Month: August 2015

Now go there and read their huge story on DuPont's destruction of West Virginia. Here is a taste:

Then, in the early 1980s, DuPont, which ran a sprawling chemical plant called Washington Works in nearby Parkersburg, approached the family about buying some acreage for a landfill. The Tennants were wary of having a waste dump so close to the farm. But DuPont assured them it would only dispose of non-toxic material like ash and scrap metal, and so they agreed to sell. Shortly after the deal closed, Jim and Della, whose home abutted the new landfill, say their two young daughters started wheezing and hacking. Worried about the girls’ health, they moved to a house in town. But most of their relatives stayed, and Jim and Della continued hunting game and eating beef grazed on the farm. Della took her daughters’ Girl Scout troop there to catch tadpoles in the creek and make plaster molds of deer tracks. Then, at some point in the mid-1990s, the water in the creek turned black and foamy, and the family began finding dead deer tangled in the brambles. The cattle started going blind, sprouting tumors, vomiting blood. “One time this cow was coming down the road and it was just bellowing, the awfulest bellow you ever heard,” Della told me. “And every time it would bellow, blood would gush from its mouth and its nose. It just bellowed and bellowed and blood just kept flying, and then it would fall down, and it would try to get up … We didn’t have anything to shoot it with, so we just had to watch it until finally the cow bled to death.”

My question is and will always be, at what point does the Governor of a State step in and do something about a company that constantly defrauds the citizens of his state? Of his country? And of the planet?

Did you get an automated call from JPMorgan Chase on your cell phone? Allegations are the company made unsolicited robocalls to cell phones, which is illegal. Now they are settling a class action lawsuit, and you could get up to $50 back if you qualify.

Jeet Heer at the New Republic says Donald Trump is not a populist, he is the voice of aggrieved privilege...

....of those who already are doing well but feel threatened by social change from below, whether in the form of Hispanic immigrants or uppity women (hence the loud applause he got at the first GOP debate when he derided “political correctness”). Far from being a defender of the little people against the elites, Trump plays to the anxiety of those who fear that their status is being challenged by people they regard as their social inferiors. That’s why the word “loser” is such a big part of his vocabulary. Trump is not the first authoritarian bigot to be mislabeled a populist. In truth, the term almost always gets misused to describe movements that are all about persevering (and enhancing) hierarchy, not about creating a more egalitarian society. Populism has been misused to describe Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade, the John Birch Society, and David Duke’s white nationalism, among others. [...]

After Monday, the news on the Biden front has decidedly shifted. Remember we had Tomasky's piece on a game changing Biden-Warren ticket after their meeting on Saturday. But now we get a lengthy piece from Glen Thrush at Politico that highlights that "Biden is still not himself" after Beau's death, that his family and his wife Jill are not sold on another run, etc.

Mourning the loss of his eldest son Beau, who succumbed to a brain tumor three months ago, and under intense pressure from the presidential hype he’s helped stoke, Biden is more subdued, grayer and grimly on-task than usual — this while occupying political center stage for the first time since the promising opening days of his doomed 1988 campaign. For all the breathless reporting on Biden’s every move and meeting, he is, at core, a 72-year-old man presented with an unexpected, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity at one of the worst times of his life. Several people Biden has talked to in the past month say he starts off conversations by conceding that “some days are better than others,” mixing recollections of Beau with logistical questions about mounting a state-by-state challenge to a vulnerable yet still formidable Hillary Clinton. “He’s just not himself,” says a longtime friend of Biden’s. “He’s sort of all over the place. He’s engaged but not in that childlike, manic way he usually is. He’s taking it all in and soaking up information, but he’s hard to read. And Joe Biden isn’t usually that hard to read.” [...] But reports that the vice president has all but made up his mind to run are simply not true, according to a half-dozen people in his inner circle interviewed by POLITICO.

I used to work at MBNA. The glory days. When high interest rate credit cards where just making their nut. My first day of orientation, had a general in it. Everyone went to "Orientation". Even special generals. It was kind of of cool to me back then to see that the appeared to treat everyone the same. I was very young and ignorant of the banking industry at this point in my life. Why hire a 4 Star Retiring general into your credit card company?

On Wednesday, September 2, at 7 pm at the Del Dem HQ in New Castle, the Progressive Democrats for Delaware are hosting a pretty great event: a Legislative Panel on the Budget for the next fiscal year. Remember the 6 Progressive Democratic State Representatives who voted against the Budget for FY2016 at the end of the last legislative session? Remember their reasons? Because the leadership did not address a looming deficit in the coming fiscal year and did not have the courage to raise taxes on the wealthiest in this state. Well guess what, the planning for this fiscal year is here, and we have now reached the can that we have kicked down the road.

As Coons continues to waffle and pretend he is tough guy (or act like it) on the Iran Deal, I figured I'd do a little lookie-loo back in time to see where else his shiny headed thoughts have bubbled and beaded similar nonsense that resembles a Delaware Way type of dissent. We all know it: the never ending sorta, kinda, wishy, washy, verbal non, almost in a way committal to your view and the 200 plus other views of Delawareans style of verbiage. I didn't have to go to far back to find Chris Coons once again challenging Obama. Questioning his strategy (however confounding) of diplomacy and not putting boots on the ground.

Some idiots on Fox News complained about a Tennessee school's decision to ban students from displaying any flag due to the renewed controversy over the Confederate flag. The exception of course, is the American flag flying on flag pols.

"This is a about a long-term trend where the people who run everything — the elites in Washington, New York, and L.A. — despise rural America and its culture, suspect anybody who doesn’t live in their cities of being a bigot, and they’re trying to crush that culture by banning its symbols — not just the Confederate flag, but the American flag," "Fox and Friends" co-host Tucker Carlson said on Sunday. "They hate expressions of patriotism. It makes them uncomfortable." Co-host Anna Kooiman chimed in to say that "Americans are feeling guilty" about their patriotism.

Flying the American flag is about patriotism. Flying the Confederate flag is about treason, which is the opposite of patriotism.

Let's play a game..which of these listed on the chart isn't an employer to residents of Delaware? I know it's not a big deal that these companies fuck over citizens of the USA and pay no price for it. The rats in their shiny metal boxes have to work. You can't hold people accountable. That would mean these people have to hire more people. Hiring more people means less profit. Less profit means less dividends. Less dividends means that 3 year plan to increase the stock prices by 8% will result in a loss of a bonus. So if the shitty work they do leads to heart ache, anxiety and a never ending cycle of high interest rates or worst case the inability to get a job who cares. I know these things don't matter to people. Have you ever had a problem with your credit and it wasn't your fault? Ever tried to get it rectified?