With apologies to non-baseball fans, Delaware’s contract with Bloom Energy is like the deal the Phillies signed with aging slugger Ryan Howard — an exorbitant amount of guaranteed money for minimal production. Some people have been fighting the deal, which enlisted Delmarva Power to collect the funding from consumers instead of the government, ever since it was announced. Those folks, who include people John Nichols and the Caesar Rodney Institute, received another setback as the Public Utilities Commission said it was powerless (no pun intended) to review the agreement, which it agrees sucks. One big problem: Ending it would trigger a poison-pill provision that would sock every Delmarva household with a $700 bill to buy out Bloom.
Et tu, Fox? The White House has sprung into action to deal with a national emergency: Fox News is no longer televising Trump’s Nuremberg rallies in full because ratings for them have fallen hard, to the point that it was underperforming the channel’s regular programming. This is a huge blow to Republicans, who now can cater only to those who can read.
Never fear, though: USA Today apparently wants to join Fox in milking those sweet, sweet racism-and-xenophobia-and-misogyny bucks. They ran an op-ed piece by Trump on Medicare so filled with lies that they’ve been getting grief for it ever since. I find it fitting, because USA Today is to journalism as Trump is to the presidency.
The Georgia gubernatorial race, pitting a voting-rights activist Democrat against a Tea Party Republican, is even more interesting than it seems on the surface. Democrat Stacey Adams and Republican Brian Kemp have been battling each other for years, mostly in court, over Kemp’s role in purging African-Americans from the voting rolls as Secretary of State. He still holds that position and has refused to step down, probably because he’s responsible for using an illegal method to purge the rolls of 53,000 voters, 70% of them black, because their registration forms don’t exactly match other IDs. So if your last name is hyphenated or has an accent mark, and one form of ID doesn’t include it, you can’t vote.
In case you thought the Kavanaugh confirmation was a blow mainly against women, think again. Henry Giroux argues it’s another step down the road to neo-liberal Fascism. Giroux is a Democratic Socialist, so if you’re ever thought of quitting the Democrats for the Social Democrats, give this a read.