RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
June 6 to June 12, 2021 A broad revolution is underway in the United States as traditional color-blind standards used to provide opportunity are being rejected by schools, corporations, and governments, Richard Bernstein reports for RealClearInvestigations. He examines the wide and rapid post-George Floyd adoption of quotas based on race and gender – and assesses the possible consequences: - On taking office, President Biden signaled an end to the nation’s principle of equality for all – i.e., treating everybody the same – by decreeing the goal of “racial equity” across the government.
- Many top universities recently jettisoned a seemingly neutral measure – standardized test scores – to give minorities a better shot at admissions.
- Hewlett-Packard, with 50,000 employees worldwide, has decreed that by 2030 half of its leadership positions and more than 30% of its technicians and engineers have to be women and that the number of minorities should “meet or exceed” their representation in the tech workforce.
- United Airlines announced that half its 5,000 trainee pilots between now and 2030 will be women or people of color.
- And the American Medical Association announced a new “strategic plan” for racial equity – describing meritocracy and treating everyone the same as “malignant narratives.”
- Troubling practical and moral questions abound: How to meet ambitious goals of diversity recruitment? And is this fair?
- To say that the concept of “best” needs to be redefined in racial terms is already a significant departure, Bernstein writes. But proponents go beyond that, casting meritocracy as a racist stratagem – a historic sea change.
Amid Democrat and media scoffing at voter fraud conspiracy theories, a potentially game-changing test of the integrity of Election 2020 is quietly unfolding in Georgia's Fulton County, Paul Sperry reports for RealClearInvestigations: - Election watchdogs have persuaded a state judge – a Democrat donor – to unseal all 147,000 mail-in ballots counted in Fulton to allow a closer inspection of suspicious votes for Joe Biden for evidence of counterfeiting.
- Poll workers have sworn under penalty of perjury that stacks of Biden ballots were oddly similar – "strangely pristine," one said, with ovals filled out with what looked like toner ink, as if they came out of a copying machine.
- Elsewhere, two other poll workers, both Democrats, flagged similar anomalies in DeKalb and Cobb counties.
- Watchdogs say tens of thousands of votes may have been manufactured in a race Biden won by just 12,000.
- Key was a late surge of mail ballots counted after monitors were shooed from State Farm Arena in Atlanta.
- For now, the ballots remain under guard, with outsiders including photographers banned.
- Yet in what was called an alarming breach of security, sheriff’s deputies left their post for hours May 29.
- If fraud is found in Georgia and other swing states like Arizona, that would back charges the election was “stolen" from President Trump.
- And it could prompt other states to tighten election security. Georgia did, but faced a national boycott backlash amid charges of voter suppression.
Biden, Trump and the Beltway Hunting Leaks, Trump Aides Focused on Schiff, Swalwell New York Times
Capitol Riot Suspects Hunted by Amateur Sleuths Bizweek
What's FBI Hiding About the DC Pipe Bomb Suspect? Substack
Hunter Biden's PR Push for Criminal Romanian Tycoon Daily Mail
Hunter Biden Worked Deal for Firm Under Investigation Washington Free Beacon
Hunter Biden Repeatedly Called White Lawyer N-Word Daily Mail Other Noteworthy Articles and Series When the State Comes for Your Sex-Confused Kid
City Journal
Many schools cannot give children aspirins without parental consent, but a growing number of states are allowing kids who believe they are transgender to decide on their own whether to take puberty blocking drugs or undergo body-changing surgery. Abigail Shrier reports that in Washington state: Minors age 13 and up are entitled to admit themselves for inpatient and outpatient mental health treatment without parental consent. Health insurers are forbidden from disclosing to the insured parents’ sensitive medical information of minor children—such as that regarding “gender dysphoria [and] gender affirming care.” ... In 2015, Oregon passed a law permitting minors 15 and older to obtain puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries at taxpayers’ expense—all without parental consent. In 2018, California passed a similar bill for all children in foster care, age 12 and up. Shrier also reports that several parents of trans-identified children said that social workers coached their daughters on their “emancipation” rights. The Scandal Rocking the Evangelical World
