DL Open Thread: Tuesday, December 17, 2024
Articles I Won’t Read–And Won’t Link To: ‘The Road Back To Power For Democrats’ by Rahm Emanuel. It’s out there. You’ll have to find it for yourselves.
Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against So-Called ‘Elite’ Colleges For ‘Price-Fixing’. You just know it happens, but are the schools liable?:
A filing in an antitrust lawsuit against some of the nation’s top universities alleges the schools overcharged students by $685 million in a “price-fixing” scheme, raising serious questions about their past admission and financial aid policies.
“Please Admit,” was often written at the top of the list, the lawsuit contends — and almost all of the applicants were.
Documents and testimony from officials at Georgetown, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Pennsylvania, MIT and other elite schools detail how they appeared to favor wealthy applicants despite their stated policy of accepting students without regard for their financial circumstances. That “need-blind” policy allowed the schools to collaborate on financial aid under federal law, but plaintiffs in the case say the colleges violated the statute by considering students’ family income.
Former students accuse 17 elite schools, including most of the Ivy League, of colluding to limit the financial aid packages of working- and middle-class students. Theclaimed damages of $685 million, which were detailed in the court filing Monday night, would automatically triple to more than $2 billion under U.S. antitrust laws.
Is that a tiny shiver of schadenfreude that I’m feeling right now?
Fuck Nancy Pelosi. Works behind the scenes to deny AOC key committee post. Succeeds:
Rep. Gerry Connolly is poised to become the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee next year. But the decision isn’t final until Tuesday, when the entire caucus is set to vote on their picks for the top Democrat in the prominent role.
The House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee voted to recommend the Virginian as the ranking member on the high-profile panel by a 34-27 vote on Monday. The veteran investigator faced a stiff challenge from New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The full caucus is set to vote on who will officially lead Democrats on the panel on Tuesday.
This is precisely the same mentality that ensured the nomination of two white guys who oppose change to be the D standard bearers in Delaware Senate special elections.
Endo’s End-Run Around Opioid Liability.
This spring, the Justice Department announced a major victory against a drug firm that manufactured billions of opioid painkillers. Endo Health Solutions, the agency said, would face $1.5 billion in fines and forfeitures and plead guilty to a corporate criminal charge.
Prosecutors said the massive fine would hold accountable a suburban Philadelphia company that profited by “misrepresenting the safety of their opioid products and using reckless marketing tactics to increase sales.”
But in the end, federal prosecutors offered far friendlier terms than those trumpeted by the agency.
Endo would not have to pay the $1.5 billion in criminal penalties, which was already a deep discount from the billions federal officials said Endo owed for dodging taxes and driving up Medicare costs.
In what amounted to a liability fire sale by the Justice Department, the company’s woes with the federal government would all be resolved by a $200 million payment.
In sentencing Endo in federal court in May, Judge Linda Parker wondered how the amount paid to the U.S. could be so low.
“I don’t understand. I really don’t understand,” Parker said. “I just don’t understand how it went from $1 billion to $200 million.”
Federal prosecutor Benjamin Cornfeld explained: Endo was broke.
Uh, not really. But you already knew that:
Codenamed Project Zed, the plan allowed Endo to restructure its debt to retain control of the company and hand out $95 million in executive bonuses before seeking protection in bankruptcy. The result for U.S. taxpayers: Endo paid a tiny fraction — three pennies on the dollar — of the $7 billion that officials said it owed the U.S. government, including $4 billion in taxes.
According to OpenSecrets, Delaware’s own Tom Carper got $5K from Endo in 2012. Did I mention that Endo was spun off from Merck/DuPont?
Matt Meyer’s DELDOT Pick (just popped up in my e-mail):
Shanté A. Hastings, P.E., is the soon-to-be Acting Secretary for the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT) and has worked for DelDOT since graduating from the University of Delaware in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. She has served as the chief engineer for the Department since July 1, 2019, and as Deputy Secretary from January 2021 – December 2024.
Shanté is responsible for implementing the Department’s more than $600 million annual Capital Transportation Program. As deputy secretary, she is also involved with personnel management, legislation, and national transportation policy. She serves as Chair of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Innovation Management Committee, Chair of the AASHTO Committee on Design, and Vice Chair of the AASHTO Committee on Transportation System Operations.
