Download and Print one-page explainers -- hand out to friends, neighbors, coworkers

Over the past few months, I've noticed that many people are confused about some basic facts about topics like immigration, crime, and the economy. I wrote up simple explainers designed to help people understand, in simple terms, why inflation got so high, what Kamala Harris' immigration policy is, and so on. 

You can download and print our explainers here.  If you like, you can print them out and hand them out to friends, family members, and coworkers who are confused. Or, you could print out a few copies and take them with you when you're out canvassing for Kamala Harris -- they might come in handy as fact sheets if and when you get people who are reluctant to commit to voting for Harris. 

 -AS

Why Was Inflation So High? Was it Biden's Fault? An Explainer

 Why Was Inflation So High? Was it Biden’s fault? 

An Explainer 

[You can download and print a one-page PDF of this explainer here.]

Inflation is a complicated issue, and anyone who says otherwise is probably not being 100% honest. I am not here to give you an easy answer. My goal is to try and explain what happened since 2020 honestly and fairly.  

First, it’s important to remember Presidents and political parties don’t really have direct control over inflation (in the U.S., the Federal Reserve is more important). Still here are a few important facts about the Biden/Harris administration: 

• Under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, 16 million new jobs have been 

created in the U.S. Unemployment is around 4%, a very good number. 

• Under Biden/Harris, wages are up a cumulative 19.4% for workers. 

• Overall economic growth has been solid (6% GDP), and the U.S. economy has recovered from the pandemic in a much better position than Europe. 

• We should also acknowledge the bad news: under Biden/Harris,

Inflation has been up a cumulative 19.2%. The current rate of inflation is down to 2.4%.

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How did we get here? 

1. Remember 2020-2022. During the pandemic, there was a slowdown in the economy, and then a rapid bounce-back period. This pattern happened around the world. 

2. 2022-2023. The U.S. economy bounced back very quickly, with lots of new jobs created, and wages going up. (Lots of jobs and high wages sounds like a good thing, but unfortunately, it can add to inflation!) The fact that the government helped in the form of stimulus (and there were big stimulus packages passed by both Trump AND Biden) as well as big, ambitious projects in the Inflation Reduction Act, probably helped the U.S. recover faster. 

Supply chain problems. During this period, there were still supply shortages for goods, including important and expensive items like cars and car parts. Oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia also cut back on oil production in 2020 when Trump was president, leading to a rise in prices once the economy started to recover. 

3. 2023-2024. Rate hikes. The best tool the U.S. government has for combating inflation is interest rate hikes. These are directed by the Federal Reserve, not the President. The Fed started raising rates from close to 0% at the start of the pandemic, all the way up to 5.33% by August 2024. These rate hikes slow down economic growth, which keeps inflation in check. 

Unfortunately, higher rates don’t help across the board. For one thing, higher rates lead to higher effective real estate prices and rents, which means that for many people the cost of owning or renting a home has gone up a lot in recent years. 

What happens next? The mythical “Soft Landing”

In past years, when the Federal Reserve raised rates to slow inflation, what usually followed was an economic recession (this happened in the 1970s, again in the 1980s, and yet again with the “great recession” of 2009-2010). There were worries that a recession might happen again in 2023-2024, but happily, we haven’t seen that. Corporate earnings remain good, hiring remains strong, and yet inflation has continued to drift downwards. This is referred to as a “soft landing,” and it seems like the U.S. has been able to achieve it for the first time in 30 years.

If you want to see more data, there is a fair breakdown of the Trump economy vs. the Biden economy on the right: 

If you want a comparison of the U.S. economic recovery against Europe’s, there’s a detailed study of that on the left.

Takeaway: European countries have had slower growth but also higher inflation rates than the U.S. since the pandemic. We’re doing something right!

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Meanwhile, what does Donald Trump want to do if he wins the 2024 election? 

The #1 economic policy Donald Trump has been talking about are across-the-board tariffs. (A “tariff” is a tax on imported goods.) He wants to put in 60% across-the-board tariffs on goods from China, and 10-20% tariffs on all other imported goods. All professional economists say this would cause a huge spike in inflation! More on the right. Donald Trump’s approach to economics is very simplistic. He doesn’t understand that we live in a complex, global economy. If enacted, these tarifs would probably cause a severe recession.  

Nearly All of Trump's Former Staff Have Spoken Out Against Him: a one-page explainer

[You can download and print a one-page PDF of this explainer here.]

This is a one-page explainer arguing that you should consider voting for Kamala Harris, not Donald Trump. My goal is not to criticize you or call anyone names, but to persuade you based on documented facts that you can check for yourself. 

It seems like everyone who works for Trump later comes out against him. Below are a few former cabinet members and White House staff who are now vehemently anti-Trump. Several of these folks are military leaders with strong reputations for honesty and integrity. They are not social media grifters or opportunists. They don’t benefit from turning against their former boss. 

Ask yourself: why do so many people who work for Donald later turn against him? What does that say about his judgment, about what kind of man he is? Maybe one of them is exaggerating or not being 100% honest. But could they really all be lying?

General John F Kelly, White House Chief of Staff. Kelly was a Marine Corps general who worked as Trump’s Chief of Staff from 2017-2019. After working closely with Trump for more than two years in the White House, he has had some of the harshest things to say. One that jumped out at me related to a military parade Trump wanted to organize in honor of himself (Trump): 

Trump tells Kelly, “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade.”

“Those are the heroes,” Kelly said. “In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are – and they are buried over in Arlington.”

