RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
November 12 to November 19, 2022

Featured Investigation:
To America's Permissive Addiction 'Fix,'
Critics Just Say No

In RealClearInvestigations, Leighton Woodhouse takes a critical look at "harm reduction," the permissive and widely adopted approach to addiction treatment that numerous skeptical experts and others think is worsening America's drug crisis instead of mitigating it. Highlights:

Harm reduction is raising alarms in California and other places as the national addiction crisis has deepened, with highly toxic fentanyl killing addicts suddenly and at record rates, homelessness exploding throughout the West Coast, and drug cartels operating in the open in cities like San Francisco.

Critics fault the voguish approach for normalizing drug abuse.

In California, state law has made it virtually impossible for any program that pushes abstinence to get public funds.

Ardent advocates of harm reduction view addiction as merely a risky health condition to be managed, with treatment tailored to individuals, not all of whom need to go cold turkey.

And they view drug-law enforcement as something to be reined in.

The harm reduction model emerged decades ago as a rationale for needle exchanges, and lately encompasses Naloxone, a medication for opioid OD’s.

Eyebrows are arching as it continues to evolve: In Vancouver, the city is already administering fentanyl to addicts, paid for by the Canadian government.

Harm-reduction dissenter: Advocates "believe in ‘meeting people where they are’ and leaving them there to die.”

Featured Investigation:
Why 401(k)'s Are Not OK
(and Not Just Because of the Lousy Economy)

Fretting over your 401(k) lately? For all the current turbulence in these retirement plans – from their rocky recent performance to asset managers' politicization of their investments – the main problem lies in their flawed design decades ago favoring the better-off, John F. Wasik reports for RealClearInvestigations.

Wasik looks at 401(k)s’ track history and equally worrisome recent research:

401(k)s were always biased toward higher earners better able to save -- and Congress keeps compounding the bias with higher contribution limits and sweeter tax breaks for those who don’t really need them.

The pandemic pushed many workers to resort to 401(k) loans and withdrawals, with Congress waiving the 10% early-withdrawal penalty.

Now over half those surveyed by Bankrate say they’re behind on their retirement savings. 401(k) balances may be drained by as much as 31% at age 60.

The plans’ typically high fees are a big issue: Invest $100,000 in a large-stock fund over 30 years with 1.5% in annual expenses and you’d end up with $483,727, assuming a 7% annual return. But with an expense ratio of 0.5%, you’d have almost $655,000.

Congress has taken care of the expense issue ... for itself: Its fees range from only 0.043% to 0.053%. (Note the zeroes after those decimal points.)

Research shows ordinary workers aren’t savvy investors. They sell during downturns and buy during upswings – i.e., lock in losses when they could be buying at a discount.

Some investors have been raising a stink about 401(k) funds’ politicized “ESG” investing, but they could find themselves conflicted when they see some of the same funds’ low expenses – BlackRock's and Vanguard’s, for example.

Biden, Trump and the Beltway

FBI Informers Were in Proud Boys,
Court Papers Suggest
New York Times

Yet another black eye for the F.B.I., which is still reeling from questions regarding its efforts to push the Russiagate conspiracy theory and the role its confidential informants played in advancing a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. This article reports that court documents show the bureau had as many as eight informants inside the far-right Proud Boys in the months surrounding the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021:

Questions about informants reporting to the government from inside extremist groups have been raised repeatedly throughout the Justice Department’s sprawling investigation of the Capitol attack. They have included concerns about why the informants were not able to give the government advanced warning about plans to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6 or seemingly to corroborate accusations after the fact that the groups conspired in plotting the attack. … But the lawyers for the Proud Boys have made entirely different claims, arguing that the information the confidential sources provided to prosecutors appears to be exculpatory and could contradict the government’s chief allegation in the case: that their clients went to Washington on Jan. 6 with a plan in place to storm the Capitol and disrupt the transfer of power from President Donald J. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Other Biden, Trump and the Beltway

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Lavishly Misspending UAW
Hides Finances
The Intercept

Amid recent leadership scandals involving hefty “restaurant tabs approaching $7,000, top shelf cigars, Louis Roederer Cristal champagne, firearms, a $1 million lake house, and, of course, cocaine,” rank-and-file members of the United Auto Workers are currently voting on whether to replace UAW President Ray Curry and allies of now-imprisoned officials in the incumbent Administration Caucus. The election, which ends this month, will have an outsize impact on next year’s contract negotiations between workers and the largest auto manufacturers in America. But an internal union audit obtained by The Intercept shows that current UAW leadership gave its members only a partial view of the value of UAW’s assets – including the strike and defense fund used to pay striking workers’ wages – ahead of the upcoming election.

The audit, which was prepared by Calibre CPA Group and covers the first half of 2021, records a difference of hundreds of millions of dollars between the total cost of assets held by the UAW – including the strike fund – and the appreciated value of those assets. … The UAW constitution includes a provision that automatically reduces union dues if the strike fund exceeds a threshold of $850 million. In 2021, the strike fund was listed as worth roughly $815 million: almost $700 million in “cash, cash equivalents, and investment securities” and around $116 million in “alternative investments.” By valuing investments at cost, instead of at the appreciation value, the $850 million cap is much harder to reach, allowing union officials to continue collecting higher dues from UAW members.

