The editors of the Washington Post muse about how the perpetrator of the killings in Highland Park managed to obtain his weapons legally despite Illinois’s thicket of laws controlling the ownership of firearms. They finally reach a point I have made here from time to time:

Local police probably could have used the state’s red-flag authority to ensure that Mr. Crimo was not able to obtain weapons. The law was about a year old when Mr. Crimo filed his application, and it is likely a lack of awareness played a role. That Illinois has made scant use of this useful tool is distressing: The Post’s Mike DeBonis reported that 53 firearm restraining orders were sought in 2019 and 2020, with only 22 granted, compared to 9,000 orders obtained in Florida since its law went into effect in 2018. Having a law on the books but not implementing it protects no one.

Laws don’t enforce themselves and the more laws there are the less likely they are to be enforced. That extends not just to police officers but prosecutors and judges as well.

Neglecting to enforce the law has consequences, both direct and indirect. The direct consequences were seen in Highland Park on the 4th of July but the indirect consequences are not as obvious. When the laws aren’t enforced or enforced capriciously it results in a general disrespect for the law.

The federal code now contains so many laws that nobody can possibly know what is against the law. The only people who benefit from that are lawyers.

I have some disagreements with Henry Olsen’s analysist in his Washington Post column about Democratic prospects in the midterms but I also disagree with what appears to be the prevailing wisdom among the Democratic leadership. Olsen first. Here’s his characterization of Democratic hopes for the midterms:

The case for Democratic optimism goes something like this: Yes, President Biden is deeply unpopular — more unpopular at this point in his presidency than any other president since Harry S. Truman, according to FiveThirtyEight. Despite that, the Democratic Party’s numbers in the generic congressional ballot, which asks respondents which party’s candidates they would back if the election were held today, are higher than Biden’s approval rating. Plus, many voters who are unhappy with Biden are also uncommitted in congressional races. That gives Democrats the chance, according to this view, to convince these voters that Democrats deserve another chance to govern despite their record over the past two years.

and here are his remarks on why that’s wishful thinking:

Perhaps, but the history of undecided voters suggests that’s not likely. A late June Politico-Morning Consult poll shows that Biden had a net minus 12 percent job approval rating — 43 percent approved versus 55 percent who disapproved — while Democrats were ahead in the generic congressional ballot 45 to 42. That difference is largely due to two factors: Democrats who are unhappy with Biden who nevertheless support their party, and independents unhappy with Biden who are undecided for Congress. Only 79 percent of Democrats approve of Biden’s job performance, but 93 percent will vote for the party. Meanwhile a whopping 38 percent of independents are still undecided for Congress, even though 66 percent do not approve of Biden’s performance. The voters Democrats need to convince are not unhappy partisans; they are people with no party loyalties whatsoever.

These findings are replicated in virtually every other recent poll that publishes similar data. The most recent Economist-YouGov poll, for example, shows Biden underwater among independents by a 28-to-58 margin, while Democrats lead among them by only 34 to 32. The independents who are undecided, we can infer, are nearly uniformly unhappy with the president. The most recent NPR-Marist and Monmouth polls also show that the undecided vote comes almost entirely from independents who disapprove of Biden.

History shows that these voters tend to break sharply against the president’s party by Election Day. The exit polls from the last four midterm elections all show that independents voted against the president’s party by between 12 and 19 points. In each case, the president had a net negative job rating on Election Day. Is there any reason, given the sharply negative views people hold toward Biden and about the state of affairs in the United States today, to think this time will be different?

My experience has been that a lot of Democrats don’t believe there are any genuinely independent voters. They think there are only disaffected Democrats and Republicans and by far the greatest number are disaffected Democrats. In addition they seem to think that the Supreme Court is doing their campaigning for them and overturning Roe v. Wade and Casey will impel voters to rally to Democratic candidates.

That’s my main disagreement with Mr. Olsen. I don’t think he’s reading Democratic thinking correctly. There is a notable tendency among them to see the glass as half-full. Speaking as someone who has actually canvassed door to door IMO there is a difference in temperament between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans don’t answer the door. I suspect that explains the polling issues.

