DL Open Thread: Friday, August 25, 2023
At first, I was fixated by the Death Stare, figuring that Trump had rehearsed this ad nauseum in order to look as resolute as Winston Churchill in that famous WW II photo. Then, inevitably, my eyes became riveted on his ‘dome-icile’, and what does, or doesn’t, reside therein. If his hair is akin to, say, an ice shelf, it’s been melting from the inside out. Because ‘global warming’. I. Can’t. Stop. Looking. At. It.
Rethug Anti-Democracy Never Takes A Day Off. Wisconsin:
Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature asked that the newest Democratic-backed justice on the state Supreme Court recuse herself from lawsuits seeking to overturn GOP-drawn electoral maps, arguing that she has prejudged the cases.
Republicans argue in their motions filed with the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday and made public Wednesday that Justice Janet Protasiewicz can’t fairly hear the cases because during her campaign for the seat earlier this year she called the Republican-drawn maps “unfair” and “rigged” and said there needs to be “a fresh look at the gerrymandering question.”
You know, completely unlike the Rethug jurists who made this blatant gerrymander legal in the first place.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina redistricting ruling has set up a possible electoral windfall for congressional Republicans in preserving their U.S. House majority next year, declaring that judges should stay out of scrutinizing seat boundaries for partisan advantage.
While Democrats only need to flip five GOP seats overall to regain control, experts say the state Supreme Court decision means four Democratic incumbents in the state — three of them first-term members — are vulnerable.
Oil Trains Running Along Colorado River? Who thought this was a good idea? Turns out, the Feds. Until now:
Fears, concerns, and legal challenges over a proposed oil train route along the Colorado River were finally addressed in federal court last week. Until then, plans for the Uinta Basin Railway project, which would ferry vast amounts of crude oil from northeast Utah eastward alongside the Colorado River, sailed through federal agencies tasked with approving large transportation projects. But then the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, successfully challenged the project’s environmental impact assessments, siding with the railway’s opponents and striking a blow against what would have been the largest petroleum corridor in the United States.
A coalition of seven fossil fuel-producing counties in Utah allied with the investment bank Drexel Hamilton sought to quadruple oil production in Utah’s Uinta Basin, 12,000 square miles of desert floor crowned by mountains and currently accessible only by truck. The Ute Indian Tribe also has a stake in the project, as some of the oil would be extracted from Uintah and Ouray Reservation land. The $2 billion plan called for 88 miles of new track through the Ashley National Forest, connecting to an existing Union Pacific line into Colorado, which snakes another 150 miles along the Colorado River and into downtown Denver.
The crude would travel south from Denver toward the constellation of city-scale refineries on the Gulf Coast commonly referred to as “Cancer Alley.” Before the trains—up to five of them a day, each about two miles long—reached their final destination, a federal analysis predicted that, every other year, one of them was likely to experience an accident by the Colorado River.
Read the entire article. It’s almost impossible to understand how such a flawed analysis of the risks involved with this project were ignored by the Feds. Although–it’s not dissimilar to the rubber-stamping of projects here in Delaware with similar lack of interest from supposed environmental watchdogs.
Wine And Dine Two Supreme Court Justices–Get Your Case Heard. We’re talking two billionaires and a ‘wealth-tax’ case:
An influential thinktank closely linked to two billionaires who provided lavish travel gifts to conservative supreme court justices is behind a successful lobbying campaign to get the US high court to take on a case that could protect them and other billionaires from a possible future wealth tax.
The Manhattan Institute was one of eight conservative advocacy groups that filed amicus briefs urging the supreme court to take on Moore v US, a $15,000 tax case that Democrats have warned could permanently “lock in” the right of billionaires to opt out of paying fair taxes.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer is chairman of the Manhattan Institute and Kathy Crow, who is married to real estate mogul Harlan Crow, serves as a trustee of the group. Both have provided two of the justices – Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, respectively – with private travel gifts and have socialised with the judges on lavish vacations, according to reports in ProPublica and other media outlets.
“Give Us The Money, We’ll Build That Warehouse.” This is how ‘economic development’ works in Delaware, far from prying public eyes:
A Gainesville, Georgia, company wants $4.56 million in Delaware taxpayer money for a cold storage warehouse in Claymont.
Agile Cold Storage plans to be one of the first companies in First State Crossing, a mixed-use redevelopment of the former steel mill in Claymont. Spanning 425 acres, plans for the project include offices, retail, housing and additional industrial space.
