Over the weekend a Chicago police officer was murdered, shot to death, in the performance of her duty. Her partner is in critical condition. The editors of the Sun-Times declaim:

In an undated photo posted on Twitter, Chicago Police Officer Ella French is equipped with everything that should have protected her on Saturday night.

She is wearing a safety vest. She has a police radio attached to her uniform so she can call for backup. She has her gun strapped to her waist.

Most importantly, Officer French is wearing the insignia of the Chicago Police Department on her left sleeve, and that should have been enough. In a better world — a better city — that should have been the only armor she needed. It should have kept her safe.

It did not.

Officer French was shot and killed in the West Englewood neighborhood on the South Side about 9 p.m. on Saturday while making an apparently routine traffic stop. Another officer was shot, as well. He is fighting for his life, as we write this, in a hospital intensive care unit.

This city should be so ashamed of itself.

Today there is an enormous amount of finger-pointing going on regarding the incident. The mayor is blaming guns. To his credit our senior senator, Dick Durbin, pointed to gangs but also blamed guns. Chicago police officers blame the mayor. Some aldermen are blaming Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx, I’ve heard at least one alderman blame the voters.

To date there have been 494 homicides in Chicago. Of those about a third were committed in three neighborhoods: Englewood, Garfield Park, and Austin. The murder of the officer took place in Englewood.

IMO thinking that guns are the problem and that can be solved by imposing tougher restrictions on their sale is a fantasy. We don’t know for certain but based on the FBI’s statistics something between 40% and 80% of all violent crimes are committed using guns obtained illegally. How will increasing that percentage reduce violent crime? That’s what will happen if the restrictions on firearm sales are tightened. The sad reality is that even in countries in which personal possession of firearms is illegal, people who want guns can get them. And that’s getting easier rather than harder.

That leaves the gangs. Until and unless the people of Englewood learn to trust and value the Chicago Police more than they do gang members, it will remain dangerous to patrol that neighborhood and other neighborhoods in which shootings are routine.

I wish that more people understood the point highlighted in this Wall Street Journal article by By Rachel Louise Ensign and Shane Shifflett. College degrees were supposed to be a way out of poverty for Americans and for blacks and other minorities in particular. That hasn’t happened:

Black millennials thought college would help them get ahead. Instead, it is setting them back.

The median net worth of households with Black college graduates in their 30s has plunged over the past three decades to less than one-tenth the net worth of their white counterparts, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Federal Reserve data. The drop is driven by skyrocketing student debt and sluggish income growth, which combine to make it difficult to build savings or buy a home. Now, the generation that hoped to close the racial wealth gap is finding it is only growing wider.

More than 84% of college-educated Black households in their 30s have student debt, up from 35% three decades ago, when many baby boomers were at the same age. The younger generation owes a median of $44,000, up from less than $6,000. By comparison, 53% of white college-educated households in their 30s have debt, up from 27% three decades earlier. The median amount rose to $35,000 from $8,000. All figures are adjusted for inflation.

Meanwhile, Black graduates’ household incomes have grown more slowly than those of college graduates in general, according to a Journal analysis of census data. Median income for Black college-educated households in their 30s increased 7% from the early 1990s to late 2010s to about $76,000. Income for their white counterparts rose 13% to about $114,000.

All of this is unfolding exactly as I have predicted over the last several decades. Our problem is not and has never been that not enough people have college educations. It is that we are not creating jobs that people with college educations want to take and that pay enough for them to pay off their educational loans.

There are ways to change that but we need to recognize the reality. We can’t export jobs and import workers at the rate we have for the last 30 years without its depressing wages. We need to start producing more of what we consume here and putting American workers to work producing them. That is true even if it raises retail prices by a couple of percentage points—that’s what the Walton family among others are pocketing by our massive importation of consumer goods from China. That is true even it it reduces our rate of economic growth by a percentage point or two.

I wanted to take note of Megan McArdle’s observations about President Biden’s extension of the moratorium on evictions in her most recent Washington Post column. After considering the health, economic, and legal basis for the extension, each of which she finds weak, she concludes:

Of course, unlike in 2014, we already had a moratorium in place, and its expiration would no doubt bring a wave of evictions. That means real hardship for millions of Americans, which no one wants to see. But this was always going to be the case when the moratorium ended. Cities and states have known this was coming since the various moratoriums were imposed, and they have had more than a year to plan. If they’re not ready to help affected residents into new shelter, they never will be. The only way any of this constitutes an argument for further delay is if you think that the moratorium should never end.

The emphasis is mine. I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Although that is one explanation other explanations could be imagined based on other assumptions. For example, it’s consistent with a “zero COVID” assumption, which I think is far-fetched, at least for the foreseeable future. We drive the number of COVID-19 infections to zero and only then lift the moratorium.

