RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week July 9 to July 15, 2023 In RealClearInvestigations, Steve Miller reports after a multi-state survey that the Republicans have a long way to go to catch up with Democrats in America's new normal of absentee voting and on-the-ground ballot harvesting ushered in by the pandemic: The GOP this year turned away from Donald Trump’s vilification of absentee voting to essentially say, ‘If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.’ But Miller's interviews with election veterans from both parties suggest there are significant obstacles to changing the Republican culture of voting to exploit the new order. “Strangers going door-to-door met with a ton of resistance from Republican voters,” one GOP official said. It turned out that, in Republican-heavy suburban developments, soliciting was frowned upon, and even prohibited, while Democrats were, as ever, more welcome in urban settings. In the Democrat experience, ballot collectors go door-to-door in their targeted areas, working from a daily roadmap of “match backs,” or voters who have received a mail ballot but have not yet cast it. To track down and secure such votes, a well-funded harvesting operation has the money to obtain updated “match back” files almost daily -- by tapping sympathetic election administrators "who care about the outcome of the election, and most of them are Democrats,” says a GOP veteran. Backing that up is the left’s prodigious fundraising for private assistance to local election offices: $1 billion worth. “The left is about 20 years ahead on getting these votes,” says a conservative election expert. Waste of the Day by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books Ukraine Aid Error Grows Like Topsy, RCI Titanic Dive Co. Got $450K in COVID Aid, RCI Vanderbilt's $17M for 'Diversity' Hiring, RCI Pricey Image Firm Backed ... More PR, RCI $47 Billion in Duplicated Services , RCI Biden, Trump and the Beltway More compelling evidence has emerged tying Joe Biden to his son’s influence peddling schemes. This article reports that a 2015 email chain reveals that one month before then-Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine, where he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid if Ukrainian leaders did not fire their top prosecutor, Hunter Biden and executives of the gas firm Burisma were discussing executing a contract for counter-messaging against any federal investigations into company’s founder and then-president, Mykola Zlochevsky. On Nov. 2, 2015, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi emailed Hunter Biden, who was serving as a Burisma board member … Pozharskyi emphasized in his email that the "ultimate purpose" of the agreement with [the lobbying firm] Blue Star Strategies was to shut down "any cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine," referring to Zlochevsky, who also went by Nikolay. … "My only concern is for us to be on the same page re our final goals," Pozharskyi wrote. "With this in mind, I would like us to formulate a list of deliverables, including, but not limited to: a concrete course of actions, incl. meetings/communications resulting in high-ranking US officials in Ukraine (US Ambassador) and in US publicly or in private communication/comment expressing their ‘positive opinion’ and support of Nikolay/Burisma to the highest level of decision makers here in Ukraine :President of Ukraine, president Chief of staff, Prosecutor General, etc." Upon joining Burisma, Hunter Biden reportedly connected the company with Blue Star Strategies to help the firm fight corruption charges levied against Zlochevsky. Other Biden, Trump and the Beltway NSA Flynn Files Show How Obama Admin Torpedoed Trump, Daily Signal Docs Shed Light on Leftist Education Advocacy, Washington Free Beacon Biden Aides: He's a Whisperer in Public, Old Yeller in Private, Axios Fake PAC Took Trump and Clinton Backers for Millions in '16, Los Angeles Times Federal Charges for 'Missing' Biden Witness, but Not Hunter, Daily Caller Epps’ Suit Reveals He’s Being Charged re: Jan. 6, Post Millennial Wray: FBI Gets Americans' Info From Firms 'All The Time', Federalist Other Noteworthy Articles and Series The U.S. has spent decades removing lead from well-known sources such as paint, gasoline and pipes. A Wall Street Journal investigation reports on a hidden source of contamination: a sprawling network of cables covered in toxic lead that had been used by telecom giants such as AT&T and Verizon and which now stretches across the U.S.: The lead can be found on the banks of the Mississippi River in Louisiana, the Detroit River in Michigan, the Willamette River in Oregon and the Passaic River in New Jersey, according to the Journal’s tests of samples from nearly 130 underwater-cable sites, conducted by several independent laboratories. The metal has tainted the soil at a popular fishing spot in New Iberia, La., at a playground in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., and in front of a school