RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
November 20 to November 26, 2022 In RealClearInvestigations, Steve Miller offers a holiday helping of abused compassion for the poor: The largescale theft and squandering of federal poverty relief across decades, distributed nationwide through foot soldiers of local “community action agencies.” The more than 1,000 CAAs epitomize a $1.16 trillion, largely ineffective welfare bureaucracy of 89 programs spanning 14 federal departments and agencies that the liberal Biden administration now is greatly expanding, Miller reports: As engines of such high-profile programs as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Head Start, CAAs distribute some $14 billion a year despite a long history of fraud and mismanagement -- offering a case study in how such spending can be virtually impossible to unwind or reform. President Biden has expanded such programs since taking office last year, including food stamps, housing assistance, tax credits, and energy subsidies. “Who wants to be the politician that cuts off a plan to help low-income people?” asks one critic. Mismanagement is so endemic that a boutique insurer offers policies “exclusively designed for Community Action Agencies” to indemnify them against “fraud, dishonesty, and theft by employees [which] are major problems confronting businesses of all sizes, including non-profit organizations.” Despite a 92% increase in spending on low-income individuals and families since 2008, poverty rates in the U.S. have remained well above 10% of the population for decades, according to U.S. Census data. Sidebar: Eric Felten reports that CAAs, born in LBJ’s 1960s War on Poverty, posed trouble from the start. Biden, Trump and the Beltway Overview of Jack Smith, 'Trump's New Nemesis' Axios
Trump Special Counsel Was Key Figure in IRS Targeting Scandal Daily Caller
Trump Faces 5 Major Probes. He Has Dozens of Ways Out. New York Times
Ex-Pro-Life Leader Alleges Earlier Supreme Court Breach New York Times
Dear Mr. Trump: I Experienced Jack Smith’s Zeal Firsthand Intercept
Jan. 6 Panel Staff Angry at Cheney's Trump Focus Washington Post Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Major tax filing services such as H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer have been quietly transmitting sensitive financial information to Facebook when Americans file their taxes online. This article reports that the data ... ... includes not only information like names and email addresses but often even more detailed information, including data on users’ income, filing status, refund amounts, and dependents’ college scholarship amounts. The information sent to Facebook can be used by the company to power its advertising algorithms and is gathered regardless of whether the person using the tax filing service has an account on Facebook or other platforms operated by its owner Meta. The widely used filing service TaxSlayer, for example, sent personal information to Facebook as part of the social media company’s “advanced matching” system, which gathers information on web visitors in an attempt to link them to Facebook accounts. The information included phone numbers, the name of the user filling out the form, and the names of any dependents added to the return. H&R Block gathered information on filers’ health savings account usage and dependents’ college tuition grants and expenses. Four years ago, it was illegal to gamble on sports in most of the United States. Today, in the wake of a 2018 Supreme Court decision that opened the door to legalized country, anyone who turns on the television or visits a sports website or shows up at a stadium is likely to be inundated with ads to bet, bet, bet. This four-part series investigates how the sports-betting industry got so big, so fast – and what the consequences are likely to be for public health, taxpayers, the sports world and more. Its findings include: Gambling companies and sports leagues had a field day with state lawmakers: The Times reports that the gambling industry used dubious data to push to legalize sports betting, in part by predicting states would be greeted by gushers of new tax revenue. A Times analysis of the industry’s claims found that many of the projections, at least so far, have been wildly optimistic. State regulators have often found themselves outmatched and overwhelmed: Because the federal government doesn’t regulate sports betting, the states have developed a set of enforcement of rules the Times characterizes as “haphazard.” Punishments have tended to be light or nonexistent and regulators are counting on the industry to police itself. One reason: The more people bet, the more states collect in taxes. To lure customers, gambling companies have struck envelope-pushing partnerships: For example, The Times found that companies have paid at least eight universities to let them promote gambling on campus. Hospitals across the United States are overwhelmed. The combination of a swarm of respiratory illnesses (RSV, coronavirus, flu), staffing shortages and nursing home closures has sparked the state of distress visited upon the already overburdened health-care system. And, this article reports, experts believe the problem will deteriorate further in coming months. Along with a shortage of beds, many hospital systems are extremely short-staffed. The fast-paced and anxiety-inducing environment of an emergency room is a deterrent for many health-care workers and the staffing shortages extend beyond physicians and nurses to include technicians, respiratory therapists and other hard-to-fill jobs. Quote: More than half a million people in the health care and social services sectors quit their positions in September — evidence, in part, of burnout associated with the coronavirus pandemic — and the American Medical Association says 1 in 5 doctors plan on leaving the field within two years. In a separate article, the Washington Free Beacon reports on a new Association of American Medical Colleges study that found medical schools are devoting more time and resources to woke ideology: Forty-four percent of medical schools have tenure and promotion policies that reward scholarship on "diversity, inclusion, and equity." Seventy percent make students take a course on "diversity, inclusion, or cultural competence." And 79 percent require that all hiring committees receive "unconscious bias" training or include "equity advisors" – people whose job it is to ensure diversity among the faculty. In a separate article, the Daily Mail reports on a study in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology that found that about 90 percent of the mannequins in CPR social media posts were white: “Researchers want to ditch the reliance on default 'lean white male' models. Doing so" -- they claim without evidence -- "will help overcome 'bias' among bystanders and help improve the survival of other groups.” The article also notes that there is no specific CPR guidance for black or Asian people as the techniques used are exactly the same for all adults. Coronavirus Investigations The antiviral Paxlovid has been touted by government leaders and many in the medical profession as an effective tool for reducing mortality from COVID. But since it became widely available this spring, death rates have hardly budged as many Americans hesitate to use it. A recent CDC report found that from April to July, fewer than one-third of America’s 80-plus-year-olds with COVID ended up taking Paxlovid, even though they had the most to gain from doing so. This article reports that the reluctance of many Americans to take the advice of experts – which usually involves concerns about the treatment side effects and rebound infections of the virus – is not unfounded. The link between the drug and a return of symptoms after an initial recovery has been the subject of much concern and debate since the spring; just last week, researchers reported in a study that has not yet been peer-reviewed that symptom rebound is more than twice as common among Paxlovid takers than among those who decline it. The fact that so many prominent figures in the federal government – including President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, and White House Chief Medical Adviser Anthony Fauci—have now had rebound certainly doesn’t help inspire confidence. … Drug interactions are another source of worry for the anti-Paxxers. Official COVID-treatment guidelines warn that the antiviral may have ill effects when combined with any of more than 100 other medications. Other Coronavirus Investigations COVID Is No Longer Mainly a Pandemic of Unvaccinated Washington Post
RCI Flashback, March '22: It's Deadly Pandemic of Vaccinated Too RCI | 