In what Louisiana is calling a stunning overreach, the Biden Environmental Protection Agency is trying to take control over development in the state's disputed "Cancer Alley" using a new tack: exploiting civil rights law to achieve "equity" and “environmental justice," James Varney reports for RealClearInvestigations.
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The EPA is trying to block state permits for two new complexes – while renewing objections to an existing plant – all on grounds of a “disparate impact” on minority populations.
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It's a novel application of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with the EPA threatening to withhold millions in federal grants.
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Louisiana’s Attorney General calls the move a breathtaking overreach.
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The EPA hasn't explained its rationale much beyond citing its “civil rights analytical framework.”
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Critical lawyer: "It looks like they are trying to expand their authority by using their muscle without clear authorization from Congress.”
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At issue: plants in the River Parishes – including the decades-old Denka plant, which uses chloroprene to make synthetic rubber.
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Activists have long linked Denka to cancer in the heavily minority population.
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But in 1997, a study found almost no evidence that cancer was higher in the River Parishes than in the rest of the U.S.
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Poor health there is caused by other factors, not environmental racism, say EPA critics -- like poverty, smoking, obesity.
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Many locals reject the “Cancer Alley” tag. They want jobs.
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Local councilman: "Instead of 'Cancer Alley' they should call this 'Opportunity Alley.'"
In RealClearInvestigations, Ben Weingarten reports on states both red and blue turning to media literacy education to instruct children on the grave threat of disinformation -- in the face of expert skepticism that such studies are ripe for politicization:
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New Jersey has enacted the first law enlisting public-school teachers and librarians in the effort.
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At least seven states both Democrat- and Republican-led are currently considering media literacy legislation aimed at the young.
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One scholar writes that media literacy education “often functions as a trojan horse, casting certain political views” – conservative ones – “as prima facie wrong and biased.”
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A leading advocate of New Jersey's law has called Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin “bad actors.” Meanwhile, she has described the Washington Post as a “trusted newspaper.”
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Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey framed his state's legislation as a response to the “violent insurrection” of Jan. 6, 2021.
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Others say media literacy dodges a more fundamental issue: Kids’ “base-knowledge problem.” They lack command of rudimentary facts.
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Democratic U.S. Senators – sometimes joined by Republicans – are working to include media literacy in proposed federal laws.
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Sidebar: The Biden administration has embedded media literacy in national security policy, arguing that disinformation threatens the homeland.
In RealClearInvestigations, Paul Sperry reports that at the same time the feds were trying to throw the book at Trump allies based on rumor and innuendo, they declined to use those same spying and corruption laws to investigate actual evidence of wrongdoing involving Hunter and James Biden and one of their corrupt Chinese business partners.
Sperry puts this double standard in sharp relief, drawing on Department of Justice documents and federal court records:
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They show the FBI busted Chi Ping “Patrick” Ho in a separate corruption case involving U.N. officials -- even as this influential Chinese figure "who flies around the world paying bribes” was cutting lucrative deals for then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son and brother.
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Hunter and his Uncle Jimmy got millions from Ho and a Chinese intelligence front.
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As Sperry elaborates in a sidebar, prosecutors at Ho's 2018 trial hid Hunter’s connection to the Chinese operative, redacting the wayward scion’s name from court exhibits.
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Sperry also reports the DOJ appears to be trying to silence another partner from coming forward to tell what he knows about the Bidens' Chinese connection.
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The feds' behavior stands in stark contrast to the DOJ's aggressive pursuit of alleged Foreign Agents Registration Act violations involving Trump associates in the Russiagate affair, which was cooked up by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
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“It’s 100% a double standard, and it’s absolutely corrupt to the core,” says a former top FBI official.
Democrats and their progressive allies are vastly expanding their unprecedented efforts begun in 2020 to use private money to influence and run public elections, Steve Miller reports for RealClearInvesitgations.
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Supported by more than $1 billion, partisan groups are working with state and local boards to influence functions that have long been the domain of government -- including training election workers and designing official websites and mail-in ballots.
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The Republican Party does not have a comparable, boots-on-the-ground effort.
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The GOP has enacted numerous private-funding bans since 2020, but those haven’t proved absolute in some states.
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A major shift by left-leaning nonprofits: “Increasingly they are about elections, election administration, election technology, ballot design, and all with big funding. These groups seem innocuous, but they aren’t innocuous because they are funded by one political side.”
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Many of the progressive groups are connected to Arabella Advisors, which in 2020 gave out $529 million to “defend democracy.”
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That coincided with the rise of private-public election partnerships as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated an estimated $350 million to the cause.
