Monthly Archives: April 2010

Jack Comes Through for Delaware Again (Updated).

One more time that our Governor, Jack Markell, has come through for the people of Delaware. Governor Markell and his administration facilitated an agreement to reopen the Valero Delaware City refinery under new ownership, bring 600 new jobs to Delaware and cutting pollution significantly at the same time. The news is so good that even David Anderson is calling it a “significant victory” for the Governor.

Five months after the Valero Corporation announced it was permanently shutting down the Delaware City Refinery, PBF Energy Partners, LP has entered into an agreement with Valero to acquire the refinery and restart refining operations as early as spring 2011. Since the closure announcement, Delaware Governor Jack Markell has sought a buyer/operator for the plant and eventually helped facilitate the negotiations between PBF and Valero. At the same time, Governor Markell and his team negotiated with PBF to bring 600 full-time jobs to Delaware, in exchange for certain economic development incentives, should PBF acquire and operate the refinery.

“We want to get people back to work in a way that is responsible, sustainable and protects public health. While there are still specifics to be resolved, today’s announcement is a very significant step forward.” Markell said. “Over the past several months, we have worked hard to save the many hundreds of good-paying jobs at this facility and the related economic contributions to our state’s economy. We are hopeful our efforts will be successful.”

Valero offered the state some early help by agreeing to the Governor’s request for the company to stop dismantling efforts on-site and keep much of the refinery intact so the state could make a more compelling case to potential buyers. The state agreed to work with PBF after PBF pledged to operate the refinery and make substantial investments in the refinery’s infrastructure. Those investments should allow the company to meet its agreement with the state, which requires that it will keep annual emissions of Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) more than 300 tons below 2007 levels and reduce those emissions further by 300 tons starting at the end of 2013 and an additional 575 total tons beginning at the end of 2014. These reductions represent more than an 1100 ton reduction compared to 2007 levels or more than 40%.

Moving Past the Ignorance

As you know, a number of Republicans or conservative bullies have called in death threats to numerous Democratic Representatives and Senators. Some have been arrested. Including a little punk by the name of Gregory Lee Giusti, a 48 year old resident of, get this, a public housing complex in San Francisco. He was so angered by the socialist actions of the socialist Speaker of the House that he was compelled to call up Nancy Pelosi and threaten her life, all the while living in socialist public housing and most likely the beneficiary of other socialist government support.

And guess what happened when he showed up in court for his arraignment today.
Like all bullies called out for their bullying, he cried.

A man accused of threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in phone calls cried Thursday during a court appearance where a magistrate initially refused his request to be released to a halfway house. Gregory Lee Giusti, 48, of San Francisco looked disheveled in a gray T-shirt and khakis as he appeared for the first time before Magistrate Judge Bernard Zimmerman.

“Some of these threats are very serious,” Zimmerman said before denying Giusti’s request to be released to the halfway house. He said Giusti may suffer from bipolar disorder and should be receiving treatment. The magistrate, however, told the U.S. attorney’s office to interview Giusti further to determine if he was mentally competent enough to be released to a halfway house or if he should continue to be detained. A detention hearing was scheduled for Monday. […]

Federal officials have said Giusti made dozens of calls to Pelosi’s homes and to her husband’s business office. The officials said Giusti recited Pelosi’s home address and said if she wanted to see it again, she should not support the health care overhaul bill that since has been enacted.

Giusti has had legal troubles in the past because of threatening behavior. In 2004 he was sentenced to a year in jail for a felony violation of threatening to kill a conductor on a commuter train, authorities said. Last year, Hamilton Square Baptist Church in San Francisco sued Giusti, asking a court to order him to cease a campaign of harassment against people associated with the church, court documents show. During Thursday’s hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Cynthia Frey said Giusti had other convictions for theft and telephone harassment.

You know, I do feel some compassion for Mr. Giusti, for it is entirely possible that the man is bipolar and down on his luck. What can I say, it is the liberal (i.e. human being) in me. Perhaps he acted in violence on this occasion and in the past because he is not receiving his medication for his bipolar disorder, something ironicaly the new health care law would help him acquire. Given that he has been living in public housing for nine years, it is quite possible he is a man of limited means or income, one of the downtrodden that we liberals and Democrats have strived for decades if not centuries to provide a social safety net for, in pursuit of the notion that society is judged by how we treat the least among us.

But through ignorance and incitement, in this case, the least among us has treated the society that provides for him with contempt, violence, and disdain. Which negates my compassion. And it is also quite possible that this man is just a violent criminal, and I would be a fool to feel any feelings of compassion for him in the first place.

