Daily Archives: 28 March 2023

An End to the Ukrainian War

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The lede in a Wall Street Journal article goes like this:

Western leaders are beginning to have a clearer vision of how they hope the war in Ukraine will end.
What is missing is any plan to make it happen.

On the contrary. The principal, the nation that has been invaded by the barbarian, has a very clear vision of how the war will end. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has articulated that vision since the day the barbarian hordes swarmed over the borders: all Russian forces out of all Ukrainian territory. Full stop.

What’s missing is Western resolve to assist Ukraine in achieving that.

Far more likely, though, is a war of attrition that lasts until one side is so defeated or exhausted that it calls a halt without realizing its ultimate aims.
Such an outcome, many diplomats acknowledge, would be measured in years not months.

Such an outcome, though, is not at all predicated on an essential balance of Ukrainian-barbarian forces and a resulting grinding fight. Any attritional aspects to the war would be obviated if the West were to supply Ukraine with the weapons, ammunition, and logistical support that Ukraine’s defense leaders say they need and in the amounts and rate of supply they say they need them.

Instead, the Know Betters in the American, French, and German governments are slow-walking all of that, insisting that Ukraine doesn’t need to tools to win—only the tools to prevent a barbarian win. French President Emmanuel Macron provides the canonical example of this arrogant shortsightedness, doubting Ukraine’s ability to achieve a complete victory on the battlefield. A victory which, of course, Ukraine cannot achieve as long as the tools they need are slow-walked or outright withheld.

That’s what is the stuff of attrition, of unnecessary blood spilled by Ukrainian soldiers and civilians—women and children—and of continued barbarian atrocities of rape, child murder, wanton destruction.

The Purpose of Medicaid

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State Medicaid programs were created for the explicit purpose of providing health insurance coverage for State citizens on the lower rungs of that State’s economic ladder. The Federal government transfers Federal funds—the tax remittances of all of us citizens regardless of the State of which we might also be citizens—to support those Medicaid programs.

In California’s case, Federal transfers in support of Medi-Cal, that State’s Medicaid program, comprise more than 69% of the program. That amounts to 71.4 billion of our tax dollars.

Now the Progressive-Democrat governor of California, Gavin Newsom, wants Medi-Cal to pay the rent for the State’s homeless.

Newsom has proposed using federal healthcare funds to cover at least six months of rent for homeless California residents and those close to losing their homes.

The foolishness is spreading; California is not the only State pulling this stunt.

California is modeling the program off of similar programs in Oregon and Arizona that have been previously approved by the federal government.

Oregon gets 76%—$8.5 billion—of its Medicaid program covered by the Feds, and Arizona gets more than 80%—$14.3 billion—of its Medicaid funding from the Feds.

Newsom argues—and he’s actually serious—that this will save money in the long run because the State (as JtN cited him)

will not have to pay as much for these people’s expenses in hospitals, nursing homes and prisons.

This is a cynical non sequitur. Nursing homes and prisons aren’t centered on medical care, for all that medical care is a small part of those…services. Those services’ costs also are already factored into their budgets. Too, hospitals aren’t residences—and their medical service costs also are already factored into their budgets, including in part from California’s existing Medi-Cal.

Maybe it’s time to stop sending the Medicaid-related tax remittances of citizens of other States to these States.