They’re Lying

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Iran’s rulers, that is, but what else is new? Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi last Friday:

In line with the ceasefire in Lebanon, the passage for all commercial vessels through Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire, on the coordinated route as already announced by Ports and Maritime Organisation of the Islamic Rep. of Iran.

Those Ports and Maritime Organisation-mandated routes are through the narrow channel between Iranian-held islands and the Iranian coast that’s on the northern, Iranian shore, of the Strait of Hormuz. That leaves ships in those routes under direct and immediate threat of seizure of destruction if the ships’ captains or owners don’t suit Iranian rulers’ whims. That’s not a completely, or even a little bit, open.

Furthermore, Araghchi was carefully silent on the matter of protection money tolls Iran’s rulers are charging those ships for “free” passage.

It’s good that President Donald Trump (R) is keeping the US blockade of Iran’s ports in place for the duration of the current cease fire.

In the realization, the IRGC has begun shooting at shipping attempting to leave through the Strait via the proper, international waterways. The IRGC has further announced that the Strait remains under strict management and control of the armed forces, regardless of what the civilian side of the Iranian government might say.

Iran’s rulers are busily making promises they can’t–or don’t intend to–keep.

A Thought on Farmworkers and Welfare

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Pity the poor American farmworkers. That’s what Jason Yarashes, Legal Aid Justice Center‘s Director of its Worker Justice Program, wants us to do. He was responding to an earlier Letter in which that letter-writer was lamenting the troubles that farmers are having as a side effect of our government regaining control of our borders and the ensuing lack of illegal aliens coming in to do those farmers’ farm work.

Yarashes is correct that such labor is backbreaking, and most of it goes unaccompanied by Social Security benefits or health insurance, despite paying taxes. Never mind that the illegal laborers are happy to get the work and most of them succeed in sending some of their pay back to their families in their home countries.

There’s an obvious solution to this conundrum, although it’s one that Leftists like Yarashes will decry to the heavens.

The US has a bloated collection of welfare programs, each of which is itself bloated. Most of those on these programs are able-bodied, healthy, and unemployed, even with the light work requirements attached to these programs.

Put these folks to work on the farms. Let them pick the lettuce, detassel the corn, harvest the apples and oranges, and on and on as a criterion for collecting welfare payments.

Let the farmers pay these modern day CCC workers the wages they would have paid their illegal alien workers—not Yarashes’ precious minimum wage rate—and collect their welfare payments on top of that, which the illegal aliens do not get. The kicker: the farm work is heavily seasonal, but these farm CCC-ers would be eligible for their welfare collections year-round. And: boost the farm workers’ welfare payments by some amount—say 10% as an opening move—to reward them for their actual, and harder, work than skating by on volunteering, entering “work training” programs, or scattering around resumes like so many advertising fliers.

One onus on the farmers: they would have to rate these farm CCC-ers on the quality of their work, with their eligibility for continuation in the next year’s farm work contingent on getting satisfactory ratings this year.

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.