RealClearInvestigations Articles

Topline: At least when Charlie Brown griped, “I got a rock,” in the Halloween special, “It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” he didn’t have to pay for it. Federal taxpayers were not quite so lucky after spending $697,000 to place boulders along a Las Vegas highway in 2011.  The Nevada Department of Transportation would have liked to spend its federal grant on something besides highway beautification. But federal regulations dictated that the money go towards “the installation of hardscape landscaping (decorative rocks, boulders, etc.) and native...

Topline: Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright pleaded guilty to embezzling $28,240 in federal funds to buy drugs and paying a subordinate an $800,000 salary over four years when he was not working, after being charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of South Carolina.  A South Carolina ethics commission also charged Wright with 65 ethics violations after allegedly spending $16,142 worth of county funds on himself and hiring his son as a deputy, for a collective $44,382 in misused federal and local funds.  Key facts: A report from the state ethics commission...

Topline: Mississippi has sent $1.2 billion to nonprofits since fiscal year 2023, but several are allegedly “wasting taxpayer funds” on “bloated employee salaries, gift cards, gym memberships” and more, according to a recent report from State Auditor Shad White.  It’s no wonder it took so long to identify the misused funds. White’s office claims that until this year, “no one in state government could determine the total amount of taxpayer money going to nonprofits, or even produce a list of the nonprofits receiving government...

Topline: A neurosurgeon who once had his medical license suspended by the state of Washington’s Department of Health for being an “immediate threat to the public health and safety” of its residents is collecting one of the largest public pensions in U.S. history.  Open record requests filed by Open the Books show that Johnny Delawshaw earned a $786,780 pension last year from the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System. It’s the second-largest pension in Open the Books’ database from 2024, which includes all 21 states that publicize pension data. The...

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week October 5 to October 11   Featured Investigation: Paper Chase: A Global Industry Fuels Scientific Fraud in the U.S. Vince Bielski reports for RealClearInvestigations that a global industry of academic fraud is spreading rapidly from Asia and Eastern Europe into the United States and Western Europe. Sophisticated “paper mills” now produce and sell fake scientific papers and authorships to researchers eager to advance their careers, threatening the integrity of legitimate research. Paper mills such as Peer Publicon in India and...

Topline: The highest-paid plumber in New York City earned $363,777 in fiscal year 2024, and 148 other plumbers earned more than $200,000 as the city’s overtime crisis continues to drain taxpayer funds.  Key facts: Mahendra Harcharan, the top-paid plumber, only made $112,293 from his base salary. He added on $234,783 of overtime and almost $17,000 of other pay to become the 92nd-highest paid public employee in the city last year.  Harcharan worked 3,731 hours, including 1,911 hours of overtime. That’s nearly 15 hours per weekday at a rate of $97.50 per hour. There...

Topline: Plenty of American children were playing mobile games like Angry Birds and Minecraft in 2011, but those only cost a few dollars. Taxpayers were billed nearly $150,000 to help develop RapidGuppy, an educational science video game created by researchers at the University of California-Riverside. The money would be worth $214,000 today.  That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses.   Coburn, the legendary U.S....

In southern India, a new enterprise called Peer Publicon Consultancy offers a full suite of services to scientific researchers. It will not only write a scholarly paper for a fee but also guarantee publishing the fraudulent work in a respected journal.    It is one of many “paper mills” that have emerged across Asia and Eastern Europe over the last two decades. Paper mills are having remarkable success peddling tens of thousands of bogus academic journal papers and authorships to university and medical researchers seeking to pad their resumes in highly competitive...

Topline: Working for the government is supposed to be a full-time job, but several employees have been caught working for several federal agencies simultaneously — or at least claiming to be.   In a Sep. 23 letter to the new Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor, Sen. Joni Ernst identified $1.2 million in salary paid to employees with duplicative jobs.   Key facts: From 2021 to 2024, then-Department of Housing and Urban Development employee Crissy Monique Baker also worked remotely as a contractor for AmeriCorps and the National Institutes of...

