Tag Archives: political economy

Warren’s Assault on Hydrocarbons

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) want so ban new leases for oil and gas drilling offshore and on Federal lands, and she wants to ban fracking altogether. This assault on our national energy underpinnings would have far-reaching negative outcomes.

  • domestic natural-gas prices would jump to somewhere between $9 and $15 per million BTUs from last Friday’s $2.32
  • oil would rise to the $80-to-$85 range and could run to $150 during market shocks from last Friday’s $53.78
  • entire oil-field service companies would become obsolete
  • pipeline owners would suffer without replenishment, as existing wells peter out

Think how such price increases for basic transportation and such job losses would hammer “the little guy” that Warren pretends to so want to protect from Evil Big Business.

And some far-reaching positive outcomes: for Canada, Russia, and OPEC.

  • Canadian shale drillers
  • big global operators for which higher energy prices would offset losses on US assets.
  • Russia: our ability to free our friends and allies from dependence on Russian oil and gas
  • Russia and OPEC: the potential for political and economic dominance by these two from their enhanced ability to commit energy blackmail (both of which have demonstrated histories of engaging in such blackmail)—sources of market shocks

Here is a core part of Warren’s foreign policy.

There are Bribes

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…and there are bribes.  Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam tried to bribe the good people of Hong Kong the other day.  She gave her annual address on her policies for the coming year, and in it she “promised” (because we’ve seen the value of her commitments in her promise to completely withdraw and rescind her draft extradition law, a promise on which she has since welched)

to boost the supply of low-cost homes, offer mortgage assistance for first-time buyers, and increase mass-transit fare subsidies

if only Hong Kong’s people would just shut up, go home, and submit.

Those folks didn’t, and don’t, believe her.

Mrs Lam’s speech this week “has not really focused on the protest itself,” a 26-year-old demonstrator…said Sunday.

And tens of thousands of Hong Kong’s finest hit the streets again Sunday, to be met with tear gas and water cannon firing abrasive, dyed liquids shot at them by Hong Kong’s increasingly thuggish police.  It’s true enough, some demonstrators also have resorted to violence—lighting fires in street intersections, trashing some store fronts, the rare Molotov cocktail tossed at those police.  It’s also true enough that incitement to violence, even when the incitement comes from police, is not, by itself, an excuse for responding with violence.

However, given that Lam and her city government have utterly ignored the desires of the people over whom she reigns as PRC President Xi Jinping’s satrap, their increasing frustration and violence are completely understandable.

Lam’s bribes, which insult those citizens’ integrity and intelligence, only add fuel to that frustration.

Costs of a Strike

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There’s a lot of discussion about the costs of the UAW’s strike against GM.  The Wall Street Journal is an example:

Economists say the cascading effect of lost wages, production, and employment will likely linger even if the strike ends….

And

…suspended work at another two dozen company-owned parts warehouses and distribution centers and led to temporary layoffs of nearly 10,000 GM factory workers not represented by the UAW….

And

Striking GM workers also are pulling back on spending, having now lost a month’s worth of company paychecks. Many are trying to get by on $275 a week, the strike pay offered by the UAW to provide some financial assistance. That figure is a fraction of their regular pay, which ranges from $630 to $1,200 for a 40-hour week.

And

120 of GM’s direct suppliers furloughed some 17,000 workers in the US during the strike….

And the damage from the UAW’s action has spread even farther, as this example illustrates:

Sam Kassab, 65, owns the Chene Trombly market where he sells food and liquor close to GM’s Detroit assembly plant. The strike is costing him between 10% to 15% of his usual business, Mr Kassab said, with most of that caused by layoffs at the supplier factories nearby.

No one, though, is talking about the cost of the strike to the union—not the workers, but the UAW itself.  Who, or what, is propping up the UAW, covering its costs, as it prosecutes it blockage of GM’s ability to function at all unless the union gets its way (with all the resulting collateral damage to suppliers, about which the UAW so plainly cares not a whit)?

And another discussion not being held: how will the UAW make whole those collaterally damaged suppliers and their workers?

A Thought on Brexit

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Supposedly, Great Britain and the EU are close to agreement on a deal governing the former’s departure from the latter. Absent a deal, Great Britain will leave the EU on its own terms.  That last is, I maintain, the best way out.

However.

There remain, as of Wednesday morning, three sticking points to any sort of deal, according to EU Chief Negotiator Michel Barnier.

