RealClearInvestigations'
Picks of the Week
May 5 to May 11, 2024 Over the past several weeks, Americans have witnessed what has seemed like a mass outpouring of left-wing dissent on elite college campuses, stretching from Columbia, Yale, Princeton to the University of Texas-Austin, Northwestern, and UCLA. This article reports that students are not the only, and perhaps not even the most important, faction active in the campus protests: As in the “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter protests of the summer of 2020, “outside agitators” – professional radicals and organizers, black bloc antifa thugs, Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries, and Palestinian and Islamist radicals – have played a central role in organizing and escalating the campus protests, just as they have organized and escalated the wider anti-Israel protest campaign that began almost immediately after Oct. 7. This largely decentralized network of agitators is, in turn, politically and financially supported by a vast web of progressive nonprofits, NGOs, foundations, and dark-money groups ultimately backed by big-money donors aligned with the Democratic Party. The article reports that roughly half of those arrested at the University of Texas-Austin and Columbia and the City University of New York had no connection with the university: The far-left groups active in the protests include antifa and other anarchists: Anarchist literature has been distributed in the encampments, and antifa websites have published dispatches from “comrades” on the inside. They also include various communist and Marxist-Leninist groups, including the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and the International ANSWER coalition, a PSL front group that worked with several Muslim groups to organize the Jan. 13 March on Washington for Gaza, at which protesters flew the black jihadist flag. On April 29, for instance, shortly before masked assailants stormed Columbia’s Hamilton Hall and barricaded themselves inside, The People’s Forum – a Manhattan event space affiliated with the PSL and funded by Neville Roy Singham, a wealthy businessman who “works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide,” according to an August profile in The New York Times – urged its activists to rush up to Columbia to “support our students.” Similar calls for an “emergency action” were distributed throughout radical networks in New York City. The “movement,” in turn, while it recruits from among students and other self-motivated radicals willing to put their bodies on the line, relies heavily on the funding of progressive donors and nonprofits connected to the upper reaches of the Democratic Party. The article reports that these organizations include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, various branches of George Soros’ philanthropic empire, the Kaphan Foundation, and the Tides Foundation. Waste of the Day
by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books Why Navy's Not in $hip-$hape, RCI
Mayor Bills City for Own Vengeful Lawsuit, RCI
Calif. Spending on Homeless Untracked, RCI
Lawmaker's Scheme to Park Taxpayer Cash, RCI
$19K Podium for Huckabee Sanders, RCI Biden, Trump and the Beltway As President Biden runs for a second term, he is pointing to the passage of three bills that provided trillions in new funding – the American Rescue Plan, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act – as proof of his effective and visionary leadership. This article reports that much of the funding remains unspent: -
Less than 17 percent of the $1.1 trillion those laws provided for direct investments on climate, energy and infrastructure has been spent as of April, nearly two years after Biden signed the last of the statutes. -
Out of $145 billion in direct spending on energy and climate programs in the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest climate law in U.S. history, the administration has announced roughly $60 billion in tentative funding decisions as of April 11. -
The government has awarded less than $700 million of the $54 billion that Congress had made available in the CHIPS and Science Act, a law aimed at boosting competition with China, though the Commerce Department has announced $29 billion in tentative awards to semiconductor manufacturers in recent months. Awarding money means the federal government has committed to pay out an agreed-upon sum. A tentative award is still under negotiation. -
And only $125 billion has been spent from the $884 billion provided by the infrastructure law and the pandemic law, both of which Biden signed in 2021. Roughly $300 billion of that won’t be legally available to spend until the next two fiscal years. -
For much of this money, the government does not provide a centralized, easily accessible way for the public to see how much has been formally awarded or spent. -
The IRA also unleashed a gusher of private company investments in clean energy and manufacturing by offering a series of tax breaks that, based on recent estimates, are worth at least $525 billion. Those initiatives are hitting turbulence, with some major electric vehicle, battery, solar and wind projects being delayed or canceled because of changing or uncertain markets.
