Oops, They’re Gonna Do It Again. Reassess, that is:
New Castle County intends to reassess every property in northern Delaware a year earlier than previously planned after a recent audit of a sampling of commercial properties found an abundance of errors.
County Executive Marcus Henry made the announcement Thursday in a statement sent out alongside the audit report.
Completed by real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield, the report examined 50 commercial properties whose valuations increased less than the median following the 2024 reassessment — or were lower than a recent sale.
The report highlighted a variety of what investigators called discrepancies, including misstated building sizes, inaccurate property classifications, and even erroneous room counts for hotels and apartment buildings.
Assessors from Tyler Technologies — the contractor hired to complete the reassessment — also conducted only exterior examinations of properties, and relied upon county data for information about the interiors.
Further, only about 1% of commercial property owners responded to surveys asking for updated information about their properties prior to the reassessment. Del Grande said the surveys could have provided information about income that commercial properties produce, among other details.
Next, county officials will develop and then advertise a new request for contractors to submit bids to conduct the next property reassessment.
County officials are targeting July 2028 as their date for completing the base property assessments – one year earlier than previously planned.
Del Grande said the next reassessment will again be completed by a third-party vendor, and that nothing in the latest audit findings would preclude Tyler Technologies from bidding and being considered by the county.
Really? Gross incompetence and taking short-cuts should not be an impediment to Tyler running it back? AYFKM?
D’s Pummel Rethugs Over Protecting Pedophiles. We’ll see how much the Epstein cover-up resonates:
Across the country, Republicans are facing attacks from Democrats saying that they have sided with pedophiles, rapists and sexual abusers. Many of these ads target Republicans, like Hinson, over votes related to the release of files connected to the infamous, late child sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, who was close friends with President Donald Trump for a decade. Others discuss personal connections to or official actions that GOP candidates took to reduce sentences for sex criminals, including pedophiles.
Political campaigns have always been negative, but increasingly they are raising emotional and upsetting issues that past candidates would have shied away from putting on television. What once was verboten is now part and parcel of politics. And not without reason.
“It’s new in the sense that the amount of attention being paid to this particular sad topic is much more than normal,” said John Geer, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University and author of “In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns.”
“But it’s also in the era of Jeffrey Epstein and all the efforts to keep his files from coming forward in the public and that’s stirred up lots of concerns,” Geer added. “So, the issue is salient and therefore it’s being raised in a lot of different quarters.”
In a number of high-profile races, attack ads mentioning pedophilia or other sex crimes go beyond Jeffrey Epstein and mention actual actions taken by the candidate to help criminals convicted of these crimes.
An ad from Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC backing Democrats, goes after Texas Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton for giving Adam Hoffman, who was accused of sexually abusing his son’s friend from the ages of 6 to 10, a deal that allowed him to plead guilty to misdemeanors and be sentenced to 29 days in prison, including time served, and kept him off the sex offender registry. The ad notes that Hoffman’s case was represented by the same lawyer who separately represented Nate Paul, one of “Paxton’s biggest donors,” and characterized the situation as an “Epstein-style deal to let a pedophile walk free.”
In Arizona, Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, has been hammering her opponent, GOP Rep. Andy Biggs, over his role as a state legislator in killing legislation that targeted police corruption connected to fundamentalist preacher Warren Jeffs. Jeffs, who ran a polygamous cult in Arizona, was convicted of child sexual abuse in 2011. Biggs has denied that his opposition to the legislation had anything to do with Jeffs and was solely due to opposition from the Fraternal Order of Police. Hobbs’ ads targeting Biggs link the Jeffs allegations to the congressman’s votes against releasing the Epstein files.
In Nebraska, Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts faces an attack from the Nebraska Values PAC over his pardon for a man who pleaded guilty to raping his now ex-wife. The ad features John Arias’ victim, Jody Snogren, describing the rape and then-Gov. Ricketts’ vote to pardon Arias after he served his sentence.
