RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
May 8 to May 14, 2022 In the face of rising violent crime, liberal jurisdictions from east to west continue to push for softer enforcement and sentencing – with the nation's capital prominent among them, Eric Felten reports for RealClearInvestigations. Critics warn that Washington D.C.’s proposed criminal code rewrite -- designed to reduce the number of people arrested and incarcerated -- could spell disaster for public safety at the seat of federal government. Felten reports: - In a city with a gang crime problem, the code would ditch the principle that conspirators in a lesser crime are responsible if a killing is committed -- meaning a fatal gang rape “may result in no liability for murder," a critic says, "as it may not be possible to determine which defendant committed the lethal act.”
- In 2020, the district treated George Floyd unrest with kid gloves, and now its new definition of “rioting” would require police to prove a long list of occurrences before charging group violence.
- The longest sentence for first-degree murder under the new code is 45 years – and some reformers think even that is too severe: “We advocate a maximum of 20 years.”
- Misdemeanor defendants facing prison could now demand jury trials, meaning the likelihood the court system would be overwhelmed.
- D.C.'s proposed new criminal code even has a get-out-of-jailbait clause for accused sex predators found to have "reasonably" believed a minor's claim at the time to be of legal age.
After a RealClearInvestigations public records request, the Biden Administration has quietly posted racial and gender equity marching orders for all Cabinet-level agencies and more, John Murawski reports for RCI – with costs still unknown. He reports: - The State Department expects its effort to export American-style gender and race consciousness to ruffle feathers around the globe, clashing with “societal norms” and an “unwillingness to cede power by dominant groups.”
- The Environmental Protection Agency plans to tap into “community science” from tribal nations and others – for evidence of what the agency calls environmental racism.
- The Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum complex, commits to affirming “the centrality of race in America” in “everything we do.”
- Even the Marine Mammal Commission has an equity plan – for human mammals.
- No one knows yet how much all these “Equity Action Plans” will cost taxpayers -- and the feds look ready to abandon traditional cost-benefit analysis to assess their value.
- The plans are already facing pushback. A judge blocked a farm debt-relief program on the ground that excluding white farmers is “abhorrent to the concept of equal protection.”
- The Department of Education has pulled references to the New York Times 1619 Project – which posits the United States’ founding as a “slavocracy.” Also pulled: references to “antiracist” author Ibram X. Kendi, who favors racial discrimination against whites.
Biden, Trump and the Beltway Although hundreds of people have been arrested and prosecuted in connection withthe Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol, Ray Epps has not – which has led some on the right to question whether he was, in fact, a government informant. The New York Times seeks to dismiss such questions by labeling them a “conspiracy theory.” The evidence? Epps’ denial of evidence of him urging crowds to go into the Capitol. Just two days after the attack, when Mr. Epps saw himself on a list of suspects from Jan. 6, he called an FBI tip line and told investigators that he had tried to calm Mr. Samsel down when they spoke, according to three people who have heard a recording of the call. [Samsel corroborated this account]. While trumpeting the “evidence” of this phone call, the Times casts it as some kind of proof because, well, Epps has proclaimed his innocence before: The theories surrounding Mr. Epps have been debunked before, most notably after he spoke last year to investigators working with the House select committee examining the Jan. 6 attack. During the interview, committee officials said, Mr. Epps said that he was not an F.B.I. informant and denied reports that he had urged protesters to go into the Capitol at the behest of federal law enforcement agencies. This is, of course, laughable. Our prisons would, of course, be empty if a suspect’s declaration of innocence were enough. Given the government’s aggressive prosecution of other people connected with Jan. 6, the real story is why the government has treated Epps so differently – including removing him from its wanted list -- a fact the Times ignores. Other Biden, Trump and the Beltway Many 'Suspicious Actors' Sought for Jan. 6 Defense Epoch Times
FBI Notes: Panic as Trump Tweeted of Its Spying Epoch Times
Source: Hollywood Lawyer Fronted Hunter's $2M in Late Taxes New York Post
