Greg Hinz has a lengthy to-do list for Mayor-Elect John in Crain’s Chicago Business:

Johnson has said he wants to shift more money to social needs, dealing with the root causes of poverty and crime. He’s also said he wants to immediately promote 200 police officers to detective. But neighborhood police districts are still short more than 1,000 officers from pre-COVID days, and Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara recently threatened that hundreds more officers would resign if Johnson won. Getting them to stay, and perhaps filling some vacancies, will be job one.

Job two will be coming up with the money the mayor-elect wants for new programs and to fill existing budget holes.

Johnson outlined $800 million in tax-hike proposals he said would avoid another increase in the city’s property tax. But some moves, like an increase in the tax on home sales, require approval from Springfield. And others, like a tax on jet fuel at the city’s airports, appear to violate federal law. They’ll have to be replaced if Johnson is to deliver on his spending promises.

Equally crucial for the 57th mayor of Chicago is dealing with a business community whose major organizations endorsed Vallas and many of whose leaders opened their wallets to the former CPS chief and ex-city budget director, a longtime fixture of city politics. Johnson may not find that easy, given his frequent attacks on “rich corporations” and the the corporate fear from the departures of Boeing, Citadel and other top companies. But then, both sides ultimately need each other.

Johnson also will have to decide whether he really will stay out of City Council reorganization, as new aldermen perhaps ratify or maybe change a plan adopted last week by the outgoing council, and whether to proceed with an all-out bid to win the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

Also up for a decision are such tough issues as whether to approve a new franchise deal for Commonwealth Edison, something Lightfoot proposed but has been unable to get through, and how to get more money to expand investment in South and West Side neighborhoods.

Chicago’s sales tax rate is 10.25%; Illinois has the second highest property taxes in the country; the city cannot impose an income tax or city earnings tax without the permission of Springfield; as noted above it can’t impose a jet fuel tax without permission from the federal government. I suspect reality will fall hard on the mayor-elect.

James Joyner has a pretty good round-up at Outside the Beltway of legal analysis on the case that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has filed against former President Donald Trump. The TL;DR version is that the case is tenuous, far-fetched. Here’s one point I haven’t seen made. Has the notion that the statute of limitations goes on vacation when somebody gets elected president been tested in New York courts? I expect that to be one of the cases made by Mr. Trump’s lawyers.

Brandon Johnson has been elected to be the next mayor of Chicago. I wish him well but, honestly, I’m not hopeful.

I was pretty certain as soon as the early returns began coming in that he would win—Vallas just wasn’t getting enough votes in the wards he needed to win big in. It will be interesting to see the statistics on turnout and who voted for whom.

Well, now City Hall, the State’s Attorney’s office, and the judiciary will be aligned in the same direction—the direction that I already believe to have failed to reduce crime. I suspect the CPD will follow suit. I mean why bother arresting people if you know they’ll just be released?

I also wonder if the mayor-elect realizes that the tax provisions on which he ran will require action from the state legislature and, possibly, amending the state’s constitution. Illinois voters have already rejected such amendments in the past.

Interesting times.

At RealClearDefense Francis Sempa writes about the “Lippman gap”, the gap between our military commitments and our capabilities:

Since 1999, the United States has extended security guarantees to 14 more European countries than it did during the Cold War, and it is about to add two more with Sweden and Finland. Our commitments have expanded at the same time that we declared a “peace dividend” only to further extend our commitments in the Middle East in a futile effort to bring democratization to the region and wage a global war on terror. Lippmann would be appalled at the widening gap between our commitments and power, especially when war clouds are gathering in the western Pacific at the same time that Howard and O’Hanlon want to expand our security commitments in Europe.

As I’ve observed before our military might is downstream from our economic power. Far too much of our present economy is devoted to retail, healthcare, and education.

I just wanted to make one quick observation in this post. The price of oil is a leading indicator of recession, possibly even causal. That was true in 2008, it was true in the early Aughts, it was true in the early 1990s, and it was true in the early 80s. It has been true in every recession of the post-war period.

We’re not as dependent on oil, particularly on foreign oil as we used to be. Maybe the recent increase in the price of oil won’t lead to a recession this time.

Today is Election Day in Chicago. We will elect the next mayor, choosing between Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson.

The main topic of the election has been crime. Some, particularly those who don’t live here, are saying that the concern about crime is all because of media hype. I’m going to suggest some reasons they are wrong. My focus will be on Chicago.

