Whenever and wherever too much government power produces bad policy and terrible results, US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) can be counted upon to pop up with the same proposed solution: More government power and more bad policy. Surely that will fix it.

Current case in point: Oil prices.

“Putin’s war is causing gas prices to rise,” she tweeted on March 8, “but this is no excuse for large oil companies to pad their bottom line with war-fueled profits. Senate Democrats are watching closely — and already working on a windfall profits tax.”

And then, the very next day:  “We need to use every opportunity for economic pressure to hold Putin accountable — and @POTUS’ decision to ban Russian oil in the U.S. is the right thing to do.”

Oh, and by the way: “The President and Senate Democrats will use every tool to bring down costs for families.”

Every tool, that is, except resisting the temptation to  push those costs up with economic sanctions, strangling regulations, and punitive taxes.

It’s not that Warren is economically illiterate. As an entrepreneur of sorts, she flipped houses for a while before managing to parlay her terrible ideas into both political power and a series of sweetheart book deals that made her a multi-millionaire. So she can presumably do basic arithmetic well enough figure out that pushing costs up doesn’t bring costs down.

But if her problem isn’t stupidity, what is it? The most likely candidate seems to be jealousy.

She’s appalled whenever she notices that other people seemingly feel entitled to make their livings without her permission and absent her direction. Why, the nerve!

She can’t get her head around the idea that anyone, anywhere could possibly make anything work without the benefit of Elizabeth Warren’s omniscience and expertise.

She’s enraged when she learns that something, anything got done without a phone call to her office to get her blessing first.

She’s not content to just take a good deal of your money, borrow more money in your name, and spend that money as she pleases. She wants your attention, your allegiance, and your gratitude, too.

Well, why shouldn’t she feel that way, given that you and she have so much in common — you want to run your life, and she wants to run it too.

And if Elizabeth Warren running your life makes your life more difficult and expensive, she’s fine with that.

Are you?

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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In the fog of war, it’s difficult to tell which claims are true and which aren’t. What are Vladimir Putin’s forces up to in Ukraine? Apart from some high points (real or media-manufactured), it’s often hard to tell.

Even when we think that the US government’s claims are true, they’re difficult to credit as uniquely damning, because they almost always refer to behaviors the US government has no problem with when it’s the one engaging in them.

“[W]e have credible information,” Bathsheba Nell Crocker, US Representative to the Office of the United Nations, wrote in a letter to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in February, “that indicates Russian forces are creating lists of identified Ukrainians to be killed or sent to camps following a military occupation.”

That sounds pretty bad. In fact, if true, it IS pretty bad. It’s also something the US military and intelligence establishments have done for decades … so much so that these days it doesn’t even really try to hide it.

As the Future of Freedom Foundation’s Jacob Hornberger points out, the CIA made use of “kill lists” at least as early as 1954 in Guatemala. They were secretive about it — they won’t even reveal the names on those lists to this day — but there’s little doubt such “kill lists” were provided by the CIA to paramilitary death squads throughout Central America at least into the 1980s.

Since 9/11, the US government hasn’t even bothered to keep its “kill lists” especially secret. They don’t always share the names, but “targeted killings” are an openly admitted element of US warfare, even if US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) gets slammed for saying the quiet part a little too loudly (“Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out”).

In 2003, the US Defense Intelligence Agency even had playing cards printed and distributed to openly and proudly publicize its Iraq “kill list.” Saddam Hussein (a head of state and thus as a matter of policy supposedly not subject to assassination like mere mortals) was the ace of spades. As of today, 48 of the 52 people on the “kill list” have been killed or captured.

The question isn’t whether Vladimir Putin should be ordering the murder or capture of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other uses of “kill lists” to “de-Nazify” of Ukraine. Clearly he shouldn’t.

But from “kill lists” to cluster munitions and thermobaric bombs to outright invasions of other countries, the US regime should start meeting the same standards it’s demanding Vladimir Putin’s regime be held to. That seems like a low bar and easily gotten over.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on March 4, 80% of Americans support a  US government ban on the importation of Russian oil.

Meanwhile, Americans are also complaining about high gas prices, which reached an average of more than $4 per gallon over the weekend following the poll’s release, in large part due to US and European sanctions on Russia.

While Russian oil constitutes only a tiny portion of US petroleum imports, a complete ban certainly wouldn’t help hold US gas prices down.

It also wouldn’t help with much else.

Believe it or not, Vladimir Putin and his oligarch cronies aren’t missing any meals due to the sanctions.

Yes, ordinary Russians are taking a hit to their per capita income of a whopping US $7,000 or so per year. And most of them probably blame the US, not Putin, for that hit.

Just like Iranians mostly blame the US, not their theocratic regime, for the effects of US sanctions.

And just like Cubans mostly blame the US, not their Communist regime, for the effects of US sanctions.

Sometimes it seems like the only victims of US sanctions who DON’T blame the US government are Americans.

Maybe it’s the differential effect. Abroad, US sanctions can produce real poverty, malnutrition, even starvation or death by preventable disease. Here at home, they’re a minor inconvenience.

Maybe you’re canceling that road trip to Vegas and planning a stay-cation instead, but you’re probably not cutting your meat ration with corn meal to make it go further, looking up the symptoms of rickets, or trying to coax a 68th year out of your 1956 De Soto.

As to who sanctions HELP, well,  cross Ukraine off that list.  Putin’s not going to call his troops back over economic sanctions. Europeans whose livelihoods are hit by being on the sanctioners’ side aren’t going to get any more anti-Russian or pro-Ukrainian. They’re just going to get poorer.

The only people helped by US sanctions on Russian oil are American oil producers. Those sanctions bring them just a little bit closer to monopoly status, allowing them to jack up prices and knock down windfall profits at your expense.

If you want to give up vodka for Lent, or switch from Russian salad dressing to a vinaigrette, in the silly belief that doing so will make a difference for Ukraine, knock yourself out. But don’t demand an increase in the cost of gas and then whine about it.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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