RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week

RealClearInvestigations’ Picks of the Week
September 29 to October 5

Featured Investigation:

Nondisclosure: Vaccine Ad Blitz Sidestepped Transparency Rules

Ads urging Americans to get the newly minted vaccines for COVID-19 in 2021 looked like most other pharmaceutical spots except for one glaring omission: disclosure that the medicine was experimental and might lead to side effects. Lee Fang reports for RealClearInvestigations that this omission appears at odds with the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), which allowed the drug companies to sell their COVID vaccines without going through the traditional testing and approval process. Fang reports:

• That authorization explicitly required vaccine ads to include a prominent warning that the medicines had not been fully tested for potential risks.
• RCI’s review of ads that ran tens of thousands of times during the pandemic found that the major vaccine companies routinely exploited a regulatory loophole to skirt those marketing rules while embarking on massive paid media campaigns to sell COVID-19 vaccines. By casting their spots as public service announcements – promoting the idea that people should get vaccinated, rather than a company’s specific product – drug companies claimed the disclosure requirements did not apply.
• “It’s an advertising laundering operation,” said Aaron Kheriaty, a bioethicist and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. The ads “violate the spirit of the EUA, if not the letter of the law.”
• The success in selling the vaccines to the public was buoyed by government support. The United States provided at least $31.9 billion in funding for the development, purchasing, and production of the mRNA vaccines, money that padded record profits. Pfizer reported $36.7 billion in revenue from the vaccine in 2021, making it one of the most lucrative drug product launches of all time. Moderna, meanwhile, minted four new billionaires as the company’s stock skyrocketed. 
• While few news outlets covered Moderna or Pfizer’s ad campaign at the time, both companies were widely celebrated by marketing professionals for the success of the blitz. YouGov called Pfizer’s ads the most successful of 2020, while Medical Marketing and Media, an industry group, awarded Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson for their innovative marketing efforts.
• Critics say it is another example of rules for pharmaceutical companies that were tossed to the wayside as maximalist policies swept through society. Online censorship, vaccination mandates, school closings, general lockdowns, and other draconian restrictions were imposed on citizens, while drug companies poised to reap unprecedented multi-billion dollar profits were given unusual and largely unscrutinized leeway.

Featured Investigation

Education’s Bottom Line: Schools Embrace Business Principles to Measure Performance

As public schools face a COVID-related double-whammy – learning loss traced to pandemic-era lockdowns and the end of federal emergency funds meant to address such problems – some districts are turning to a tried and true business practice to raise student performance: Return on Investment. Vince Bielski reports for RealClearInvestigations that a small but growing number of districts are adopting this data-driven approach, which analyzes the costs and outcomes of programs to identify those that deliver the most educational bang for the buck.

• School funding has steadily climbed for decades, recently reaching more than $750 billion a year and comprising about 20% of all state and local spending. But falling math and reading test scores in the last decade among the nation’s 50 million students, particularly in low-income communities, show that districts have gotten a poor return on their sizable investment.
• Academic Return on Investment (AROI) measures correlate spending with achievement to find out what’s working and what is not.
• At the relatively affluent Boulder Valley district in Colorado, the AROI process uncovered 251 mostly academic and extracurricular programs, such as elementary Honors Choir and Democracy Day, at its 56 schools. They varied widely in effectiveness. The ongoing cost: $46 million. 
• At the large Mansfield Independent School District in Texas, principals at its 49 schools go before the leadership cabinet in what’s called a “cadence of accountability,” where they must reveal why they did or didn’t make progress and what they might need to improve.  The cabinet might not approve requests for additional staffing based on whether it’s cost effective. 
• Mississippi has lifted academic performance since state school superintendent Carey Wright implemented an AROI approach. When Wright presented the data to the Board of Education, she spoke in business terms. “I told them, ‘You gave me $15 million for the Literacy-Based Promotion Act. Here’s your return on investment,’” Wright said in an interview with McKinsey & Co.
• Data-driven accountability has been a touchy subject among educators and the unions that represent them since the controversial federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 imposed performance reporting on districts.

