DL Open Thread: Saturday, December 21, 2024
Totally Unnecessary Shutdown Averted. Trump doesn’t get his shutdown while Biden is President.:
Facing a government shutdown deadline, the Senate rushed through final passage early Saturday of a bipartisan plan that would temporarily fund federal operations and disaster aid, dropping President-elect Donald Trump’s demands for a debt limit increase into the new year.
House Speaker Mike Johnson had insisted Congress would “meet our obligations” and not allow federal operations to shutter ahead of the Christmas holiday season. But the day’s outcome was uncertain after Trump doubled down on his insistence that a debt ceiling increase be included in any deal — if not, he said in an early morning post, let the closures “start now.”
The House approved Johnson’s new bill overwhelmingly, 366-34. The Senate worked into the night to pass it, 85-11, just after the deadline. At midnight, the White House said it had ceased shutdown preparations.
This is bad for the country. But one thing is unavoidably clear: If you were a party coming off a stinging defeat and looking for ways to burnish your brand as the party focused on the needs of average Americans on a budget you could scarcely ask for a better environment in which to do it. Even beyond what I described above, with these two rough beasts slouching their way into 2025, you have probably never had a time in American history where you have all the billionaires lining up and saying pretty much openly and loudly that we’re here as Team Billionaire and here to support the billionaire President and excited to usher in a new era of government of the billionaires, quite literally by the billionaires and really obviously for the billionaires.
To wrap it all together you also have the gobs of public time and attention and resources lit on fire by the tantrums, egomania and sundry character disorders of people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk because that’s a central feature of billionairedom: the rules don’t apply to you. Things most of us had to get straight with when we were in our 20s, because we live in the real world, guys like Elon Musk have magnified 100-fold by their 50s because the rules don’t apply to them.
Needless to say, it’s not great. But it really is tailor made for a politics focused on being the defense of ordinary Americans living on a budget.
Not holding my breath for Democratic Party leaders to take that ball and run with it. But we can.
Dog Bites Man: Oil Companies Falsified Environmental Impact Reports In Colorado:
Oil and gas companies operating in Colorado have submitted hundreds of environmental impact reports with “falsified” laboratory data since 2021, according to state regulators.
Colorado’s energy and carbon management commission (ECMC) said on 13 December that contractors for Chevron and Oxy had submitted reports with fraudulent data for at least 344 oil and gas wells across the state, painting a misleading picture of their pollution levels. Consultants for a third company, Civitas, had also filed forms with falsified information for an unspecified number of wells, regulators said.
Some of the reports, which were conducted and filed by the consulting groups Eagle Environmental Consulting and Tasman Geosciences, obscured the levels of dangerous contaminants in nearby soils, including arsenic, which is linked to heart disease and a variety of cancers, and benzene, which is linked to leukemia and other blood disorders, among other pollutants, according to the commission.
Until Big Oil is stopped, climate change will continue unabated.
Delaware Updates State Energy Plan:
Delaware is the lowest-lying state in the U.S. Garvin said that means it’s impacted by climate change and sea level rise through more frequent intense storms and flooding, and an increase in sunny day flooding associated with tides.
Strategies that are included in the updated state energy plan include assessing the feasibility of adopting a Low Carbon Fuel Standard, expanding clean energy workforce development programs, and identifying policy gaps and directing policies and programs to help impacted underserved communities.
Delaware’s Office Of Unclaimed Property Faces Class Action Lawsuit. Oh, so that’s where Brenda Mayrack ended up:
A class-action lawsuit was filed in Delaware federal court Friday against the leaders of the Delaware Office of Unclaimed Property.
The memorandum supports a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction in response to the Office of Unclaimed Property’s reported “escheatment scheme.”
The action was brought on behalf of Jaime Vial and other heirs of a Chilean man who owned stocks in companies incorporated in Delaware such as Citigroup Inc. and Hilton Hotels Corp. The Office of Unclaimed Property eventually seized the property without alerting any of the man’s heirs or lawyers, according to the lawsuit.
Vial contacted the Office of Unclaimed Property requesting the money be returned, legal documents state, and only years later did he receive checks worth over $2.5 million. However, the lawsuit claims that this sum was “grossly inadequate” and failed to take the current values of the stocks into account.
In response, the lawsuit demands that the state return the property to each class action member or put them in the same monetary position they would be if the property hadn’t been seized, including interest and compensation.
The Office of Unclaimed Property did not respond to a request for comment.
Neither did a spokesperson for the office, since the office itself is merely an office, and incapable of speech.
I close with this song, released 50 years ago, which becomes more and more relevant every year around this time:
What do you want to talk about?
“a politics focused on being the defense of ordinary Americans living on a budget.”
When Democrats try to help ordinary Americans who are being financially screwed by rich fucks their first and only response is to subsidize those ordinary Americans so they can pay the rich fucks in full.
There is a truism in economics: “If you want to increase the price of a thing, subsidize it.” I cringed when Harris ran on a $25k subsidy for new home buyers.
Biden to his credit actually articulated this to some extent, calling for building the economy “from the middle out.” But implementation was weak, because we didn’t give him the Senate we needed. Not to mention the MAGA Supreme Court.
I want Democrats who can communicate to voters how their family budget is being screwed and exactly who is doing the screwing. Vilify and demonize the bad actors. And then campaign for legislation that will restrain them, so those “ordinary Americans” can get a fair shake.
The financialization of the economy that has taken place over the past half century has rewarded asset owners by the amount of the exploding US debt that is a consequence of the tax cuts that have benefitted the same asset owners.