Venezuela: President Trump and Continued Refugee Issue

The Washington Post has the latest and greatest on President Trump's thinking on Venezuela. Before getting into this we have to remember that on April 30th, opposition leader Juan Guaido thought he had garnered support from key Maduro loyalists. He quickly realized that he didn't have their support. With nearly two months having passed, what does the Washington Post have to say:

A frustrated Trump believed that national security adviser John Bolton and his director for Latin American policy, Mauricio Claver-Carone, “got played” by both the opposition and key Maduro officials, two senior administration officials said . . . Summer arrives this week with Maduro still in place, and little indication that he is imminently on his way out, or that the Trump administration has a coherent strategy to remove him. The president, officials said, is losing both patience and interest in Venezuela . . . But Trump has clearly been frustrated about a foreign policy issue he “always thought of . . . as low-hanging fruit” on which he “could get a win and tout it as a major foreign policy victory,” the former official said.

Did President Trump and his advisors forget about the 2017 protests? Maybe not. Perhaps they thought the sanctions had done enough damage to encourage the people and military to turn against Maduro.

Algeria: Corruption Arrests and Protests Continue

As a reminder, back on April 2nd, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was forced to resign by the army after weeks of protests. I last wrote about Algeria in mid-May. In that blogpost, I discussed how the arrests being made by the Algeria military were either driven by an attempt to gain support by the protests or to stop political opposition (or possibly both).

Both the arrests and protests continue.

From Al Jazeera (June 18):

Those with "grudges and animosity towards the army and its command . . . are undoubtedly enemies of Algeria," a defence ministry statement on Tuesday quoted Gaid Salah as saying at a military base in the southwestern province of Bechar . . . Large weekly demonstrations similar to those that led to Bouteflika's exit have continued, with protesters demanding the fall of establishment insiders and the setting up of independent institutions . . . On Monday, a court in the capital, Algiers, ordered the detention of Mourad Eulmi, head of family-owned firm SOVAC, a partner of Germany's Volkswagen AG, over suspected corruption . . . On June 16, former Finance Minister Karim Djoudi had appeared before the Supreme Court to face questions about corruption accusations, according to state media . . . His hearing came days after the same court ordered the detention of former Prime Ministers Ahmed Ouyahia and Abdelmalek Sellal, as well as former Trade Minister Amara Benyounes for "dissipation of public funds and awarding illegal privileges".

Part of me

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Game Time: Behind the Scenes of Sports Controversies

I went to the LA Times Festival of Books (April 13-14). I'm posting my notes on the various panel discussions I attended.

The ninth and final panel discussion I attended was "Game Time: Behind the Scenes of Sports Controversies."

Here is an edited panelist biography via the LA Times website.

Ken Bensinger has been a working journalist for twenty years, getting his start in a small magazine in New York soon after graduating from college before jumping to the Wall Street Journal where he was given his first beats to cover.

Mark Leibovich is Chief National Correspondent for The New York Times Magazine. He lives in Washington, D.C. with this family and occasionally eats lunch there. His newest book is "Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times."

Rob Neyer is the Commissioner of the West Coast League, the premier collegiate summer baseball league west of the Mississippi River. He's written or co-written seven books about baseball, and his latest "Power Ball: Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game," won the Casey Award as the best baseball book published in 2018. He lives in Oregon with his wife and daughter.

And the following are my notes from the panel discussion:

Ken Bensinger. Many books have been written about soccer and corruption. He wanted to do it from a different direction. FIFA bullies countries. FIFA will say that they will kick countries out of the World Cup. There needs to be oversight over FIFA. Media companies need to be looked at. Their money causes corruption.

Mark Leibovich. Football and politics both have redeeming qualities. Politics impacts peoples lives. In the NFL, you can’t hide from poor performance. He likes and dislikes people in both realms. Politics are for keeps. The NFL commissioner needs to be fired. There should be term limits for football owners. They have outsized influence.

Rob Neyer. Why write a book about a random baseball game: about a team that would eventually win the World Series versus a team that was out of the playoffs? His editor wanted him to pick a game that already happened: Oakland A’s versus Houston Astros.

Baseball should work towards a game that was played in the 70s and 80s. The game now is all about home runs and strike outs. In the 70s and 80s, you had players doing different things. Stealing bases, for example. Baseball fans spend too much time rooting for billionaires and millionaires. We need to worry about how minor leaguers live.

