The Supreme Soviet in Brussels imposes ruinous costs on energy and consumers.

The European Union requires vassal states to levy a minimum excise duty of €0.359 per liter ($1.47 per gallon) on gasoline.

EU industries pay power prices 2-3 times higher than those in the U.S. Taxes made up, on average, 23% of the retail electricity price paid by Europe’s energy-intensive firms in 2023.

Netherlands gas tax is highest at $3.23 per gallon.

UK diesel tax is highest at $2.56 per gallon.

Furthermore, EU law requires a standard value added tax (VAT) rate of at least 15% to apply to most goods and services. Member States may also apply up to two reduced rates as low as 5%, one super-reduced rate lower than 5% and one zero rate to a limited set of goods and services taken from an agreed list.

The EU countries with the highest standard VAT rates are Hungary (27 percent), Croatia, Denmark, and Sweden (all at 25 percent). Luxembourg levies the lowest standard VAT rate at 17 percent, followed by Malta (18 percent), Cyprus, Germany, and Romania (all at 19 percent).

The EU’s average standard VAT rate is 21.6 percent, more than six percentage points higher than the minimum standard VAT rate required by EU regulation.

The VAT is always a Ponzi scheme that taxes the consumer the hardest:

Every business along the “value” chain receives a tax credit for the VAT already paid.

The end consumer does not, making it a tax on final consumption.

Diesel and Gas Taxes in Europe, 2024

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In case you missed my interviews in the last two years with Liberty Chieftain Scott Horton:

Ep. 6044 – Bill Buppert on the Threat of Terrorism and the Changing Nature of Warfare – 4/18/24

Ep. 5857 – Bill Buppert: A Deep Dive into Irregular Warfare – 2/17/23

Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me

The great Kelley B. Vlahos interviewed me about my new book Provoked today:

Kyle Anzalone breaks down the highlights (or lowlights) from Trump’s inaugural address.

The beat-down goes on administered by the non-naval armories of the Houthis in Yemen.

Geoff Ziezulewicz avers:

Those SM-6 missiles are a cool four million dollars a pop.

A rather chilly one third of a billion dollars in SM-6 expenditures alone.

320 million dollars.

Guns are economical, reliable, versatile, and proven. Did I mention economical? Any kind of guided missile/munition is expensive. 5-inch guns are good. Might 6-inch or 8-inch be better? And why only one turret? Granted, going back to building ships around big-gun turrets probably isn’t a good thing (an Iowa-class with 16″ guns will just be a missile sponge as most surface navies will discover in the 21st century) but maybe two turrets?

The current state-of-the-art 155mm artillery round is the XM982 has a nominal range of 12nm when fired by the M777 howitzer. But I don’t believe it has a proximity fuze option for air and small high speed surface targets. As Army/USMC howitzers are not designed to engage targets while rolling and pitching, an entirely new weapon would have to be designed to use the 155mm rounds that may be size analogs to 4-6″ guns. DDG 1000 had a variation on the 155mm theme in the 155mm Advance Gun System, but that weapon was uniquely designed for much longer ranges and thus was too specialized for general shipboard installation a million dollars a round. Things *could* have been different, but weren’t and won’t be.

US Navy destroyers and cruisers needing to leave the ongoing battle against Iran-backed Houthi rebel missile and drone barrages in the Red Sea to reload their Mk 41 Vertical Launching System (VLS) missile cells are causing a presence gap and “a real challenge,” Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said Wednesday at the annual Surface Navy Association conference. That challenge extends not only to the Red Sea campaign, he said, but especially to a future war with China across the vast West Pacific expanse as well.

***

At-sea reloading would cut down on the transit time for re-upping a warship’s munitions, while allowing such ships to stay at least closer to the action, even though rearming would likely take place at least some distance from the core of the fighting.

“The opponent would have weakened our fleet even without scoring a punch” if warships have to leave the battle to reload, James Holmes, a maritime strategy professor at the Naval War College, told Navy Times in 2017, after then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson announced the effort that would become TRAM. “If we keep having to rotate cruisers or destroyers back to rear areas to reload, the opponent has subtracted that much combat power from the fleet.”

https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/so-were-going-to-screw-up-ddgx-too

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Journalism in Action: Holding Blinken Accountable on Gaza

A powerful confrontation between journalists and Secretary Blinken reveals the urgent need for accountability in U.S. foreign policy, particularly regarding the situation in Gaza. The episode highlights how challenging narratives can shift discussions and emphasizes the importance of journalistic integrity in the face of state power.

• Blumenthal directly questions Blinken about the U.S. role in the Gaza conflict
• Husseini highlights the importance of journalist accountability
• Insights into the impact of U.S. aid on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Discussion of the complexity surrounding the potential ceasefire in Gaza
• Reactions to the shifting political narratives in Washington
• The role of media in shaping public perception and policy decisions

Another incipient program doomed to failure, cost ballooning, massive incompetence and buyer’s remorse. The program should be stopped immediately and every flag officer currently serving fired, the Department of the Navy SES structure gutted and cashiered and blow the lid off all the mismanagement and classified hiding schemes of the Navy Operational Test and Evaluation bureaucracy that has been a keen contributor to the absolute failure of all ships built since 1991 with the last successful hull commissioned in the Aegis. The time for creative destruction and absolute disruption of business as usual has to happen.

Stop the madness.

Fire them all.

In a lot of areas, we need a “Program Stand Down.” We cannot afford to be stupid, again, with DDG(X), nor with F/A-XX.

Whatever is making these programs move at the speed of smell needs to be gutted and gibbeted. For 75 years, the Brightest People in the Room™ have been telling us naval guns were obsolete, but in every real world encounter with our messy and unpredictable world, we have needed them.

We no longer live in the post-Cold War land of the Lotus Eaters. Urgency and action. Embrace the good-enough, and publicly damn the pursuit of the perfect and transformational, as that narcissistic folly is what got us in to this mess.

Oh, and put a damn 5” Mark 45 on the front and at least one 76mm like the Italian warship Caio Duilio has two forward, aft.

https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/so-were-going-to-screw-up-ddgx-too

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Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me