Monday roundup

Jared Kushner's image as the boy wonder of Middle East peace negotiations is taking a hit. Palestinians in general don't like what he's coming up with; the stuff they've been insisting on all along -   statehood, Jerusalem as capital, and a right of return for refugees (71 years later, how many of those are there?) - isn't part of the plan. Each of the main Palestinian organizations has its specific reasons for giving it a big thumbs down:

The deal as outlined so far has been dismissed by President Mahmoud Abbas' western-backed Palestinian Authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Abbas has boycotted political dealings with the Trump administration for 18 months. This followed Trump's decisions in 2017 to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv.

Since then, the Trump administration has curtailed aid to the Palestinian Authority, shuttered the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) delegation in Washington and cut off finance to UNRWA, the U.N. agency supporting Palestinian refugees. Washington meanwhile endorsed Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

"In practice they have already started implementing 'the deal of the century'," the senior Palestinian leader said, "on the ground, step by step". "Today, the two-state solution has been scuttled".

Abbas is not alone in his view of the U.S. deal.

It was rejected by the Islamist Hamas movement, which does not recognise Israel's right to exist and has only given conditional consent to a state in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The PLO has dismissed the Kushner effort as an attempt to bribe Palestinians into accepting Israeli occupation of the West Bank, a prelude to Israel annexing about half their territory and leaving them with scattered cantons.

Hanan Ashrawi, a moderate Palestinian leader, tweeted that the Kushner plan and the Bahrain conference were just "a handout to make our captivity palatable".

And while it's been interesting to observe the closer ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia due to their common alarm about Iran, King Salman won't endorse a deal that doesn't meet the Palis' conditions.

Sandy From Westchester has, in the space of five months, established herself as a kingmaker in the Freedom-Hater party.  Former Maryland congressman John Delaney wasn't exactly tearing up the polls anyway, but he came in for boos and derisive laughter at the California Democratic Convention for telling those assembled that Medicare for all is a bad and unworkable idea and that 150 million post-Americans who are at least somewhat presently satisfied with their health insurance don't want it yanked away. In a tweet, Sandy said his assertion was "untrue" and that he needed to "just sashay away."

Derek Scissors of the American Enterprise Institute has a great piece today entitled "China and Mexico: One Two Many Trips to the Tariff Well." Why is it so that there is one too many?

Placing high tariffs on one of them would mean we’d buy a lot more from the other; now we might not be able to. Canada, our third-largest source of imports, doesn’t send us the same products China and Mexico do. Neither does our fourth (Japan), fifth (Germany), and sixth (Britain), all much richer than China and Mexico and competitive in different sectors.

We have smaller trade partners, such as India, who do compete with China and Mexico but they can’t substitute for Chinese and Mexican goods on anything like the scale necessary. Imports from India last year were less than $90 billion.

Nor can we shift much production at all to the US in just the few months of time left according to the administration’s threats. If we apply 25% tariffs on China and Mexico simultaneously on October 1, the only thing we’re going to get is far more expensive products from China and Mexico.

One response from the administration might be to look to the longer term. In the long term, production would rise somewhat in the US and other countries would be able to replace Chinese and Mexican supply. That process, however, will take far longer if the main substitute for China (Mexico) and the main substitute for Mexico (China) are taken out of the picture.

As a China hawk, I have further concerns. The president’s confrontation of the PRC has caused companies to consider moving production. That process will slow if firms fear heavy new tariffs, for widely varying reasons, may be introduced on other countries. Further, in a battle for share of the US market after 25% tariffs, China would easily out-subsidize Mexico, and huge amounts of dollars would continue to flow to the Communist Party.

None of this means it is acceptable for Mexico to allow tens of thousands of migrants from other countries to pass through to the American border. Nor is it acceptable for China to continue to steal American technology important for national security and the health of our economy. But it is certainly possible to argue that tariffs are not a good response in either case. For example, the US has plenty of other tools to deal with China, such as targeting Chinese state-owned enterprises with sanctions.

If President Trump still insists on broad tariffs, there is no escaping that these two sets of tariffs undermine each other. The administration should bite the bullet and set a priority. And only one of these countries is a globally dangerous dictatorship.

