DL Open Thread: Sunday, May 19, 2024
Brief campaign note. Was knocking doors for Branden Fletcher Dominguez yesterday, and I was paired with Susan Sander, who just won a seat on the Red Clay School Board. She’s the real deal! What an upgrade.
Hey, it’s an open thread, so that’s not a digression…
Ezra Klein: Why Biden Is Losing, And What He Can Do To Change It. I agree with him that one step is to stop the poll denialism:
It’s not Joe Biden’s poll numbers that worry me, exactly. It’s the denial of what’s behind them.
Democrats need to redefine Trump. “Biden is not running against God,” as Bernie Sanders put it. “He is running against Donald Trump.” A year ago, Democrats were pretty confident than as the possibility of a Trump presidency came closer, voters would realize what they were risking and come home to Biden. That looks less likely with each passing day.
The mistake Democrats keep making about Trump again and again is to assume that the rest of the country will see Trump as they see Trump. But Trump won in 2016 and he came scarily close in 2020; absent the pandemic, he may well have been re-elected.
There are other ways to run against Trump: He cut taxes for rich people and tried to cut Medicaid for poor people. He cut funding for the police before a crime wave and got rid of the National Security Council’s pandemic preparedness group before the coronavirus hit. He told the oil companies to give him a billion dollars because they’d get preferential treatment if he’s re-elected. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, took $2 billion from Saudi Arabia to fund his private equity firm. Trump’s flagrant violations of democratic norms and basic decency often overshadow the banal ways in which he governed, or let others govern, in cruel, stupid and corrupt ways. Right now, the Biden campaign has much more money than the Trump campaign; it should be using it to redefine Trump in the ways that matter to the voters they need.
Discuss.
Rudy Giuliani Gets His Felony Indictment. Fittingly, during his 80th birthday party:
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was officially served with a felony indictment on Friday night for allegedly interfering in Arizona’s 2020 presidential election. Officials with the office of Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes served Giuliani in front of nearly 100 guests at his 80th birthday celebration in the Palm Beach, Florida area.
The New York Post reported early Saturday morning that the former personal attorney to Donald Trump was in high spirits when he was served around 11 PM on Friday at the Lake Clarke Shores home of GOP consultant Caroline Wren. Prior to being served with felony indictment paperwork, Giuliani reportedly “belted” the song “New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra in front of what the Post said was between 80 and 100 guests. Some of the more high-profile attendees of the party were longtime Trump aide Roger Stone and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.
“Some partygoers started screaming and one woman even cried as Giuliani was served,” the Post’s Lydia Moynihan wrote.
Yep. Segregation Academies Still Exist In Alabama:
Divisions like this have long played out across the region. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring public school segregation unconstitutional. As the federal courts repeatedly ruled against the South’s massive resistance, many white people pivoted to a new tactic, one that is lesser known and yet profoundly influences the Black Belt region today: They created a web of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of private schools to educate white children.
Now, 70 years after the Brown decision, ProPublica has found about 300 schools that likely opened as segregation academies in the South are still operating. Some have flourished into pricey college-prep behemoths. Others, like Wilcox Academy, remain modest Christian schools. Many have accepted more nonwhite students over the years, and some now come close to reflecting the communities they serve.
But across Alabama’s 18 Black Belt counties, all of the remaining segregation academies ProPublica identified — about a dozen — are still vastly white, even though the region’s population is majority Black. And in the towns where these schools operate, they often persist as a dividing force.
We had the same thing happen here in Delaware after desegregation. They were called ‘Christian schools’. And, yes, de facto vestiges remain to this day. They shouldn’t get any public funding, but they do.
Great Gut Food. Hey, I eat lots of these (but no miso in lukewarm water thankyouverymuch). Perhaps it’s why I’m often referred to as a magnificent chiseled specimen of manhood.
The Burgeoning DE Turf Frederica Empire. Pretty much everything you need to know. Except THIS:
Now, academic researchers are conducting higher-quality studies to determine whether PFAS and other chemicals detected in turf samples can end up on athletes and pose a risk to their health.
“I don’t think there’s been nearly enough studies to know,” said Christopher Kassotis, an assistant professor in the Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at Wayne State University who is preparing to conduct a study on whether the chemicals found in turf can affect the endocrine system. “There’s very little work here on human exposure, and that’s certainly a piece of the puzzle when it comes to risk.”
Kyla Bennett, the lead researcher behind the tests in San Diegoand the director of science policy for PEER, said the results are a “red flag,” and larger studies are needed.
But some parents aren’t waiting around for clearer answers.Parvini has lobbied forlocalschool boards in California to use turf fields made without PFAS.In the meantime, he tries to limit his daughter’s playing time on artificial turf fields.
“If they want to use PFAS in microchips, great. My kid doesn’t eat microchips,” he said. “But if they want to use it in artificial turf and my kid is exposed to it 2,070 hours a year, well, what is that doing to her body?”
That’s an article worth reading. You won’t find it in any Delaware articles cheering the economic development boon that may be forthcoming in Frederica.
