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Don't discount pain of economic punishment

Before we let the chicken hawks and armchair generals get too far ahead of themselves in this U.S.-Russia confrontation debate, it’s good to perhaps understand what kind of pain can be delivered via economic sanctions leveled against Russia.

A number of President Obama’s critics want him to do more than just level some specific economic sanctions against Russia. They want some form of military option, such as arming Ukrainian military units and sending troops to NATO nations as a standby warning to Russia.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/03/20/obama_orders_new_round_of_sanctions_on_russia_121998.html

However, the sanctions that Obama has imposed on a number of key Russian leaders with lots of money spread around in banks throughout the world well could put a serious damper on an already-weak Russian economy.

Russia’s economic growth is near zero. The Crimean region that Russia has effectively annexed is an economic basket case. Corruption still runs rampant throughout Russia, with gangsters and thugs controlling an underground economy that dwarfs many aspects of the above-ground economy.

The measures enacted by the White House through executive orders signed by the president are meant to deny access to financial assets by key Russian leaders. It’s going to cause them considerable personal pain. There well might be more severe measures taken against rank-and-file Russians if Russia ratchets up its military involvement in Ukraine.

Let’s be crystal clear about one non-starter of an idea: War with Russia is out of the question, which Obama has declared. There will be no battlefield confrontation between the nations.

Having said that, there’s no way to guarantee what Russia might do to re-annex three Baltic states — Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, all of which are members of NATO. Let us not forget that NATO constitution says that an attack against one member nation is an attack against the entire alliance — which includes the United States of America.

The White House is banking that given the sad state of the Russian economy, the economic punishment just might be enough to give Russia pause if it aims to continue its aggression in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the chicken hawks ought to pipe down.

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Let's define 'sanctions'

The media have this habit of latching on to words without clarifying their context, meaning or importance.

The word of the day is “sanctions.”

President Obama today announced he is expanding the sanctions being leveled on high-level Russian officials who have played any important role in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

Being a reasonably well-read individual, I think I know what he means by “sanctions.” The president is using executive authority to freeze assets of individuals high up in the Russian government. They’ll be unable to move money around. They’ll be hit where it hurts, in the bank account.

I think that’s what the word means.

The media, though, ought to explain these sanctions and how the U.S. government intends to inflict enough pain on Russia’s government to make it stop interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs. If the media cannot do it, then they should ask White House officials, Treasury Department gurus, Federal Reserve Board brass, high-level Ivy League economists or anyone else with intimate knowledge on how these things work to explain to us unwashed masses.

Sanctions.

It’s a nice word. It seems so clinical, so clean and so, oh, bordering on meaningless unless you can define how the sanctions actually work.

I’m all ears.

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Predator gets off easy

My wife came unglued this morning as we listened on NPR to someone defending an Army brigadier general who had been accused of sexually assaulting his former lover.

A military judge this morning sentenced Jeffrey Sinclair to a fine, a reprimand and zero jail time after he pleaded guilty to charges involving an affair he had with a junior officer.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/general-fined-not-jailed-or-demoted-sex-case-n57646

Gen. Sinclair copped a guilty plea and got the Army to drop the most serious charge of sexual assault involving the woman with whom he was having the affair.

Then came the NPR report in which a spokesman for Sinclair declared the general to be a “man of honor” who didn’t deserve to spend time behind bars.

“A man of honor?!” my wife shrieked as we sat in the car. “My God, the guy had an affair and was accused of assaulting someone,” she said.

I have to agree with my bride. A “man of honor” never would have gotten involved with someone other than his wife in the first place.

The sentence now essentially ends this high-profile court-martial.

Gen. Sinclair has disgraced himself, grievously injured his family and dishonored the country he served.

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'Secede' from our beloved country?

I keep seeing this bumper sticker on the back end of a pickup.

It’s next to another one. Their juxtaposition means that neither of them makes sense.

One is an American flag, Old Glory, the Stars and Stripes. The fellow who owns the truck is a “proud American,” I’m reckoning.

The other one says a single word: “SECEDE.”

OK, so which is it? Is the guy a patriot who loves this country? Does he want to break up his beloved United States of America?

You see these “SECEDE” bumper stickers and other signage around the Texas Panhandle every so often. I’m unsure — as I haven’t mustered the guts to actually question someone displaying the signs — whether the secede messages are to be taken literally.

I’d ask, except that in Texas we allow people to carry concealed handguns, so I’m afraid of getting shot … OK?

The secession talk ebbs and flows. I think it’s beginning to flow once again with election season coming on and tea party folks in Texas and elsewhere touting their candidates for public office.

