Before his death in a car accident in 2007, David Halberstam wrote over twenty excellent histories. His attention to detail and accuracy were hallmarks of his work and this enabled the reader to become immersed in his telling of history. I first was introduced to him by reading The Reckoning which traced the decline of the American auto industry under the assault of the carmakers of Japan. He is perhaps best known for his analysis of the origins of the Viet Nam war in The Best and the Brightest where he reviews the actions of the “Whiz Kids” of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

The book he was most proud of is The Coldest Winter. In it he not only discusses the failures of the U.S. military, the arrogance of Douglas McArthur and the weakness of the Truman administration in the face of the legend of McArthur, but provides the perspective of those on the sharp end of the bayonet; the common infantryman, squad leaders and others who fought a wily and driven enemy.
Having just a few short years before beaten the Nazi and Imperial Japanese war machines, one asks how such a vaunted military could perform so poorly against an enemy inferior in every measure of military strength except manpower. The answer lay in arrogance, upper echelon officers who kowtowed to McArthur and inflexibility in meeting not an enemy on the level ground of Europe, but one who fought in the hills and mountains of Asia.

There are few officers who come off well in this book. One of the few is Major General O.P. Smith, the commander of the First Marines during the battles near the Chosin Reservoir. Resisting orders to scatter his forces in a vain attempt to constantly push forward as directed by Tokyo (McArthur’s headquarters), Smith instead kept a firm hand on his excellent troops to make sure they knew they were acting as a team and were not cut up into weak and exposed positions.

Another leader who stands out is Matthew Ridgeway who was a rising star at the end of World War II. Ridgeway managed on infuse morale into an all but defeated American army through his personal style of leadership. He was seen everywhere; at the front lines, at the chow lines and others, always talking to the troops, listening to them and making them feel that he had their personal wellbeing in mind. At the same time, he demanded much of them, but unlike McArthur, he could be seen, his presence felt and his insistence of getting the troops off the roads and into the hills where the enemy hid and hit from, brought out the best in the troops.

Finally, there is the question of why President Truman put up with the disrespect and insubordination of McArthur for so long. Truman had to put up not only with McArthur, but also with powerful D.C. politicians who saw McArthur as a replacement for Truman and this meant a divided national will. With the successful turn around provided by Ridgeway, Truman was finally able to take decisive action and relieved McArthur.

The finest part of this history however, is page after page of personal experiences by American troops. You will feel drawn into their lives as they fought, often wearing summer uniforms in sub-zero temperatures and suffering from bad logistical support against human wave attacks, day after day, with seemingly little regard for the enemies’ losses. At the same time, given the vivid descriptions provided by Halberstam, one can only image the miserable conditions of the North Korean and Chinese “volunteers” who were driven forward by Communist commissars. Those troops, often barefooted and having even worse support, were simply cannon fodder used by a system that could always count-on hundreds of thousands of poorly trained but docile replacements.

If you read only one book on the Korean war, make it this one.

“The worse the society, the more law there will be. In Hell there will be nothing but law”
Grant Gilmore

Recently the governor of California signed nine hundred new laws into being. Each law will carry various civil and/or criminal penalties and will be further clarified by various rules as determined by the various agencies which will enforce the new laws and rules. Do you know how these new laws will impact you, your life, your family, or business? How many of them will make your life better or easier? Yet, you will be expected to abide by these laws; ignorance of the law is no longer a defense.
In this excellent book, Justice Gorsuch gives numerous examples of how federal laws and rules can be abused by the authorities and how naked we stand before the power of the State. An example is the fisherman who was charged with violating the Sarbanes-Osley Act (instituted after the housing crash of 2007 and aimed at financial institutions) when two federal officials miscounted how many fish he had caught with the result that he lost his business, home, and retirement savings. In the end, the Supreme Court found that he was innocent, but he lived a twenty-year nightmare and received no restitution.
That ex-fisherman was fortunate for he had the nerve and outside help to fight the system, while others often charged with multiple “crimes” from multiple agencies simply plead down their “crimes” in order to try to get on with their lives. And what chance does the average person have when you take the example of new laws in California, multiply it by fifty states and then add on and average of fifty-six new federal crimes every year. In reality, no one knows exactly how many federal laws and regulations carry a criminal punishment, but it is at least three-hundred thousand and growing.

