,
these people that are screaming,
oh, communism, communism,
America is capitalistic at its core.
[00:09:55]
And if you don't believe it,
look at what it took.
First of all, when Covid happened, it
wasn't the government that shut us down.
It was the NBA that shut us down.
If you remember, it was Rudy Gobert
at the at the press conference and he had
Covid and he put his hand all over the
microphones of all the other reporters.
[00:10:14]
And then they canceled
the game that night.
The NBA was like,
oh wow, we got to cancel.
That's a private corporation.
And then everything started closing down.
Similarly, if you look at Donald Trump
being kicked off, we tried for years
to quiet Donald Trump down.
The government didn't stop him.
They tried impeachments.
It didn't work. It didn't work.
[00:10:30]
But it was the social media networks
that finally that are private companies
that kicked them off.
So we are, at our core,
a capitalistic society.
So this whole idea of like price gouging
and going after price gougers
is going to turn us into communists
is the most ridiculous thing in the world.
[00:10:47]
And by the way, the price gouging is not
the only reason why we've had inflation.
There was other causes to inflation,
obviously, and that's why it's amazing
how like there's no
room for nuance with these people.
It's either you're a communist
or you're a capitalist.
[00:11:02]
You either like the corporations
or you're going to be Stalin.
And it's just ridiculous that they
are going out and saying these things.
And I personally am all for,
as you guys were saying, looking
at the program and seeing what it is.
And I think good for her
for putting it out there and, and
[00:11:19]
and yes, clearly we've we've heard these
CEOs on some of these calls talk about,
oh, this is a great time for us
to raise our prices,
buy back our stocks, buy private jets.
Look at the stock market.
It's blowing up and life is good.
Well, maybe it's time for them to actually
stop taking advantage of the situation.
[00:11:39]
Okay, well, real quick I'm going
to give you some of those CEO quotes
that, Maz just promised you.
And he's right.
Rudy Gobert ruins everything.
I bet on the wolves. Okay.
The CEO of Iron Mountain Incorporated
told Wall Street analysts
at September 20th Investor Event that
the high levels of inflation
over the past several years had helped
[00:11:56]
the company increase its margins.
And for that reason, he had long been,
quote, doing my inflation dance,
praying for inflation.
Rodney McMullen, Kroger's CEO, said our
business operates the best when inflation
[00:12:11]
is about 3 to 4%. A little bit of
inflation is always good in our business.
AutoZone, which sells cars, parts
and accessories, saw earnings jump 13%.
CFO Jamere Jackson called inflation,
quote, a little bit of our friend in terms
[00:12:27]
of what we see in terms of retail pricing,
because what they're saying is, look,
when there's inflation, people realize
that we're going to raise prices
so they don't object that much.
So then we raise them even more
because we realize especially for food,
[00:12:42]
the demand is inelastic.
And what that means is they need to eat.
And so as long as we've got enough
of a monopoly on these grocery stores,
we could charge them higher prices
and they can't complain.
So when you dance to it almost literally
right in your shareholder meetings,
[00:13:01]
then you can't turn around and pretend
you're not doing price gouging later.
And finally, I promise that earlier,
the reason why Kamala Harris
wasn't doing interviews yet was because
they were formulating this plan on policy.
Now she'll do the interviews and
and then they could ask her
about these policy positions.
[00:13:17]
That's why she was waiting.
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