Death of a City

I have been going into my downtown office almost daily since June, but I now mostly drive and not train, park, do what I need to do, and then quickly leave without going more than a block from my office. But on the Tuesday lunch hour I decided to walk around a bit to see what the city’s heart looked like after months of pandemic and renewed riots and looting over the weekend.  I gripped my pepper spray tightly in my right hand and began my self-guided tour.

It was a brilliant late summer day, warm and dry, the kind of day that normally draws throngs of workers out of their cubicles out on their lunch break to stroll with the tourists taking in the city sights.  But not today.  Today, the streets were nearly empty, though, sans a few mostly masked people scattered here and there and beggars posted on nearly every street corner and in front of every Dunkin’ or Starbucks that was opened, their zombie-like appearance and the scene conjuring up images of the dystopian Will Smith film I Am Legend.

I walked toward State Street (that formerly Great Street), past the trash in the streets and the boarded up storefronts and office buildings.  Many stores still had unswept piles of shards of glass in front of them.  There was little traffic and the stillness at midday was unsettling.  It was more like an early Sunday morning than a midday, midweek scene in the loop.   I finally made it over to Michigan Avenue.  Several buildings were boarded up, and many of the retail stores.  I walked past the outdoor tables of the restaurants that would normally be fully occupied with a line waiting to get in on a gorgeous day like today.  Sadly, as I passed by each one, they had no more than one or two tables taken.

I turned down Michigan Avenue, walking toward Pauline Books and Media, the Catholic bookstore operated by the Daughters of St. Paul and braced myself for what I was about to see.  The good sisters were looted the last time around and I fully expected to see shattered glass, and statues and books strewn about.  As the store came into view, I was overwhelmed with emotion to find it intact.  This time around, the looters bypassed the store.  Nothing had been touched.  All of the statues and crucifixes were safe in their glass displays.  Not a book was out of place.  I chatted with one of the nuns and she said that an alarm went off but it was for something else and they prayed and prayed.  I bought a copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions and some bookmarks and when I checked out, one of the good sisters talked to me about God’s grace.  Ironically, I had attended Jennifer Frey’s lecture on Flannery O’Connor’s vision of grace in A Good Man Is Hard to Find earlier this year, about how somehow we find grace and redemption in the darkness.  (Here it is if you are so inclined   https://www.lumenchristi.org/event/2020/02/flannery-oconnor-vision-of-grace-jennifer-frey).  The brief conversations with the sisters have given me a lot to think about after seeing the results of the nihilism and destruction that has been wrought upon the city.    At least the Catholic bookstore was spared in this city with such a strong Irish, Polish and Hispanic Catholic backbone.

But that island of hope cannot mask the reality of a dying city.  Macy’s has given notice that it is abandoning Water Tower.  Navy Pier, a premier tourist attraction has announced that it may close.  The looting damaged the Ronald McDonald House.  Of course, we hear almost nightly new stories of the terrible violence in the city, the murder of children, the carjackings, the hold ups.  With murder and mayhem all around, Mayor Lightfoot announced the establishment of a “statue review committee” to determine which statues are offensive, begging the question of why the concern over inanimate objects when black children are being slaughtered each weekend.

As I toured the wreckage, the reality began to sink in, that this great city will never be the same.  Carl Sandburg’s City of the Big Shoulders has been reduced to a slightly upgraded version of Mogadishu.  The Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads, and Freight Handler to the Nation is now a shadow of its former self, less safe than Kigali, Rwanda.

The runoff of population that was already underway and accelerating with the threat of Pritzker’s “Fair Tax” will turn into a flood.   Baby boomers that looked forward to downsizing and living in a condo downtown to enjoy the culture and restaurants have taken that off the table.  Dinner and the Lyric Opera or Chicago Symphony loses its appeal if there is a real threat of a carjacking awaiting you.

