DL Open Thread: Thurs., December 16, 2021

Face It, Joe. Manchin’s Playing You And All The Democrats.  He’s never gonna support the package.  He is a Republican. He’s loving every second of his slo-mo betrayal, and the on-screen facetime he gets.  Time to offer Murkowski whatever Alaska wants in exchange for her vote.

The standoff nonetheless evinced the political divide between Biden and a member of his own party, despite Democrats’ repeated efforts over the past year to assuage Manchin’s concerns. Without his support, Senate Democrats simply lack the votes in the narrowly divided chamber to finalize their roughly $2 trillion proposal,even if they invoke special chamber rules that allow them to sidestep a GOP filibuster.

Manchin’s already demonstrated that it they assuage his concerns over one issue, he’ll simply find another issue to cause him concern.

Trump Losers Lose Faith In Trump, Will ‘Turn It All Over’:

Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lynn Lawrence are set to testify next week before the House select committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol. The pair will deliver testimony and turn over documents, including text messages, that indicate the extensive involvement members of Congress and the Trump administration had in planning the House challenge to certifying Biden’s election and rally near the White House where Donald Trump spoke — efforts that ultimately contributed to a massive and violent attack on the Capitol.

Among the documents the couple is providing are conversations they had with staffers and members of Congress as they planned the main rally that took place on the White House Ellipse that day. Stockton described these discussions as largely logistical and focused on planning the members’ participation in objections to the electoral certification on the House floor and various events that were staged to protest against the election. […]

“We’re turning it all over and we’ll let the cards fall where they may,” Stockton says.

Chris Coons’ Bipartisanship Doesn’t Move Ted Cruz:

Democrats are threatening hardball tactics as they try to break a blockade by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that has left dozens of President Biden’s State Department nominees in limbo.

Democrats and the conservative firebrand are struggling to make progress toward an agreement that would trade votes on some of Biden’s ambassador nominees for a vote related to Nord Stream 2 sanctions, a longstanding goal for Cruz, who has ensnared nominations across the State Department, the Treasury Department and the U.S. Agency of International Development.

The impact of the holds played out in real time on Wednesday when Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who has been trying to work out a deal on ambassador nominations, asked to get a handful of ambassador nominations confirmed, including former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel as ambassador to Japan. Cruz objected, leaving them in limbo. 

Utah: Dryness Isn’t Just For Alcohol.  Second-driest state rejects water conservation. Here’s why:

Steered by the state’s largest water districts, with the help of their legislative allies, Utah has prioritized the pursuit of new pipelines over large-scale conservation programs. These districts — the public entities that supply water wholesale to cities and towns — have used their influence to secure funding for the costly infrastructure projects, and they have done this while opposing or slowing efforts to mandate conservation, according to a ProPublica review of the districts’ internal communications and every water-related bill filed in the Utah Legislature over the past decade.

In 2017, for example, the water districts opposed legislation intended to more accurately convey to consumers the true cost of water on their utility bills by capping how much of the cost could be covered by property taxes. A similar measure in 2019 passed only after being stripped of limits on water districts’ ability to collect property taxes.

Then, beginning in 2018, the districts and their allies raised concerns about a series of bills to mandate meters for water used on lawns and gardens. Again, the proposals were significantly scaled back.

And in 2020, when a lawmaker wanted to require utilities to find leaks in their systems as a means of conservation, a lobbyist for the districts rewrote the bill, removing the mandates.

Bottom line?:

“Water politics waste more water than anything else in Utah.”

‘Forget it, Brigham. It’s…Provotown.’

Neighborhood Improvement Districts Coming To NCC?  I’m…ambivalent. Mainly because I tend to agree with everything that Jea Street says:

Councilman Jea Street voiced vehement opposition to creating NIDs in regards to the fees, as well. He said the crime initiative that would be included in an NID is a “hoax” and that fees imposed on property owners for services will just be passed on to renters.

“None of you have as many challenged communities as I do, and I don’t support this,” Councilman Street said. “For one, you’re gonna take low-income communities and tax them further for police services that are obviously not working. And second, … the slumlords who are helping to cause the problem won’t suffer, but the people who have to stay there, they’re going to have to pay the increase in cost of rent, and I don’t think it’s going to change anything.”

BTW, why do I need to read the Delaware State News (aka Bay-To-Bay) to learn this?  I saw nothing in the Snooze Journal.

What do you want to talk about?