RealClearInvestigations Articles

Topline: Individual commemorative postage stamps have never sold more than 517 million copies each. But in 2009, using arithmetic befitting Ralph Wiggum, the U.S. Postal Service decided to print 1 billion stamps featuring characters from “The Simpsons.”  The majority went unsold and were destroyed in 2012 once they became obsolete, wasting $1.2 million worth of printing expenses. The money would be worth $1.9 million today. That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a...

Topline: Maryland gave at least $319,000 in food stamps and other federally-funded benefits to prisoners, dead people, and a $2 million lottery winner. A July report from the state’s Office of Legislative Audits found Maryland has “no comprehensive process” to ensure only eligible recipients are approved for federal assistance. Even when computers flag questionable payments, the state takes months to investigate them. Key facts: The audit found a person who won a $2 million lottery prize in July 2023 but was still receiving benefits as recently as this February. Six others...

Topline: New York City’s bus depots and maintenance facilities are legally required to recycle their paper and cardboard, but it rarely happens. The Metropolitan Transit Authority’s inspector general visited 40 NYC Transit facilities and found that 21 of them mixed trash and recyclables together in the same dumpster. The other 19 facilities’ employees properly separated the material, but the company they hired to pick up the waste mixed it all together in the same truck. The inspector general estimates the city lost $800,000 over five years by unnecessarily paying to send...

Topline: Susan Noel, the former clerk and treasurer of the Town of Washington, Oklahoma, allegedly used public funds to buy a puppy, sofa, vacuum cleaner, electric dog clippers, and much more. Nearly a third of the small town’s spending in a four-year period was "fraudulent or unauthorized,” according to a new report by State Auditor Cindy Byrd, who called the scandal “the worst example of board oversight I have seen in my 29 years of government auditing experience.”  Key facts: The audit alleges that Noel stole $676,368 from the town from 2020 to 2024. That...

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week July 26 to August 1   RCI Podcasts & Videos On this week’s episode of the RealClearInvestigations Podcast, RCI Senior Reporter James Varney speaks with author Jim Rasenberger about his new work of history, “A Perfect Coincidence: The Extraordinary Friendship and Astonishing Deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.”.   On The Miller Report: Real Clear Journalism, Maggie Miller speaks with Vince Bielski about his recent RCI artcile reporting on Johns Hopkins University's plan to launch a School of Government and Policy...

Topline: The federal government, by its own estimate, has recouped less than one percent of the money lost to fraud during the Covid-19 pandemic, Open the Books found in a new report compiling official data from more than 20 relief programs.  Key facts: The Government Accountability Office estimates that “around $300 billion” in pandemic relief funds were stolen by fraudsters. Only $1.4 billion has been recovered, though the latest update was in 2024. That means each American household lost an average of $2,260 in tax dollars to fraud during the pandemic, and has recovered...

Topline: The Miami-Dade County school district’s attempt to get students to purchase cheap, healthy school lunches in 2012 needed just a bit more time in the oven. The district spent $612,808 to replace its cafeteria lines with cashless vending machines, reasoning that students’ love of touchscreens would get them to buy food they might otherwise ignore. “Students are very tech-savvy and love to text, punch in numbers and get things quickly,” one local official told TechNews Daily at the time, paying triple the cost of an average vending machine. Waste of the...

Topline: The former executive director of a federally-funded housing authority in North Carolina recently pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit theft of a federal program. She will serve two years in prison and pay $232,488 in restitution.  Prosecutors claimed Debbie Norris Woodell, 64, paid her husband’s company for work that was never completed and took kitchen appliances meant for low-income tenants. Key facts: Woodell had been working for the Dunn Housing Authority since 1989 and was promoted to executive director in 2014. The authority receives about $1 million per year from...

On Nov. 17, 2023, Mustafa Ramos, a Muslim man wearing a turban and a robe, was shot in the buttocks while selling Islamic paraphernalia adjacent to the Islamic Center of Rhode Island mosque in Providence. The 52-year-old man was treated and released from the hospital in two hours. The incident, however, which happened just six weeks after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack targeting Israeli citizen non-combatants of all ages, quickly became national and international news as the latest example of an “Islamophobic hate crime.”  Following the lead of the initial report...

Topline: A former New York City school superintendent was working for Brooklyn schools as a consultant as of this June, a year after his new employer in New Jersey sued him for alleged fraud and mismanagement, according to an investigation by independent reporter Susan B. Edelman. Key facts: Thomas McBryde Jr. left his job as superintendent of Brooklyn’s District 19 — part of the larger NYC school district — in 2021, but his private McBryde Consulting Group was hired by the district in 2022. He became superintendent of Hackensack Public Schools in New Jersey in 2024. He was...