For years now, we Democrats have wondered aloud, after we lost the elections of 2000, 2002, and 2004, about how people can vote against their own interests. Ta-Nehisi Coates, a senior editor of the Atlantic, wrote a short post recently that I think captures part of the problem:

The GOP is, effectively, the party of willfully unlettered Utopians. It is the party of choice for those who believe global warming is a hoax, that humans roamed the earth with dinosaurs, and that homosexuals should work harder at not being gay.

That the party of unadulterated quackery also believes that Birth Of A Nation is more true to the Civil War than Battle Cry Of Freedom, is to be expected. Ignorance does not respect boundaries. It is, at times, qualified and those who know more, often struggle to say more. But people who believe that the Census is actually a covert attempt to put Americans in concentration camps, are also likely to believe that slavery was incidental to the Civil War.

This is who they are–the proud and ignorant. If you believe that if we still had segregation we wouldn’t “have had all these problems,” this is the movement for you. If you believe that your president is a Muslim sleeper agent, this is the movement for you. If you honor a flag raised explicitly to destroy this country then this is the movement for you. If you flirt with secession, even now, then this movement is for you. If you are a “Real American” with no demonstrable interest in “Real America” then, by God, this movement of alchemists and creationists, of anti-science and hair tonic, is for you.

The essence of Coates’ post is that the rank and file of the Republican base are ignorant, willfully or by product of circumstance (i.e. lack of education). The latter are no doubt products of our education system, which, in many areas, is woeful in teaching any more than the basics, which unfortunately does not include actual thinking. And so they grow up, do not go to college, and watch Fox News all day and night, and listen to conservative talk radio, where they are told what to think, and where, recently, they have been incited to anger and violence. It is why they vote against their interests. For they do not know any better, literally.

Those Republicans who are educated yet remain ignorant do so willfully, for they are so married to an ideology that they can listen to any lie, repeat any lie, and make up any lie, so long as it fits into their world view. The educated ignorant are the worse of the bunch, for they give support to those who are just ignorant by circumstance, and they all reinforce either other.

Which is Gregory Lee Giusti? I don’t know. And I really don’t care. For at this point, he will only learn the folly of his ways by being held accountable for his actions. And if we hold all who would threaten and commit violence as a way to achieve their political aims accountable, then maybe, just maybe, those who say they are the party of personal responsibility and accountability will learn personal responsibility and accountability.

We as a nation have always had ignorant (willfully or otherwise) among us. Indeed, college education in our country was a rarity, a privilege available to few, until after World War II. The ignorant have voiced anger and outrage before during times of social change. The ignorant have been incited before. There has been biased media before. Indeed, the norm in the 1800’s and early 1900’s was biased media and yellow journalism. There have been Glenn Becks before, in the form of Father McLaughlin during the 1930’s. There has been violence before. We as a nation got through it, and the ignorance was defeated, eventually. But it was only defeated because the agents of change keep plowing ahead.

And by plowing ahead, we did not stop to feel compassion for those that stand in our way. I feel pity for Mr. Giusti if his possible illness and circumstance led him to violence, or if he was incited to violence by Beck and Hannity and was too stupid or ignorant to know better. But I will not sacrifice reforming our society to appease the ignorant. I will not make exceptions for or concessions to the ignorant. The ignorant do still have the ability to learn, especially by example.

Questions for the Insurance Commissioner

Next week, a joint committee will be holding a hearing with the Insurance Commissioner, Karen Weldin Stewart to discuss a BCBS issue and allegations raised by the partisan, Caesar Rodney Institute.  DelawareLiberal may be in attendance at the hearing, but all of the questions will be issued by the members of the committee.

However, I thought it might be informative if we come up with questions that we would like answered.  Hopefully someone will filter these to members of the committee.  I’ll start.

  • You have stated that there were no law firms capable of representing the office of the Insurance Commissioner in a lawsuit that you inherited from your predecessor.  However, the name of the law firm in question, Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, LLP is not named as counsel on the Chancery court decision.  The law firm named is a local firm; Richards, Layton and Finger.  What role did Stroock & Stroock & Lavan serve on the case?
  • Your department has made the statement in the past that the OIC is not funded by taxpayer dollars.  While this is technically correct, any monies remaining at the end of the budget year are redirected into the General Fund, reducing taxpayer liabilities.  Do you feel that the OIC should be bound to austerity measures that have been implemented in other parts of state government?

So here’s the ground rules… They have to be real questions.  We can’t ask questions like “is it true that you can’t read or write?” (I am sad that I have to even stipulate that).  They should be pointed and not subject to pontification.  If there are follow-ups, ask them too.  You can even follow up on the questions someone else asked.

