| | | |
RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
October 23 to October 29, 2022 Are electric vehicles a “zero emissions” solution to climate change, as politicians from California to the White House repeatedly claim as they move to phase out gasoline-powered cars? No way, John Murawski reports for RealClearInvestigations, in an in-depth reality check that dispels myths and hype about EVs. Drawing on a range of EV authorities including advocates, Murawski finds: -
No disagreement on this point: There is no such thing as a zero-emissions vehicle and there won’t be for the foreseeable future. -
In fact, EVs’ footprint today looks more like a carbon Bigfoot: There are more emissions in the manufacture of EVs than in making gasoline-powered cars. That means it can take several years of driving an EV before there is any benefit to the climate – the duration depending on the car’s energy mix drawn from power plants. -
EV batteries will darken the picture further if they don’t last the life of the car. A replacement means a second dirty carbon footprint. -
EV calculations also don't include the vast number of new charging stations required, backed by new power projects on a possibly colossal scale – to meet a projected demand equal to 41% of U.S. electrical generating capacity. -
Then there's the matter of major polluter China and its near-monopoly on battery production. Its role could dim EVs’ American sales, since materials sourced from a “foreign entity of concern” (read: China) jeopardize a generous tax credit.
In an inhospitable election year for the left, Democrats, far from being on the back foot, are pressing their case as champions of kids who want to change their gender via hormone blockers, genital surgery, breast removal or otherwise, Ben Weingarten reports for RealClearInvestigations. Just this fall, progressive politicians have advocated curbing parental custody in California, New York, and Virginia. This week, days from the election, President Biden made clear the party’s broader position, telling a transgender activist that no state should be able to bar “gender-affirming healthcare” for kids. Divisions have deepened despite, as Reuters recently reported, a lack of “strong evidence of the efficacy” of the treatments at issue and despite their possible long-term consequences. Weingarten gives an overview of major developments, including: -
Biden’s June executive order calling on the Department of Health and Human Services to work with the states to expand access to "gender-affirming care." -
His vow to work with the Federal Trade Commission to combat so-called “conversion therapy.” This includes simple talk therapy championed by opponents of the transitioning of minors. -
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s signing last month of a measure making the Golden State the nation’s first “sanctuary state” for children seeking gender-transitioning services without the knowledge or consent of their parents.
-
A New York state senator this month introduced a similar measure curtailing parental rights in his state. -
Before an outcry forced her to backtrack, a Democratic Virginia state delegate announced legislation to criminally prosecute parents for child abuse should they refuse to affirm their kids’ transgenderism. -
46 states and Washington D.C. permit transgender treatment for minors. -
Four states restrict such treatment for minors.
Biden, Trump and the Beltway Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Follow the money may be great advice for budding journalists, but it can be extremely complicated, as this distinguished piece of investigative reporting reveals. It reports that in response to a growing series of sanctions over the years, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies have used a network of shell companies and middlemen to move hundreds of millions of dollars out of Russia. At the core of the network, this article reports, is a firm called Bridgewaters in the Isle of Man, a windswept self-governing island in the Irish Sea: The firm has helped structure a corporate empire for its clients that has included investments in U.S. technology companies such as Meta Platforms Inc., Twitter and Airbnb Inc. ; investment in a company that allegedly sells surveillance equipment to the Russian government and real estate around Europe, according to the documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. … Bridgewaters deals are managed through complex layers of partnerships, limited liability companies, loans and holding companies in global tax havens built with the help of multinational law firms and elite financial institutions, including Credit Suisse Group AG , according to public records and the documents. It's hard to know how much time and how many resources devoted to this story – or whether it will make any difference. It is hard to believe that it will boost the Journal’s earnings. But, at a time when so many news outlets are coming under fire for their slanted coverage, this investigative article reminds us that high-minded work is still being produced. On Dec. 1, 2018, Canadian authorities detained Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies Co., a telecommunications giant founded by her father, because of bank-fraud charges filed against her in the United States. Days later, two Canadians were seized in Hong Kong and Beijing in retaliation for Meng’s arrest. This investigation draws on a wide array of documents and interviews to detail the high-stakes negotiations: Negotiations to free the prisoners strained relations between China, U.S. and Canada. Each nation navigated its own security concerns and domestic political pressures. The U.S. pressed Chinese leader Xi Jinping to release the two Canadians and cited their arrest as evidence of Beijing’s disregard for the international rules-based order. Mr. Xi [who personally wrote at least “100 notes” about the case] saw Ms. Meng’s detention as another underhanded attempt by the U.S. to contain his country’s advance. … The arrests marked a turning point in the growing power competition between the U.S. and China, helping shift it from mutual wariness to full-blown animosity. Unlike last century’s Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union, the prisoner skirmish reflected a U.S.