RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
June 23 to June 29 Featured Investigation: How NYC Gets Homeless to Split:
Free Rent Most Anywhere New York City has a distinctive way of dealing with the homeless: pay for them to live pretty much anywhere in the country they want. Since 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration has used a program called Special One-Time Assistance to relocate thousands of homeless people to over 300 cities across the country - including Los Angeles, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Birmingham, Ala. The program, which pays to landlords a year of tenants' rent upfront, is a significant departure from past city homeless relocation efforts because it does not require participants to have strong community ties to the new destination. Max Diamond reports: - Destination cities in the relocation program where presidential contender De Blasio might want to woo votes are none too pleased about it.
- "You're kidding me," said Mayor Elinor Carbone of Torrington, Conn., when told New York's homeless have used it to move to her town. "That's incredible. Wow."
- It costs about $70,000 per year to keep a family with children at a city shelter while the annual out-of-city relocation rental subsidy runs around $15,000.
- But that doesn't begin to suggest all the expenses the city avoids - and passes on elsewhere -- including the high price of mental health care and education.
The city did not answer questions on why New York did not coordinate with other cities, nor whether the program is open to people with criminal records, including sex offenders. Read Full Article
The Trump Investigations: Top Articles Memo That Spread Anti-Trump Alarm in Obama's Final Days, Fox News
Samantha Power Emails Show Anti-Trump Bias in Final Days, ACLJ Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Private Firm Finds Huawei's Secret Back Doors
Washington Times
Will the Chinese government have access to your mobile devices, smart homes,and other internet-connected devices? A new report says that is a growing possibility. Huawei Technologies now dominatesthe global market for next-generation 5G telecommunications infrastructure,which those devices will use. The report, by the cybersecurity firm Finite State, found that 55% of Huawei devices it tested include secret access points that could allow Chinese intelligence to conduct cyberoperations through the equipment. Google's Plan to Prevent New 'Trump Situation'
Project Veritas
Is Google preparing to stop Trump in 2020? That's the claim from Project Veritas, whose latest undercover-video investigation appears to show Google's plans to "prevent" the next "Trump situation." An anonymous Google insider says the company gooses its artificial-intelligence programs in service of a left-wing political agenda. Undercover footage of longtime Google employee and "head of responsible innovation"Jen Gennai says Google's immense size and reach are key to its anti-Trump efforts: "Elizabeth Warren is saying we should break up Google," says Gennai. "And like, I love her but she's very misguided; like, that will not make it better, it will make it worse, because all these smaller companies who don't have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation. It's like, a small company cannot do that."Gennaisays Project Veritas edited her commentsto change their meaning. But Google suggested its inclination to control content by pulling the Project Veritas video from YouTube, which it owns. The Deadly World of India's Sand-Mining Mafia
National Geographic
Modern civilization is built on sand: Concrete, paved roads, ceramics, metallurgy, petroleum fracking—even the glass on smart phones—all require the humble substance. Humankind's total consumption of sand, more than 40 billion tons a year, is now double the amount of sedimentsbeing replenished naturally on Earth. As the value of this commodity has risen, so too has crime surrounding it. This article reports on the situation in India, where a lucrative black market has emerged that is both preyed on and protected by goons. Sand miners have killed police trying to halt the strip-mining of India's rivers and reporters who have exposed the forbidden practice of excavating waterways. NYT Trump Tax Reporter Said to Go Rogue for Book Deal
Daily Beast
Oh, the irony! David Barstow shared a Pulitzer Prize this year with two of his New York Times colleagues for an investigation of the Trump family's tax returns that alleged a stringofshady practices.But thenBarstow allegedly violated the paper's ethics rules trying to parlay his work into a lucrative book deal. This article reports that Barstow went behind his colleagues' backs to try and ghostwrite the book with a source even after editors warned him off the project and the colleagues shunned him. Barstow made a surprise visit to the source's residence that left the source "freaked out." Materials the source gave to Barstow have still not been returned despite a demand by lawyers, according to the people familiar with the matter. How Judges Added to the Grim Toll of Opioids
Reuters
The opioid epidemic that has so far killed half a million Americans is routinely attributed to greedy drug makers, feckless doctors,and lax regulators. But this article points to another culprit: judges. It reports that judges overseeing lawsuits against Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, agreed to seal compelling evidence more than a decade ago. The records showed the drug's "effects often wore off much sooner, exposing patients to a relapse of pain, withdrawal, or both - suffering relieved only by the next pill. When doctors raised concerns, the documents showed, Purdue sales reps counseled them to put patients on bigger, more dangerous doses." A separate article in Bloomberg Businessweek profiles a former Boeing engineer who robbed banks, sometimes with his son,to feed their addiction to narcotics. How Amazon's Book Dominance Became a Kind of Lawlessness
New York Times
Like millions of people,we'veordered lots of books from Amazon.com through the years. New and used, they all seem legit- and the customer reviews vouch for the credibility of the sellers. This article uses the basic fact that "Amazon takes a hands-off approach to what goes on in its bookstore, never checking the authenticity, much less the quality, of what it sells" to report concerns that counterfeit books on Amazon have "surged." But it cites precious few examples, so it's not clear if it's making a broad claim based on limited evidence. The underlying critique here seems to be of the free-market system embraced by Amazon, in which buyers and sellers police each other with minimal oversight. The irony is that several of the examples the article uses to illustrate a marketplace gone awry actually illustrate how responsive and self-correcting the system is. Alabama: Shot While Pregnant and Charged in Unborn's Death
New York Times
Alabama is among 38 states that have fetal homicide laws recognizing the fetus as a victim in cases of violence against a pregnant woman. A trial may test the limits of that law. The defendant is Marshae Jones, who was five months pregnant when she was shot in the stomach in a fight she started with another woman. Her unborn child did not survive, and now the 28-year-old Jones is charged with manslaughter for failing to remove herself from harm's way. Polygamist Allegedly Scammed U.S. for $500M
Bloomberg Businessweek
Convinced the Mormon Church lost its divine authority in renouncing polygamy, Elden Kingston persuaded three other families during the 1930s to join him in establishing a sect to restore the Kingdom of God. In the decades since, this insular group has drawn the attention of police for allegedly hiding profits to avoid taxes and ignoring environmental and safety regulations, including at their now-shuttered coal mine in central Utah. This article uses a new criminal allegation - that Jacob Kingston collected $500 million in biodiesel credits his company didn't deserve - to explore the sect's history and practices. |
