DL Open Thread: Friday, March 1, 2024

Turmoil At Chemours: Can The ‘Forever Chemicals’ Company Survive?   Perhaps the Business Giveaway Fund can pause before trying to bail it out with taxpayers’ money?:

Wilmington-based chemical giant The Chemours Co., a spinoff of the DuPont chemical empire, is in apparent tumult at the uppermost levels of management.

Three senior executive officers, including the CEO and chief financial officer, have been placed on leave, the company announced to investors Thursday morning.

Two weeks ago, Chemours failed to release its quarterly earnings report as scheduled. A director on the board, Sandra Phillips Rogers, also announced in February she would step down and that a new director would join the board on Friday, March 1.

Thursday’s announcement hit the top levels of executive and financial leadership of the company and also signaled a full audit that includes outside counsel after apparent reports received to the company’s ethics hotline.

“What we think many perceived as likely a relatively minor accounting hangup two weeks ago now appears wider, longer, and with more ramifications than the market initially believed,” Barclays analyst Michael Leithead told Reuter’s news service on Thursday.

Whatever befalls the Forever Chemicals company, you can be assured that the Forever Chemicals will be with us–forever.

Trump Circus Coming To Delaware?   Pleasepleaseplease:

The founders of Truth Social, a social media platform branded for Donald Trump, on Wednesday sued the company they helped create in Delaware’s Court of Chancery.

That lawsuit is sealed for now. But in an associated motion to expedite the proceedings, attorneys for Trump Media co-founders Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss outline claims that the former president and his associates at Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. tried to cheat them out of the value of their shares in the company.

The basis for the lawsuit filed Wednesday will be familiar to fans of lightly fictionalized Mark Zuckerberg biopic “The Social Network.” Trump and his associates stand accused of diluting the value of the co-founders’ shares by issuing a large number of new shares — which is, in part, what happened to both real and fictional Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin.

“In recent weeks, Trump-controlled TMTG purported to increase the amount of its authorized stock from 120 million to 1 billion common shares and create new classes of voting and non-voting stock (the “Billion Share Authorization”),” reads the motion from Moss and Litisnky’s attorneys. “This wrongful 11th hour, pre-merger corporate maneuvering can serve only one purpose: to dilute UAV before the merger and misappropriate UAV’s merger consideration for Trump.”

Gee, that doesn’t sound like something Trump would do.  Does it?

Israel Mows Down Starving Gazans.  Apparently they weren’t orderly enough for the Netanyahoos:

Israeli troops fired on a crowd of Palestinians racing to pull food off an aid convoy in Gaza City on Thursday, witnesses said. More than 100 people were killed in the chaos, bringing the death toll since the start of the Israel-Hamas war to more than 30,000, according to health officials.

Israel said many of the dead were trampled in a chaotic stampede for the food aid and that its troops only fired when they felt endangered by the crowd.

The violence was quickly condemned by Arab countries, and U.S. President (Feckless) Joe Biden expressed concern it would add to the difficulty of negotiating a cease-fire in the nearly five-month conflict.

Mississippi Goddamn.  Hard to believe the stuff that goes on there:

Key Mississippi lawmakers have introduced several bills that would drastically limit when people can be jailed without criminal charges as they await court-ordered psychiatric treatment.

The proposals follow an investigation by Mississippi Today and ProPublica finding that hundreds of people in the state are jailed without charges every year as they go through the civil commitment process, in which a judge can force people to undergo treatment if they’re deemed dangerous to themselves or others. People who were jailed said they were treated like criminal defendants and received no mental health care. Since 2006, at least 17 people have died after being jailed during the commitment process, raising questions about whether jails can protect people in the midst of a mental health crisis.

Civil rights lawyers contend Mississippi’s practice is unconstitutional because it amounts to punishing people for mental illness, but the state’s civil commitment law allows it. That law spells out the process by which people suffering from severe mental illness can be detained, evaluated and ordered into treatment. Under the law, those people can be held in jail until they’re admitted to a state psychiatric hospital or another mental health facility if there is “no reasonable alternative.” If there isn’t room at a publicly funded facility or open beds are too far away, local officials often conclude that they have no other option besides jail.

I guess because having sufficient mental health facilities is out of the question in Mississippi.  I can’t even…

Claymont Community Market And Garden Project Kicks Off.  This makes me happy:

Ground was broken Thursday morning, February 29, 2024, for a new community market and garden in Claymont.

Claymont Community Center CEO Allison David said the project will include renovating an old Lions Club building at the corner of Green Street and Commonwealth Avenue.

“We have been providing food support for families for years and this is going to be a space that will be welcoming, that will be attractive, and updated,” said David. “We believe that if people need help they should be treated in a way with dignity, with kindness, and this will be that place where everyone will be welcome.”

She said the garden will provide healthy food options and a real sense of community.

What do you want to talk about?