O’Connor’s short story involves death and grace and I urge you to read it—it’s very short and meaningful.   I am desperately searching for God’s grace in this--- the death of a city.  I have had to write several eulogies and tributes over the course of my life for individuals that have passed from the scene.   Soon it appears that I will have to write one not for just a person, but for an entire city, a city where I have very deep roots (part of my family has been here since the Great Chicago Fire).   My tour was like seeing your once robust, lively father hooked up to monitors and breathing tubes in the hospital in his last days.   It is almost incomprehensible that he is in this state, helpless, hanging on, never to be the person he once was.  Like a person that eventually concedes to disease, injury, and bodily breakdown, this city’s body is collapsing under the weight of decades of corruption, graft, gangs, and violence. 

This is what the death of a city looks like.

 

 

Childrens' Lives Matter

The world is in turmoil over pandemic and perceived racial inequities, and once these things calm down a bit, Greta Thunberg is sure to surface again and wag her finger at us for not doing enough about climate change.  While media, sports and Hollywood are obsessing over “racial injustice,” age injustice towers over racial injustice as a problem in our society.

Age injustice?  Yes, age injustice.  Age injustice runs counter to the American Dream and we are failing on several fronts.  You see, the American Dream goes something like this—you come to this country, or you come from very modest means and you suffer the indignities of a marginal existence, doing crummy, low paying jobs day after day, without complaint, so that your children can receive a decent education and have a better life than you had.  Perhaps they can get into a profession, have more control over their lives, live in a better neighborhood, afford a real therapist instead of the local bartender. 

After the Manchester bombing in May of 2017, I wrote a blog post that excoriated the West for not doing enough to keep our children safe (.http://commonsense-mark.blogspot.com/2017/05/our-children.html)   Last autumn, I wrote a post entitled Bloody Fall, in which I highlighted the murders of 4 young high school and college girls of different races last fall (http://commonsense-mark.blogspot.com/2019/12/bloody-fall.html).

Things have not gotten better.  Of all the stresses that are affecting our society, our failure to put our children first, to have enough of them,  to protect them, to nurture and educate them, to allow them to have a childhood worries me a great deal.

After the Manchester bombing, I was concerned about Islamic terror. But it turns out that most of the terror is coming from within our own population.  In Philadelphia, 100 children under the age of 18 have been shot so far this year.  In Chicago, 38 juveniles have been killed so far this year.  Shootings are up 53% in New York, with many children as victims.  Similar increases are occurring across the U.S.  The shootings affect those families and the friends of those kids, depriving them of the magic of childhood.  One Chicago Public School has lost 3 players to its football team to gun violence.  As I asserted after the Manchester bombing, a civilization that will not do what is necessary to protect its young from physical violence is in serious trouble.

The management of our schools during this pandemic is another indicator of putting children last.  Teachers unions across the country have demanded that they not be required to teach in person due to COVID19.   And most districts caved, even though numerous studies have shown that the risk of transmission of COVID19 by children is not significant. We do know that remote learning is ineffective, especially for special needs children and lower income children.   The cost to these children is incalculable.  Many will never be able to make up the loss in math and science.  The psychological costs of social isolation are beginning to pile up.  Yet the unions remain intractable.  In a different era, we took on risks to ensure a better life for our children.  But not this generation. 

A monumental debt burden is the legacy we are leaving to our children.  The national debt is at $25 trillion and rising.  State governments like Illinois are leaving the next generation an unmanageable debt level.  And this is on top of a burgeoning debt load many individuals took on to get a college degree.  This is unconscionable.  Instead of leaving them something in the will, so to speak, we are consuming their future earnings, their future wealth, their future opportunities.  Neither of our political parties even talk about it.

Finally, there is the sexual abuse, sexual exploitation and sexualization of children.  Incredibly, much of this has been perpetrated through institutions.  Yes, there has been the coverup by the Catholic Church.  But we have also had the UN involved (Peter Newell, the top UN childrens’ rights official was just jailed for sexually assaulting a child).  We had the incredible scandal at Michigan State with Larry Nassar that resulted in the resignation of MSU’s president and charges brought against the athletic director.  The details of Epstein’s island are unfolding with the implication of Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton.  Libraries across the country have been hosting Drag Queen Story Hours.  Hasbro just released a troll doll that giggles when you touch it in its private area.  The New York Times has been running op-eds suggesting that pedophilia is not a criminal act but either a treatable condition or a sexual preference.  The liberals’ open border policy conveniently ignores the widespread child sex trafficking that goes on.  There are many tentacles to this, but the bottom line is that we are permitting the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and continue to normalize pedophilia.  This needs to stop and it needs to stop now.