The “SECEDE” sign next to Old Glory on the back bumper of the pickup sends a mixed message. I trust the owner of the truck is as proud of his country as I am, but I don’t know it, given the sign calling for Texas to pull out of the country.

I believe that’s called “sedition.”

In this country, though, it’s OK to say you want to secede; it’s quite another to actually do it. Eleven states did that once. It didn’t work out for them.

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Realism rules in taking military strike off table

World leaders usually say they are leaving “all options on the table” when dealing with crises.

President Obama, though, has taken another — quite reasonable — approach in trying to find a solution to the crisis in Ukraine.

He has ruled out a “military excursion” pitting U.S. armed forces against Russians.

Good call, Mr. President.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/obama-rules-out-military-excursion-ukraine-n57081

The United States does not need another war. It certainly does not need a shooting war with Russia, which — in case anyone needs reminding — is the second-greatest nuclear power on the planet; the United States is No. 1, but the Russians still have the ability to inflict cataclysmic damage.

Thus, the United States will not entertain the idea of engaging Russia on the battlefield.

Critics no doubt will say something about a “timid” U.S. response that “emboldens” Russian President Vladimir Putin. Let them grumble.

The very idea of a U.S.-Russia battlefield confrontation is too chilling to even ponder, let alone discuss out loud.

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Who will also-rans endorse for lt. gov.?

Jerry Patterson and Todd Staples are feeling a bit stung these days.

Patterson, the state land commissioner, and Staples, the Texas agriculture commissioner, finished out of the running in the four-man race for Texas lieutenant governor. But they both still might have something to say about who Texas Republicans should nominate in the May 27 runoff.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/03/12/patterson-staples-talk-the-past-present-and-future/

They talked to the Texas Tribune about their campaigns and their futures.

Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is facing state Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston in the runoff to see who will run this fall against Democratic nominee state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio.

It’s going to be a bitter fight all the way to runoff voting day.

How might Patterson and/or Staples affect the outcome? They could endorse one of the two runoff foes.

My guess is that Dewhurst would get the nod, given that Patrick managed to anger Patterson and Staples with some pretty mean-spirited campaign ads during the primary.

What’s more, both the land commissioner and the agriculture commissioner have worked with Dewhurst as statewide elected officials. It’s kind of a clubby atmosphere among statewide officeholders.

Patrick could be seen as the fiery outsider in this foursome.

I don’t know what Patterson and Staples will do. I don’t know either of them well enough to predict how or whether they’ll make endorsements in this contest.

They’ll wait a suitable length of time before making their decisions, either because they don’t yet know what they’ll do or because they want to generate maximum political impact on this important contest.

Stay tuned.

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U.S.-Russia relations in freezer

Let’s not call it Cold War 2.0, at least not yet.

The New York Times reports that the Ukraine crisis involving the Russian takeover of Crimea signals a deepening freezing of relations between the world lone superpower and one of its rivals for international supremacy.

The United States won the first Cold War partly because the then-Soviet Union bankrupted itself by trying to out-muscle its American rivals. It didn’t have the resources to keep up. The United States won. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Russia emerged a damaged, highly corrupt nation.

What’s happening now in Ukraine isn’t the first such land grab that the Russians have completed. They did the same thing in Georgia in 2008. Ukraine’s unrest made Moscow nervous for the ethnic Russians in Crimea, which voted to secede from Ukraine.

Where do U.S.-Russia relations go from here? Into the tank, according to the New York Times.

The Times’s Peter Baker reports: “The decision by President Vladimir V. Putin to snatch Crimea away from Ukraine, celebrated in a defiant treaty-signing ceremony in the Kremlin on Tuesday, threatens to usher in a new, more dangerous era. If it is not the renewed Cold War that some fear, it seems likely to involve a sustained period of confrontation and alienation that will be hard to overcome. The next reset, if there ever is one, for the moment appears far off and far-fetched.”

Against this backdrop we have critics of President Obama pushing him to do more than he’s done. Obama’s response has been to rely heavily on international allies to join in condemning the Russians’ efforts to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty. Russia, of course, is having none of it.

What does the United States do? What can the lone superpower do? The hard reality is that our hands are tied, except to deny Russia involvement in high-level economic summits, such as the G-7 meeting about to occur next week in The Netherlands. It should be the G-8, but Russian strongman Vladimir Putin won’t be there.

The rivalry between the United States and Russia has just gotten a good bit frostier.

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It's the uncertainty that is most painful

The people who love those who were aboard Malaysia Air Flight 370 are enduring the worst of this tragedy.

