Yesterday I mentioned that the saga of corruption revealed in the trial and conviction of the “ComEd Four” was far from over. At Crain’s Chicago Business Steve Daniels explores just how far it may extend:

Madigan’s successor as House speaker, Chris Welch, D-Hillside, said: “At every step, I have emphasized the need for due process and that the federal courtroom was the appropriate venue for questions of guilt or innocence. After reviewing the entirety of the evidence, this jury has sent a clear message that the behavior of the defendants was criminal. Since my election as speaker, I’ve been clear that restoring trust in government was paramount. I’m proud to stand with a new generation of leadership in Illinois who share these values.”

Left unsaid was that Welch was Madigan’s favorite to succeed him in 2021 after it became clear that he didn’t have the votes to carry on as speaker.

Also left unsaid was an embarrassing nugget involving Welch from the trial. In one of the wiretaps, Fidel Marquez, the ComEd executive turned government informant, expressed anger along with Hooker that Welch wouldn’t get to be the lead sponsor of ComEd’s bill to extend the highly lucrative formula rate system, which they said Welch dearly desired. That rate-setting process first was enacted in 2011 — at the beginning of the scheme prosecutors convinced the jury the four had carried out.

I don’t see how you can convict the “ComEd Four” and put Mike Madigan on trial without putting Springfield in the dock as well.

In a highly agonistic column at Financial Times Rana Faroohar concludes:

The global trade system as it stands isn’t working well. In his speech, Sullivan talked about the US maintaining its commitment to the WTO, while also recognising the key question of today: “How does trade fit into our international economic policy, and what problems is it seeking to solve?” As I’ll argue further in future, it should start by seeking to solve the problem of concentration and competition.

Her complaints about the “global trade system” appear to be that

• Suppliers to Western companies in non-Western countries care little about the safety or well-being of their workers
• Income inequality in non-Western countries that do business with Western companies increases
• Suppliers to Western companies in non-Western countries care little about environmental degradation or global climate change
• The global supply chains are too fragile and subject to disruption

I would say that the system of global trade has worked very well, indeed, over the last 30 years, lifting more than a billion people out of extreme poverty, but that the global security system and political systems in many countries, possibly including our own, are failing. Complaining that the global trade system is “not working” because buildings in Bangladesh fall down sounds to me like blaming your smartphone because it doesn’t launder your clothes. You evaluate the performance of your smartphone based on how well it accomplishes the things it was designed to do not whether it does things it was never intended to do.

I would further assert that her complaints are part and parcel of the victimization narrative so common in developing countries. While I agree that the colonizers were cruel and self-serving, she might reflect on the possibility that political, social, and economic dysfunction is what allowed countries to be colonized in the first place.

As evidence that the global security system is failing I would submit the following examples:

• The U. S. invasion of Iraq
• Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen
• The Russian invasion of Ukraine
• The ongoing low intensity war between China and India in the Himalayas

and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I also think that to fix the global security system the United States needs to

• Stop invading other countries or aiding aggressors
• Restore our productive capacity beginning with reducing our dependency on other countries for strategic goods.
• Restore a political and social consensus domestically.

Like it or not the global security system is dependent on U. S. might and U. S. military might is downstream from U. S. economic power and political stability.

After five days of deliberation the jury has found all four “ComEd Four” defendants guilty on all charges. Michelle Gallardo reports at ABC 7 Chicago:

CHICAGO (WLS) — A jury found all defendants in the “ComEd Four” trial guilty on all counts on Tuesday afternoon.

Tuesday marked day five of deliberations in the trial. Jurors found Mike McClain, Anne Pramaggiore, John Hooker and Jay Doherty guilty on nine different counts of conspiracy, bribery and falsification of records.

About two hours prior to the verdict’s announcement, jurors came to the judge with a question. At the time, their question indicated that there was some uncertainty about whether prosecutors had proved their case, at least regarding the falsification of records counts, beyond a reasonable doubt.

This is not the end. It’s the beginning of what will be a years-long process. Former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan has been charged with racketeering conspiracy and individual counts of using interstate facilities in aid of bribery, wire fraud, and attempted extortion. He’s 81 at this point. He may run out the clock. But even that won’t be the end.

If plaintiff’s attorneys can connect the dots between bribes and the electricity rates that Chicagoans are paying I expect an enormous class action suit for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Have I mentioned that Speaker Madigan was a long-time chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party?

There’s been quite a brouhaha here about the, shall we say, conversation going on between our outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Texas continues to send busloads of illegal immigrants asylum seekers to Chicago. The editors of the Wall Street Journal react:

Posturing as a “sanctuary city” used to be fun when it meant resisting Donald Trump, but now the migrant crisis is everywhere. “We simply have no more shelters, spaces, or resources,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot says in a letter Sunday to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. “Though I am sympathetic to the significant challenges that border cities face, this situation is completely untenable.”

And the scales fall. Since last summer, when Mr. Abbott began sending busloads of migrants Chicago way, “we have shouldered the responsibility of caring for more than 8,000 men, women, and children with no resources of their own,” Ms. Lightfoot says. That’s nothing next to El Paso, which this week declared a state of emergency, as it braces for the end of Title 42 pandemic expulsions. The El Paso Times cites estimates of about “10,000 to 12,000 migrants in Juárez,” waiting to cross into the U.S.