There are several problems with the Democrats’ strategy. As to independents IMO there are many different reasons people are independents including they’re not interested in politics, they’re in despair about politics, they’re not joiners, they’re disaffected Democrats, or they’re disaffected Republicans, just to name five reasons. I honestly don’t believe that a lot of independents are disaffected Democrats who will return to their tribe at election time.

And regarding Dobbs I see two problems. First, no polling data supports the belief that the decision will motivate enough people to swing the election in Democrats’ favor. And second I suspect that anyone for whom support for a right to abortion was a key motivating factor was going to vote Democratic anyway.

I see this midterm as one like no other. Among the reasons for that are

• The COVID-19 pandemic and as or more important, the policy responses to it. By the standard Candidate Biden articulated during his campaign he should already have resigned. The trend isn’t moving in the right direction right now.
• We haven’t had the sort of inflation we have at present for more than 40 years—that’s not within living memory for a majority of Americans.
• We haven’t had a president with this low an approval rating going into the midterms in 70 years.
• We’ve never had a president this old. And speaking brutally honestly although a lot of Republicans seem to be kidding themselves about Biden’s degree of disability it cannot be denied that Biden has lost a step or two. He’s not a drooling senile lump but he’s not the man he was when he was Obama’s vice president, either.
• These midterm elections are likely to be scrutinized as no other.
• There are a lot of unknown unknowns.

I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I don’t see the trends as favoring the Democrats, either. And I think the Democratic leadership is sclerotic, literally and figuratively.

In his Washington Post column Fareed Zakaria expresses concern that the West’s strategy in Russia’s war against Ukraine is in danger of flagging:

The core of the West’s strategy has been two-pronged: to provide Ukraine with arms, training and money, as well as imposing massive sanctions on Russia. That basic idea still makes sense, but the balance needs to change. It is now clear that the economic war against Russia is not working nearly as well as people thought it would. President Vladimir Putin cares less about what these sanctions do to the Russian people than he does about what they do to the Russian state. And thanks to rising energy prices, Bloomberg News projects the Russian government will make considerably more revenue from oil and gas than it did before the war, around $285 billion this year compared with $236 billion in 2021.

Meanwhile, Europe is facing its worst energy crisis in 50 years.

What’s the snag?

The basic problem with the economic war against Russia, as I have argued before, is that it is toothless because it exempts energy. The Russian economy is fundamentally an energy economy. Revenue from oil and gas alone make up almost half of the Russian government’s budget. And unfortunately, the solution would not be for the West to stop buying Russian energy altogether because, with less supply in the world’s markets, that would only drive prices even higher. Having developed a dangerous dependence on Russian energy over the past two decades, Europe cannot quickly change that without plunging into a deep and protracted recession.

Here are some key observations:

Western countries are still not treating this challenge as a paramount priority. The Netherlands has a huge gas field, but it’s actually slowing production. Germany still will not reverse its self-defeating phaseout of nuclear energy. The Biden administration is still making it harder to finance long-term investments in natural gas and oil. It also cannot seem to find a way to restore the Iran nuclear deal — a move that would bring an enormous influx of new oil supplies onto the world market and almost certainly stabilize the price. I understand that there are valid objections and concerns with all these policies — but the priority has to be to defeat Putin.

What does he propose?

Western leaders should recognize that economic sanctions simply will not work in a time frame that makes any sense. They should increase as much of the supply of energy worldwide as they can but also dial back those sanctions that clearly are causing more pain to the West than Russia. Meanwhile, they should amp up military support to Ukraine, erring on the side of taking more risks. Freeing up the blockade around Odessa would be a huge economic win for Ukraine, and a shattering symbolic defeat for Russia.