Waste of the Day

by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books

Walz Donors Received Billions in State Business, RCI

Florida Hospitals Spent $566M on Migrants, RCI

China, Russia, Others Paid Royalties to U.S. Scientists, RCI

Taxpayers Billed for Online Flirting, RCI

N.J. Bets $20M on Horse Racing Subsidies, RCI

Election 2024 and the Beltway

How Joe Biden Lost His Grip on Israel’s War, Washington Post

Trump Allies Setting Stage for Post-Election Fight, New York Times

DOJ Sues Alabama Purging Noncitizen Voters, Fox News

IRS Whistleblowers Sue Hunter Biden Attorney for Defamation, National Review

Unmasking the “Whole-of-Government” DEI Agenda, City Journal

Harris’ Husband Accused of Striking Ex-Girlfriend in 2012, Daily Mail

Flight of Agents Weakened Secret Service, New York Times

Nasty Dem vs. Green Party Feud Could Flip Wisconsin, Politico

Did the FBI Entrap a Fake Assassin?, TomKlingenstein.com

Special Counsel Accuses Trump of ‘Private Crimes,’ Associated Press

Special Counsel’s Unsealed Court Filing, Office of Special Counsel Jack Smith

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Flight of Agents Weakened Secret Service 

New York Times

The two assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump this summer have revealed deep problems in the Secret Service. In addition to failures of planning and coordination, this article reports, the agency is hobbled by a lack of staff even as it faces a crush of demands.

The agency knew it would face an avalanche in 2024. There would be presidential campaigns. Political conventions. A NATO summit. It was looking to be one of the busiest years in the Secret Service’s recent history, even as threats of violence against political leaders were rising. … But instead of growing, as the big year approached, the service shrank. At least 1,400 of its 7,800 employees left in the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years, the largest outflow from the agency in at least two decades, federal data show.

The Times reports that these departures – which include many of “the best-trained people” – are partly rooted in longstanding failures by the Secret Service management. These include:

• Crushing amounts of overtime work, often assigned at the last minute and sometimes without pay.
• An initiative to rehire retired Secret Service agents, which backfired by spurring more employees to retire so they could be paid a salary and a pension at once.
• Perceptions of favoritism in promotions and hiring, including an episode in which the agency’s chief uniformed officer moonlighted as a real estate agent for subordinates, who then won promotions.
• Pleas from agents to rapidly embrace new technology like drones that could improve protection efforts and ease the workload, which went unheeded.

Fentanyl Traffickers Exploiting U.S. Trade Law 

Reuters

In January 2023, this article reports, U.S. federal agents raided the home of a Tucson maintenance worker who had a side hustle hauling packages across the border to Mexico. They estimate that he had ferried about 7,000 kilos of fentanyl-making chemicals to an operative of the Sinaloa Cartel during the last two years – a sufficient quantity to produce enough pills to kill every living soul in the United States several times over. 

The chemicals had traveled by air from China to Los Angeles, were flown or ground-shipped to Tucson, then driven the last miles to Mexico by the freelance delivery driver. Even more astonishing is what fed this circuitous route: a few paragraphs buried in a 2016 U.S. trade law supported by major parcel carriers and e-commerce platforms that made it easier for imported goods, including those fentanyl ingredients, to enter the United States. … U.S. lawmakers inadvertently turbocharged this problem as part of the 2016 legislation by loosening a regulation known as de minimis. Individual parcels of clothing, gadgets and other merchandise valued at up to $800 – one of the highest such limits in the world – now enter the country duty-free and with minimal paperwork and inspections. Fully 90% of all shipments now enter the country this way, and most arrive by air, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The liberalized trade rule has been a boon for retailers and e-commerce platforms such as China-founded Temu and Shein that ship merchandise directly to buyers’ doorsteps.

