RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
Oct. 28 toNov. 3 Featured Investigation Christine Blasey Ford has received close to $1 million in donations since politically charged hearings for Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court where she accused him of attempted rape. As Paul Sperry reports for RealClearInvestigations, this windfall challenges assertions by top Democrats during the hearings that Ford had "nothing to gain" by coming forward with her explosive accusation. Sperry elaborates: - Two GoFundMe accounts have raised more than $842,000 for Ford, and the money is still coming in weeks after she testified and left the spotlight. The total does not include a third account collecting $120,000 for an academic endowment in her name.
- All told, more than 21,000 people have donated to her cause. Several donors have written big checks, including Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, who gave $10,000.
- Some question the necessity of the financial assistance, given that much of the costs associated with Ford's testimony - including all of her legal fees plus a polygraph examination - were covered by Democratic attorneys assigned to her by the Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee.
- Ford has told donors she needs money to cover "the costs for security, housing, transportation and other related expenses [which] are much higher than we anticipated and they do not show signs of letting up." But congressional investigators told Sperry that Ford and her family have been staying with relatives and at their beach house.
- The Fords' primary residence, in Palo Alto, has a current market value of $3.3 million. Their Santa Cruz beach house is estimated to be worth $1.03 million.
- Ford and her husband hold well-paying jobs.
Experts worry that these donations might set a dangerous precedent in which unregulated crowdsourcing donations could become tantamount to bountiesoffered for dirt on political figures. Read Full Article The Trump Investigations: Top Articles Plot to Smear Mueller Unravels as FBI Investigates, New York Times
2 Years On, Surveillance Court Yet to Publicly Explain Itself,TheHill
Mueller Probes Roger Stone Calls on WikiLeaks, Wall Street Journal Other Noteworthy Articles and Series How Campus Accused Fight Back in Court, and Often Win
RealClearInvestigations
Richard Bernstein reports forRealClearInvestigationsthat a legal backlash is building against Obama-era campus-sex policies by which schools, acting as judge and jury, expel without due process the mostly male students accused of misconduct. Many accused are lawyering up to take their fights to real courts -- and winning. And in an ironic twist, some accused are exploiting the same Title IX anti-discrimination law that justified the campus crackdown in the first place, claiming anti-male bias that denied them their due process. Andrew Gillum and the Mystery of 311 East Jennings Street
RealClearInvestigations
In the closing days of his campaign to become Florida's governor, Andrew Gillum is shadowed by an FBI probe involving friends and donors,as well asa separate, ongoing state ethics probe into Gillum's relationship with donors. As Steve Miller reports forRealClearInvestigations, these inquiries offer a window into how politics is done in Tallahassee, Florida's capital city, where Gillum serves as mayor. Miller peels back this onion by focusing a single building in the city, 311 E. Jennings St. It has been the official address of at least 52 limited liability corporations - which have contributed to Gillum and other candidates of both parties while doing business with the city and state. And many of those companies are connected to a single power broker, businessman J.T. Burnette. On Social Media, Torrent of Post-Pittsburgh Anti-Semitism
New York Times
The murder of 11 Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue by an anti-Semite who was active on social media is drawing new attention to how hate speech and falsehoods spread online. A search for the word "Jews" on Instagram, the photo-sharing site owned by Facebook, displayed 11,696 postswith the hashtag "#jewsdid911," claiming that Jews had orchestrated the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The article also notes that YouTube users reported nearly 10 million videos from April to June for potentially violating its community guidelines, and that a study by MIT researchers found that falsehoods on Twitter were 70 percent more likely tobe retweeted than accurate news. North Korean Women Say Rape by Officials Rampant
AgenceFrance-Presse
North Korean police and other officials prey on women with near-total impunity,according to a report issued byHuman Rights Watch. The organizationdrew on interviews with more than 50 North Korean escapees to chronicle gruesome details of rape and other abuses perpetrated by security officers such as border guards, but also civilian officials.One anonymous former textile trader in her 40s recounted being treated like a sex toy "at the mercy of men … On the days they felt like it, market guards or police officials could ask me to follow them to an empty room outside the market, or some other place they'd pick," where they forced sexual encounters, she said. Cash and Bombs: Inside a Covert Iranian Operation in Europe
Wall Street Journal
The brazen and brutal murder of journalist JamalKhashoggiinside Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul drew wide condemnation and calls for a harsh response against the Gulf state. So it will be interesting to see how the media and nations respond to the latest evidence that Iran continues to dispatch assassination squads in Europe. On Tuesday, Denmark announced it had foiled an Iranian operation to kill a dissident, turning up the pressure on Europe to harden its posture toward Tehran. That follows the June arrest in Paris of an Iranian émigré and his wife with an explosive device; they were allegedly going to use it to murder Rudolph Giuliani and other Americans attending an event in the city. Congo: Hospital Patients Held Hostage for Cash
Associated Press
It's no secret that Congolese hospitals routinely detain patients who can't pay their bills: Administrators, doctors and nurses openly discuss it, and the patients are held in plain sight. The only ones who claim ignorance are the major health donors and agencies who invest billions of dollars in the country and have major operations there — including the European Union, UNICEF, the International Committee of the Red Cross, PATH, Save the Children, the U.S. Agency for International Development and World Vision. Inside the Underground Weed Workforce
The Walrus
If you need to make some quick cash as a marijuana trimmer, you'll need to remember: "Don't smoke the weed - it slows you down." That's what Lee Hawkes (a pseudonym) writes in The Walrus as he recounts his own experience as a trimmer. Hawks reports on this illegal world from Vancouver to California, with an eye to how regular people make a living in the underground economy. Silicon Valley Parents Don't Want Their Kids on Smart Phones
New York Times
Parents concerned about technology's effects on their kids are getting support from an unlikely source: Silicon Valley. "I am convinced the devil lives in our phones and is wreaking havoc on our children," said Athena Chavarria, a former executive at Facebook. While big tech executives like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have long been known to put limits on their kids' screen exposure, there is a growing consensus among Silicon Valley defectors that screens have devastating effects on kids. Their concerns are bolstered by science showing the power screens have on brain development and how little control parents may have. On Hold 45 Minutes? It Might Be Your Secret Customer Score
Wall Street Journal
Here's a surprising but predictable development: Companies are now using the wealth of information they have assembled on customers to determine whose call they should answer first in the queue.The rating, known as a customer lifetime value, or CLV, is used by all manner of companies to measure the potential financial value of their customers. Your score can determine the prices you pay, the products and ads you see and the perks you receive. Credit-card companies, for example, use the scoring systems to decide what to offer customers to dissuade them from cancelin their cards. Wireless carriers route high-value callers immediately to their most skilled agents. At some airlines, a high score increases the odds of a seat upgrade. |