Tear it up.

Get Your GOP Talking Points Now and Beat the Rush

Via Dave Neiwert at Crooks and Liars, we get a sneak preview of what at least one influential conservative wants to be a main Republican talking point this fall. While blabbering incoherently talking to Sean Hannity Tuesday night on Hannity’s FOX News show, Newt Gingrich regurgitated the factually untrue and already debunked right-wing myth about the IRS having to hire 16,000 additional agents to enforce the Affordable Care Act. Quoth the Gingrich:

One of the things in the health bill is 16,000 additional IRS agents. Now I think the average American doesn’t think we need 16,000 health police — they don’t think we need a single health police. And it’s interesting that that health bill has more IRS agents than it has doctors or nurses or people who actually do health in the bill.I think, Republicans this fall, if they were to run as one of their planks, that they will never fund the 16,000 IRS agents, and they will block implementation of the $430 billion in new taxes.

And then put it straight to the country — Do you want 16,000 new IRS agents? Vote Democrat. Do you not want 16,000? Vote Republican.

My guess is that, in fact, could be one of the five or six issues that could set the stage for a Republican majority.

Like almost every Republican campaign “issue” of the past couple years, this one could be pretty powerful — if it weren’t for those pesky “facts”. Of course, it’s also open for debate as to whether or not the lack of veracity actually does diminish the power of the assertion. Regardless, this one, like its death panel and birther brethren before it, has no basis in reality. For the best debunking of this blatantly fear-mongering, anti-government falsehood, I direct you to non-partisan FactCheck.org.

In the same mold as many lies before it, this one started as a vague assertion, did a couple rounds through the right-wing echo chamber, then came out as an unassailable “fact”. If you want the whole sordid affair, I strongly recommend the FactCheck article. But to make a long story short, it started with a soft range of how much the IRS’s budget might increase. Conservatives then acted on the assumption that the entire (and high-end) figure would not only be solely devoted to new personnel, but only to “agents”, who make up a small part of the IRS’s force, and not to various other types of employees. Ron Paul even gave them all guns by refering to “16,500 armed bureaucrats”!

Needless to say, almost no part of the “16,000 New IRS Agent” story has any truth to it. In fact, the ACA specifically states that, “In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure” No need for gun-toting IRS cops. The real lesson to take from this, I think, is just the sad realization that the GOP still has no real platform to run on. It seems as if we’re in for another election cycle of Republicans making wild, false accusations, the press repeating them, and Democrats fighting in vain to educate voters on the facts. Sigh.

Edit: I see that Ezra Klein has a post on this subject, as well.

Another Round of Anti-Government Violence

We don’t know much about this case yet, but it sounds troubling:

An East Texas man who federal prosecutors allege left explosive devices including pipe bombs in multiple area mail boxes, was motivated in part by anger at the government, Brit Featherston, first assistant U. S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas tells TPMmuckraker in a phone interview.

“It does appear that there were two motives: one, that he was disenchanted with the federal government, and, two, he was disenchanted with an individual who he perceived that had wronged him,” says Featherston of 52-year-old Larry North, who was arrested today.

…

They say that he was witnessed putting a pipe bomb in a collection box in Tyler Wednesday. Prosecutors say North distributed 36 devices in 23 locations, but he has not been charged beyond the possession count.

Luckily no one was injured.

Thursday Open Thread

Welcome to your almost-daily open thread. Do you have any burning issues that you just can’t wait to talk about? Share them here.

The man charged with threatening Nancy Pelosi lives off government largesse (of course he does):

The San Francisco man arrested Wednesday for allegedly threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over her support for health care reform spent five years harassing a local church – until its custodian helped break the case involving Pelosi, the church’s lawyer said.

Gregory Lee Giusti, 48, was arrested at noon at his Tenderloin apartment. A tall, hulking man who kept to himself, Giusti was not well known – or well liked – at the federally subsidized Marlton Manor where he has lived for more than a decade, said neighbor Rose Riggs.

“When he’d start with me about political stuff,” she said, “I’d just back off.”

Giusti also has a history of welfare fraud, threats and riding public transportation without paying. Obviously this man has some issues with his mental stability.

Alan Greenspan doesn’t think he is to blame in the current financial crisis. In testimony in front of Congress yesterday Greenspan allowed that he might have been a little bit wrong:

My experience has been, in the business I was in, I was right 70 percent of the time, but I was wrong 30 percent of the time. And there are an awful lot of mistakes in 21 years.”

