Breakfast Links/Open Thread Nov. 19: Joe Biden, Meek Mill and Tom Capano
His book tour has sparked a lot of Biden-for-President speculation. It gets a cold shower from the New Republic’s Alex Shephard, who looks askance at the idea. Really askance:
To be fair, he probably could beat Trump, but that’s only because it looks like any Democrat could beat Trump. So why should Democrats settle for Joe Biden, an Iraq War–voting, crime bill–authoring, financial services–coddling septuagenarian?
Well, that’s nitpicking, innit?
Gotta confess I didn’t pay much attention to the Meek Mill story unfolding up in Philadelphia, mostly because he’s a rapper and I figured it was just a hip-hop artist in legal trouble — ho-hum. Then I saw Jay-Z’s op-ed in the NYTimes and realized this is a textbook case of how the “just us” system treats millions of young African Americans. He served his sentence but it included eight years of probation, which allowed the court to send him back to prison for 2 to 4 years on the flimsiest of charges.
Don’t mean to upstage El Som’s SOTD, but this one’s fresh off of last night’s SNL, and it’s the song America needs right now.
Matt Bittle of the Delaware State News takes a comprehensive look at Delaware’s badly outdated property assessments and finds a Rehobooth Beach house that sold for $5.5 million — and an assessed value of $110,000.
The News Journal’s 20th-anniversary retrospective on the Capano case brought a few surprises, but I knew all about this reporter’s experience with the poster boy for Toxic Masculity. I’m not if sure she’s told this story publicly before; I’ll ask next time I see her.
Who’s paying Donald Trump’s legal bills? Could it be….Russia?!?! You decide!
Former labor secretary Robert Reich has a documentary out called “Saving Capitalism,” an idea that millennial Matt Rosza of Salon finds inherently conservative. Reich is on the left side of the Democratic mainstream, but today’s young liberals aren’t interested in fixing capitalism’s roof — they’re finding cracks in the foundation.
If you’ve got anything else interesting, post it here forthwith!
This is the other song that America needs right now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9GSF3ROa58
I’ve prime-sponsored property reassessment bills more than a few times with former Senator Blevins as the Senate prime and every time she asked me to test the waters in the House caucus I did so. The proposal almost always received a frigid response. I believe that you might find little enthusiasm from those members of the General Assembly, (current and former), who own some of those high-priced/low-assessed beach and shore homes. We can never reform education funding in Delaware without a fair and honest reassessment of property values accompanied by regularly scheduled reassessments.
Representative John Kowalko
That SNL song is just what I needed about now…they say depression is a lack of hope. It’s been a long year and there hasn’t been much to feel hopeful about. Watching your country slide into an abyss doesn’t allow for much comic relief or optimism, but I did feel okay for just a few minutes watching that clip. Just a few minutes. Thanks.
Most Delawareans know most of the real estate in the beach areas have not been assessed in… well, forever. It’s unpopular in the general assembly because the owners have power and money in abundance and politicians fear them, as noted some politicians own houses like this that are worth millions and valued at pennies on the dollar. This has been an issue since I moved here in 1974, as has that popular lie “cut the taxes of the rich and the millionaires will all move back”. Disappointing , but not surprising, that in the face of eternal deficits in the budget reassessment is never mentioned.
I was talking yesterday with a friend who knows the high-end real estate market in Sussex, and he said that $5.5 million house isn’t even the most egregious example. He know of $2+ million properties with tax bills below $1,000.
Even without capturing that revenue, SuxCo is swimming in money. This is why the state needs a statewide property tax.