Author Archives: eehines

A Problem of their own Making

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In a Wall Street Journal article centered on the People’s Republic of China’s setting up trade-centric “retaliatory tools,” there’s this bit in the middle of the piece:

The rules could put US and other Western companies in a bind: they need to comply with US restrictions on trade with China and often want to reduce their reliance on Chinese production, yet such actions expose them to punishment by Beijing and even possible expulsion from the world’s most important manufacturing hub.

Of course, if those companies weren’t in the PRC in the first place, the PRC couldn’t “punish” them. They’ve had plenty of time to move their supply chains and businesses out of that nation and plenty of warning regarding the necessity of doing so.

Still, there remains no time like the present to take serious heed and get moving on those adjustments.

A Conundrum

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A town in Massachusetts has laid it out. South Hadley had a referendum put in front of them that proposed a 50% property tax hike. Voting it down, said its pushers, would be the end of the town as residents knew it.

Override backers argued that the measures were vital to preserve schools and town services. Without a revenue infusion, officials had warned, major cuts loomed: no school sports or extracurriculars, slashed Advanced Placement classes, reduced police and public-works staffing, and more.

That “more” included slashed Advanced Placement offerings, along with hits to police and public-works staffing.

The town’s residents, though, made it clear they’ve had enough of tax increases with little to show for them but empty promises by the taxers. The referendum was voted down in no uncertain terms, 65% to 34%. The message of this defeat was clearly articulated by Rudy Ternbach, semiretired and leader of the anti-override group Alliance for Fair Taxes:

I think the results of the election show voters do not want to try and fix the government by increasing taxes on those least able to pay. They want more efficiencies in government and less taxes.

Sadly, but entirely predictably, the message was not received by Leftist tax-and-spenders. Lisa Wong, South Hadley’s Progressive-Democrat Town Manager:

“We will regroup and continue to communicate with the public on the changes ahead,” she said by text, adding that the town would also push for policy changes and greater support at the state and federal levels.

Politicians of the Progressive-Democratic Party cannot conceive of cutting spending or leaving taxes alone, much less reducing them. Efficiencies in government? Pfft. Progressive-Democrats only want to increase people’s dependency on government, if not at their own level, then further up the government’s food chain.

This is a message to the rest of us and a lesson to be heeded come November.

A European Plan to Hold Open the Strait of Hormuz

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They’re finally getting around to talking about setting something up—after declining to help force it open in the first place. That would be too dangerous for fragile European militaries, they say. Might get poked in the nose. Or as French President Emmanuel Macron so carefully euphemistically put it,

…reopening the strait by force would be “unrealistic[.]”

What’s really interesting, though (as an aside, I do wonder why those nations have military establishments if they’re not intended to fight), is who has been invited to this diplomatic coffee klatch and who has not (of course the US has not, but that’s not the interesting part). They’ve invited the People’s Republic of China and India. But they’ve apparently chosen not to invite the Republic of Korea, Japan, or Australia, each of whom also has a serious interest in the free flow of cargo, oil, and natural gas through the Strait. Of course, they chose not to invite the Republic of China; that would offend the PRC, and Europe is much too fearful of the PRC to do anything that would even remotely hint at that.

Saudis Want Negotiations

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Saudia Arabia is worried that the Houthis, a terrorist client of Iran, will close the Bab al-Mandeb and thereby block Saudi oil shipments from leaving the southern end of the Red Sea enroute to India, Asia, and points east. They fear an Iranian push on the Houthis in response to President Donald Trump’s (R) move to block the Strait of Hormuz against Iranian oil leaving, ships entering with a view to loading up on Iranian oil, and ships exiting that have paid the Iranian protection money.

Never mind that ships leaving with non-Iranian oil or other cargo—including the Saudis’ oil—and that have not paid the protection vig are free of the Trumpian blockade.

Against all that, the Saudis want Trump to go back to negotiating with the Iranian terrorists. Negotiate, the Saudis want, anything, anything to keep the Bab al-Mandeb open. Please.

No. Trump’s blockade must stay in place, and the destruction of the IRGC’s small boat fleet must resume forthwith, along with the resumed destruction of Iranian missiles and rockets and their launchers, along with the destruction of Iran’s drone inventory, launchers, and ability to manufacture any weapons of any type. It’s not possible to have meaningful negotiations with terrorists.

If the Saudis really are that married to negotiations and attendant terrorist accommodations, let them reach their own accommodation with the Houthi terrorists. Alternatively, the Saudis could get serious about fighting and destroying the Houthis themselves in place of their years of desultory, perfunctory potshots at the occasional Houthi enclave.

Failing Public Schools

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And failing teachers union schools, but I repeat myself. These are the favorites of the Progressive-Democratic Party, and that favoring is independent of teacher performance. The Los Angeles Unified School District is the latest example.

Only 18% of Los Angeles eighth-graders scored proficient in math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, compared to 27% nationwide.

That’s OK, though. Here’s those teachers’ and their union’s participation ribbon:

United Teachers Los Angeles increases salary scales by 11.65% over two years—double the rate of inflation—plus four weeks of paid parental leave….

And

The agreement comes after the district warned in February that a looming $877 million deficit could require thousands of layoffs.

Guess, though, who will pay for this. The parents on the lower end of the area’s economic ladder. These are the ones who can’t afford to move away from these failures and move to live and work in jurisdictions with better schools. But the ones who will pay the biggest priced are those parents’ children. These are being consigned to a lifetime of ignorance, inability to perform the most basic functions of managing their own lives, and so to a lifetime of continued poverty and dependence.