Susan Rice's ‘Abusive, Dehumanizing’ Workplace American Prospect Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Should children in foster care help reimburse states for the cost of their care? That’s the question raised by this article, which reports that states routinely seek to claim Social Security benefits owed to roughly 10% of foster youth in the U.S., either because their parents have died or because they have a physical or mental disability that would leave them in poverty without financial help. This money – typically more than $700 per recipient per month (an estimated total of $165 million collected by the states in 2018) – is considered the property of the children under federal law. But, this article reports: At least 49 states and Washington, D.C., foster care agencies comb through their case files to find kids entitled to these benefits, then apply to Social Security to become each child’s financial representative, a process permitted by federal regulations. Once approved, the agencies take the money, almost always without notifying the children, their loved ones or lawyers. At least 10 state foster care agencies hire for-profit companies to obtain millions of dollars in Social Security benefits intended for the most vulnerable children in their care each year, according to a review of hundreds of pages of contract documents. Almost all the states contacted for the story said they take the money as reimbursement for the cost of foster care, putting the funds in individual accounts to recoup what the state has paid for each child’s room and board. Youth advocates counter that this means some kids are being made to pay for their own foster care — a public service that federal law and laws in all 50 states require the government to pay for. Cars now makes up the largest source of stolen guns in the United States, according to a new data analysis by the nonprofit group Everytown for Gun Safety. The nonprofit, which advocates gun violence prevention, found that in 2020, an estimated 77,000 guns were reported stolen in these 271 cities alone. Of those, more than half were taken out of vehicles — a stark difference from a decade ago, when the majority of gun thefts were from burglaries and less than a quarter were from cars, according to Everytown. … Most states do not have laws that specify how a firearm should be stored inside an unoccupied vehicle. In a separate article, City Journal reports 123 law-enforcement officers were shot in the line of duty this year through May 1, a 35 percent increase relative to the first five months of 2021. Nineteen of those officers died, according to data collected by the Fraternal Order of Police. These figures offer just a snapshot of the past 18 months, but the long-run data also suggest that policing has indeed gotten more dangerous since 2020, reversing its dramatic decline after violent crime hit a peak in the 1990s. Utah’s voters may be among the most conservative in the country, but that doesn’t mean that officials who serve them are. Emails and documents obtained by the Free Beacon show that public health officials there allocated COVID drugs through a point system that prioritized race. Patients received more points for being non-white, for example, than for having congestive heart failure. With the backing of the Biden administration, the state implemented the policy even after it was warned that it violated federal policy. Such race-conscious policies proliferated throughout the pandemic, sparking both moral outrage and legal scrutiny. Like Utah, Minnesota and New York prioritized non-white residents for monoclonal antibodies. Vermont did the same for vaccines. Some states, including Utah and Minnesota, scrapped their policies in the wake of political backlash – and amid threats of legal action from conservative nonprofits. The emails suggest Utah was ground zero for many of these schemes. The state initially defended its system by invoking guidance from the Food and Drug Administration, which lists race as a risk factor that can qualify patients for monoclonal antibodies. But according to the emails, it was Utah that inspired that guidance in the first place. Anyone paying attention during the 1970s knew that New York Mayor Ed Koch was almost certainly gay – when Mario Cuomo ran against him for Mayor in 1977 and for Governor in 1982, posters appeared that read “Vote for Cuomo, not the homo.” It was tragedy of that era that the city’s brash Mayor, who died in 2013, had to publicly deny this fact, while even pretending to date former Miss America Bess Meyerson. The article’s details of the bargain Koch had to make – trading companionship for power – is compelling. But much of the ground is familiar. More interesting is the reason the Times gives for running this article now: Now, with gay rights re-emerging as a national political tinderbox, The New York Times has assembled a portrait of the life Mr. Koch lived, the secrets he carried and the city he helped shape as he carried them. Gay rights are not a political tinderbox – although the Times and others seem bent on making them one. The plan is to conflate something most Americans now endorse – the equality of gays and lesbians – with far more radical claims, such as those of transgender activists. In this instance, the Times is trying to equate the unacceptable choices Koch was forced to make with the far more questionable demands of others. Coronavirus Investigations Report: COVID Vaccine Maker Hid Evidence of Problems New York Times
NIH's Hidden Estimated $350M Royalty Stream Open the Books
Pandemic Has Pushed Some Mothers Into the Workforce New York Times |
