DL Open Thread: Tuesday, January 7, 2025

Election Scofflaw Becomes Governor Today.  Because only the voters did their jobs.  Let the Vanity Governorship begin.

The John Carney Interview.  OK, kids, here is your assignment for today.  Read this interview, which is must-reading, then point out the bullshit Carney spews.  Sure, I could point out my favorite lies, but it’s more fun to read your responses.  I’ll just share one exchange:

We’re starting to see more progressive Democrats win seats, especially here in Delaware. Do you worry that the classic kind of Delaware Way position is starting to wane, or do you think it will endure?

I do worry.

I learned and came up in a Delaware political environment which was pretty balanced. Where we had 16 years of Republican governors, Pete du Pont and Mike Castle back to back, and haven’t had one since. And increasingly, the registration has become – as the National Republican Party has become more far-right driven – more Democratic in response. Most of the Republicans of my day were moderate Republicans, and they tend to be a little bit more pro-business. Then Tom Carper and Ruth Ann Minner mold were more of a pro-business Democrat, which is what I consider myself.

I think more worrisome, or what requires more work, is that the newly elected members of city council and the legislature are very young. They haven’t had a lot of real world experience, particularly in employment and the business sector.

Ahhh, nostalgia for the ’80’s.  Just what we need in 2025.  He’s all yours, Wilmington.

Another Death At An Understaffed Delaware Assisted Living Facility.  Largely because there are no minimal staffing requirements at assisted living facilities.  Corporate owners, repeat offenders:

The memory care unit at the North Star assisted living facility was short-staffed.

An argument between two employees meant both had been sent home and it would be hours before a caregiver found 83-year-old Shyuan Hsia bleeding on the floor, having suffered a beating from which she would later die.

The last documented time a caregiver saw Hsia was four hours before she was found. And her assailant had already attacked another resident that same night.

These revelations and others − including that the assailant was not closely attended to on more than a half-dozen occasions following the attack, despite being placed on one-on-one supervision − are detailed in a recently released investigation by the state health department.

BTW, ‘Memory Care Unit’ doesn’t mean that any memory care is taking place:

She noted that The Summit’s memory care unit is not a nursing facility, meaning it likely could not provide the level of care the assailant needed.

“You’d think from the (title) of ‘Memory Care Unit’ that you’re putting your family members in a nursing unit, but really what you’re getting is like daycare,” Chao said. “It’s like going to an adult daycare, except you’re living there.”

While The Summit’s memory care unit does provide medication management to residents, it is not certified as a nursing home and does not have the staff or infrastructure required to operate as one.

In fact, inspection documents showed that at times, the facility didn’t even have the proper staff to complete tasks required by a certain level of nurse.

Spiros, Kendra, you have your assignment for this legislative session.  End this disgrace.  Shout-out to reporter Isabel Hughes.  A really comprehensive article.  My other must-read for the day.

Lawyers Try To Bury Smith’s Report On Trump Investigation:

Defense lawyers asked both the Justice Department and a federal judge on Monday night to stop the special counsel, Jack Smith, from publicly releasing a report detailing his investigation into President-elect Donald J. Trump’s mishandling of classified documents after he left office in 2021.

The two-pronged attempt to block the report’s release arrived as Mr. Trump was only two weeks away from being sworn in for a second term as president. With the case against Mr. Trump already dismissed, the report would essentially be Mr. Smith’s final chance to lay out damaging new details and evidence, if he has any.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers, in an aggressively worded letter to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, said they had recently been shown a draft copy of Mr. Smith’s report, calling it an example of the special counsel’s “politically motivated attack” against Mr. Trump. They demanded that Mr. Garland not allow Mr. Smith to make the report public and “remove him promptly” from his post.

What we don’t know won’t hurt us?

Why Senate Democrats Suck.  Part 1:  Durbin Over Whitehouse For Judiciary.  Part 2: Gillibrand To Head Senate Campaign Committee.

Why Democrats Suck: Part Infinity.  From a Talking Points Memo reader:

Trump has promised to do a bunch of things on day 1. Why aren’t Democrats taking the worst of them and raising the cost of doing them? It is political malpractice. The easiest would be to say that Trump is going to pardon the cop killers of January 6. No deep thinking, no multi clause sentences,  no saying there was or wasn’t an insurrection, just that he is going to pardon the violent cop killers of January 6. Over and over. Let him split hairs. He can deny it. Then direct the press to the officers themselves.  That mob killed Capitol Hill police. Tell the press to go talk to the Capitol Hill police who were there on January 6. Then say he is anti-police. He is with the criminals. Over and over.

Next: Tulsi Gabbard loves Syrian dictators who gas their own people. This is who is going to keep us safe?

We don’t have to win everything, we just need to push back where he is soft. He is flooding the zone. We can do the same. Cop killers and dictators who gas people…those are his kind of people.

The group is one big eye roll.

Ay-yup.

To Politicians, Ethics Reform Is The Enemy.  North Dakota serves as today’s proxy for Delaware:

Fed-up North Dakotans, led by a group of women calling themselves the BadAss Grandmas, voted to amend the constitution and establish a state Ethics Commission six years ago. Their goal was to investigate and stop unethical conduct by public officials.

But the watchdog agency has achieved less than the advocates had hoped, undermined in large part by the legislature the commission is charged with overseeing, an investigation by the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica has found.

The commission has not substantiated any of the 81 complaints it has received. It has dismissed 47, most because it lacked the authority to investigate them. Thirty complaints are pending, some for more than a year. Numerous tips don’t get investigated because the agency can’t proceed without a formal complaint, and complainants have said they fear retaliation if they file one, the commission’s executive director said.

Here’s how the ‘Honorables’ have rendered the Commission ineffective:

But the amendment also gave the legislature a role to play, directing it “to provide adequate funds” for the commission. The amendment did not spell out how the commission would operate, and amid that ambiguity, lawmakers took it upon themselves to pass laws governing the commission’s operations and investigations.

The legislature has consistently given the agency less money than initial estimates suggested it would need, leading to belt-tightening and at times a scramble for supplemental funding at the end of the budget cycle. The legislature also has restricted the type of complaints the body can investigate and limited the commission’s attempts to oversee lawmakers — familiar tactics to impede ethics commissions across the country, according to the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit that has studied the issue.

Hey, we’ve got an Ethics Commission in Delaware with no enforcement power, so we fit right in.

Pssst–Kevin Hensley has his case adjudicated today.  Don’t tell anybody.

What do you want to talk about?