At this point I think the correct policy is to set a date or conditions certain for lifting it as well as gradually tightening the eligibility requirements. While it would be harsh to cancel the moratorium without warning raising the expectation of repeated extensions would be worse.

I think it’s possible that relatively few have my life experience. I’ve actually spoken with people for whom never paying rent was a strategy—they basically stayed one step ahead of eviction over a period of years. You learn things when making dunning calls. Don’t assume everybody is honest. There are a lot of very dishonest people out there.

Her conclusion in which she points out the irony of the situation is worth quoting as well:

I’m old enough to remember when it was a bad thing for presidents to knowingly and blatantly violate their oath to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States. I’m even old enough to remember a time — lo these seven months ago! — when the left responded to such maneuvers with horror, rather than egging them on.

Which is worse? Doing so because you’re arrogant and invincibly ignorant or doing so knowingly?

It’s dissettlingly quiet here at Chez Schuler. I had thought that Ziva’s health was stressing out the other dogs but I hadn’t realized how much. Kara, our remaining Samoyed, seems pretty bummed out. It doesn’t help that she sprained her foot last weekend and has been benched all week. I’ve been taking my daily walks by myself. Mamie and Ghillie, our Australian Shepherds, have been searching for Ziva as is their nature. I think they’re puzzled. Everyone clearly misses her.

Earlier this week we received her cremains in a lovely wooden box with her name embossed on the side. It’s sitting on our hearth room mantle.

A few more articles like this one at the National Interest by Christian Whiton will convince me that World War III might very well break out in the western Pacific. My previous top candidate had been on the India-Chinese border.

Update

At RealClearDefense Josh Sternberg reports that some Eastern Europeans are hearing echoes of the Cold War in the present situation in the Western Pacific:

As the analogies between the present geopolitical situation and the old Cold War are broadly disseminated and critiqued, it is worth remembering that many in the small states of Eastern Europe have a recent memory of living next to and under the control of – or, like the Baltic states, unwillingly within – an authoritarian superpower. Once in Taipei, Vystrčil invoked John F. Kennedy’s famous Berlin speech, declaring to Taiwan’s parliament “I am a Taiwanese.” Perhaps more than any other moment, that speech shows how the Eastern European countries that threw off Soviet domination only a generation ago are liable to see Taiwan’s geopolitical position in those Cold War terms. Along with Slovakia, the Czech Republic also recently made vaccine donations, with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen hailing the gift as showing Taipei and Prague to be “firm partners on the path to freedom and democracy”. It seems that more than a few politicians in Eastern Europe feel a fraternity with small democracies in precarious geopolitical situations.

At the American Institute for Economic Research Gerald P. Dwyer digs into the numbers on inflation and finds that the estimates for 2021 are too low. The TL;DR version is that if the Consumer Price Index (CPI) does not increase at all for the rest of the year, it will have risen 3.34% for 2021. If the Fed’s preferred Price Index for Personal Consumption Expenditures (CPE) does not increase at all for the rest of the year it will have risen by 2.2%—above their target rate of 2%. If the PCI rises at trend it will have increased 6.6% for 2021 and the PCE rises at trend it will be 4% for the year.

Inflation hurts the poor, those on fixed incomes (seniors), and savers. Guess who it helps? People who invest in the stock market on borrowed money.

Exercise for the interested student: will an additional $3.5 trillion in federal spending increase prices, decrease prices, or have no effect?

RealClearInvestigations picks as its “Investigation of the Week” Paul Sperry’s post on the killing of Ashli Babbitt on January 6 of this year. I don’t believe I have commented about the events of that day since they transpired. On the day of the breaching of the Capitol I condemned it in as unambiguous terms as I could muster. In doing so I attempted to use non-agonistic, not loaded diction.

Like so many other issues these days it’s what I think of as a “reverse Moynihan”: everybody has his or her own facts and they cannot be dissuaded of them. I have no idea of how to adjudicate these positions.

There are so many things with which I agree in David Brooks’s most recent New York Times column, I wish that I agreed with his premise. Here are his opening paragraphs:

If Joe Biden stands for one idea, it is that our system can work. We live in a big, diverse country, but good leaders can bring people together across difference to do big things. In essence Biden is defending liberal democracy and the notion that you can’t govern a nation based on the premise that the other half of the country is irredeemably awful.

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is skeptical: The Republican Party has gone authoritarian. Mitch McConnell is obstructionist. Big money pulls the strings. The system is broken. The only way to bring change is to mobilize the Democratic base and push partisan transformation.

If all you knew about politics was what goes on in the media circus, you’d have to say the progressives have the better argument. Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene — healthy bipartisan compromise seems completely hopeless with this crew.

