Happy Cinco de Mayo! Are you doing anything to celebrate? Patricia Talorico in the NJ has a roundup of the best places in DE for tacos today. Did she miss any of your favorite spots?
There is also a good article in the NJ re: the Fisker meltdown. And I’ll take the obligatory note of the hypocrisy by the GOP on this thing — handing over taxpayer monies to businesses (especially dirty energy businesses) is just fine, even though they hardly need the help. And they don’t seem to mind handing over money to the local banks and casinos and other local ventures — but I imagine that these ventures are also writing them campaign checks. Fisker was always something of a risk — and frankly, I think that the conversation ought to be whether or not taxpayers ought to be in the venture capital or business support business. The free market certainly isn’t served by the government handing over funds to start up OR to support the balance sheets of established businesses. I was a supporter of taking this risk, but I’m more than a little disturbed that we’re willing to rush in to support businesses with little to no of the accountability that we keep puffing our chests out over schools and teachers. As it happens, the state as a functioning asset with great jobs already that they were trying to throw under the bus — the Wilmington Port. How is it that we can be so gung ho over a Fisker deal and working to actually dump an asset that is already performing?
Still, the Fisker story isn’t quite over yet. They raised a bit more than $1B in venture capital and it looks like they added $100M in new funding last September. Who knows where Fiskar goes from here, but I wouldn’t quite give up the ghost on something that attracted more private venture capital than either the US or Delaware contributed. Making cars at Boxwood may be done, but Fiskar is still worth watching.
And WTF is up with Tom Gordon’s CAO?
Grimaldi, who is County Executive Tom Gordon’s chief administrative officer, got in a shoving match during a Delaware Police Athletic League meeting in late 2011 or early 2012, witnesses said. And he was charged with offensive touching after a 2010 altercation that Grimaldi said was his reaction to an attack, court records show.
Having a government gig apparently means never having to be accountable, I guess.
What interests you today?