At The Hill Myra Adams lists eleven major risks in 2024. I’ll repeat the risk she lists. For her analysis, read her post.

1. What if a barrage of AI-generated content and social media from domestic and foreign players blur presidential campaign messaging, so that voters don’t know what is real or fake?
2. What if House Republicans vote to impeach President Biden?
3. What if Biden drops out?
4. What if the Supreme Court rules that Trump has presidential immunity and can not stand trial on Jan. 6-related charges?
5. What if Trump is convicted of a felony before November’s election, and polls show he still defeats Biden?
6. What if the economy keeps improving and growing with a strong stock market while inflation, interest rates and unemployment all trend lower?
7. What if Trump’s campaign rhetoric continues to sound authoritarian as he leads Biden in the polls?
8. What if the U.S. is drawn into a Middle East war against Iran-backed groups that continue to provoke U.S. naval ships and disrupt international commercial shipping?
9. What if, without U.S. aid, Ukraine falls to Russia?
10. What if war explodes on three fronts?
11. What if there is a terrorist attack in the U.S., and the perpetrators(s) enter over the southern border?

It’s too late to do anything about #1. The best solution would be an aware, educated, rational electorate. #6 is a positive risk; I hope all of those things happen. #10 and #11 concern me most.

Speaking of corruption, I want to cite just one passage from Jonathan Turley’s post at The Hill, “The grifter defense”:

The question is whether Joe Biden knew about the influence peddling of his brothers and his son. If so, he actively assisted his family in acquiring millions to influence him on public policy or legislation. His family was effectively marketing time shares in a senator, a vice president and now a president.

Whether or not Biden delivered, the family business corrupted the functions of government by converting offices into types of commodities. That is the case regardless of whether or not they delivered. It is akin to an extortionist taking money without any intent to follow through on threats of disclosure or use of damaging material. Even in today’s willfully blind politics, every voter should be able to agree on two simple facts.

First, influence peddling is corruption long opposed by the government and denounced by both parties.

Second, if the president knew that his son and uncles were using him for influence peddling, Joe Biden is also corrupt.

That is why it comes down to knowledge. Under federal case law, money and gifts going to one’s family is often treated as a benefit for the purposes of corruption or bribery. Indeed, many of the current Democratic members previously voted that money going to family members of a judge was impeachable. I represented that judge in the last judicial impeachment tried on the Senate floor.

It is highly implausible that the president did not know about the influence peddling. There were news articles on the allegations, and the Biden family has been accused of influence peddling for decades. It is a virtual family business.

It is just barely arguable that the danger posed by a second Trump term warranted voting for someone as manifestly corrupt as Joe Biden. It is a lot less arguable when Biden is trailing Trump in the polls as badly as he is at present.

Long-time Chicago Alderman Ed Burke and Charles Cui were found guilty on all counts (except for conspiracy) in his federal trial. At ABC 7 Chicago Sarah Schulte, Craig Wall, and Chuck Goudie report:

CHICAGO (WLS) — Former Chicago Alderman Ed Burke was found guilty of all counts except for one in his federal corruption case Thursday.

The former Chicago alderman faced 14 counts, including racketeering, bribery and attempted extortion.

The case against the once-most powerful member of the Chicago City Council centered around him using his public position for private gain.

“Burke has his hand out for money. He tied the giving of official action by him to the giving of money in 3 different corrupt episodes,” said US Attorney Morris Pasqual.

Burke was chairman of the powerful Finance Committee. The context of this case is that he was fingered by an FBI informant. The Speaker of the Illinois House and chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party, Mike Madigan, is also facing trial on charges of corruption. The “Chicago 4”, those accused of bribing Mr. Madigan, have already been convicted.

I have several points to make. First, it is impossibly naive to believe that the charges on which Mssrs. Burke and Madigan were arrested are their only corrupt acts. Second, it is simply not credible that such corruption could have persisted without the knowledge not just of their colleagues but of a compliant media. You will not hear it from the Chicago media but they knew. They had to know.

In Mr. Madigan’s instance it strains credulity to believe that he might have been chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party for 40 years without high-ranking national Democrats and the media being aware of the corruption and looking the other way as long as he delivered.

So, what’s next? I expect a number of appeals in the case to the 7th Circuit. I don’t expect them to succeed. Then it will begin to get interesting. How long will Mr. Burke, knowing what he knows, survive in federal jail? That gives him two unpalatable alternatives: the prospect of meeting with an unfortunate accident in jail or rolling on, essentially, the entire Democratic Party apparatus. Burke is 79. Any sentence is likely to be a life sentence. Maybe he’ll die before he goes to prison.

It has been observed in comments here that violent crime is trending down. I think the title of this article published by the Council on Criminal Justice pretty much says it all: “Homicide, Other Violent Crimes Decline in U.S. Cities but Remain Above Pre-Pandemic Levels”.

Also, as I’ve pointed out in the past, I’m wary of crime statistics these days. Are the statistics based on the number of crimes, the number of crimes reported, or the number of police responses to reports? It may well make a difference.

Here’s an interesting factoid. Chicago’s homicide rate per 100,000 population has increased, sometimes sharply, in every presidential election year since 2004. 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. Prior to 2008 there was no such pattern.

I don’t have an explanation for that.

2024 will make an interesting test case. Will homicides in Chicago increase, decrease, or remain the same in 2024?

In the Wall Street Journal Jerry Hendrix warns:

Recently the news broke that the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Carney had fended off several missile and drone attacks in the Red Sea. While Biden administration officials tried to frame the battle, for a battle it surely was, as the Carney’s defending nearby merchant ships, it seems clear that Iranian-supplied Houthis were targeting the Carney directly as well as the commercial ships it was accompanying.

