Yesterday I heard that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had undergone surgery to have two malignant growths removed from her lung and that she is doing well after surgery with no other signs of cancer. I wish Justice Ginsburg well.

Not to be a crepe hanger but that did bring up several questions for me. I’m not a doctor. I am unaware of a reliable blood enzyme test for pancreatic cancer. How do they know that her lung growths are not metastatic cancer? I know that metastatic cancer is when a cancer spreads to other organs beyond its original point of origin and is, presumably, diagnosed by the presence of certain blood enzymes. I also know that when you have had cancer once there is a slightly elevated risk for getting another, not just of the same type but of a different type.

Justice Ginsburg has now had cancer at least two and possibly three times. What is her present risk of getting cancer again?

I suppose I should comment on Gen. James Mattis’s resignation as Secretary of Defense. I thought that during his tenure as SecDef he was a welcome tonic to the often mercurial president. It was a thankless job and I’m surprised he stuck it out as long as he did. The editors of the New York Times declaimed:

Jim Mattis is stepping down as defense secretary, a day after President Trump overruled him and other top national security advisers by ordering the rapid withdrawal of all 2,000 American ground troops from Syria. Mr. Mattis, a retired four-star general, said in his letter of resignation that his views on a number of foreign policy and defense matters were fundamentally at odds with those of the president.

while the editors of the Wall Street Journal report:

On Thursday, Mr. Trump tweeted that “Getting out of Syria was no surprise” because he campaigned on it. But the abruptness of the announcement did catch his own advisers and the world by surprise. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Joseph Dunford, is widely reported to have not been consulted.

Withdrawing those 2,000 American troops from the Middle East is a significant act for which allies in the region and elsewhere needed a decent interval to prepare. Mr. Trump gave them none. The decision, which emerged after Mr. Trump’s phone call with Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan, did earn public praise from one big beneficiary—Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Then on Thursday Mr. Trump tweeted that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, one of his strongest appointees, “will be retiring” in February. This landed shortly after the Journal reported that Mr. Trump may withdraw most U.S. troops from Afghanistan within weeks. Mr. Mattis’s resignation letter makes clear he is leaving because he disagrees with Mr. Trump’s treatment of allies and his impulsive decision making.

This may come as a shock to the editors but “civilian” control” means that those are the president’s decisions to make. Not the Secretary of Defense’s. Not the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The president’s.

My advice: carpe diem. Donald Trump may be the only president with the temerity to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan or, indeed, Syria. We aren’t making progress in Afghanistan any more and it’s unclear to me whether we’re making progress in Syria or not. In Syria a “political solution” that does not include leaving the Alawite regime in place is either wishful thinking or antithetical to our interests. The Kurds know that and are highly likely to make common cause with Syria.

As Lord Palmerston put it more than a century and a half ago, we have no permanent allies, only permanent interests. Turkey has not been our ally for at least 20 years. Can any Islamist country be a reliable NATO member? I have my doubts.

For context, read this piece at Lawfare on the judge’s outrageous conduct during Michael Flynn’s sentencing hearing.

Conclusion:

Under statute the Supreme Court has an affirmative responsibility to discipline judges for ethics violations and bias among other things and any American has the right to bring such abuses to their attention. The rule of law and the rule of lawyers are not the same thing. You have a right to bring instances of abuse of power to the attention of the members of the Supreme Court and they have a responsibility to deal with them. At the very least judges who abuse their power should be disciplined as should Supreme Court justices who refuse to do their jobs even unpalatable parts of their jobs.

Here is the peroration of Michelle Alexander’s New York Times op-ed about the terrible immorality of birthright citizenship:

It’s tempting to imagine that our position as gatekeepers is morally sound — since we’re frequently reminded that “all nations have a right to defend their borders” — but our relationship to those who are fleeing poverty and violence is morally complex. Not only does birthright citizenship bestow upon us a privileged status that we haven’t earned; our nation’s unparalleled wealth and power, as well as our actual borders, lack a sturdy moral foundation. But for slavery, genocide and colonization, we would not be the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world — in fact, our nation would not even exist. This is not hyperbole; it’s history. There’s good reason some Mexicans say: “We didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us.” That is, in fact, what happened.

It is terribly difficult to debate someone at a distance, especially when you have so little common agreement with them about morality, law, or even language.