1. In the summer of 2020 downtown Chicago was sacked for the first time in the city’s history. That didn’t happen in the aftermath of the Chicago Fire 150 years ago. It didn’t happen during the Democratic Convention riot of 1968. Systematic looting of downtown stores has continued since then with some stores having been looted multiple times.
2. Since Mayor Lightfoot was elected the number of homicides in Chicago has been worse than at any time in 30 years.
3. The crime isn’t isolated to downtown or to the South Side. Here in my Northwest Side neighborhood there have been three carjackings at gunpoint over the last couple of months within two blocks of where I’m sitting. That has never happened before.
4. On a near nightly basis kids are racing each other at high speed on Peterson Avenue a half block north of me, firing guns at each other. That has never happened before. That’s why there are gunshot microphones everywhere.
5. In trendy Lincoln Park gangs of young men have been riding up and down the streets, conducting carjackings and robbing people of their possessions. That has never happened before.
6. In the last two weeks alone ten 7-Eleven stores on the North and West sides have been robbed at gunpoint. That kind of spree has never happened before.

Yesterday in comments this post at Brookings by Hanna Love and Tracy Hadden Loh was brought to my attention. The article’s focus is on downtown business districts. If only the increase in crime were limited to the downtown business areas! There are lots of statistics in the piece but this passage caught my eye:

People deserve to feel—and actually be—safe regardless of where they live and work. Downtowns have experienced significant disruptions since the pandemic that have made workers, visitors, and residents feel uneasy. In particular, our interviews revealed that increased visibility of public drug use, high-profile violent crimes, vacant storefronts, emptier streets, and harassment are making residents feel as though their city is in disarray, and that the government isn’t doing much about it.

Pointing to the mismatch between where crime predominantly clusters and residents’ perceptions is not designed to delegitimize their concerns or deny the impact that crime in other parts of the city can have on perceptions of downtown. Rather, it is to demonstrate that the spatial distribution of crime has real implications for how local leaders can address it.

They’re oversimplifying. Focusing on the downtown shopping areas, at least in Chicago, is misdirection.

They propose several measures for improving the situation. Conspicuously absent from their list is enforcing the law. As long as crime is a viable way of making cash with entry requirements that any high school dropout can meet, the problems presented by crime will continue to fester.

I recommend reading this piece at Modern War Institute by Marnix Provoost on the Russian “theory of victory” in the war in Ukraine. Here’s the kernel of the piece:

From the Russian perspective, the Ukraine invasion is a necessary offensive move within a strategic defensive posture. A prosperous, Western-oriented Ukraine that is a member of the EU may offer the Russian population a dangerous glimpse of an alternative political system and thereby fuel dissatisfaction with Russia’s political and economic system. Furthermore, Ukrainian entry into NATO and the EU would lead to a political-strategic loss of face for the Russian regime at home and abroad and therefore represents a military-strategic vulnerability for Russia’s defense.

Initially, the Russian regime may have regarded its invasion of Ukraine as a “regional conflict” with “important” military-political goals, and its classification as a “special military operation” may have been genuine. Indeed, it seems that the Kremlin’s ambitious political objective was to install a new, pro-Russian government in Kyiv by lightning action. Bold, deep maneuvers along multiple axes of attack and the rapid elimination of the Ukrainian government in Kyiv should have led to the collapse of Ukrainian resistance and prevented Russia from indirectly opposing the economically and technologically superior West in a protracted proxy war.

After this failed, Russia seems to have adjusted its political objectives and strategy. The Russian armed forces currently have neither the troop numbers nor the capacity to subdue and pacify all of Ukraine. As contradictory as it may sound, however, the special military operation therefore does seem likely to escalate into a “large-scale war” with “radical” military-political objectives.

He concludes with a good question: what’s the U. S. theory of victory? To my eye it’s “whatever the Ukrainians say it is” which at this point is similarly beyond the capacity of Ukraine.

While I’m asking questions, does anybody remember the war in Ukraine? We haven’t been reading/hearing nearly as much about it lately as we did a couple of weeks or months ago.

Why aren’t we hearing so much about the war in Ukraine?

1. We’re hearing just as much; you just aren’t paying attention.
2. The news from Ukraine is so good, the western media aren’t reporting it.
3. It’s being crowded out by domestic news.
4. There is nothing new to report.
5. The news from Ukraine is so bad, the western media aren’t reporting it.
6. There’s a war in Ukraine?

Here’s what isn’t the answer: B.

I have a question. Is it possible that taking Adderall is a factor in many of the ills reportedly afflicting our young people? E.g. heart problems, anger, lower sex drive, various mental health problems.