This article reports that the Biden administration is rushing to spend more of the money because if Donald Trump wins, he could halt all pending grant approvals and applications. In a separate article, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Biden administration is engaging in a “frenzy of regulatory activity” in order to “Trump-proof” its legacy should the Republican win in November. The Congressional Review Act allows a new president, with the help of allies on Capitol Hill, to target final regulations that were introduced 60 working days before the end of the last session of Congress. Regulations passed before late May will be far harder for a Trump administration to overturn, this article reports. The FBI is not waiting for the Supreme Court to weigh in on the limits of government-compelled censorship in Murthy v. Missouri, the ongoing case focused on allegations that the federal government’s pressuring of social media companies to censor free speech online constitutes a violation of the First Amendment. After a brief pause, this article reports, the bureau says it has resumed communications with social media companies about removing “disinformation” on their sites ahead of the 2024 election. An FBI spokesperson told the Federalist: “In coordination with the Department of Justice, the FBI recently implemented procedures to facilitate sharing information about foreign malign influence with social media companies in a way that reinforces that private companies are free to decide on their own whether and how to take action on that information.” The article reports that the FBI did not respond “when pressed on when they restarted communications with social media companies on efforts to remove posts containing so-called ‘disinformation’ from their platforms.” The bureau also did not identify the specific companies it is working with on such efforts. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says that it takes conflicts of interest seriously. But financial entanglements with the drug industry are common among its leaders, this article reports. Examples include former FDA commissioner Lester Crawford, who was sentenced to three years of supervised probation and fined $89,377 for false reports about stocks that he and his wife owned in four FDA regulated companies; and Scott Gottlieb who, just months after he left the agency he led from 2017-2019, was nominated to Pfizer’s board of directors. Quote: The revolving door between the FDA and industry surprises few anymore, despite the widely acknowledged potential it has for undermining public trust in government. And stories about FDA commissioners’ heavy ties to industry have become commonplace: nine of the FDA’s past 10 commissioners went on to work for the drug industry or serve on the board of directors of a drug company. This article focuses on Margaret Hamburg, who led the FDA between 2009 and 2015. “Like her colleagues, Hamburg had relationships with FDA regulated companies before and after her stint at the FDA’s helm. But unlike her colleagues, Hamburg was allowed to hold financial interests in an exclusive hedge fund managed by her husband’s company [Renaissance Technologies].” A BMJ analysis found that the hedge fund consistently invested in FDA-regulated drug companies during Hamburg’s tenure: A review by The BMJ found that, in every quarterly disclosure for the past 20 years, including the six in which Hamburg served as FDA commissioner, Renaissance Technologies held stock in FDA regulated companies. In all 24 of the quarterly reports filed during Hamburg’s tenure at FDA, Renaissance held stock in three major drug companies – Amgen, Novo Nordisk, and AstraZeneca – at an average value of $518m. Across 10 drug companies, the reports indicate average holdings of over $1bn. Other Biden, Trump and the Beltway The DOJ's Doctored Crime Scene Photo of Mar-a-Lago Raid, Declassified
Biden Impeach Witness Alleges DOJ Retaliation in Prison, Just the News
Rep. Bowman’s YouTube Page Is a Conspiracist’s Dream, Daily Beast
RFK Jr. Says Doctors Found a Dead Worm in His Brain, New York Times
Pro-Palestinian Protesters Backed by Biden’s Top Donors, Politico
Trump Hush Money Prosecutor Got $12K as DNC Adviser, Daily Mail
Google Banned Trump Ad Targeting Blacks Before It Didn't, PJ Media Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Jails and prisons have become America’s largest provider of inpatient mental health treatment, with 10 times as many seriously mentally ill people now held behind bars as in hospitals. Estimating the population of incarcerated people with major psychological problems is difficult, but the number is likely 200,000 to 300,000, this article reports: Many of these institutions remain ill-equipped to handle such a task, and the burden often falls on prison staff and health care personnel who struggle with the dual roles of jailer and caregiver in a high-stress, dangerous, often dehumanizing environment. … Many seriously ill people receive no treatment. For those who do, the outcome is often determined by the vigilance and commitment of individual supervisors and frontline staff, which vary greatly from system to system, prison to prison, and even shift to shift. This article focuses on the experience of a 29-year-old inmate named Markus Johnson who, while serving a short sentence for gun possession, died in custody connected to “a mental collapse that had gone largely untreated.” The NYPD site that allows the public to track officers’ misconduct is “shockingly unreliable," this article reports. Cases against officers frequently vanish from the site for days – sometimes weeks – at a time. The issue affects nearly all of the officers in the database, with discipline disappearing from the profiles of patrol officers all the way up to its most senior uniformed officer. Quote: Since May 2021, at least 88% of the disciplinary cases that once appeared in the data have gone missing at some point, though some were later restored. As of this week, 54% of cases that had at one point been in the system were missing. … These missing cases have included Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, the force’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, and six deputy chiefs whose assignments include the department’s transit bureau and the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Because the department’s database is designed to show discipline only for active officers, some cases relating to former officers might have been removed from the data over time. Yet, this article reports, “that would only explain a fraction of the missing cases. For most of the past year, at least a third of cases that had previously appeared in the database were missing. … The NYPD did not respond to repeated requests for interviews or comment.” Surprise fees are sneaking onto the bottom of bills for everything from concert tickets, to haircuts, package deliveries and dinners out. The upshot, this article reports, is that prices we see are rarely the ones we end up paying. More companies are unbundling the cost of their goods and services, retail analysts say, tacking on 3% for swiping a credit card or adding a little extra for gas. With Live Nation Entertainment facing scrutiny over its ticketing process, singer Maggie Rogers recently urged her fans to buy tickets to her next show at the box office “like it’s 1965” to avoid fees, even showing up at one herself. The Cure’s Robert Smith, meanwhile, convinced Live Nation Entertainment subsidiary Ticketmaster to offer some fee refunds. … In Brooklyn, N.Y., event planner James Fairbrother says food-delivery fees are now so high that he can rarely rationalize the convenience. “The fees wind up being equivalent to half what the actual order will be, to the point where sometimes I cancel the order,” says Fairbrother, 33. He cites a recent delivery from an Italian restaurant where taxes, fees and tip added $21 to the $48 food bill. … Alexander Chernev, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, says that beyond the effect on people’s pocketbooks, surprise fees feel unfair. He recounted mailing a standard letter envelope of tax documents via FedEx a few weeks ago. What he expected to cost about $10 turned into $38 after various fees, including $5.38 for fuel and another $4 to pick up the envelope from a Northwestern mailroom. |
