RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
April 7 to April 13, 2024 In RealClearInvestigations, Ben Weingarten reports on progressives’ unprecedented efforts to exploit legal loopholes and federal power to maximize Democrat votes in the 2024 election -- at taxpayers’ expense: -
The methods include voter registration and mobilization campaigns by ostensibly non-partisan charities that target Democrats using demographic data as proxies. -
The administration is also following President Biden’s executive order that "every federal agency" focus on “ways to expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.” -
Watchdogs say an array of Democrat-linked (and similarly named) “democracy-focused” outfits – operating as tax-exempt charities and lavishly funded by major Democrat-tied “dark money” vehicles – are engaged in a sprawling campaign to register voters and harvest the votes necessary to defeat Donald Trump. -
These efforts amplify and extend what Time magazine described as a “well-funded cabal” to defeat Trump in 2020. They “were not rigging the election,” Time declared. “They were fortifying it.” -
By contrast, Republican stalwarts lament, no comparable effort exists on the right. -
The GOP's turnout efforts seek to thread a difficult needle by encouraging offsite voting while the party simultaneously fights the mainly blue-state pandemic-era laws that greatly expanded the practice. -
The party's position is further complicated by its standard-bearer's warnings of a rigged election bigger than in 2020, which some speculate could turn off moderate swing voters.
In RealClearInvestigations and on leefang.com, Lee Fang reports that the U.S. government provides funding and direction to Ukrainian media outlets that go beyond countering Russian propaganda to imposing censorship, closing dissident outlets, spreading disinformation, and silencing critics of the war with Russia, including American citizens. Fang reports: -
Among leading critics cast as part of a “network of Russian propaganda” are economist Jeffrey Sachs, commentator Tucker Carlson, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer. -
But these figures are hardly Kremlin agents. They simply have forcefully criticized dominant narratives about the war, from both the left and the right. -
VoxUkraine, a fact-checking partner to Facebook parent Meta, has released highly produced videos attacking the credibility of American opposition voices, including Sachs, Mearsheimer, and Greenwald. -
Detector Media similarly produces a flow of social media and posts branding American critics of the war as part of a Russian disinformation operation. -
Unlike similar media programs that the U.S. has led throughout the Middle East, Ukrainian outlets tend to produce a lot of English content that trickles back into the domestic American audience and explicitly targets American foreign policy discourse. -
The U.S. Congress is now hotly debating further aid to Ukraine. -
Ukraine illustrates the increasingly global reach of the American government’s propaganda arms, at a time when Washington’s efforts to censor information at home are drawing greater scrutiny.
Waste of the Day
by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books 'Infinite Horizon' of Entitlement Spending, RCI
'Diversity' Statements Win NIH Grants, RCI
Maryland's Profligacy Express, RCI
Riding Tiger Stadium Into Sea of Red Ink, RCI
DC Taxpayers Fund Mom's Miami Vacay, RCI Biden, Trump and the Beltway NY: Rep. Bowman Praised Cop Killers, Antisemites, Washington Free Beacon
Excerpt: Steve Bannon’s MAGA Mutiny, Vanity Fair
Election Worker Turnover Reaches Historic Highs, NBC News
Sen. Grassley: FBI Vouched for Informant Accused of Lying, Daily Signal
Fed Gov's Iffy Scholarship and Credentials, City Journal
Ga.: DOJ Finds 'Inconsistencies' in Fani Willis Use of Grants, Free Beacon Other Noteworthy Articles and Series
Cindy Picos was dropped by her home insurer last month. The reason: aerial photos of her roof, which her insurer refused to let her see. This article reports that her insurer said its images showed her roof had “lived its life expectancy.” Picos paid for an independent inspection that found the roof had another 10 years of life. Her insurer declined to reconsider its decision. Quote: Across the U.S., insurance companies are using aerial images of homes as a tool to ditch properties seen as higher risk. Nearly every building in the country is being photographed, often without the owner’s knowledge. Companies are deploying drones, manned airplanes and high-altitude balloons to take images of properties. No place is shielded: The industry-funded Geospatial Insurance Consortium has an airplane imagery program it says covers 99% of the U.S. population. The array of photos is being sorted by computer models to spy out underwriting no-nos, such as damaged roof shingles, yard debris, overhanging tree branches and undeclared swimming pools or trampolines. The red-flagged images are providing insurers with ammunition for nonrenewal notices nationwide. … The increasingly sophisticated use of flyby photos comes as home insurers nationwide scramble to “derisk” their property portfolios, dropping less-than-perfect homes in an effort to recover from big underwriting losses. In February, Marine Corps acting Commandant Gen. Christopher Mahoney called for “wall-to-wall” inspections of conditions at all housing facilities for single Marines by March 15. This article reports that initial results of the investigation, which spanned 60,000 