DL Open Thread: Friday, August 16, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday unveiled an aggressively populist economic agenda, providing the most detailed vision yet of her governing priorities since becoming the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.
The most striking proposals were for the elimination of medical debt for millions of Americans; the “first-ever” ban on price gouging for groceries and food; a cap on prescription drug costs; a $25,000 subsidy for first-time homebuyers; and a Child Tax Credit that would provide $6,000 per child to families for the first year of a baby’s life.
The last item followed a suggestion earlier this month from J.D. Vance, the GOP vice-presidential nominee, that the credit be raised from $2,000 per child to $5,000. Harris is also calling for restoring the Biden administration Child Tax Credit that expired at the end of 2021, which raised the benefit for most families from $2,000 per kid to $3,000.
It’s not a great leap from ‘populist’ to ‘popular’.
Offshore Wind Companies Bet On Harris:
An Interior Department auction to lease federal waters for wind projects off the coasts of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia drew nearly $93 million in bids — an amount that appeared to quell nerves about the industry’s ability to withstand its political and economic headwinds.
While Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to carry Biden’s mantle on offshore wind, Trump has been vocally hostile to it, prompting concern that he could derail Democrats’ plans.
Trump has already pledged to sign an executive order “on Day One” targeting the offshore wind industry if he is elected to a second term.
Trump’s disdain for wind power stretches back to his fight against an offshore development in Scotland that he contended in legal challenges would spoil the views from a golf course he owns nearby. The U.K. Supreme Court rejected his claims in 2015, but the GOP presidential nominee has kept up his attacks on wind power, falsely claiming wind turbines don’t work, destroy property values, cause cancer and kill whales.
Oh, something he said at that no-question press conference yesterday?:
For more than 45 minutes at the top of what was billed as a press conference, Trump attacked Harris and revisited the economic proposals he talked about on Wednesday. Among his targets were green energy initiatives like electric vehicles and wind power.
“You want to see a bird cemetery? Just go under a windmill,” Trump said. “It’s a green scam.”
Everything he does is about him, and only him.
Ex-President Bone Spurs Does It Again. Claims the Presidential Medal Of Honor he gave to a billionaire donor’s wife is ‘better than the Congressional Medal Of Honor’ because those recipients are either ‘riddled with bullets or dead’. He’s truly proud of having avoided service. Sickening stuff. The good news? This won’t play well. For those w/o the time to watch the video:
Trump: I have to say Miriam … I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom … that’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version — it’s actually much better because everyone who gets the Congressional Medal, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy beautiful woman …. And they’re rated equal…”
Cooler Buildings Using A Zig-Zag Pattern? Sounds promising:
A research team led by Qilong Cheng at Columbia University in New York has developed a promising solution that could help reduce energy use, by redirecting the sun’s energy away from buildings.
Cheng’s team has proposed a structural wall design featuring a zigzag pattern that can reduce a building’s surface temperature by up to 3C compared with flat walls, without consuming any energy.
The design consists of walls with a series of protrusions that create a zigzag shape when viewed from the side.
This configuration takes advantage of radiative cooling – a passive cooling strategy that reflects sunlight and emits long-wave infrared radiation through the Earth’s atmosphere into outer space.
What do you want to talk about?
Some major updates to the Campaign Finance thread:
https://delawareliberal.net/2024/08/12/the-30-day-campaign-finance-reports-a-work-in-progress/
OK, cut-and-pasting my copy on the D governor’s race campaign finance reports. If it seems like I’m really pissed at Collin O’Mara, it’s because I am:
“For those of you who didn’t think that BHL could still raise money (looks at self in mirror), she raised a shitload of money, much of it from people I’ve never heard of. The bad news for her? She’s burned through most of it. She started the year with $687K and raised $531K. The bad news? She burned through over $1 mill, leaving her with $218K for the stretch run. I just focused on the max ($1200 each) donors. A lot of them are from tony out-of-state addresses, many in Pa. Plus, a bleepload from Suxco. I’m guessing that the guy from the Democratic Lieutenant Governors’ Association riffled through his contact list.
Matt Meyer started the year with $1.7 mill in the bank and raised another $823K. He has $1.6 mill remaining to spend. While that likely makes him the favorite, it all depends on how he spends the money.
Collin O’Mara’s report just went up and, it makes me angry. He started out the year with a balance of $870K, $750K of which was from loans. He raised another $101K. Here’s the kicker, though–he only spent slightly over $54K. While in theory this leaves him with over $917,000 to spend, I think we’ve learned a different lesson. He doesn’t intend, and likely never intended, to spend the $750 K he lent the campaign. $54 K in a statewide race doesn’t give you much name recognition. He’s toast. God DAMN.”
Mostly out-of-state contributions again too. By my count, Collin reported only about 30 contributions from people in Delaware.
Also note fwiw that at least half of the money Omara raised is from out of state.