Racial injustice is infinitesimally tiny in the West.  Age injustice is the elephant in the room.  Our inability and unwillingness to sacrifice for, and protect our children is unconscionable. Our recent riots are a ruse.  We should be rioting over how we treat our children.

 

Criminal Inversion

Two weeks ago, we observed the 51^st anniversary of man’s first landing on the moon.  Neil Armstrong first set foot upon the moon on July 20, 1969, followed by Buzz Aldrin (who I had the pleasure of hearing speak a couple of years ago at the Printers Row Lit Fest) while Michael Collins circled above, waiting for them to reunite and ferry them safely home.  The moon landing was one of America’s singular achievements of the 20^th century and all of America was transfixed by this scientific, engineering and, yes, government accomplishment.

Armstrong’s death, like his life, was observed in a rather low key and modest fashion.  It was reported in the news and PBS ran a special on his life, but his modest funeral service was attended by a few hundred people and he was buried at sea with little fanfare.  There are only a couple of statues of him – one at Purdue and one at USC (thankfully, not destroyed yet).   Armstrong was truly an American hero, an iconic and yet modest man that risked much to do what America asked of him (the lunar module had only about 15 seconds of fuel remaining when it set down on the lunar surface).

Fast forward about a half century to the funerals of George Floyd.  His death came at the hands of an overzealous rogue police officer with a string of complaints of rough treatment of citizens.  But Floyd himself had quite a record of criminal behavior, imprisoned for 5 years for assault and battery of a pregnant woman.  His run in with Chauvin arose out of passing counterfeit money and he had fentanyl and meth in his system.  However the trial of Chauvin turns out, the fact remains that Floyd was not someone you would want as your neighbor. Yet Floyd’s passing was marked by 4 funerals, a gilded casket, wall-to-wall news coverage and sobbing and wailing by liberal politicians.

The contrast between George Floyd’s funeral with Armstrong’s memorial service couldn’t be more stark.  In 50 short years, this is where we are.

The criminal inversion has been brewing for some time.  Barack Obama gave it legs by claiming the police acted “stupidly” in the arrest of Henry Louis Gates and then welcomed Black Lives Matter into the White House with open arms.

Like most really bad ideas, the criminal inversion—lionizing and freeing criminals and punishing law abiding citizens began in the university system.  It began at Oberlin College where the local bakery had 3 black youths prosecuted for shoplifting.  The university began a campaign to drive out the bakery, organized protests and canceled its contract with the bakery, claiming the bakery was “racist.”  The bakery sued for libel and obtained a $25 million judgment (reduced to $11 million).  The Gibson’s Bakery case was really the first significant case of an attempt to turn the victim of a crime into the perpetrator.

But with pandemic and the George Floyd incident, things have rolled downhill very quickly.  While prison reform was passed,  COVID19 gave progressive (read: Marxist) politicians the excuse to empty prisons.  Bail reform and feckless prosecutors like Kim Foxx declined to prosecute cases.   And then with the George Floyd incident, the insane “defund the police” movement gained traction, with New York, Minneapolis, Portland and other cities substantially reducing resources devoted to policing (Chicago had quietly done this over time) with a concomitant spike in violent crime.

The citizenry noticed when, during the pandemic, criminals were set free and rioters were let loose to wreak havoc, smash retail establishments and steal goods, while normal, law abiding citizens were arrested at beaches, playgrounds and parks for violating social distancing rules.  Local governments gave protesters a free pass to gather in masses while ordinary working people were forbidden to attend church services.

In Atlanta, the police officer that shot Rayshard Brooks after Brooks stole the officer’s taser and fired at him was charged with felony murder.  Brooks, like George Floyd was lionized by the press and even some politicians like Indiana senator Mike Braun.  ABC wrote a glowing profile of Brooks, calling him a “dedicated family man” even though he beat his wife and child and had multiple felonies on his record.

