DL Open Thread: Weds., Aug. 28, 2019
NCC Council Approves Height Limits On Landfills. The vote was unanimous, with two abstentions. A tip of the sombrero to Matt Meyer and to Council. It’s about time someone, anyone, challenged Delaware’s casual environmental racism. Couldn’t find out who abstained on the County website. Who were the two miscreants? Nancy, were you there?
Trump Moves To Expand Logging In Alaskan Wilderness. Hey, anything Bolsonaro does, Trump can do even worse. Someone needs to look into Russian interference in the Brazilian elections.
Trump Guts FEMA Funding For More ICE Detention Centers. Then complains about tropical storm that could hit Puerto Rico.
Top Trump/McConnell Financier Driving Amazon Deforestation. One Steven Schwarzman, a founder of Blackstone. Did I say an ally of Trump and McConnell?:
In 2018, he was paid at least $568 million, which was, in fact, a drop from the $786 million he made the year before. He has been generous toward McConnell and Trump with that wealth. In 2016, he gave $2.5 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, McConnell’s Super PAC and put Jim Breyer, McConnell’s billionaire brother-in-law, on the board of Blackstone. Two years later, Schwarzman kicked in $8 million to McConnell’s Super PAC.
Blackstone employees have given well over $10 million to McConnell and his Super PAC over the years, making them the biggest source of direct financing over McConnell’s career. McConnell’s Senate campaign declined to comment.
Schwarzman is a close friend and adviser to Trump, and served as the chair of his Strategic and Policy Forum until it fell apart in the wake of the Charlottesville neo-Nazi rally, in which Trump famously praised “very fine people, on both sides.” In December 2017, as the final details of the GOP tax cut were being ironed out, Schwarzman hosted a $100,000-a-plate fundraiser for Trump. Some of the president’s dinner companions complained about the tax bill, and days later, Trump slashed the top percentage rate in the final package from 39.6 to 37.
There has to be a special place in Hell for the whole lot of them.
Pool Boys, Personal Trainers: The Dubious Financial Shenanigans Of Jerry Falwell Jr. And Liberty University. Sure looks like moral rectitude takes a back seat to…erectitude.
What do you want to talk about?
Prime Minister Boris is gonna suspend Parliament. surely THIS is the thing Corbyn has been waiting for to ride in and save Europe.
No point in baiting your target, he’s banned.
We are winning! I think this vote is a clear reflection of the old men waking up. They saw what happened to their pals powers and weiner in 18. They saw Bell catch a primary from a strong opponent for this cycle.
As Jason 330 pointed out in an earlier post all the county council folks have filed oddly early. I don’t think this goes as smooth back in 2017. Keep it up!
Waste Management is not going away. Maybe Darius Brown can give those campaign contributions back to the Waste Management lobbyists and take his manhood out of a blind trust.
Sen. Brown–we’re watching you. If you persist in selling your office, we will persist in calling you out. Selling out your constituents for dirty campaign cash is a firing offense. If you wanna talk, you know how to reach us.
Oh, and Bobby Byrd? Haven’t you made enough money off of the misery of communities that you have subjected to environmental racism yet?
Thomas Edsall with a data-based look at political realignment. Turns out the biggest migration from D to R isn’t the white working class, it’s white people with higher-than-average income but no college degree.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/opinion/trump-white-voters.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
BREAKING: Kristen Gillibrand is out:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sen-kirsten-gillibrand-ends-her-presidential-bid/2019/08/28/a277fe24-c9b8-11e9-8067-196d9f17af68_story.html
Becomes a regular on Morning Joe in 3-2-1…
Somewhere, Al Franken is popping the cork on some bubbly.
Nailed the Morning Joe. Democrats need another scold warning them that unpopular centrism is the only way to win
Time’s up for Gillibrand. Democratic voters came forward and held her accountable.
The two abstentions on the landfill height vote in NCC Council were Tim Sheldon, who had a legit conflict-of-interest b/c he works for the Delaware Solid Waste Authority, and Janet Kilpatrick, who apparently had nightmares of landfills in Greenville.
I think she lives in Hockessin, where it already smells like a dump on the days they turn over the mushroom soil.
Sheldon’s abstention is interesting. This landfill is not under the purview of DSWA, however but of DNREC, so he is not directly involved.
Kilpatrick, as a ‘good GOPerhead’, just doesn’t want to side against a business in any manner, my guess.
So this is a good bill and I hope it holds against some action of the General Assembly to over ride it.
But I do not hesitate to say that Saint Meyer is flying this action as a catch all of goodness (including two campaign donation requests in the space of several days referring to his action) but he is cherry picking.
Neglected in his essay are the increase in pollutants that come with his land use department – as far as responsibility for increases in auto/truck tail pipe emissions as relates to traffic congestion and new land use application approvals.
Neglected are the new, fresh elimination of traffic mitigation and congestion protections from the UDC by way of Meyer’s NCC Ord. 19-005 spearheaded by the Committee of 100 (featuring the newly energized and public Pam Scott), the DSCC, Business Roundtable, DelDOT, Governor Carney, members of the General Assembly, and Janet Kilpatrick et. al. (her guaranteed 7 votes for the county executive were bragged about by Meyer from the onset of the 19-005 introduction in January 2019).
Just sayin’
DSWA will gain financially Nancy, because of the closing of the Landfill. That’s why I abstained from the vote. Steve knew it was legit as I said on WDEL and my district thanked me
They have a 130 ft. height limit now under a fairly recent permit. NCC limit is increasing that to 140 ft., so hard to claim NCC is “closing it.”
Point taken that once their height limit is reached, DSWA would be the only dumping facility in DE eligible to negotiate new dumping.
I guess my question then, after Tim’s response, is how this landfill got a special status under DNREC in the first place.
Now the business is threatening to sue and Meyer is calling on their charitable nature as good citizens not to……. “has asked Waste Management “as good corporate citizens” not to sue over the legislation.” D’oh.
New WDDE report https://www.delawarepublic.org/post/legal-expert-not-persuaded-drpi-landfills-claims-against-new-county-limits
Nancy: The County did the right thing b/c the State Senate didn’t/wouldn’t. BTW, I’ve been told by a very good source that John ‘I’m Not An Environmental Racist’ Carney wanted the landfill expansion to move forward. Just like he wanted that cement slagging operation located in Southbridge.
Only Matt Meyer and NCC Council have stepped forward to stop environmental racism. Leave it to you to find fault b/c Meyer isn’t Tom Gordon. For which the rest of us can all be thankful.