Emerging Evidence
of Puberty Blockers' Perils
New York Times

The use of puberty-blocking drugs for children who may be suffering gender dysphoria has, this article reports, “typically [been] framed as a safe, and reversible, way to buy time to weigh a medical transition and avoid the anguish of growing into a body that feels wrong.” But as many more adolescents identify as transgender, concerns are growing among some medical professionals, this article says:

... [T]here is emerging evidence of potential harm from using blockers, according to reviews of scientific papers and interviews with more than 50 doctors and academic experts around the world. The drugs suppress estrogen and testosterone, hormones that help develop the reproductive system but also affect the bones, the brain and other parts of the body. During puberty, bone mass typically surges, determining a lifetime of bone health. When adolescents are using blockers, bone density growth flatlines, on average, according to an analysis commissioned by The Times of observational studies examining the effects.

Other nations have been quicker to recognize the problems. England’s National Health Service last month proposed restricting use of the drugs for trans youths to research settings. Sweden and Finland have also placed limits on the treatment, concerned not just with the risk of blockers, but the steep rise in young patients, the psychiatric issues that many exhibit, and the extent to which their mental health should be assessed before treatment. In the United States, though, there is no universal policy, and the public discussion is polarized.

In a separate article, the Daily Mail reports that “young people who used drugs or surgery to change their gender but later regretted their procedures and sought to reverse them are warning of worsening abuse from the transgender community they've walked away from. De-transitioners, as they are known, speak of online vitriol, doxxing, harassment and death threats.

Missouri's Low-Paid Disabled
ProPublica & Kansas City Beacon

Sheltered workshops in Missouri can pay their disabled employees less than $1 hour because they are supposed to offer temporary positions that train workers to take positions in the regular workforce. But an investigation by ihe Kansas City Beacon and ProPublica found that, as of June 30, the vast majority of the more than 5,000 disabled adults employed at Missouri’s 97 sheltered workshop locations have been there for years:

The news organizations’ analysis of employment data shows that nearly 45% of the employees have worked at the facilities for at least a decade, and 20% have been there for two decades. The longest-serving employee has stayed for more than 50 years. That’s because very few employees ever “graduate.” From January 2017 through June 2022, only 2.3% of all sheltered workshop employees in Missouri left for a regular job, according to an analysis of employment data by the Beacon and ProPublica.

The article reports that Missouri is an outlier: At least 14 states have adopted laws or policies that completely phase out sheltered workshops or subminimum wages. At least 10 others have considered similar actions in recent years. This shift has come on the heels of a number of studies showing that sheltered workshops across the country were failing to live up to their goal, including a 2001 estimate by the Government Accountability Office that no more than 5% of employees were transitioning into the regular workforce.

Could U.S. Do More
to Prevent Stillbirths?
ProPublica

Every year more than 20,000 pregnancies in the United States end in stillbirth, the death of an expected child at 20 weeks or more. That number has exceeded infant mortality every year for the last 10 years. It’s 15 times the number of babies who, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS, in 2020. But, this article reports, those deaths are not inevitable:

One study found that nearly one in four U.S. stillbirths may be preventable. For pregnancies that last 37 weeks or more, that research shows, the figure jumps to nearly half. Thousands more babies could potentially be delivered safely every year. But federal agencies have not prioritized critical stillbirth-focused studies that could lead to fewer deaths. Nearly two decades ago, both the CDC and the National Institutes of Health launched key stillbirth tracking and research studies, but the agencies ended those projects within about a decade. The CDC never analyzed some of the data that was collected. … Federal agencies, state health departments, hospitals and doctors have also done a poor job of educating expectant parents about stillbirth or diligently counseling on fetal movement, despite research showing that patients who have had a stillbirth are more likely to have experienced abnormal fetal movements, including decreased activity. Neither the CDC nor the NIH have consistently promoted guidance telling those who are pregnant to be aware of their babies’ movement in the womb as a way to possibly reduce their risk of stillbirth.

Germany: Europe's Bordello
UnHerd

Prostitution, in all its forms, is legal in Germany, and has been since the end of the Second World War. One result, this article reports, is that Germany is known as the bordello of Europe. With more than 3,000 brothels across the country, and 500 in Berlin alone, its sex trade is worth more than £11 billion per year. There are an estimated 400,000 prostitutes, and around 1.2 million men (the population of Germany is a little over 80 million) who buy sex every day. Cologne opened the world’s first drive-through brothel in 2001, and since then, more followed. There are “mega brothels” in cities such as Munich and Berlin which can accommodate around 650 johns at one time offering an “early bird” deal of a burger, beer and sex. At quiet times, some brothels offer “two for the price of one” deals, and “happy hours” with discounted rates.

This article reports on research conducted regarding the personal and social effects of the legalized sex trade on johns, prostitutes and the culture of large as well as on the calls from some scholars, citizens and politicians that the government take notice of the “pimp state” and consider the terrible toll prostitution takes on its women and girls.

Iowa Using $23.5M in Covid Aid for ‘Field of Dreams’ Stadium

Throwback Thursday: In 1979, NOAA Studies Pot Smoking in Scuba Divers