Most egregiously, the McCluskeys of St. Louis were charged with a felony for the unlawful use of a weapon when they responded to a mob that had broken down their gate and threatened to overrun their home.  None of the threatening mob was charged.   And now there are reports of prosecutorial misconduct as there are allegations that the prosecutors office tampered with Mrs. McCluskey’s gun to make it operable (it was heretofore inoperable).

Beginning with the Obama administration, there was a concerted effort to degrade police officers, distort the true incidents of police brutality, and criminalize the police and private citizens while at the same time liberating criminals through “criminal justice reform,” low or no bail and the pretext of COVID19 risk (while placing the risk of criminal behavior on law abiding citizens).

What’s behind this?  Nothing less than the wholesale destruction of American society.  Saddam Hussein emptied his prisons on the eve of the U.S. invasion figuring that dispersing criminal elements would make the country ungovernable by an occupying force.  The Radical Left is using the exact same tactic to fracture American society.  By demonizing the people whose job it is to keep the peace and freeing and lionizing those that would do us harm, they are making our society ungovernable.  If this continues, only a totalitarian right or left leader will be able to regain control, and the Radical Left is betting that it will be the latter.

Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Them Goodbye

Below is an email that I sent to the Chicago White Sox this week.

Dear Chicago White Sox Organization:

The Chicago White Sox have been part of my life as long as I can remember.  One of my earliest memories was being on my father’s lap during a fireworks show at old Comiskey.  I had a treasured ball hit by Don Buford when I was a boy.  I also kept a 1967 yearbook and I remember Joel Horlen, Smokey Burgess and Ken Berry.  In high school, I reveled in the South Side Hit Men and that exciting summer of 1977 with Nancy Faust playing “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” after Ritchie Zisk and Oscar Gamble pounded home runs all summer long.  Later, there was the ’83 Winning Ugly team and, of course, the capstone of the glorious 2005 World Series victory.  I have a lifetime of memories around the White Sox.

Just prior to the COVID19 outbreak, a consultant and I were discussing the purchase of a ticket package for client entertainment.  The White Sox looked like an exciting team this year with exciting prospects.

All of this is gone now.  I am writing to tell you that I will not set foot at Guaranteed Rate (or whatever your ballpark is called in the future) again.  I have unfollowed all the MLB and White Sox related sites on social media.  The old yearbook has been pitched.

MLB’s support and alliance with Black Lives Matter makes attending a ballgame distasteful and intolerable.  This Marxist organization is committed to, among other things, “the disruption of the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.” Night after night, we have seen the violence, looting and havoc wreaked by BLM members in its name.  Their members chant “Pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon” and “What do we want? Dead cops.  When do we want it? Now.”   The founders of Black Lives Matter are “trained Marxists” (their own words) and one of their representatives explicitly told Martha MacCallum that he intended to “burn it all down.”  It is reprehensible that the league intends to support and promote an organization that openly advocates Marxism, the destruction of the family, and violence against law enforcement. 

Most hypocritical of all is one of your star players, Jose Abreu,  who joined the kneelers.  Abreu somehow made his  way out of Communist Cuba to come to the U.S. to play ball.  Had he remained in Cuba,  he’d still be eating rice and beans with his ration of chicken and playing in rickety, run down ballparks.  Instead, he was able to escape and make millions, and he now disgraces the freedom and riches that this great nation offered him.  If Marxism was for him, why did he bother to go through the machinations required to leave his beloved Cuba?

Baseball is truly the American pastime.  I was eagerly looking forward to the start of this shortened season, the Field of Dreams game this summer and a young team that looked like it will be competitive for many years,  and it saddens me that I will miss all that.  But you and the rest of the league have chosen to abandon me as a fan and customer, so I am abandoning you.  I will not be purchasing the ticket package this year….or ever.  I will use my leisure time to pursue other activities, and I will find other ways to entertain clients. 

Best of luck to you and the league.   The COVID19 experience will allow your players get accustomed to playing in empty stadiums.

Teaching Management Skills?

