RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
May 24 to May 30, 2020 For an inkling of how "woke" American culture will likely process the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd -- once the smoke clears from the nationwide rioting it provoked -- take a look at what's happening in women's popular novels right now. As Naomi Schaefer Riley reported for RealClearInvestigations just before the Floyd news broke, white guilt-tripping has become quite the narrative theme: A growing genre of books, by authors black and white, aims to educate whites about the deep racism that supposedly inhabits their privileged lives. She writes: - Extended lectures about structural racism have become a regular feature of chick lit best-sellers that qualify as "beach reads."
- "A Good Neighborhood" by New York Times best-selling author Therese Anne Fowler, centers on a smart, classical guitar-playing black teen in North Carolina who is falsely accused of raping a rich white neighbor by her racist, sexist, pervert, tree-killing stepfather.
- In "Privilege," a campus novel by Mary Adkins, a biracial character is puzzled during a stay with a white friend's family after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown. "Was it that hard to know … that racial bias could be subconscious?"
- The protagonist of "Queenie," a Jamaican British 20-something, is obsessed with police killings of blacks in America. "What do you mean, ‘What was he doing?'" she tells a liberal co-worker. "He wasn't doing anything. He was driving."
- None of these novels mentions the disproportionate rates of crime committed by blacks; or the number of black people murdered by other black people, which dwarfs the number shot by police; or the number of black lives that have been saved by supposedly racist police tactics.
- The point of the books is that even well-meaning whites don't grasp how bad the system is -- and how, through their "unconscious bias," they are at least in part to blame.
- The works reflect a broader "Great Awokening" including "Race 2 Dinner." These are catered affairs for white women costing $2,500 a ticket, where those at the table learn how they "are complicit in the continued injustices of our white supremacist society."
The embattled Atlantic Coast Pipeline - the most expensive natural gas pipeline project in America - illustrates the colliding forces of litigation and political influence slowing or thwarting energy projects and driving up consumer costs nationwide, Vince Bielski reports for RealClearInvestigations. But in a sign of how much the energy landscape has changed, this is not a battle between climate change believers and deniers. The fight is about how long it's necessary to burn natural gas. Bielski reports: - Almost everyone, including politically astute CEOs, lawmakers and Wall Street analysts, agrees on the need to transition to renewable energy.
- But Dominion Energy and Duke Energy, owners of the planned 600-mile pipeline from West Virginia to Virginia and North Carolina, insist that the gas "bridge" to a renewable future must be decades-long.
- They want time to allow gas-scrubbing tech to evolve to help meet emissions-reduction goals as they shift to currently less reliable wind and solar.
- But even now, low-cost renewable energy is posing a challenge to natural gas - much as gas once did to dirtier fossil fuels - causing foes to question the need for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline at all.
- Upshot: Paralysis for a project that was supposed to be running in 2018 and is still far from completion.
- And the falloff in energy demand from the coronavirus pandemic adds a new wrinkle to the question of the pipeline's usefulness.
Other Noteworthy Articles and Series New Jersey: Paterson NAACP Leader Alleges Mail Vote Fraud
WNBC New York
The heavily Democratic, ethnically diverse city of Paterson, New Jersey's third largest by population, may have provided a preview of the fall elections: More than 20 percent of all ballots were disqualified in a vote-by-mail council election held there this week -- some in connection with voter fraud allegations. Paterson activist Ernest Rucker said he never got a ballot and election records show someone mailed in one in his name. "I was robbed of the right to vote or not vote," Rucker said. "I was disenfranchised." New Jersey Deputy Assembly Speaker Benjie Wimberly said his family's votes were put aside and not counted, and the Board of Elections refused to tell him why. And he's a supporter of Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, who ordered the mail-only balloting. Video has surfaced showing ballots left out in building lobbies and of a voter handling many ballots. Postal workers reported finding hundreds of ballots at a time stuffed in mailboxes in Paterson - and even in a neighboring town, Haledon. Meanwhile, a postal carrier in West Virginia was accused of attempted election fraud by taking five requests for Democratic absentee ballots and re-marking them as requests for Republican ballots. Facebook Shut Bid to Make Site Less Divisive
Wall Street Journal
Should social media leviathans mediate speech in the name of the public good? That's the questions raised by this article, which reports that while Facebook says it's all about bringing people together, the company's research shows it often drives them apart. "Our algorithms exploit the human brain's attraction to divisiveness," read an internal company slide from a 2018 presentation. "If left unchecked," it warned, Facebook would feed users "more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention & increase time on the platform." This article reports that the slide was part of Facebook's broader effort to understand how its platform shaped user behavior and how the company might address potential harm. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg had in public and private expressed concern about "sensationalism and polarization." But in the end, Zuckerberg decided that the platform must be a guardian of free speech, even when the content is objectionable. In a separate article, Vox reports on the efforts of tech billionaires to bolster Joe Biden's campaign - among them LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Unreported $6 Billion-Plus to U.S. Colleges From Adversarial Nations