How did this type of system develop? The Founding Fathers were very fearful of a powerful centralized state for they knew from their life experiences the helplessness of the individual. Thus, they created a system of checks and balances in order to limit the power of the central government. They believed that if laws were made, it would be better to have them created at the state level where there was a better opportunity for the average citizen to see, understand and give voice to their concerns.
The system began to change under the administration of President Woodrow Wilson who believed that what was needed was a “science of administration” where “experts” could “straighten the paths of government.” What this meant was that far too much time was spent thinking about the relationship between government and the constitution, and not enough time spent looking for government “efficiency.” And what better model than the Prussian bureaucracy? The Constitution stood in the way of “efficient” government with all of those annoying checks and balances. Better to let expert bureaucrats take the reins of government so that a living, breathing constitution could be created. Despite the failure of “expert” government from the times of Plato and Aristotle, Wilson believed that this time it would be different.

The result is a system where Americans spend 9.78 billion hours to complete federal (not counting state and local) paperwork. To put it another way, “Suppose that we assembled every resident of Chicago and insisted that for the entirety of 2019, each one must work forty house a week engaged in just one task; fill out federal forms. By the end of 2019, the 2.7 million citizens of Chicago will not have come within four billion houses of the annual paperwork burden placed on Americans.”
How do we change a system where the average citizen is lost in a maze of laws and rules drawn up by bureaucrats who are not judged on their service, but rather who have a vested interest in creating new rules in order to expand the bureaucracy? The answer is not simple and must come in large measure from the average American. Justice Gorsuch points out the woefully inadequate amount of time and money spent in educating children on civics. In fact, while the federal government spends about $.54/student on education for STEM, it only spends about $0.05 on civics. The result is that only about thirty-two percent of millennials believe that it is “absolutely essential” that “civil rights protect people’s liberty.”

A more encouraging step is Proposition 315 in Arizona. Under that law, any new rule from the bureaucracy which would cost $500,000 over a five-year period would have to be examined and agreed to by the state assembly. In other words, the law makers would have to realize the impact of their laws (which unfortunately Congress gave up years ago). This proposition is strongly opposed by the League of Women Voters as it would give lawmakers a tool to block rules with which they do not agree!

In the end, we face a lopsided battle; the bureaucracy which cannot be fired nor held to account vs. the average citizen who has no idea what laws and rules they face every day. We can only thank those few strong individuals and those who support them for showing us with their struggles the leviathan we face every day.

Even though we are surrounded by scores of information sources, the sheer number is enough to make one go numb. Factoids will be posted periodically to bring you bits of news which may or may not catch your fancy. Most of the Factoids will be posted to bring you counter-intuitive information which may not be covered by traditional news sources; Question: why aren’t they covered? They may go against the grain of political or cultural “acceptable” thought. Or perhaps because they cannot fit into the thirty-second sound bites without raising more questions than they answer. Hopefully, you will find them of interest!

The German government, strongly supported by the EU has decided that there needs to be fifteen million (15,000,000) EVs in Germany by 2030. I wonder if that includes EVs on car dealers lots because the federal government is facing a major challenge to its goal. The challenge? Nearly 34% of all EV drivers are switching back to combustion engines.
This means that early adaptors who purchased EVs were mostly concerned about the environment, perhaps specific features or just had a case of “first on the block” syndrome. If they are going back to combustions engine vehicles, the fact that they entered the EV with an open mind indicates a failure on the part of EVs. Imagine the disappointment and potential anger to be found from those who are literally forced into EVs through the dictates of the EU.
In fact, the return to combustion vehicles is accelerating; In 2021, 14.2% of EV owners returned to combustion vehicles; that number increase to 17.5% in 2022 and was 28% in 2023. At the same time, only 3.6% of new car buyers choose EVs (the number is only 2.9% in the German market). Inventories are piling up on dealers’ lots and the interest charges for those inventories are putting a severe strain on the dealerships. According to the head of strategy for the ADAC SE (the Auto Club of Germany), “the federal government’s goal of 15 million electric cars by 2030 is already impossible to achieve.” This will mean “a stock of 8.6 million electric cards is possible by 2030.”
It is no secret why European nations, especially Germany are experiencing such weak economies; forced policies like the EV mandates ignore reality and the desires of the market place. Aside from the known drawbacks of EVs, the grids in Europe are not designed nor updated to handle the energy demands to accommodate the needs of so many EVs. Europe continues to do the same thing and expects a different result; nearly eighty years of tired policies need to be re-examined, and new ideas brought forth. To do that would require leadership and the weak coalition governments of Germany and France are not capable of such boldness.
Source: Remix News, 10/15/2024

