The December 9, 2016 Thread

The December 9, 2016 Thread

“Donald Trump will continue to hold the title of executive producer for the television show ‘The Celebrity Apprentice’ after taking office, foreshadowing an unorthodox presidency in which the commander in chief has a hand in the world of reality TV,” the Washington Post reports. “Trump’s name will be listed in the credits of the NBC show that he once hosted, according to details of the arrangement confirmed by a representative of the show. Such credits in Hollywood often come with a paycheck, though the representative did not disclose whether Trump will be compensated.” So NBC will pay a salary to the President. Yeah. No conflict there at all.
The Settlement Between Christina and Charters Should Stand

The Settlement Between Christina and Charters Should Stand

The Short: Christina School District, DOE, and the general public gain previously non-existent oversight on how Charter Schools spend restricted money they are conditionally entitled to at a cost to the District of $150,000 (a one time payment to be divided equally among all 15 Plaintiff Charter Schools) plus the District's legal fees. Now, if you're interested in the gritty details, come on inside and get comfortable, it's a long read.
We can fight Trump right here in Delaware by passing a LLC Disclosure Bill

We can fight Trump right here in Delaware by passing a LLC Disclosure Bill

“Across Mr. Trump’s business, he uses a similar web of privately held LLCs and other entities to house his assets—everything from real estate to a vintage carousel in Manhattan’s Central Park, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of hundreds of pages of his corporate filings and personal financial disclosures. Fifteen entities, for example, are used to hold his interests in two airplanes and three helicopters.” “Unlike publicly traded companies, Delaware LLCs don’t have to publish any financial information or even disclose the identity of the owner… None of the 96 LLCs examined by the Journal appear to regularly release audited financial statements. That opacity—compounded by Mr. Trump’s decision to break with decades of precedent by declining to release his tax returns—makes it impossible to gauge the full extent of potential conflicts between his business interests and presidential role.” It is time for the Delaware General Assembly to end this practice of corruption.

Open Letter of Apology to Charlie Copeland

Hi Charles, In the run-up to the election, I regularly singled you out for abuse because of your dogged loyalty to Donald Trump. You really were (are?) a stalwart Trump supporter and I was totally convinced that you would regret supporting such an "unelectable" misogynist, white supremacists, bigoted, homophobic a-hole who showed no signs of being mentally or emotionally equipped for being the President of the United States. Well, you were right and I was wrong, so sorry about all that bile I was slinging your way for months. You knew something I didn't know. Even though the odds seemed stacked against you (simply because your party picked an unsavory character to advance widely unpopular policies), you knew you had the advantage Republicans always hold in any electoral contest. You get to run against Democrats. That keeps every election close and it is a huge advantage that I don't think we'll ever be able to match.
The December 8, 2016 Thread

The December 8, 2016 Thread

“After meeting with Vice President-elect Mike Pence on Tuesday to hash out plans to repeal Obamacare, top Senate Republicans are no closer to resolving an issue that’s splintering the GOP heading into the start of Donald Trump’s presidency: how long to give themselves to replace the law,” Politico reports. “Pence communicated that the incoming administration is prepared to work closely with Congress on the issue, senators said, but did not dictate how long the transition period should last. That decision will affect millions of Americans’ health care and send insurance companies scrambling to adjust.” “They have nothing to put in its place. And believe me, just repealing Obamacare, even though they have nothing to put in its place, and saying they’ll do it sometime down the road, will cause huge calamity, from one end of America to the other. They don’t know what to do. They’re like the dog that caught the bus.” — Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), quoted by the Huffington Post, on Republican promises to repeal Obamacare next month.

Carper Considers Quitting

I don't know how I missed this:

Carper hasn’t decided if he will run for re-election in 2018

Dec 5th, 2016 · by · Comments: 2
DOVER — U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, who has held elected office in Delaware continuously for 40 years, has not yet decided whether he will seek a fourth term in the Senate.
Sen. John Thune (R-SD) Looking to Carper’s Help Repealing the ACA as Early as January

Sen. John Thune (R-SD) Looking to Carper’s Help Repealing the ACA as Early as January

Republican Senate leaders said Tuesday that they plan to charge through with their plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act as soon as the new Congress convenes in January. "Obamacare repeal resolution will be the first item up in the new year," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said at his weekly press conference after the GOP caucus lunch.
Either the GOP thinks it has Carper's vote in the bag, or they want Obamacare repeal to fail YET AGAIN in order to be able to keep it in place in order to run against it YET AGAIN in the next mid-term. Flip a coin. Both outlandish explanations make sense in the up is down world of Trump's America. If the answer is Carper's vote is in the bag, we will be hearing about "budget balancing" as the vote draws near. Thune said that Republicans will be attacking the ACA through budget reconciliation, a method that only requires a bare majority vote in the Senate. It is a method that Carper has previously supported when it entailed trading off "entitlement cuts" for debt reduction in what came to be called the "Grand Bargain."

The December 7, 2016 Thread

Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast and his take on Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees:
By my count, Ben Carson, nominated by Donald Trump to be his HUD secretary, makes the fourth designee who seems to oppose the very mission of the department he’s about to take over. There’s Jeff Sessions at Justice, who isn’t likely to be enforcing many civil rights cases or pursuing many antitrust violations. Tom Price at Health and Human Services, who wants to dismantle the same Obamacare that it’s HHS’s job to implement and who more broadly will bring a ferociously anti-statist world view to an agency that embodies the state’s concern for its citizens’ health and well being—especially its female citizens, who have extra reasons to worry about Dr. Price. And finally there’s billionaire Betsy De Vos for Education, who’s basically against, y’know, public education. Critics of the Carson choice complain that he’s totally unqualified because he has no background whatsoever in housing. Well, if you wanna get technical about it, that’s true. But as the Beast’s Gideon Resnick wrote the other day, Carson has actually shown interest in public-housing issues for some time. The problem is that his interest is pretty much of the “public housing is social engineering” variety, even to the point where he (inevitably) compared the things the government does to house its poorest people to socialism and communism.
Is Senator Chris Coons Completely Useless?

Is Senator Chris Coons Completely Useless?

When it comes to standing up to Trump, Coons really is winning the "most spineless" derby. In a recent Slate Podcast Coons spends 15 minutes rephrasing all of Dahlia Lithwick's questions about the beating that the Constitution is already taking, without ever answering any questions. The closest he comes it an answer is to opine, from on high, about that fact that the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution sets up a "fascinating conflict" between originalists and people who think that the Constitution is a living document. Could there be a more entitled approach to Trump's multiple and egregious conflicts of interest? "fascinating conflict" JESUS!