Perhaps not coincidentally, the FSB, Russia’s main security agency, has arrested Evan Gershkovich, one of the authors of the article I cited yesterday, for espionage. Daniel Michaels and Vivian Salama report in the Wall Street Journal:

The Biden administration on Thursday condemned the detention of an American Wall Street Journal reporter in Russia for what Moscow described as espionage, the first such case of an American journalist detained for allegations of spying since the Cold War.

The White House said in a statement that the State Department had been in touch with the Russian government concerning the arrest of reporter Evan Gershkovich and that it was communicating with the Journal about his case.

“The targeting of American citizens by the Russian government is unacceptable,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a separate statement, said that the U.S. seeks immediate consular access to Mr. Gershkovich so that it can provide the appropriate support.

“In the strongest possible terms, we condemn the Kremlin’s continued attempts to intimidate, repress, and punish journalists and civil society voices,” Mr. Blinken said.

President Biden was briefed on the detention of Mr. Gershkovich, National Security Council Strategic Coordinator John Kirby told reporters. He reiterated earlier U.S. State Department warnings that Americans are urged to avoid traveling to Russia or to leave immediately.

Russia’s main security agency said Thursday it had detained Mr. Gershkovich in the city of Yekaterinburg, around 800 miles east of Moscow, on Wednesday while on a reporting trip, accusing him of espionage.

“The Wall Street Journal vehemently denies the allegations from the FSB and seeks the immediate release of our trusted and dedicated reporter, Evan Gershkovich,” the Journal said. “We stand in solidarity with Evan and his family.”

Mr. Gershkovich’s detention and charge on the allegation of espionage mean the case is likely to become a high-level diplomatic issue, and is also expected to heighten tensions between Moscow and Washington.

The Federal Security Bureau said Mr. Gershkovich, “acting on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.” Mr. Gershkovich is accredited to work as a journalist in Russia by the country’s foreign ministry.

Authorities took Mr. Gershkovich to Moscow, where he appeared in court with a state-appointed defense attorney and was ordered held in custody until May 29, said the press service of the court, according to state news agency TASS.

I sincerely hope Mr. Gershkovich won’t be used as a pawn in the U. S.-Russia relationship, probably at its lowest point since the old Soviet Union days, but I suspect that’s exactly what will happen.

I wanted to call this piece by Ross Barkan at New York Magazine via MSN to your attention. It’s an analysis of the Chicago mayoral run-off and I think it’s of broader interest than just to Chicagoans, as being published in New York Magazine and MSN should indicate to you. Here’s the kernel of it:

Two wildly divergent candidates vie to replace her in the nonpartisan April 4 runoff: Paul Vallas, the former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, and Brandon Johnson, a Cook County commissioner and a former public-school teacher. The contest might naturally sort along racial lines — Johnson is Black and Vallas is white — but the starkest difference between the two men, both Democrats, is ideology. Just as the party has undergone enormous shifts at the national level, veering leftward from the ’90s Clintonian consensus while influential moderates simultaneously try to beat back progressive upstarts, Chicago is now the locus of a pitched struggle between the left and center — or even center-right, depending on your view.

Here’s his characterization of Paul Vallas:

Vallas, a 69-year-old who has managed three other school systems beyond Chicago’s, has emerged as the obvious if beatable favorite. In the first round of voting, Vallas took 33 percent to Johnson’s 22 percent — a remarkable finish for a man who placed ninth in the race against Lightfoot four years ago. He is quietly assembling a formidable coalition, branching out beyond his white moderate base to court-reform-oriented liberals disenchanted by Lightfoot and crime-weary Black voters willing to allow the candidate backed by the right-wing president of the local police union to control City Hall.

while here’s his characterization of Brandon Johnson:

Johnson, 47, is the candidate of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Jesse Jackson, and the local affiliate of the Working Families Party.

There are several points on which he is either mistaken, out-of-date, or simply fails to mention.

Whether the race is “bent slightly toward Vallas” as Mr. Barkan avers depends on which polls you read. Some polls show Vallas 46%/Johnson 41% while others show Vallas 46%/Johnson 44%. Still others show the two candidates tied at 44% each. I suspect the results depend substantially on who is being sampled.

The TV spots being run by the Johnson campaign could not be clearer: anyone who doesn’t accept the most radical positions of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is a crypto-Republican. That’s very peculiar since those endorsing Vallas include Jesse White, arguably the most popular Democrat in the state, the senior senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, the Senate majority whip, and many of those who served in the Obama Administration. Basically, Vallas is what used to be called a “regular Democrat”.