in suburban New Jersey. … Lead levels in sediment and soil at more than four dozen locations tested by the Journal exceeded safety recommendations set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This article reports that telecom companies have long known about the lead-covered cables and the potential risks of exposure to their workers, according to documents and interviews with former employees. They were also aware that lead was potentially leaching into the environment, but haven’t meaningfully acted on potential health risks to the surrounding communities or made efforts to monitor the cables. Russia has publicly acknowledged the deaths of just over 6,000 soldiers in the Ukraine. This article reports that the number is probably closer to 50,000. Two independent Russian media outlets, Mediazona and Meduza, working with a data scientist from Germany’s Tübingen University, used social media postings and photographs of cemeteries across Russia to build a database of confirmed war deaths. As of July 7, they had identified 27,423 dead Russian soldiers: “These are only soldiers who we know by name, and their deaths in each case are verified by multiple sources,” said Dmitry Treshchanin, an editor at Mediazona who helped oversee the investigation. “The estimate we did with Meduza allows us to see the ‘hidden’ deaths, deaths the Russian government is so obsessively and unsuccessfully trying to hide.” They researchers then went further, using a statistical concept popularized during the COVID-19 pandemic called excess mortality to estimate how many more men under age 50 died between February 2022 and May 2023 than normal. “According to their analysis, 25,000 more inheritance cases were opened in 2022 for males aged 15 to 49 than expected. By May 27, 2023, the number of excess cases had shot up to 47,000.” The article reports that these numbers jibe with international estimates. In February, the U.K. Ministry of Defense said approximately 40,000 to 60,000 Russians had likely been killed in the war. A leaked assessment from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency put the number of Russians killed in action in the first year of the war at 35,000 to 43,000. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has earned at least $3.7 million from sales of her memoir and children’s books since joining the Supreme Court in 2009 – and some of that is thanks to the efforts of her taxpayer-supported employees. This article reports that her staff often makes sure that enough copies of her book are on hand for sale when she speaks: At Clemson University in South Carolina, school officials offered to buy 60 signed copies before a 2017 appearance; Sotomayor’s staff noted that most schools order around 400. Michigan State University asked Sotomayor to come to campus and in 2018 spent more than $100,000 on copies of her memoir, “My Beloved World,” to distribute to incoming first-year students. The books were shipped to the Supreme Court, where copies were taken to her chambers by court workers and signed by her before being sent to the school. … In a statement, the Supreme Court said it works with the justices and their staff to ensure they are “complying with judicial ethics guidance for such visits.” “When (Sotomayor) is invited to participate in a book program, Chambers staff recommends the number of books (for an organization to order) based on the size of the audience so as not to disappoint attendees who may anticipate books being available at an event,” the court said. While members of Congress are prohibited from using staff for activities that provide personal financial gain, Supreme Court justices are not. At 18, Zachary Burkard was too young to buy a handgun from a licensed gun store, and he was an admitted drug dealer with mental health issues, court records show. So, this article reports, he went to a website that sells “ghost gun” parts with no serial numbers, bought a gun kit and assembled a complete pistol himself. About two months he shot and killed two other teenagers with his homemade firearm. He is not alone, this article reports: Teenagers have discovered the ease with which they can acquire the parts for a ghost gun, and they have been buying, building and shooting the homemade guns with alarming frequency. Everytown for Gun Safety compiled a list of more than 50 incidents involving teens and ghost guns since 2019. … Teens are hardly the only users. Last year, police departments seized at least 25,785 ghost guns nationwide, the Justice Department said recently, and those are just the weapons submitted by police to ATF for tracing, even though they don’t have serial numbers and largely cannot be traced. This article reports that because many ghost gun parts manufacturers do not consider their “80 percent” frames or receivers to be firearms, they do not believe they are required to conduct any background checks or to refuse to sell to teenagers. A full ghost gun kit can cost between $800 and $1,000, according to websites that sell them. |