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RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
March 19 to March 25, 2023 In what Louisiana officials are calling a stunning overreach, the Biden Environmental Protection Agency is trying to take control over development in the state's disputed "Cancer Alley" using a new tack: exploiting civil rights law to achieve "equity" and “environmental justice," James Varney reports for RealClearInvestigations. -
It's a novel application of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with the EPA threatening to withhold millions in federal grants. -
Louisiana’s Attorney General calls the move a breathtaking overreach. -
The EPA hasn't explained its rationale much beyond citing its “civil rights analytical framework.” -
Critical lawyer: "It looks like they are trying to expand their authority by using their muscle without clear authorization from Congress.” -
At issue: plants in the River Parishes – including the decades-old Denka plant, which uses chloroprene to make synthetic rubber.
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Activists have long linked Denka to cancer in the heavily minority population. -
But in 1997, a study found almost no evidence that cancer was higher in the River Parishes than in the rest of the U.S. -
Poor health there is caused by other factors, not environmental racism, say EPA critics -- like poverty, smoking, obesity. -
Many locals reject the “Cancer Alley” tag. They want jobs. -
Local councilman: "Instead of 'Cancer Alley' they should call this 'Opportunity Alley.'"
In RealClearInvestigations, Ben Weingarten reports on states both red and blue turning to media literacy education to instruct children on the grave threat of disinformation -- in the face of expert skepticism that such studies are ripe for politicization: -
At least seven states both Democrat- and Republican-led are currently considering media literacy legislation aimed at the young. -
One scholar writes that media literacy education “often functions as a trojan horse, casting certain political views” – conservative ones – “as prima facie wrong and biased.” -
A leading advocate of New Jersey's law has called Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin “bad actors.” Meanwhile, she has described the Washington Post as a “trusted newspaper.” -
Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey framed his state's legislation as a response to the “violent insurrection” of Jan. 6, 2021. -
Others say media literacy dodges a more fundamental issue: Kids’ “base-knowledge problem.” They lack command of rudimentary facts.
Waste of the Day
by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books Biden, Trump and the Beltway Other Noteworthy Articles and Series The FBI may have won the battle but lost the war as an unsuccessful lawsuit claiming gender discrimination brought forth a “parade of witnesses” who exposed gross dysfunction and mismanagement in the bureau. Among the revelations Politico reports: -
Former General Counsel Jim Baker testified that when he took over in 2014, his staff of about 200 lawyers were burned out and locked in bureaucratic turf battles. Some were so afraid to openly raise concerns that they “frequently” slipped anonymous notes under his door overnight ‒ typewritten to conceal handwriting. -
A senior lawyer in the office’s national security branch allegedly threw a chair at a meeting. -
The Justice Department’s top watchdog, Inspector General Michael Horowitz, threatened to open an obstruction-of-justice investigation into a senior bureau lawyer during a standoff over access to FBI files. -
Bureau officials warned of widespread “grade inflation” in annual performance reviews of FBI personnel.
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While defending the FBI in the discrimination suit, a Justice Department attorney referred to the general counsel’s office as “a low-morale organization." -
Former FBI Director James Comey managed to entice Baker into taking the post, despite billing it as “the worst job in the FBI,” Baker said.