Let’s start with language. Here is the second definition of “earn” as thoughtfully provided by Merriam-Webster:

2a : to come to be duly worthy of or entitled or suited to
she earned a promotion
b : to make worthy of or obtain for
the suggestion earned him a promotion

Those of us born in the United States have earned citizenship in that sense by virtue of U. S. law. Those whom she cites who have entered the United States in contravention of U. S. law have not. They have committed crimes in doing so. Their guilt from those crimes may be mitigated by virtue of their motives but they are not eliminated by them. We are legally entitled to punish them for those crimes as long as we do so justly.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which had its 70th anniversary the other day, a most expansive document, does not recognize a right of immigration. Emigration but not immigration. It also does not recognize a universal right of U. S. citizenship. Prudently, it recognizes that it is up to the governments of individual countries to determine who is a citizen and who is not. Just as Mexico may determine who is a Mexican citizen the United States may determine who is a U. S. citizen. It is not up to Americans to determine who is a Mexican citizen any more than it is up to Mexicans to determine who is an American citizen.

Two hundred years ago Mexico had acquired its territory at the time in the same way that every present country has: by seizing it by force of arms from its previous owners. The status of territory 200 years ago has no legal or moral relevance today.

Morally, we are required to treat people decently, kindly, and justly. We are not required to give them jobs or citizenship. If we are Christians, we are required to treat them in a caring way. We are not required to make them citizens or even grant them legal residency. “Render unto Caesar, etc.” We should feed them, clothe them, and care for their wounds.

Finally, neither Emma Lazarus nor Margaret Mead have any political, legal, or moral standing. Margaret Mead may have some authority in cultural anthropology but even that is a matter of some doubt. Just about everything she ever wrote has been challenged by later anthropologists.

This piece by Daniel DiMartino at RealClearPolicy sounds a number of themes near and dear to my heart:

In the wake of a recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report that revealed that federal highway spending could face a 30 percent cut after 2021, Democrats and Republicans are rallying together around infrastructure. Many members of Congress now agree on raising the gas tax or indebting the nation to pay for increased infrastructure spending. Meanwhile, President Trump has endorsed a gas tax increase to pay for his $200 billion infrastructure plan. But Congress should not pass some massive spending bill to try and solve America’s infrastructure problem — it should empower states to fix it themselves, and drastically reduce the federal role in highway funding.

Just to enumerate a few…

1. The federal government has a legitimate role in genuinely interstate travel, e.g. bridges across rivers that border states. It does not have a legitimate role in commuter roads or transport.
2. People are more likely to make prudent judgments when they foot the bill themselves.
3. Lower federal taxes could create more “head room” for increased state and local taxes.
4. The experience in some states, e.g. Missouri, clearly demonstrates that people are willing to tax themselves to pay for things that they want.
5. Centralizing decision-making infantilizes state and local governments.
6. The Mass Transit Account is just one of the thousands of ways in which suburban and rural Americans subsidize citydwellers.

As me auld mither used to say we can afford anything we want but we can’t afford everything we want.

The editors of the Chicago Tribune are alarmed that Illinois continues to shrink:

When he takes office in January, Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker will have fewer constituents than he might have expected. Unfortunately he’ll also have fewer constituents working and paying taxes to support Illinois’ state and local governments. Every time a worker departs, the tax burden on those of us who remain grows.

The release on Wednesday of new census data about Illinois was alarming: Not only has the flight of citizens continued for a fifth straight year, but the population loss is intensifying. This year’s estimated net reduction of 45,116 residents is the worst of these five losing years.

and

Why are so many people departing? Certainly some leave because they don’t like winter weather, or summer humidity, we suppose. But the trail out West or to down South is well worn. There’s nothing new about Sun Belt migration, and indeed, the story in Illinois is that for decades a steady, fairly predictable number of Illinois residents left for other places. Over the past few decades, about 65,000 more people voluntarily left the state each year than arrived. It was neither shocking nor worrisome.

The change came in 2014. That year, with the Great Recession well over, the domestic migration shortfall jumped from 68,204 to 93,704. The negative number jumped again in 2015 (106,544) and again in 2016 (109,941). In 2017, more exodus: 114,779. And now in 2018, Illinois lost another 114,154 people. If you’ve read our editorials about what we call the “Illinois Exodus,” you’ve met many of these people and absorbed their families’ stories. They include young people who will build their futures elsewhere, far from the families who raised them and hoped to keep them close.

