Money For Nothin’. The coming-together of Carney’s brain-dead ‘budget-smoothing’, the lack of virtually any guardrails on that windfall of Federal money, and the cynicism of the Delaware General Assembly. Because there are apparently no problems that need addressing in Delaware. We have the region’s dirtiest streams and rivers? We’re overridden by pollutants? We have too many people living in poverty?
Well, we certainly can’t grow the base of the budget. John Carney said so even though it’s not the law. So let’s just give this money back to people. To those who need it and those who assuredly don’t need it. That’s bipartisanship, bay-bee. BTW, if you’re annoyed that gloryhound Val Longhurst was pretty much the only one quoted in the paper, fear not. You can bet that there are a whole lot of other PO’d legislators. Think I’ll send my legislators a note asking them to thank Val for getting me that money I don’t need.
Having said that, if you feel the need to fwow up, but just can’t quite muster that sufficient gag reflex, this should help:
“Delaware has always been a unique state, being the First State. We’ve always been able to work across party lines for the betterment of our state,” House Majority Leader Valerie Longhurst told WDEL. “We here in Delaware are a little bit smaller state, and we work together to make sure that Delawareans are taken care of, and we work well with our colleagues across the aisle. This isn’t a partisan piece of legislation. It’s definitely bipartisan.”
Yep. Giving away money you could have spent elsewhere is always bipartisan. Also bipartisan: Requiring no means test.
The messages — 29 in all — reveal an extraordinary pipeline between Virginia Thomas, who goes by Ginni, and President Donald Trump’s top aide during a period when Trump and his allies were vowing to go to the Supreme Court in an effort to negate the election results.
On Nov. 10, after news organizations had projected Joe Biden the winner based on state vote totals, Thomas wrote to Meadows: “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!…You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”
The messages, which do not directly reference Justice Thomas or the Supreme Court, show for the first time how Ginni Thomas used her access to Trump’s inner circle to promote and seek to guide the president’s strategy to overturn the election results — and how receptive and grateful Meadows said he was to receive her advice. Among Thomas’s stated goals in the messages was for lawyer Sidney Powell, who promoted incendiary and unsupported claims about the election, to be “the lead and the face” of Trump’s legal team.
In February 2021, when the Supreme Court rejected election challenges filed by Trump and his allies, Thomas wrote in a dissent that it was “baffling” and “inexplicable” that the majority had decided against hearing the cases because he believed the Supreme Court should provide states with guidance for future elections.
Latest Variant-Plus: Call it anecdotal, but I have a well-placed source who just happens to maybe work in a pharmacy. Positive tests of the latest variant are growing exponentially. You might not want to mothball those masks just yet:
Luckily, we’re stopping mass testing and viral tracing so that we can pretend like there’s nothing wrong going on!
Even Clickbait Has Jumped The Shark. I know, I know, I ‘rank’ my 50 fave songs each year. But, this? Ex-Village Voice music critic had a perfect description for this: “Distinctions not cost-effective.”
Back later, after PT (my new hip is doing just fine, thanks, could be out lit-dropping in less than two weeks, and I will), with the Delaware Political Weekly. I guarantee that it will be more interesting than last week’s Political Weekly.
What do you want to talk about?