This article reports that America’s ports of entry are now so jammed with these packages, most of them from China, that just a tiny fraction of the nearly 4 million de minimis parcels arriving on U.S. shores daily are inspected by U.S. Customs. 

N.C.: Tiny Town Slammed by Helene Could Disrupt Big Tech 

NPR

The tiny town of Spruce Pine, N.C., which has just been devastated by Hurricane Helene, could end up severely disrupting the global supply chain for microchips and solar panels. This article reports:

Semiconductors are the brains of every computer-chip-enabled device, and solar panels are a key part of the global push to combat climate change. To make both semiconductors and solar panels, companies need crucibles and other equipment that both can withstand extraordinarily high heat and be kept absolutely clean. One material fits the bill: quartz. Pure quartz. Quartz that comes, overwhelmingly, from Spruce Pine. “As far as we know, there’s only a few places in the world that have ultra-high-quality quartz,” according to Ed Conway, author of “Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization.” Russia and Brazil also supply high-quality quartz, he says, but “Spruce Pine has far and away the [largest amount] and highest quality.”

This article reports that companies have been pursuing artificial substitutes, but so far, those alternatives can’t satisfy the world’s demand for this pure quartz.

How Washington Worsened Hurricane Helene’s Destruction 

Reason

From the Annals of Your Government At Work, this article reports that even as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is busy helping survivors of Hurricane Helene in flood-stricken regions, its National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) perversely incentivizes Americans to reside in these high-risk areas through subsidizing flood insurance. A 2018 government report on the program,

candidly admits that flood insurance affordability programs create perverse incentives, including “encouraging lower-income households eligible for assistance to purchase properties in very risky areas.” And that’s just what the NFIP has done: approximately 13 million homeowners live in Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHAs), where there is at least a 1 percent annual risk of flooding. … Without NFIP-subsidized insurance, rates would increase, becoming unaffordable for some homeowners. Unaffordability is a feature of insurance markets, not a bug. High insurance rates discourage risky behavior that is likely to be even more painful than having to pull up roots.

In a separate article, Reason reports that an estimated 12 people die every day awaiting kidney transplants in part because of a law passed in the 1980s to streamline the kidney donation system.

Congress passed a law creating about 50 regional monopolies where organ procurement organizations (OPOs) would have the exclusive right to collect donated organs and match them with needy recipients. Overseeing the regional monopolies is a national contractor, the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). Many of those OPOs don’t do their job very well. A 2019 report by the public health nonprofit Organize found that just six of the regional OPOs managed to collect at least 50 percent of the donatable organs – that is, organs from deceased individuals who had agreed to be donors – within their territory.

All told, this article reports, more than 17,000 kidneys (as well as thousands of other organs) are going to waste each year instead of finding their way to dialysis patients who need a replacement.

How a Web of NGOs Is Fueling the Migrant Crisis 

Daily Caller

The flood of migrants across the border has led to a ten-fold increase in federal spending on loans, grants, and contracts connected to immigration. Much of that money, this article reports, has gone to NGOs that collaborate with government agencies to facilitate the resettlement of refugees – thereby exacerbating the migrant crisis, critics say.

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has an agency called the Administration for Children & Families, and under its purview is the Office of Refugee Resettlement which partners with nonprofits in states that participate in the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program. The only state not listed is Wyoming. In fact, the site even has a tool for people to locate various refugee resettlement NGOs in their area.

Parker Thayer, who works for the Capital Research Center, a Washington-based think tank, said many of these NGOs depend on government support.

He pointed to The Vera Institute for Justice as an example of governments funneling taxpayer dollars into nonprofits. The Institute gets millions in federal dollars to represent illegal immigrants in immigration court while it pushes for soft-on-crime and open borders policies that lead to larger government contracts, Thayer said. “It’s a self-feeding circle,” he concluded.