Measure EE: Los Angeles Voters Defeat Parcel Tax for LAUSD

Measure EE was parcel tax proposal that would have raised about $500 million per year for LAUSD. Per the Daily News:

Under Measure EE, commercial property owners would have paid the bulk of the estimated $500 million per year in tax revenue, with an average cost to homeowners of $100 to $450 per year. The measure was written to sunset in 12 years.

The measure was voted down on June 4th: 54.3% no, 45.7% yes. It needed a two-thirds majority vote to pass so it went down in flames.

Interestingly, LAUDS is forecasting that they will have a $576.6 million deficit for the 2019-2020 Fiscal Year. So basically, the $500 million per tax would keep things flat.

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Where Do We Go From Here? Contextualizing This American Moment

I went to the LA Times Festival of Books (April 13-14). I'm posting my notes on the various panel discussions I attended.

The eighth panel discussion I attended was "Where Do We Go From Here? Contextualizing This American Moment."

Here is an edited panelist biography via the LA Times website.

Nicolas Berggruen is Founder and Chairman of the Berggruen Institute. He is coauthor of "Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century: A Middle Way between West and East" and is copublisher of The WorldPost. He is also Chairman of Berggruen Holdings.

Nathan Gardels is Cofounder of the Berggruen Institute and Editor-in-Chief of The WorldPost, a partnership with the Washington Post. He is the coauthor of Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century: A Middle Way between East and West, a Financial Times best book of 2012.

Professor Jennifer Rothman is nationally recognized for her scholarship in the intellectual property field, and has become the leading expert on the right of publicity. She researches and writes primarily in the areas of intellectual property and constitutional law. Her book on the subject, "The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World" was released last year by the Harvard University Press.

Named one of the world's ten most influential intellectuals by MIT, Douglas Rushkoff is an award-winning author, broadcaster, and documentarian who studies human autonomy in the digital age. Drawn from the popular "Team Human" podcast, Rushkoff's latest book of the same name is an extension of the ideas he discusses on the pod.

LIbya: Haftar Over-Stretched?

Brief info on Libya before going into my blog:

The UN backed government in Tripoli is called the Government of National Account (GNA).

There is a rival government in Benghazi called the Libyan National Army (LNA). Khalifa Haftar is the leader of that government and is currently attempting to gain control of Tripoli.

Okay . . . is Haftar getting over-stretched?

Via Aljazeera we learn that Haftar isn't really making any ground in his two-month assault on Tripoli. The current situation:

Eastern Libyan forces launched air strikes for a second night on a military base housed within Tripoli's airport as fighting for the capital continues . . . The LNA, supported by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, accuses Turkey of backing the government in Tripoli and its forces.

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Aren’t We American? Race, Class, Immigration, and Citizenship

I went to the LA Times Festival of Books (April 13-14). I'm posting my notes on the various panel discussions I attended.

The seventh panel discussion I attended was "Aren’t We American? Race, Class, Immigration, and Citizenship."

Here is an edited panelist biography via the LA Times website.

An ordained Buddhist priest in the Soto Zen tradition, Duncan Ryuken Williams has spent years piecing together the story of the Japanese American community during World War II. He has published five other books, including The Other Side of Zen.

Sam Erman is an Assistant Professor of Law at the USC Gould School of Law. He came to USC from the Smithsonian Institution, where he was a postdoctoral fellow in Latino studies. Erman's primary areas of research include the history of Puerto Rico and its relations with the United States.

Juan De Lara is an Assistant Professor in American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. His newest book, "Inland Shift: Race, Space, and Capital in Inland Southern California" was published last year.

Elda María Román is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Southern California. She is the author of "Race and Upward Mobility" and has published articles on Latinx and African American cultural production.

Shale Oil: Constraints, Cash Flow and Breakevens

OilPrice had a number of articles up on shale, as always. I found a few to be of interest. This article focuses on some of the constraints that shale has:

Also, more water and more sand and longer laterals all have their limits. 

In 2018, the industry spent $70 billion on drilling 9,975 wells, according to Hughes, with $54 billion going specifically to oil. “Of the $54 billion spent on tight oil plays in 2018, 70% served to offset field declines and 30% to increase production,” Hughes wrote. 

Better technology and an intensification of drilling techniques have arrested decline, and even led to a renewed increase in production. But ultimate recovery won’t be any higher; drilling techniques merely allow “the play to be drained with fewer wells,” Hughes said.

What is interesting here is that better technology doesn't mean that shale producers are able to get more oil out of the ground. It just means they're able to recover it quicker. Also, as a capital expense number, it costs around $7 million for a well to be drilled.