I want to commend Yascha Mounk’s most recent Substack to your attention. In it he interviews Dan Wang and they contract the United States as a lawyers’ state with China as engineeers’ state. As just one example consider this. Since 1980 every Democratic Party presidential candidate has been a lawyer. Over the same period every Chinese president has been an engineer.
Here’s another thing to consider. Are the problems that have so greatly delayed and increased the cost of the high-speed rail system in California engineering problems or legal problems?
I don’t agree with everything that both of them say in the piece. Their view of U. S. manufacturing is very much from 50,000 feet. The only thing I have to contribute is that what is happening in the U. S. is very much what I have predicted and said for more than two decades. Production engineering necessarily follows production. Ultimately, design engineering follows production engineering. I also think that Mr. Wang is presenting an overly rosy view of China. Although the percent has declined sharply over the last couple of decades according to the world Bank 22% of China’s workers are farmers. I believe that China and, particularly, the Chinese Communist Party have a large number of engineers. But China is still not a country of engineers. It’s a country that has been run by Soviet-style engineers for several decades.
Read the whole thing (or at least as much as you can).
In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem presents her defense of federal agents’ actions in enforcing immigration law, particularly in Portland and Chicago. Here’s her list of particulars:
Our officers have been shot at and assaulted. They have faced death threats, doxxing and confrontations at their homes. Spotter networks in Chicago linked to street gangs and Mexican cartels track the movements of officers for Customs and Border Protection as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, relaying locations and enabling ambushes during routine enforcement operations.
This month a member of the Latin Kings gang was charged with putting a bounty on the life of Border Patrol Commander at Large Gregory Bovino. The illegal alien charged with placing that bounty was arrested, has pleaded not guilty, and will face justice. The incident shows the enormous risk law-enforcement officers face to make our cities safe again.
A self-styled anarchist website in Portland, Ore., encouraged supporters to use high-powered laser pointers to bring down federal helicopters in the area.
In Dallas an anti-ICE terrorist opened fire on an ICE facility intending to kill officers. Instead, he killed two detainees. In Alvarado, Texas, Antifa terrorists ambushed ICE officers at a detention facility, wounding a local police officer in the neck.
I think the law should be enforced but it should be enforced lawfully and scrupulously. I’m not convinced that is the case. Perhaps, as details come out in the upcoming court case more facts will be presented.
I have no idea whether the charges she levies are correct or not. There is pretty good documentation of the last incident she mentions, the murder of two illegal immigrants in Dallas.
I’ve been critical of Illinois’s governor and Chicago’s mayor because I think that they don’t believe that the law should be enforced and their statements have the effect of stoking discontent.
Le Parisien reports that French authorities have apprehended two individuals suspected of stealing the Napoleonic crown jewels from the Louvre:
Sous le feu des projecteurs internationaux, l’enquête judiciaire sur le casse du siècle au Louvre s’accélère. Selon nos informations, deux suspects ont été interpellés ce samedi soir et placés en garde à vue dans le cadre des investigations ouvertes pour « vol en bande organisée » et « association de malfaiteurs en vue de la commission d’un crime », pilotées par la brigade de répression du banditisme de Paris (BRB) et l’Office central de lutte contre le trafic des biens culturels (OCBC).
Translated:
Under the glare of international attention, the judicial investigation into the “heist of the century” at the Louvre is speeding up. According to our information, two suspects were arrested Saturday evening and placed in police custody as part of an investigation opened for “theft by an organized gang” and “criminal conspiracy with intent to commit a crime,” led by the Paris anti-gang brigade (BRB) and the Central Office for the Fight Against Trafficking in Cultural Property (OCBC).
They further report that the two apprehended lived in Seine-Saint-Denis. That’s one of the largest suburbs in metropolitan Paris. Two-thirds of those living there are “immigrants” in the French sense, mostly from North Africa. That means non-French citizens, likely in France illegally.
