RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
Nov. 25 to Dec. 1
Featured Investigation
Schools around the country have been boasting about their record-setting graduation rates in recent years. As Max Diamond reports for RealClearInvestigations, this feat is even more extraordinary given two groups that are often not in attendance: teachers and students.
A recent national study by the U.S. Department of Education showed that about one in seven students missed 15 days or more during the 2013-14 school year – the year before the national high school graduation rate hit an all-time high of 84 percent. At the same time, at least one-fifth of traditional public-school teachers missed more than 10 days in 32 of the 35 states studied.
Diamond reports:
RealClearInvestigations contacted departments of education in all 50 states seeking to compare their school attendance rates with their graduation rates. Eleven provided comparable school-by-school data for 2016-2017, and in almost all of them, the same trend was present: Many schools had high rates of chronic absenteeism – students missing 10 percent or more of the school year for any reason – while still reporting high rates of students who graduated from high school in four years.
Among those states – California, Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Tennessee – it wasn’t hard to find schools where roughly a third of the students were chronically absent.
“Graduation rates can be gamed by schools, and districts, and it’s not really telling us what we need to know about what students are learning,” explained Ben DeGrow, director of education policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan.
The Trump Investigations: Top Articles
Mueller: Manafort Lied After Plea Deal, Wall Street Journal
Manafort’s Lawyer Said to Brief Trump Team on Mueller, New York Times
Cohen: Candidate Trump Kept Involved in Moscow Tower Project, Wall Street Journal
Plan for $50M Putin Pad in Trump Moscow Tower, BuzzFeed
FBI Raids Home of Clinton Foundation Whistleblower, Daily Caller
Other Noteworthy Articles and Series
Trump Cabinet Member Cut Sex Abuser Deal of a Lifetime
Miami Herald
This is the story of how hedge fund manager and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, friend of Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew, bolstered by unlimited funds and represented by a powerhouse legal team, was able to manipulate the criminal justice system to serve only 13 months in jail for an astonishing array of sex crimes; and how his accusers, still traumatized by their pasts, were betrayed, they say, by the very prosecutors who pledged to protect them. Chief among the prosecutors was Alexander Acosta, now President Trump's Labor Secretary, who let off, scot-free, Epstein's unidentified accomplices and participants.
The Debt-Collection Nightmare Crushing Small Businesses
Bloomberg Businessweek
Imagine logging onto your accounts one day and finding your finances hijacked and your dreams in ruins. As this exposé explains, that's the experience of tens of thousands of contractors, florists, and other small-business owners nationwide who have been chewed up by arcane legal documents called confessions of judgment. Under them, borrowers sign away their right to defend themselves if the lender takes them to court. Which happens often: Without proof, lenders can accuse borrowers of not paying and legally seize their assets before they know what hit them. Behind the process is a group of financiers who lend money at interest rates that would put a Mafia loan shark to shame. Rather than breaking legs, these lenders have co-opted New York’s court system and turned it into a high-speed debt-collection machine.
'If Bobbie Talks, I'm Finished': Moonves Tries to Silence Accuser
New York Times
This disturbing story focuses on a woman who claims that Les Moonves forced her to give him oral sex decades before he was forced from his job as head of CBS over allegations of sexual misconduct. Bobbie Phillips was a 25-year-old actress in 1993 when her agent arranged a meeting for her with Mr. Moonves, who was then the president of Warner Brothers Television. While her back was turned, she said, he undid his trousers. She says he told her, “Be my girlfriend and I’ll put you on any show,” before grabbing her by her neck, pushing her to her knees, and forcing his penis into her mouth. Legal experts said Moonves' subsequent actions to silence the actress could jeopardize a $120 million severance.
Lewinsky Says Clinton Urged Her to Lie Under Oath
Fox News
Monica Lewinsky says that Bill Clinton and his legal team pushed her to lie under oath about her relationship with the president if she were called to testify in Paula Jones’ sexual harassment suit against Clinton. She told an A&E documentary film crew that Clinton called her at 2:30 in the morning to discuss the matter and that later, one of his lawyers, Frank Carter, “explained to me if I'd signed an affidavit denying having had an intimate relationship with the president it might mean I wouldn't have to be deposed in the Paula Jones case," she recounted. "I did feel uncomfortable about it but I felt it was the right thing to do, ironically, right? So, the right thing to do, to break the law."
Witnesses Describe Torture, Labor in Chinese Prisons
Der Spiegel
Since the communists took control in 1949, China has imprisoned an estimated 50 million dissidents in upwards of 1,000 forced labor camps specializing in brainwashing and torture. Five years ago, China's Communist Party claimed that it had officially abandoned the sinister sites. But in truth many of the old facilities still exist, often under a new name. The facilities have one goal in particular: to break the will of the people who dare to imperil the almighty power of the state. This multimedia story tells the stories of three former prisoners.
Related: RealClearInvestigations reported in August on the estimated one million Chinese Muslims – the Uighurs – who have been sent to “reeducation” camps.
Supreme Court Nixes Frog 'Habitat' That Didn't Exist
Los Angeles Time
Can an area be deemed a protected habitat for an endangered species – thereby making the land almost useless to its owner - even if that species (in this case the dusky gopher frog) doesn’t live there? In a moment of sanity, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the answer is, well, of course not. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said in his opinion that the “critical habitat” of an endangered species “must also be a habitat.”
Related: RealClearInvestigations explored the case of the dusky gopher frog in this 2017 article.
St. Petersburg Heart Unit Operated as Babies Died
Tampa Bay Times
When the internationally renowned Johns Hopkins took over All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, it vowed to transform its heart surgery unit into one of the nation’s best. Instead, the program got worse and worse until children were dying at a stunning rate. Nearly one in 10 patients died last year. The mortality rate, suddenly the highest in Florida, had tripled since 2015.
Sheryl Sandberg Ordered Research on Billionaire Soros
BuzzFeed
Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, is leaning away from previous denials that she knew about the company’s opposition research into billionaire George Soros. Sandberg, in fact, requested the research, according to internal emails. During a speech at the World Economic Forum in January, Soros described Facebook and Google as a “menace” to the world and “internet monopolies” had no interest in protecting society.
FEMA Contractors Charge Big Markups on Puerto Rico Repairs
New York Times
Extravagant markups, overhead and multiple levels of middlemen have helped lead to huge costs in the FEMA-financed repair program in Puerto Rico, aimed at repairing damage from Hurricane Maria, which struck in 2017. More than 60 percent of the $1.2 billion FEMA is spending in the program to repair up to 120,000 homes -- the largest emergency housing program in the agency’s history -- is not paying for roofs, windows or doors, the New York Times found in a review of its expenditures. Instead, it is going toward overhead, profit and steep markups. In case after case, a door worth about $50 would be billed to FEMA at perhaps $700, with a succession of intermediary contractors passing along costs and profits along the way.
She Posted a Bad Yelp Review, Then Her Nightmare Began
Daily Beast
After posting a blurb about a disappointing bachelorette party venue on Long Island on Yelp, Monica Araujo became the target of cyberbullying. Soon disturbing, harassing, sexually explicit messages started flooding her Facebook page and her wedding website. “Aren’t you the girl that was giving hand jobs the other night?” one user, who appeared to be linked to friends of the bar’s owner, posted.