Townhall
American colleges and universities have received more than $6 billion of previously unreported foreign donations from known U.S. adversaries including Russia and China, according to the Department of Education. In a May 19 letter to Congress obtained by Townhall, the DoE's Office of the General Counsel wrote that some school "leaders are starting to acknowledge the threat of foreign academic espionage and have been working with federal law enforcement to address gaps in reporting and transparency. However, the evidence suggests massive investments of foreign money have bred dependency and distorted the decision making, mission, and values of too many institutions." India: Rise of a Hindu Vigilante in the Age of Social Media
Wired
The rise of social media in India, along with the growing power of its Hindu-nationalist leader, Narendra Modi, is fueling an increase in Hindu vigilante mobs bent on punishing those who violate sacred laws - such as killing cows. This article, by a former staff writer for The Hindu, India's second largest English-language newspaper, combines a critique of Modi's tenure with stories of mob violence that Modi may, or may not, have helped inspire. According to a database of hate crimes compiled by the Indian organization FactChecker, there were 254 reported attacks against minorities between 2009 and 2018; 90 percent of them occurred after Modi came to power in 2014. According to Human Rights Watch, at least 44 people were killed in "cow-related violence" across 12 Indian states between May 2015 and December 2018. Thirty-six of them were Muslims. Since 2015, the term lynching, a word with American roots, has become part of the Indian vernacular. Trump-Russia and the 2020 Election Durham Probe: Where Things Stand, and the Stakes Associated Press
Flynn Not Masked Because FBI Framed Him as Putin Agent National Review
Some New Trump Watchdogs Can Now Probe Themselves Washington Post
Tara Reade's Credibility as Expert Trial Witness Questioned New York Times
Minnesota: VP Prospect Klobuchar Didn't Prosecute Death Cop in '06 Week Coronavirus Investigations Wealthiest Hospitals Got Billions in Virus Bailout
New York Times
So the government decides to spend trillions of dollars in a few weeks - what could go wrong? The latest answer involves the $100 billion in government bailout funds meant to prevent health care providers from capsizing during the coronavirus pandemic. So far, this article reports, the riches are flowing in large part to hospitals that had already built up deep financial reserves to help them withstand an economic storm. Smaller, poorer hospitals are receiving tiny amounts by comparison. Providence Health System got at least $509 million even though it is one of the country's largest and richest hospital chains, sitting on nearly $12 billion in cash; in a good year of investing that stash Wall Street-style, it can generate more than $1 billion in profits. In a separate article, Reuters reports that 12 companies that have used offshore havens to avoid paying taxes have received more than $104 million in loans from U.S. taxpayers through a COVID-19 assistance program. Red vs. Blue States: What Corona Reveals
New York Times
The coronavirus has no politics - and yet it reflects America's partisan divide. The death toll has touched every part of the country, but Democrats are far more likely to live in the worst-hit counties, while Republicans are more likely to live in those largely unscathed, though they are paying an economic price. Overall, the infection rate is 1.7 times as high in the most urban areas of the country compared with nearby suburbs, and 2.3 times as high in the suburbs as in exurban and rural areas. Counties won by President Trump in 2016 have reported just 27 percent of the virus infections and 21 percent of the deaths - even though 45 percent of Americans live in these communities, a New York Times analysis has found. The very real difference in death rates has helped fuel deep disagreement over the dangers of the pandemic and how the country should proceed. Why Less Driving Means Less Fizz for Sodas
Wall Street Journal
You know the fabled butterfly whose flapping wings can affect far off places Replace it with COVID-19 and you begin to understand why beer and soda prices might rise. This article reports that the economic slowdown of the coronavirus has reduced the demand for ethanol which is mixed into much of the nation's gasoline. This, in turn, has led to a 30 percent reduction in the production in one of ethanol's byproducts - carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a key ingredient in carbonated beverages, as it gives them their fizz. While driving picked up in May as lockdowns eased, that increase hasn't been big enough to spur ethanol companies to restart production. Scary thought: Come New Year's, will there be corks popping to "Auld Lang Syne"? Also Coronavirus-Related State-Tied Hackers Pivot to Vaccine Espionage Axios
Ex-U.S. Senator Max Baucus' Role in Chinese Propaganda National Review
'Didn't Give a Damn': Inside a Ravaged Spanish Nursing Home AP
Virus Cases in Federal Halfway Houses Are Undercounted Intercept
Virus Scenarios: Small Surges, Monster Wave, or Crisis, Cont. STAT
Survived Worst Battles of World War II, Died of Covid New York Times
Why Immunity to the Novel Coronavirus Is Complicated Smithsonian
Breeding the New Lab Mice Needed to Fight COVID-19 Knowable |