I saw this coming but harbored secret hopes that the Booth School of Business and the Becker Friedman Center at The University of Chicago could resist, but alas their resolve is collapsing.  From what I can gather, only tiny Hillsdale College has been able to stand firm and not kneel before  the BLM forces.

As a prelude, a few years ago, I attended a program at the Becker Friedman Institute, chaired by then director John List to hear economist Casey Mulligan speak.  In his introductory remarks, List spoke about building the pipeline for Chicago, how it is attempting to recruit top notch faculty, and how difficult it is to hold on to talent as other schools constantly attempt to poach Chicago faculty.  I noted then that I heard only words of “academic excellence,” “intellectual rigor,” “creativity” and the like.  List uttered not one word about “diversity” and “inclusiveness.” But that was then and this is now.

Last week, Dean of the Booth School of Business Madhav Rajan sent out a blast email to alumni with the subject line “Strengthening Diversity and Inclusion at Booth” (reprinted below).

In it, Rajan outlines a major push purportedly to improve “diversity and inclusion” at Booth.  Rajan, who hails from India (I’m never sure where Indians fit into Woke culture of whites versus brown and black people) dispatches a missive that could have come from any progressive liberal arts college in the country.  Booth is consistently ranked among the top 5 business schools in the country and is known for its top flight economists, and quantitative rigor, yet Rajan felt compelled to worship the diversity gods in a very pedestrian and ordinary way. 

Here are my responses to Rajan’s missive:

-        Rajan is compelled to invoke George Floyd in his opening paragraph.  While Floyd’s death sparked a great deal of unrest and it appears to have been a case of terrible police brutality, that single incident should not be sufficient to require a wholesale shift of focus of the school.  Among other things, Floyd’s death has not yet been adjudicated, the facts have not been fully heard (Floyd had fentanyl in his system) and there is not a shred of solid evidence to show that his death was racially motivated, or even whether he was killed by the officer. To be clear, Mr. Floyd himself was a very bad man—so bad, in fact, that society determined that he had to be removed from it for five years—a long sentence.  It does not appear that Mr. Floyd hadn’t learned his lesson and was not very repentant as he was still engaged in illegal activity.  So to invoke George Floyd as an impetus for a major initiative at a business school seems misplaced, to say the least.

-        Rajan blindly accepts the term “inclusion.” What does that term mean, exactly?  For its entire history, the Booth School of Business stood for something quite the opposite—it was “exclusive.”   This is a school with Nobel Prize winners on its faculty.   It is an intellectually ELITE school.  It boasted average GMAT scores of 730 or better, which is in the 95^th  percentile.  Additionally, Booth’s emphasis on mathematical ability will skew admissions even further.  The Booth School is, and should be, exclusive, not inclusive.  It screens out applicants that do not have the quantitative aptitude to handle the rigor of its curriculum.  Its faculty is even more elite, and its stated goal has been to attract and retain faculty members that are the equivalent of academic Olympic athletes, regardless of skin color. 

      

       Astonishingly, as part of his “diversity and inclusiveness” push, Rajan proposes to include “unconscious bias training.”  Much has been written about the ineffectiveness of such training in corporate America.  There is no definitive empirical evidence that it does anything much.  The very institution most known for its ability to empirically test hypotheses now proposes to include mandatory training that its own management that has no quantifiable effectiveness.  It's almost as if Rajan had Ta-Nehisi Coates as an advisor.

-        Most importantly, minorities (Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans)  make up 27% of the student body at Chicago Booth.   The latest census shows that such minorities make up 30% of the U.S. population.  Unless I’m missing the point, it looks like the Booth School of Business is awful darn close to reflecting the general population in its student body.  Rajan appears to be investing an awful lot of time and resources into a problem that does not seem to exist.  The numbers don’t break out percentages among minority groups, and if Rajan is focused on African Americans, he needs to say that.  Otherwise, the numbers don’t support his assertion.