The front page of today’s Wall Street Journal contains an article named, “Western Spy Agencies Sound Alarms on Chinese Espionage,” as if the lights suddenly went on in spy agencies around the world. The spying has been at all levels of our business and governments; remember the Chinese spy who was Senator Diane Feinstein’s driver (and office manager) for twenty years? Or how about Mayor Adams of New York City whose “Asian Affairs Advisor” is being investigated for close ties to the CCP? Or how about that illegal biolab in California or the illegal CCP “police offices” in NYC and in at least fifty countries around the world.

But there is more than spying that is a danger to the rest of the world. The deeper danger is when our politicians and business leaders fall into a corrupt and traitorous relationship with the CCP. Peter Schweizer’s excellent book Blood Money tells of several U.S. “leaders” who have worked hand in hand with the CCP at the expense of the United States. The final threat to our freedom and political system is the dark money from the CCP which has been flowing into our political system for decades. Just as the Soviets poured money into the student movement during the seventies and later, the CCP has been working on numerous fronts such as the Rainbow Coalition.

The link below will take you to a long interview with Trevor Loudon, a New Zealand author, speaker, blogger, and researcher. Although it starts out focusing on the Communist ties to Kamala Harris’ parents, at about the sixteen minute mark we begin to find those on the monied Left who have aided, funded and supported various groups whose goal is to corrupt the U.S. political system and turn us away from a free Republic toward a weaken Socialist state where our rights are limited and destroyed.

Paranoia? It is all a coincidence? It is up to you to decide, but we live in a time when a former First Lady says that the Federal government should jail those who spread “propaganda” without defining just what qualifies as “propaganda.”  We have a Vice-Presidential candidate who says there is no guarantee of First Amendment rights for those who say hate speech, again without defining who determines what is and what is not “hate speech” and who makes that determination. Remember the short lived “Disinformation Governance Board” set up in 2022?

Isn’t you and your children’s freedom worth an hour or so of information?

https://www.bing.com/search?q=trevor+loudon+kamala+harris&form=ANNTH1&refig=067982e5cda64458a93df928b33dbd0a&pc=HCTS&pq=trevor+louden+kamela+&pqlth=21&assgl=27&sgcn=trevor+loudon+kamala+harris&qs=SC&smvpcn=0&swbcn=2&sc=2-21&sp=1&ghc=0&cvid=067982e5cda64458a93df928b33dbd0a&clckatsg=1&hsmssg=0

Unfortunately, too few histories, written by Vietnamese of the First and Second Indo-China wars have been available in English.  The author, a former General in the South Vietnamese Army provides an excellent history especially of what is commonly called the Vietnam War (2^nd Indo-China war).

A very good read, he covers his family history and education under the French system and then his service in the military.  He is very honest in discussing the friction in the South between the military officers who came South after the expulsion of the French, and the Southerners in the military.  The infighting and politics of the military led to waste and corruption, not to mention a lack of overall strategy.  He also is honest about the corruption of the politicians and their inability to offer the average citizen a truly viable alternative to the Communists.  Finally, he destroys the myth held by some of the benign policies of the VC; he discusses their tactics such as beheading, slaughter of families who supported the government of the South and their reign of terror to enforce their will.

