DL Open Thread: Thursday, October 27, 2022
Mega-Donors Roll Call. Whose billions are driving the election?
What Happens When Conspiracy Theorists Force A Hand Count Of Ballots. We’re talkin’ Nye County, NV:
Volunteers in a rural Nevada county where voting machine conspiracy theories led to an unprecedented hand-count of mail-in ballots came face-to-face with one messy reality of their plan Wednesday: It’s more time-consuming than anticipated.
After a full day in the Nye County office building in Pahrump, 60 miles (96 kilometers) west of Las Vegas, some 60 volunteers had counted about 900 of the 1,950 mail-in ballots that the county has received so far.
Nye County, an old silver mining region between Las Vegas and Reno, is home to about 50,000 residents, including 33,000 registered voters. It’s best known as the home of the nation’s former nuclear weapons test site.
Two groups of five that The Associated Press observed Wednesday spent about three hours each counting 50 ballots. Mismatched tallies led to recounts, and occasionally more recounts. Several noted how arduous the process was, with one volunteer lamenting: “I can’t believe it’s two hours to get through 25” ballots.
One group observed by AP found during their first 30 minutes that they had mismatched numbers for eight candidates. A recount took nearly 40 minutes, and two of the recounts still had different outcomes.
You get the point.
Oil Companies Sell Wells To Avoid Environmental Cleanup Costs. Guess who will have to pay?:
Even with strong cash flow in the short term, producers have more to gain from offloading wells and the associated liability — chiefly expensive environmental cleanup — than from pumping more oil and gas, experts say.
Some industry experts, lawmakers and environmentalists are concerned about the recent deals, noting that the sales shift environmental liability from corporate powerhouses to less-capitalized firms, increasing the risk that aging wells will be left orphaned, unplugged and leaking oil, brine and climate-warming methane. They see a threat that the state’s oil industry could repeat a pattern seen in other extractive industries like coal mining and lead to taxpayers bearing cleanup costs.
California Assemblymember Steve Bennett, a Democrat who has long worked on oil policy, has seen oil companies in his Ventura district walk away from environmental liability. “It gets passed on to a smaller company and to a smaller company until someone declares bankruptcy and the public is stuck with the cleanup bill,” he said.
Some more great reporting from Pro Publica. Read the entire story.
Anti-Helmet Attorney Dies In Motorcycle Crash. He helped change Florida’s law and took advantage of it by–dying.
For Completists Only: The Senate Special Session.
Is Wegman’s paying for all the free pub that the News Journal is lavishing on them? Just wondering.
R. I. P. Loretta Walsh. One thing I liked about her is that she instilled fear in hack politicians who deserved to be fearful.
What do you want to talk about?
YIkes, El Som, so much to respond to this morning.
Re Nye County: Just shows that if you do enough recounts, sooner or later you’ll manufacture the result you’re seeking. Isn’t that the point?
Re Wegmans and the NJ: It would be great for the shrinking media outlet if Wegman’s would make a substantial repayment via print advertising purchases but I seriously doubt that will happen. After all, print circulation is now down to about 15,000 — a drop of roughly 90 percent in 30 years.
Our best hope is that with Wegman’s open, they can go back to writing real news stories.
Oops, they just had 11 reporters (half the staff) spending time collecting vignettes on the statewide contagion of Phillies’ Fever. Well, maybe in a couple of weeks.
I mean, there’s a Wegman’s about a mile over the state line on 202.
It’s not like people yearning for a Wegman’s couldn’t go to a Wegman’s.
The Glen Mills store is about the same distance from my house as the one at Barley Mill. About the only thing I noticed yesterday while driving on 141 was more traffic, and no road improvements.
Nye County: But… But….. “hand counted paper ballots!” (counted in Pahrump no less). As is the case with more then a few far right Cause Celebre this one is based on stupidity and a gullible electorate. As ever no lesson will be learned as Trump voters continue to claim the elusive “Voter Fraud!” without a shred of evidence, iconic “paper ballots” or not.
Learned my lesson on a M/C many years ago: Full protective clothing and a helmet. Notice I’m still alive(Somewhat) and they ain’t.
Trump got 69.07% of the vote in Nye county and yet I’m sure these mismatched counts will be used as additional evidence that Biden “stole” the election.