Brandon Johnson has no experience relevant to the job of mayor of the country’s third largest city. Zero. He has never managed or administered anything.

Nearly all of Johnson’s campaign contributions come from unions, mostly from public employees’ unions, a lot of it from the Chicago Teachers Union. Most of Vallas’s contributions come from individuals. The majority of Johnson’s contributions come from outside Chicago; most of Vallas’s from within Chicago.

The individual contributors to Vallas’s campaign tend to be more highly compensated and more highly educated.

Ross Douthat asks a good question in his New York Times column. Two good questions, actually. Taking an essay in American Affairs as his starting point he asks:

Thus our peculiar situation: a once-radical left presiding somewhat miserably over the new order that it long desired to usher in, while a once-conservative right, convinced that it still has the secret of happiness, looks to disruption and chaos as its only ladder back from exile.

Here’s that starting point:

As Musa al-Gharbi writes in an essay for American Affairs, the happiness gap between liberals and conservatives is a persistent social-science finding, visible across several eras and many countries. Meanwhile, the view that “my life is pretty good, but the country is going to hell,” which seems to motivate a certain kind of middle-class Donald Trump supporter, would have been unsurprising to hear in a bar or at a barbecue in 1975 or 1990, no less than today.

He cites a Gallup poll which found a substantial “happiness gap” between conservatives and liberals. How big?

In Gallup polling from 2019, just before the pandemic, the happiness gap between Republicans and Democrats was larger than in any previous survey. And the trend of worsening mental health among young people, the subject of much discussion lately, is especially striking among younger liberals. (For instance: Among 18- to 29-year-olds, more than half of liberal women and roughly a third of liberal men reported that a health care provider had told them they had a mental health condition, compared with about a fifth of conservative women and around a seventh of conservative men, according to an analysis of 2020 Pew Research Center data by the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.)

What has happened? “Conservatives” are angry because they’ve realized their views don’t represent the American consensus, at least not any longer:

the entire organizing premise of post-1960s American conservatism was that the country as whole shared its values — hence the rhetoric of the “silent majority” and the “moral majority” — and that the problem was just an elite class of liberals, irreligious and unpatriotic but also out of touch with the breadth and depth of American society. Remove the weight of ineffective bureaucracy, end the rule of liberal judges, and watch the country flourish: That was the effective message of Republican politicians and quite a few conservative intellectuals for a very long time.

Fewer and fewer conservatives seriously believe that it’s this simple anymore. But where does conservative politics go without a traditional cultural foundation to conserve?

As he paints it the situation for “liberals” is equal and opposite:

An organizing premise of progressivism for generations has been that the toxic side of conservative values is responsible for much of what ails American society — a cruel nationalism throttling a healthy patriotism, a fundamentalist bigotry overshadowing the enlightened forms of religion, patriarchy and misogyny poisoning the nuclear family. Thus in many ways the transformations of the last few decades are ones that liberals sought: The America of today is more socially-liberal on almost every issue than the America of George W. Bush, more secular, less heteronormative, more diverse in terms of both race and personal identity, more influenced by radical ideas that once belonged to the fringe of academia.

Unfortunately in finding its heart’s desire the left also seems to have found a certain kind of despair. It turns out that there isn’t some obvious ground for purpose and solidarity and ultimate meaning once you’ve deconstructed all the sources you consider tainted. And it’s at the vanguard of that deconstruction, among the very-liberal young, that you find the greatest unhappiness — the very success of the progressive project devouring contentment.

I think his premises are almost completely wrong. First off, what are called “conservatives” today have only the slightest relationship to those of 30 or 40 years ago. Many are what would be better termed Southern social conservatives and they’ve been angry for 200 years.

Similarly, today’s liberals bear very little relationship with those of 30 or 40 years ago. “Progressives” would be a better description and progressives by definition are dissatisfied. They have always been dissatisfied. They will always be dissatisfied. It’s inherent. If they weren’t dissatisfied, they wouldn’t be progressives. They keep demanding that arc of history bend toward justice more quickly. But, as Mr. Douthat observes, they have no standard by which to measure justice any longer.

In his New York Times column Thomas Edsall directs me to a study that attempts to find the reason for our political polarization by measuring the “tightness” and “looseness” of the states:

Political biases are omnipresent, but what we don’t fully understand yet is how they come about in the first place.

