RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
October 16 to October 22, 2022

Featured Investigation:
Invisible Hand or Iron Fist?
Introducing RealClearInvestigations’ Guide
to Politicized Capitalism

In RealClearInvestigations, Ben Weingarten unveils RCI's Guide to Politicized Capitalism -- a one-stop trove of resources allowing readers, including investors, to survey today's politically charged corporate battlefield and assess how companies are influencing American politics from outside the voting booth, and being influenced themselves. Highlights:

• A clickable dashboard of hyperlinks to eight sub-articles presents readers the full spectrum of political activism in big business, from woke corporate left to unwoke corporate right.
• Large, publicly traded companies overwhelmingly support progressive causes and are substantially better-organized and more influential than their conservative peers.
• The financial services sector, whose largest and most powerful players overwhelmingly support the left’s “environment, social and governance” (ESG) agenda, exert outsized control over businesses’ politics by leveraging their investment power.
• Michael R. Bloomberg, the media mogul and philanthropist, chairs a climate group pressuring businesses – ones his Bloomberg journalists cover – to report ESG data via Bloomberg's proprietary tools.
• Included in the RCI Guide are corporate rating tools aggregated from across the political spectrum to allow readers to assess corporations' politics through prisms left and right.
• Conservative investors and consumers in particular are likely to find themselves hard-pressed to decouple from companies that conflict with their deeply held beliefs.
• The Guide outlines the political struggles arising from the woking of business, including a backlash primarily from conservative state officials and executives, infuriated by the channeling of public pension dollars to leftist priorities.

Featured Investigation:
Doubt-Free, America's Schools Warm
to Climate Activism

Public school districts are adopting curricula on the climate from well-funded progressive groups that cast climate change as a threat to life on the planet and then use worst-case scenarios to push students to take action, Steve Miller reports for RealClearInvestigations:

• As of fall 2020, 29 states and the District of Columbia have adopted standards that require science classes to teach human-caused climate change as a grave peril beyond dispute.
• School districts often rely on information provided by advocacy groups including the Sierra Club and the U.S. Green Building Council.
• Lessons from standards developed by mostly progressive science learning groups also encourage students to “[take] action within their own spheres of influence” to combat what they contend is out-of-control global warming.
• Seven Utah students, ranging in age from 9 to 18, in March sued Utah Gov. Spencer Cox. The lawsuit alleges Cox, a Republican, and other officials are harming the plaintiffs through “unconstitutional” fossil-fuel policies.
• As the standards are adopted, school districts, with enrollment this year of 50 million students, are also collectively paying millions of taxpayer dollars to “sustainability officers” and their staff to ensure schools are following “green” practices and to help districts meet their self-imposed goals for clean energy and carbon neutrality.
• To question schools’ widely disseminated doomsday view of climate change is to invite outrage and personal attacks. 

Biden, Trump and the Beltway

Bidens Got $5M 'Interest-Free,'
'Forgivable' Loan from China 
Just the News

President Joe Biden’s  family cashed in on a zero-interest, forgivable loan from an energy company in communist China. This article reports that the information released by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley shows that CEFC Beijing International Energy Company Limited paid $5 million to a Hunter Biden-connected firm in August 2017. One of Hunter’s former business partners, Tony Bobulinski, told the FBI that some of the Chinese money paid in 2017 was actually deferred compensation for work Hunter and James Biden had done while Joe Biden was still vice president, Grassley wrote. Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson previously have said some $6 million paid in spring 2017 appeared to be for pre-2017 work. Bobulinski has said in media interviews that Joe Biden was a silent partner in the Chinese transaction, identified in internal documents as "the big guy" who might get 10% of the deal.

In a separate article, Fox News reports that Grassley has sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray and U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss detailing new whistleblower allegations that the bureau is in possession of: "significant, impactful and voluminous evidence with respect to potential criminal conduct by Hunter Biden and James Biden."

Claim: Trump Hotels
Gouged Government 
Axios

Former President Trump's business charged Secret Service agents "excessive nightly rates" at its properties during dozens of trips, according to documents released the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Some charges were as high as $1,185 per room per night at the former Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. — more than five times the government rate, according to the committee. The documents appear to contradict claims made by the Trump Organization at the time that federal employees traveling with the former President would stay at Trump properties "for free" or "at cost." In response to the documents, one of the former president’s sons, Eric Trump, issued a statement saying “any services rendered to the United States Secret Service or other government agencies at Trump owned properties, were at their request and were either provided at cost, heavily discounted or for free." 

Other Biden, Trump and the Beltway

Dossier Source Acquitted. Here's What the Trial Revealed Techno Fog, Reactionary
Internet Sleuths: China Running Midterm Interference Ops Just the News
FBI Indicted 22 Pro-Lifers, Zero Pregnancy Center Arsonists Federalist
Biden's Pot Clemency May Free No One Marshall Project
Top Democrats Pay Kin From Campaign Coffers Fox
NIH Blocks Non-Woke Genetic Research City Journal

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Xi Jinping Prepares China
to Confront U.S. 
Wall Street Journal

Since rising to power a decade ago, Xi Jinping has unleashed an array of campaigns to help ensure that China would prevail in, or at least withstand, a confrontation with the West. He has bolstered China’s military, reorganized the economy and remade society around a more ideologically committed Communist Party. This article reports: .