Dean Rajan’s email is troubling on a number of fronts.  This is a school that relentlessly challenges its students to identify and solve the right problem and utilize quantitative tools to marshal resources and to measure progress.  Yet, Rajan puts forward scant evidence that the Booth School has fallen flat in its minority representation.  Moreover, if not enough minorities (especially African Americans) have the quantitative skills to perform at Booth, that is not a problem Rajan can solve.  Those skills are acquired much earlier in life.  By the time someone is 21 or older, it’s too late.   That is the job of primary, secondary and universities to tackle, and not a graduate school.   

The leader of one of the top business schools in the country misidentifies a problem, allocates scarce resources to solving it, proposes steps that are known to be ineffective, and doesn’t appropriately measure any of it.  That’s all the elements of poor management.  Rajan missed an opportunity to bring a uniquely Chicago approach and voice to the conversation and instead opted to send a message that could have been written by any other college president or dean.

________________________________________________________________________

Dear Chicago Booth Community, As you may have seen, the University of Chicago recently announced its plans to address Diversity and Inclusion across the university, in response to recent events including the killing of George Floyd. Chicago Booth welcomes these steps and reaffirms the school’s unwavering commitment to diversity and inclusion, and rejection of racism. Over the past several weeks, I and my senior leadership team have been in conversation with many in our community of students, alumni, faculty, and staff to evaluate and strengthen our work to address racism and create positive change across Chicago Booth. I am thankful to those of you who lifted your voices and demonstrated your deep concern for your school and community. Inspired by the discussions with our full- and part-time MBA community, this week we shared with the students our initial Plan of Action to strengthen diversity and inclusion at Booth. These near- and long-term steps cover a broad range of areas, including student admissions, curriculum, faculty and staff, communications, employer relations, and engagement. The important work articulated in the plan is currently under way, but this is just the first step. We continue to consider ways we can do more and measure our progress going forward. We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a dynamic issue that affects people in different ways, and we understand this will be experienced differently among members of our global community. While we developed this plan with input from our MBA students, these conversations are also taking place across various facets of the school. I would like to express my gratitude to our MBA students, and in particular the students of the African American MBA Association and our student leaders, for sharing their stories, feedback, and ideas to effect meaningful change. Our students’ honesty, passion, and commitment to seeing the school excel have been and will continue to be crucial to our success in making Booth a more diverse and inclusive institution and community. Best wishes, Madhav

Tainted Warrior?

In a chaotic world starved for leadership, I thought we had a solid leader in Jim Mattis.  Indeed, when he resigned as Secretary of Defense in December, 2018 over troop withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, I, along with many, felt a sense of loss.  The conventional narrative was that Mattis brought respect and a sober timbre to an administration that seemed to be at sea on the world stage.

We were wrong.  Dead wrong.  And let me explain how my views on Mattis did a 180 degree turn.

It turns  out that Mattis had a carefully cultivated public image.  He seemed to be a warrior from another era, almost Patton-like.  In a time when we have mostly fought wars to a stalemate or an inconclusive outcome, his pithy quotes captured our longing for a simpler time:

“I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery.  But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes:  If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.”

“Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”

“There are some people who think you have to hate them in order to shoot them.  I don’t think you do. It’s just business.”

How could he not stir up the warrior spirit in you?

So I eagerly signed up to hear him speak last September at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. And as I do with most of these events, I brought my notebook with to take notes in case that I want to blog about it.  I’m glad I did.

Mattis spent a good deal of time in his opening remarks about his leaving the administration his post administration duty.  He simply said that he had left over “policy differences,” which was the appropriate thing to say.  But Mattis went on to outline the set of principles for leaving.  He said he did not want to talk about his personal relationship with Trump.  More importantly, he emphasized his “Duty of Silence” and said that there is a long held tradition in the military about not passing political judgments. He said that the country is dealing with difficult issues, that he had a “duty of quiet” to allow the administration to continue.  He asserted, “It is vital not to give our adversaries the appearance of weakness.”