Many of them left because they believed Illinois is headed in the wrong direction. Because Illinois politicians have raised taxes, milked employers and created enormous public indebtedness that the pols want to address with … still more taxation.

Consider, too, the implications for a diminished Illinois in Congress. When Madigan was born 76 years ago, Illinois boasted 27 seats in the U.S. House. Yet in recent decades as the growth-squelching, hostile-to-employers agenda of Springfield has driven people to economically friendlier states, that number has plummeted to 18. In the next reapportionment, after the 2020 census, that number surely will drop to 17. Wednesday’s news of continuing population decline here increases the chance the Illinois’ U.S. House delegation instead will shrink to 16.

Left unmentioned: the median income of those departing is higher than the median income of those remaining.

The weather in Illinois didn’t suddenly become worse in 2014 and I’ve been to Texas. It does not have better weather than Illinois. Illinois isn’t losing population to Texas because of Texas’s benign climate other than its business and tax climates.

Illinois cannot tax and borrow its way to prosperity. The reason is simple mathematics: the debt must be serviced by fewer, poorer people than those by whom it was incurred.

J. B. Pritzker was elected on a platform of increased spending and the probably elusive goal of creating a graduated income tax here, something that would require that the state’s constitution be amended.

All of the interventionists, neocons, and anyone else promoting the advancement of American interests through war over the period of the last 30 years have been condemning the announcement that the U. S. would be withdrawing its small force from Syria. The editors of the Washington Post are pretty typical of the lot:

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S sudden move to yank U.S. troops out of Syria undermined at a stroke several foreign policy goals he has championed. The president promised to finish the job of destroying the Islamic State, but the withdrawal will leave thousands of its fighters still in place. He vowed to roll back Iran’s aggression across the Middle East, but his decision will allow its forces to entrench in the country that is the keystone of Tehran’s ambitions. He promised to protect Israel, but that nation will now be left to face alone the buildup by Iran and its proxies along its northern border.

as are the editors of the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Trump inherited a mess in Syria, and by the time he took office it was far more difficult to enforce a no-fly zone to protect opponents of the Bashar Assad regime. But the U.S. presence in northeastern Syria amounted to a de facto no-fly zone that allowed the Kurdish and Arab Syrian Democratic Forces to clear out as many ISIS cells as possible. Keeping 2,500 forces in northeast Syria to continue this work is hardly an exorbitant commitment. It is not nation-building.

The stakes are also larger than ISIS. Mr. Trump made his withdrawal decision soon after a phone call with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been threatening to attack the Kurds in Syria. Trump officials insist they aren’t abandoning our allies, but the SDF will now have to make its own survival calculations in striking deals with Mr. Erdoğan, Mr. Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers.

Withdrawing U.S. troops greatly reduces U.S. influence on a diplomatic solution to the Syrian civil war. The U.S. can complain at the United Nations, and it can block money for rebuilding the country, but facts on the ground count for far more. That’s especially true for Iran, which is turning southern Syria into a forward operating base against Israel.

while those who are more skeptical of spreading democracy at the point of a gun are holding their peace. Those who have argued we have a grave moral obligation to remove a criminal like Assad have a better case but I note, perhaps pettily, that their sense of obligation does not extend to taking up arms themselves or foregoing other goals they desire in the interest of that obligation. My own view is that however criminal Assad and the Alawite regime he represents, every other real alternative is worse. If your interest is the people of Syria, you should want the conflict there to end as quickly as possible which means either aiding the Russians and Iranians or simply standing aside to let them complete their task.

Those concerned for the Kurds in our absence should recognize that the Turks are not our friends and have not been our friends for 15 years. No Islamist government should be considered a NATO member and how anyone could think anything else astonishes me.

At Ricochet James Pethokoukis warns us to prepare for an America with an economy growing faster than we might expect:

What might things be like in, say, 2040? The expert consensus predicts the same old, same old economic growth, about the same pace as we’ve seen throughout the 2000s. A (maybe, nearly, hopefully) 2 percent economy. Real GDP will likely grow at about half the pace of what it did in the last half of the 20th century.