He takes pride in his professionalism and gives long overdue credit to many of those in the South who fought with skill and dedication to hold back the invasion from the North. He writes about numerous battles where the troops of the South we able to defeat the VC and even the better supplied (near the end) North Vietnamese.  After Tet and the decreased American support, we see a slow downturn of the ability of the South to hold back the open invasion by the North which was lavishly supplied by the Soviet Union and China.  As time progressed the Democrats in the U.S. Congress reneged on aid; trucks and tanks were short of parts, tires, etc. while the North could move South via thousands of Soviet trucks.

The end was tragic for all parties.  A million dead, bravery squandered, families torn apart and more. 

An excellent book I can recommend to anyone interested in that long war.

Even though we are surrounded by scores of information sources, the sheer number is enough to make one go numb. Factoids will be posted periodically to bring you bits of news which may or may not catch your fancy. Most of the Factoids will be posted to bring you counter-intuitive information which may not be covered by traditional news sources; Question: why aren’t they covered? They may go against the grain of political or cultural “acceptable” thought. Or perhaps because they cannot fit into the thirty-second sound bites without raising more questions than they answer. Hopefully, you will find them of interest!

There is a saying in certain legal circles that the average person commits three felonies a day. Impossible you say? You know the laws and you obey them? Sorry, you are simple incorrect. Certainly, if you are in business, you will commit violations of the federal government. If you are a teacher, lawyer, farmer, insurance salesperson, mother, or father, you are in grave danger of committing a federal crime. Why? Read on.

Over the past ten years, Congress has passed and place in motion an average of 344 new pieces of legislation. Each year, those new laws contain two to three million words, which outline the rules and guidelines and the costs of disobeying those words of wisdom. But there is more, for when Congress passes those laws, they send them to the correct federal agencies to be enforced and to write how they are to be administered. One, two or multiple agencies may be involved, and each one has a vested interest in making sure they have administrative and police powers to enforce their directives. Currently no one knows for certain how many federal agencies exist; the lates count put the total of over 350 agencies, but again, that is not a final count. And each one of those agencies is looking out for its own turf. At the current time, there are over 5,000 federal crimes.

But, as with government, there is always more. Those federal agencies have police powers, and they contribute by creating over 300,000 regulations which carry criminal sanctions. On top of their regulations, they also issue “guidance” documents and many appear in the federal register. If you wish to read the federal register, make yourself comfortable and the 5,000 volumes, each containing about 1,000 pages (a total of five million pages), will be brought to you. *

Aside from the possibility of committing an infraction against the hundreds of thousands of laws (all designed to make your life better), there is the cost to you of these regulations. A recent study found that the regulations passed in the last three and a half years, will cost the average American family over $47,000 over the life of those regulations. **

The next time a politician promises a goodie for you (at no cost of course), or seeks a bond for some new project that we simply cannot live without, remember the cost will be borne by you and the next time you step out your front door, you just might be committing a federal crime.

• * Figures provided by Chapter 1 of Overruled by Justice Neil Gorsuch and Janie Nitze
• **Study done by Casey Mulligan, University of Chicago, WSJ, 9/26/2024, ppA17

When we think of war, we tend to think of great campaigns, great Generals, and the struggle between nations. The countless small battle actions done by the millions of people who make up the battles are often overlooked. We know no individual combat action by any of those millions will be decisive in the war, but taken together, they create the victory or defeat in war.

The battle of the River Plate, off the coast of Montevideo in mid-December 1939 was a single action that was not a major factor in the loss by Nazi Germany. It was a battle that was more symbolic for the British and a lesson learned by the German Navy. On the surface it was a battle between a German “pocket battleship” and the British navy; one ship against a professional navy that could call on aircraft carriers, battleships, heavy cruisers, and other ships by the dozen. Logically, there was no doubt of the outcome of the battle, yet it had to be fought for war is not a gentleman’s game.

The German ship was the Graf Spee, a lone ship whose main purpose was to seek out and destroy Allied merchant ships in both the Atlantic and even the Indian oceans. The presence of such a ship, armed with six-eleven-inch guns put every merchant ship, destroyer, and light cruiser in harm’s way. If the Graf Spee could not sink any ships, her existence and presence would disrupt the passage of merchant ships and with every ship valuable to the survival of England, she had to be hunted and destroyed.