That was the backdrop of Mattis’s betrayal of President Trump a few weeks ago, when he renounced Trump in a most harshly written statement.  Breaking his “duty of silence,” Mattis considered Trump a “threat to the Constitution.”  As the barbarians were literally at the gates of the White House and threatening to overrun the place, Mattis wrote off the mob, saying “we must not get distracted by a small number of lawbreakers.”  He apparently did not see---or chose not to see--- the people throwing bricks and Molotov Cocktails at police and the hundreds that smashed small businesses and storefronts in cities across the United States.  He did not see the storekeeper murdered by the mob or the security guard killed in Oakland.  Instead, Mattis chose to excoriate his former boss by stating, “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—he does not even pretend to try.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m disinclined to try to unite with folks that would throw bricks at cops, no matter what their beef, or burn and loot the stores of small shopkeepers.

Mattis’s statement doesn’t even sound like it was written by him.  It sounds like it was written by some editor at the Washington Post or the New York Times.

  https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640/

But this is not the only lapse in judgment by Mattis.  He himself admitted that he did not persuade the right people of his plan to close on Osama bin Laden and that led to his escape at Tora Bora (with terrible consequences for which we are still paying).  As a commander in Iraq, he made a terrible judgment in ordering the bombing of a “safe house” that turned out to be a wedding party, killing 42 innocents.  Mattis was also on the board of directors of the notorious Theranos, the company run by Elizabeth Holmes and her lover, Sonny Balwani.  Not only was Mattis on the board while Holmes and Balwani were perpetuating the fraud described in John Carryrou’s book, Bad Blood, Mattis actively pushed to have the fraudulent equipment adopted by the military.  Like former Secretary of State George Shultz, Mattis was star struck by the charismatic Holmes.  While the board of directors has not been named as a defendant, Mattis apparently did not take a very skeptical posture as a board member and as a representative of the military with respect to Holmes and her company.

I am loathe to criticize someone that has spent a career serving the country.  But his last scalding of President Trump caused me to re-evaluate my views of Mattis and when I added up the string of awful lapses in judgment, I conclude that his PR has outrun his performance, especially when I realized that his self proclaimed "duty of silence" had a rather short expiration date.

Enviro-Hysteria

My blog sometimes writes itself.  I have begun the practice of posting responses to email correspondence that I receive from friends and family in which I take an opposing position.  I take care not to identify the recipient of my correspondence since in this day and age of doxxing or otherwise outing, I do not wish to cause damage to someone else's livelihood or reputation but at the same time, I will not hesitate to respond with an appropriate counterargument.  In this case, the recipient had sent me some arguments on climate change and the suggestion that I read a book in which the author proposes that the solution is to radically reduce human consumption and, presumably, with a similar reduction in economic activity (after I had forwarded a presentation by Lars Peter Hansen on climate modeling).  Below is my response:

Dear ______:

Happy 4^th  of July,  if in fact you are celebrating.  I no longer take saying that for granted since it appears that a significant part of our nation is quite unhappy over the nation’s founding. 

But as to Lars Peter Hansen, it is certainly the case that he is not as effervescent as, say, the patron goddess of the climate change religion, Greta Thunberg.   To be sure, he does not present with as much flair and drama.  But he did win a Nobel Prize in economics, with his work centered around risk and modeling.

Which brings me to the point of the proposal, which, without reading the entire book, suggests that the solution to climate change (if, in fact, it has anything to do with human activity) lies in radically reducing human consumption, and, logically, economic activity.

An analysis of climate change actually consists of three independent parts, which must be viewed independently and together in order to formulate a sensible approach.   The issue I have, without reading the book (and I will at some future time) is that it jumps right to a proposed solution, which is likely the very worst possible solution to climate change.

But before I explain why, let me tell you why I have a high level of skepticism over the whole issue. The environmental hysterics have a perfect track record.  They have been consistently wrong for over 50 years.  Not just wrong once.  And not just a little bit wrong.  Spectacularly wrong.  The Godfather of Environmental Whiffs is Paul Ehrlich.  I still have the book for which I prepared a book report in 7^th grade. In Population Resources Environment, Ehrlich proposed Nazi-like restrictions on population growth because of the fallacious “carrying capacity” of the earth.  He predicted that if nothing was done, we would face mass starvation on the planet, among other horribles, by the mid 1980’s.  None of that occurred.  By 2016 in fact, abject poverty had been reduced from about 40% of the world population at the time Ehrlich made his claims, to about 10%.   Rather than an overpopulation, many countries are now facing a population swoon.  China, Russia, Japan, and much of Europe are not reproducing at replacement rate and are having terrible demographic issues as a result.   Poland and Hungary are engaged in various incentives so that women will have more babies.  Had the world’s nations followed Ehrlich’s prescription, it would even be in more desperate demographic shape.  Worse, Ehrlich’s proposals relied on enforcement mechanisms that the Third Reich would have been proud of.

