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RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
January 8 to January 14, 2023 Furious over Joe Biden's massive planned student loan bailout? Caution: James Varney's new report in RealClearInvestigations likely won't calm you down. It turns out that students all along have been pocketing unmonitored refunds of loan overpayments, which they can spend on pretty much whatever they want – windfalls that taxpayers underwrite, Biden bailout or no. Varney reports: -
Refund Day is the much-anticipated day on campus when millions of students find out how much of their approved federal loan is left over after the school has taken its share for tuition and other charges.
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Students can reject the refund and reduce their debt, or accept the windfall.
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Guess which many choose? As one Philadelphia student put it: “I’m 23, if you give me a refund check, I’m going shopping ... You just gave me free money.” -
Although the money’s meant for education-related expenses, there is no mechanism to monitor it. -
The notion that some student loan money is being used to pay for trips or other splurges could strike some as particularly galling in light of the Biden administration’s move to erase perhaps $400 billion in such debt, a case now before the Supreme Court. -
Ultimately, taxpayers underwrite most everything, since President Obama pushed through a federal takeover of student loans as part of his 2010 Obamacare victory.
Biden, Trump and the Beltway In an analysis, Andrew C. McCarthy offers his take on the fallout from unfolding disclosures that President Biden mishandled classified documents from his time as Barack Obama's Vice President: Expect two things to happen going forward. First, there will now be laser-focus in the media-Democrat talking points on Trump’s alleged lying to the grand jury, and much less emphasis on the national-security threat posed by his reckless handling of classified government intelligence. Second, because Democrats are determined to nail their nemesis, the calls to prosecute Trump for obstructing Congress in connection with January 6 (as the House January 6 committee recently urged) will grow louder, and the certainty that the Mar-a-Lago case should result in an indictment will diminish. Donald Trump could be a lucky guy here, because the political problems inherent in indicting him over mishandling classified documents have now greatly increased for the Biden administration, special counsel or no special counsel. But by no means is he out of the woods at this point. A linchpin of the Russiagate conspiracy theory was the claim that Russian social media bots had helped President Trump collude with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election. Although this misinformation was debunked by RCI contributor Aaron Maté years ago, some mainstream outlets are only now reporting the facts. This Washington Post article centers on a study by New York University scholars, which found that: Russian influence operations on Twitter in the 2016 presidential election reached relatively few users, most of whom were highly partisan Republicans, and the Russian accounts had no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior, according to a study out this morning. In an interesting piece of timing, this article appeared just three days before journalist Matt Taibbi documented the same finding in his latest dispatch from the Twitter files provided to him by Elon Musk. Taibbi takes it further by noting that Twitter executives knew this was nonsense from the start and Taibbi also shows how top Democrats, including Rep. Adam Schiff and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, nevertheless pushed the false narrative. Other Biden, Trump and the Beltway Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Biden Immigration Policies Create Mexican Crisis
Los Angeles Times Articles like this one make it hard to have thoughtful conversations about immigration. It presents the humanitarian crisis at the southern border as wholly the fault of the United States (and not those streaming across it) while accepting the widely debunked claim that most people trying to enter the country have legitimate cases for seeking asylum (e.g. that they are fleeing violence rather than just seeking a better life). Although the border crisis has been exacerbated in large part by President Biden’s policies, the article also suggests former President Trump is to blame. Thousands of people from some of the world’s most oppressive countries marooned in Mexico because of the expansion of a Trump administration policy that allows border agents to immediately expel migrants without considering their asylum claims. In recent years, even as hundreds of thousands of migrants from Mexico, Central America and elsewhere were swiftly deported under Title 42, a rule invoked by ex-President Trump that allows the government to impede the entry of foreigners during a public health emergency, people from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and other countries were generally allowed to enter the U.S., given temporary work permits and granted asylum hearings. Their home countries were simply too unstable or too politically at odds with the United States for agents to coordinate mass deportations. Big global banks are eying some $2 trillion of debt in the world’s most fragile countries for a new experiment in financial engineering: debt relief in exchange for environmental protections. Called “debt-for-nature swaps,” they present a tempting solution for the rising number of nations in distress, particularly those with ecosystems to protect. A country gets to avoid default and lower its debt burden, as long as it’s willing to earmark some of the savings to salvage a coral reef, preserve a forest or build a wind farm, for example. Global investors get better returns and enhanced green credentials. Wall Street takes a cut. This article also reports that behind the feel-good headlines, it’s unclear whether these kinds of swaps will deliver the promised benefits. “The terms can be murky. Transaction costs are high. Experts question whether the complex and costly deals will achieve long-term financial stability.” Ridership numbers at many of the nation’s largest urban mass-transit systems have failed to recover from the pandemic. This article reports that transit authorities in major cities such as New York and San Francisco have been leaning on emergency funding to plug budget holes and prop up operations. But those funds are dwindling, leaving transit officials grappling with budget shortfalls andseeking new ways to fund existing service. The ridership drop also has fueled an increase in transit crime, which in turn has pushed away more riders. … In the U.S. overall, about 883,000 fewer people took public transit in the third quarter of 2022 compared with the same period in 2019, according to federal data gathered by the American Public Transportation Association. The decline is particularly acute among so-called “choice riders,” people who have access to a vehicle but choose to take mass transit. … In New York, more riders are skipping fares due to economic hardship and attitudes that changed during the pandemic, MTA officials say, resulting in an estimated $550 million a year in lost revenue. Solutions appear few and far between. In New York, the MTA is preparing to charge drivers a fee to enter Manhattan south of Central Park, a system known as congestion pricing, which could raise $1 billion a year but is unlikely to make many people turn to mass transit. The University of California (UC) system has invested millions of dollars in companies that are linked to the ongoing Uighur genocide, an analysis of its endowments revealed. UC invested $14,997,234 into Alibaba, a company responsible for software which could use facial recognition to identify Uighur people, according to a 2020 report by industry watchdog IPVM. UC invested an additional $37,571,922 into Alibaba through pensions reported through June 30, 2022. The U.S. Department of Commerce imposed trade restrictions on two Alibaba-funded artificial intelligence organizations, Megvii and SenseTime, in 2019 because they were “contrary to the foreign policy interests of the United States,” according to the Federal Register. … UC also invested $27,613,608 into MSCI China, an index made up of large- and mid-cap Chinese firms, according to its website. It invested an additional $75,821,519 through pensions. Twelve companies from the MSCI China Index engaged in forced labor and camp and surveillance construction, according to a Hong Kong Watch and the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University report. Despite the infusion of new funding earmarked for the IRS via last year's Inflation Reduction Act, this article reports that the agency continued historic trends of targeting primarily low-income taxpayers, with relatively few millionaires and billionaires getting caught up in the audit sweep. Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse released data for the fiscal year 2022 which, it said, showed that, "The taxpayer class with unbelievably high audit rates – five and a half times virtually everyone else—were low-income wage-earners taking the earned income tax credit," reported TRAC, noting that the poorest taxpayers are "easy marks in an era when IRS increasingly relies upon correspondence audits yet doesn't have the resources to assist taxpayers or answer their questions." |
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| January 13, 2023 The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will spend $7.5 million to prevent HIV by identifying areas of medical mistrust between Hispanic and Latino gay and bisexual men. The grant, funded through the Centers... |
| January 12, 2023 In 1983, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration spent $22,700 — over $67,851 in 2023 dollars — to seek out composers and artists to create art and music for a future space station. Senator William... |
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