RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
October 22 to October 28, 2023 In RealClearInvestigations, John Murawski reports on the vastly expensive next phase of America's top-down energy transition: the federal and state governments pumping in billions of dollars to build out a massive national infrastructure of charging stations to power electric vehicles: The free market takes a back seat here. Huge public subsidies will be crucial because private industry is unwilling to take on the financial risks. A Manhattan Institute report notes pointedly that “to encourage adoption of the newly invented gasoline-powered cars, governments didn’t have to ban horses.” California leads states outlawing sales of new gasoline-powered passenger vehicles in just 12 years, and projects that it may need to install at least 20 electric chargers for every gas pump now in service. To avoid penalizing the little guy, federal EV mandates require that 40% of benefits pay for public chargers in disadvantaged areas, while California requires that at least half go to such “equity” communities – where relatively few people currently drive EVs. EV sales are not close to the ambitious targets set by policy experts – lately under 8% of new car sales in the third quarter. The charging buildout fits a pattern of selling complicated policies as simple fixes. As RCI has reported, cultural gatekeepers: 1) misrepresent EVs as a “net zero” technology; 2) lowball the total land area needed for solar and wind farms; and 3) muffle criticism of the dire predictions of climate action advocates. Waste of the Day
by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books Soc Sec Duns Retirees for Overpaid $26B, RCI
Miami Pays $348K to Alleged Dirty Pols, RCI
Marines' $100M Jet Vanishes for a Day, RCI
Gravel Co. Quarries Federal Boondoggle, RCI
Texans Zapped as Electric Cost Is Juiced, RCI Biden, Trump and the Beltway Biden Paid Cash for Beach Pad After Hunter Threat to Chinese, Daily Mail
Why'd Jim Biden Get $200K Loan, Then Pass It to Joe?, Federalist
Which Biden 'Loan' Prompted Brother's $200K 'Repayment'? Fox
Anti-Israel Sentiment Permeates Biden Administration, Just the News
Gaza-Sympathizing ‘Mutiny Brewing’ in State Dept., HuffPost
How Disputed GOP Electors Tried to Thwart Biden's '20 Georgia Win, AP
DOJ Being Probed Over Russiagate Spying on Congress, Just the News
Sen. Grassley Says FBI and DOJ Tried to Quash Biden Probes, Fox Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Gavin Newsom, the California governor with presidential dreams, has signed a raft of laws and regulations to speed the nation’s most populous state away from fossil fuels, including a ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 and a mandate to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2045. He also wants to end oil drilling in his state, a major oil producer, by 2045. This article reports that Newsom hopes his state will be a model for the nation — and the world. But some fear that his ideas may crash up against reality. Critics warn that some of Mr. Newsom’s climate policies are so ambitious as to be unrealistic, making them impossible to scale on a national or global level. Worse, they say, his headlong pursuit of his goals could disrupt California’s energy supplies, hike electric rates and devastate communities that depend on gas and oil drilling. As he attacks and sues the oil industry, Newsom also admits that he still relies on it. “Yes, I use their product,” he said. “And yes, I flew over here. And yes, I’m in a car that uses gas. I’m not stupid. I’m not naïve. I didn’t walk here in my organic moccasins. But nor am I naïve about their deceit and their denial and as a consequence of the delay and how that’s literally accelerating the destruction of our planet.” In a separate article, the New York Post reports that sex workers, emboldened by new California laws that make it nearly impossible for cops to bust prostitutes, have turned the city’s red light district into an open air market. A 40-block area of Figueroa Boulevard in South LA sees hundreds of prostitutes, some barely out of their teens, plying their trade since Gov. Gavin Newsom passed the controversial Safer Streets for All Act, which decriminalized loitering with the intent to work as a prostitute in January. “Before, this type of activity only happened at night where most citizens wouldn’t see it, but now it’s 24/7,” one source told The Post. After decades of expansion, the nation’s largest drugstore chains are closing hundreds of stores as they reorient their operations against rising competition, a crush of opioid lawsuits, and other forces – relegating many already-vulnerable communities into pharmacy deserts. Moving more merchandise behind plexiglass barriers to discourage theft and violence, this article notes, has also “lent a dystopian feel to some locations”: Rite Aid, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, CVS and Walgreens have signaled over the past two years plans to collectively shutter more than 1,500 stores. Public health experts have already seen the fallout, noting that the first neighborhoods to lose their pharmacies are often predominantly Black, Latinx and low-income. “According to our estimates, about one in four neighborhoods are pharmacy deserts