Ehrlich was the first enviro-flop, but certainly not the last.  Enviro-hysteria is nothing, if not consistent. The hole in the ozone layer was supposed to go global and we were all going to fry like bacon, remember?  The hole magically healed with the elimination of fluorocarbons.  Then there was the hysteria over acid rain.  Acid rain was going to denude all trees and other foliage in North America by the mid 1990’s and poison all the lakes and rivers.  As I write this, and look out my window, all the trees have bright green leaves and I just got back from Bass Pro Shop where people were stocking up on fishing gear, so we apparently still have some fish in our lakes and streams.   Then, there was “peak oil.”   “Peak Oil” has apparently been supplanted by “Systemic Racism” as the apparition issue de jure.  Because oil is a finite commodity, and we already had found the easy-to-get-to stuff, our economies would have to adjust to a scarce and expensive commodity.  Again, none of that came to pass.  No one talks about “peak oil” anymore.  We are literally drowning in the stuff.  Technological advances such as horizontal drilling and fracking made yet another enviro-scare not come true.

The environmental movement boasts a forecasting track record so poor that economists and weather forecasters look like soothsayers in comparison.

But we only have to look at our current catastrophe to see how “science” and policy based on “models” interact, especially when “experts” and international bodies are involved, as is the case with climate change.  We were initially told by W.H.O. that COVID19 could not be transmitted human-to-human.  The W.H.O. then told us that China self reported the virus and that turned out to be false.  Then, relying on models predicting 2 million deaths, we shut an entire economy down.  The initial models turned out to be off not by 5 or 10% but by 1000% or more.  Worse, we have terrible and extremely unreliable data, as deaths by other causes are lumped into the data.  Initially, we were told that the death rate might be as high as 2%.  It’s really probably around .3%, and much less among those younger than 65. And if you throw out the deaths that were CAUSED by putting infected people into nursing homes, it may be even less.  We were told that it could survive on surfaces for 9 days and be able to be transmitted that way.  Then we were told that transmission from a surface was rare.  Dr. Fauci first said masks were largely symbolic.  Now, he wants us to wear them in public at all times.  Most recently, Dr. Fauci said that we should not “balance lives against the economy” which tells you that he doesn’t understand risk assessment at all.  We do that in all things, like driving cars.  And we MUST do that with COVID19. The “deaths” of despair,” i.e. suicide, drug overdoses, alcohol related deaths, deaths due to social discord, are piling up and our children are being prevented from receiving an education while the “experts” are advising us to “play it safe.”

COVID19 provides insight into risk assessment and risk balancing of science and policy, and we see how awful, misguided, and unnecessarily damaging to peoples’ lives when poorly understood science is met with bureaucratic policy blunders.

After the disastrous management of COVID19—the inaccurate and misleading measurement, widely incorrect model predictions, and catastrophic policy response, does any thinking person really believe that all of these aspects (and you need ALL of them to work properly) will do any better in reducing global temperatures by a degree or two in 100 years, especially given the track record of the environmental hysterics so far?  The COVID19 modeling was as if the team lined up for a field goal and kicked it into the stands at midfield.  What faith do you have that the climate change crew will do any better?

Finally, it is fine if people want to voluntarily reduce their consumption of certain goods.  They are free to do so now.  But any government mandate or coercion that would require that involves the kind of tyrannical government that I will resist with every fiber of my body until my last breath.

Lars Peter Hansen may not be the most exciting person to listen to, but he is skilled at inducing a little epistemic humility before we are condemned to living in one room shacks with our allotment of rice and beans that the environmentalists would like to place us in.  It is the opposite strategy, a vibrant, free and innovative economy that is most likely to lead to less environmentally impactful energy technologies.