RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
April 23 to April 29, 2023 In RealClearInvestigations, Paul Sperry reports that by sending billions in military aid to corruption-plagued Ukraine, President Biden coincidentally also is securing the investments of a Ukrainian-American car magnate and longtime Delaware supporter of the president: John Hynansky and his family have contributed more than $100,000 to Biden’s campaigns over his career. Hynansky family members have been guests at the White House. Hynansky has floated hundreds of thousands of dollars in alleged “sweetheart" loans to Biden family members. Hynansky’s son lent the use of his Lear jet to Biden when he was a senator. The Biden administration helped Hynansky’s team in Ukraine prepare for Russia’s invasion, including placing calls to his top executive in Kiev 13 days in advance of tanks crossing the border. It has sent billions to help rebuild war-torn cities where Hynansky operates the lion’s share of the country’s car showrooms, specializing in Porsches, Jaguars, Land Rovers and Bentleys, among other non-American imported brands. It is impossible to establish whether this support – provided in the wider context of a war – is intended to protect the in-country assets of his “very good friend,” as Biden has described Hynansky. But ethics watchdogs say the friendship poses yet another apparent conflict of interest for the President and his family – one that demands a full accounting. In RealClearInvestigations, Vince Bielski reports on the schoolwide cluster grouping model embraced by contrarian educators as a counterpoint to one-size-fits-all education -- the prevalent pedagogy pushed today by "equity"-minded social justice advocates: The trend-bucking model has taken root in states such as Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, South Carolina, and Texas, where progressive educators have less influence and where gifted programs get more support. Elementary students are placed in six different groups based on ability -- and only then carefully mixed together in classrooms in ways that shrink the huge achievement gaps among them.. In the Paradise Valley district outside Phoenix, where about a third of kids are Latino, high percentages are being identified as gifted. Many teachers say effective instruction is impossible under the prevailing "equity" approach – where, in a single classroom, five grade levels of ability or more can separate students. Still, as some districts discover, the sweeping changes required of the alternative model are hard to pull off. An advanced-learning director near Dallas says teachers hate it because “it was a training nightmare.” Waste of the Day
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Dr. Fauci Concludes: ‘Something Clearly Went Wrong’ NYT Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Minnesota retiree Geraldine Tyler fell behind on her property taxes, accruing $2,300 in back taxes and another $13,000 in penalties, interest, and late fees. The county foreclosed on her condo and sold it. This did not surprise the octogenarian. What did, this article reports, was that after selling her home for $40,000, the county kept all the money – almost $25,000 above her debt. Twelve states that allow this practice, which is now being challenged in court. Had Tyler's condo been valued at, say, $300,000, the process would have played out the same way. That's what happened to Tawanda Hall of Oakland County, Michigan, when she fell $900 behind on her payment plan for back property taxes. Her total bill—after penalties, interest, and fees—came to $22,642. The county seized the home that Hall shared with her husband and children, sold it to collect the debt, and kept the difference, which totaled about $286,000. "We agree that the government can seize the property to collect a debt," says Christina M. Martin, a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation who has represented both women and will argue Tyler's case before the Supreme Court in April. "What it can't do is take more than it's owed." After serving their country, many of America’s top military leaders are getting rich by advising foreign governments and companies, this article reports: Retired Army Gen. Keith Alexander, who led the National Security Agency under Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, secured $2 million in consulting deals with foreign governments after leaving office, including a $700,000 contract to advise Saudi Arabia on cybersecurity after the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, newly released records show. Alexander’s consulting firm also won a $1.3 million contract from the government of Japan to provide advice on cyber issues, according to additional documents obtained by The Washington Post as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. This article is part of an ongoing series of reports by the Post that have identified more than 500 retired U.S. military personnel ‒ including scores of generals and admirals ‒ who accepted employment from foreign governments, mostly as contractors in countries known for human rights abuses and political repression. The recent release of classified information, allegedly by a 21-year-old National Guardsman named Jack Teixeira, has raised questions about how the government safeguards its secrets. This article does not provide much comfort. It reports that most secret material can be seen only in a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF (pronounced “skiff”), whose basic design it details: There are thousands of SCIFs in Washington and beyond, tucked into federal buildings, military installations, embassies and government contracting offices. They can range from phonebooth-sized rooms to entire floors of buildings. The article reports that cellphones and other unsecured devices are barred from the rooms, which have a variety of safety features to prevent eavesdropping or attack. Many SCIFs, however, do not have guards to monitor the activities of visitors who might want to steal secrets. And as RealClearInvestigations reported earlier, there doesn’t seem to be an ironclad system in place – like the one used at public libraries around the country – to immediately determine if requested material has been removed. A long train is frequently stalled at the Hammond, Indiana crossing when Lamira Samson takes her 8-year-old son Keremiah to school, forcing her to make a tough decision: walk around the train, perhaps a mile out of the way; keep her 8-year-old son home, as she sometimes does; or try to climb over the train, risking severe injury or death, to reach Hess Elementary School four blocks away. This article reports that it's a wider problem: Every day across America, their trains park in the middle of neighborhoods and major intersections, waiting to enter congested rail yards or for one crew to switch with another. They block crossings, sometimes for hours or days, disrupting life and endangering lives. … ProPublica and InvestigateTV witnessed dozens of students [like Keremiah] do the same in Hammond, climbing over, squeezing between and crawling under train cars with “Frozen” and “Space Jam” backpacks. An eighth-grade girl waited 10 minutes before she made her move, nervously scrutinizing the gap between two cars. She’d seen plenty of trains start without warning. “I don’t want to get crushed,” she said. The article does not identify any easy fixes, though it notes that rail companies have resisted efforts to limit the size of trains and localities have been willing to negotiate down tickets issued to trains for stopping too long at crossings. Dozens of school districts in Nevada, California, Iowa, Virginia and other states are shifting toward a practice called “equitable grading” which aims to measure whether a student knows the classroom material by the end of a term without penalties for behavior, which, under the theory, can introduce bias. Homework is typically played down, this article reports, and students are given multiple opportunities to complete tests and assignments. Proponents of the approach, including paid consultants, say it benefits students with after-school responsibilities, such as a job or caring for siblings, as well as those with learning disabilities. Traditional grading methods, they say, favor those with a stable home life and more hands-on parents. … Some teachers and students say the changes have led to gaming the system and a lack of accountability. “If you go to a job in real life, you can’t pick and choose what tasks you want to do and only do the quote big ones,” said Alyson Henderson, a high-school English teacher there. Lessons drag on now, she said, because students can turn in work until right before grades are due. “We’re really setting students up for a false sense of reality,” Ms. Henderson said. | 