RealClearInvestigations'
Picks of the Week
Nov. 10 to Nov. 16, 2024 In RealClearInvestigations, James Varney scrutinizes the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Helene: After-action reports indicate relief agencies were slow to react – and preoccupied with identity politics beyond the Florida scandal in which a FEMA supervisor told rescuers to avoid houses with Donald Trump campaign signs. -
Interviews with private relief groups, along with statistics provided by congressional sources, indicate North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s office and the Biden administration were slow to activate military personnel and assets like helicopters that were critical in the days after the storm. -
Budgetary moves and internal communications have also raised questions about how the Federal Emergency Management Agency operates under a Biden administration suffused with “diversity, equity and inclusion” mandates. -
The fired Florida FEMA staffer said her orders to avoid houses of Trump supporters were not an isolated incident and that FEMA avoided "politically hostile" zones in the Carolinas, too. -
Until the Florida revelation, FEMA’s Helene response had enjoyed considerably better coverage than the agency received during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when media accounts blistered the agency and the Republican Bush administration for weeks. -
Private groups granted that they enjoyed freedom from the red tape that customarily snarls government bureaucracies.
In RealClearInvestigations, Vince Bielski reports how numerous states are boosting test scores by essentially lowering their expectations of students, and some educators are pushing back: -
States including Oklahoma and Wisconsin are making it easier for students to demonstrate on annual assessments that they are proficient in math and English after a decade of declining test scores nationwide. -
By redesigning the assessments or lowering the so-called “cut scores” that separate achievement levels such as basic, proficient and advanced, several states have recently posted dramatic increases in proficiency, a key indicator of school quality. -
Maryland’s new superintendent of schools opposes the approach: “You can make yourself look better to the public by lowering your cut scores. But then you are not really measuring proficiency. My position is no, no, no. Parents and teachers need to know if their children are proficient or not.” -
In other moves to accommodate struggling students, districts have reduced graduation requirements and inflated grades with policies that ban failing marks. -
Studies in Washington and North Carolina suggest what empty victories such moves can be: Grades have held steady at their pre-pandemic levels even though students are learning much less.
Waste of the Day
by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books USAF Pays Millions for Soap Dispensers, RCI
Huge Cheating Ring at Houston Schools, RCI
DOE Paid for Useless Asbestos Training, RCI
Extra Courtrooms Built by Accident, RCI
'BLM Escape Room' Got Federal Funding, RCI Election 2024 and the Beltway Justice Dept. Is Terrified of Trump's Return, Politico
Trump Draft Executive Order Suggests Board to Purge Generals, Wall St Journal
Trump's Win Could Be Windfall for Anti-Trump Groups, Washington Free Beacon
Biden Waives Terrorism Sanctions on Palestinian Government, Free Beacon
How Trump and Musk Could Cut $2 Trillion in Spending, Reason
Harris Allies Say Campaign Was ‘Broken Since the Beginning’ Daily Beast
Harris Campaign Gave Oprah $1M and Paid Other Celebs Too, Fox News
Joe Rogan and the Future of Political (Dis)Engagement, Politico
Fired Anti-Trump FEMA Boss Says She's Not Alone, Daily Mail
Cell Carriers Dispute FBI on J6 Pipe Bomb Suspect, Just the News
CIA Official Charged for Leak on Israel’s Plans to Hit Iran, New York Post Other Noteworthy Articles and Series AI writing programs such as ChatGPT are unleashing a wave of plagiarism and other forms of cheating across college campuses. “Talk to professors in writing-intensive courses, particularly those teaching introductory or general-education classes,” this article reports, “and it sounds as if AI abuse has become pervasive.” At Middlebury College in Vermont, for example, the percentage of students who admitted to violating the honor code rose from 35 percent in 2019 to 65 percent in 2024. Quote: But it’s not AI that has a lot of professors worried. It’s what lies behind that willingness to cheat. While the reasons vary by student and situation, certain explanations surface frequently. Students are working long hours while taking full course loads. They doubt their ability to perform well. They arrive at college with weak reading and study skills. They don’t value the assignments they’re given. They feel like the only way they can succeed is to be perfect. They believe they will not be punished – or not punished harshly – if caught. And many, it seems, don’t feel particularly guilty about it. This article reports that online schooling during the pandemic shifted the paradigm around cheating. Zoom classes in high school, which many students felt were both underwhelming and frustrating, were easily cheatable, which made it normal. “It’s not like an ethical dilemma,” said [Emily] Wight, who graduated from Middlebury in May. “It’s more of a practical concern with cheating where it’s like, OK, this thing is due at midnight. I have 10 things to do. I’m going to copy this.” Human smugglers are working to stoke fear among people who might want to cross into the United States, using WhatsApp and social-media groups to tell migrants it is now or never. This article reports that they are hoping to generate a surge in lucrative business, promising migrants better, quicker routes to the U.S. for a fee, before President-elect Trump’s expected crackdown: In southern Mexico near the Guatemala border, some 4,000 migrants formed three caravans last week and set out for the U.S., volunteers and Mexican officials said. But many of them dispersed after being quickly “hooked,” or lured, by human smugglers, said Luis Villagrán, a Mexican migrant advocate who organizes caravans in the city of Tapachula. Caravans offer safety in numbers for migrants, but are easy targets for authorities, while smugglers offer faster routes to the U.S. … Near the Darién Gap, a strip of wilderness connecting