What do you want to talk about?
Biden doesn’t have more money than Trump. I mean he does if you look at campaign accounts, but if you look at PACs, Trump has billions and ready access to more billions.
I think it was Alby who first pointed out in these pages that America isn’t a majoritarian democracy, and hasn’t been for a long time. The very wealthy once had the good sense to keep that info on the down low, but no longer. With the EC, dumping a few hundred million into a handful of districts is all they need to do to reinstall Trump. I guess the brightside is that armchair liberals (like me) will have some REAL grievances to complain about for the foreseeable future
On Pod save the UK I recently heard George Monbiot discuss Neoliberalism in a way that really clarified some things for me in that he tied our prevailing economic ideology directly to calvinism.
I highly recommend it. While it is all stuff readers of DL already know about Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Thatcher et al…the chat just knits it all together very nicely.
https://crooked.com/podcast/the-economy-is-growing-so-why-are-we-feeling-poorer/
Here is a Monboit tweet from this weekend:
@GeorgeMonbiot
Don’t knock the privatised water companies. At least 90% of what comes out of our taps is water.
RE: Biden poll #s
I think the current polling situation, and the Biden presidency writ large, is a symptom of “excessive pluralism.” In contrast, the Rs have a defined constituency that is activated. The internal strife over Israel/palestine is the case in point of how the big tent is collapsing under its own weight. Republicans don’t have to choose between well heeled NYC Jews (strength in dollars) vs Michigan Muslims (strength in numbers). Locally we see this playi g out in the three-way primary for the governorship. Dems need to define a constituency and commit to it, rather than think they can continue to stumble forward as the party of “not trump”. Dems had four years to groom a more compelling candidate, and instead spent most of the time re-litigating the Trump presidency (poorly).
RE: segregation academies. Can you name specific schools and their state funding? First time I’m hearing out that.
RE:PFAS turf. The most problematic aspect isn’t the turf itself, but the travel sports culture that the DE Turf is targeting. That’s more toxic to kids than the fake grass
Most progressive policies (higher taxes for the wealthy and corporations, universal healthcare, saving the planet from burning up, health care for women) are very popular across the entire Dem coalition. The tent isn’t too big, our leadership it too timid to make simple moves that would activate and energize the base.
These are all great aspirations, but save for a federal protection for abortion, it’s will be hard to translate any political gains into short term wins for constituents. Take climate change and modern transportation: if we want to bring true high speed rail to the northeast we would need to build a brand new rail alignment, separate from existing infrastructure. Unlike post war Europe, there are. Lot of people in the way of a new rail right of way, mostly poor and minority. Do we continue a legacy of displacement to serve the greater good? I think part of the Dem proceas is believing that they can be everything to everyone, that all problems can be solved with enough dial twisting by the policy wonks to wrap every solution in a neat intersectional bow. It’s not happening and it’s causing too much intra-party strife
High-speed rail won’t happen here, but not because we don’t want to displace the poors – when has that ever stopped anyone? They just don’t want to spend the money.
You seem to think that “Dems” is some sort of organized group that grooms leaders. That’s the other party, and even then, look at what all their candidate-grooming got them – 16 people who all lost to Trump. The GOP has just as much internal tension as Democrats do, but in an authoritarian organization it doesn’t surface as often. Wall Street hedge funders and Bible Belt fundies have just as little in common as any two Democrats you could find.
High-speed trains will never be cheap enough for working-class commuting like a subway. If there ever is high-speed rail network, it won’t replace cars or buses – it will replace airplanes. Like air travel, the market for high-speed trains will upper-middle class or richer.
That’s not the market for it in Europe, where it competes with air travel on a fairly even basis. You’re right that they’re for distance travel, not commuting.
Moot point, though. The U.S. is too heavily invested in air travel.
“The most problematic aspect isn’t the turf itself, but the travel sports culture that the DE Turf is targeting.”
Cults come in many forms.
It’s about time someone started talking about toxic turf. Some of these older fields are made with ground up car tires, which can contain lead. The kids come home covered in black dust, and I’ve seen black dust trails going up the nostrils of a goalie back in the day (early aughts). There are soccer/lacrosse fields here in Sussex that are infused with ground up car tires because someone thought it reduced injuries. Folly, pure folly.
Meanwhile, we can grow grass in Delaware. It’s not hard, even I did it. I’ve never seen the need for turf fields at local high schools, it’s just a waste of money and it makes sports parents feel good about something. Grass, without the motherload of chemicals, is the answer.
I appreciate the sentiment, but a well-used grass field will become a dust bowl/mudpit shortly after the start of the season. Professional sports are able to maintain grass fields only with massive manpower and expense. Toxic surfaces aren’t the answer either; not sure what the answer is.
How many high schools have installed artificial turf fields? Seriously asking, I haven’t followed high school sports in years. I know some have.
I don’t know how many, but I wonder how much “school choice” comes into play. The traditional public school came with lots of land, allowing one or more game fields and multiple practice fields. Now education has become fragmented into many specialized schools with limited land.