On Governor Newsom’s Plan to Produce Insulin

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Regarding that idea, a letter writer in The Wall Street Journal‘s Tuesday Letters section offered this after suggesting that Newsom’s effort would have the salutary outcome of demonstrating the foolishness of such a move:

Targeted subsidies for at-risk populations cost a fraction of the investment needed to bring “affordable” medications to the people….

That’s true enough, could Government actually do that and, further, keep it limited to the truly at-risk. However, actual competition in the market is free, and that brings down costs for everyone. Additionally, that competition allows far better and more accurate identification of those remaining few at-risk who still can’t afford their meds and would be legitimate targets of largesse. That also would facilitate more effective use of sources of largesse, beginning in order with family and friends first, followed by church and local charity, local community, county, then state governments, with the Feds last on the list, rather than the default source.

Bragging about Getting al-Zawahiri

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It’s good that we got him. It’s unclear that we can do this sort of thing routinely. General Frank McKenzie, Central Command commander during President Joe Biden’s (D) panicky running away from Afghanistan, had this:

Let’s remember, this is one strike in a year[.]

Indeed. Successfully burning al-Zawahiri in his city apartment makes us one-for-two in over-the-horizon drone strikes into Afghanistan. The other was in the immediate aftermath of that cut-and-run, when we successfully burned a civilian and a bunch of kids with a drone strike on a car.

However, with an n of 2, we can’t tell whether the first, failed, strike is illustrative of the true trend, or the second, successful, strike is illustrative of the true trend—or even whether the true trend is closer to that mediocre 50-ish per cent success rate.

Nor is two strikes a year apart a very useful pace.

More Government Overreach

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This time by President Joe Biden’s (D) Attorney General, Merrick Garland (D). Garland has decided to sue Idaho over that State’s abortion law because, Garland claims, that law might put doctors at hospitals that accept Medicare, and those hospitals, at risk of Federal law violation if they follow Idaho’s law.

That Federal law

requires hospitals accepting Medicare to provide emergency treatments, which can sometimes include abortion.

Idaho’s law, on the other hand,

has exceptions allowing doctors to perform abortions to save the life of a pregnant woman or in cases of rape or incest that have been reported to law enforcement.

That satisfies the Fed’s Medicare law, and the administration’s suit demonstrates the overreach—and demonstrates the Biden administration’s utter disregard for the Supreme Court.

“Call Russia’s Bluff”

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Zalmay Khalilzad has a rather fanciful op-ed in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal. Russian President Vladimir Putin is claiming to want a diplomatic solution to his invasion of Ukraine, a claim he’s making with the voice of his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the latter’s tour of Africa. Khalilzad suggested that Putin’s “bluff” should be answered with a number of steps.

First…. One step that may force Moscow to recalculate is for senior US officials to clearly convey that Russian escalation will be met by an accompanying escalation of American support for Ukraine.

Yeah, that really deterred Putin from invading Ukraine in the first place. Neither should we meet escalation with “accompanying escalation.” That just continues surrendering the initiative to the barbarian. We need to escalate faster than the barbarian can respond; we need to be well inside the barbarian’s recognition and decision loops, not the other way around.

Second, improve the chances that Ukraine’s planned offensive operations succeed by ensuring that their plans are realistic and thoroughly evaluating their assets.

Because we Know Better what the folks actually engaged need. That’s why we’re sending them deliberately stunted HIMARS, for instance—we Know Better—instead of sending them fully capable systems, in the numbers they need, and promptly so.

Third, make a better case for other countries to support Ukraine.

Certainly, but we shouldn’t wait to act while we beg for consensus, and shouldn’t act as though we’re unable to act on our own initiative. In the case of Europe, especially, Germany is a lost cause; we should simply write them off and move on. If that means NATO qua NATO doesn’t act, oh well. The member nations don’t need NATO’s permission to act on their own initiatives.

Khalilzad should know better.

Sue, Settle, and Biden’s Demand for Producers to Produce

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There was a time when a million acres of land were available in California for oil and gas leasing and hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

Then California’s Attorney General, Governor, and “other state agencies” sued, claiming that the Bureau of Land Management’s environmental impact analysis was inadequate. BLM then settled. Under the terms of BLM’s sue-and-settle agreement,

until the Bureau conducts a supplemental environmental review of the project, new oil and gas leases will not be granted in central California….

Three guesses when that review will be begun, and you get a pass on the first two.

This is the duplicity with which President Joe Biden (D) inveighs against oil and natural gas producers for not producing more.