Media critic: 2020 Democrats’ Smollett Hoax Shame

“Democratic presidential candidates jockeying for position in 2020 had a lot to say when actor Jussie Smollett said he was attacked in Chicago by two white men who shouted racist and homophobic slurs as they beat him,” recalls The Washington Examiner’s Dominick Mastrangelo. Sens. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, for example, both characterized the incident as “a modern-day lynching.” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand likewise jumped to an unfounded conclusion, railing against this “sickening and outrageous attack,” and adding: “It’s the latest of too many hate crimes against LGBTQ people and people of color.” How did these same Democrats react to the weekend revelation that Smollett had likely staged the whole thing, per Chicago police sources? As Mastrangelo archly notes: “They were silent.”

Numbers cruncher: Democratic Socialist’s Good Idea

Believe it or not, Brooklyn state Sen. Julia Salazar, a newly elected democratic socialist, is pushing an idea that the Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon says “could appeal to limited-government conservatives across New York.” Her End of Corporate Welfare Act establishes “a multi-state compact that would bar member states from offering any ‘company-specific subsidy,’ ” including development grants and deferred tax liability. The bill would have knocked out “a large portion” of the just-aborted Amazon deal, which included a company-specific $500 million state capital grant. Insisting on a multi-state compact is a shortcoming, he says, though it is meant to address any complaints that New York couldn’t compete for corporate investments. But, asks McMahon, “why compete at all” in what Salazar rightly describes as “a subsidy-waving ‘race to the bottom’ ”?

Policy wonks: High-Speed Rail Won’t Leave the Station

Sponsors of the Green New Deal must now recognize what California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s cancellation of a massive high-speed rail project linking San Francisco and Los Angeles means, suggest Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox at City Journal: “If high-speed rail is not feasible in the state with the three densest major metro areas in the nation, and the highest overall urban density, it is not feasible anywhere else in the United States.” Which certainly undercuts advocates’ vision of a massive network of high-speed trains to kill the internal-combustion engine. Yes, such systems exist in western Europe, but the distance between cities there is much shorter. Besides, only two such lines (Tokyo-Osaka and Paris-Lyon) are profitable. And in both cases, highway tolls for the same route exceed $80 each way, making rail much more attractive.

Scribe: Muslim Politicos Should Speak Carefully on Israel

Anti-Semitism “has spread through the Islamic world like a cancer,” contends Fareed Zakaria at The Washington Post — which is why Muslims like Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib “should be particularly thoughtful” when speaking about Israel and “its most ardent American supporters.” An Anti-Defamation League survey of 100 nations found anti-Semitism “twice as common among Muslims than among Christians” and “far more prevalent in the Middle East than the Americas.” It “should be possible” to criticize Israel and even to question the influence of AIPAC, its chief US lobby. But by phrasing the issue as Omar and Tlaib have done — with suggestions of Jewish money buying support — “they have squandered an opportunity to further that important debate.”

Religion watch: How Africa Is Converting China

Much has been made of the influx of Chinese money and workers into Africa over the past two decades, notes Christopher Rhodes at UnHerd. ­Indeed, China is now Africa’s primary economic partner. But it turns out China is importing something else besides natural resources: “religion, and particularly evangelical Christianity,” which Beijing has “been trying to eliminate at home.” Chinese workers in Africa feel alienated, he says, and many have found in faith “a source of comfort.” Evangelicalism “pervades much of sub-Saharan Africa,” and Chinese, “heavily discouraged from practicing religion at home, are attractive converts.” When they return home, they have been bringing their newfound religion with them. Meanwhile, African migrants, practitioners of that same faith, “are also moving to China in larger numbers.” All of which is “creating a headache for the Communist Party.” — Compiled by Eric Fettmann & Sohrab Ahmari