RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
September 3 to September 9, 2023 Last year, RealClearInvestigations reported that many school districts were heading toward a fiscal cliff as the $190 billion in COVID relief they received from the federal government was set to expire. This article reports that schools around the country are now grappling with that reality: Districts have through September 2024 to earmark the last of the money provided by Congress in three COVID relief packages. Some schools have already started pulling back programming to soften the blow, and the next budget year is likely to be even more painful, with the arrival of what some describe as a “funding cliff.” In a June survey of hundreds of school system leaders by AASA, The School Superintendents Association, half said they would need to decrease staffing of specialists, such as tutors and reading coaches, for the new school year. Half also said they were cutting summer-learning programs. School districts are complaining that these cuts are occurring even as data show that the pandemic took a huge toll on learning. But, as Steve Miller reported for RCI in 2022, many schools dug these holes for themselves by spending much of the aid on line items that did not bolster education: The nation’s public schools are hiring new teachers and staff, raising salaries, and sweetening benefit packages. Some are buying new vehicles. Others are building theaters and sports facilities. Using such temporary support for new staff and projects with long-term costs is setting the table for perilous “fiscal cliffs” after COVID funding expires in 2024, some education budget analysts say. And that’s on top of doubts about whether money to battle the pandemic is being properly spent in the first place. Waste of the Day
by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books Biden, Trump and the Beltway Other Noteworthy Articles In December, a Senate investigation revealed that correctional officers at a federal prison complex in Florida admitted in sworn interviews with internal affairs investigators that they had repeatedly raped women under their control. Yet, this article reports, thanks to a little-known Supreme Court precedent and a culture of corrupt self-protection inside the prison system, none of those guards were ever prosecuted – precisely because of the manner in which they confessed. The problem arose when Internal Affairs forced the culprits to sit for sworn interviews. Once those officers confessed to sexual assault, the possibility of criminal prosecution evaporated. The Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case, Garrity v. New Jersey, that when a government employee is compelled to answer questions under oath as a condition of employment, it would violate the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination for prosecutors to use those statements. By compelling prison guards to admit to criminal conduct, BOP internal affairs investigators got enough dirt to kick them out of the agency but also shielded them from future criminal prosecution. Although it would technically be possible for federal prosecutors to bring charges now, they would have to rely on other evidence and prove that nothing in their case was tainted by those interviews. Perversely, the more detailed and thorough the confession, the harder it is to prosecute – a feature that any BOP employee who screws up badly enough to get called in for a sworn interview understands. One patient took the powerful steroid prednisone for 89 days because a pharmacist confused the drug with Prilosec, the heartburn drug that had actually been prescribed. Another patient prescribed acetaminophen was given medicine for high blood pressure. And one person was incorrectly given another customer’s prescription for 50-milligram tablets of the antidepressant Zoloft and took the drug for at least seven months, refilling the prescription three times. This article reports that they are not alone: California pharmacies make an estimated 5 million errors every year, according to the state’s Board of Pharmacy. Officials at the regulatory board say they can only estimate the number of errors because pharmacies are not required to report them. Most of the mistakes that California officials have discovered, according to citations issued by the board and reviewed by The Times, occurred at chain pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens, where a pharmacist may fill hundreds of prescriptions during a shift, while juggling other tasks such as giving vaccinations, calling doctors’ offices to confirm prescriptions and working the drive-through. In a survey of California licensed pharmacists in 2021, 91% of those working at chain pharmacies said staffing wasn’t high enough to provide patients adequate care. While the pharmacy board requires pharmacies to document errors internally, inform patients about mistakes in certain cases and learn how to prevent them from occurring again, only 62% of chain pharmacists said stores were following those rules, according to the survey. Although this article only focused on California, it suggests that the problem is occurring nationwide. The U.S. has committed more than $60 billion for what the Biden administration calls the “Internet for All” program, the latest in a series of sometimes troubled efforts to bring high-speed internet to rural areas. But fulfilling that promise in many remote communities – especially Indian reservations – is very expensive, this article reports: Nebraska’s Winnebago Tribe has long been stuck with sluggish internet service. The federal government plans to fix that by crisscrossing the reservation with fiber-optic cable—at an average cost of $53,000 for each household and workplace connected. That amount exceeds the assessed value of some of the homes getting hookups, property records show. ... In Montana, laying fiber-optic cable to some remote locations could cost more than $300,000 per connection, said Misty Ann Giles, director of Montana’s Department of Administration. Building to those places would empty the state’s coffers, she said: “That’s when we might not reach everyone.” Regional banks across the country dished out commercial real-estate loans and related investments in big cities over the past decade. But, this article reports, with the market now in meltdown, those trillions of dollars are looming threat for the banking industry – and potentially the broader economy. The banks are in danger of setting off a doom-loop scenario where losses on the loans trigger banks to cut lending, which leads to further drops in property prices and yet more losses. … Low interest rates made higher-yielding real-estate loans lucrative to hold. That strategy now appears risky after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates. Banks are under pressure to pay depositors more to keep customers from fleeing to higher-yielding investment alternatives. Without cheap deposits, banks have less money to lend and to absorb losses from loans that go bad. Depositors withdrew funds from many small and regional lenders earlier this year after the collapse of three midsize banks stoked fears of a systemwide crisis. This article reports that “the doom-loop scenario is starting to play out in big cities where office vacancies have soared. Real-estate investors that are unable to refinance their debt, or can only do it at high rates, are defaulting. The lenders, no longer getting the debt payments, often have to write down the value of those mortgages. Sometimes the bank ends up owning the property.” New York City’s bill for migrant services this year will exceed the combined cost of critical services like sanitation, parks and firefighting, this article reports. That $4.7 billion price tag is sure to rise as about 10,000 asylum seekers are arriving every month: There are now nearly 60,000 migrants in the city's care, with about 21,000 new migrant children starting school this year. As the school year kicked off on Thursday, some schools were forced to turn away students as the classrooms overflowed. … The city is currently paying about $385 a night per migrant family that needs housing and feeding. According to Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, asylum seekers are costing the city roughly $10 million every day. Claiming the influx will “destroy” the city, Mayor Eric Adams’ pleas for assistance from Washington, D.C. are largely unheeded. Still, the city has contributed mightily to this mess. In years past, when relatively few migrants sought shelter from the city, it was easy to virtue-signal as a “sanctuary city.” The suddenly large influx of migrants, and a 1979 court case that required the city to provide food and shelter to the homeless, have created crushing strains. |
