Author Archives: eehines

Mistake

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In their piece in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, the editors wrote about President Donald Trump’s decision to continue sending weapons to Ukraine because [t]hey have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard.

Unfortunately, the editors wrote this near the end of their bit:

What matters is giving Ukraine enough firepower to change Mr Putin’s cost-benefit calculation about continuing the war.

This isn’t just wrong; it’s deeply immoral. Arming Ukraine enough to change the barbarian’s cost-benefit calculation is just a means to keep Ukrainian soldiers in the field fighting, being maimed, and dying and to keep Ukrainian women and children available as targets for the barbarian.

Putin has already made his cost-benefit calculation: he doesn’t care about the cost, even having decided that his soldiers are nothing more than consumables on a par with fuel and ammunition. No amount of continued Ukrainian resistance, no matter how effective and costly (in the editors’ eyes) the war continues to be for Putin, he sees the benefit—conquering and occupying Ukraine, erasing it from the list of sovereign nations—as well worth the expenditure, whatever its size.

It isn’t enough to arm Ukraine enough that it can continue the war. Ukraine must win the war outright. That requires sending it the offensive and defensive weapons systems the UA needs in the numbers and in the timing that the UA needs them. Naysayers in government and Timid Tesses like these editors and their brethren elsewhere in the news media gallery need to get out of the way of that.

Arrogance of an Activist Justice

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The Supreme Court recently lifted a district court judge’s injunction that blocked President Donald Trump’s (R) Executive Order requiring heads of agencies to work with the Department of Government Efficiency on hiring decisions and developing plans for layoffs. The Court also ruled that it had based its decision on the legality of Trump’s Executive Order, and didn’t rule on whether any reorganization plans broke the law. And

The Government is likely to succeed on its argument that the Executive Order and Memorandum are lawful[.]

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson piped up in her lone dissent.

This was the wrong decision at the wrong moment, especially given what little this Court knows about what is actually happening on the ground[.]

This is her Preciousness, and the arrogance of her activism. The Court knows little of what’s actually happening on the ground? But Jackson does know? Or in her shared Court ignorance, she would leave intact an injunction that’s blocking no known ill effects? Of course, highly talented and educated woman that she is, she knows full well that “don’t know” means…”don’t know.”

What she does know, though, as do all of the Justices on the Court (the other eight of whom voted to lift the injunction), is that no hiring decisions or layoff plans have been developed yet, much less begun execution. There is, then, no reason for the injunction, the EO itself being entirely legal.

This is the sort of activism—ignorant, not just ideological—that we can expect to deprecate the Supreme Court under a Progressive-Democrat President and Progressive-Democratic Party-dominated Senate.

Where Have We Heard This Before?

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The Wall Street Journal editors opined regarding the Progressive-Democratic Party’s “abundance” campaign in contrast with Party’s New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s campaign of paucity:

…higher taxes on the rich, greater income redistribution, and expanding government control over private business—or, as he put it in 2021, “seizing the means of production.”

Then they wrote this:

Despite the tension between the two camps, both believe government should re-engineer the economy and society to their desired liberal ends.

They seem surprised by this. But. But, but, but. Progressive-Democratic Party leaders have sung this song before, and we’ve heard Party’s singing.

Then-Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Barack Obama, on the eve of his election bragged that he was just days away from fundamentally transforming America. In his first address to Congress, the then-Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden announced his intention to fundamentally transform our national economy.

Mamdani should come as no surprise at all, and New Yorkers would be well to heed this and elect accordingly.

A Start

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President Donald Trump (R), after the latest telecon with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which came after the his latest telecon with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who followed that telecon with a large drone and missile attack on Ukraine’s civilian housing and infrastructure, has said defensive weapons shipments to Ukraine will resume.

It’s a start, but it’s insufficient. The best defense is a good offense, and that’s even more true in combat than it is in football. With the barbarian forced to defend, to react to Ukrainian moves—at the least to divert resources away from offense to reaction and defense—the barbarian’s attacks will at the least lessen.

From that, we—the US and Europe’s nominally West-aligned nations—need to send Ukraine offensive weapons, also, in the numbers and at the rates the UA says they need them. If Ukraine can reach inside Russia at depth and strike railroad nodes and naval ports, ammunition and fuel supplies, troop massings, bomber and fighter bases, the barbarian will have a much harder time moving those troops, aircraft, and consumables (keeping in mind the redundancy, in Putin’s mind, of troops and consumables) into positions from which to attack.

That increases Ukraine’s ability to win the barbarian’s war rather than endlessly bleed from defending. UA’s successful attack on a number of bases hosting the barbarian’s strategic bomber fleet does seem to have lessened, at least relatively, the ratio of air-to-surface missiles to drones in subsequent attacks.

Another Reason

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The Straits Times, a Singapore-based e-newspaper, has an interesting piece regarding Europe and exit taxes. The lede bullets include these two items:

  • European countries like Germany, Norway, and Belgium are increasing exit taxes to retain wealthy residents and collect revenue on unrealised capital gains
  • These taxes, levied on individuals leaving with significant assets (e.g., over €500,000 in Germany)…

The e-newspaper is of unknown provenance and reliability, at least to me, so take this with a grain of salt. The claims are entirely plausible, though, given the European nations’ broad range of taxes and high tax rates, and the states’ basic assumption that the money citizens earn is for the state to tax and not actually for the citizens to earn and remit a portion.

If the description is true, though, this is just one more reason for successful folks (not just the wealthy: Germany’s Purchasing Power Parity per capita GDP is €61,800. Those €500,000 in assets is upper middle class) to push the pace on leaving Europe before doing so gets even more financially difficult. The Soviet Union erected an Iron Curtain—literally in some places—in order to keep folks from leaving, so as to keep them working for the state. It looks like Europe is erecting a Euro Wall to keep the folks who earn money from leaving, so as to keep them earning money for the state. How long before they erect a 100% tax Euro Wall?