across the country,” said Dima Qato, an associate professor at the University of Southern California who studies pharmacy access and health equity. “These closures are disproportionately affecting communities that need pharmacies most.” This article reports that while the number of pharmacies in the United States has hovered near 64,000 since 2014, there’s been a “distribution shift,” as pharmacies are leaving low-income and majority black and Latino neighborhoods and expanding in predominantly white and middle- to higher-income areas. One of the few indoor public spaces open to all comers, libraries are now the scene for all that ails a public scarred by the pandemic and an opioid epidemic. About two-thirds of nearly 600 library workers surveyed by Urban Librarians Unite in 2022 said they had experienced violent or aggressive behavior from patrons. For staff, that means reversing overdoses in bathrooms; confronting patrons watching pornography; or defending against people brandishing guns, or a snake in a jar. Some people come to the library to sleep, get warm or use the bathroom. Others are looking for jobs, housing or just somewhere safe to read. “They don’t have anywhere else to go, and they don’t trust other places. I love being that place. But after a while, it’s taxing and wearing on you,” said Kevin King, head of community engagement at the Kalamazoo Public Library in Michigan. This article reports that in response to librarians seeing more patrons in crisis many cities are hiring social workers to help them. Six years ago, fewer than two dozen libraries in North America employed full-time social workers, said Sarah Johnson, a licensed social worker and adjunct lecturer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Today, more than 100 employ social workers, and more have social-work interns, she said. Two years ago, amid an alleged national wave of violent crimes against Asian immigrants and Asian Americans, the state of California awarded $110 million over 3 years to non-profit organizations to provide services to victims and to develop programs to prevent anti-Asian hate crimes. This article asks: What was that money spent on? Some representative grantees in the San Francico Bay area include: The Oakland Asian Cultural Center was awarded $90,000 for the 2021-22 fiscal year to produce an anti-racism podcast. Richmond Area Multi-Services, Inc. received $100,000 in the first round to provide mental health services for a group of children the organization took on an anti-racism road trip. One group received funding to combat “anti-Blackness in the PI (Pacific Islander) community,” as if the reason Asians were victims of hate crimes was because of their own racism. Likewise, a group that represents Asian nail salon workers boasted of publishing a statement “condemning anti-Black racism in nail salons.” This article concludes: Collectively, the applications provide a glimpse into how much of the activist non-profit sector sustains itself by exploiting high-profile crises to raise funds that are then diverted into barely related or entirely unrelated causes. It also indicates how little the actual victims of those crises in this case, Asian hate crime victims – actually benefit from these ballyhooed government spending sprees, which keep non-profit workers employed but do little for the communities they purport to serve. Jim Harbaugh promised to restore Michigan football to greatness when his alma mater hired him as head coach in for the 2015 season. After losing to arch-rival Ohio State five years in a row, he suddenly turned things around with appearances in the four-team college football playoff in 2021 and 2022. Midway through this season, his team is undefeated and ranked No. 2. It appears that Michigan may have reversed its fortunes, in part, by cheating. This article reports that the NCAA is investigating Michigan for stealing their opponents’ play-calling signals by sending people connected to its football program to attend games of opponents and videotape coaches as they signaled in plays, in violation of the rules that govern college football. In a bit of intrigue, an unidentified “outside firm” presented the NCAA with a raft of evidence: Among the pieces of evidence the firm presented, those people said, was a detailed schedule of Michigan’s planned sign-stealing travel for the rest of this season, listing opponents’ schedules, which games Michigan scouts would attend and how much money was budgeted for travel and tickets to scout each team. The opponents targeted the most on this schedule, these people said, were not surprising. Atop the list was Ohio State, Michigan’s top rival in the Big Ten, and scouts planned to attend as many as eight games, costing more than $3,000 in travel and tickets. Next on the list was Georgia, a potential opponent in the College Football Playoff, with four or five games scheduled for in-person scouting and video-recording, also costing more than $3,000 in travel and tickets. In total, those people said, Michigan’s sign-stealing operation expected to spend more than $15,000 this season sending scouts to more than 40 games played by 10 opponents. The article reports that Harbaugh has issued a statement denying denied any knowledge of or involvement in any such scheme. | 