RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
June 18 to June 24, 2023 In RealClearInvestigations, James Varney reports on an overlooked factor in current “woke” sports controversies: the quiet power of religious faith in athletics. It seems likely to complicate progressive agendas to influence pastimes that are bellwethers of American society. The latest flashpoint was a Los Angeles Dodgers event last week honoring Catholic-mocking drag-queen nun impersonators. It was opposed by high-profile, religiously devout players and thousands of protesters outside the stadium -- and condemned as "blasphemy" by the Archbishop of Los Angeles. For generations, gestures of faith like the sign of the cross have been common among the unshakable habits and rituals for which athletes are famous, from superstars imported from the Dominican Republic to Italian-American Rocky Colavito from the Bronx. Today baseball power hitters commonly point and look skyward to a higher power at the end of their home-run trots; Aaron Judge’s American League record 62 four-baggers last year can be viewed as episodes of public worship witnessed by millions. In pro football, Patrick Mahomes prays onfield, but that gets less attention than did the racially charged knee-taking of fellow quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Elsewhere, it is common for stars from basketball to boxing to thank Jesus Christ first in victorious post-competition remarks. In the current politically charged atmosphere, religious conviction in sport seems a sleeping giant only just beginning to stir. In RealClearInvestigations, John R. Lott Jr. and James Varney analyze how politicians and others selectively use data and definitions to spin the problem of violent crime in desired directions -- affirming again Mark Twain’s caution about “lies, damned lies and statistics.” They write: Depending on the framing, accurate sets of numbers can be assembled to tell starkly different stories about mass shootings, school shootings, and other violent crime. Case in point: California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s claim that “blue states have lower murder rates” than red states. That was true for 2020, but Newsom left out the newer figures for 2021, which told the opposite story. Counties won by Joe Biden in Republican states explain higher murder rates in so-called Trump states. Those Biden counties have much worse murder rates. States don’t enforce the laws; local governments enforce them – meaning success or failure in law enforcement lies with the latter. In the last few years, many Democrat district attorneys have been accused of going soft on violent criminals. A closer look at such numbers underscores how generalizations on one partisan side or the other can mislead. In RealClearInvestigations, Vince Bielski reports that school choice is becoming much more widely available to families dissatisfied with public education in the post-pandemic era – a development that could pose a threat to government-run schools. Eight states – including Arizona, Florida, Indiana, and West Virginia – have approved “universal” or near-universal school choice laws since 2021. That means virtually all students in those states, including those already in private schools and from wealthy families, can tap some $7,000 to $10,000 in state funding each year for their education. What’s more, most of these states have also enacted education savings accounts, or ESAs. They give families much more freedom than tuition vouchers, depositing state funds into private accounts to spend on virtually anything to do with learning. During the pandemic, student test scores in math and English plummeted as a result of ineffective remote learning. Parents seethed. Parents are also angered by public schools’ embrace of woke ideology – that is, race-centered teaching after George Floyd’s 2020 murder, casting whites as oppressors; and transgender-conscious material that they see as highly inappropriate for young children. But universal choice is stirring controversy too – not only from Democrats and unions, who fear a flight from public schools, but Republicans, particularly in rural areas, who object to giving taxpayer dollars to wealthy families to pay for private schooling. Waste of the Day
by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books Pentagon Overvalued Ukraine Aid by $3B, RCI
Cash to Tag Right, Christians as Terrorists, RCI
Splurging on Jets for Congressmen, RCI
Illinois $300K to Mystery BLM Group, RCI Biden, Trump and the Beltway This week’s big political news was the deal reached by the president’s son, Hunter Biden, in which he agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges for failing to pay his taxes in 2017 and 2018 on time and to avoid prosecution for lying on an application to obtain a handgun. This article reports that the probe started during the Trump administration and ... ... continued after President Biden took office, overseen by the U.S. attorney for Delaware, David C. Weiss, a Trump appointee who was kept on to allow him to finish the inquiry. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has testified to Congress that Mr. Weiss had full authority and independence to decide whether to bring a case against Mr. Biden. Garland’s assertion is now being challenged by IRS whistleblowers who claim the DOJ interfered mightily in the probe to protect the president and his son. The Daily Mail reports a whistleblower testified to Congress on Thursday that Hunter Biden failed to pay taxes on $8.3 million in income and the Department of Justice denied attempts to bring charges in other states besides the Bidens' home state of Delaware. The testimony also asserted that Weiss asked for independent special counsel status -- and was denied by the Department of Justice. Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley A. Strassel reports that Gary Shapely, a 14-year IRS veteran, said the Justice Department, its Tax Division and the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office “provided preferential treatment and unchecked conflicts of interest.” He says his team was told in September 2020 by Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf that they couldn’t pursue a search warrant of Joe Biden’s guest house (Hunter’s onetime residence) because of the “optics” and because “there is no way we will get that approved.” In December 2020 the team wanted to search a storage unit in Virginia where Hunter had moved business documents. Ms. Wolf again objected, then tipped off Hunter’s defense counsel, “ruining our chance to get to evidence before being destroyed, manipulated, or concealed,” Mr. Shapley said. Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters also tipped Hunter’s Secret Service team to a proposed “day of action” in which members of U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s team intended to conduct surprise interviews of witnesses—including Hunter. This gave a group “close to Hunter” the opportunity to “obstruct the approach,” and of the “12 interviews we hoped to conduct on our day of action, we only got one substantive interview.” Hunter lawyered up. Along the way, according to Mr. Shapley’s testimony, Ms. Wolf told investigators not to ask any questions about “dad” or “the big guy.” The Washington Free Beacon reports that an IRS investigator has said that Hunter made illegal deductions for “personal wages and salaries paid, personal travel expenses paid, personal children expenses that he paid,” and payments to a no-show employee who “was essentially a prostitute." Although the investigator does not name President Biden, Hunter’s mingling of business and personal funds – including the channeling of large sums to at least nine Biden family members through an array of shell companies – suggests that his influence peddling was not just a business but a family operation. The New York Post reports on a text Hunter allegedly sent in 2017 threatening a Chinese business associate. “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Hunter Biden wrote [Henry] Zhao, the director of Harvest Fund Management, according to [IRS investigator Gary] Shapley. “Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” the now-53-year-old went on. “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. … “I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father,” Hunter reiterated to conclude the stunning message. The Washington Free Beacon reports that photographs on Hunter's abandoned laptop place him behind the wheel of his father's classic Corvette at his father's Wilmington, Del., residence on the day he invoked the President's name in that text message. Other Biden, Trump and the Beltway House Votes to Censure Adam Schiff Over Russia Hoax, PJ Media
The Group Trying to Scare Lawyers Away From Trump, Spectator
Judge Muzzles Trump Team in Documents Case, Guardian
How Reddit Radicalizes the Left and Encourages Violence, Federalist
GOP Targets 'Disinformation' Researchers, New York Times Other Noteworthy Articles and Series ProPublica continues its effort to undermine trust in the Supreme Court with another thin and tendentious attack on a conservative Justice. Following its string of stories exploring the friendship between Justice Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crowe – a billionaire who has provided hospitality and indirect financial benefits to Thomas but who has never had business before the court – ProPublica’s latest article reports that billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer allowed conservative Justice Samuel Alito to fly for free on his private plane as part of a group fishing trip in Alaska in 2008. In a highly misleading nut graph, ProPublica writes: In the years that followed, Singer’s hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media. In 2014, the court agreed to resolve a key issue in a decade-long battle between Singer’s hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. Alito did not recuse himself from the case and voted with the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor. The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion. In fact, as Justice Alito noted in a pre-emptive response published in the Wall Street Journal, almost all of the cases were petitions to be heard by the Court. Alito wrote: “During my time on the Court, I have voted on approximately 100,000 certiorari petitions. The vast majority receive little personal attention from the justices because even a cursory examination reveals that they do not meet our requirements for review.” None of those petitions listed Singer’s name – nor did the 7-1 case ProPublica mentions. As with the Thomas coverage, ProPublica suggests that Alito violated ethics rules by concealing the trip when, in fact, he was not required to disclose it - and he had spoken about in public years before. The Journal’s Editorial Board sees the ProPublica article as another effort by partisans who invoke high-minded principles – “ethics” “the rule of law” – to bend people and institutions their will: By imposing even tenuous associations as grounds for recusal, litigants can exclude certain Justices from hearing a case. With a Court of only