Wish I could tell you more, but I had a great time yesterday evening. I met several incredible candidates who will be running for the General Assembly next year. Can’t wait until you get to meet them…plus…there are more coming!
But, I digress.
Climate Change Is Here. Now. The denialists weren’t only wrong, they exacerbated the problem:
In one sense, this pile-up of crises is exactly what climate scientists expected. Global temperatures are rising at pretty much the anticipated rate, Simon Lee, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University, told me, and natural disasters are corollaries to that fact. There will be some year-to-year variation in what happens—and this one may clock in with slightly worse conditions, overall, than trend lines would predict. But the fact is, climate change is implicated at least to some extent in all of these disasters. It makes the hot days hotter. It makes rainstorms more intense. It dries out landscapes and primes them for ignition. “We don’t need to do a specific attribution study anymore” to make such assertions, Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told me. “We’ve been doing this for 20 years now … This is so far from rocket science.”
Even if those disasters do play out exactly as expected, the scientists I spoke with said they’ve noticed shifts in how Americans are discussing them. “People are no longer talking about climate change in the future tense,” Ruane said. “They’re talking about climate change in the present tense.” More and more of them have personal tales of climate woe. Disasters are no longer framed as harbingers; they’re simply understood to be the way things are. “These are not canaries in the coal mine,” Schmidt said. “The canaries died a long time ago.”
Uh, can we get the oil companies to pay up now?
On Cue, Rethugs Seek Repeal Of Green Bank Initiative. This is a good program, we should have our own Green Bank initiative in Delaware:
Today the Environmental Protection Agency launches two grant competitions aimed at financing clean-energy projects across the country, particularly in disadvantaged communities that have struggled to attract private investments.
The grant competitions will dole out $20 billion under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, commonly known as a “green bank,”established by the Inflation Reduction Act. They come as the EPA races to stand up the green bank despite several obstacles, including depleted staffing levels and House Republicans intent on repealing the spending.
The green bank is arguably one of the least understood and most impactful programs in the climate law. So before we delve into the details, let’s review how the program works.
Imagine you have a promising idea for a new clean-energy business, but you can’t get a loan from an investor to turn your idea into a reality. Potential lenders tell you they’re hesitant to support a novel green technology or a business without a track record of success.
This scenario is common, especially in low-income and minority communities that have historically struggled to attract private capital. The green bank aims to overcome this problem by making clean-energy investments seem less risky for potential investors.
About half a dozen states have already established their own green banks without waiting for the EPA, and they’ve seen some notable successes. (Delaware is not yet one of them.)
House Republicans have proposed rescinding nearly $7.8 billion from the green bank in the spending bill for fiscal 2024 affecting the EPA and Interior Department.
“These reductions are necessary to right-size these agencies and take into account the excessive level of funding that these agencies received outside of the regular appropriations process,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies, said yesterday during a markup of the bill.
Let’s stop right there–Rethuglican efforts to kill environmental initiatives should be at the top of the list for every single D running for office. We see it in Delaware in the ludicrous fight against EV’s. Climate change is real, it’s here. It impacts everybody. Any D candidate this side of Joe Manchin who fails to pound this issue home with voters is guilty of electoral malpractice. Oh, and let’s get some Green Bank legislation ready for January–please?
More Clarence Thomas Bribes (Via Venmo)–Plus Yet Another Reason To Hate The Dallas Cowboys.
Absolute Power corrupts absolutely. Clarence Thomas is absolutely corrupt. But, hey, who would want to deny Thomas the Bestest Christmas Party ever?
How Six MAGAts Sought To Disenfranchise 100,000 Georgians.
The recent transformation of of the state’s election laws explicitly enabled citizens to file unlimited challenges to other voters’ registrations. Experts warn that election officials’ handling of some of these challenges may conflict with federal law.
Ya think? Yo, DOJ, get moving! Here’s but one of the vote suppressors:
On March 15, 2022, an email appeared in the inbox of the election director of Forsyth County, Georgia, with the subject line “Challenge of Elector’s Eligibility.” A spreadsheet attached to the email identified 13 people allegedly registered to vote at P.O. boxes in Forsyth County, a wealthy Republican suburb north of Atlanta. Georgians are supposed to register at residential addresses, except in special circumstances. “Please consider this my request that a hearing be held to determine these voters’ eligibility to vote,” wrote the challenger, Frank Schneider.
Schneider is a former chief financial officer at multiple companies, including Jockey International, the underwear maker. His Instagram page includes pictures of him golfing at exclusive resorts and a dog peeing on a mailbox with the caption “Woody suspects mail-in voter fraud” and the hashtag “#maga.” On Truth Social, the social media platform backed by former president Donald Trump, Schneider’s posts have questioned the 2020 election results in Forsyth County and spread content related to QAnon, the conspiracy theory that holds that the Democratic elite are cannibalistic pedophiles. In January 2023, he posted an open letter to his U.S. representative-elect encouraging “hearings to hold perpetrators accountable where evidence exists that election fraud took place in the 2020 and 2022 elections.”
The March 2022 voter challenges were the first of many from Schneider: As the year progressed, he submitted seven more batches of challenges, each one larger than the one previous, growing from 507 voters in April to nearly 15,800 in October, for a total of over 31,500 challenges.
Port Of Wilmington Takeover Finalized. Just like that, it’s a ‘done deal’:
The Port of Wilmington will have a new operator “in a matter of days,” state officials announced Wednesday.
Enstructure LLC, a Massachusetts company, received its final approval Tuesday to take over the port. The decision ends the turbulent tenure of GT USA Wilmington, a subsidiary of Emirati company Gulftainer that ran the facility since the state privatized port operations in 2018.
The Diamond State Port Corp., a state-owned entity that oversees the port, ultimately voted unanimously on Friday to approve an agreement with Enstructure. That left one final approval: a “concurrence” of a group of Delaware lawmakers and the state controller general.
Those officials, House Speaker Valerie Longhurst, Senate President Pro Tempore David Sokola, Joint Capital Improvement Committee Co-Chairs Rep. Debra Heffernan and Sen. Jack Walsh and Controller General Ruth Ann Miller, gave their yes vote Tuesday.
Memo to Deb Heffernan: When the people who live in Edgemoor are inevitably disadvantaged by this agreement, I don’t want to hear even a bleat of protest from you. You’ve already demonstrated whose side you’re on.
What do you want to talk about?