[Xi's] overarching goal is to restore China to what he believes is its rightful place as a global player and a peer of the U.S. As a consequence, he has come to see the possibility of a showdown with the West as increasingly likely, according to people familiar with his thinking. … His approach could be summed up in a favorite aphorism of Mao Zedong that Mr. Xi has invoked, warning against a lack of vigilance, according to people familiar with the matter: “Don’t fight unsure wars, and don’t fight unprepared battles.”

In a separate article, the Journal reports that Xi is preparing the ground politically by installing trusted lieutenants at every level of the ruling Communist Party while purging possible opponents through anti-corruption campaigns. He has also cracked down on opposition in places like Hong Kong and Xinjiang, to help shore up his authority and weed out foreign influences.

In another article, the Journal reports that Xi has reorganized the People’s Liberation Army, doubled its budget and begun work to enhance China’s nuclear arsenal “to ensure China is ready to engage in combat, if necessary, for the first time since 1979—especially if elections in the U.S. and Taiwan in 2024 result in leaders willing to embrace independence for the island, the reddest of red lines for Mr. Xi.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports, China is using American technology to prepare for possible conflict with America.

Military research groups at the leading edge of China’s hypersonics and missile programs — many on a U.S. export blacklist — are purchasing a range of specialized American technology, including products developed by firms that have received millions of dollars in grants and contracts from the Pentagon, a Washington Post investigation has found. The advanced software products are acquired by these military organizations through private Chinese firms that sell them on despite U.S. export controls designed to prevent sales or resales to foreign entities deemed a threat to U.S. national security, the investigation shows.

Poor Minorities Were Charged
Top Prices for Slower Internet 
The Markup

AT&T, Verizon, EarthLink, and CenturyLink disproportionately offered lower-income neighborhoods slow internet service for the same price as speedy connections they offered in other parts of town, according to an analysis of more than 800,000 internet service offers in 38 cities.

[It] found that all four routinely offered fast base speeds at or above 200 Mbps in some neighborhoods for the same price as connections below 25 Mbps in others. The neighborhoods offered the worst deals had lower median incomes in nine out of 10 cities in the analysis. In two-thirds of the cities where The Markup had enough data to compare, the providers gave the worst offers to the least-White neighborhoods. … Residents of neighborhoods offered the worst deals aren’t just being ripped off; they’re denied the ability to participate in remote learning, well-paying remote jobs, and even family connection and recreation—ubiquitous elements of modern life.

Industry representatives said many of those poor neighborhoods have not been upgraded to faster fiber connections, but did not explain why.

Covert Abortion Network
Rises After Roe 
Washington Post

As many states move to limit abortion access, a covert network has emerged to provide abortifacients through the mail. Distinct from services that sell pills to patients online, this article reports, a growing army of community-based distributors is reaching pregnant women through word of mouth or social media to supply pills for free –  though typically without the safeguards of medical oversight. Those interviewed by the Post ...

... described a pipeline that typically begins in Mexico, where activist suppliers funded largely by private donors secure pills for free as in-kind donations or from international pharmacies for as little as $1.50 a dose. U.S. volunteers then receive the pills through the mail — often relying on legal experts to help minimize their risk — before distributing them to pregnant women in need. The system could upend Republican plans for a post-Roe America. Despite the strict abortion bans that have taken effect in over a dozen states, some antiabortion leaders fear that the flow of abortion pills could help make abortion more accessible than it was before Roe fell.

In a separate article, the New York Times reports that lawmakers and doctors are struggling to define what an abortion is. The irony is that abortion rights advocates seem to support a broad definition of the term – basically defining it as the intentional termination of any pregnancy for whatever reason –  that could restrict its use. “Anti-abortion lawmakers and groups disagree,” this article reports, “arguing that it’s an abortion only if the woman or her medical provider elects to end the pregnancy. This generally means that terminating a pregnancy in a dire medical situation is acceptable, while terminating an unwanted pregnancy is not.”

Coronavirus Investigations

As COVID Hit, Federal Officials
Made Timely Stock Trades 
Wall Street Journal

As part of its series investigating stock trades by government leaders and employees, the Wall Street Journal reports that federal officials working on the government response to COVID-19 made well-timed financial trades – both as the markets plunged and as they rallied.

In January 2020, the U.S. public was largely unaware of the threat posed by the virus spreading in China, but health officials were on high alert and girding for a crisis. A deputy to top health official Anthony Fauci reported 10 sales of mutual funds and stocks totaling between $157,000 and $480,000 that month. Collectively, officials at another health agency, Health and Human Services, reported 60% more sales of stocks and funds in January than the average over the previous 12 months, driven by a handful of particularly active traders. … And as the government was devising a loan package aimed specifically at helping companies including Boeing Co. and General Electric Co. , a Treasury Department official involved in administering the aid acquired shares of both companies.