I had to laugh out loud when I read Mr. Zakaria’s characterization of the Russian economy as an “energy economy”. All major economies are energy economies. Ours is. China’s is. The approach we have been using to reduce carbon emissions has been self-destructive and fantastical. It has been self-destructive in its emphasis on reducing basic industries in the U. S. because they’re energy-intensive. It has been fantastical because that imagines that carbon emitted in China is different from carbon emitted in the U. S.

As to the predicament in which our NATO allies find themselves, they have just been following their individual national interests as they perceive them. They’ll keep doing so with single-minded intensity.

I’m skeptical that we can win the sort of war of attrition we’re waging against Russia. “The West” is not the only game in town and I fail to see how driving Russia and China or Russia and India closer together is in our national interest.

With respect to allowing grain-bearing ships to leave the port of Odessa, I think he should consider the claim that the Russians have made that it is not their blockade that is the impediment but Ukrainian mines. I have no way of evaluating the truth of the claim. I think he should consider that “freeing up” the blockade might be neither the economic win nor the symbolic defeat that he imagines.

What do I think we should do? I think we need to adopt an “all of the above” energy strategy. I think we need to reindustrialize. If we actually want the Ukrainians to win against Russia, we need to be able to produce more war materiel domestically more quickly. We can’t be dependent on Chinese semiconductors or steel. And, for goodness sake, we shouldn’t be selling oil to the Chinese.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been assassinated in Japan, Satoshi Sugiyama and Chang-Ran Kim report at Reuters:

NARA, Japan, July 8 (Reuters) – Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving leader, died on Friday hours after he was shot while campaigning for a parliamentary election, shocking a country in which political violence is rare and guns are tightly controlled.

and

It was the first assassination of a sitting or former Japanese premier since the days of prewar militarism in 1936.

and

Airo Hino, political science professor at Waseda University, said such a shooting was unprecedented in Japan. “There has never been anything like this,” he said.

Senior Japanese politicians are accompanied by armed security agents but often get close to the public, especially during political campaigns when they make roadside speeches and shake hands with passersby.

but this is a key point:

A man opened fire on Abe, 67, from behind with an apparently homemade gun as he spoke at a drab traffic island in the western city of Nara, Japanese media reported.

It’s very sad and I’m sure it will rock Japan, much as JFK’s assassination rocked the United States.

I think there are several takeaways from this story. First, no country is completely safe from political violence. There is no practical way to prevent it completely, particularly in a democratic country.

Japan has among the highest degrees of social cohesion in the world. No level of social cohesion can prevent such actions completely.

Trying to prevent gun violence by controlling guns is futile because the cause of gun violence isn’t guns but, ultimately, personal empowerment and curtailing that is impractical in a free society.

In a piece at Project Syndicate economic historian Harold James makes some good points. Inflation isn’t just inflation. Historically, inflation has been known to bring societal upheaval. Monetary policy and fiscal policy are joined at the hip (by law). Here’s the key snippet:

History is replete with examples of high inflation driving systemic breakdowns. By trying to bind societies together with money, central banks have repeatedly sown the seeds of broader political and social dissolution. In federal states, such as Germany in the early 1920s or the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the late 1980s, inflation fueled a centrifugal dynamic and separatism. The public harbored a gnawing suspicion that the center (Berlin, Moscow, Belgrade) exercised unfair political control over the distributive levers. For the federated republics, secession and monetary autonomy became ever more attractive.

By breeding uncertainty, inflation can easily destroy large, complex political entities. We know that Russian President Vladimir Putin believes the breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest political catastrophe of the twentieth century. He may also believe that energy- and food-price inflation – and government efforts to buffer the impact with even greater subsidization – will destroy the British, American, and European unions.

I’m of mixed mind about this. For one thing I think he’s instantiating one of my pet peeves—conflating inflation with hyperinflation. While I agree that lax monetary and fiscal policy over the period of the last 20 years has increased the risk of hyperinflation, I don’t believe that hyperinflation is a species of inflation. I think it’s sui generis. Inflation is a decrease in the value of money. Hyperinflation on the other hand is a catastrophic loss of confidence in the currency. Under certain conditions inflation can go on indefinitely without producing hyperinflation. What conditions? Well, we’ve had them for the last 200 years or more. That’s another way of saying that deficit hawks are wrong.