Topline: A professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has received nearly $1.1 million from the college since 2017 while making antisemitic comments online and encouraging hatred against Jews.  Key facts: Sut Jhally, former chairman of the UMass College of Social & Behavioral Sciences’ communications department, is also the director of the film “The Occupation of the American Mind.” It criticizes Israel’s “repeated invasions” of the Gaza strip in 2014, which happened after Hamas kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teenagers in the...

Topline: Overtime pay is meant for employees working more than eight hours per day, but the Illinois Department of Corrections has found a way to circumvent that rule. Employees are using paid time off to stay home during work hours and then coming in later the same day to work overtime, according to a report from the state auditor released on Sept. 23.  Key facts: Employees are more than happy to gain extra overtime hours and earn 1.5 times their regular salary, but the practice of “shift swapping” violates the Department of Corrections’ training manual, in the...

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week September 28 to October 4   Featured Investigation: From Lawfare to Barfare: Another Way To Target Trump Allies Jeffrey Clark, the former DOJ official tapped to lead Trump's regulatory review office, faces disbarment in Washington, D.C., over an unsent draft letter he composed in the waning days of the first Trump administration that challenged the 2020 presidential election results from Georgia. Ben Weingarten reports for RealClearInvestigations that the case is just one of scores brought before local bar review boards by Democrats and...

Topline: Student performance in Baltimore City Public Schools is among the worst in the nation, but that has not stopped the district from splurging on its staff members, spending at least $613,181. The schools spent at least $529,306 on 426 catering orders for employees in 2024, bought them massages, rented out a private IMAX movie theater and more, according to vendor payment records obtained by Open the Books. Key facts: Over $117,000 worth of food spending came during various “staff appreciation” events at Baltimore’s 154 schools. That included beignets, $16,000 in...

The classroom subject of “civics” evokes antiquated images of Cold War-era conformity, but Andrew Hart describes a recent teacher workshop on civics with a schoolboy’s exuberance: “It was really refreshing. I was, like, wow.” The weeklong seminar at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia delved into the writings of Aristotle and Cicero, the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and civil rights titans W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X.  “We spent the first full day just talking about...

Three years ago, RealClearInvestigations reported that the FBI was undercounting the number of armed civilians who had thwarted active shooters by a factor of three. Even though the FBI acknowledged the issue at the time, it never corrected the error involving the politically fraught issue. In the years since, the problem has only gotten worse. Since RCI’s 2022 article, the FBI has acknowledged just three additional incidents of armed good Samaritans stopping active shooters from 2022 to 2024, and none in the last two years. In contrast, the Crime Prevention Research...

Topline: In a true embrace of the 21st Century, the federal government made sure its questionable spending at the Milwaukee Public Museum in 2011 was available in 3-D. A $24,632 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities paid for “Mummies of the World” — 150 human and animal mummies on display — including a holographic rendering of an ancient mummy, available to the public in Milwaukee for five months. That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot...

Topline: There were at least 235,502 retirees across the country who collected a public pension of $100,000 or more in 2024 — costing taxpayers $30.6 billion — and there are likely many others. Laws in 29 states prohibit pension information from being released to the public, meaning there are huge swaths of data still hidden. It’s a slight increase from 2023, when 222,569 people earned six-figure pensions worth a total of $28.7 billion. Key facts: Open the Books has obtained nearly all pension data from the 21 states where it is legal to do so: Arizona, California,...

Topline: Mississippi has received $2.5 million from the federal government since 2021 to reduce HIV infections by 75% before the end of 2025, but the state will fail to meet its goal “barring a major reversal,” according to a recent report from State Auditor Shad White. Questionable spending decisions were likely a factor. White found that three nonprofits that received $853,575 from the federal money have conducted only 35 HIV tests since 2021. Instead, the nonprofits spent money on a “diva brunch,” a “Queer-ceañera” pride event and more. Key facts:...

When Jeffrey Clark was tapped to lead the second Trump administration’s chief regulatory review office, it marked an astonishing redemption.  For years, congressional investigators and prosecutors had pursued the former Department of Justice official primarily over an unsent letter he drafted, in support of President Trump’s 2020 election challenge, calling for Georgia to consider launching a last-minute legislative session to review its results. Trump’s return to power has not ended Clark’s troubles: Washington, D.C.’s legal disciplinary authority has...