It’s true. While all three candidates raised a lot of money from out of state, both Meyer and BHL clearly have a lot of financial support within Delaware.
O’Mara doesn’t.
Also, does he have a new campaign manager yet?
Its absurd. The guy ruined any chance of having a political career here. Mealy mouthed and fake. Shame on WFP.
on the other hand, this will be good for him in two ways:
1) he will have more time to be a Girldad.
2) he can stop pretending to live in Bear.
Both of these things sound like massive quality of life improvements.
Where’s his wife running for governor next? I assume they’re just taking turns until they find people dumb enough.
I don’t blame WFP at all.
I, too, was blown away by the presentation that he made that earned him the endorsement. I, and certainly they, didn’t expect him to basically not mount a campaign.
Speaking for myself, all I can say is:
“I was had.”
I do blame WFP. I have always been a big supporter of all of their candidates…but this is nonsensical. IMO, to be a credible political organization, you need to base an endorsement not just on one presentation by a candidate….but you need to have the substantive ability to look under the hood, evaluate the mechanics of the campaign…
They need to rescind the endorsement to have any credibility going forward. I won’t be able to take their statewide endorsements seriously going forward if they don’t.
Though, I’ll continue to take their local endorsements seriously…they have an amazing track record in local races. Maybe just…got ahead of their skis on this one? Got swept up in the moment?
Regardless, O’Mara’s “campaign” is a pure humiliation for him and WFP. Pure humiliation.
As I have pointed out before, the WFP folks are always sniping at the DelDems for their endorsements.
The difference between the DelDems endorsement process are night and day.
All DelDem statewide endorsements are done from the RD to the Subdivisions to the State Exec committee. All of the meetings are open to all Democrats and the meetings are advertised. Leading up to the recommendations and endorsements, the candidates meet with the various groups in meetings open to all Dems. Once a candidate is endorsed, they get to say that they are endorsed. 95% of the time, that is all that comes with the honorific of “endorsed candidate”.
WFP has an endorsement committee that conducts private interviews with candidates. I have not seen the who/when/where for those meetings (I tried). The endorsed candidate gets support from WFP in the form of mailers paid for by? Who knows. I have heard that most of that money comes from WFP-Central in NY. But I honestly haven’t seen the receipts, so hopefully a WFP person can tell me where the 10s of thousands of dollars comes from that gets spent in Delaware. I’m pretty sure it isn’t from the cash generated by Patreon contributions to The Highlands Bunker.
And boy have they howled about the open process that lead to BHL getting the DelDems endorsement, but here they are with the kind of back-room endorsement process that produced a dud of a gubernatorial endorsement. In fact, their entire process seems to be the sort of thing that this blog bitched about in the early-mid 2000s for the DelDems.
Liberalgeek makes some good points. Fortunately there’s enough time and energy to think both deldems and wfp suck.
I don’t need to choose one or the other in Meyer’s Delaware!!
@MC: Once again, your snotty attitude does you no favors. I’m less inclined to vote for someone whose supporters act like assholes at every opportunity.
My wife suggested, and I couldn’t agree more, that Democrats should give Sarah McBride a speaking role at the convention.
Can’t imagine (m)any up-and-coming Democrats in her league.
She spoke at the DNC in 2016 and is a lock to head to D.C. in January. There may be more important Democrats who are struggling that need the airtime. Not saying that McBride isn’t a fantastic speaker, but she doesn’t exactly need the help or exposure.
On the other hand, if you want to fight back on trans issues, having the first trans member of Congress in a major role is a big selling point.
“Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun. I shall do the next best thing: block it out.”
Montgomery Burns,
Springfield
When I read “(Bethany) started the year with $687K and raised $531K. The bad news? She burned through over $1 mill, leaving her with $218K for the stretch run.”
Why do I think, “Wow, that’s a lot of airline miles racked up by Dana Long” ?
If his forum page is any indication, it looks like Jerry Price is giving up. There goes my job as the DL unpaid Jerry Price correspondent:
https://jerrypricedegov.com/forum/
Is… is that parody? It’s pretty funny, but surely that’s not a real statement intended to be taken at face value, right?
I cannot tell what’s satire or real right-wing rhetoric anymore.
I don’t know. Maybe we better give Mike Ramone and his toes a sniff?
Looks real to me, unless someone hacked in.
“My site was hacked . I am still running for governor. It looks like other candidates are afraid of me. Sorry for their luck . I will win.”
lmao
Hey, everybody has to have a hobby, but why do so many fat old farts choose embarrassing themselves by becoming right-wing political bozos? I mean, if they want to be clowns, at least put on some makeup and entertain little kids at the children’s hospital or something.
It beats doing actual work, volunteer or otherwise. I assume their families are tired of listening to whatever nonsense OAN is spewing so they need to find a new audience. Unfortunately that’s us.
Hacked? He’s got an WordPress message board which accepts any name, lol. Elite cyber hacking masterminds at work.