Michael Brown is one of those Christian conservatives whose fealty to sound doctrine is refreshing, but whose enthusiasm for the Very Stable Genius leads him to make some very lame excuses for the guy. Such is the case with his latest Townhall column in which he claims to see 5-D chess in the VSG's balancing of his recognize-the-great-contributions-of-our-LGBT-citizens pandering with his reinstatement of the ban on transgenders in the military. Weak tea, Michael. The VSG is nowhere near that deft. He does what he thinks is going to make him look like a winner at any given moment even if it contradicts - because he has the memory capacity of my cats - what he did to look like a winner yesterday.

I mean, check this out:

As an evangelical supporter of Trump, I would much rather that he did not muddy the waters with what appears to be a mixed message. But it’s who he has been since he announced his run for president. And overall, when the dust settles, he has done far more to oppose LGBT activism than to support it, as Signorile and his colleagues know all too well.

Play-like energy forms are hitting users of normal-people energy forms in the pocketbook:

Solar panels and wind turbines are making electricity significantly more expensive, a major new study by a team of economists from the University of Chicago finds.

Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) "significantly increase average retail electricity prices, with prices increasing by 11% (1.3 cents per kWh) seven years after the policy’s passage into law and 17% (2 cents per kWh) twelve years afterward," the economists write.

The study, which has yet to go through peer-review, was done by Michael Greenstone, Richard McDowell, and Ishan Nath. It compared states with and without an RPS. It did so using what the economists say is "the most comprehensive state-level dataset ever compiled" which covered 1990 to 2015.

The cost to consumers has been staggeringly high: "All in all, seven years after passage, consumers in the 29 states had paid $125.2 billion more for electricity than they would have in the absence of the policy," they write.

Freddy Gray at Spectator USA is exactly right that the VSG needs to cut it out re: the schoolboy name-calling exchange he has going with London mayor Sadiq Khan:

Trump being Trump, he can’t resist counter-punching Khan. Twitter spats are his modus operandi. But it is a shame that he has insisted on reigniting his feud with Khan, since there are far more interesting things to talk about at this important moment in the relations between America and Brexit Britain. Trump vs Khan is a silly distraction, a bit like that ridiculous (and oddly small) Trump baby protest blimp that commands so much media attention.

Glenn Reynolds' dim view of what social media is doing to us ought to give us pause:

In the days of the old blogosphere, when people expressed views on their own personal blogs, scattered across many different servers and platforms, other blogs might pick them up.
But each time that happened, it took a conscious decision, and at least some degree of thought, to compose and publish a blog post, and bloggers who published links to stories or posts found elsewhere often encouraged readers to “read the whole thing.”
On social media, a “share” or “retweet” takes but a second, and research indicates that most people never read anything but the headline before sharing. This facilitates the rapid spread of outrage mobs, conspiracy theories and hysteria.

Things are made worse by the fact that social media sites operate under algorithms that promote “engagement,” which generally means emotion. And because, as tech visionary Jaron Lanier has written, the easiest emotions to engage are the negative emotions, the effect of social media platforms’ algorithms is to amplify negative feelings.

The more you use them, the angrier and sadder you’re likely to become. (And they’re quite consciously designed to be addictive.) 

Jim Geraghty at National Review is pretty worked up - and rightly so - about PACs from the yee-haw stratum of the Right scamming people who think their donations are going to rescue Western civilization: He gives the figures for amounts donated in a particular time frame vs. how much actually went to particular political candidates or causes of a slew of organizations: Put Vets First, Conservative Strike Force, Tea Party Majority Fund, a bogus Sheriff David Clarke-for-Senate campaign fund, and the Committee To Restore America's Greatness, just to name a few.

Don't hold back, Jim. Tell us how you really see it:

And some folks want us to believe that the problem with the conservative movement is David French?

Why is the conservative movement not as effective as its supporters want it to be? Because day after day, year after year, little old ladies get called on the phone or emailed or receive letters in the mail telling them that the future of the country is at stake and that if they don’t make a donation to groups that might as well be named Make Telemarketers Wealthy Again right now, the country will go to hell in a handbasket. Those little old ladies get out their checkbooks and give what they can spare, convinced that they’re making a difference and helping make the world a better place. What they’re doing is ensuring that the guys running these PACs can enjoy a more luxurious lifestyle. Meanwhile, conservative candidates lose, kicking the dirt after primary day or the general election, convinced that if they had just had another $100,000 for get-out-the-vote operations, they might have come out on top.

Mayor Lightfoot, call your office: 50 shot, 10 dead in Chicago over the weekend.