Does ordinary inflation bear the risks of which Dr. James warns? I think it can produce misery and political unrest but I remain unconvinced it can produce the sort of upheaval that occurred in Weimar Germany. We are nowhere near hyperinflation at this point.

How do we mitigate the risks of hyperinflation? Electing better leaders would be a start. My definition of better leaders is individuals who value the public good over their own personal good. That’s a tall order. Conflating their own personal good with the public good is endemic in politicians. It can’t be stamped out. We can only limit its impact.

Limiting the reach of government is another measure that could mitigate the risk of hyperinflation. Hyperinflation is inflation plus a generous dose of stupidity coupled with political pigheadedness. Political leaders start spending to address the misery caused by the previous round of spending, the central bank covers that tab, and people come to expect that. It’s a positive feedback loop.

There are a number of distressing findings in the most recent Harvard/Harris poll. Among them are that both political parties are “underwater”, i.e. the percentage of Americans disapproving of them exceeds the percent approving. Republicans are underwater by 10 points while Democrats are underwater by a whopping 20 points.

Most concerning of all at least to me is that 60% of Americans don’t think that Joe Biden is mentally fit to serve as president:

In April it was 53% Opinion is not moving in the right direction for him.

I am seeing a whole raft of calls to supply more artillery to Ukraine, presumably in reaction to Russia’s consolidation of its control over the Luhansk Oblast. Consider Josh Rogin’s observations in the Washington Post:

The Biden administration deserves credit for giving Ukraine massive amounts of help and rallying European allies to the cause. At the same time, concerns are rising that President Biden’s risk-averse strategy amounts to giving Kyiv just enough weapons to maintain a violent stalemate but not to win the war. Winter is coming, and if Russia controls large chunks of Ukrainian territory when the Donbas region freezes over, Putin’s gains will become harder, if not impossible, to roll back in the spring.

According to Mr. Rogin the impediment is primarily political:

Privately, several administration officials told me that the delays are not a result of any problem with the actual delivery of weapons. The core problem is the protracted hand-wringing inside the Biden policy team over each weapons decision. Risch said this is caused by a misguided concern that if Putin starts to lose badly, he might escalate further.

“As a result of that [the White House is] taking the middle path. And the middle path is the wrong path here,” he said. “They can win this, but they can’t do it themselves. They will provide the fight if we provide the weapons.”

concluding:

But at the current pace of support, the stalemate is only likely to persist — a recipe for endless war, destruction and human suffering. Zelensky reportedly told the NATO leaders Ukraine needs to push back Russian forces within months, not years. This week, he unveiled a recovery plan that calls for $750 billion in international investment and support. What will that tab be if the war goes on another year, or another five years?

All wars end with a negotiation, when one or both sides are exhausted enough to seek an end to the fighting. What’s clear is that neither Ukraine nor Russia is at this point of exhaustion yet. But the longer the war goes on, the more pressure mounts on Western economies and the greater the devastation and suffering of Ukrainians.

“Urgency is very important,” Risch said. “This has got to be done before the world looks the other way.”

By dragging its feet on giving Zelensky the weapons he is asking for, the United States risks ensuring that the stalemate persists, which ultimately redounds to Putin’s benefit. The Biden administration underestimated Ukrainian forces in the first stage of the war. It must not repeat the same mistake now.

Another in the genre is William A. Galston’s column in the Wall Street Journal:

A Ukrainian counteroffensive may fail, but if we withhold what the Ukrainians need to have a chance of succeeding, we will ensure that they fail. And if they fail, there is no reason to believe that Vladimir Putin, who sees himself as a 21st-century Peter the Great, will stop in Ukraine. As Mr. Putin once instructed a group of geography students, “The borders of Russia do not end.”