In 2014, Michele J. Gelfand, a professor of psychology at the Stanford Graduate School of Business formerly at the University of Maryland, and Jesse R. Harrington, then a PhD. candidate, conducted a study designed to rank the 50 states on a scale of “tightness” and “looseness.”

Appropriately titled “Tightness-Looseness Across the 50 United States,” the study calculated a catalog of measures for each state, including the incidence of natural disasters, disease prevalence, residents’ levels of openness and conscientiousness, drug and alcohol use, homelessness and incarceration rates.

Gelfand and Harrington predicted that “‘tight’ states would exhibit a higher incidence of natural disasters, greater environmental vulnerability, fewer natural resources, greater incidence of disease and higher mortality rates, higher population density, and greater degrees of external threat.”

The South dominated the tight states: Mississippi, Alabama Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and North Carolina. With two exceptions — Nevada and Hawaii — states in New England and on the West Coast were the loosest: California, Oregon, Washington, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont.

In both 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump carried all 10 of the top “tight” states; Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden carried all 10 of the top “loose” states.

The study itself is here.

While I think that what they’re doing is worthwhile, I would suggest that the authors of the study continue to refine their criteria on the grounds that “looseness” and “tightness” are only predictive for the loosest and tightest states. Otherwise by their criteria either Illinois would be a Republican state or Montana and Idaho would be Democratic ones because Illinois sits right in between Montana and Idaho in the index they’ve created.

Quite to the contrary I think there is a simple even commonsensical explanation for the phenomena they’re trying to nail down. Once the percentage of a state’s population living in a single metro area reaches a certain percentage, the state tends to be Democratic. I would further suggest that percentage is around 20%. That would explain why California, New York, and Illinois are all Blue states while Montana, Idaho, and Indiana aren’t.

Chicago mayoral candidate and, possibly, the next mayor of Chicago Brandon Johnson insists that he wants to attack the root causes of crime. Okay, I’ll bite. What are they? According to his public statements he believes that mental illness and lack of economic activity particularly jobs are the root causes of crime.

I think that mental illness, the widespread availability of firearms, and lax enforcement of existing laws are the root causes of mass shootings. Firearms are so widespread now that I don’t believe we can do anything about their availability to individuals who are willing to break the law to get them. We can adjust the requirements for involuntary mental health treatment. That might reduce the number of mass shootings but I doubt it.

I agree with Stanton Samenow’s observation in Psychology Today: poverty doesn’t cause crime; crime causes poverty. Any number of studies have found that black communities have more homicides, shootings, and crimes against poverty than comparable communities with lower black populations. Here’s a report on one of them.

IMO the root cause of crime in black communities is criminal gangs and those are a result of social dysfunction within those communities, particularly family structures. Most black children are born to single mothers and most black households are headed by single parents who are women. While I agree that’s an outcome of slavery and Jim Crow, slavery and Jim Crow have been gone for a long time now. The social dysfunction remains and so does the crime. Until well-meaning people of all races stop patronizing blacks and call out the dysfunction for what it is, the crime will continue.

What first struck me about Georgi Kantchev and Evan Gershkovich’s report in the Wall Street Journal was the slug: “Investment is down, labor is scarce, budget is squeezed.” What struck me is that it could well be written about the United States. Business investment is down:

Labor is scarce:

That’s what a low unemployment rate means by definition. When the unemployment rate is low only a very small percentage of those who want jobs don’t have them. Do I need to comment on whether the budget is squeezed?

And yet I don’t believe that the U. S. economy is collapsing. Is Russia’s? I don’t think we can tell from reading the cited article. For example this sentence: “The country’s biggest exports, gas and oil, have lost major customers.” They’ve also gained major customers. Russian oil exports measured in dollars have actually increased since the invasion of Ukraine. The reason for that is that the price of oil has risen.

The sanctions imposed by Russia’s erstwhile trading partners are resulting in Russia being more dependent on China. Russia’s economy had approached autarky because of prior sanctions. I don’t think we know enough to make any sweeping claims about what will happen next with Russia’s economy. Don’t be surprised if the moment that shooting stops, German imports from Russia jump right back up.

