DL Open Thread: Friday, May 17, 2024
The C. Montgomery Burns Of Maryland? $62 Mill couldn’t buy Total Wines’ David Trone a Senate seat:
The amount of money Trone burned through is stunning. According to the Open Secrets compendium of self-funders, Trone, a co-owner of Total Wine & More, spent more of his own money on his Senate primary race than any other candidate in the 21st century (and, almost assuredly, ever).
While Trone is likely to have spent about $200 per vote when full results are in, that’s not the worst return on investment for a self-funder this year. And it’s not even the worst return on investment for Trone personally.
While many have pointed to the $1 billion Mike Bloomberg (D) spent on his also-ran presidential campaign in 2020, other presidential candidates have actually fared worse on dollars-per-vote. And at the top of that list — by a country mile — is Doug Burgum (R). Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, spent about $14 million of his own money to run for president last year, but he dropped out a month before the Iowa caucuses. That means he cobbled together about 500 votes in states where he remained on the ballot. Total cost: nearly $28,000 per vote.
#2 on that list: Does anybody remember Tom Steyer?
Steyer spent over $253 million, with all but a little over $3.5 million coming from his personal funds. This amount worked out to be $3,373 for every vote he received in the three primaries where he was on the ballot before dropping out of the race. During Steyer’s time as a candidate, his campaign spending surpassed every other Democratic candidate except for fellow billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
Carter/Reagan Hostages Redux? Does anybody not think that Trump’s surrogates have met with Netanyahu to convince him to agree to no ceasefire plan until Trump gets elected?:
It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent.
His mentor was John B. Connally Jr., a titan of American politics and former Texas governor who had served three presidents and just lost his own bid for the White House. A former Democrat, Mr. Connally had sought the Republican nomination in 1980 only to be swamped by former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. Now Mr. Connally resolved to help Mr. Reagan beat Mr. Carter and in the process, Mr. Barnes said, make his own case for becoming secretary of state or defense in a new administration.
What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.
Not a conspiracy theory–a legit conspiracy. Betcha it’s happening again.
Who Could Ever Have Imagined—That Pa. ‘Cyber Charters’ Would Succumb To ‘Excessive Profiteering’?:
The massive growth in net assets — from $566,000 in 2018, to $486 million in 2022 — demonstrates ”excessive profiteering” by cyber charters at school districts’ expense, according to the report by Education Voters PA, a pro-public-education advocacy group. Pennsylvania’s 13 cyber charter schools receive about $1 billion a year from school districts.
At least one cyber charter, Commonwealth Charter Academy, has been increasingly buying property — with 29 properties purchased statewide since 2018, according to the report.
The four schools have been taking in significantly more revenue than they’re spending each year. The largest of the four, Commonwealth Charter Academy, which enrolls more than 20,000 students — more than double its enrollment prior to the pandemic — took in $397 million in total revenue in 2022, according to its 990 tax form, but only spent $274 million.
An inventory of properties owned by the school indicates it’s developing a “real estate empire” across Pennsylvania, the report said, “funded by property taxes paid by homeowners in school districts that cannot afford to fix and maintain their own buildings.”
Tell me again why we need Cyber Charters? And, anyone know what Charles Copeland has been doing lately? Just askin’. Sure sounds like a rich dilettante’s scam to me.
What do you want to talk about?
Instead of “charter schools,” we should refer to them as what they are – non-union schools.
I’m pretty sure that teachers at schools chartered through school districts can be DSEA members.
Hope someone from DSEA will jump in with more details, but teachers at Odyssey Charter voted to unionize a few years ago and there may be others.
They can, but name me one that started with unionized teachers.
Charter of Wilmington? I know they’re affiliated w/Red Clay.
No, they voted to unionize in 2018. Same with Odyssey, it started non-union and voted to unionize. From what I can find online those are the only two, but most charters set their pay scale at some percentage, usually 90-95%, of what union teachers in the charter’s home district get.
That said, in the two that unionized, the impetus apparently was working conditions rather than pay.
They are “publicly” funded institutions with closed/limited access for poor, minority and disabled students. They discriminate blatantly. See Newark Charter five-mile radius banning Wilmington (poor and black) from being allowed to join the admissions lottery. Look at Wilmington Charters percentage of poor, black, and Latinos. Success stories my ass. Bastions of deliberate discriminatory practices is an apt description
re: Carter/Reagan Hostages Redux/Trump surrogates
Nobody has seen Rudy Colludy lately (is he even allowed to leave the country?)
Guiliani has fallen so far that I think Trump would like to see Hannibal Lecter have him for dinner.
Wouldn’t even have to put him in a smoker.
He reeks of ‘Eau De Cigar’.