The Atlantic
The leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention dismissed and covered up serious charges of sexual abuse, one of its highest ranking officials alleged in his resignation letter to the country’s largest Protestant denomination. This article reports that Russell Moore, who ran the SBC’s policy arm, wrote: “I am trying to say this as clearly as I can to you, brothers and sisters: These are the tactics that have been used to create a culture where countless children have been torn to shreds, where women have been raped and then ‘broken down.’” Moore also wrote that he resigned because of conflicts over his demand that the SBC address racial issues: My family and I have faced constant threats from white nationalists and white supremacists, including within our convention. Some of them have been involved in neo-Confederate activities going back for years. Some are involved with groups funded by white nationalist nativist organizations. Some of them have just expressed raw racist sentiment, behind closed doors. How Ethnic Killings Exploded From an Ethiopian Town
Reuters
The only thing the two sides in Ethiopia’s civil war agree on is that hundreds died that November day in the small farming town. This investigation, based on more than 120 interviews, reports that the first round of brutal killings, committed by ethnic Tigrayan soldiers using knives and machetes, sparked violent waves of revenge killings against Tigrayan citizens. In one majority Tigrayan town, government forces burned many houses leaving nothing for those who lived there to return to. The United Nations has spoken of possible war crimes by all sides in Tigray’s war. In April, Reuters detailed accounts of women tortured and raped in central Tigray in conditions that a regional official described for the first time as “sexual slavery.” Scams Running Rampant in Cryptocurrency Markets
Wall Street Journal
Scams are proliferating in cryptocurrency markets as a huge rally in bitcoin, a lack of regulation and the anonymity of digital money have created an environment ripe for fraudsters, this article reports. Scammers have targeted everyone from small investors scouring social media for investing tips to the Wall Street veterans who lost nearly $82 million in the six months ending April 2021, more than 10 times the amount from the period a year earlier. The article reports on a 28-year-old pharmacy technician who lost about $10,000 in a crypto venture after its anonymous creators vanished in May, leaving behind hundreds of unhappy investors. America Has a Drinking Alone Problem
The Atlantic
Since the turn of the millennium, alcohol consumption has risen steadily, in a reversal of its long decline throughout the 1980s and ’90s. While the number of actual bars have decreased in number, this article reports, drinking is acceptable in all sorts of other places it didn’t used to be: Salons and boutiques dole out cheap cava in plastic cups. Movie theaters serve alcohol, Starbucks serves alcohol, zoos serve alcohol. Even before COVID-19 arrived on our shores, the consequences of all this were catching up with us. From 1999 to 2017, the number of alcohol-related deaths in the U.S. doubled, to more than 70,000 a year—making alcohol one of the leading drivers of the decline in American life expectancy. These numbers are likely to get worse: During the pandemic, frequency of drinking rose, as did sales of hard liquor. By this February, nearly a quarter of Americans said they’d drunk more over the past year as a means of coping with stress. Although both men and women commonly use alcohol to cope with stressful situations and negative feelings, research finds that women are substantially more likely to do so. Gabrielle Glaser, a journalist who wrote a 2013 book on women and alcohol, “Her Best-Kept Secret,” said almost all of the heavy-drinking women she interviewed drank alone—the bottle of wine while cooking, the Baileys in the morning coffee, the Poland Spring bottle secretly filled with vodka. They did so not to feel good, but to take the edge off feeling bad. Coronavirus Investigations 2 Scientists: Why Science Points to a Lab Leak Wall Street Journal
Pentagon Gave $39M to Wuhan Lab Funder Daily Mail
California: Worry as Berkeley Biolab Expands Intercept
The Teen Who Made a Pile Off Pandemic Scarcity Wall Street Journal
Trump Right on Hydroxychloroquine All Along? Daily Mail |