Given the political situation in France at present
if immigrants are determined to be responsible for robbing the Louvre, that will provide additional fuel for the anti-immigrant Rassemblement National (National Rally) and its allies.
Here are some examples. Today I used ChatGPT to use a font in one of my blog posts different from the default font. I asked the question, asked a few more questions to refine what my intention was, copied the code, and edited my post.
Yesterday I devoted a considerable amount of time to creating a complete storyboard for a hypothetical movie. I was very satisfied with the results. Maybe I’ll go ahead and create the movie itself (using a different AI tool) or maybe I won’t.
I don’t read for pleasure as much as I used to. Once upon a time I read a book every day. Nowadays it’s too fatiguing especially considering how much else I read (for work—when I was working, news reports, editorials, opinion pieces, etc.).
Not long ago at my wife’s urging I read Dark City Dames: The Women Who Defined Film Noir. She’s very much into reading celebrity biographies. Over the last couple of months she’s read biographies and/or autobiographies of Mary Astor, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Kay Francis, Gloria Swanson, Myrna Loy, and Louise Brooks). Talk about degrees of separation! I’ve never met any of those people but I was acquainted with people who did. Three degrees, sometimes two.
The book consists of three sections. The first consists of brief bios of Jane Greer, Audrey Totter, Marie Windsor and actresses who created the great characters of film noir from 1945 to 1955 drawn from interviews with them over a number of years, sixteen in all. The second consists of updates on their later lives. The final section is some observations from Mr. Muller.
In case you’re not familiar with him Eddie Muller is one of the hosts on Turner Classic Movies. He’s a very insightful guy, much more insightful than you might gather from his remarks on TCM. I learned things of which I had been unaware not just about the actresses he interviewed but about Hollywood and current events in 1945-1955.
Here’s an example of the absence of reporting I mentioned in my last post. Do you recall the story of the bounties being placed on the heads of federal agents by criminal gangs?
Since the story came out I have devoted a significant amount of time researching the topic and have come up with …nothing. There seems to be no public corroboration or denial of the story other than what’s in Department of Justice press releases, statements, and court filings. That doesn’t mean that the DoJ is lying; it just means there’s neither a public corroboration or denial.
Isn’t this an important story? I don’t think that either the Journalists who support Democrats or those who support Republicans are interested in reporting it. Are they afraid of what they might discover? It would interfere with their preconceived notions? Is such down-and-dirty reporting beneath them? Do they know how?
I want to know. I don’t need context or explanations. I don’t want to know what to think about the facts. I need the facts.
David Lauder may not realize but his piece in today’s Tribune illustrates nicely why newspapers are folding. Here’s a snippet from his piece:
Some 136 newspapers in the United States have closed in the past year, news deserts are expanding and web traffic to the nation’s top newspapers has dropped markedly this decade, according to a report issued Monday that struggles to find hope for the beleaguered news industry.
struggles to find hope for the beleaguered news industry.
While entrepreneurs are launching digital news sites, often backed by philanthropies, they haven’t sprouted at a rate that makes up for the losses, the report from Northwestern University said. the report from Northwestern University said.
Taking a step back for an even broader look at the industry is even more troubling. Since 2005, the numbers of newspapers published in the United States has dropped from 7,325 in 2005 to 4,490 now, said the Medill State of Local News report. Daily newspaper circulation that averaged between 50 and 60 million people at the turn of the century now stands at just over 15 million.
An estimated 365,460 people worked at newspapers in 2005, and now that number is down to 91,550, the report said. Two decades ago, 71% of journalists worked at newspapers and now just 29% of the nearly 42,000 working journalists are at newspapers.
He’s just regurgitating Northwestern’s press release. There is no reporting here and precious little value-added.
What use are newspapers that are just passing along press releases or rephrased articles from wire services? The “news deserts” he laments are being created have been mirages for years.
And you don’t need a Medill School of Journalism to teach repeating press releases and adding opinion. It can be done by ChatGPT.
