RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
October 8 to October 14, 2023 In RealClearInvestigations, Nancy Rommelmann unpacks a single random assault to illustrate the largely self-inflicted social maladies of progressive and permissive Portland, Oregon: -
The assault victim is Dr. Mary Costantino, a physician out on a date who was suddenly felled on the street by a thrown metal water bottle. -
The assailant was an apparently psychotic addict who, surveillance video would show, looked like any number of men on the streets of Portland: white, 30s, beard, dark hoodie, backpack. -
He and thousands of others living on the streets of Oregon’s largest city are on their own. Despite the safety nets Portland has in place, it's a fertile environment for drug addiction and homelessness, due to hands-off policies and the idea that a moral society is a tolerant society. -
There are 6,297 homeless recorded in surrounding Multnomah County today, compared with 3,120 in 2020. -
Oregon ranks as having the second-highest drug and alcohol addiction in the nation by percentage of population, after Montana. -
The 2022 murder rate was nearly triple 2019’s rate before the pandemic and the unrest sparked by the police killing of George Floyd. -
Critic: "Oregon's become a guinea pig for the rest of the free world to see if this would even work. And it hasn't."
In RealClearInvestigations, Vince Bielski reports how cities and their teacher unions are increasingly working to undermine charter schools, viewed by many as successful alternatives to struggling traditional public schools. -
The Los Angeles board of education voted last month to ban charters from sharing space at 300 district campuses. -
Proponents say the ban, a long-sought goal of United Teachers Los Angeles, will protect black and Latino students from the disruption of co-locations. -
But researchers and charter advocates say charters -- privately run schools that aim to bring innovation to public education -- have an outstanding track record compared with traditional schools. -
They have become one of the favorite destinations for exiles from public schools, especially in southern and western states. -
In the three years during the pandemic, charter enrollment jumped 7% to about 3.7 million students while public schools lost 3.5% of students. -
President Joe Biden, a staunch ally of unions, has emboldened charter opponents, by neglecting vital federal funding for facilities so charters can expand.
Waste of the Day
by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books $25B to Ukraine Farms, Small Businesses, RCI
Nevada's $9M No Help to Homeowners, RCI
1981's Highway to Cost-Overrun Hell, RCI
On the Dole for $135B in Pandemic Fraud, RCI
$34M in Trees for Housing-Poor NYC, RCI Biden, Trump and the Beltway Alarmed Scrutiny of Suspended Biden Iran Envoy, New York Post
Biden Admin Admitted Palestinian Aid Likely to Benefit Hamas, Free Beacon
Almost Every Illegal Alien Biden Admin Let Go Is Still in U.S. Just the News
ICE Overseeing Record 5.7 Million Migrants in the U.S., New York Post
Comer: White House Lied Hiding Biden's Secret Docs, Federalist
Up Close with Vice President Kamala Harris, Atlantic
Democrat Sen. Menendez Charged as Agent of Foreign Power Politico Other Noteworthy Articles and Series “On a cold, foggy Saturday morning in February,” this article begins, “an air traffic controller cleared a FedEx cargo plane to land on Runway 18L at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas. A Southwest Airlines jet was on the same runway, but the controller said it would take off before FedEx’s hulking Boeing 767 got too close.” It did not take off and but for the heroics of the FedEx pilot, all 128 people abroad the Southwest flight might have died. The errors by the controller – who has continued to direct some plane traffic in Austin – were far from the whole story, according to a Times investigation. Austin-Bergstrom, like the vast majority of U.S. airports, lacks technology that allows controllers to track planes on the ground and that warns of imminent collisions. The result is that on foggy days, controllers can’t always see what is happening on runways and taxiways. Some have even resorted to using a public flight-tracking website in lieu of radar. In addition, for years Austin has had a shortage of experienced controllers, even as traffic at the airport has surged to record levels. Nearly three-quarters of shifts have been understaffed. Managers and rank-and-file controllers have repeatedly warned that staffing levels pose a public danger. The controller on that February morning was working an overtime shift. The article reports that Austin is a microcosm of a systemic crisis. The safety net that underpins air travel in America is fraying, exposing passengers to potential tragedies like the episode in February. There has not been a fatal crash involving a major U.S. airline since 2009, but close calls have been happening, on average, multiple times a week this year, the Times reported in August. Government documents obtained by The Intercept reveal that national security agencies – including the Department of Defense, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security – are advancing the narrative that synthetic opiate fentanyl could pose a WMD threat, going so far as conducting military exercises in preparation for an attack by a fentanyl weapon. (Irony: Fentanyl is a scourge born of