Author Archives: eehines

A Good Start

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President Donald Trump (R), through Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, has announced Operation Economic Outcast, a far more broad based and farther reaching set of economic sanctions on Iran than any prior set.

It’s a badly needed expansion of the economic circumcision of Iran, but it assumes that the terrorists running Iran will feel the pain of the cutoffs and isolation that Iranian citizens will experience. That’s unlikely, since those terrorists don’t care about their subjects, only about their personal power and their mantra of destruction.

A kinetic component remains badly needed.

Sanctioned oil tankers need to be seized wherever they are, whether or not they still have Iranian oil on board, and they need to be sold to legitimate shippers or to breakers.

The roads, railroads, bridges, and pipelines in Iran that carry oil, natural gas, and other cargo toward the People’s Republic of China need to be cut in several places, with the servicing repeated as necessary.

Shipping in the Caspian Sea that carries Iranian goods to Russia or to other nations on that Sea for transshipment to Russia and that carry foreign goods to Iran need to be sunk.

These kineticisms won’t impact the terrorists’ pain threshold enough to get them to accept the terms of renouncing and dismantling their nuclear weapons program and acknowledging that the Hormuz Strait is international water and not controlled or influenced by Iran. They will, though, severely circumscribe the terrorists’ ability to do much of anything beyond Iran’s borders.

The Cat’s Out of the Bag

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One of President Donald Trump’s (R) advisors, Jared Kushner, met with Progressive-Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D, NY), ostensibly to seek out areas of “common ground” in advance of Jeffries’ ascension to House Speaker in January.

The Left has been ripping at its collective bodice ever since news of the meeting broke. I also disagree with the usefulness of the meeting, but for different reasons. The first is that Jeffries cannot be trusted to keep any agreement, formal or tacit, out loud or unspoken, with a President or a Party whose members he’s spent his time in the House smearing as unpatriotic threats to democracy and/or personally dishonest.

This corroborates my position:

Jeffries said the only way the Democrats and the Trump administration would come to agreements on issues would be if Republicans were willing to give ground to Democrats on cost-of-living issues, which is the Republican’s top priority.

Nothing about his party giving ground to Republicans on any question. Nothing about compromise at all. This is Jeffries’ statement that he will lead Party to pass legislation without Republican input that isn’t Republican surrender. This is Jeffries’ statement that he and Party will simply dictate legislation and non-Party Representatives can go hang.

This is corroborated by Party’s commitment to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate as soon as they get a majority there, enabling Party to impose its will on us Americans wholly independently of any other party input and utterly without compromise.

That arrogance makes Jeffries and Party entirely untrustworthy.

That Part Would be Easy

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In California Progressive-Democrat Attorney General Rob Bonta’s ongoing feud with Paramount, which is attempting to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, Bonta now is going to demand that Paramount sell off some cable channels and commit to keeping its movie studio separate from Warner Bros. Disney.

It wouldn’t be the end of the world for the new company to sell off a few of the loser cable channels (there always are some, or at least a few that are the smallest revenue generators and/or with the smallest margins). The truly easy part, though, would be the bit about keeping Paramount‘s movie studios separate from Warner Bros. Disney. Simply relocate Paramount to Tennessee, and move Warner Bros. Disney to, say, Texas. Then set up the two to be overseen by an executive in the C-Suite of the new company rather than merging the two studios into a single set with a common senior direct management team.

The real benefit, to Paramount, to Warner Bros. Disney, to the combined company, to the employees of all three, and to the shareholders of all three, would be getting them all out of California with its decidedly anti-business environment and enormous cost of living* and into business-friendly environs with their concomitant much lower living costs.

 

*A $100,000 salary in Los Angeles would need only $62,000 to match its value in upscale Plano, Texas, and only $58,500 in Nashville, Tennessee.

Sloppiness in Voter Registration Rolls

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A letter writer in Friday’s WSJ Letters section offered this as a way to correct/reduce error rates in State voter registration rolls.

…federal officials should focus on providing funding to enable more consistent reviews of voter registrations.

No. Elections may be national in scope, but they’re run by each State. The Federal government has no business funding what the States should paying for themselves. If there’s a funding shortfall vis-à-vis voter registration, the States need to reallocate their spending, not use their own sloppiness as an excuse to draw more outside taxpayer dollars.

The Feds do have a role and a responsibility here, though. That would be better achieved by cutting Federal transfers to States that choose not to take accuracy in voter registrations seriously.

Speculation and So What

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The Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery merger that California’s Progressive-Democrat AG Rob Bonta, along with some dozen of other Progressive-Democrat-led States and a union, have gone into court to block may be entering “settlement” talks. The situation as it stands, from Paramount:

Paramount has warned it is prepared to move the company out of California if it can’t reach a deal with the states, with a potential move starting as soon as October 1. Tennessee is seen as a likely potential landing spot for Paramount.

October because that’s when Paramount starts owing fees to Warner Bros. Discovery related to delayed signing of the deal. Tennessee is the most likely gaining State, although there are a number of States with much more congenial business environments than those Progressive-Democrat-run States.

From Bonta:

As it stands today, the proposed Warner Bros./Paramount merger will mean higher costs, less competition, lower wages, job cuts, and fewer movies and TV shows[.]

That’s pure speculation based on nothing other than ephemeral economic studies that try to predict the future, here in an environment very much changed from the environment in which those studies were conducted. Speculation should form no basis, even in the Ninth Circuit’s region (the first stop for the inevitable appeals), for blocking a business deal.

From the union:

The Writers Guild of America also sued over the merger, saying that the deal would eliminate jobs and career opportunities for Hollywood screenwriters.

That may or may not be true, and it’ll be influenced largely by the willingness of those Hollywood screenwriters to relocate and become Tennessee screenwriters. At bottom, though, while any job loss would be too bad for those terminated, the WGA‘s plaint is a big so what. Nobody, not even Hollywood screenwriters, have an intrinsic right to any job, not even screenwriting.

Paramount, in the absence of a deal with the States that’s entirely satisfactory to Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery by COB 30 September, should make its move out of California on 1 October and conclude the merger. There’s no need for Paramount or Warner Bros. Discovery to delay past that date.

The Tennessees of our nation will greatly benefit from the revenue gains that making movies, ancillary businesses associated with movie-making, businesses supporting ancillary businesses, and further business rippling will bring to the gaining State (and in the case of Tennessee, the rippling will flow into Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South and North Carolina). Los Angeles and California can take up that loss of revenue with Bonta, et al.