RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
March 13 to March 19, 2022

Investigative Issues:
Now That the NY Times Has Granted Legitimacy
to Hunter's Laptop,
Will It Stop Being a Biden Lapdog?

Talk about burying the lead. In the 24th paragraph of an article detailing the Department of Justice’s ongoing probe into Hunter Biden’s finances, the New York Times finally acknowledges the authenticity of material on the infamous laptop the president’s son abandoned in a Delaware repair shop. This, of course, is the same laptop – filled with explosive allegations of sketchy deals with foreign government and suggestions of payoffs to Joe Biden – that the Times and other mainstream outlets ignored or dismissed as “Russian disinformation” after the New York Post first reported on it in October 2020. Twitter and Facebook banned the Post from sharing its reporting.

The damage of this disinformation campaign orchestrated by Democrats and their media allies is incalculable. Given Biden’s razor-thin margins in several swing states, it is worth asking if he would have been elected president had these allegations of corruption received a full and fair airing. Now that the Times has deigned to confer legitimacy on the laptop, the big question is whether it will pursue its leads.

Featured Investigation:
How Schools' Covid-Aid Joy Ride
Could Send New Hires Off a Fiscal Cliff -- Again

It's déjà school all over again for the spendthrifts of American education. They are flunking the hard lessons of the past's shortsighted school budget math, Steve Miller reports for RealClearInvestigations.

Flush with $190 billion in federal pandemic relief, districts are spending like there's no tomorrow – greenlighting projects with big carrying costs and hiring new staff – and thereby heading straight toward “fiscal cliffs”: widespread budget cuts and layoffs when the federal money runs out, as it will in 2024.

It all rings a (school) bell, Miller reports:

• After the 2008 recession, districts commited essentially the same budgetary malpractice, hitting fiscal cliffs after blowing federal largesse from the $107 billion Recovery Act and Education Jobs program.
• Layoffs disproportionately affected schools in lower income areas. “Tears and disbelief,” lamented the Baltimore Sun.
• Today’s profligacy is occurring as the nation’s public schools shed 3% of their students – largely a result of parents pulling their kids out amid pandemic closures.
• Education analysts blame the feds’ murky, open-ended guidance for the school spending free-for-all.
• Money is going to sports facilities, vehicles, and other bells and whistles, but districts’ “go-to strategies are adding staff,” says a spending monitor.
• “The ultimate problem is how to spend that money without hiring a bunch of people,” says a deputy superintendent in suburban Houston. “This is a labor-intensive industry and 90% of our budget is people.”

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Chernobyl Staff Work Nonstop at Gunpoint
Wall Street Journal

Since Russia’s Feb. 23 takeover of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the site of the world’s worst nuclear-power disaster has become an impromptu prison, and an increasingly dangerous one. Drawing from interviews with trapped workers, videos and texts they have sent to family members, as well as interviews with those loved ones, this article reports that:

Chernobyl’s technicians and support staff have been working nonstop. After arriving at 9 p.m. [on that fateful day] for a single night shift to monitor electrical transmission levels and the temperature inside the plant’s gigantic sarcophagus housing radioactive waste, they are approaching 500 hours on the job—snatching sleep on chairs in front of beeping machinery and on piles of clothes next to workstations. Their diet has dwindled to porridge and canned food, prepared by a 70-year-old cook who at one point collapsed from exhaustion. Their phones have been confiscated and they are trailed by Russian soldiers through the nuclear plant’s labyrinth of reinforced-concrete corridors. …

In the one-minute calls Russian soldiers allow workers to place to family members, they have told of extreme fatigue, dizziness, nausea and terrible headaches. That exhaustion is mutating into rebellion, with staff members arguing with their captors over the nature of Russia’s war and staging acts of defiance. Every morning at 9, the national anthem, ‘Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished,’ blares through the loudspeaker. The Ukrainian workers stand, palms pressed to chests, then return to work.

$10 Billion for Russian Firm to Build
Nuke Sites Under Iran Deal
Washington Free Beacon

Russia’s top state-controlled energy company is set to cash in on a $10 billion contract to build out one of Iran’s most contested nuclear sites as part of concessions granted in the soon-to-be-announced nuclear agreement that will guarantee sanctions on both countries are lifted.