nine Justices, this could determine the outcome. Call it Court-thinning rather than Court-packing, but the effect would be similar. Should Justice Elena Kagan have recused herself from the pending Harvard admissions case because she is a former Harvard law dean? Or Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson from cases about executive power because she must be grateful that President Biden appointed her? They shouldn’t recuse in our view, but those “appearances” of a conflict are more substantial than recusing over a plane ride from someone Justice Alito had no obvious reason to believe was associated with a case. Solar projects across the country are encountering opposition from an unlikely quarter: local conservation groups and environmentalists. This article reports on the internecine tension between greens: For some people, addressing climate change is paramount, and building large renewable energy projects is worth certain trade-offs because of the greater harms that loom if our grid continues to be dominated by planet-heating fossil fuels. For others, conserving land, habitats or biodiversity is their core value, and they push for larger renewable projects to be built somewhere else. NPR being NPR, it puts it thumb on the scale, serving up quotes from “experts” who say the tension stems from the fact that society has delayed climate action too long. According to Michael Gerrard, environmental law professor at Columbia University: While some disagreements between neighbors over what to conserve are inevitable ... these conflicts can delay renewable energy projects just as climate science demands their urgent adoption. "There's some very tough trade-offs that have to be involved," Gerrard says. "We are now in the midst of the sixth extinction in geologic time. It's going to get much worse as the climate worsens. If we don't act in a very strong way, we're going to lose far more species. We have to make some sacrifices now in order to avoid far greater losses in the years and decades to come." In a separate article published last December in RCI, John Murawski reported on the tensions solar farms are creating in rural Virginia. It has been widely reported for years that the modeling business is far from glamorous behind the catwalk. This article draws on interviews with former models to report the ongoing horrors: Though models fuel the $2.5 trillion fashion industry, they struggle to survive in its epicenter, New York. Unlike Hollywood talent agencies, which are licensed, regulated and place a 10 percent cap on commissions, modeling firms like NEXT and Wilhelmina are considered management companies and enjoy a unique carveout when it comes to the state’s labor laws. Among the industry’s most egregious practices, agencies typically wield “power of attorney” over their models and can legally accept payments on their behalf and deduct expenses like wildly inflated rent for substandard housing with zero obligation to detail their accounting. Even worse, the top agencies, which are said to scour refugee camps and eating disorder clinics in the quest for fresh faces, employ multi-year, auto-renewing contracts whether or not they book their models any jobs. As a result, even models who work regularly find themselves in debt to their agencies, leaving them vulnerable to predators like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein, who were both deeply entwined in this world. Former model Sara Ziff, who founded the Model Alliance in 2012 to promote fair treatment for those who serve as the face of the industry, said, “The modeling industry really does in some cases rise to the level of trafficking — labor trafficking and sex trafficking.” Ukrainian soldiers released through prisoner exchanges are coming home with tales of appalling suffering in Russian captivity ‒ executions and deaths, beatings and electric shocks, a lack of health care and near-starvation rations. One former prisoner, Dr. Yurik Mkrtchyan, described ... ... how new arrivals had to run a gantlet of prison guards who beat them with sticks, a hazing ritual known as a “reception.” He recalled running, head down, through the torrent of blows, and seeing a fellow prisoner on the ground. The soldier, a wounded prisoner with serious burns named Casper, was killed by the beating, he said. … The “reception” beating lasted five hours. “I was kneed in the face,” [another former prisoner] said. The beatings continued daily for a month. The guards used rubber truncheons, plastic piping, wooden rulers and knotted pieces of rope, or just kicked prisoners, he said. Prisoners nicknamed one group of guards “the electricians” because they tormented prisoners with electric shocks. The article reports that Ukraine allows the International Committee of the Red Cross access to the Russian prisoners of war it is holding, an indication that it is meeting its obligations under international conventions of war. Russia does not. It restricts outside monitoring and has confirmed the identities of only some of those it is holding. In a separate article, Reuters reports on three Africans who decided to fight with Russia. In journeying to Russia, they were “following the route of many young Africans, including future heads of state, since the 1960s. Starting in Soviet times, Moscow had opened its arms to African students as a way of courting influence in countries that were just shaking themselves free of Western European colonial rule. Today, some 35,000 African students are enrolled in Russian universities and colleges, the country’s education minister said earlier this year.” | 