In the comments thread of the OTB post linked above, in addition to some very sound remarks by a regular commenter here, there was a comment on Donald Trump that astonished me in its vehemence. Rather than recap the comment I will merely ask the question: is Trump a traitor? Is there actual evidence of it?

My take on some of Mr. Trump’s comments, things called by some “cozying up to dictators”, was that he think you catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar. Maybe I’m being overly generous.

I don’t hate Trump. I just don’t think he should be president. I don’t think he should ever have been president. The reasons are simple. First, I do not think he is a good or decent person. Second, I don’t think he has the temperament, skills, or ability to make good on his promises.

This post by James Joyner at Outside the Beltway is largely a round-up of articles sounding a similar theme: Ukraine is losing in its war with Russia. He observes:

On the one hand, depending on unlimited and indefinite external support for one’s war effort is a pretty good indication that you’re destined to fail. On the other, most of the countries that have pledged such support are pretty wealthy and have a strong interest in seeing Russia weakened, if not defeated—to say nothing of the moral and humanitarian interests at stake.

I was wrong in predicting back in 2022 that Putin would not invade Ukraine. I misjudged the intensity of his views if not his motives. However, since the beginning I have questioned the achievability of Ukrainian victory, defined as a return to the pre-2014 borders, NATO membership, and the attendant security guarantees against Russia. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to imagine that happening. It’s a matter of understanding Russian objectives and arithmetic.

The pieces to which James links are either 1) facesaving measures or 2) beating up on the United States or 3) beating up on the Republicans or some combination of all of the above.

Let’s approach this more positively. What would it take to achieve victory for Ukraine? I support aid for Ukraine because our aid keeps the Ukrainian government afloat and prevents outright Russian victory on terms decreasingly favorable to Ukraine (or us for that matter). That’s why I always accompany my support on an insistence on oversight which we have never really provided. What good to support the Ukrainian government if the money goes to line the pockets of some corrupt official?

I don’t believe we are capable of producing munitions at the pace at which Ukraine requires them, by the time we could build up our capacity the war will be long over, there just aren’t enough Ukrainians, and the risks of direct confrontation between NATO countries and Russia are just too great.

In a piece at Foreign Affairs Stephen Kotkin hypothesizes about five possible futures for Russia. They are:

• France. A bloody revolution followed by a more liberal democratic Russia
• Retrenchment
• Vassal of China
• North Korea. Non-functional dependency on China
• Chaos

I would dismiss the first. It’s not going to happen. Mr. Kotkin never actually defines what he means by “retrenchment”. Russia won’t be a vassal of China or a long-term dependency of it.

Of the five I think the most likely are retrenchment or chaos. My definition of “retrenchment” would be continuing on much as it has although possibly less assertive. Chaos is the way Russia was before Ivan Grozniy.

What Mr. Kotkin either misses or dismisses is that there’s little that Russia is doing now that hasn’t been the case for 200 years or more. Somewhat Europeanize, not a liberal democracy, lots of corruption, authoritarian leadership, a somewhat paranoid foreign policy, the Orthodox church, etc.

While Mr. Kotkin correctly observes that Putin is not Stalin he misses the degree to which Putin is just a Russian politician. He’s telling the people what they want to hear.

We should all hope that Russia doesn’t follow the French model—Mr. Kotkin seems to forget that between the revolution and the emergence of a liberal democratic France there was Napoleon.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Eliot Kaufman argues the case that Israel must strike back against Iran:

Israel is being told again to let the problem fester and accept a tit-for-tat equation, but on worse terms than ever. “It’s only 100 ballistic missiles” is only the latest gruel to swallow, while Mr. Khamenei releases ravings, such as on April 10, about Israeli normalization with Muslim states: “The Zionists suck the blood of a country for their own benefit when they gain a foothold.” The world brushes off the antisemitism. The media doesn’t even report his statements.