Topline: City employees in Cary, North Carolina spent $24.2 million on their purchasing cards in 2024 and 2025, filled with arguably some of the most bizarre purchases in the recent history of local governance.  State Auditor Dave Boliek found staff members spent thousands of dollars to film themselves dancing to ABBA songs, and $151,000 to write and promote a book that sold only a handful of copies. They also lost $7,481 from cancelling nonrefundable hotel rooms. Key facts: During a 2024 staff retreat to nearby Wilmington, employees planned an elaborate lip-syncing contest to the song...

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week July 19 to July 25   RCI Podcasts & Videos On The Miller Report: Real Clear Journalism, Maggie Miller speaks with Dr. Jonathan Lesser and Mitchell Rolling about their new National Center for Energy Analytics study, "Batteries and the Grid: The Hype, Hope, and Economic Reality." In a separate episode, Miller interviews RCI senior reporter James Varney about his article detailing how the federal government is increasingly acting like a venture capitalist by investing billions of taxpayer dollars in private companies. Featured...

Topline: The City of Oakland spent $2 million in 2024 to issue citations for illegal trash dumping, but offenders rarely bothered to respond. Just $16,000 of fines were collected, the city auditor found in a recent report. Key facts: Garbage pickup in Oakland can be expensive and cumbersome. Residents are required to subscribe to the county’s weekly pickup service for $40 or more per month. Bulky trash like appliances or mattresses require a pickup appointment made two weeks to a month in advance, and can cost nearly $700 for huge disposals. Many residents illegally ignore the...

Topline: For almost a decade, the federal government’s budget for Antarctic research included little money for actual scientific inquiry, and a boatload of cash for infrastructure and administrative overhead. An independent review found that from 2002 to 2011, less than 20% of the $300 million spent on the U.S. Antarctic Program funded the academic work central to the program’s mission. The rest paid for fuel, repairs to aging buildings and more, because — surprise, surprise — living in the South Pole is logistically difficult. That’s according to the...

For much of its five-decade history, the Colorado Energy Office was a small department with a handful of employees who supported practical, cost-saving energy conservation measures. From 2010 to 2022, records show, the office received an average of $7 million per year from the U.S. Department of Energy.  All that changed after the Biden administration and Congress approved hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending to provide “a more equitable, low-carbon, and clean energy economy.” In fiscal year 2024, Colorado’s state energy office was slated to...

Topline: Since 2019, school districts across 24 states and Puerto Rico have lost $225 million to fraud confirmed by the U.S. Department of Education inspector general’s semiannual report to Congress. No more than $67 million has been recovered. Key facts: Open the Books and the State Financial Officers Foundation documented 74 instances of confirmed school fraud, averaging over $3 million each. There are far more that have gone unprosecuted or undetected. Florida and Illinois schools each had the most instances of fraud with 11. Indiana lost the most money — $44 million —...

Topline: A city councilman in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, has still not paid more than $47,000 of utility bills he has owed since 1999. Another two councilmen have a combined $30,231 of unpaid bills dating back several months. The City Council voted to raise residents’ utility bills by 15% this March. Key facts: Former State Auditor Beth Wood previously discovered that Councilman Andre Knight had not paid $47,704 in bills for water, electricity and more. His utilities should have been disconnected, but two former city managers and the local finance director intervened beginning in...

Topline: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration cancelled development on a new rocket launcher after already spending $1.4 billion on the project. The half-finished launcher will be stripped down and used as spare parts for existing machinery. Key facts: The Mobile Space Launcher 2 was supposed to send astronauts to the Moon in early 2028 as part of the Artemis IV mission. The construction company Bechtel National began work in June 2019 and was expected to be done in March 2023 at a cost of $383 million. But NASA never created a reliable cost or schedule estimate, and Bechtel...

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week July 12 to July 18   RCI Podcasts & Videos On this week’s episode of the RealClearInvestigations Podcast, RCI Editor J. Peder Zane and RCI Senior Reporter James Varney speak with Tablet writer and RCI contributor Lee Smith about conservative media in the Trump era with a special focus on X. On The Miller Report: Real Clear Journalism, Maggie Miller speaks with Varney about his recent RCI article that examines billions of taxpayer dollars invested in private companies. Varney’s investigation raises questions about oversight,...