What counts as “savings and efficiencies” in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s government?
In the 2026 budget the mayor presented last week, the two biggest items in that category were a $118 million reduction in how much the city planned to contribute to its woefully underfunded pension plans and a cap on how much overtime the Chicago Police Department could accrue.
That’s akin to an individual or household saying they’re tightening their belts by paying the minimum on their credit cards.
After explaining why we can’t expect any relief from the City Council, they continue:
So business community, if you are reading us, this is a dire moment.
Deals and investments that have been in the works in parts of the city still attractive to business are teetering, we hear. “Capital is fleeing,” one alderman tells us.
It’s a time now for high-profile corporate leaders to make clear to the mayor and council members what the stakes are. That could well mean that some household names threaten to close Chicago offices or reduce their city workforces. If that’s something these corporate leaders are contemplating behind closed doors — and we’ve little doubt it is — now’s the time to make those plans public.
The mayor has made it quite clear that he sees businesses as cows to be milked or slaughtered to feed the ravening maw of city services. There’s scarcely a sign of cutting expenses in the budget and a host of new pet projects.
I think they’re pleading in vain. Business leaders have an option they’re more likely to take than playing hardball with City Hall: get out of Dodge.
My question remains as it has been for nearly two years. What did people expect? The Chicago Teachers Union “brung” Brandon Johnson. He’s maintained what little popularity he retains by funneling more money to public employee union members. The solutions the editors envision, economic and population growth, play hardly any role in the mayor’s thinking.
This post is the first in a series considering costs in healthcare. I plan to reflect on the roles that insurance companies, Medicare, healthcare providers, and any other factor that comes to mind play. This first post in the series will be about the role of healthcare insurance companies in increasing the cost of healthcare. All of my figures are drawn from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
To my eye the remarkable thing about the insurance component of healthcare costs is how consistent they’ve been since 2017. That’s true whether you’re looking at healthcare insurance company profit margins (net income divided by net earned premium):
Year
Profit Margin (%)
2010
3.9
2011
3.4
2012
2.7
2013
2.2
2014
1.1
2015
0.6
2016
1.1
2017
2.4
2018
3.2
2019
3.0
2020
3.8
2021
2.0
2022
2.4
2023
2.2
2024
0.8
or as a percentage of total healthcare spending:
Year
Insurance Costs (% of Total Health Spending)
2010
6.4
2011
6.5
2012
6.7
2013
6.8
2014
6.7
2015
6.8
2016
6.9
2017
6.7
2018
6.6
2019
6.8
2020
6.9
2021
6.7
2022
6.6
Profit margins soared during the reduction in utilization that took place but they have averaged around 3%. As a percentage of GDP insurance costs have varied from 6.4% to 6.9%. That’s so consistent my conclusion is that they are artifacts.
My tentative conclusion from that is that healthcare insurance costs are not driving cost increases; they’re following them.
Please don’t construe this as support for healthcare insurance companies. I don’t think that healthcare insurance should exist, at least not in its present form. Too many things presently covered are not insurable risks.
The story of the day is the “No Kings” rallies going on around the country. Chicago has been the site of one of the largest. It probably won’t be as large today because of the rain.
I don’t object to them so long as they remain non-violent but I don’t see much point to them, either. I don’t believe in kings (probably less than most Americans since I hale from a particularly Anglophobe part of the country). I don’t even watch Downton Abbey. I do believe in democracy (probably more than most Americans since I hale from a particularly populist part of the country).
But I don’t think they do much good or mean much, either. That may be colored by my living in Chicago, a remarkably oligarchic even hereditary oligarchic place. Here we are governed by lawless oligarchs and have been for most of the last century. Oh, yes, we have elections. Those are mostly pro forma.
Update
I want to agree with something that Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy has been quoted as saying at the DC “No Kings” rally:
We are not on the verge of an authoritarian takeover; we are in the midst of an authoritarian takeover.
My recommendation would be to vote against every incumbent politician.