“I don’t want them,” Trump said. “It doesn’t look good for me.” (Click the QR code for more John Kelly’s accounts of what Trump said at various points about veterans)

John Bolton. John Bolton was a Fox News regular for years before he went to work for Trump. He also had high-ranking positions in previous Republican administrations, including George W. Bush. He worked for Trump as National Security Advisor. Here is some of what he’s said about his former boss: 

On one level, “The Room Where It Happened” is a blistering, bitter takedown of the president who Bolton describes as ignorant of such basic facts as that the United Kingdom is a nuclear power; a commander in chief who blathered through many of his own intelligence briefings and who changed his mind on a dime – “we made a weathervane look like the Rock of Gibraltar” – and who filtered all his decisions through an electoral lens, even to the extent of encouraging Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him get reelected by purchasing more goods from American farmers. Bolton observes, “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations.”

Elsewhere John Bolton has said he considers Trump “unfit to be President.” 

Defense Secretary Mark Esper. Mark Esper was a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army and a veteran of the Gulf War. and served as Secretary of the Army under Trump (2017-2019). Between 2019 and the end of 2020, he was Trump’s Secretary of Defense. During the protests in the summer of 2020, Trump wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, and deploy active-duty troops to shut down protests in American cities. Esper opposed that (and thankfully, it didn’t happen), but kept working for Trump. The final straw was Trump’s behavior leading up to and during January 6. He has described Trump as a “threat to our democracy,” and said that Trump’s actions during this time were “a national embarrassment that undermined our democracy, our credibility, and our leadership on the world stage."

Also look up Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, Attorney General Bill Barr (who was loyal to Trump for a long time before turning against him), Defense Secretary Rex Tillerson, and of course former Vice President Mike Pence. All of these are tried and true, life-long conservatives with nothing to gain by turning against Trump.

Here’s why it matters: throughout his Presidency, Trump was only concerned about his own appearance, not about the good of the country or respect for democratic institutions. No injured veterans at the parade; “it doesn’t look good for me.” No respect for democratic institutions (like the ban on using military troops against civilians on U.S. soil), no real competency or strategy on international affairs. In short, a weak leader. Why would we want him back? 

 

Why You Shouldn't Vote for Trump: Basic Facts About Immigration, Crime, and the Economy

[You can download and print a one-page PDF of this explainer here.]

Why You Shouldn’t Vote For Trump: 

Basic Facts About Immigration, Crime, and the Economy

Right off the bat, I wanted to say that I’m not here to call anyone names. My hope is to say a couple of things you might not have heard about immigration, crime & the economy, and hope to persuade you with facts you can verify yourself. 

On the 2020 election. Donald Trump has spent the last four years claiming that the 2020 election was stolen. In the weeks following the election in November 2020, Trump’s legal team filed many lawsuits challenging the results in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona – more than 40 cases! Many of the judges hearing these lawsuits were appointed by Trump himself. All but one of the cases was immediately dismissed. Even the one that was successful was overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Many judges, including the conservative U.S. Supreme Court, looked at these questions and rejected them. There’s no big cover-up and no conspiracy here. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related_to_the_2020_U.S._presidential_election

Bottom line: the 2020 election was not stolen. It was close in the swing states like PA, but Joe Biden won, fair and square. Biden won the U.S. popular vote by 7 million votes!

On the border. It’s a fair concern to say that a large number of migrants were coming into the U.S. across the southern border in the first years of Joe Biden’s presidency. Working with Republicans in the Senate, Biden advocated for a very strong, conservative immigration bill that he would have been ready to sign. But in February 2024, Donald Trump blocked it! This fact has been verified by many Republican Senators, including several who are still voting for Trump. Kamala Harris says she would sign this bill if elected. 

There’s more about what was in this bill here: 

https://www.factcheck.org/2024/02/unraveling-misinformation-about-bipartisan-immigration-bill/  (or use the QR code with your phone camera)

Incidentally, border crossings are way down this year. After Trump blocked the border bill, Biden implemented a new executive action to force asylum seekers to request asylum outside of the U.S. That has been working. As of June 2024, the rate of illegal crossings is the lowest it’s been since January 2021. Now, you may wish that number were 0, but if you see Trump saying the borders are “wide open” and “millions” of migrants are coming in illegally, that’s just not true. 

On the economy. It’s fair to say that inflation has been an issue under Biden. Overall inflation has led to a cumulative 19.2% increase in prices over Biden’s term. But it’s worth noting that wages have also been way up – a 19.4% increase over Biden’s term. So things may cost more, but most Americans also have more money to spend. Under Joe Biden, the economy has added 16 million jobs. 

Overall, economic growth under Biden has been strong despite inflation: +6% in 2021 (though that’s a rebound from pandemic number), +1.5% in 2022 (effects of inflation), and +2% in 2023. Right now, economists are saying that Biden and the Federal Reserve have managed that rare thing – bringing inflation down without causing a recession (a “soft landing”). 

If you want to see more data, there is a fair breakdown of the Trump economy vs. the Biden economy here: 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/18/trump-biden-economy-charts-compare/ (or use the QR code)

On crime. We hear a lot of scaremongering in the media about violent crime rates.  Actually, after a spike in violent crime under Trump, violent crime has been falling rapidly in most American cities since 2022, including Philadelphia. (In Philadelphia this year, the homicide rate is down 42%!) So when Trump says that crime is out of control and that illegal immigrants are responsible, that’s just not remotely true. 

Remember, the local news always follows an “if it bleeds, it leads” approach, so we tend to only hear about bad things happening in Philadelphia. More on the drop in crime rates here (or use the QR code) is here: 

https://www.axios.com/2024/08/12/violent-crime-harris-trump-election