Category Archives: politics

A Time for Choosing

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New York’s Congressional 10th District is a microcosm of the choices we face. The Progressive-Democratic Party primary features two far Left candidates. One is Dan Goldman, who is a virulent Never Trumper, to the point his Congressional votes are based on that rather than on any real policy objections, and an increasingly strident anti-Israel politician, to the point of working with ex-President Joe Biden (D) to deny Israel’s access to some of the weapons needed to defend itself against Hamas.

The other is  Brad Lander, former New York City Comptroller and an open, enthusiastic supporter of Progressive-Democrat Mayor Zohan Mamdani. Lander shares Mamdani’s naked antipathy for Israel and is openly antisemitic.

The choices come down to this. Progressive-Democrats must choose between a Never Trumper and anti-Israel politician and a candidate who, far beyond being merely anti-Israel, is both antisemitic and pro-Palestinian, the latter with no distinction between Palestinian civilians and the Palestinian terrorists epitomized by Hamas.

After primary season, we Americans in general must choose between a Republican party whose small-government positions are eroding but still leaning that way and a Progressive-Democratic Party that is rapidly strengthening its big, intrusive government ideology; is increasingly incapable of working with Trump or anything Republican; and that is, in this context, increasingly opposed to the only Middle East democracy and staunch US ally while actively strengthening its antisemitic bigotry.

The Cost of Ethanol-laced Gasoline

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A number of corn State Senators, Chuck Grassley (R, IA), Joni Ernst (R, IA), Deb Fischer (R, NE), Pete Ricketts (R, NE) and Roger Marshall (R, KS), have written about the financial benefits of ethanol in our gasoline.

Expanding E15 availability lowers gas prices by 20 to 40 cents per gallon on average.

Compared to what, though? See below.

And

E15 is a net positive. We know E15 will lower prices at the pump….

Again, compared to what?

I won’t go into the production costs of cars whose fuel-related seals must be designed to handle the corrosive nature of ethanol, nor will I address the maintenance costs of cars burning ethanol-laced fuels, even with those corrosion-resistant (but only resistant) seals, nor why the percentage of ethanol in gasoline tops out at 15% before ethanol’s corrosive nature overwhelms even these toughened up seals.

I won’t mention, either, the increase in the cost of food, including meat, from the diversion of corn away from the grocery store or the production of animal feed toward the production of ethanol. I’m only going to mention the immediate fiscal costs to the consumer of ethanol-laced gasoline, taking corn-based ethanol, corn being the primary source today for ethanol production, as my illustration.

It costs $1.74 in 2001 currencyto produce a gallon of ethanol from corn, and it costs 95 cents to produce a gallon of gasoline.

A gallon of E15 gasoline consists of 85% gasoline, and 15% ethanol. According to my 3rd grade arithmetic, the costs embodied in that gallon are 85% of $0.95 plus 15% of $1.74, or a skosh under $0.81 plus a skosh over $0.26. That’s $1.07 per gallon of the hybrid fuel. Using my 3rd grade arithmetic again, that’s $0.12 per gallon more than for unadulterated, and much easier on the car, gasoline.

That’s not cheaper fuel for our cars; it’s much more expensive. Those Senators bragged that

Expanding E15 availability lowers gas prices by 20 to 40 cents per gallon on average. That could mean around $400 per year in savings for a US household—precious dollars that could be spent on other needs.

The irony in that isn’t lost on me, even if it seems lost on those Senators. Instead of those 30 cents per gallon (to take the middle of their range) in ethanol-laced gasoline, not having to spend that baseline of 12 cents extra per gallon at all, all year long, would save roughly $160 per US household—precious dollars that could be spent on other needs, like food, including meat, made cheaper by no longer diverting corn to making alcohol. (OK, a little mention.)

Not “Back to Other Agencies”

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors are dismayed that an intel naif like Bill Pulte has been designated the Acting Director of National Intelligence. They go farther and want the whole office of the DNI eliminated altogether. I’ll not go into Pulte’s qualifications, or lack, for the position; my disagreement with the disposition of the office.

Its first director, John Negroponte, quickly hired hundreds of people who duplicated the job of the analytical side of the CIA. It’s now a vast political bureaucracy.

