DL Open Thread: Sat., July 6, 2019
Delaware A Wholly-Owned Subsidiary To Developers. Great reporting by Karl Baker, who had the time to read the Bond Bill that was introduced and voted on in the Senate within a matter of minutes. Yep, everyone was in on it. It is long past time to remove the FOIA exemption for all these insider cronies.
Biden’s Path to the Nomination? Attack AOC. He’s a ‘uniter’, not a ‘divider’. I’m sorry, he really is a piece of shit.
$108 Mill. Taxpayers’ Tab For Trump Golf Outings. That’s one expensive duffer.
Trump Predicts ‘Huge Spike’ In Military Recruitment Due To His ‘Salute To America’. I mean, who wouldn’t want to join the military with this madman in charge?
Can Trump Get Away With Politicizing The Census? Yep, it’s possible.
What do you want to talk about?
Delaware truly is under the thumb of the developers, they own the politicians and do as they like, it was obvious from when I first came here in 1974 and nothing has changed. Even better we pay for the roads that service the developments, around Middletown it’s hard not to notice roads that are built mainly to put McMansions on. As noted the exemption from the FOIA is obvious corruption and a rather transparent effort to hide what their doing. As noted Their All In On It. That and fuck Joe Biden, he and Bernie need to go the hell home.
Agreed El Som, that is excellent reporting.
“For future facility and construction workers, the calculated risk is within EPA’s acceptable cancer and non-cancer risk range,” the report stated.
Miles said Northpoint has a long history of developing polluted sites safely and so the environmental issues “did not scare us.”
Of course its not going to scare you, you’re in Kansas City, you’re never going to live or work there. Building a warehouse, roads and a parking lot on top of a superfund site, what could possibly go wrong?
Good thing Delaware isn’t a major metropolitan area or our esteemed baffles would give millions in hand outs to billion dollar sports franchises to build tax pay funded stadiums. Oh, wait…
What bugs me is that BOTH the Bond Bill and the Grants-In-Aid bill were drafted, introduced and passed in what appears to me to be a deliberate attempt to keep the details away from the prying eyes of the public.
Even by lax Dover standards, this year was worse in that regard, something I would not have thought would happen.
I hope the public will join me in demanding a change in the way that we allocate taxpayer money without transparency or full disclosure to the public or legislature. I will be going to the Attorney General to challenge this misuse and abuse of taxpayer money, and following up with court proceedings if necessary.
Rep. John Kowalko
*****
Lawmakers in Dover last week quietly gave the state authority to hand over millions in taxpayer dollars to developers.
Buried 30-pages deep in the epilogue of the state’s bonding legislation, the new legal authority stated that Delaware can help to fund 3% of the construction of facilities that cost at least $75 million and would eventually employ 500 workers or more.
Rep. John Kowalko, D-Newark, said most lawmakers probably weren’t aware that they were voting to allow developers to receive Delaware Strategic Fund grants when they approved the bond bill.
“To me, it was strategically placed (in the bill’s epilogue) to avoid a lengthy discussion,” Kowalko said.
Read full article in the News Journal: https://delawareonline.com/…/how-delaware-legis…/1620458001/
John: There are so many misuses of FOIA in Delaware. I’d love to see progressive legislators put together a package lifting FOIA exemptions on a whole lot of things–the so-called Private Prosperity Partnership, the police slush-fund SLEAF, police disciplinary actions, personnel records for double-dipping state officials, rogue LLC’s having their perfidy kept secret by the Secretary Of State, add your own entries.
Any chance that such a package could be crafted? Even if it ended up going nowhere, it would flush out the worst offenders in the General Assembly.
Our elected officials apparently, do not read what is being voted on. In a sense; NOT DOING THEIR JOB! And they don’t have the backbone to vote against or not take the developers money. Fisker, Bloom Energy and many more, now this. Sussex County is going to turn into a total craphole, because of the overdevelopment that is going on down there, with no consideration for the surrounding infrastructure. STOP THE SPEND IT OR lose IT MENTALITY IN OUR GOVERNMENT!!!
Was Snopes hacked or something?
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-build-cages-immigrants/
Those cages weren’t overcrowded, people weren’t being denied basics like soap and toothbrushes, etc.
But in case you’re wondering why nobody made a fuss back then, well, his enemies were on your side, and your side sees nothing wrong with this, so nobody made a fuss. What part of that eludes your understanding?
Are you stupid or something? I mean, I can tell from reading you over the years that you’re not, but you persist in clinging to stupid beliefs. Why?
I pretty much agree to an extent, but I blame Congress. This comment was just a show of surprise. I would have expected something like a “mostly false” or a “mixture” rating from Snopes on this, considering their biases.
Why is it “bias” when someone disagrees with you?
Congress has more than once come up with a comprehensive solution only to have it scuttled by the Freedom Caucus, the far-right group of Republicans. So it’s not the entire Congress, just the people who want to keep it as a live issue instead of a settled one (as with abortion) because you can’t bilk people for donations once the issue is settled. As usual, that’s mostly the far right.
So why is it, as long as we’re asking these questions, that the police are always infiltrating peace groups because they’re dangerous, but refuse to treat heavily armed self-styled “militias” as the terrorists they are?
McDowell? Did he throw in the towel at the close of the session? Is he retiring or not going to run again? And, why in the hell did he abdicate on the RPS bill?
Sorry if this was covered before – I just found ya
He will retire when his term is up in 2020. Won’t run for reelection.
What is the RPS bill?
Increasing the Renewable Portfolio Standards goal. Republicans and the Caesar Rodney morons vehemently opposed it.
John K
Thanks John K,
Several of us spoke to a number of Senate R’s who said that they would vote FOR a more aggressive RPS. Are there that many R’s on both sides to kill it?
Condor
Join nothing will be done. You’ll hem and haw and insult people but in the end YOU VOTED FOR IT