Panama and Colombia, one smuggler told migrants in a WhatsApp group message seen by The Wall Street Journal that he expects more deportations under Trump, and wished them luck not getting caught trying to cross the U.S. border. “Human smugglers are sowing doubts, especially among those migrants aiming to legally apply for asylum,” said José Luis Pérez Canchola, head of the migrant support unit in the border city of Tijuana, neighboring San Diego. He estimates that more than 3,400 migrants, many of them children, are living in shelters across the city. “Trump’s victory has generated a lot of nervousness, and the smugglers are taking advantage of that,” he said. This article does not report on what, if anything, the Biden administration might do if this expected surge of migrants emerges. Attorneys looking for new revenue streams are using the Americans with Disabilities Act to launch thousands of website-accessibility lawsuits. This article reports that in 2023, about 2,800 such suits were in the federal courts, up from just 814 in 2017. Over a third of public accommodations suits – often on behalf of people who are blind, deaf or have other disabilities – now concern websites. Most get filed in New York, where judges have proved sympathetic: Firms of all sizes find themselves in the crosshairs. Over 80 percent of the top 500 e-commerce websites have confronted a disability action in the last five years. But the ADA is an even bigger threat to smaller firms. About three-quarters of all website lawsuits are filed against companies with annual revenues under $25 million, and that proportion has risen in recent years. The thousands of federal lawsuits represent only part of the impact of the website-accessibility campaign. Many other lawsuits are filed in state courts. Many attorneys don’t file suits at all but instead send “demand letters” threatening website operators if they don’t meet accessibility requirements. Attorneys request swift settlements from businesses, often with monetary payoffs. … The suits and threats are making some attorneys quite wealthy. The ADA has a strange structure: while the disabled plaintiffs don’t reap monetary rewards, the attorneys can recover their fees if they win. A few big law firms thus find “tester” plaintiffs to front for them across multiple cases, presumably in exchange for cash from the firm itself or from the special settlements that they can arrange. The top ten plaintiff firms filed over 80 percent of the federal website-accessibility lawsuits last year. The Navy established the Special Boats Teams in the 1980s, using high-powered racing boats to speed Navy SEALs to their targets. In seeking an edge in combat, this article reports, the Navy has created boats so powerful that riding in them can ravage sailors’ brains. In a questionnaire sent to boat team veterans by one retired chief, nearly all who replied – about 300 – said they had experienced concussion symptoms from riding on the boats, and most were still experiencing symptoms years later. Nearly a quarter said they had been suicidal: Several former crewmen said skipping over big waves and hitting the faces of the next ones was like being in repeated car crashes. “The first hit weakens you, and you are still trying to recover when the next one hits,” said Steve Chance, who served in the first generation of boats in the 1990s. “You do that for hours, and it feels like someone worked you over with a pool cue. Sometimes you’d slam so hard you’d have a headache for a week.” … In interviews, 12 former boat team leaders — nearly all chiefs or senior chiefs — said the damage piles up almost unnoticed for years, and then cascades, often around the time sailors move into leadership roles. Rock-solid sailors like Mr. [Troy] Norrell become erratic, impulsive and violent [before he took his own life]. Many develop alcohol problems, get arrested for bar fights or domestic violence, or become suicidal. One was charged with threatening to kill President Barack Obama. “Over and over and over, high-performing guys spiral down and fall apart,” said Robert Fredrich, 44, a retired senior chief who served in the teams from 2001 to 2023. “It happened to me, it happened to most of my friends. When it does, they kick us out or force us to retire, but never address the real issue.” This article reports that issues with the Special Boats Team suggest a wider problem: In its push for ever more powerful equipment, the military may have exceeded what many human brains can handle. The Pentagon has started to acknowledge that repeatedly firing weapons like howitzers and rocket launchers may cause serious injuries to troops’ brains. But the experience of the Special Boat Teams suggests that the problem may extend beyond blast exposure to include getting jolted and knocked about in high-performance vehicles. From late Thursday on Nov. 7 and into the early hours of Nov. 8, Dutch authorities said, organized mobs unleashed a wave of hit-and-run violence, chasing Israelis through the streets of Amsterdam on motorbikes and beating them. The attacks came after videos circulated online of fans of the Maccabi soccer team, which was playing in the city, pulling down a Palestinian flag and chanting about Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. One clip verified by Storyful showed crowds of Maccabi fans descending a metro station escalator and chanting in Hebrew, “Let the IDF win. F– the Arabs!” in a reference to the Israel Defense Forces. Then, this article reports: A screenshot of a pro-Palestinian WhatsApp group chat, viewed by the Journal, called for a “Jew Hunt” on Thursday and referred to a standoff on Wednesday night in which a group of Israeli fans were cornered by a crowd that police said included taxi drivers who had responded to an online call to mobilize. “They knew everything,” said Shachar Bitton, a 30-year-old Maccabi fan. “They knew exactly where we stayed. They knew exactly which hotels, which street we were going to take. It was all well-organized, well-prepared.” This article reports that European cities with large Muslim populations have become tinder boxes of tension since the start of the war in Gaza. Authorities have recorded a surge in antisemitic acts since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel and the subsequent conflict in which Israel has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza. |