-China battle for control of the international flow of data and, ultimately, primacy in global commerce. Officials of bodybuilding’s two premier federations have been sexually exploiting female athletes for decades – pressuring them to pose for nude photographs, posting those photos to soft-core pornography sites, and, at times, manipulating contest results in favor of cooperative competitors, a Washington Post investigation has found: Interviews with dozens of competitors, judges, officials and others connected to the sport reveal the systematic exploitation of female athletes often rendered vulnerable by extreme dieting and workouts, lack of financial stability and a drive to win. The Post found that some women believed their scores depended on their willingness to pose for sexual photos or to please the sport’s leading judges, promoters and managers, almost all of whom are male. At least since Jimmy Carter’s presidency, pot proponents have argued that legalization would end the crime surrounding drugs. This claim has been put to the test in recent years as many states have legalized marijuana. This article reports that black markets for marijuana have not vanished like a puff of smoke in California and other states: In fact, illegal growing and selling of pot have increased so rapidly in the past six years that earlier this month, Sacramento vastly expanded the state’s war on pot by taking a decades-old seasonal commission designed to curb illegal growing and turning it into a full-time, multi-agency task force with the job of snuffing out a booming black market. Nor is California alone in watching its black market explode after legalization. In Oregon, where recreational pot became legal in 2015, officials now estimate that thousands of illicit marijuana farms operate in the southern part of the state, where gun battles among rivals have become common. Despite legalization in 2016, more than two-thirds of pot transactions in Massachusetts take place in the black market, state officials estimate. Mexican cartels and other foreign gangs, meantime, have reportedly moved into the business in Colorado—another of the 19 states that has created a legal market for recreational pot. The voting rights organization founded by Stacey Abrams spent more than $25 million over two years on legal fees, mostly on a single case, with the largest amount going to the boutique law firm of the woman who is chairing her 2022 gubernatorial campaign in Georgia, Allegra Lawrence-Hardy. That lawsuit, launched shortly after Abrams lost the governor’s race in 2018 and complained of voter suppression, ended in defeat last month when a judge threw out all of its remaining claims. This article reports: The level of legal expenditures dwarfs those of other voting rights cases brought in federal court, say voting rights experts. By comparison, the state of Georgia devoted almost $6 million to defend the secretary of state’s office ... according to the attorney general’s office. “The typical case is a couple of hundred thousand dollars and can take a couple of years,” said Leah Aden, deputy director for litigation at the Legal Defense Fund, which advocates for civil rights and racial justice. ... “Beyond $10 million would be very shocking, I would say.” Coronavirus Investigations Results of a national exam reveal that U.S. students in most states and across almost all demographic groups have experienced troubling setbacks in both math and reading, offering what this article describes as “the most definitive indictment yet of the pandemic’s impact on millions of schoolchildren.” Quote: In math, the results were especially devastating, representing the steepest declines ever recorded on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card, which tests a broad sampling of fourth and eighth graders and dates to the early 1990s. In the test’s first results since the pandemic began, math scores for eighth graders fell in nearly every state. A meager 26 percent of eighth graders were proficient, down from 34 percent in 2019. … Reading scores also declined in more than half the states, continuing a downward trend that had begun even before the pandemic. No state showed sizable improvement in reading. And only about one in three students met proficiency standards, a designation that means students have demonstrated competency and are on track for future success. |
|
| October 27, 2022 In 1979, the National Endowment for the Arts spent $1,000 — $4,088 in 2022 dollars — on a Hawaiian art project that entailed a helicopter filming 400 people below wearing colorful party hats. For this... |
| October 26, 2022 The U.S. Department of Energy illegally gave China $15 million in taxpayer-funded, groundbreaking technology for a powerful rechargeable battery used for grid energy storage. It took six years and more than $15... |
|
|
| | |
|
