Close the Strait of Hormuz?

Iran’s government now is threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz if the US joins its war on Israel on Israel’s side, among other things by bombing Fordow and Natanz with MOPs.

Iran certainly could, but for how long? My prediction is for a few hours to a few days, at the end of which Iran would have left no navy worthy of the name and no Arabian Gulf or Arabian Sea ports of any use to the remnants of its navy or to its commercial shipping—including is ghost tanker fleet with which it ships embargoed oil.

The reasons center on Iran’s own incapacity. It has no air assets with which to close or to keep closed the strait; it has only a supply of cruise missiles which it would have to divert from its attacks on Israel to close and keep closed the Strait, and its small navy with which to sail the strait.

That navy and the ports from which it would sally are nothing more than targets for the US Navy, which has been expanding in the region, and it would be a campaign of a matter of hours or a few days to sink the Iranian navy and destroy those ports. A few destroyers would serve to protect commercial shipping in the strait, and in the Gulf, come to that, against those cruise missiles, just as those destroyers and cruisers have done in the Gulf of Aden.

There would be sequelae to an Iranian attempt to close the strait. At the end of the campaign to reopen the strait, Iran would have limited capability to get its oil onto tankers (it would be useful for the reopening campaign also to sink such ghost tankers as happen to be in the Gulf or the nearby Arabian Sea, which would further restrict Iran’s ability to ship its embargoed oil). That would hurt the People’s Republic of China’s economy, which has been importing lots of price-discounted Iranian oil (discounts the PRC can demand since it takes 90% of Iran’s oil exports and so can demand the discounts).

Another consequence would be further reductions in Iranian (re)supplies to the Houthis.

There would be a spike in oil prices from a closure of the Strait of Hormuz, but that would be temporary, and the closure would lead, nearly inevitably, to those follow-on sequelae, which would be to the net good of the larger world.

A Useful Move

The Senate—at least the Republicans in the Senate; the Progressive-Democratic Party’s Senators remain ensconced in their knee-jerk Nothing Republican mode—is working toward easing Corporate Average Fuel Economy requirements by eliminating the penalties associated with failing to comply with ever-increasing and increasingly impossible fuel efficiency standards. Of course there are objections, but most of them are empty.

From the news writers’ own bias:

nullifying rules that for generations have pushed automakers to churn out ever cleaner and more fuel-efficient vehicles. That technology has saved two trillion gallons of gasoline over the past 50 years, according to the journal Energy Policy.

Ignored here, as the writers cite the journal, is the fact that cost of operation—fuel costs, for instance—remain a competitive selling point, and market forces will drive fuel efficiency. That drive will occur on us average Americans‘ schedule, though, instead of by government fiat. Car companies will continue to seek competitive advantages through such techs as turbocharged engines that deliver more power, transmissions with more gears and powertrains that automatically shut off at stoplights to conserve gasoline along with a host of other pathways, including some not yet thought of, but which competitive R&D will bring out.

Other objectors include Chris Harto, a Consumer Reports policy analyst:

Automakers have proven time and time again that without strong and enforceable fuel-economy standards, many of them will leave proven, popular, and cost-effective technologies like hybrids sitting and gathering dust on the shelf[.]

Aside from the fact that simple competitive pressures in a truly free market, shorn of excessive government regulation, will push “automakers” to continue to work toward, among other things, fuel efficiency. What Harto is ignoring, though, is that his favored vehicles are sitting on the shelf because consumers don’t want them and aren’t buying them.

And this:

Consumer advocacy groups warn that the move could result in…further dependence on foreign oil sources.

This is just disingenuous. The US is the world’s largest producer of oil and a net exporter of it. What would be beneficial here would be a parallel move to deregulate oil production and refining (and exporting).

Also absent is any rationale for why we should care about gasoline savings of that magnitude. My back of the envelope estimation of how much that actually works out to is based on there being 105 million cars on the road in 1975 (those 50 years ago) and 299 million cars and now light trucks and SUVs (which burn gasoline and are much more ubiquitous than 50 years ago) on the road today. A naïve average of that is 201.5 million gasoline-burning vehicles on the road each year. 40 billion gallons of gasoline “saved” each year (those 2 trillion spread across the years) works out to 200 gallons “saved” per car per year.

To achieve that tiny savings, a ton of money has been spent on CAFE compliance rules, on building compliant and so very expensive vehicles, and on wasted money pushing those far more expensive CAFE-meeting vehicles out the factory door in order to meet the mandated manufacturer’s fleet average fuel efficiency numbers. This wastage includes, over the last several years, pushing battery cars and hybrids out the door only to sit unsold on dealer lots as us average Americans refuse to pay the enormous cost of those battery-dependent vehicles.

This is a good beginning, if the Republicans can pull it off, and the Republican caucus in the House goes along. Better would be elimination of CAFE altogether, that should be for a later day.

Judge Shopping

A Wall Street Journal editorial correctly decried this, and a letter writer to the news outlet’s Letters section correctly included the Northern District of Texas as a particular judge shopping target for bringing suits convenient to the Trump administration. The letter writer also pointed out that, as an attempt to mitigate, if not eliminate judge shopping, the Judicial Conference of the United States, strongly discourag[ed] the practice, and some Federal districts changed their rules to enhance random assignments of their judges—but those rules are District by District.

Lost in this kerfuffle (cynically so, say I given that judges as a group surely know better) is a nation-wide requirement of centuries-long standing [emphasis added]:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed….

And

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved….

For those of you following along at home, those are from our Constitution’s 6th and 7th Amendments, respectively.

For the quibblers of the lawyer class, the latter is easily extensible by statute to explicitly require the civil suit to occur in the State and district wherein the [cause of the tort] shall have [first occurred].

The ability of Congress to make such a thing explicit is in this nation-wide requirement of equally centuries-long standing:

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.

The District courts, as creatures of Congress, have their jurisdictional authorities set by Congress. This Congressional power over jurisdictional authority extends to the Supreme Court [emphasis added]:

…the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

Again, for those of you following along at home, those are from our Constitution’s Art III, Sect 1, and Art III, Sect 2, respectively.

All that’s required to eliminate judge-shopping is a renewed respect for and enforcement of our Constitution.

All Too Typical

Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for New York City mayor and currently sitting City Comptroller says it’s remarkable that he was arrested by ICE agents, two of whom were themselves immigrants, for his obstruction of their arrest of an illegal alien and that he’s sad and angry over the arrest.

This is all too typical of Progressive-Democratic Party politicians: they profess to see no difference between immigrants, such as those two ICE agents, and the illegal alien whom those agents were arresting.

It’s also all too typical of Progressive-Democratic politicians that they think laws, especially laws about obstructing law enforcement personnel, don’t apply to them.

These are just two more examples of Party’s intrinsic disdain for those law and order that isn’t of their construction.

No Way

President Donald Trump (R) says “Iranian officials” had offered to travel to the White House to negotiate amid ongoing missile exchanges with Israel.

Trump should not waste his staffers’ time on meetings with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s staffers. If there’s to be a meeting, it should be between Trump and Khamenei, face to face. It also should not occur in the White House or Camp David or Mar-a-Lago.

Maybe such a White House meeting could occur, if it took place in the kitchen, or in a back hallway. Maybe, instead, hold it in a ground floor room in one of the rebuilt World Trade Center buildings.