RealClearInvestigations Articles

Topline: Government subsidies can sometimes be useful tools to help struggling businesses or convince large companies to create jobs. There is little reason to spend taxpayer money on an industry that would be prosperous even without subsidies, but that has not stopped the Department of Agriculture’s Market Access Program from spending hundreds of millions of dollars to promote U.S. cotton abroad. Program funds have been used to subsidize an Indian reality TV show about designing clothes using cotton, among other questionable initiatives.  That’s according to the...

Topline: Residents of Lanesborough, Mass., will likely be on the hook for over $1 million of their local shopping mall’s unpaid taxes. Local officials are suing the mall owners, but their own attorney told them during an Aug. 11 board meeting to "treat [the money] as though you might not get it," according to iBerkshires. Key facts: The Baker Hill Road District, an independent authority that manages the Routes 7-8 Connector road in Lanesborough, sued mall owners JMJ Holdings for $545,000 of unpaid taxes in December 2024. The road district plans to file another $500,000 lawsuit for...

Topline: A contractor that received $1.5 million from the Internal Revenue Service for computer maintenance left some computers unusable for over a year, according to an Aug. 8 report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Key facts: The IRS has 100 computer terminals located around the country that help the public file their taxes, claim their refund or answer legal questions. These Facilitated Self-Assistance Kiosks were installed in 2011, but the inspector general found at least 40 that are inoperable.  IRS employees told the inspector general that the company...

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...

Topline: An attorney in Syracuse, NY, gave up her law license on July 22 after she admitted to overbilling a taxpayer-funded legal program by $160,000, according to Syracuse.com. She is not expected to face criminal charges. Key facts: The Onondaga County Bar Association Assigned Counsel Program is one of many across the country that uses public funds to provide lawyers for defendants who can’t afford an attorney. The county district attorney’s office found that Marsha Hunt, 63, billed the program for more than 12 hours worked in one day several times starting in 2022. Five times,...

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week August 17 to August 23   Featured Investigation: Billionaires Backing Woke Math Doesn't Add Up Amid DEI Rollback Lee Fang reports for RealClearInvestigations that billionaire foundations are funding a radical transformation of K-12 mathematics education based on social justice principles, despite a lack of evidence showing improved student outcomes. The Heising-Simons Foundation, led by Liz Simons (daughter of deceased hedge fund legend Jim Simons), has shifted from supporting basic math and science research to funding social justice math...

Topline: Admission to the Illinois State Fair costs only $5 most days of the week, and it’s no wonder the price is so low. Taxpayers funded the fair with $140.8 million in subsidies.  Illinois Agriculture Director Jerry Costello revealed in an Aug. 7 press conference that Gov. JB Pritzker’s plan to “make the fair affordable” included $55.3 million from the state Department of Agriculture and $85.5 million from the Rebuild Illinois infrastructure fund. Waste of the Day 8.22.25 Open the Books Key facts: The money from the Department of Agriculture helped...

Topline: Most Americans have likely never wondered about the “diverse wine and food industry” in Washington State, but everyone in the country helped fund the Walter Clore Wine and Culinary Center in Prosser, WA in 2011. The self-proclaimed “destination for wine and food education” received a $2 million grant from the Department of Commerce, despite the fact that local officials were only willing to chip in $100,000. That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a...

HOLLY RIDGE, La. – More than three millennia ago, indigenous people built a massive ceremonial mound a few miles from here, an engineering marvel called Poverty Point and one of the oldest known building projects in North America. Today, this is ground zero for what may prove a defining feature of the 21st century’s landscape. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is constructing a gargantuan, $10 billion data center that tech executives, lawmakers, and business leaders say will bring much-needed prosperity to this rural area in northeast Louisiana. Set to be operational...

Topline: Following two of the largest hospital bankruptcies in recent memory, state and local governments in Massachusetts, California and Pennsylvania have been forced to spend $130 million to keep the hospitals open and avoid putting their communities in danger, according to the Wall Street Journal. Key facts: Steward Health Care, the largest for-profit hospital system in the U.S., filed for bankruptcy in May 2024. Prospect Medical Group, which owned 16 hospitals, went bankrupt in January of this year. Waste of the Day 8.20.25 Open the Books Many of the private hospitals were...

