RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
February 14 to February 20, 2021 With figurative solar and wind storms approaching, the Love Boat carrying Joe Biden and Big Labor could be heading straight for the rocks, Vince Bielski reports for RealCIearInvestigations. Bielski's reporting finds seemingly irreconcilable differences between unions representing legions whose jobs depend on fossil fuels and another core Biden constituency: greens looking to quickly consign those jobs to the dustbin of history. Highlights: - Biden wants net-zero carbon emissions for energy generation by 2035 -- a herculean feat. In contrast, key unions favor a timetable roughly twice as long: net zero by 2050.
- Biden's pace imperils about 750,000 fossil-fuel union jobs -- because it would shutter many of the nation's remaining 670 coal mines and 280 power plants.
- Biden would need to use federal muscle to more than triple the expansion of solar and wind -- now amounting to 18% of America's power supply.
- Plus he'll need vast battery storage for backup.
- Doubts remain about both battery storage and fossil-fuel carbon capture -- essential to Biden's goal.
- GM's pledge to make only electric vehicles by 2035 won't cut pollution if they're plugged into a dirty grid to recharge.
- Utility, mine and construction unions want time to improve and lower the cost of carbon capture and storage tech for fossil-fuel plants.
- Team Biden's mantra is that the energy transition will create "millions" of well-paying green jobs. But that's a stretch: The median wage for a solar installer is about $45,000 a year.
Biden, Trump and the Beltway Biden Aide Out Over Threat to Ruin Female Reporter Washington Post
House Democrats Hire Ex-Gang Member to Top Post New York Post
'Sophisticated Insider Threat' at DHS Immigration Washington Times
The Jan. '17 Red Flags the FBI Blew Past on Russia Collusion Just the News Other Noteworthy Articles and Series How Oracle Sells Repression in China
The Intercept
The Chinese government collects mountains of information on residents and visitors, including financial records, travel information, vehicle registrations, social media, and surveillance camera footage. The challenge is how to harness it to serve the needs of the surveillance state. Enter the American firm Oracle and its cutting edge data analytic software. The Intercept reports: Slides from the [2018] presentation, hosted on Oracle's website, begin with a "case outline" listing four Oracle "product[s] used" by Liaoning police to "do criminal analysis and prediction." One slide shows Oracle software enabling Liaoning police to create network graphs based on hotel registrations and track down anyone who might be linked to a given suspect. Another shows the software being used to build a police dashboard and create "security case heat map[s]." Apparent pictures of the software interface show a blurred face and various Chinese names. The concluding slide states that the software helped police, whose datasets had been "incomprehensible," more easily "trace the key people/objects/events" and "identify potential suspect[s]" - which in China often means dissidents. LAPD Sought Ring Home-Security Videos on BLM Unrest
The Intercept
The Los Angeles Police Department sought protest-related footage from Amazon's Ring home camera systems in the wake of George Floyd's killing last year, this article reports, "lending credence to years of warnings that pervasive private surveillance networks will enable questionable police practices." It's unclear if the police request, relayed to customers through Amazon's Ring subsidiary, was directed to a single camera owner or many. Contemporaneous emails released by the department show that Ring's in-house law enforcement liaisons were helping officers use an interface that would allow them to send bulk video requests to specific neighborhoods or broader geographic areas. Ring spokesperson Yassi Shahmiri said that the company "expressly prohibits Video Requests for lawful activities, such as protests" and believed that the LAPD's request was intended to identify individuals responsible for theft, property damage, and physical injury. Inside the Making of Facebook's Supreme Court
New Yorker
Under pressure from the left, Facebook is one of the big tech companies trying to formalize censorship. This article is based on eighteen months of privileged access to an outside Oversight Board including "humanitarian activists, a former prime minister, and a Nobel laureate." It describes their deliberations as they try to define hate speech, which often depends on context. This is especially challenging because Facebook operates around the world, and almost every nation sees the issue differently. In Hong Kong, where the pro-democracy movement has used social media to organize protests, activists rely on Facebook's free-expression principles for protection against the state. In Myanmar, where hate speech has contributed to genocide against the Rohingya, advocates have begged for stricter enforcement. At 93, She Waged War on JPMorgan and Her Grandsons
Bloomberg
"Beverley Schottenstein was 93 years old when she decided to go to war with the biggest bank in the U.S," this article reports. An independent audit of her account at JPMorgan Chase & Co. - worth some $80 million - discovered her advisers had "run up big commissions, putting her money in risky investments they weren't telling her about. It was the latest red flag about the bankers. There had been missing account statements. Document shredding. Unexplained credit-card charges." So she sued the bank and the advisers - who included two of her grandsons, whom the bank dismissed. This article details "the intergenerational financial struggle that culminated in Beverley taking on her grandsons and a deep-pocketed Wall Street bank." Excerpt: Women Serial Killers in Health Care
The Walrus
The number of serial killers is far higher than most people reckon. Most of these killers were health care workers. Half of them were women. From an excerpt of Patricia Pearson's "When She Was Bad: How and Why Women Get Away With Murder": Since 1970 more than ninety serial murderers around the world have been convicted after operating in hospitals, long-term care homes, and private residences with elderly charges. Between them, these nurses (mainly) and doctors (a few) have killed or injured over 600 people; an additional 2,600 deaths are connected to them but unproven. The caregiver killer deploys a subtle arsenal of insulin and opiates and pillows over faces. They hasten a person's demise by doping them with already-prescribed drugs at higher doses, or they induce heart attacks or strokes. Another forty health care workers in this time period evaded conviction for lack of evidence beyond reasonable doubt. In the Gosport War Memorial Hospital, in England, for instance, a female physician presided over 456 deaths due to inappropriate prescribing of opioids between 1987 and 2001, with another 200 patients considered to be her possible victims. Although she was censured for "professional misconduct," her licence wasn't suspended, nor was she prosecuted for manslaughter or murder. Coronavirus Investigations Vast Reach of Chinese Disinformaton in Covid Conspiracy-Mongering
Associated Press
This article reports on China's systematic effort to blame the United States for COVID-19 - and tries to blame President Trump and Fox News for it. It reports that a nine-month investigation of state-sponsored disinformation shows how a rumor that the U.S. created the virus that causes COVID-19 was weaponized by Beijing, spreading from dark corners of the Internet to millions across the globe. It reports that the conspiracy theories began almost as soon as the disease itself emerged in China - "Watch out for Americans!" a Weibo user wrote on Dec. 31, 2019. Although this was well before Americans understood the threat, the article claims Chinese officials "were reacting to a powerful narrative, nursed by QAnon groups, Fox News, former President Donald Trump and leading Republicans, that the virus was instead manufactured by China." And while it is certain America did not create the virus, it is still not clear whether it was developed in nature or a Chinese lab. Other Coronavirus Investigations Covid-Linked Syndrome in Children Is Severe and Growing New York Times
California: Dying on the Waitlist ProPublica
Hospitals Still Ration Medical N95 Masks as Stockpiles Swell Associated Press
Who Has Died from COVID-19 in the U.S.? Vox |