And there are good reasons for this forecast, a combo of demographics (an aging society with lower birthrates) and weak productivity growth. On that latter point, the Robert Gordon argument laid out in “The Rise and Fall of American Growth” represents the baseline in mainstream thinking. All the low-hanging fruit of innovation has been picked. New inventions like the iPhone and even autonomous vehicles pale against the old such as electrification and the combustion engine. Sorry, Millennials.

But what if the future is already here, just not widely distributed? What if artificial intelligence and advanced robotics spread throughout the economy and improve, boosting worker productivity and economic growth and incomes? How about a 1990s-style tech boom that keeps on booming? That’s just the optimistic prediction of the consultancy Capital Economics, as outlined in its first long-term forecast.

My answer to that is who cares? Let’s do a little thought experiment.

Imagine that just one person, say Bill Gates, in the United States’s income rises by a trillion dollars over the next 20 years and everybody else’s stayed the same. Most of the money stays in the financial system, a lot is spent on good works outside the U. S., and a little leaks into the U. S. economy.

Good for him but it doesn’t mean much to me one way or another. That’s the extreme case.

Now look at the graph at the top of this post. That’s the Gini index, a measure of income inequality, in the U. S. over time. It has been going up—meaning incomes are becoming less equal over time. When I was a kid it resembled that of most Western European countries. Now it’s more like Saudi Arabia’s.

My answer to Mr. Pethokoukis is that a growing economy is great but not nearly enough. We need a society in which the income is spread around a little more evenly and there’s no obvious way to get there.

My point is that there is a perceptual component to economic growth and my advice to the top .1% of income earners to whom most of the incremental income is accruing is that it’s in your interest for other people to feel that they have a greater stake in economic growth.

A week or so ago I complained about the increasing level of crime in my neighborhood. Here’s an example of what I was talking about from ABC 7 Chicago:

SKOKIE, Ill. (WLS) — A pair of carjackings this week in Chicago’s suburbs have police on alert.

The latest incident occurred Tuesday. Police are still looking for five suspects at the center of a crime spree that began with a stolen car in west suburban Elmhurst and then a retail theft at Old Orchard Mall in north suburban Skokie.

It was there were the suspects stole another car at gunpoint from a 13-year-old student and her mother in the Niles North High School parking lot, fled, then crashed the second vehicle and set it on fire.

Police said just before 1 p.m. they were alerted to a retail theft at the Nordstrom in Old Orchard Center. Witnesses told police they saw five males running out of the store carrying purses.

Police said those suspects got into a stolen silver Audi and tried to flee, but crashed into another vehicle on the west side of the mall.

Elmhurst police said the silver Audi had been stolen from the 800-block of North Addison Street. Police said the keys had been left in the ignition, and the owner left a loaded .380 caliber handgun in the car.

Police said the suspects abandoned the Audi and at least one ran to the parking lot of Niles North High School where they stole a Jeep at gunpoint.

“I just thought, is this real? Is this actually happening? Why did this happen to us?” said the 13-year-old girl inside the car. ABC7 Eyewitness News is protecting her identity.

The girl spoke to ABC7 with her parents about the encounter that left her shaken.

“He came up to my mom and started pulling her out of the car, telling her to get out and leave everything. He was pointing a gun at her head,” the girl said.

The girl and her mother had just left a meeting when they were met by the gunman.

“I was yelling at the guy to don’t hurt her,” she said. “I thought, is he going to kill her? Is he going to kill me?”

Police described that suspect as a black male, over 6 feet tall, with a thin build and who was bald and wearing a black coat. Police did not release descriptions of any of the other suspects.

The stolen Jeep then picked up the rest of the suspects before fleeing southbound on Interstate 94. Police found the car in a parking lot near Cicero Avenue and Peterson Avenue in Chicago, abandoned and apparently set on fire.

Destroyed in the backseat were the girl’s book bag full of school supplies and the computer she uses for class.

“He took everything that we had and just burned it all,” she said. “The only good thing is that he let me go and didn’t just kill me right there.”

The burning car was abandoned a block and a half from my house. The culprits are still at large.

That same parking lot was the scene of a carjacking a week or so ago. There had been a previous carjacking two blocks north of me. There have been several armed robberies and an increasing number of burglaries.

We pay the highest property taxes in Chicago while the values of our houses haven’t increased in 20 years.

I’ve already told you about the mismanaged road repairs in our neighborhood. I’m beginning to think that Chicago doesn’t want us. It isn’t just the taxes. It’s not receiving value for what we’re paying.