The editors are correct in this criticism.

However.

From the editors’ penultimate paragraph:

In a better world, Congress would use Mr. Pulte’s appointment to eliminate the DNI and send its staff back to other agencies.

No, if that staff really is redundant (and the vast bulk of them are), that better world would see the large excess returned to the private sector, rather than reallocated elsewhere in the government, inflicting their unneeded employment on other agencies.

Better yet would be for Congress to amend the legislation creating the Office of DNI: cap the total number of employees, volunteers, staff on loan to the DNI, and political appointees, Senate confirmable or not, at some low number like 100 and no more. In conjunction with this, explicitly limit the ODNI DOC to coordination among the other intelligence agencies, facilitating communications among them, and the like. Explicitly bar ODNI from doing its own intelligence gathering or fact checking of other agencies’ data, and the like. Give the DNI some teeth: his instruction for an agency to share these data, unredacted, in toto, and immediately, with that (or those) other agency(s) should be directive, not suggestive, with bureaucrats stalling, slow-walking, or outright refusing, being a fireable offence on the DNI’s authority, with the President strongly encouraged to fire the obstructing political appointees.

But as the editors alluded with their own proposal, that’s in an ideal world. We live in a Congressional world, instead.

At It Again

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Section 702 of FISA is up for renewal, and President Donald Trump (R) has nominated Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte for DNI after the incumbent Tulsi Gabbard announced her resignation to be with her husband, who’s been diagnosed with cancer.

Progressive-Democrats, obstructionist Never Trump-No To Republicans to the core, are saying they’ll block Pulte’s confirmation unless they get what they want in FISA’s renewal legislation.

Regardless of what we might think about FISA and its Star Chamber court or of Pulte’s fitness for DNI, it’s time for Republicans to locate their spine, recovery a measure of unity, and use their majority to simply ignore these Progressive-Democratic Party politicians and move ahead. Who will become DNI has nothing to do with whether FISA should be renewed. This is just Party attempting to extort their way into control.

Duplicity and Mistaken Imperative

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There was a ceasefire agreed between Iran and the US and Israel in the recent US-Israeli conflict against Iran aimed at preventing the latter from acquiring nuclear weapons. Then, amid skirmishing during this ceasefire, which remains in official effect, Iran showed its duplicity by welching on the terms of the ceasefire by insisting, de novo, that Israel’s conflict with Iran’s terrorist satrap Hezbollah, operating in Lebanon, was actually a part of that ceasefire agreement.

That conflict is a separate matter between Israel and Hezbollah, and never has been a part of the ceasefire. Iran’s insistence that it is is Iran’s confession that Hezbollah is an instrument of Iran’s terrorist government, and that lately insistence is a demonstration (as if another one is needed) of the Iran government’s duplicity and intrinsic untrustworthiness.

President Donald Trump (R) has long made clear his abhorrence of war, with its broad destruction and civilian casualty rate. The conflicts Trump has fought despite that abhorrence are emblematic of that, with their brevity, sharpness, and precision, which have vastly limited civilian casualties, including during the current conflict with Iran. In this latter case, sharpness and precision have limited destruction to Iran’s nuclear weapons development-associated facilities and military facilities and personnel. Civilian damage, damage to civilian infrastructure has been remarkably constrained.

Therein lies Trump’s mistaken imperative. In his desire to bring a diplomatic end to the conflict with Iran, he is overemphasizing his abhorrence for death and destruction by acceding to Iran’s insistence that Israel’s separate conflict with Hezbollah be included in any ceasefire agreement: Israel must end its conflict with Hezbollah. Trump pushed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into agreeing that separate ceasefire.

This is a broad mistake, and it will lead only to a prolongation of both conflicts with concomitant increased death and destruction. The better answer would have been (and still could be) to require Iran and Hezbollah work a separate peace with Israel and to resume full out attacks on Iran, this time with a view to destroying its ability to fight at all, with the conflict continuing in full force until Iran’s government men and women agree to forswear in a provable way its ambition to acquire nuclear weapons and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, including an official statement acknowledging that the Strait is international waters and that Iran has no ambition to control it.