Tag Archives: politics

Who’s In Charge?

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State Financial Officers Foundation CEO OJ Oleka noted in his Wall Street Journal op-ed the foolishness of Minnesota’s decision to eliminate its State Treasurer position with effect ‘way back in 2003. Supporters insisted that the position was purely clerical and so not worth the million dollars a year cost. Instead, the position’s responsibilities were scattered around to other State agencies. Oleka added

When no statewide official is clearly responsible for safeguarding public money, taxpayers pay the price.

Like with the multi-billion dollar Medicaid fraud that’s being uncovered in Minnesota. Only it’s not just the citizens of Minnesota who are paying that price; it’s all of us citizens all across these United States.

Oleka also pointed out the value of having someone in charge of watchdogging a State’s public money.

Across the states, financial officers are proving that vigilance works. Kentucky Auditor Allison Ball uncovered $800 million in wrongful Medicaid payments. North Carolina Treasurer Brad Briner found $170 million in unspent funds, while Iowa’s Roby Smith delivered a record $469 million return on investments that help fund state services.

There’s another factor here, though. Every one of those officials are Republicans.

Hmm….

Rich Want to Pay More Taxes

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At least, that’s the claim of Tom Steyer and Mitt Romney. On this, The Wall Street Journal‘s editors are on the right track.

One curiosity of democracy is the rich citizens who tell politicians to raise their taxes. It’s the patriotic thing to do, they [not only Steyer and Romney] say.

And

The rich who favor higher taxes pitch this as an act of civic virtue.

Of course, both Steyer and Romney refuse to specify what a rich man’s fair share is, or how much more is more enough. Still it’s not like rich folks other than these two don’t pay more enough already. This graph makes that clear.

In the end, there’s nothing stopping these two virtue-signalers and their buds from paying more into the Federal Treasury on their own initiative. It would be a simple matter to have their accountant write the check. That they won’t, that they get quite indignant at the suggestion, demonstrates their insincerity and their authoritarian demand to impose their personal views on all the other rich folks around them.

Apparently, it’s patriotic enough to natter on about the situation, and civic duty is fulfilled by yapping.

A Few Thoughts on Trump’s Partial Blockade

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President Donald Trump (R) has been increasing the US navy’s presence in the Caribbean Sea and near the coast of Venezuela. Within that, he’s declared a partial blockade against Venezuela, barring sanctioned oil ships from entering or leaving Venezuelan ports, and he has seized a couple of sanctioned oil tankers in Caribbean international waters. Sanctioned oil tankers carry some 70% of Venezuela’s crude oil.

Trump has made no bones about wanting, directly, some of Venezuela’s oil. It was stolen, and he wants it back, he says. He’s referring to the oil production and refining facilities that Hugo Chavez had seized in the years before Maduro took power.

There are two other factors in play, though, that I’ve not seen talked about. One is that Trump’s partial blockade also denies, I think by intent, Venezuelan oil to the People’s Republic of China. In 2024, the PRC imported a bit over $1 billion of oil from Venezuela, which amounted to a skosh under two-thirds of the PRC’s total imports from Venezuela. That’s chump change from the PRC’s perspective, even as it pushes the PRC a little bit more toward needing Russian and Iranian (sanctioned) oil. That brings me, though, to my other thought.

That other is that the moves deny Venezuela’s ability market its oil nearly entirely. Blocking sanctioned oil tankers would deny Venezuela the ability to sell those 70% of its oil exports. In 2025, before the sanctioned oil shipping blockade, Venezuela exported 900,000 barrels per day. If the partial blockade continues, it’ll reduce that oil export to 270,000 barrels per day. That’s a revenue drop, taking the market price as an outer bound on the price Venezuela can get for its shipping-sanctioned oil—$56.52/bbl for West Texas Intermediate Crude as of 19 December—from $54.8 million to $15.3 million.

And these, also, two side effects of the military buildup near Venezuela’s coast. One is Maduro has suddenly stopped gradually building his military presence in eastern Venezuela and threatening to invade Guyana with a view to seizing that nation’s oil fields.

The other is the potential for a cutoff of oil to Cuba, threatening that nation’s ability to function at all. In 2025, Cuba’s two largest sources of imported oil and fuel (Cuba imports more oil than it produces for itself) were Mexico, at 5,000 barrels per day and Venezuela at 27,400 barrels per day. That’s out of a total of 45,400 bpd that Cuba imports. That’s against Cuba’s domestic oil production of 40,000 bpd and the 120,000 bpd that the nation needs to meet demand.

Typically Liberal “Misunderstanding”

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It’s William Galston, this time. Galston, in his op-ed for last Tuesday’s The Wall Street Journal disparaged SecDef Pete Hegseth’s alleged disdain for the laws of war.

Leave aside the fact that Galston cynically and deliberately chose not to cite any of these laws of war. Instead, he actually wrote extensively about Hegseth’s supposed disdain for rules of engagement. In this vein, Galston generalized, without logic or facts, Hegseth’s disdain for particular rules into a disdain for all rules of engagement.

However, Galston’s more serious…error…is this. Rules of engagement are not Laws of War. RoE are the particulars, tailored to specific combat and short-of-combat environments, intended for particularized implementation of those general laws of war. Yet he opened his piece with this lede, and his piece continued solely in that vein.

It’s no surprise the US Navy’s September 2 strike on an alleged drug-carrying boat near Venezuela has been controversial. The man who now leads the Defense Department has ridiculed the laws of war throughout his military career.

I’m not that convinced, though, that Galston’s mistake is a misunderstanding Given his high skill as a journalist for a leading news outlet, for whom words are his stock in trade, I lean more toward outright distortion in his use of rules of engagement and laws of war interchangeably.

Oh, and one more “leave aside:” The controversy surrounding that second strike is entirely a journalistic construction. Those of us with actual military experience and who are not trading on that experience for political gain see no fault in sending in a second strike to finish a task that the first strike had not completed.

Nanny State Strikes Again

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The lede has it.

California regulators have given Tesla 90 days to meet compliance after an administrative law judge found the company deceived consumers by falsely implying its cars could drive on their own.

The article got specific down the page.

California’s DMV first brought the case against Tesla in 2022, arguing the automaker’s use of product names “Autopilot” and “Full-Self Driving Capability” amounted to false advertising. The regulator said Tesla’s use of this language implied to drivers that its cars could function as autonomous vehicles.

Ninety days to stop calling an autopilot an autopilot and to stop calling a full-self driving capability a full-self-driving capability. Never mind that Tesla’s instructions also instruct drivers to remain alert and to keep at least one hand on the steering wheel.

Because California’s government officials think California citizens are grindingly stupid and cannot think for themselves.