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RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
January 1 to January 7, 2023 In RealClearInvestigations, Vince Bielski reports on a high-stakes, divisive gamble playing out in urban public education: the end of screened admissions at selective schools to improve the lagging performance of mostly black and Latino students. It's a gamble that could prove disastrous if, as threatened, alarmed parents of high achievers decide to yank their kids out of public schools. Bielski explores this widely resonant story from New York City, the nation's largest school system: -
A lot of parents aren't buying the theory that all students benefit when poorer performers are placed in selective schools. And those families are threatening to bolt this year. -
If they do, they’ll add dramatically to the city’s loss of more than 100,000 students due to the pandemic. -
With state funding based on head count, the decline has already forced a cut of over $200 million from the city’s education budget. -
Diversity advocates dismiss the threat of a new exodus as scaremongering. -
But such advocates have already suffered a remarkable setback in progressive San Francisco, with the ouster of three school board members pushing such policies.
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Nationwide, schools in 39 states have adopted so-called integration strategies, including preferential admissions for poor and minority (but typically not Asian) students. -
A mother in a Manhattan district calls her son’s experience at an unscreened middle school “a disaster.” Students spent much of English period reading unchallenging fantasy and sports books. -
“Advocates say students learn best in mixed-ability classrooms, but in fact nobody really learned much from their reading in my son’s class, and that’s terrible.”
In RealClearInvestigations, Ben Weingarten reports on faculty and alumni doubts about Wharton Business School's watershed embrace of wokeness, epitomized by its offering this year of an MBA major in "environmental, social, and governance" and related degrees. Weingarten reports: -
Founded in 1881 by an industrialist who made a killing in the sorts of “dirty” industries that ESG proponents disfavor, the school now has the distinction of becoming the first prominent institution to offer an ESG degree. -
Proponents such as ESG faculty director Witold J. Henisz see it as a way to “enhance” capitalism’s “efficiency” by pricing such “externalities” as “pollution, human rights, and other ESG impacts.” -
Skeptics, including ex-Wharton faculty and alums, many of whom spoke anonymously for fear of blowback, warn of one-sided left-wing politics being used to justify, as one recent graduate put it, “increasing the power of the state in markets and firms while demonizing capitalism."
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Another grad said Henisz’s recently published blast at "anti-woke" naysayers was “sad to see.” If Henisz’s “intent was not to persuade, but instead to intimidate those who might otherwise speak up and disagree, he likely achieved his goal.” -
Ex-Wharton professor: “ESG is not a debate on which you have to take a ‘side’ – it’s a subject. … people’s stance on a subject should evolve with the evidence rather than being anchored on a side.” -
Another alum said ESG thinking clashes with the analytic methods that students learn in class, making the Green New Deal seem “a blend of wishful thinking and pure nonsense.” -
Sidebar: Wharton wokeness decades in the making.
Biden, Trump and the Beltway U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff tried to get RCI senior correspondent Paul Sperry suspended from Twitter and to have “any and all content” related to House Intelligence Committee staffers removed from the site, according to the latest document dump authorized by new owner Elon Musk. in January 2020 [Sperry] wrote an article for RealClearInvestigations about the purported “whistleblower” behind former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, for which Schiff served as a House manager. In the article, Sperry said then-CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella was overheard talking in the White House with Sean Misko, a holdover staffer from former President Barack Obama’s administration. A former official who reportedly heard the conversation told Sperry, “Just days after [Trump] was sworn in they were already trying to get rid of him.” … Schiff’s office also asked for suspension of “the many accounts, including @GregRubini and @paulsperry_, which have repeatedly promoted false QAnon conspiracies and harassed” someone whose name is blacked out. “I have never promoted any ‘QAnon conspiracies,’ " Sperry said in response. "Ever. Not on Twitter. Not anywhere.” In August, however, Sperry’s Twitter account – which had 325,000 followers – was permanently suspended without explanation in the wake of the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla. Sperry’s account was restored this week. Follow him @paulsperry_ The Department of Justice is trying to prevent disclosure of 400 pages of sensitive documents on Hunter and Jim Biden's dealings with China, Russia and Ukraine by pretending they don't exist, this article reports: Colorado lawyer Kevin Evans sued the department in March after it failed to comply with his request for records on the Bidens' dealings under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Evans, a FOIA expert, … said government lawyers first admitted in court to having at least 400 pages of 'potentially relevant' documents – but are now trying to get away with saying they can 'neither confirm nor deny' the existence of any records that match his request. Evans' case has its next hearing in January. In “Courage Under Fire,” his new book addressing the frantic efforts of Capitol Police officers to protect Congress and themselves from an armed mob on Jan. 6, 2021, former Capitol Police chief Steven