rooms at 25 installations across the globe, show that some Marines are living in filthy, cramped quarters, often with broken appliances and a lack of privacy: Former barracks residents described months of going without hot water; broken air conditioning units, clogged plumbing facilities, broken locks and elevators, according to the report. Photos posted later on social media depicted squalid conditions for the barracks housing Lima Company at the Marine Corps School of Infantry-West in Camp Pendleton, California, Marine Corps Times reported in January. One photo showed dead rodents unattended on a filthy floor. ... This article reports that the findings are “consistent” with those of a watchdog report released in September. A Marine stationed in Washington D.C. stated that the problem has been festering for decades. As they secure additional funding, the Marine Corps plan to overhaul their barracks completely by 2030. Developed as a civilian technology by Elon Musk’s Space X company, Starlink satellites are providing immediate and largely secure access to the internet on battlefields from Ukraine to Sudan – including America’s foes, this article reports: The Journal investigation found that a shadowy supply chain exists for Starlink hardware that has fed backroom deals in Africa, Southeast Asia and the United Arab Emirates, putting thousands of the white pizza-box-sized devices into the hands of some American adversaries and accused war criminals. Many of those end users connect to the satellites using Starlink’s roam feature after the dealers register the hardware in countries where Starlink is allowed. In Russia, middlemen buy the hardware, sometimes on eBay, in the U.S. and elsewhere, including on the black market in Central Asia, Dubai or Southeast Asia, then smuggle it into Russia. Russian volunteers boast openly on social media about supplying the terminals to troops. They are part of an informal effort to boost Russia’s use of Starlink in Ukraine, where Russian forces are advancing. This article reports that U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb said that SpaceX is working together with Ukraine to try to end the Russians’ use of the terminals on the front. In a separate article, Bloomberg reports Russia’s use of North Korean missiles in its assault in Ukraine is giving Pyongyang a rare chance to test its weapons in combat and perhaps take away lessons that could improve their performance. “I don’t believe that in my recent memory that the North Korean military has had a battlefield laboratory quite like the Russians are affording them to have in Ukraine,” said General Charles Flynn, the US Army Pacific’s commanding general. An Afghan migrant on the terrorist watchlist spent nearly a year inside the U.S. after he was apprehended and released by Border Patrol agents last year, U.S. officials told NBC News. Mohammad Kharwin, 48, was arrested in February and then freed on bond as he awaited an immigration hearing in Texas, scheduled for 2025. The immigration judge who was not told he was a national security threat. Kharwin is on the national terrorist watchlist maintained by the FBI, which includes the names of 1.8 million people considered potential security risks. The database indicates he is a member of Hezb-e-Islami, or HIG, a political and paramilitary organization that the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization. According to the national intelligence director’s office, HIG is a “virulently anti-Western insurgent group” that sought to overturn the Western-backed Afghan government before its fall in 2021. HIG was responsible for attacks in Afghanistan that killed at least nine American soldiers and civilians from 2013 to 2015. The group is not seen as a top threat in terms of attacks inside the U.S. The chaos in Haiti now has a soundtrack. This article reports that after heavily armed gangsters burst open the gates of Haiti’s National Penitentiary last month, a rapper and warlord called Izo [whose real name is Johnson Andre] posted a video on his popular TikTok account showing a crowd of freed inmates cheering him on after he had landed yet another blow against Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s crumbling government. “Gonna whack them all,” he said in a TikTok post directed to his rivals. “Going to snort cocaine and kill everyone who hates me.” Quote: Andre, along with his so-called Five Seconds Gang, has surged to prominence during the past few years and has expanded his control over the ports and coastline used for drugs and weapons smuggling. Along the way, he has systematically used the world’s most popular social-media platforms to recruit more foot soldiers and sow terror, posing a major challenge for the international security force that the U.S. and its allies are trying to deploy to stabilize a country fast falling into anarchy and starvation, security researchers and the United Nations say. … The sheer violence of Andre’s methods [including videos of rapes, sometimes in front of family members] – and the publication of the attacks on social media and messaging apps like WhatsApp – have astonished even experienced officials who have worked in Haiti. Last week, this article reports, TikTok banned Andre’s account, which had 227,000 followers, joining Alphabet’s YouTube and Meta—the parent of WhatsApp and Facebook – in curbing the spread of his content, in which he ridiculed Haitian politicians, rapped about killing police officers, and showed off new fatigues and military-grade weapons. |