The author does and excellent job of outlining and following how the British reacted to the realization that the Graf Spee was lose in the Atlantic. They immediately reached out to their major ports to gather ships capable of destroying the German raider and created several hunting groups. From the North Atlantic to the Med to the southern tip of Africa, heavy units of the British navy all joined the hunt for the Graf Spee.

For anyone not familiar with navy ships, the book does leave something to be desired regarding the match up between the Graf Spee and the British; speed, armor, firepower are briefly covered by the assumption seems to be that the reader at least has a glancing knowledge of these topics. Also missing are the stories of the individual sailors for both sides. Anyone who has read the excellent Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James D. Hornfischer will be disappointed at the lack of personal depth in this book.

In the end, the British sank the German raider, the war moved on to the Battle of the Atlantic and one episode in a great war ended. Yet today, it is a tradition when sailing off Montevideo to sail over the graveyard of the Graf Spee and think even if only briefly, of those men who fought and died some eighty-five years ago.

Even though we are surrounded by scores of information sources, the sheer number is enough to make one go numb. Factoids will be posted periodically to bring you bits of news which may or may not catch your fancy. Most of the Factoids will be posted to bring you counter-intuitive information which may not be covered by traditional news sources; Question: why aren’t they covered? Possibly they may go against the grain of political or cultural “acceptable” thought.  Or perhaps because they cannot fit into the thirty-second sound bites without raising more questions than they answer. Hopefully, you will find some of them of interest!

Who profits from fictitious poverty numbers?

We often hear about the crisis with the Social Security and Medicare programs, but we never seem to hear about any problems with funding for welfare programs. In 2023, means-tested welfare spending totaled $1.6 trillion, and it takes up “72.6% of unobligated general revenue (total revenue net of Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes and premiums and mandatory interest on public debt)”.

What do we get for this huge expenditure? While the official poverty rate has remained stable at about 11.5%, the Supplemental Poverty Rate (SAP) is actually increasing (This indicates that while the official measure stayed the same, the broader measure that includes additional factors like government assistance programs saw a significant rise). How can this be?

One interesting fact about the government’s numbers is that the Census Bureau does not count 88% of transfer payments made to “poor” households. This means that programs such as food-stamp debit cards, free medical care through Medicaid, refundable tax credits (checks from the Treasury) or benefits from about one hundred other Federal transfer payments are not counted as income. If all these transfers of money, services and goods were counted, the total value would have been $64,700 in 2020! Compared to when the War on Poverty began in 1967, this is an increase of 780% in inflation-adjusted dollars. How long do you have to work to net after taxes, $64,700?

So, who does profit from this amazing bit of government math, aside from the recipients? One obvious answer is the Federal government, or to be accurate, the vast bureaucracy which administers these programs. Add to that vast number are the other bureaucrats at the State, County, City, etc. levels of local government. Hundreds of thousands of individuals have a personal stake in creating erroneous numbers and openly report that the trillions of dollars spent on these programs are wasted.

What exactly is the purpose of these programs? Not counting those individuals who have a real need due to physical or mental problems, but looking only at the healthy, is it to help lift them off of welfare and into a productive life, or is it to maintain them at their current level so that hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats lead a middle and upper middle-class lifestyle? That, as people used to say, is the $64,000 question. How long can we spend approximately twice on means-tested welfare than we do on our national defense?

Thanks to Welfare is What’s Eating the Budget, WSJ, 9/12/2024, ppA15, written by Phil Gramm and Jodey Arrington.

George Kennan (not to be confused with George F. Kennan, remembered for his famous “Long Telegram”) was a journalist and explorer. He wrote a number of books, including Tent Life in Siberia where he wrote about living with a number of Siberian tribes such as the Koraks, Yakoots, Gakouts and others. It was this experience that opened the door for him to return to Czarist Russia to author a book about the exile system in Siberia.

He initially was positive about the exile system as he felt it was a positive way to bring settlers to Siberia who would be able to repay society for their various crimes. Because he authored several positive articles on that system, he was granted almost unlimited access to the camps and officials despite the skepticism of various Czarist officials. 