Mr. Biden asks Israel to put its faith in deterrence while its enemies become stronger and Israel is the one deterred. When the president threatens that Israel will be isolated, on its own if it defends itself properly, he is asking it to stick to the strategy that left it fatally exposed on Oct. 7 and that it swore off the same day.

I have no idea what the Israelis are thinking at this point. I suspect that failing to strike back at Iran will make matters extremely difficult for Mr. Netanyahu politically while Israel striking back at Iran will make things politically even more difficult for President Biden.

My own view is that while there were several ways to avoid tying the president’s political future to Israel, we have done none of them. Imagining an Israel that does not exist, a Gaza that does not exist, a Palestine that does not exist, and political leadership in Israel and Palestine that do not exist is not conducive to good policy.

I’m going to violate my own conventional practice and quote in full an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Suzy Welch, the widow of former GE CEO Jack Welch, and a management prof:

To everyone who sent me the article reporting General Electric’s sale of Crotonville, the longtime learning center that was the pride and joy of my late husband, Jack Welch, I’d like to thank you for the ugly cry. It is indeed the end of an era: one when companies and employees were on the same team.

That’s done and over, isn’t it? Today, companies and employees are each in a boxer’s crouch, glaring across the ring.

I wonder sometimes what Jack would make of my M.B.A. students—not to mention Generation Z in general—who view every employer with a gimlet eye. They aren’t only thinking, “How are you going to help my career?” or “How much will you value my ideas?”

They’re thinking, “How fast are you going to chew me up and spit me out? Because that’s how it works now.”

In too many cases, they aren’t wrong. No one works at one company for very long anymore; that’s a given. We all know the reasons: changes in tech, economic shifts, demographic trends, the zero-sum zeitgeist. A friend, a Sloan graduate, just hit nine years with one company, a big e-commerce platform. She told me she’s considered a lifer and something of a freak of nature.

Crotonville was a shrine to such “freaks,” people who so bought into the company’s values that they considered it an honor to be invited to an off-site program where they got to talk about those ideas even more than they did at work.

Crotonville was based on the notion that you could love your company. And your company could love you. I remember those days with bittersweet nostalgia myself, but this seems like a laughable notion in 2024, doesn’t it?

Early last semester, I invited Emily Field to present to my class at New York University on managerial skills. She’s a McKinsey partner and a co-author of “Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work.”

During the Q&A, a student asked about motivation. After Ms. Field’s reply, which I agreed with, I added, “Look, what Emily is saying is that managing people is hard, because to do it right you have to authentically care about them. On some level, management is an act of love.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Ms. Field said. We both looked up to see 60 mortified faces. Hands shot up.

“You need to keep boundaries at work.”

“You can’t trust your boss.”

“Companies don’t love you, they use you.”

For a few minutes, Emily and I were like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. We stood our ground, but I left class shaken. For the rest of the semester I continued to make my case—that companies and their people are one and the same. Or they should be. Work is better that way—more productive, interesting, effective, enjoyable. Jeepers, it’s more fun.

Yes, fun at work. Imagine that.

Gen Z can’t, it seems. Work is what you do when you can’t be doing what you want.

Handshake, a job site solely for college students and recent grads, recently conducted a survey of 2,500 undergraduates. When asked for their definition of career success, 78% of Gen Zers named sustaining a work-life balance as their top choice. Dead last was “advancing to a senior role,” at 40%.

This trend has reverberations through corporate America. At Brunswick, where I’m a senior adviser, we’re used to clients presenting all sorts of strategic problems. Lately, “employee engagement” has topped the list again and again. Here’s another data point: In 2023 a Gallup poll found that Americans are unhappier at work than they’ve been in years.

Crotonville wasn’t built for times like these. That would have made Jack sad.

I thought you might find it interesting. Did Crotonville close because it was no longer useful, because it was too expensive, or GE’s management no longer saw the use of it?

My wife managed to capture a picture of Jack in motion and I thought I would share it.