Mother Jones discusses Greenspan’s actual record:

What Greenspan left out is those guidance papers, as their name implies, didn’t require the recpipients to take any action whatsoever. He also neglected to mention that in spite of boatloads of research showing the proliferation of abusive lending practices, the Fed, as the Washington Post reported, not only blew off those worrying signs but refused to supervise lenders and their compliance with federal consumer protection laws. In 1998 it even adopted a policy “to not conduct consumer compliance examinations of, nor to investigate consumer complaints regarding, nonbank subsidiaries of bank holding companies.” And when non-bank lenders were snapped up by big banks, which the Fed did actively supervise, it declined to scrutinize those non-banking subsidiaries.

Greenspan’s own intransigence played a direct role in the Fed’s hands-off philosophy. As the Post reported, the former chairman argued that inspecting subprime lenders and non-bank institutions would require too much effort and, curiously enough, would give borrowers a false sense of security. It was a contentious move by Greenspan, but his view won out in the end.

Greenspan’s view that no one saw the crisis coming is just plain wrong. There were plenty of people who were ringing warning bells but Greenspan was completely deaf to them.

That consensus, however, did exist among state regulators and fair lending groups. They singled out [pdf] products like no-income-no-job-no-assets, or NINJA, mortgage loans; “liar” loans, in which borrowers didn’t have to prove their income; and negative amortizing loans, when a borrower’s balance actually increased as they made payments. All those loan products, consumer advocates say, are fundamentally toxic and were at the root of the meltdown. Surely the 100 or so Fed staffers tasked with consumer protection during Greenspan’s era could’ve spotted those blatant abuses.

Instead Greenspan blamed Congress and the national push for increased homeownership for hand-cuffing the Fed and preventing it from cracking down on predatory lending. “Congress would have clamped down on” the Fed had it gone after subprime lenders, he claimed.

Greenspan was probably right that Congress would have been upset with him, though I would argue that Greenspan is supposed to keep the best interests of the country in mind instead of Congress.

The Delaware Round Up.

A daily round up (since I am famous for rounding things up) of political news and blog posts in Delaware.

Wyoming Mayor Mike Marasco has resigned over a dispute concerning the town’s police chief. Newly elected Georgetown Mayor Eddie Lambden will not run for a second two year term, citing personal reasons.

A civil war in Odessa?

Republican Fred Cullis has ended his quioxitic race for Congress in favor of Michele Rollins. Meanwhile, another unknown, Glen Urquhart, seems to be full steam ahead. Can poor Michele handle a primary?

A change to Delaware’s election laws has doubled the number of members a smaller party needs to gain access to the ballot. Those small parties affected are threatening a legal challenge to the law.

Coach Bill Yoast, who was portrayed by Will Patton in the critically acclaimed movie “Remember the Titans,” will be a speaker at the 50th Governor’s Prayer Breakfast on May 6.

So Now You Get Mad

This is a repost of an email forward making the rounds. Yeah, we liberals also have email forwards just like the conservatives, but with one major difference. Ours are not filled with lies.

We had eight yearsof Bush and Cheney, but now you get mad!

You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.
You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative had her cover blown simply for contradicting Dick Cheney.
You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.
You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.
You didn’t get mad when we spent over 600 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.
You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq .
You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden.
You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city drown.
You didn’t get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.
You didn’t get mad when, using reconciliation; a trillion dollars of our tax dollars were redirected to insurance companies for Medicare Advantage which cost over 20 percent more for basically the same services that Medicare provides.
You didn’t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark, and our debt hit the thirteen trillion dollar mark.

You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but helping other Americans… oh hell no.

AND NOW YOU’RE MAD !

Now, we are all led to believe that the Teabaggers are simply small government libertarian folk who oppose wasteful spending, want low taxes and want the governments off our backs. However, the litany of transgressions these supposed small government libertarian folk did not oppose exposed that as a lie. The teabaggers are angry for the one of three reasons (and it may be a combination of two or all of the above): 1) A Republican is not President; 2) A Democrat is President; 3) A black man is President.

Off and Running

From Rebecca in the comments to another post, we learn that New Castle County Executive Chris Coons will hold his three-county announcement tour, as is traditional for Delaware, on Monday, April 19th as follows:

10:00AM – The Boardwalk at Rehoboth Avenue, Rehoboth Beach

12:30PM – Delaware Agricultural Museum, 866 N. Dupont Hwy, Dover

3:00PM – IBEW 313 Union Hall, 814 West Basin Rd., New Castle

Looks like Chris is taking is taking Jason’s advice and is amp-ing up his campaign. Or maybe that Rob Tornoe cartoon hit too close to home.