  • Customs arrangements for the island of Ireland
  • The issue of giving Northern Irish authorities a greater say over regulatory arrangements, and the ability to veto them
  • Guarantees of a level playing field—that Britain will not be at an unfair advantage when it comes to business regulation

Customs arrangements for the entire island—even though one part of the island is a sovereign nation and EU member and the other part is a member country of the United Kingdom.  There should be nothing to discuss here. A major reason for the successful Leave vote was for Great Britain to regain control over its own borders—including its national border across the island of Ireland.

Giving Northern Ireland—that part of Great Britain—veto authority over the national government’s “regulatory arrangements”—devolution hasn’t gone that far, nor should it. This sticking point is nothing more than a naked early step in dismantling Great Britain in punishment for its effrontery in voting to leave the Holy Brussels Empire.

Guarantees of a level playing field—Great Britain is justified in seeking such guarantees, but it won’t get them, unless it accedes to what Brussels will define as “fair.”

These…sticking points…illustrate with crystalline clarity the EU’s bad faith in dealing with Great Britain—and they illustrate with equal clarity why a no-deal-Brexit is optimal for Great Britain.

Unfortunately, British PM Boris Johnson, in an agreement just concluded with Barnier, appears to have surrendered to the EU on the matter of Great Britain’s border with the Republic of Ireland:

Northern Ireland will remain part of the UK’s customs territory and will be an entry point into the EU’s single market. No customs checks will be done on the border between [the Republic of] Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Johnson surrendered on the second sticking point, also:

The Northern Irish assembly will have to give consent after Brexit for the region’s continued alignment with the EU regulatory regime every four years.

This cedes control of the British border to the EU, with all that that portends for the nation’s future. British sovereignty now hangs, ironically, on whether Labour MFWIC Jeremy Corbyn can deliver his party’s no vote.  Nigel Farage, Brexit Party head and strange bedfellow of Corbyn’s on this, also has come out against the deal, as have the Democratic Unionist Party, which in coalition with the Tories give Johnson a one-vote majority on most things, and the Scottish National Party, which have been NeverLeaveNoWay all along.

It could be, of course, that Johnson has included these poison pills so as to get this last minute agreement rejected by Parliament, and he can get his no-deal exit from the EU. That raises the question, though, of whether Johnson is that Machiavellian.

Johnson wants an up-or-down vote from Parliament Saturday.

A House Impeachment Vote

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), as soon as she returned from the House’s vacation this week, announced that she would not hold a floor vote on whether President Donald Trump should be impeached and the associated investigation should begin forthwith.  Many pundits say Pelosi’s refusal flows from her desire to protect some number of Progressive-Democrats purported to be vulnerable in the 2020 elections.  This is naïve.

Neither Pelosi nor the Progressive-Democrat House caucus that she leads are interested in the slightest in any actual impeachment.  Nor does that disinterest have anything to do with whether there’s a realistic expectation of getting a conviction in the Senate, with the effort’s failure constituting vindication for Trump.

No, the reason Pelosi won’t have the vote is because, her Party having failed to invalidate the 2016 election and canceling American voters’ decision, she’s now bent on prejudicing the 2020 election by extending the smear campaign that the Progressive-Democrats began the day after Trump’s election: Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D, MI) in her election victory speech promising to “impeach the mother**.” The move gained steam with Progressive-Democrats’ formally announced invalidation effort made shortly after Trump’s inauguration: Congressmen Al Green (D, TX) and Brad Sherman (D, CA) circulating their Impeaching Donald Trump Resolution that May, and Congressman Steve Cohen (D, TN), along with six other Progressive-Democratic Congressmen, formally introducing Articles of Impeachment.

The smear has continued with Congressman Adam Schiff’s (D, CA) promise of incontrovertible evidence of Trump’s guilt…of something…until the Mueller report disappointed Party, continues with Congressman Jerrold Nadler’s (D, NY, Chairman, House Judiciary Committee), Schiff’s (Chairman, House Intelligence Committee), and Congressman Elijah Cummings’ (D, MD, Chairman, House Oversight Committee) secret Star Chamber inquisitions, from which Schiff has been leaking strategic tidbits, and Wednesday evening with Congressman Eric Swalwell’s (D, CA) announcement on Fox News‘ The Story that Trump is guilty and the hearings are just procedural, a claim of already determined guilt that he’s made several times over the last couple of weeks.

Floor vote for an impeachment proceeding?  Not for a baker’s dozen of months.