They are waiting for any hint, a clue, a tiny tidbit of knowledge about their fate. Absent that, their minds are playing terrible tricks on them. They are having fanciful dreams of a miracle that those aboard the plane that vanished without a trace — so far — after taking off March 8 from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia en route to Beijing.

I know a little bit about what they’re going through. I’ll share a brief version of a personal tragedy in my own family’s history.

On the morning of Sept. 8, 1980, I received a phone call at work. The voice on the other end told me my father was missing after a boating accident just north of Vancouver, British Columbia. Four men were aboard a small craft; two of them were safe; the other two were missing. Dad was one of the men missing — and he was presumed dead.

I took a deep breath, called my wife and went home to prepare to tell my mother the terrible news.

The next day, I boarded a small plane to the fishing camp where Dad and his business associates were staying. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were conducting a search of the saltwater inlet for any sign of Dad’s body. After two days they hadn’t found anything.

I returned home and we all waited for news. Meanwhile, my mind was fantasizing about Dad. He was alive, traipsing around in the forest, undetected by civilization.

I knew intellectually that wasn’t the case. I knew he was gone. But we didn’t have any tangible evidence of what happened to him.

Eight days later, the evidence arrived with a phone call from the Mounties. They found Dad. I was relieved and heartbroken at the same time. But we had closure and were able to say goodbye properly.

This is what those who are waiting for news about Flight 370 might be going through. They well could be clinging to the thinnest reed of hope that their loved ones are miraculously OK; that they landed on a remote island; that they’re waiting for someone to fly overhead to detect them, rescue them and return them to those who love them.

Those loved ones know better, but their minds and hearts could be playing terrible tricks on them.

Their pain defies description.

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Get tougher with Putin? How … precisely?

You knew it would happen.

President Barack Obama would announce new sanctions against Russia for its incursion into Crimea and its endorsement of a decision by ethnic Russians to separate from Ukraine.

Then the Republican opposition here at home would criticize the president for not being tough enough on the Russians. Of course the GOP would oppose it.

http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/europe/201132-republicans-demand-obama-get-tougher-with-putin-on-ukraine

They want the United States to expel Russia from the Group of Eight industrialized nations. They insist that the United States dramatically boost its exports of natural gas to undermine the Russians’ economy. They want more economic pressure applied.

What’s next? Do we go to war with Russia?

White House press secretary Jay Carney did manage to put the GOP call for tougher action into some perspective when asked today to comment on the Republican criticism. “As others have said, the fact that President George W. Bush invaded Iraq and had two ongoing wars in the Middle East didn’t seem to affect Russia’s calculations when it came to its actions in Georgia. So there’s a problem with the logic,” he said, referring to the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, which also — like Ukraine — is a former Soviet-bloc state.

Barack Obama has limited options, as does the rest of the world that opposes what Russia has done, which is to interfere directly in the affairs of another sovereign nation.

Obama already has declared his intention to impose a heavy cost to Russia for its incursion into Crimea and for its meddling in Ukraine’s political dispute.

The GOP peanut gallery needs to pipe down while our head of state seeks — in conjunction with our allies — a suitable method for making the Russians pay for its blatant violation of international law.

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This isn't the Dust Bowl, but …

I cannot even pretend to understand what Texas and Oklahoma Panhandle residents endured in the 1930s when the Dust Bowl blew their livelihoods away — and killed many folks in the process.

However, the dust that has been blowing the past few days is getting very tiresome and more than a bit worrisome.

Today was another one of those days when the dust blew in from the north and west over much of West Texas. The Weather Channel led with it on its early-evening newscast, replacing the late-winter snow storm that is pounding the East Coast.

How does this condition ever end?

Well, let’s look at the obvious solution: Rain needs to fall. A lot of rain would be good.

Two and a half months into 2014 and our rainfall deficit is beginning to look grim. We’re about half of where we need to be a this point in the year, according to the National Weather Service. The March winds that are well-known to us here in the Texas Panhandle have kicked in and the topsoil that hasn’t been dampened is being lifted into the air and taken to God knows where.

There might be some good news in the offing. I was visiting the other day with a water conservation district official who told me he understands there’s a “48 percent chance that El Nino will return this spring.” That means we’ve got a nearly one in two chance that the Pacific Ocean currents will bring more moisture inland, which is what the El Nino current usually does.

Of course that also means that we’ve got about the same likelihood of either the conditions staying the same or the La Nina current will take over, meaning even drier-than-normal conditions will prevail over the region.

Those of us who weren’t around during the Dust Bowl do not really grasp what the region’s older residents went through more than seven decades ago. The survivors of that terrible time no doubt remember how it used to be and may be shrugging their shoulders at what’s occurring today.

We all have a common desire. We need rain. Now!

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