Monthly Archives: March 2022

But Maybe a Different Response

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John Deni, of the Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, speculated in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal about whether a coup to overthrow Russian President Vladimir Putin would improve much. He opened with

Some Western observers hope Vladimir Putin will be overthrown in a coup. While the likelihood of such an event is debatable, one thing is certain: if Mr Putin were removed in a coup, whoever replaces him would face the same domestic political incentives and disincentives, which would likely lead to a continuation of Russia’s confrontational approach to the West.

He concluded with

So although a coup in Moscow could bring an end to Russia’s disastrous war in Ukraine, a new ruler or regime would face the same domestic political incentives and would likely end up behaving in similar ways.

Were a coup to bring that end to Ukraine’s misery, that alone would make the coup worth the cost.

Beyond that, though, a new Russian government might be able to recognize that no one in the West has any designs on Russia, no one in the West is any security threat to Russia. That lack stems from a single incontrovertible fact that plays on what Adam Smith termed the invisible hand: our own self-interest.

Russia has absolutely nothing that anyone in the West wants that can’t be gotten far more cheaply and far more beneficially to us in the West—and by the way, for the Russian people, too—through free and open trade.

It’s a long shot that a replacement crop of Russians at the top of that government would recognize that, but that replacement crop is unlikely to be worse than the Putin-led syndicate that is, empirically, bent on war and conquest.

Deaths from Wuhan Virus Vaccine Side Effects?

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Lancet claims so. Leave aside that the magazine long ago went political and abandoned serious medical paper publication, having already had to publicly retract one paper that was shown (not by the magazine’s putative peer reviewers) to be badly flawed and written from a predetermined political conclusion.

This paper is just as badly flawed, in its own right.

The paper begins by depending in part on the CDC and FDA jointly maintained Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System database. VAERS is a badly flawed database, being a collection of claims voluntarily reported by anyone who felt like interacting with it—and lacking who knows what other information that others didn’t feel like reporting.

The Lancet paper writers also depend in part on v-safe, a smart phone app(!) through which users can self-select their own reported symptom claims (or choose not to report them).

With those flaws at the center of the writing—which in an objective medical journal would have gotten the paper rejected—the paper’s writers claimed that 1.3% of the reported Wuhan Virus mRNA vaccinations resulted in deaths, and that 6.6% of the reports resulted in inpatient hospitalization [sic], prolongation of hospitalisation [sic], permanent disability, life-threatening illness, congenital anomaly, or birth defect.

Nonsense like this badly dilutes serious reporting and the public’s perception of serious reporting of the vaccines’ effectiveness and side effects. There may well be serious, but sub-lethal, and lethal outcomes to getting an mRNA vaccine against the virus. But sloppily done papers like this shed no light on the rates of those outcomes and sully legitimate reports that accurately estimate those rates.

Reckless Putin

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors are fretting about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and that war-of-Putin-choice’s closing approach to NATO territory. They conclude their worry beads fingering with this bit:

No one wants a broader war. But as Russia escalates, Mr Biden and NATO had better be prepared to fight one. A reckless or desperate Mr Putin may give them no choice.

Putin is far from reckless or desperate, except under the foolish Western assumptions that Putin thinks like we do, has the same pain points we have, has the same value sets we have. Putin, on the contrary, has been quite clear and steadfast all along. He intends to reconstitute Russia’s former USSR empire, complete with regaining control over the outer, occupied nations, like Russia-controlled Poland and German Democratic Republic, and others. Those nations, along with so many of the ex-SSRs, are now members of NATO.

Putin’s push into NATO will come in accordance with his goals, and there’s no maybe to it. Western governments hide their heads in the Irrational Putin sand at their—and us citizens’—peril.

Earmarks—Congress Has Them

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They’re back, in spades, courtesy of Congress’ latest spend-a-thon, the $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill just rushed through under the guise of billions more dollars in aid and weapons for Ukraine. The funding for Ukraine is sorely needed, but that should have been argued and enacted through a separate, stand-alone bill. Instead, Progressive-Democrats and too many Republicans (vis., Senator Richard Shelby, R, AL) used the blood and bodies of Ukrainians to speed through their personally convenient spending wishes—earmarks.

The argument for earmarks is that Congress should direct this spending rather than leave it to the federal bureaucracy. But the bureaucracy is better placed to make trade-offs based on economic value and urgent need in a world of limited resources.

There are two failures in this claim by The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board.

One is that earmarks are perfectly fine as compromise grease and tradeoffs—they just should occur from within a separate budget and allocation line item for earmarks, and each such earmark should be openly debated on the House and Senate floors so We the People can see them and approve or disapprove of them.

The other is the incredibly naive claim that bureaucracy is better placed to make trade-offs based on economic value and urgent need. No, it’s not. Bureaucrats, just like any other politicians, whether elected or Civil Servant, will make the trade-offs that best suit the bureaucrat(s) involved. On top of that, it’s Congress that controls spending, not bureaucrats. Spending decision should be left to our elected representatives in those houses; delegation needs to be reined in and severely curtailed.

Drill, Baby, Drill

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Progressive-Democrats really do not want our nation to be energy independent or to be able to support our friends and allies—and acquaintances around the world—with energy exports for the foreseeable future. For motives known only to themselves, they want to kill our energy capability until their dream of “green” energy comes to fruition, in that future distant beyond the foreseeable.

Senate Democrats are threatening to punish US oil companies with a windfall-profits tax if they increase production.

This also illustrates Progressive-Democrats’ utter disinterest in the way economics and economies work (I’m reluctant to say these Know Betters are ignorant of those ways).

The Senators plan would require companies that produce or import at least 300,000 barrels of oil per day (or did so in 2019) to pay a per-barrel tax equal to 50% of the difference between the current and average price between 2015 and 2019 (about $57 a barrel).

Since increasing supply relative to demand brings down price, one counter to this Progressive-Democrat war on our energy economy is to drill, baby, drill.

Another counter becomes available this fall—we need to fire Progressive-Democrats from our State and Federal governments so that energy producers can drill, baby, drill.