Chicago has heard that Texas will resume migrant busing on May 1. “The national immigration problem,” Ms. Lightfoot says, “will not be solved by passing on the responsibility to other cities.” But the burden of this humanitarian crisis shouldn’t fall only on border states, and the virtue of Mr. Abbott’s approach is in making progressives confront it.

The website for Ms. Lightfoot’s (failed) re-election campaign brags that she ended “police collaboration” with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “terminated ICE access to citywide databases,” and signed an executive order so city benefits don’t depend on citizenship. America’s immigration problems won’t be fixed until Ms. Lightfoot’s Democratic Party awakens from this progressive daydream.

I think there are a lot of wrongs going on here. It’s wrong for Mexico to use the U. S. as a safety valve; it’s wrong for Mexican and Central American nationals to pretend to be asylum seekers in the hopes of being admitted to work at menial jobs that pay a lot more here than in their home countries; it’s wrong for President Biden to allow our southern border to lapse into its present disarray; it’s wrong for Gov. Abbott to send busloads of new arrivals to Chicago; it’s wrong for Mayor Lightfoot to complain about it while urging it on.

I think the United States should have a controlled migration system rather than our present uncontrolled one. I also think that an unending supply of non-English speakers who can only take low wage jobs distorts the U. S. economy in ways that are not healthy. Mayor Lightfoot is only just now realizing that we can’t afford it. We haven’t been able to afford it for a long while.

The editors of Financial Times warn of an “urban doom loop” for Aemrica’s “old line” major cities:

Anyone who has strolled through the business districts of San Francisco, Chicago, New York or any number of other large, old-line US cities can sense the lingering effects of the pandemic. Commercial office space available for lease is at record highs in the US, as cities — particularly large ones in the north — have struggled to bring workers back to the office full time. The trend, which may well get worse before it gets better, threatens to create an urban doom loop that puts the future of some large cities themselves into question.

Mobile phone data collected from city centres tells a dismal story. According to the private equity firm Apollo, phone activity in San Francisco is at 31 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, New York is at 74 per cent and Chicago at 50 per cent of 2019 levels. Boston is at 54 per cent of pre-pandemic levels. This has implications not only for office vacancy rates, but for the shops, restaurants and services around big commercial centres. Once bustling areas, such as San Francisco’s Union Square, now seem down at heel. Petty crime is rising, as are homelessness and open drug use.

All of this further discourages efforts to get workers back to city centres. Given that commercial tenants are typically the largest taxpayers in urban areas, public budgets are suffering too.

In Chicago the situation is even more complicated than that. Downtown property taxes are actually discounted already. If downtown office buildings were taxed in a way strictly analogous to residential properties, they would be paying much higher taxes than at present. That’s a strategy which has actually been pretty successful to date in keeping the downtown area from becoming a ghost town.

That’s just one of the “doom loops” we’re facing. There are others.

One of them is that city administrative structures do not respond in an agile manner to a declining population. Chicago’s population peaked in 1950 and it now has almost a million fewer residents than then—a 30% decline. That doesn’t mean that the number of city employees has declined.
We have about the same number of firefighters as we did in 1980. The same is true of Chicago public school teachers and most other groups of Chicago public employees.

It’s also true of facilities like firehouses, schools, streets, and sewers.

We’re also paying for retired city employees. About 20% of Chicago’s budget goes to pensions. Almost no one other than public employees has a guaranteed benefit pension plan.

We can’t tax our way out of these “doom loops”. As taxes rise those who are most portable, generally those with the highest incomes, leave the city and the city becomes poorer.

What I have been seeing lately are story after story reported substantially differently in different news outlets depending on the outlet’s ideology. I’ll give a couple of examples.

One took place in Texas. A guy was shooting at targets in his backyard, neighbors complained, guy went over to the neighbor’s house and shot five of the neighbors dead. I’ve seen this story told at least five different ways, depending:

• Private ownership of assault weapons should be illegal.
• Isn’t Texas horrible?
• We have too many immigrants.
• Illegal ownership of guns results in a lot of violent crime.
• People are too afraid.

I think there’s a kernel of truth in each of those renditions except the last. In this particular instance it seems to me the opposite was the case—I see no signs of fear on the part of any of the parties. I would add one account I haven’t heard but would suggest is more relevant to this and other tragedies than fear: sense of entitlement. “The mofo dissed me and I offed him.”

A key problem is that facts in the story were reported selectively depending on ideology. If you only accept reports from your own favored sources as evidence, in all likelihood you’ll only get part of the story.

Here’s another one. The use of facemasks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The versions are:

• Masks are useless.
• Masks should be mandatory.
• Masks are helpful in reducing the risk of spreading COVID-19 but the marginal benefit is low.
• Masks are helpful in reducing the risk of spreading COVID-19 and the marginal benefit is high.