“Because of Pete Ricketts, my attacker is now allowed to own a gun and had his name removed from the sex offender registry,” Snogren says in the ad. “I have no idea why Sen. Ricketts chose my rapist over me.”
We all know, if not officially ‘knowing’, that Trump is all over those Epstein files and that DOJ and Rethugs in Congress have kept that information from us. Oh, need I mention QAnon? Rethugs embraced the insane rabbit-holes that QAnon led the easily-influenced down. About damn time that D’s hammered at these hypocrites.
Christian Corruption–A ProPublica follow-up:
Last month, in collaboration with the investigative sports podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out, Mother Jones published a months-long investigation into Life Surge, the Christian wealth seminar company that has attracted large crowds with celebrity speakers including college football legend Tim Tebow, NBA icon Magic Johnson, and Red Sox great David Ortiz. We detailed how the company attracts crowds of thousands who pay around $20 to attend its one-day events, which mix a star-studded lineup with worship music, tearful and heartfelt Christian testimony, and demonstrations of the company’s proprietary stock-market and real-estate investment strategies. Attendees are given the opportunity to sign up for three-day “impact classes,” where, they are told, they will learn more investment tips—so that they can improve their own finances as well as make a Christian “kingdom impact.” At those classes, which now cost about $97, former attendees reported salespeople invoking Christian faith to sell them a program called SurgeU, investment education packages ranging from $10,000-$40,000.
After paying for the SurgeU classes through a third-party financing company contracted by Life Surge, some attendees have reported ending up tens of thousands of dollars in debt. As one dissatisfied customer wrote in a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission, “I am so devastated that Christians like Tim Tebow made me trust in something that has taken so much money from me. This is evil, especially because I’m disabled on a limited income.” Karen Neal, a 61-year-old former Life Surge customer, told me that for her, buying into the SurgeU classes was a $15,000 mistake. “I see many of these strong Christian artists and strong Christian people that are up there speaking at the Life Serve conferences,” she said. “And it’s like, do they know what’s happening to some of these people that are getting into this?”
Our investigation appears to have touched a nerve: In the days following the release of the Mother Jones story and the Pablo Torre Finds Out episode, there was a mass exodus of celebrities from upcoming Life Surge events. Tips from former Life Surge customers and employees flooded in and shed new light on the company’s complex web of financial interests—and in at least one case, its failure to pay its bills.
Life Surge CEO Jeremy Nosek declined to respond to our request for comment for this piece before our deadline, but he expressed frustration with our previous investigation. “Your reporting, along with that of Pablo Torre Finds Out, has demonstrated a pattern of selectively presenting information, distorting context, and misleading your audiences,” he wrote. “We have little confidence that our responses will be represented fairly or accurately.”
Dem’s weasel words. In fairness, the ‘celebrities’ might not have known about the entire scheme. Although, in fairness, they should have known:
According to a former employee who worked closely with the Life Surge executive team and contacted us after our investigation, the speakers were briefed about the three-day impact classes but not the pricier SurgeU packages. “They know that they are being hired for a Christian event that has a business focus, and they might know about the first classes,” he said. “But they do not know what goes on after that.”
Me? Whenever ‘business’ and ‘religion’ mix, I automatically smell scam.
Netanyahu Looks To Obliterate Palestinian West Bank Residents:
Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the army to prepare for a “very extensive” operation in the occupied West Bank after two Israeli soldiers and two Palestinians were killed in an exchange of fire near a checkpoint in Hebron.
Netanyahu said the military would go house to house and demolish homes in an operation on a scale unseen in the occupied West Bank for decades, after the Israeli military said it had thwarted a “terror attack” by two armed Palestinians on Friday, amid heightened tensions before next week’s election.
Because Bibi thinks that a high body count can heighten his reelection prospects. Pure unadulterated evil.
What do you want to talk about?
“Whenever ‘business’ and ‘religion’ mix, I automatically smell scam.” – hold on, there’s a separation? no, religion is a business and a scam