GO CHRIS!

Well, That’s Another Start

As you will all remember, in 2008, the Delaware Democratic Party got itself into a little bit of a jam when it not only endorsed but financially support former Lt. Governor John Carney in his primary battle with then State Treasurer Jack Markell. To avoid a future row over the party getting involved in intra party primary battles, it is asking each Representative District Comittee to vote on the issue.

Last night, the 38th RD in Sussex County voted not to endorse in a primary.

And here is a little ancedote on John Carney’s fundraising in Sussex County. It was also announced last night that John Carney is hosting a fundraiser at the Cripple Creek Country Club on May 2nd, and he already has 10 “hosts” each signing on at $300 a pop ($3,000), so Carney is on pace to raise a lot of money, at least in the 38th.

McDonnell Decides Slavery Was Significant After All

Virginia governor Bob McDonnell fueled a huge controversy when he resurrected “Confederate History Month” after an 8-year hiatus. Just to make things extra controversial he included absolutely no statement about slavery and when asked said slavery wasn’t significant enough to be included in the declaration. After much criticism, including from many Republicans, McDonnell is changing his tune:

“The failure to include any reference to slavery was a mistake, and for that I apologize to any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed,” McDonnell wrote in a statement. “The abomination of slavery divided our nation, deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights, and led to the Civil War. Slavery was an evil, vicious and inhumane practice which degraded human beings to property, and it has left a stain on the soul of this state and nation.”

He also added a clause to the proclamation that declares slavery “led to this war.”

WHEREAS, it is important for all Virginians to understand that the institution of slavery led to this war and was an evil and inhumane practice that deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights and all Virginians are thankful for its permanent eradication from our borders, and the study of this time period should reflect upon and learn from this painful part of our history.

Bob McDonnell successfully fooled enough people in Virginia into thinking he was moderate and focused on the economy. So far his top priorities have been to take away rights from LGBT people and to honor slaveowners. I find it pretty hilarious that Republicans call themselves the party of Lincoln. I doubt Lincoln would find much in common with them today.

Well, That’s a Start.

And it is pretty impressive for just one month of fundraising.

New Castle Co. Exec. Chris Coons [D] raised $635K in his first month in the race, CongressDaily’s Erin McPike reports.

The June 30th deadline will be the monster deadline. I suspect he will have to triple that haul for the DSCC to make this race a priority in spending. More as details emerge…

Wednesday Open Thread

Welcome to a regular Wednesday in summer. What, it’s not summer you say? It certainly feels like it. My husband and I waited until 8 PM last night to go running because we were hoping it would cool off some. It didn’t. It was still 80 when we finished the run around 9 PM. So, is something else on your mind besides summer? Share it in our open thread.

Hey, CNN is just asking a question:

California lawmakers are working to abolish an antiquated law that requires doctors to look into “the causes and cures of homosexuality.” The state adopted the law in 1950 “in response to public outcry over sex crimes in California” and added the homosexuality provision as part of a broader effort to to study the psyche of sexual predators. As Bonnie Lowenthal, the Assemblywoman who’s spearheading the repeal explained in this LA Times piece, “In 1950, homosexuality remained, officially, a mental disorder. So when the Legislature promised funding for a study into the causes and cures of sexual deviance, it was, tragically, natural to add homosexuality to the list.”

Taking homosexuality off that list should be a no-brainer, but this afternoon, CNN — which has tried to present itself as the “hard news” cable network and “the most trusted name in news” — hosted a debate between discredited “ex gay” Richard Cohen and Lowenthal to ask, “homosexuality, is it a problem in need of a cure?”

“Tell me why it’s offensive to you, tell me why you wanted to take action right away when you heard about it,” host Kyra Phillips pressed Lowenthal, while seemingly accepting Cohen’s claim that he’s a “former homosexual.” Watch it:

I sure am glad this fake counselor Richard Cohen is getting a lot time on TV. I wonder when CNN is going to learn that they aren’t going to win ratings by becoming Fox Light.

The RNC had its best fundraising month ever in a comparable mid-term election year (which could save Michael Steele’s job). Unfortunately for the, the DNC did even better.

The energy around the health care fight has produced pretty good fundraising figures for both parties in March.

The Republican National Committee — for whose Michael Steele healthy fundraising may be a lifeline — raised more than $11 million, though it was able to sock away just $2 million of that for its war chest.

But the DNC did even better, raising more than $13 million, according to communications director Brad Woodhouse.

The RNC spent $9M in March? On what?