DL Open Thread: Thursday, December 2, 2021

BREAKING: Auditor’s Office Has Spent $262,000 On Attorney’s Fees Since 2019: Nobody’s Talking.  Articles like this are why I subscribe.  From Xerxes Wilson’s piece:

In the same time period during which Delaware state Auditor Kathy McGuiness is accused of a felony for intimidating employees under her leadership, public documents show taxpayers have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on outside attorneys to handle workplace grievances and disputes in her office.

A contract signed by McGuiness, Gov. John Carney and partners for Wilmington law firm Potter Anderson Corroon LLP shows the firm was hired in 2019 to provide McGuiness “employment advice” and “litigation services” relating to “pending” workplace grievances involving employees in the auditor’s office…

While the contract does not say if McGuiness has a role in the issues being litigated by the firm, state prosecutors have accused her of a felony based on allegations involving how she treated her employees.

Prosecutors lodged a felony intimidation charge McGuiness, claiming she spied on and discriminated against employees with the intent of dissuading whistleblowers from testifying or becoming witnesses in legal proceedings.

BTW, taxpayers are also paying for litigation concerning Insurance Commissioner Trinidad Navarro:

Public records show that Navarro, Carney and a state solicitor signed off on an agreement for Potter Anderson Corroon LLP to represent employees in the insurance commissioner’s office related to employment complaints using the same language as the contract the law firm has with the auditor’s office.

Entries in the state’s online checkbook under a division of the Insurance Commissioner’s Office indicates that the law firm has been paid nearly $670,000 since the execution of that contract.

Roe v Wade Is History:

What I heard Wednesday morning was not a court in which a majority was worried about backlash, but a court ready for revolutionary change. (The justice who expressed the most concern about backlash was Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s most vocal proponent of abortion rights, who seemed ready to write a barn-burning dissent.)

That’s not to say that the conservatives on the court will necessarily be unanimous. Chief Justice John Roberts did seem like he might want to avoid reversing Roe outright. And Justice Barrett’s position was not always easy to gauge — she may be the conservative vote most up for grabs. But for much of the arguments, Justice Barrett did seem to ready to reverse Roe. For instance, she repeatedly suggested that pregnant people had no need for abortion because they could simply put their children up for adoption.

I’m Not A Troll. I’m NOT.  Someone somewhere on the intertubes is calling out trolls (I’m not one, I swear) who revel in the deaths of anti-vaxxers.  To quote a laundered phrase from Richard Nixon, I could do that, but it would be wrong.  No, I’m far more nuanced about the deaths of anti-vaxxers.  I understand that the vast majority are just sheeples who have been led around by (that word again) ‘influencers’.  Which brings me to my point: I revel in the deaths of influencers who have led the lambs to the slaughter.  Take, for example, the unironically-named Marcus Lamb. Please. Sky Dad just did:

Marcus Lamb (October 7, 1957 – November 30, 2021) was an American televangelist, prosperity theologian, minister, Christian broadcaster, and anti-vaccine advocate. He was the co-founder, president, and CEO of the Daystar Television Network, which in 2010 claimed to be the second-largest Christian television network in the world, with a claimed book value of US$230 million. He died in 2021 of COVID-19 after downplaying the virus and encouraging listeners not to get vaccinated.

Lest you were curious, yes, he took sheep dewormer before dying.  Oh,  and one more…perhaps Rethug schemes to steal elections will fail due to ‘Big Steal’ proponents falling victim to their own lies:

William Hartmann, the Republican member of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers who made national headlines for initially refusing to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, died Tuesday following a battle with COVID-19.

It is unclear whether Hartmann was vaccinated. His Facebook page includes posts and memes downplaying the severity of the coronavirus, comparing vaccine passports to Nazi Germany and blasting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s efforts to mitigate the spread of the virus.

In one Facebook post, Hartmann appeared to question the efficacy of the vaccine. “If the ouchie is so great, why do they have to offer bribes?” he wrote, apparently referencing  incentives offered to some individuals to receive a  COVID-19 vaccine.

The world is a better place now that these two have departed the scene.  Facts are facts.

Stacey Abrams Running For Governor Of Georgia!  She will have the Democratic field all to herself. The Rethugs, OTOH:

Trump and his loyalists have vowed to exact revenge on Kemp after he refused to overturn 2020 election results in Georgia, and the former president suggested at a September rally that he would have preferred if Abrams was governor.

Former U.S. Sen. David Perdue is seriously considering a primary challenge against Kemp with Trump’s support. He’s told donors and activists that he’s tempted to enter the race because he fears Kemp will get trounced by Abrams next year.

Several other Republicans have already launched campaigns premised on their loyalty to Trump, including former Democratic state Rep. Vernon Jones.

Politico turns this into a cause for concern among D’s in 3-2-1.

In Utah, The Mormon Church Decides Who Gets Welfare Benefits.  Isn’t this, um, unconstitutional?:

Near the start of the pandemic, in a gentrifying neighborhood of Salt Lake City, Utah, visitors from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrived at Danielle Bellamy’s doorstep. They were there to have her read out loud from the Book of Mormon, watch LDS videos and set a date to get baptized, all of which she says the church was requiring her to do in exchange for giving her food.

Bellamy, desperate for help, had tried applying for cash assistance from the state of Utah. But she’d been denied for not being low-income enough, an outcome that has become increasingly common ever since then-President Bill Clinton signed a law, 25 years ago, that he said would end “welfare as we know it.”

Although maintaining a safety net for the poor is the government’s job, welfare in Utah has become so entangled with the state’s dominant religion that the agency in charge of public assistance here counts a percentage of the welfare provided by the LDS Church toward the state’s own welfare spending, according to a memorandum of understanding between the church and the state obtained by ProPublica.

What that means is that over the past decade, the Utah State Legislature has been able to get out of spending at least $75 million on fighting poverty that it otherwise would have had to spend under federal law, a review of budget documents shows.

BTW, this is the kind of rigorously-researched article that justifies a contribution to Pro Publica.  I donate, feel free to join me.

What do you want to talk about?