A. Sund blames cascading government failures for allowing the brutal melee. This article reports: The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and even his own agency’s intelligence unit had been alerted weeks earlier to reams of chilling chatter about right-wing extremists arming for an attack on the Capitol that day, Sund says, but didn’t take the basic steps to assess those plots or sound an alarm. Senior military leaders, citing political or tactical worries , delayed sending help. … Sund reserves his greatest outrage for those Pentagon leaders, recounting a conference call he had with two generals about 2:35 p.m., 20 minutes after rioters had broken into the Capitol and as Vice President Mike Pence and other lawmakers scurried to hiding places. Sund writes that Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt told him he didn’t like the optics of sending uniformed Guard troops to the Capitol, but could allow them to replace police officers at roadside checkpoints. Listening incredulously and trying to explain that he needed help to save officers’ lives, Sund said, he felt both “nauseated” and “mad as hell.” Other Biden, Trump and the Beltway Other Noteworthy Articles and Series A lineup of unpaid union-backed reps, retirees and political appointees oversee some $4 trillion in public pension funds and, this article reports, “they’re proving to be no match for a system that’s exploded in size and complexity.” The article compares the performance of U.S. public pension managers with those in Canada, who are selected for their financial expertise. In the 10 years through 2015, a group of large Canadian funds delivered excess returns that beat a passive portfolio designed to match their liabilities by 2.2% a year. That return was 0.7% more than U.S. counterparts earned for taking greater risk above a similar index – equivalent to $280 billion in missed opportunities over a decade. Multiple other studies have found that funds managed by boards stacked with government officials and elected representatives of public employees underperform. This underperformance is a drag on state and local finances and – along with headwinds that include a growing ratio of retirees to workers and lenient accounting standards – gobbling up an increasing share of government budgets. In a separate article, the Illinois Policy Institute reported that government pensions cost the equivalent of $2,796 per family in the state in 2021. The typical career state pensioner earns more in retirement than Illinoisans do working. Households now pay over three times more than they did nearly two decades ago to cover the costs. Europe’s plans to accelerate construction of wind and solar farms in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine are facing stiffening opposition from residents and officials who say a wave of new projects will harm the region’s landscapes, cultural sites and valuable tourism industry. In the Galician countryside of northwest Spain, Maria Martin and her husband opened an inn six years ago offering vacationers a tranquil refuge. The ocean is a few miles away, and the Basilica de San Martiño de Mondoñedo, Spain’s oldest cathedral and an attraction for pilgrims walking the famed Camino de Santiago, lies in the same valley. The couple and other residents are fighting a proposal to build a cluster of 345-foot tall wind turbines near the inn. The turbines are among more than 200 that Pittsburgh-based Alcoa Corp. is counting on to power the restart of a hulking aluminum smelter it owns in San Ciprian, 14 miles to the west. Alcoa idled the smelter in 2021 because of soaring electricity prices as Russia began to cut the flow of natural gas ahead of its invasion of Ukraine. … “No one can live so close to a wind farm,” Ms. Martin said. Critics say the turbines are a blight on the landscape, make noise and cast shadows. “Probably my business, my way of life, will disappear,” Ms. Martin said. In a separate article published last month, John Murawski of RealClearInvestigations reported on concerns about the growing amounts of real estate required for solar expansion in the United States. Since Canada legalized euthanasia in 2016, it has become an increasingly common means of ending life -- accounting for 10,064 Canadian deaths in 2021. Supporters insist that this is not state-sanctioned suicide, but rather a dignified solution for those who no longer wish to suffer from terminal or chronic illness. And yet, longstanding concerns that some desperate people will seek to end their lives for other reasons, including non-lethal health issues or financial struggles, are proving true. This article reports that ... ... in internal meetings, those close to the system have long talked openly about red flags that many people are choosing euthanasia because they’re not getting the “supports and cares” they need. The physicians in charge of the process not only know that this is happening, but they have discussed it in seminars, collected evidence, and then kept it quiet in public. The safeguards promised by [Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau and others to prevent vulnerable people from heading down the road to euthanasia turn out to be vague, pro forma, and easy to get around by doctor-shopping. And interviews with patients and their loved ones show that some of them, perhaps many, are making it to the end of that road. Coronavirus Investigations |
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| January 06, 2023 When reviewing applications for disability benefits, the Social Security Administration consults an obsolete directory last updated in 1977, despite having spent $250 million on a newer, more relevant one.The SSA relies... |
| January 05, 2023 In 1981, The U.S. Department of Commerce spent $28,600 — $93,669 in 2022 dollars — to decide how best to spend another $250,000 — or $818,787 — to find a good surfing beach in Honolulu. That... |
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