Daniel Beer’s book, The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Czars reviewed here on 4/21/2023) wrote of an earlier version of the system and although he did not have firsthand experience, it outlines a terrible blot on the face of Czarism. Kennan’s book goes further as he spent months travelling across Siberia, visiting way stations, camps, and work sites as well as speaking to many Czarist officials himself.

Kennan very quickly changes his mind about the system as he immediately comes across suspicious officials who only put up with him due to his letters of introduction and directives signed by high officials from the capital. He describes the towns and villages of Siberia, mostly small, dirty, and rudimentary with only a thin veil of civilization and little culture. The European Russian inhabitants attempt to build some sort of livable community life, but they are the end of an exceptionally long and thin line, far from the capital and of no significant importance to the national concerns.

In visiting the actual camps themselves, he does find some dedicated officials (normally having served a shorter time in the system) as the system is simply overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of prisoners. There are more prisoners than camp buildings so the weaker prisoners sleep outside which is not that bad during the milder months as the interiors of the camp buildings are dark, poorly ventilated, and filthy due to the lack of proper sanitation. He writes that at times he is choaking from the stench of the buildings. Some officials show him stacks of letters they sent to their superiors asking for additional funds to construct new facilities, for more manpower to manage the prisoners, all to no avail. Most letters are never even acknowledged.

Does it ever appear to you that most governments and especially the Federal government live in some sort of alternative universe? Recently a local government decided to shut down local oil rigs in the name of saving the planet. The problem was that those oil rigs contributed about eighty-three million dollars to the government in the form of taxes. As the day of the shut down approached, (the decision had been made two years ago), someone in government asked how were those funds going to be replaced? Perhaps a reduction in the number of city workers? No, not that. Eliminating non-essential government programs? No, not that. Then someone had a brilliant idea: increase the sales tax even though the current city sales tax is among the highest in the nation. Yes! Great idea!

On the national level, the lack of being in touch with reality is even greater. For example, the EPA last Good Friday decided to roll out it is Biden inspired electric truck mandate. From 2027-2032, heavy-duty trucks will be responsible for an ever-increasing percentage of trucks on the road. By 2032 the percentage is targeted to be 25%.

There are a number of questions and concerns that came to light immediately, but which somehow were not anticipated or answered by either the EPA of the White House, for example:

• The batteries of semis are larger and heavier than those in fossil fuel vehicles, so their pay loads will be smaller.
  • This means that there will be more semis on the road which will lead to more traffic congestion which will lead to:
    • More pollution as their tires creates more soot than conventional tires.
    • Higher delivery costs
    • Greater damage to the highways as these semis are heavier which may be beyond the original engineering specifications.
• The cost.
  • While there will be more semis on the road, where will the capital come from in order to pay for the new semis:
    • Electric semis cost on average, about twice as much as traditional semis.
      • This will lead to higher costs of transportation which will lead to higher costs for the consumer and greater inflation.
      • At the current time, there are no U.S. electric semis in production so will the new semis be manufactured by our national competitors such as China?
        • Is this mandate in reality a job core program for China?
      • What will be done with the hundreds of thousands of suddenly outlawed semis?
• Where will the energy come from?
  • By 2030, electric trucks are anticipated to use about 11% of California’s electricity. As the trucks have to run mostly during daylight hours in order to cover more ground, they will have to recharge at night when rates are higher, which will lead to greater shipping costs.
  • Between now and 2032, about 15,000 chargers will have to be built and installed each and every month. The government has installed less than a dozen chargers in the past two years.
  • Infrastructure will have to be upgraded, including transformers, wiring, etc. The estimated cost is $370 billion with another $620 billion being spent by the truckers themselves at their facilities. Another increase in pricing.

The list could easily go on and on and I sincerely doubt that anyone at the EPA, the White House or Congress is looking at how to solve those issues above in a time of major economic and international pressures. Perhaps the powers that have a few ounces of magic dust they intend to use to help implement their silly, unrealistic, childish mandate. And this is just one of many brilliant ideas we will continue to see coming out of D.C. in the future, no matter which party is in power. After all, the government must appear to be doing something or else we would just end up asking why we need so many bureaucrats in our lives.