Politico warns that such revelations from bureau insiders might be “exploited” by former President Trump and others who argue that FBI leadership has run off the rails. The young woman with pink hair who suggested to left wing activists that she was a sex worker named Chelsie was actually a Colorado Springs police detective named April Rogers enlisted by the FBI to infiltrate the group as protests spread across the country in the summer of 2020. She was not alone, this article reports: The work of Rogers, or “Chelsie,” is a direct offshoot of the F BI’s summer of 2020 investigation in Denver, where Mickey Windecker, a paid FBI informant, drove a silver hearse, rose to a leadership role in the racial justice movement, and encouraged activists to become violent. Windecker provided information to the FBI about an activist who attended demonstrations in both Denver and Colorado Springs, prompting federal agents to launch a new investigation in the smaller Colorado city. … As the FBI’s Colorado Springs investigation reveals, Denver wasn’t the only city where federal agents infiltrated racial justice groups that summer. Working through the Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership with local police, the FBI assembled files on local activists using information secretly gathered by Rogers. Once Rogers gained trust among the activists, she tried to set up at least two young men in gun-running conspiracies. Her tactics mirrored those of Windecker, who tried to entrap two Denver racial justice activists in crimes, including an FBI-engineered plot to assassinate Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser that went nowhere. From the Annals of ... Really? Yes, corporate America apparently has donated more than $83 billion – that’s right billion – to Black Lives Matter and related causes such as the NAACP and the ACLU. According to the searchable database created by the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life, these include donations and pledges worth about $1.1 billion from CitiGroup, $810 million from BlackRock, $600 million from CVS Health, $169 million from Amazon, $152 million from Cisco Systems and $85 million from Enterprise Rent-A-Car. The Association of Mature American Citizens reports: Among the biggest contributors to BLM, according to the database, is JPMorgan Chase, which pledged $30 billion to its so-called “Racial Equity Commitment,” which directs billions of dollars in investments to closing “the racial wealth gap” and building “diversity into the supply chain.” Microsoft pledged $244 million to similar initiatives, including $250,000 to bail out rioters during the George Floyd riots of 2020. Notably, Claremont found that the Silicon Valley Bank ‒ which collapsed just days before the release of the database ‒ donated more than $70 million to BLM-adjacent organizations. In an August 2020 report from the group, the Bank’s CEO wrote that the group would emphasize its commitment to causes like “social justice, sustainability, and supporting women, Black and Latinx emerging talent, and other underrepresented groups.” When new rules were implemented in 2020 to prioritize the sickest patients on waitlists for liver transplants – wherever they lived – critics warned that it would reduce the number surgeries and increase deaths. They were right, a data analysis by The Washington Post and the Markup has found: The new system, called the “acuity circles” policy, has nearly doubled the median distance livers are transported, increased transport costs and coincided with the highest number of wasted livers in nearly a decade, 949 in 2021. That’s 1 in 10 donated livers. The analysis further shows a significant increase in the number of states sending donated livers beyond their own borders. In 2019, before the new policy took effect, 21 states and territories exported a majority of livers they collected. Two years later, 42 did. … The analysis of data from federal health authorities found sharp declines in lifesaving surgeries in Puerto Rico and seven states, all but one Southern and Midwestern: Alabama, Louisiana, and Kansas, North Carolina, South Dakota, Iowa and Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, New York and California, whose transplant industry officials lobbied for the new policy, logged their highest numbers of liver transplants in more than a decade in 2021 – 603 and 959, respectively. In a separate article, Axios reports that stocks of essential drugs, including cancer treatments, “are hitting 10-year lows, forcing rationing and pharmacy workarounds. … Manufacturing delays and quality problems are blamed for the shortages. But that's often because there aren't many alternative sites to pick up the slack in the system due to the challenging economics of the market, experts say.” Although it avoided wheelbarrows, the 100-trillion-dollar bill was probably the breaking point for faith in Zimbabwe’s currency. Now, this article reports, the African nation has reached a new stage of monetary dysfunction – DIY: Because of a lack of small change, businesses have started printing their own “money” ‒ scraps of paper, sometimes handwritten, that customers can use to pay for future purchases. Others are handing out change in-kind, making customers whole with juice boxes, pens or slices of cheese. … Today, $1 [U.S] costs more than 900 Zimbabwean dollars and inflation hit 230% in January. Most businesses once again demand payments in U.S. dollars, although the Zimbabwe dollar remains the country’s official currency. … The paper IOUs have proven an unsatisfactory fix. For starters, they aren’t fungible. Ms. Manyowa, a 23-year-old college student, spent 15 minutes waiting by the till of a Harare Chicken Inn until another customer paid with a $1 bill she could use for the bus fare home. … In contrast to bank notes, which are usually made from cotton or plastic, paper chits also can’t withstand an extended spin in the washing machine. Adelaide Moyo, a journalist for a Zimbabwean newspaper, says she has more than once found the faded remnants of vouchers from Chicken Inn or the local franchise of Netherlands-based supermarket chain Spar stuck to her clothes when she pulls them out of the wash. To avoid such losses, Ms. Moyo says she has accepted slices of cheese, extra sauce and, once, a hard-boiled egg instead of more paper chits. Those barter trades usually don’t offer good value for money, like the slice of cheese that cost her $0.50, but, she says, they’re better than carrying around, or losing, vouchers from multiple places. “You’d rather just get the food,” she said. |
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| February 03, 2023 Included in the $1.7 trillion omnibus package supported by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) was a provision to give $200 million to the Appalachian Regional Commission, an agency headed by Manchin’s wife, Gayle. The... |
| February 02, 2023 In 1986, the U.S. Air Force spent $600,000 — over $1.6 million in 2023 dollars — to operate a luxurious private jet exclusively for top generals in the Strategic Air Command. Sen. William Proxmire, a... |
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