the very same administration's lax border controls.) “Fentanyl Very Likely a Viable Option for a Chemical Weapon Attack in the United States for Extremists and Criminals, Low Probability High Impact Event,” reads the title of an FBI intelligence bulletin. While the likelihood of such an attack is “remote,” this article reports that the push to declare fentanyl a WMD has been a boon to agency budgets: “In the WMD world, there’s an industry built on taking a bit of a threat du jour and, like a few egg whites and a whisk, whipping it into an expensive meringue,” said Dan Kaszeta, a former adviser to the White House on chemical and biological preparedness and longtime expert on WMDs. The push to treat fentanyl like a WMD so far “involves emergency responders giving fentanyl mythical properties that toxicologists and anesthesiologists who use the stuff all the time refute,” added Kaszeta, who is currently an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank. “Is it,” Kaszeta asked, “the next anthrax scare – a way to beg for budget, training, equipment?” High schools across the country are trying to reduce racial differences on campuses by eliminating honors classes, primarily during freshman year. The theory goes that starting everyone on equal footing gives more students the confidence and skills needed to enroll in honors and Advanced Placement courses in later years. This article reports that the changes are mostly aimed at helping black and Latino students, who are underrepresented in advanced courses in most states: In the freshman class entering Oak Park [Illinois] in 2021-2022, a year before the new system, white students made up 54% of the class and at least 62% of those in honors classes; Black students were 18% of the class and 9% or less of honors enrollment. In a district study released last month, the school points to a promising early sign: The proportion of courses that sophomores enrolled in this year that were honors or Advanced Placement rose by 8 percentage points, to 44%. In the four restructured subject areas, it rose 7 percentage points to 66%. However, this article reports that the honors classes have become a little easier. “State-issued survey data included in the report shows that after the changes were implemented, freshmen ranked classroom rigor and teacher expectations lower than prior years’ ninth-graders.” A senior at a California high school is quoted as saying, “We’re not fixing anything.” Last school year, news reports identified more than 1,150 guns brought to K-12 campuses but seized before anyone fired them. This article reports that the true number is almost certainly far higher. A Washington Post survey of 51 of the country’s largest school systems showed that 58 percent of seizures in those districts last academic year were never publicly reported by news organizations. Those same districts said the number of guns recovered on campus rose sharply in recent years, mirroring the growing prevalence of firearms in many other public places. The guns were discovered practically everywhere – bookbags, lockers, trash cans, bathrooms, cars, pockets, purses, bulging behind waistbands and hidden above bathroom ceiling tiles. Some were brought by accident, others to show off. In many cases, police alleged, they were brought to end lives. A Florida 16-year-old was caught after taking selfies with a pink-handled pistol in a high school restroom. In Georgia, a teacher found a handgun inside a diaper bag, and in Illinois, a 10-year-old girl smuggled in a gun that belonged to her mother, a corrections officer. The Post investigation also found that the number of campus gun seizures spiked significantly between the 2018-2019 school year and the 2022-2023 school year – a five-year period that, following the pandemic shutdowns, also has seen significantly more behavioral problems in school. “The 47 districts for which The Post was able to obtain five full school years of data saw a 79 percent increase in guns found on campuses over that time frame. In many communities, the number of guns found has more than doubled, a trend that mirrors a precipitous rise in school shootings.” This article opens with an arresting lead: Inside the medical examiner’s office, two pathologists removed a baby’s lungs from his chest, clamped them together and placed them in a container of water. Then they watched. They were examining the suspicious death of the baby whose body was found in a Maryland home; his mother said he was stillborn. If the lungs floated, the theory behind the test holds, the baby likely was born alive. If they sank, the baby likely was stillborn. “A very simple premise,” the assistant medical examiner later testified. The lungs floated – and the mother was charged with murder. This article reports that the lung float test has emerged as a barometer of sorts to help determine if a mother suffered the devastating loss of a stillbirth or if she murdered her baby who was born alive. The test has been used in at least 11 cases where women were charged criminally since 2013 and has helped put nine of them behind bars, a ProPublica review of court records and news reports found. “But the test is so deeply flawed that many medical examiners say it cannot be trusted. … It is pseudoscience masquerading as sound forensics, they say. Some even liken the test to witch trials, where courts decided if a woman was a witch based on whether she floated or sank.” |