This was only one of several recent assaults on American naval assets in the region. They have happened despite the presence of the Ford carrier strike group in the eastern Mediterranean and the Eisenhower strike group in the Gulf of Aden—a conventional level of naval deterrence that should have reduced aggressive activities by U.S. enemies. Instead, Iran attacked American ships and allies.

These events show that American naval deterrence is failing, and a recent report from the Sagamore Institute concludes that it could soon evaporate.

concluding:

America’s failure to expand and maintain its fleet, or stand by its word, may have already entirely eroded U.S. naval deterrence. The Navy’s budget, size and force architecture all need urgent attention from Congress if the U.S. is to preserve its ability to deter its enemies. Failure to do so imperils global trade as well as America’s place in the world and the safety of its people.

I don’t know how Capt. Hendrix knows that the Carney was attacked. We say the ship wasn’t attacked; the Houthis say that they didn’t attack it. Perhaps he has insider information?

IMO if we had deliberately set out to weaken our military deterrent we would have done much what we have over the last 30 years. In terms of the Navy here was our force strength in 1992:

At present we have 291 active battle force level ships.

As I see it military deterrence has much in common with criminal deterrence. For deterrence to be effective enforcement must be swift and sure. Over the last 30 years we have overutilized our armed forces (Somalia, Yugoslavia, Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan). Rarely have we achieved our objectives. The advantage we have is a seasoned military. Over-seasoned, some would say. Now we’ve given away our inventories of munitions to Ukraine. We’re producing more at a rate below the rate at which Ukraine is using them.

I believe we should use our military much more sparingly than we have but when we use it our military should achieve our objectives decisively. That also means that the objectives must be ones that can be achieved with military force. So, for example, we were never going to turn Iraq or Afghanistan into liberal democracies allied with the United States. That was beyond our military’s capabilities.

I’m not certain what objectives Capt. Hendrix wants to accomplish or what sort of navy would be required to accomplish them. Maintaining freedom of navigation for merchant vessels has historically been seen as a vital U. S. interest. Unfortunately, ours is not the only navy whose battle forces have declined over the last 30 years. Both France’s and Britain’s have declined precipitously while China’s navy increased enormously. I don’t think that our navy should be the world’s only force maintaining freedom of navigation for merchant vessels but we may have no alternative.

Here’s what the Food and Drug Administration says about drug shortages:

Drug Shortages can occur for many reasons, including manufacturing and quality problems, delays, and discontinuations. Manufacturers provide FDA most drug shortage information, and the agency works closely with them to prevent or reduce the impact of shortages.

which is not particularly illuminating. I think a big part of the answer is supply chain problems. Relatively few pharmaceuticals are made in the United States from components made entirely in the United States. That is particularly true of generics. Most generics are manufactured either in China or India from components at least some of which are manufactured in China. That introduces many problems including that China has been subsidizing its pharmaceutical sector for the last 40 years which places China at a competitive advantage and Chinese pharmaceutical companies have been known to manipulate supply and prices to preserve market share. I suspect that Indian and American pharmaceutical companies are not above such shenanigans.

The United States both subsidizes and penalizes its pharmaceutical sector. Our very expansive patent system, for example, is a subsidy while our approval and health, safety, and environmental regulations are penalties.

The White House’s strategy for dealing with pharmaceutical shortages is described here. I doubt that the headline measures (creation of a Council on Supply Chain Resilience and using the Defense Production Act to make more pharmaceuticals in the U. S.) will have much short term effect.

BTW this article from the NIH is interesting.

When I was a kid our eye doctor(s) were Dr. Alvis and Dr. Alvis, father and son. “Young” Dr. Alvis was in his mid-60s which gives you some idea of how old “old” Dr. Alvis was. Old Dr. Alvis performed glaucoma tests completely by hand with a hand as steady as a rock. When you consider that all of this was 70 or more years ago, old Dr. Alvis must have been born right about the time of the American Civil War. He continued to practice into his 90s.

I hope there are still Dr. Alvises around.

The brouhaha of the day is the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to bar Donald Trump from the Republican Party ballot on 14th Amendment grounds. I will leave the legal discussion to others and delegate my reaction on the politics of it to Eric Boehm at Reason.com:

What’s the endgame here? President Joe Biden (or whomever the Democratic nominee turns out to be) is likely to carry Colorado whether Trump is on the ballot or not. Let’s suppose courts in other blue states follow Colorado’s example. Now he’s missing from a bunch of states’ ballots, but not ones that are likely to affect the election’s outcome. What happens then?

In one scenario, Trump loses but his supporters are able to nurse a permanent grievance that the system wouldn’t even let their guy compete. Not for the abstruse reasons that Trump’s team tried to conjure up after the 2000 results came in, but because of something that’s easy to understand and easy to see as a legitimate grievance.

In another scenario, Trump wins the Electoral College—remember, these states weren’t likely to vote for him anyway—but with a far lower percentage of the popular vote. Indeed, the popular and electoral votes would be even more mismatched than in 2016 or 2000. In terms of democratic legitimacy, that outcome might be even worse for the future of the country.

But those are the two new possibilities that the Colorado’s Supreme Court has opened with its ruling on Tuesday. All in all, that seems like a decision that will make things worse, not better.

I continue to wonder what the operative definition of “democracy” is. Apparently, it’s not allowing candidates onto ballots now. That smacks of “burning the village in order to save it” but it’s the consequence of the slippery slope of using lawfare to manage elections.