RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
August 21 to August 27, 2022 In RealClearInvestigations, Steve Miller reports from California on a major neglected problem threatening the zero-carbon future: inadequate transmission lines to move clean power into the green economy. Such shortcomings of the electric grid raise the prospect that marquee products of the growing battery economy such as electric vehicles -- "emission free" on the road – will be recharged mainly by a "dirty" open secret flowing from power plants: energy from fossil fuels, some of it from out of state. Miller reports: - California's precariously out-of-date grid can't handle the state's growing amounts of solar and wind energy coming online, with system managers already forcing repeated cutbacks in favor of conventional energy to keep the blackout-prone grid stable.
- The amount of renewable energy “curtailed” in California tripled between 2018 and 2021, according to operator statistics.
- In April, the state curtailed more than 596 million kilowatt hours of wind and solar energy, enough to provide electricity to 55,000 American homes for a year, according to federal estimates.
- Such curtailed power is wasted: There’s no place to store it yet.
- At the root of the longstanding problem: stalemate between renewable-energy providers and electric system operators over who will pay for the infrastructure.
- And public officials haven't come up with a fix either – as they shortsightedly greenlight easier-to-approve solar and wind installations.
- With grids nationwide facing the same transmission challenge, “we’re headed toward duplicate systems whose only benefit is to permit the occasional use of ‘clean power,’” says a consultant.
Biden, Trump and the Beltway While Donald Trump still pushes false claims that he won more legitimate votes than Joe Biden in 2020, real evidence keeps emerging that the election was tilted against him in other meaningful ways. This article reports that Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has asked Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz to investigate whistleblower claims that FBI officials instructed agents not to investigate Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 presidential election. “After the FBI obtained the Hunter Biden laptop from the Wilmington, DE computer shop, these whistleblowers stated that local FBI leadership told employees, ‘you will not look at that Hunter Biden laptop’ and that the FBI is ‘not going to change the outcome of the election again,'” he wrote [in an apparent reference to the FBI’s handling of Hillary Clinton’s private email server, which many Democrats blame for her 2016 loss]. The FBI, in fact, gained possession of the laptop in December of 2019, when Biden was still seeking the Democratic nomination. The FBI stayed silent when laptop’s existence became public 10 months later, in October 2020, and the Biden campaign sought to defuse its damaging revelations by spreading the lie that it was Russian disinformation. Subsequent polling suggested many Biden voters might have had second-thoughts about their choice if they’d known about the pattern of seemingly corrupt foreign dealings contained on the laptop. In a separate article, the New York Post reports that liberal journalist Nate Silver is admitting what many on the right have long known: that "liberal public health elites" persuaded Pfizer to delay fast-track approval of its COVID-19 vaccine until after the 2020 presidential election – perhaps denying then-President Donald Trump a political win before voters headed to the polls, and almost certainly costing lives as the vaccine’s rollout was delayed. “Trump pushed for vaccine approvals too fast’ is the worst possible critique of the Trump administration’s COVID policy,” Silver, founder of the FiveThirtyEight political news and analysis website, tweeted. Other Biden, Trump and the Beltway Biden White House Facilitated Trump Criminal Probe Just the News
Two Plead Guilty to Biden Diary Sale Scheme New York Times
Right's Leonard Leo a $1.6B Kingmaker New York Times
TikTok's U.S. 'Elections Center' Empowers China Federalist
Dying American Dream Now Mantra of GOP Minorities NY Times
DoJ Memo on Mueller-Era Obstruction Doubts Politico
SEC Mum on Clinton-Tied Chair, Strzok Wife Roles in Trump Probe Just/News Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Twitter executives deceived federal regulators and the company’s own board of directors about “extreme, egregious deficiencies” in its defenses against hackers, as well as its efforts to fight spam, according to an explosive whistleblower complaint from its former security chief. This article reports that the former executive alleges that the “rudderless company beset by infighting,” is unable to properly protect its 238 million daily users, including government agencies, heads of state and other influential public figures: Among the most serious accusations in the complaint, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is that Twitter violated the terms of an 11-year-old settlement with the Federal Trade Commission by falsely claiming that it had a solid security plan. Zatko’s complaint alleges he had warned colleagues that half the company’s servers were running out-of-date and vulnerable software and that executives withheld dire facts