Monthly Archives: April 2022

The Barbarian on His Redeployment

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is redeploying some of his forces away from the vicinity of Kyiv. He’s also ordering his hordes to lay booby traps that would do Daesh proud.  Per Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (as cited by The Wall Street Journal):

[R]etreating Russian forces had placed mines in houses, laid trip wires and booby-trapped corpses.

And this:

The [Bucha, just northwest of Kyiv] city council said a confectionery factory in Bucha had been mined by the Russian military before it departed.

Never mind the lack of military importance of this sort of installation. Certainly, sugar can be used to make a variety of bombs, but to the extent that’s the case, the militarily appropriate act would have been simply to destroy the factory. This was done solely to inflict more civilian casualties.

And at a private residence in Velyka Dymerka, a village just northeast of Kyiv, a returning resident filmed the damage done by Russians:

In a kennel outside, his dog lay dead, apparently shot. “Why would you kill it?”

Because barbarism.

NATO Member Nations’ “Commitment”

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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has gotten NATO members to step up their military budgets. Or so is the hopeful assessment of those member nation governments’…claims.

NATO members outside the US are set to boost their military spending following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to alliance Secretary-General [and former Norway Prime Minister] Jens Stoltenberg and pledges from member countries.

However [emphasis added].

Only eight countries, including the US, already cross the 2% threshold, according to NATO’s report, a decline from the previous annual report, in which 11 countries met the target.

And

The percentages are subject to changes in both defense budgets and to economic activity, which has been buffeted by the coronavirus pandemic over the past two years.

Indeed. There’s always an excuse for walking away from an inconvenient commitment.

Stoltenberg, as cited by The Wall Street Journal, said:

…it is hard for governments to allocate more money for defense. “But when we see a new security reality, we all realize the need to invest in our security,” he said.

No, it’s not hard at all. Either the nations’ governments honor their commitments to defend each other, either the nations’ governments honor their obligation to defend their own people (which is enhanced—or would be—by that mutual defense commitment), or they do not. The only hard part is finding the moral courage actually to do what they say they will do. The rest is just allocation of monies.

On that note, this:

But Germany and other countries that fall short have recently announced new plans to increase military spending following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

Germany is a prime example of this. During the Trump administration, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged to increase Germany’s military spending to 2% of GDP or more, and thereby honor Germany’s commitment to that 2% threshold—a commitment Germany had been dishonoring since the NATO-wide commitment’s inception in 2014. Then Germany continued to dishonor its commitment under Merkel: the budget she submitted next after her commitment to Trump welched anew; her budget allocated less than 1.6% of GDP to Germany’s military.

Now Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz has made the Merkel commitment, but there’s no reason to believe he has any more intention than Merkel had of honoring the promise.

Those other 20+ countries who’ve been dishonoring their commitments all along? Sure. Italy already has walked away again; the others likely will simply be quiet about their continued decision to not spend on military needs.

There’s always an excuse.

The Progressive-Democratic Party Fails Again

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editors are concerned about the Left’s and the Progressive-Democrats in Congress’ efforts to cancel in one form or another Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over some text messages his wife sent.

Democrats and their media allies quickly sped past Ginni to demand that Justice Thomas resign (Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY)), or be impeached (Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D, MN)), or at least recuse himself from hearing cases related to elections (Senator Amy Klobuchar (D, MN), et al.).

The Editors are entirely justified in that concern.

However, I think the problem goes well beyond that.  This whole sorry affair is typical of the Left’s and the Progressive-Democratic Party’s intrinsic sexist bigotry, and their efforts to turn back the clock on the feminist movement (the real one of Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, et al., not today’s movement of professional victimhood and identity politics).

Demanding Justice Thomas recuse/resign/be impeached over his wife’s remarks does nothing but reduce Mrs Thomas to that erstwhile status of a wife being merely an appendage of her husband and not a free agent in her own right.

Yet Another Start

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The House has passed—by 414-5—a bill that markedly improves Americans’ 401(k) retirement plans that are offered by most employers. If also passed by the Senate and signed into law by the President (or passed anew over a President’s veto) the bill would

  • raise the age at which retirees must start taking money out of their Plans, over the next decade, to 75
  • allow older workers to make bigger contributions: the current “catch up” contributions of $6,500/yr for those older than 50 would rise to $10,000/yr for people ages 62, 63, and 64
  • the extra $1,000 people 50 and older can contribute annually to an IRA would become indexed to inflation

These are important moves. However, there are no reasons in logic or economics for those age or contribution limits. Folks should be able to contribute as much as they want to their retirement plans, whenever they want, at any age, and regardless of income.

They should be able to delay making withdrawals for as long as they wish—and not be required to continue making withdrawals once they start. Retirement withdrawals should be in the amounts and at the times the retiree deems useful, not when Government dictates them.

The benefits of such finishing touches are readily apparent. The more we’re allowed to save during our working years for our retirement, the less dependent we’ll be on increasingly fragile government retirement programs like Social Security and Medicare when we do retire.

The more retirees have for their own retirement resources, the less stress retirees will impose on those government programs, which can only reduce their fragility.

War, Inflation, and Biden’s Energy “Policy”

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President Joe Biden (D), having had his nose rubbed in the criticality of fossil fuels to our economy and those of all nations around the world by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s frequent use of oil and natural gas exports as weapons, now is begging other nations and consortia to produce more oil. And he’s insisting that our own oil and gas producers do more to produce while castigating them for being responsible for the present high and continuing inflation rates us Americans are experiencing.

An anonymous White House spokeswoman:

Mr Biden “wants to do everything possible and sensible to mitigate” the affect of high energy prices on American families.
“He’s been clear in recent remarks that oil and gas companies should help ensure that oil supply meets demand, and at the same time we need to advance clean energy options and decrease our reliance on fossil fuels[.]”

This is disingenuous, though. Biden and his advisors know full well that oil and gas producers cannot just turn on the wells and turn them off at will. It costs time and money to cap the wells in a safe, environmentally protective manner, and it costs time and money to uncap them in a safe, environmentally protective manner. It costs time and money to protect pipelines from the pressure reductions associated with significant production decreases, and it costs time and money to protect pipelines from the pressure increases associated with significant production increases. It costs time and money to reschedule and reallocate rail cars for oil transport.

It especially costs time and money to dig new wells, frack new wells, and lay additional pipelines to handle the increased production. That transport brings me to refineries—these cost time and money to to close and to open in order to handle refining decreases and increases. Natural gas-to-liquid natural gas facilities are even more expensive to close and reopen, and require even more money than simple refineries to build more of, which we need to do since we don’t have enough here, and potential customer nations don’t have enough of at the receiving end.

The time and cost problems don’t end there. It takes time—years—to recoup those costs, which run to billions of dollars per year. And yet, the current Progressive-Democrat political environment is one of zealously anti-fossil fuels regulation, drilling blockages, pipeline blockages.

Oil and gas producers are understandably and justifiably chary of spending that time and money to alter their production schedules. They can’t trust the Progressive-Democrats to let them produce long enough to recoup all those costs.

There’s just no reason to believe Biden and his advisors are serious about oil and gas or of high energy prices or of inflation generally.