The editors of the Washington Post are alarmed about the return of measles to the United States:

This year is not yet one-third over, yet measles cases in the United States are on track to be the worst since a massive outbreak in 2019. At the same time, anti-vaccine activists are recklessly sowing doubts and encouraging vaccine hesitancy. Parents who leave their children unvaccinated are risking not only their health but also the well-being of those around them.

[…]

According to the World Health Organization, in 2022, 37 countries experienced large or disruptive measles outbreaks compared with 22 countries in 2021. In the United States, there have been seven outbreaks so far this year, with 121 cases in 18 jurisdictions. Most are children. Many of the outbreaks in the United States appear to have been triggered by international travel or contact with a traveler. Disturbingly, 82 percent of those infected were unvaccinated or their status unknown.

As the passage quoted above makes clear they lay the blame for the outbreaks solidly on those avoiding vaccinating their kids and the “anti-vaccine activists” sowing doubts.

While I don’t disagree with that I suspect there are other factors as well. Among those are the degree to which the public health bureaucracy has undermined itself. It only takes one lie to undermine confidence and during COVID the public health bureaucracy lied to us at least once. Furthermore they oversold the effectiveness of vaccinations, partly out of ignorance, partly out of good intentions.

Additionally, I don’t believe that most Americans understand that measles hasn’t been wiped out (like smallpox) but that materially universal vaccination against it prevents it from spreading. Measles can’t be wiped out until it’s wiped out everywhere and that appears very unlikely at present.

Finally, the strategy for dealing with anti-vaccine activists’ “sowing doubts” is through reasoned discourse and evidence rather than censorship. Censorship can come right back at you.

After reflecting on Iran’s attack on Israel over the weekend, I arrived at some possible conclusions.

The first, widely lauded in the West, is that Iran’s missiles and drones aren’t as good as Israel’s anti-missile defenses.

It is being reported that U. S., British, Jordanian, and French aircraft took part in the defense against the Iranian attack. If true, it suggests one of two things, either a) those countries have been defending Israeli airspace for some time or, more likely, we had good intelligence about the actual timing of the Iranian attack.

We have also learned that Iran can attack Israel pretty much any time it cares to. We have suspected that for some time but this attack confirms it.

There are some other things we haven’t learned. We haven’t learned, for example, that Iran has “shot its wad”, as an old Navy friend of mine used to say. Maybe it has maybe it hasn’t.

Iran’s reported foreign reserves of $75 billion could pay for a lot of missiles and drones. Therefore we haven’t learned that Iran will not engage in attritional attacks against Israel.

We haven’t learned whether Israel required U. S., British, Jordanian, and French support to repel the attack.

We haven’t learned whether Israel would be as successful in defending against simultaneous missile and drone attacks from Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and maybe even Iraq.

I am hearing some assertions that this attack demonstrates that we need to “isolate Iran”. I have few ideas on how that might be accomplished. It is my understanding that 90% or more of Iran’s oil exports go to China and I am confident that China and North Korea will continue to be delighted to sell missiles and drones to Iran. Not to mention those they produce domestically.

We haven’t learned (yet) whether Israel will respond to the attack. I suspect it will.

What else have we learned or not learned from Iran’s attack on Israel?

I found Joachim Klement’s analysis of the pragmatic effects of the Trump era Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 on business tax rates distressing, to say the least. The short version is that the effects were to increase taxes on many more companies, mostly small companies, than it decreased them for:

In the end, companies that are barely profitable and often have years when they make a loss were the big losers of the tax reform. Large corporations did just fine while small business owners got to pick up the bill.

I have made no secret of my opinion of corporate income taxes: I think they should be abolished. Increase the personal income tax to make up the difference in revenue if you will. Better yet abolish the income tax entirely in favor of a prebated value-added tax, prebated at different rates based on income to assure progressivity. Corporate income taxes are too inefficient and, as Mr. Klement’s analysis supports, can be used as a weapon by big companies against their smaller competitors.