about the number of breaches and lack of protection for user data, instead presenting directors with rosy charts measuring unimportant changes. Even as deaths from synthetic narcotic fentanyl reach record highs, those numbers may be an undercount. A University of Maryland study has found that only 5% of emergency department visits for drug overdoses include fentanyl screenings. When screenings are done, the positivity rate was over 41%, more than triple the positivity rate of other opioids, suggesting that many more people are overdosing on the drug. This article reports: Chinese-made fentanyl trafficked across the southern border into the United States has been a major contributor to record high overdose death numbers during the past several years. Nearly 110,000 Americans died from overdoses in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the highest number ever recorded. In a separate article, the City Journal reports that the border crisis is also exacerbating New York City’s homeless problem. The arrival since May of around 6,000 asylum seekers – many sent on buses from Texas by Gov. Greg Abbott – is adding new stress to the overtaxed system. News about the availability of free shelter in New York has also made it to the border. The “consent to transport” form, signed by New York-bound migrants, references local shelter programs. Abbott has sardonically cited New York’s right-to-shelter law, as well as its sanctuary-city status, to explain why Gotham is the “ideal destination for these migrants.” According to a report published in The City, “One of the Venezuelan families in New York City ... decided to come to the city, they said, after overhearing other migrants at the border discuss New York’s guaranteed shelter.” From the Annals of There’s No Honor Among Power Brokers: After compelling evidence emerged that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was behind the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, the kingdom’s standing and influence in the West seemed imperiled. Some countries suspended arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and more issued travel bans against those suspected of the killing. Several lobbying and public relations firms, think tanks and universities suggested that they would stop taking piles of Saudi cash. But, this article reports, those initial outcries and severed ties have been quieted and mended in the nearly four years since Khashoggi’s murder and Saudi Arabia’s reputation has been rehabilitated thanks, in no small part, to the richly compensated assistance of many of those same outfits. That effort seemed to pay off this summer when President Biden, who had famously called the Saudi government a “pariah” on the campaign trail in 2019, shared a fist bump with MSB as he agreed to sell the kingdom billions of dollars’ worth of weapons. Regulation and taxes have triumphed where the war on drugs could not – vanquishing California’s small marijuana farmers. This article reports that local growers in Humboldt County --- “the once-mystical heart of the nation’s artisanal pot business” -- are being put out of business by Democratic policies that favor corporate concerns. After voters passed a law in 2016 making it legal to grow and possess cannabis ... ... [T]he state imposed multiple taxes across the cannabis supply chain, a burden unmatched in other nearby marijuana-legal states. At the same time, the state declined — after initially signaling it would do so — to limit the size of cannabis cultivations or the number of grower licenses it would issue to farmers. As a result, the state is now awash in tax revenue, much of it from the industrial-scale farmers and retailers, and in marijuana, a market glut that has gutted wholesale prices and left [small] farmers … unable to break even. The state and local jurisdictions have seen pot as a tax bonanza: In some regions of the state, one pound of cannabis is subjected to as many as five separate taxes, some based on weight and others on sales. … California’s cannabis taxes come on top of licensing fees and regulatory permits, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars annually for growers, burying those who used to work without regulation in red tape and state invoices. As sources of nourishment, mobility, irrigation and beauty, rivers have been considered sacred by diverse cultures for millennia. This well-written, beautifully illustrated six-part series – which examines rivers from New Zealand to Nepal to Nigeria to the Pacific Northwest – reports that even as these rivers remain an object of devotion ... ... [S]ome face dire threats – severe pollution, diminution of their flow, hydroelectric projects. In Nepal, many devout Hindus no longer cleanse the bodies of their newly deceased loved ones with the waters of the Bagmati River – it’s befouled by sewage. In the Middle East, the Jordan River’s dwindling waters are a dull greenish brown as they approach the site revered as where Jesus was baptized. … The Osun River flows through a forest designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is revered by the Yoruba-speaking people of southwestern Nigeria. But it’s under constant threat of pollution from waste disposal and other human activity. That includes dozens of illegal gold mines whose runoff fills the river with toxic metals. | 
