DL Open Thread: Friday, May 8, 2026

That Fucking Refinery.  In order to ‘fix a problem’, they apparently have no choice but to emit toxic sulfur dioxide for several weeks.  I’m with Speaker Minor-Brown on this one:

  Delaware City Refining Company will be emitting significantly higher-than-normal amounts of sulfur dioxide for several weeks.

The Department of Natural Resources said Thursday that the company has informed the state that it is making repairs on its coker carbon monoxide boiler. The refinery will shift from a primary pollution control process to secondary emissions control.

The refinery also switched to secondary emissions control for 17 days last year. DNREC said it will issue appropriate penalties for expected violations of emissions standards.

State House Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown, D- New Castle said in a statement that it is “incredibly disappointing and extremely unacceptable” that the refinery is once again “putting our community in harm’s way.”

By many accounts, this was not an unavoidable accident, but instead the result of decisions made by the refinery, including the decision to delay necessary maintenance despite clear warnings and opportunities to act sooner.

“I’m looking at this situation not only as a lawmaker, but as a parent raising my children just a few miles away. Families in our community deserve to feel safe in their homes and confident that their health and safety are being protected – period, end of story.

Minor-Brown’s district includes Delaware City Refining Company.

Wilmington City Council Doubles Down On Stupidity:

Wilmington City Council voted to remove City Councilman James Spadola from his at-large seat, but he’s been saved by a court ruling.

City Council voted 8-1 (2 absent, 2 present) to remove Spadola via a resolution saying that when Spadola announced a party switch from Republican to Democrat last year, he worked around “legislative intent” that one member of a non-majority party should be on council.

What is not in Wilmington’s charter to govern is whether the person who is the non-majority party member has to actually remain in that party while they are in office.

Spadola sued Council President Trippi Congo on Monday arguing there was no legal grounds for council to remove him from office.

Chancery Court Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick held a hearing on Thursday, with Congo announcing before discussion on the resolution that they could vote, “but if it’s passed, it would be stayed until the case is finally resolved.”

Spadola said he’s been frustrated by a body made up entirely of members of his new party.

“I joined the Democratic Party because it is a big tent party (well. that’s a lie), and despite the lack of inclusiveness that this council may be showing me, I have full faith that the rule of law will prevail.”

OK, kids, you’re smart.  You know that Spadola switched parties because he has political aspirations that could not be realized as a Rethug.  (Raising the question, why was he a Rethug for so long?  But I digress.)  Kids, you also know that Wilmington City Council is not doing this because they believe that defending the rights of the Republican Party is essential for a functioning democracy.  As if the city has a functioning democracy.  They’ve focused their Solomoronic wisdom on the task of killing Spadola’s political aspirations in their infancy.  Making said aspirations far more likely for success than if they’d just done nothing.  

Have I missed anything?

Hospital Price-Gouging–It’s Not Just About ChristianaCare–It’s Nationwide:

The largest corporate health care hospitals in the country are consolidating their power and using it to rip off patients, a new study from Families USA shows. Released amid the GOP’s manufactured affordability crisis, the study shows that health care executives at a handful of corporations are setting “high and irrational prices” in every state and charging patients almost three times what Medicare pays for the exact same service.

The 15 largest systems charged an average of 282 percent more than the Medicare rate, the study found, resulting in $22 million in profit per hospital per year.

The reason hospital executives can do this is because they are consolidating at a rapid clip, buying up independent providers, and jacking up prices at will. Five or fewer corporations in 42 states and the District of Columbia “controlled at least half of all hospital care in 2023,” researchers found. In almost half of all states, just three corporations controlled the majority of hospital care. Hospital executives have no competition or regulations to discipline their price-gouging, so they “can charge basically whatever they want, because they can,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA.

…The reality is that the lack of hospital regulation is a bipartisan failure. GOP policies, Democratic inaction, and rapacious health care executives are all to blame.

Families USA found that the biggest factor in price is whether a hospital is independent. At a press conference about the report, one of the speakers, West Virginians for Affordable Health Care Executive Director Ellen Allen, recounted how she herself has seen an increase in fees since a practice she goes to was taken over by a larger system, including a new charge tacked onto the bill that wasn’t there before the takeover, though the service was the same.

Independent hospitals charged less than corporate ones, the study found, though still well above the Medicare rate. Those smaller hospitals charged 221 percent above Medicare, a 61-percentage-point difference.

Families USA called on Congress to enact “site-neutral payments,” so costs are the same everywhere; require that hospitals and health plans give patients “full price transparency”; ban anti-competitive practices between hospital systems and insurers; strengthen oversight of nonprofit hospitals; and cap prices and inflation relative to Medicare benchmarks.

Lobbying reports and other documentation show that the executives of these massive corporate entities will fight all of those measures. The industry as a whole has already spent a fortune lobbying the government this year…

I trust you’ll find this useful, just in case you were wondering why hospital care cost containment initiatives have ground to a halt in Delaware…

Trump Tariffs Illegal–Again:

A panel of federal judges on Thursday found President Trump had violated the law when he imposed a 10 percent tariff on most U.S. imports, dealing yet another legal setback to the White House in its efforts to wage a trade war without the express permission of Congress.

In a split ruling, the Court of International Trade found that Mr. Trump had wrongly invoked a decades-old trade law when he applied those duties beginning in February. The president imposed the levies after his previous set of punishing tariffs was struck down by the Supreme Court.

The decision appeared to place, for now, new limits on Mr. Trump’s trade powers, which he has wielded aggressively in hopes of resetting relationships with allies and adversaries, raising new revenue and encouraging more companies to make their products in the United States.

Trump Gets Put In His Place By–Saudi Arabia:

President Trump’s announcement on Sunday that the U.S. military would escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz angered Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who denied U.S. access to Saudi airspace and American bases in the country, according to a person briefed by Saudi officials and a U.S. military official.

Prince Mohammed’s action stunned U.S. officials and forced Mr. Trump to abandon his plan, according to a U.S. military official familiar with the sequence of events. The Saudis have since lifted the restrictions on the bases and overflights, but still have not agreed to permit the use of its territory in support of “Project Freedom,” as Mr. Trump named the naval operation, the U.S. official added.

“Oligarchs Of The World, Join Hands, Board The Bribe Plane, Bribe Plane”:

So, how are you planning on celebrating the nation’s 250th birthday? Have you been yearning, hoping against hope that President Donald Trump will get his luxury bribe jet from Qatar up and running by the Fourth of July? You are in luck!

The Air Force, which apparently doesn’t have enough to do these days despite being in a war and all, is racing to meet the July 4 deadline for Trump to fly around in his fancy new plane. You will not be surprised to learn that they were trying to make it by June 14 so Trump could get a present on his birthday.

Does having your taxpayer dollars go toward fixing up the bribe plane just so Trump can take it with him when he leaves office make you feel like a Real American Patriot?

Speaking of … how much did you pay for this? No one knows! The cost is secret!

It might be $400 million, it might be $1 billion, which is a comically big range. But according to Trump, spending millions of taxpayer dollars to turn the flying bribe palace into Air Force One is actually a way to save tax dollars.

It’s not clear how we’re saving anything when we know that Trump already diverted $934 million from money dedicated to modernizing nuclear missiles into an unidentified and classified project that everyone knows is the plane.

It would be inhumane of me to leave that earworm (not to be confused with RFK’s brainworm) unplayed. So:

What do you want to talk about?