There are probably some more versions and we’ll probably be hearing this debate for the next 20 years. I’ve read studies reporting from 10% effectiveness in reduction to 40%. I don’t believe I’ve read any studies which found a total end to spread due to wearing facemasks, at least not ordinary masks, N95s, or KN95s.

David Greising of the Better Government Association takes note of the lessons which Chicago Mayor-Elect Brandon Johnson has yet to learn in an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune:

The truth is hard to discern in the rhetorical arm wrestle between a progressive-minded prosecutor like Foxx, the pragmatists like Lightfoot and the law-and-order absolutists like many of Chicago’s cops on the beat.

That struggle between the ideals of the progressive agenda and the complexities of actual governing are worth keeping in mind as Johnson prepares to take office on May 15. The platitudes about Chicago’s role as an economic engine for Illinois and progressivism as a panacea for the state quickly will run into the real-world struggle to get legislation passed in Springfield.

If Johnson expects to implement his real estate transfer tax for homes worth $1 million or more, he’ll need Springfield’s help. If he hopes to begin taxing securities trading, he’ll need to outmaneuver Chicago exchanges that previously have beat back such measures — and persuade Gov. J.B. Pritzker to reverse a publicly stated aversion to the idea.

Perhaps Johnson is right that, with his election, Illinois has established itself in the vanguard of progressive politics. He need look no further than the experiences of Lightfoot and Foxx to see what that means in practice. Lightfoot compromised abundantly, lost her progressive support and lost her job. Foxx’s steadfast refusal to compromise brought on pressures and criticism that may have contributed to her surprise decision to exit office.

Progressive principles will take Johnson only so far. Decisions he makes and actions he takes when his progressive ideals crash into the reality of governing will determine his legacy in office too.

If experience is any gauge, he will take those lessons to heart no more than did Lori Lightfoot, the mayor whom he succeeds, and Kim Foxx, the Cook County States Attorney, who presided over a substantial increase in violent crime in Chicago. If Mr. Johnson is lucky, the crime will subside on its own but luck is a risky basis for an incoming administration.

Quite a few people are chiming in against the debt ceiling. Most of them are supporters of President Biden but there’s something they seem to have forgotten: President Biden opposes eliminating the debt ceiling, characterizing that as “irresponsible”. I should add that I see no difference between abolishing the debt ceiling and the House automatically approving raising the debt ceiling. Perhaps there is one that has eluded me.

I would say it is incumbent on those who want to abolish the debt ceiling to accept one or more of the following:

1. They disagree with President Biden
2. There is a difference between abolishing the debt ceiling and Congress’s automatically approving an increases in the debt ceiling and it is [fill in the blank]
3. President Biden and/or Sen. Schumer are being irresponsible by not negotiating with the House

For the first century of the U. S.’s existence there was no debt ceiling. It was adopted a little over a century ago. The explanation I’ve read is that it provided more flexibility in financing America’s participation in World War I. That doesn’t actually make sense to me. Someday perhaps I’ll summon up enough energy to dredge up the contemporaneous arguments in favor of imposing a debt ceiling. I suspect it was adopted for precisely the reason that we’re seeing now—it provides Congress with additional power over spending.

An additional thing I wanted to add. Decisions like the one in Train v. City of New York has placed the president in something of a bind. Once the Congress has appropriated money the president must spend it as the Congress has directed. That means the only courses of action open are for Congress to raise taxes or to “borrow” which in this case mostly means to extend credit to ourselves.

One final note. My own preference would be for the Congress to be limited in its ability to appropriate. Every appropriation above the revenue anticipated should explicitly “borrow”, raising the debt ceiling.

At MedicalExpress there’s a report on an interesting study:

The team randomly sampled 195 exchanges from AskDocs where a verified physician responded to a public question. The team provided the original question to ChatGPT and asked it to author a response. A panel of three licensed health care professionals assessed each question and the corresponding responses and were blinded to whether the response originated from a physician or ChatGPT. They compared responses based on information quality and empathy, noting which one they preferred.

The panel of health care professional evaluators preferred ChatGPT responses to physician responses 79% of the time.

“ChatGPT messages responded with nuanced and accurate information that often addressed more aspects of the patient’s questions than physician responses,” said Jessica Kelley, a nurse practitioner with San Diego firm Human Longevity and study co-author.

Additionally, ChatGPT responses were rated significantly higher in quality than physician responses: good or very good quality responses were 3.6 times higher for ChatGPT than physicians (physicians 22.1% versus ChatGPT 78.5%). The responses were also more empathic: empathetic or very empathetic responses were 9.8 times higher for ChatGPT than for physicians (physicians 4.6% versus ChatGPT 45.1%).

“I never imagined saying this,” added Dr. Aaron Goodman, an associate clinical professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine and study co-author, “but ChatGPT is a prescription I’d like to give to my inbox. The tool will transform the way I support my patients.”

which confirms something I’ve been saying for some time.

My prediction is not that computer programs will replace flesh and blood physicians but that they’re going to make human physicians more productive. Such programs will also affect what skills are emphasized in the selection and training of physicians. We need physicians who are more human rather than more machine-like. Machines will beat human physicians at being machine-like every time. The challenge is for them not to be more human as well.