In 2013, Shanté was awarded the Young Engineer of the Year Award by the Delaware Engineering Society in recognition of her work in the field of engineering and community service. In 2024, she was named Government Engineer of the Year by the Delaware Engineering Society. She currently serves on the boards for Leadership Delaware, the Delaware State Fair, the Joshua M. Freeman Foundation, and Sussex Academy Charter School. In May 2024, she was nominated and confirmed to the University of Delaware Board of Trustees.
The article is not worth reading, so I’ll just let you know that one of the News Journal’s ‘Top Entertainment Moments Of 2024’ was Eli Manning being spotted at a Chick-Fil-A in North Dover.
Will Suxco Derail Offshore Wind Project? If so, it will be a parting gift from lame-duck members of Council:
As an offshore wind farm looks to start construction 15 miles off the Atlantic coast, there isn’t much left for US Wind, a Maryland energy company owned in part by an Italian infrastructure firm, to get approved.
The federal government approved the plan back in September, and just last week, the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) approved multiple permits for underwater and on-land construction.
All that remains is a vote from Sussex County Council to allow US Wind to build a substation that intakes high-voltage cables from the offshore wind farm to the mainland. Whichever way the Tuesday vote goes, it will either fuel or delay one of the region’s most ambitious energy projects in decades.
But with three council members on their way out of office, they could make bold votes and save face in the wake of significant local opposition to the project.
Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, you ask?:
Prior to the vote, a new website appeared online looking to lobby citizens away from the permit. Stop Offshore Wind is an incorporated organization formed Dec. 5 by a lawyer with ties to a massive lobbying firm.
(A)ccording to his LinkedIn, he’s the former general counsel to the BGR Group, a lobbying firm with ties to multiple oil and gas companies and foreign nations. He still frequently reposts BGR Group posts on LinkedIn.
There’s also been a massive local public outcry in regard to the project. Two lawsuits have already been filed in opposition to the wind farm, challenging the permitting status of the projects and the environmental review, as reported by Delaware Public Media.
Additionally, the Caesar Rodney Institute, a conservative Delaware public policy think tank, has spent a lot of time advocating against the offshore wind farm. David Stevenson, the institute’s director, said the council vote on Tuesday will be one last push to get the council to deny the permit.
Conversely, Mark Nardone, the director of the Delaware Nature Society, argued the investment by US Wind into Delaware’s power grid will fill a growing energy demand in the state.
Nardone also said Delaware is not a state that produces much energy, and it’s often bidding and buying its energy from surrounding states. But new offshore wind could limit the emissions other states produce.
Got it. Bad guys are the oil and gas lobbyists who support complete and total despoiling of the environment.
What do you want to talk about?
Read the Emanuel article basically what you’d expect. Any article about Democrats and the road back to relevancy that would prefer to complain about pronouns and the term ‘Latinx’ and not about how elites like Emanuel who led us to this situation should fall on their swords is a dead letter to me.
Two things can be true at once.
Focusing on pronouns and trans rights as if they are real issues in most Americans lives was a mistake by democrats
Rahm and many of his kind cozying up with republican lite policies are a mistake.
Democrats need a rough and tumble man or woman to talk about real issues and not able to get bullied all at the same time.
People keep telling me that Democrats are too focused on Trans rights, but I don’t think I heard a peep out of Harris’ campaign about pronouns or Trans folks.
I agree that we need a more pugilistic message about things regular people care about, but if that means abandoning our Trans siblings along the way, that ain’t rough and tumble, it’s just fucking cowardice.
Trump was able to CONVINCE people that the democrats only cared about pronouns and vocabulary. The democrats talked just enough about that to let trump’s strategy work. I don’t know the answer to this problem, since those kinds of concerns are legitimately part of the democrats’ dna and most conservatives just don’t want to hear it. But I do think democrats need to talk more about genuine anti-elitism issues. Bernie probably emphasized the right things, but there’s no way he himself could get elected. If getting elected is the main thing.
Fr. Burke is too kind and a bit too optimistic. But that’s because he is a good person who looks for the good in people, I can save him a bit of time Johnny boy will be worse than Mikey! I have to say Fr. Burke may be newish here but he is just what this town needs he can see right through the Delaware way BS!
https://delawarecall.com/2024/12/17/in-response-to-mayor-purzycki/
I support David Hogg’s campaign to be DNC Vice-Chairman.