Topline: The State Department spent $1.2 million on upgrades to swimming pools in seven foreign countries in the last four years, according to an analysis from Sen. Joni Ernst’s office published in the New York Post. Key facts: Ernst’s review of federal spending data on USAspending.gov revealed 14 purchases for swimming pools at embassies or mission residences during President Biden’s administration, mostly to renovate existing pools instead of installing new ones.  A $130,000 purchase in Harare, Zimbabwe, helped buy pool covers and other upgrades. There was $40,000...

Jim Simons’ mathematical skills helped transform him from a prize-winning academic at Harvard and MIT into a legendary financier whose algorithmic models made Renaissance Technologies one of the most successful hedge funds in history. After his death last year, one of his consequential bequests went to his daughter, Liz, who oversees the Heising-Simons Foundation and its nearly billion-dollar endowment. Liz Simons is using some of the money made by her hedge fund math whiz father, Jim Simmons, to push math informed by social justice.  @CommunityChange YouTube channel What Liz...

Topline: Like a bad dream, thousands of Congressional earmarks that were thrown out during last year’s appropriation process will potentially receive federal funding next year. The fiscal year 2026 spending bills currently being debated in Congress contain 7,737 earmarks worth $13.8 billion — down from at least $30 billion that was originally requested. Key facts: Earmarks — often dubbed the “currency of corruption” or “pork barrel spending” — send billions of dollars of federal funds to local projects around the country each year. Critics argue...

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week August 10 to August 16   Featured Investigation: I Challenged Duke’s DEI Dogma – and Paid With My Job Dr. Kendall Conger, an emergency room physician, was terminated from Duke University Health System after challenging the organization's diversity, equity and inclusion policies. His first-person story for RealClearInvestigations reveals the personal cost of dissent within institutional orthodoxy. Conger's resistance began in 2018 when Duke's diversity officer described society as divided between "oppressors" and "oppressed." He...

Topline: A Louisiana woman was arrested and charged with fraud last month after allegedly underreporting her income to qualify for Medicaid. The state Bureau of Investigation claims that Candace Taylor, 35, bought a Lamborghini and owned six businesses that earned almost $10 million in five years while on federal assistance. The case has been featured in FOX News, USA Today and dozens of other news outlets. Key facts: Taylor allegedly applied for Medicaid in 2019 using the fake name Candace Sailor and claiming that she earned less than $4,000 per month. That application was denied, but she...

I was heartened to see my former employer, Duke University Health System, quietly reverse its commitment to woke racism this year. I had joined the internal resistance to its diversity, equity, and inclusion crusade and was fired because of it. Here’s my story.  Without public notice, the 38,000-employee organization scrubbed its website of the commitment to DEI it had trumpeted in 2021, when it proclaimed racism a “public health crisis,” and “equity” as its cure. Now, all such fealty to DEI has been discarded with its new 2025...

Topline: Everyone knows you can kill two birds with one stone, but the National Institutes of Health was the first to try getting the birds stoned. In 2011, the NIH spent $357,000 to fund a University of Kentucky study on how cocaine affects the sex drive of Japanese quail. The results? Yes, cocaine makes birds turned on. The study is listed in 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. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the...

Molecular biologist Mike Rossner, who has committed his life to following the science, now finds himself playing an unexpected if urgent role – exposing the fraud of his fellow scientists.  Rossner is part of a network of experts that sniff out researchers who intentionally or recklessly fabricate, falsify, or plagiarize evidence. Rossner, a consultant specializing in identifying manipulated and duplicated images in journal papers – a telltale sign of deceit – has been dismayed by his findings at U.S. research centers. Scientists often have deleted the data...

Topline: A new report from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) identified 13 federally funded construction projects that are collectively $163 billion over budget and up to 19 years behind schedule. Key facts: Ernst’s report, “Off The Rails: The Billion Dollar Boondoggles Taking Taxpayers for a Ride,” has been in progress since 2021. The senator has been fighting projects that are over budget and behind schedule for years. Waste of the Day 8.13.25 Open the Books She added a clause to the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act requiring the Department of Transportation to...