Russian and Iranian documents translated for the Washington Free Beacon show that Rosatom, Russia’s leading energy company, has a $10 billion contract with Iran’s atomic energy organization to expand Tehran’s Bushehr nuclear plant. Russia and the Biden administration confirmed on Tuesday that the new nuclear agreement includes carveouts that will waive sanctions on both countries so that Russia can make good on this contract. … The removal of these sanctions will provide Moscow’s Rosatom company with a critical source of revenue as American and European sanctions crush Russia’s economy in response to its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

California: Can It Do More Than Talk the Talk
on High-Speed Rail?
New York Times

Fourteen years ago California voters approved a nearly $10 billion bond to start building a rail system that would whisk riders from Los Angeles to San Francisco at speeds of more than 200 miles per hour. But in the years since, this article reports, the project has become something else: an alarming vision of a nation that seems incapable of completing transformative projects.

The rail’s planned route and scope have changed as a result of ballooning costs, political squabbles and legal challenges. “We just have a fundamental problem in the United States of building large projects,” said Yonah Freemark, a researcher with the Urban Institute who has been following the rail plan for more than a decade. “And California’s high-speed rail is the largest of the projects.”

Nevertheless, proponents are hoping that the $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed last year will offer a lifeline to the beleaguered project even as the state’s Democratic leaders seem to have soured on it.

5 in U.S. Accused of Helping
China Spy Unit Crush Dissent 
CBS News

The Chinese government certainly has legions of spies and operatives in the United States. This article, for example, reports that the Justice Department has charged five individuals for trying to silence dissent and harass outspoken Chinese nationals living in the U.S. The five, allegedly acting on orders from the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS), engaged in various schemes, ranging from attempting to blackmail a congressional candidate with false claims of prostitution to trying to bribe an Internal Revenue Service employee to obtain one victim's tax returns. At least one victim was even jailed in Hong Kong as a result of one of the criminal schemes.

In a separate article, however, the New Yorker reports that sometimes the line between spy and engaged citizen is blurry – especially when it comes to scientists working in America who share their knowledge with companies and officials in China. “There is a long-standing conflict between scientists, who see themselves as citizens of a cosmopolitan republic of unrestricted inquiry, and the state, which is likelier to assign a property value to knowledge.”

Liberal Cities Change Course
and Clear Homeless Camps
Associated Press

Liberal cities across the country – where people living in tents in public spaces have long been tolerated – are removing encampments and pushing other strict measures to address homelessness that would have been unheard of a few years ago. This article reports:

• In Seattle, new Mayor Bruce Harrell ran on a platform that called for action on encampments, focusing on highly visible tent cities in his first few months in office. Across from City Hall, two blocks worth of tents and belongings were removed Wednesday.

• In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser launched a pilot program over the summer to permanently clear several homeless camps. 

• The Los Angeles City Council used new laws to ban camping in 54 locations. LA Mayoral candidate Joe Buscaino has introduced plans for a ballot measure that would prohibit people from sleeping outdoors in public spaces if they have turned down offers of shelter.

Biden, Trump and the Beltway

RCI's Paul Sperry Discusses Durham Probe Megyn Kelly Show
Feds Admit Breaking Law in Delaying Jan. Sixer's Case Politico
Video: Armed FBI Raid on Project Veritas Journalist’s Home Project Veritas
FBI Broke Rules 747 Times Probing Pols, Faith Groups, Others Wash Times
Pence Rewrote Script to Help Thwart Trump on Jan. 6 Politico
Biden Supreme Court Pick Championed CRT Advocates Daily Wire
Child Porn Cases May Haunt Supreme Court Nominee The Hill 

Coronavirus Investigations

Are Second Booster Shots Effective? The Atlantic
Hong Kong Goes From 'Zero-Covid' to World's Top Death Rate NBC
For Covid, Some Choose Vitamins Over Vaccines LA Times
At 26, She Struggles After Life-Threatening Covid Case NBC