George Friedman is pretty bitter about the attacks on the Iraq War coming from all sides occasioned by the 20th anniversary of the invasion. Here’s his conclusion:

Invading Afghanistan and Iraq was the only practical option if the goal was to cripple a very capable enemy. The U.S. launched broad attacks in multiple countries. This could provoke hostility, but there was no better option. It was an unconventional counteroffensive, and this is what its critics dislike, but they offer no clear alternative. After 9/11, the threat was simply too great. The strategy was worldwide disruption. It was not pretty, but it worked. There were no other large-scale attacks on the U.S. homeland.

I find that a flood of illogic. Iraq was not a threat. Repeat: it wasn’t a threat. It didn’t harbor Al Qaeda until we removed Saddam Hussein. Furthermore, we have clearly failed in Afghanistan. If invading Iraq and Afghanistan were our only options against a “very capable enemy”, why has failure been an acceptable option in both countries?

I would like to suggest to Mr. Friedman that Al Qaeda was not the threat; our own laziness and carelessness were the threats. They are still threats. Al Qaeda was not a “very capable enemy”. They got lucky. Evidence: we have had no successful mass attacks by Al Qaeda since 9/11. Mr. Friedman’s interpretation is that’s because we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. That sounds like the tiger repellent argument to me.

This is not 20-20 hindsight on my part. I’ve been saying all of this for 20 years. The evidence that I was right continues to mount.

When I read this statement by Marc Joffe in a piece at Cato, “Are Taxes Really Lower in California than in Texas?” (spoiler alert: it depends on how you figure it)

WalletHub recently published an analysis of tax burdens by state that included some surprising findings: most notably, that Texas state and local governments impose heavier taxes on median earners than their California counterparts. Of the fifty states plus DC, the Golden State had the 12th lightest tax burden, while Texas ranked 41st.

I immediately hustled over to the analysis at WalletHub comparing total tax burdens by state, pretty sure of what I would find. Of course, Illinois has the higher tax burden in the country (the alternative analysis at Tax Foundation gives no joy—we’re in the six states with the highest burden there).

Two questions immediately come to mind. Why are Illinois’s taxes so high? Our roads are full of potholes and the state contribution to K12 education is one of the lowest in the country. The answers I would give are:

• Illinois is one of the most corrupt states in the country. Our only real competition is Louisiana and that’s saying something.
• Public employees (teachers, police officers, firefighters) are among the best-compensated in the country and we have a lot of them
• Sales taxes and property taxes are high—without Prop 17 California’s taxes would be a lot higher.

The other question, of course, is why do I live here? Largely by accident. I moved to Illinois to attend college and never left. I like my house. There isn’t much to draw me to any other state. It’s better to be going to something than fleeing from something. Almost the only attachments I have to my state of origin, Missouri, are to the dead. Now my closest family are in Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Indiana, New York, and Florida and I wouldn’t move to be near any of them.

I didn’t know whether to be amused by Phelim Kine and Stuart Lau’s piece at Politico, “Ukraine is changing the math for countries caught between the U.S. and China”, for which the tag line appears to be “Europe is listening” or shocked at how obtuse it was. Here’s the meat of the piece:

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Europeans are starting to pay more attention to Biden’s message about the dangers of dependence on dictatorships. With urgency like never before, they are restricting exports of chip-making equipment to China, banning TikTok on government devices and pushing protectionist trade policy. Even long-time holdout Germany, the European Union’s biggest economy and a heavy investor in China, is starting to question its business-first ethos.

China is fighting back. It’s strengthening ties with Russia, offering up a peace plan for Ukraine and pushing the message that governments can be “democracies” even if they deny their citizens the right to vote freely for their leaders.

“We are at a heightened moment — between the war in Ukraine, China’s alignment with Russia, and continued economic tremors — and the stakes for international leadership are fraught,” said Stephen Feldstein, who served as U.S. President Barack Obama’s deputy assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor, and who regularly advises current administration officials on those issues.

Europe is listening.

Listening perhaps. Just not acting. Consider:

Point to Europe’s distancing itself from China on that graph. That’s a trick question. They aren’t.

Just as is the case in supplying Ukraine with arms our European cousins talk a good fight but they’re completely willing to let the United States carry the weight and Uncle Sugar is dumb enough to do it.

Actually I expect the Germans to sour on trade with China. China ran a trade surplus with Germany last year for the first time since 2009 and that doesn’t fit in with Germany’s trade policy. Both China and Germany depending on running trade surpluses with just about everybody in the world including each other is a formula for collision. I don’t think there’s an off ramp for Germany but we’ll see.