But underneath that circus, there has always been another layer of politics — led by people who are not as ratings-driven, but are more governance-driven.

What’s working?

So over the past 20 years or so, while the circus has been at full roar, Congress has continued to pass bipartisan legislation: the Every Student Succeeds rewrite of federal K-12 education policy, the Obama budget compromise of 2013, the Trump criminal justice reform law of 2018, the FAST infrastructure act, the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020, the Trump-era ban on surprise billing in health care. In June the Senate passed, 68 to 32, the United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, which would devote roughly $250 billion to scientific projects.

Note that this “other layer” was also functioning during the presidency of He Who Must Not Be Named. Here’s what Mr. Brooks says is the difference:

The Biden administration has moved to separate government from the culture wars. It has shifted power away from the Green New Deal and Freedom Caucus show horses and lodged it with the congressional workhorses — people like Republican Rob Portman and Democrat Mark Warner, who are in no danger of becoming social media stars.

and here’s where we get to the problems:

The moderates are suddenly in strong shape. The progressives say they won’t support this Biden infrastructure bill unless it is passed simultaneously with a larger spending bill. But if the Democrats can’t agree on that larger bill, will progressives really sink their president’s infrastructure initiative? In the negotiations over the larger bill, the moderates have most of the power because they are the ones whose seats are at risk.

I think that’s almost completely backwards. That just isn’t the way Congress works. Safe seats are, well, safe. And, yes, progressive’s may well sink Joe Biden’s infrastructure initiative because they’re radicals. For them half a loaf is not better than none. No loaf is better than cooperation with evil. That is the way that Marcusists think.

And Mr. Brooks gets to the core of the problem:

As former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel notes, the problem with the progressive base mobilization strategy is that progressives think they’re the base. But a faction that keeps losing primaries can’t be the base. Joe Biden is the base. And Biden, and the 91 percent of Democrats who view him favorably, want to make the system work.

Every time I’ve seen Rahm Emanuel quoted recently I think “We had a guy with the same name as mayor for two terms here. Where was this guy when that guy was mayor? Progressives probably account for less than half of the Democratic Party—a higher proportion among Millennials. That means they account for 10-15% of the electorate. Equal and opposite to many of today’s conservatives they think that there are hosts of “shy progressives”, longing to come out and vote for a candidate who’ll deliver their agenda. There are no such shy conservatives or shy progressives.

But I’m not as convinced as Mr. Brooks that most Democrats are moderates. I think many of them are more, like, “what’s in it for me?”

The editors of the Wall Street Journal comment on President Biden’s electric vehicle photo op last week:

What a spectacle. We’re referring to the political advertisement that auto makers staged with President Biden on Thursday endorsing the Administration’s stricter fuel-economy rules and climate agenda. Behold Big Business colluding with Big Government to grab subsidies and raise consumer prices.

The White House previewed the electric-vehicle promo with joint statements from auto makers, the United Auto Workers and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Ford, GM and Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler ) announced their “shared aspiration” for electric cars to make up 40% to 50% of their sales in 2030. EVs make up a mere 3% of current U.S. sales, and most are Teslas.

“This represents a dramatic shift from the U.S. market today that can be achieved only with the timely deployment of the full suite of electrification policies committed to by the Administration,” including government incentives for consumers, charging stations and battery manufacturing, Detroit’s auto makers said. For “incentives,” read subsidies.

concluding:

Auto makers have been touting their increasing EV sales and claim electric cars are the “future.” Great. Then government doesn’t need to subsidize them. Steve Jobs never asked the government to pay people to buy iPhones or to finance their production.

And CEOs wonder why Americans have soured on big business. This isn’t capitalism. It’s corporate socialism, or state capitalism. We hope these corporate titans enjoy their new government “partners.” Maybe they can put Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders on the corporate board.

I wish more people would talk ways and means rather than ends. Presently, about 70 million vehicles are sold globally per year. Of those about 3 million are electric vehicles. U. S.-only figures are roughly proportional to that with 15 million vehicles sold annually but it’s the global figure that’s important. To meet that goal we’ll need to increase production roughly 10-fold.

There’s about a kilogram of lithium in an EV battery. If all global lithium production were devoted to EV batteries we’d have just about enough lithium. Translation: we’ll need new sources of lithium to meet that target. It takes about five years to bring a new hardrock lithium production facility into production and about seven years to get a new brine facility into production. Translation: it will be difficult to bring new sources into production within the timeframe. And that’s just one material.

The situation for cobalt, another material needed for EV batteries, is even worse. Even if we were to devote 100% of annual global cobalt production to EV batteries it wouldn’t be nearly enough. Another way cobalt is more difficult: nowadays most lithium production is in Australia while most cobalt production is in the Democratic Republic of Congo.