The U.S. owes President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government a chance to win this war, on which Ukraine’s survival and the West’s security depend. We must give the Ukrainians what they need, when they need it.

concluding:

To have the best chance of carrying out a successful counteroffensive, Ukraine will need to neutralize Russia’s advantage in long-range artillery, which it has used to devastating effect in the Donbas region. The Himars multiple-rocket mobile launch system is the best option. The U.S. has already sent Ukraine four of these systems, with another four on the way. Early battlefield reports suggest that Ukrainians have proved to be apt students and are using Himars to great effect. We should send Ukraine another 50 systems as soon as possible, while expanding and accelerating the training needed to operate this sophisticated equipment. (Some experts argue that a shortage of appropriate rockets would limit the utility of the additional Himars, at least in the short term.)

In addition, we should send the Ukrainian army advanced drones to bolster its intelligence gathering and its ability to attack Russian command centers. America should intensify its efforts to refill Ukraine’s stocks of ammunition and artillery shells that have been depleted by months of intense fighting. Working with our allies, the U.S. should give Mr. Zelensky’s government the estimated $5 billion a month that his government will need to maintain basic services during the economic collapse the invasion has created.

I see several defects in both columns. The first is that neither makes any mention of any of our NATO allies. Does Germany have no role in supplying the Ukrainians? On Sunday the German chancellor’s reaction to a question along those lines was instructive. It amounted to “we haven’t spent as much as the United States (even relative to our economy) and we don’t intend to”. That’s a pretty phlegmatic response.

The second is logistics which both columns ignores. 50 HIMARs amounts to our entire inventory. It should be obvious we aren’t going to deliver our entire inventory to the Ukrainians. Even should we intend to do that accomplishing it could be difficult. I think that this is a case in which a difference in scale is surely a difference in kind. Producing that quantity of new HIMARs on short order may well be beyond our capability. That’s the cost of offshoring the production of so many strategic materials.

I won’t even touch on the political gamesmanship aspect of the Ukrainians’ ask.

Following the murders in Highland Park, the editors of the Washington Post plead for a ban on assault weapons:

The high-powered rifle used in the attack, according to authorities, was legally purchased by the suspected 21-year-old gunman, who was arrested on Monday and charged Tuesday with seven counts of first-degree murder. The ease of acquiring these weapons of war — and make no mistake, war is what the designers of these weapons envisioned — is by now, after Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Las Vegas and countless other mass shootings, a sadly familiar story. That the back-to-back shootings in May at a grocery store in Buffalo and at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., were allegedly committed by 18-year-olds who had no problem strolling into gun stores and leaving with weapons that would be used to kill 31 people should have been a call to action for Congress.

Instead, the regulation of assault weapons was not even allowed on the table as a package of moderate gun and school safety measures was negotiated by a bipartisan group of senators and signed into law. As we said at the time, it was good that Congress was able to take some action, breaking more than a 25-year stalemate on gun control. But as the horrific events of Highland Park demonstrated, more rigorous reforms are needed. Banning assault weapons is a good place to restart the conversation.

I don’t object to a ban on the private ownership of “assault weapons” providing they can be defined in an objective way. However, I think the editors will be disappointed at the outcome. IMO the reforms necessary (in descending order of importance):

1. We need to enforce existing law.
2. We need to change our attitudes regarding mental illness and how it is treated, indeed, whether it is treated.
3. Define what is meant by “assault weapons”.
4. Ban them.

Highland Park already has a city ordinance banning assault weapons. Illinois does not.

In a randomized test researchers were surprised to find that money did not in fact buy happiness:

The data reveal that participants spent the windfall of cash fairly quickly, with increased expenditures dwindling down the UCTs within a matter of weeks. Interestingly, the increase in expenditures did not translate to positive differences on the pre-registered financial, psychological, cognitive capacity, and health survey outcomes, neither between the Control and cash groups, nor between the two cash groups. If anything, the results show that relative to the Control group, cash groups reported worse financial, psychological, and health (but not cognitive capacity) outcomes for our prespecified analyses.

The researchers go on to speculate that receiving the money caused the recipients to think about money more, thereby decreasing their happiness.