The project will also take advantage of the new Claymont train station, which is expected to open in November before Thanksgiving, according to Delaware Transit Corp. CEO John Sisson.
Agile Cold Storage’s grant request will be heard at a Council on Development Finance meeting Monday. Applicants are brought to the council by the Delaware Prosperity Partnership, a privately run organization set up by Gov. John Carney to oversee the state’s economic development. Since the partnership’s founding in 2018, the council has never rejected a grant applicant.
I’m not opposed to the project. It’s possible a case could be made that it’s worth the $4.56 million state investment. But this privatization of state funding for economic development stands, along with budget-smoothing, as Carney’s two ‘legacies’. It’s up to the next governor to get rid of these legacies altogether.
What do you want to talk about?
I just figured you were moving to the center.
Somebody fixed it for me. I’m guessing the ‘Geek’ Squad.
He looks like he is thinking “I can’t believe I’m being arrested by black people. BLACK PEOPLE! The world has turned upside down!!”
Well hey, how about those corrupt and on the take supreme court justices? How about the refusal of congress to do anything about it, let alone impeach Thomas, first and foremost. This is a game that ends in gun fire and blood in many countries, as we’re on a rocket sled to the third world remind yourself: Yes, it can happen here. Is it really any wonder that Americans across the board hate the government?
A liberal and an idealist, I do not hate the government. Changing out thralls for humans improves it. And I work to that end.
Forgive my ignorance, I understand what the term “budget smoothing” means; however, I have missed the discussion on this forums objection to it. Can I get a recap? Thank you.
A couple of things. Although I don’t know where the idea originated, Carney ‘borrowed’ it from former Treasurer Ken Simpler. He then tried to get it enacted into law, but the General Assembly nixed it. He subsequently ordered all executive agencies under his control to conform to it, meaning the budgets that he’s submitted are based on that philosophy.
This scheme really comes from the Greenville Rethugs, who have been obsessed with never paying their fair share of taxes since before I’ve been alive. Carney is pretty much the only alleged Democrat who has embraced it. Too bad he’s the fucking governor.
The idea is to limit the growth of the base of the budget. Carney once again takes any revenue-raising ideas off the table like, you know, higher tax brackets for the wealthy.
One especially stoopid feature is, if, say, the budget will grow by 2%, all agencies under his control can only build in a 2% increase into their budgets. So, there is no providing for disparities between agencies’ (and by extension) needs regardless of issues facing the state. It’s a one-size-fits-all solution that doesn’t adjust to crises and problems in the state.
It also forbids ‘growing the base’ of the budget. Any increases must be one-time only. That’s why Carney comes up with schemes like screwing state retirees rather than thinking outside his green eyeshade.
This despite (at least) two piles of money the state refuses to touch: The Rainy Day Fund and the recently-created Budget Stabilization Fund. About $425 mill just sitting there.
It’s right out of Grover Norwquist’s playbook. When I was still in office I managed to convince enough of my colleagues to vote against a proposed constitutional change making a balanced budget ( mandatory cuts to the poor and working class) a constitutional requirement. Carney then imposed budget smoothing by executive order. The GA can overturn that if they were more than spineless jellyfish. John Kowalko
Oh. I got a budget smoothing last weekend and it definitely wasn’t that. I do have a lot of genital irritation though.
The basic problem is that the taxpayers of this year should pay for the services they get this year; anything that requires longer goes in the bond bill anyway. Instead the taxpayers of this year are being billed for services so future taxpayers won’t be. This arrangement is implicit in tax law, but obviously it must be made explicit to prevent cowards like Carney from employing it. Unfortunately, it works well as an incumbent protection racket, so he’s far from the only Democrat on board with it.
It’s blatantly unfair, and Richard Korn’s claim to fame is that he got this practice outlawed by a court in his county in New York.
I had to laugh out loud when I read that Trump self-reported his height and weight at 6’3″ and 215 pounds. One of the best takes on that is by Rupert Murdoch’s Daily Mail:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/nfl/article-12445893/Donald-Trump-Muhammad-Ali-Lamar-Jackson-heavyweight-champ-Oleksandr-Usyk-height-weight-6-3-215-arrest-atlanta.html
Everyone is having good laugh. But it should also remind everyone that Trump is a hardcore liar.