Let’s start with a couple of political ‘while I’m thinking about its’:
What’s wrong with Claire Snyder-Hall? Why in the world is she supporting Mark Schaeffer’s wife in a primary against Alonna Berry? Berry’s been a really good rep. My Sussex Spies know better than me. So tell me.
Whatever happened with that ethics investigation into Josue Ortega that was announced with much fanfare by Speaker Mimi Minor-Brown? What if this guy wins the primary? Then what?
Delaware City Refinery Fights DNREC-Imposed Fine:
The Delaware City refinery has appealed a nearly $1 million fine that state regulators imposed earlier this year following what they called an “uncontrolled” release of air pollution.
The fine was the maximum amount the state could issue for violating environmental permits under a new law that increased penalties on industrial polluters.
In the appeal, attorneys for refinery owner PBF Energy called the state order imposing the penalties an “abuse of discretion,” and said regulators ignored the company’s efforts to collaborate with them ahead of the offending emissions last spring.
Pity the poor Delaware City refinery. They had gotten away with paying chump change for their ongoing polluting of neighboring communities. No wonder they’ve taken umbrage at finally being held accountable.
Why? Because the General Assembly enacted Larry Lambert’s environmental justice bill, and DNREC, under new leadership, is enforcing it:
The appeal follows last month’s order from Delaware Environmental Secretary Greg Patterson that sanctioned the refinery for a release of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides between May 7 and May 30.
The releases into the atmosphere exceeded allowable limits by 745 tons for the sulfur dioxide and 50.5 tons for nitrogen oxides, according to the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.
In his order, Patterson assessed a maximum $40,000 daily fine for the 24 days of pollution. The $960,000 total is one of the largest fines the state has issued the refinery in recent years.
Patterson noted a history of similar violations by the refinery, and his belief that PBF Energy has the ability to pay the penalty.
“The nature, circumstances, extent, and gravity of the violations are significant,” Patterson said in his order.
In an emailed statement to Spotlight Delaware, Patterson also pointed to a portion of his order asserting that decisions by PBF Energy to keep certain equipment online during maintenance at the refinery “resulted in an economic benefit.”
Dispensing With the Third Way, Once And For All:
The statements seem as belligerent as Pete Hegseth on a bad hair day.
“We are preparing for the next war that is coming,” says Jonathan Cowan.
Cowan is president of Third Way, described by TheNew York Times as a “leading centrist Democratic group.” Cowan’s Third Way is preparing a $15 million war chest to “discredit democratic socialism.”
Robert Reich reveals that The Third Way is not a ‘leading centrist Democratic group’. How? He follows the money:
If you bother to look at the funding sources of Third Way — those that have been made public, that is (Third Way is structured as a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization that’s not legally required to publicly disclose its donors) — you’ll find a Star Wars cantina of billionaire megadonors, Fortune 500 CEOs, corporate dark money bundlers, and giant corporations.
Third Way senior vice president Matt Bennett has even conceded that “the majority” of Third Way’s donor support comes from the group’s board of trustees, most of whom are from the finance sector. (That’s the same Matt Bennett, by the way, who helped stage the infamous “Dukakis in a tank” photo-op that helped sink Dukakis’s 1988 presidential campaign.)
Here’s Third Way’s Board of Trustees (the most recent list available):
- Jonathan Vogelstein, chairman of New Providence Asset Management and senior advisor to private equity firm Warburg Pincus.
- David Heller, formerly global head of equity trading for Goldman Sachs.
- Bernard Schwartz (chairman emeritus), chairman and CEO of BLS Investments.
- David Horvitz, chairman of the board and CEO of SouthOcean Capital Partners, LLC and SouthOcean Investment Partners, LLC.
- David Coulter, managing director and senior advisor at Warburg Pincus, focusing on the firm’s financial services practice, and former vice chair of JPMorganChase.
- William Daley, vice chairman of Bank of New York Mellon, former vice chairman of JPMorganChase, former board member of pharmaceutical companies Abbott Labs and Merck.
- John Dyson, chairman of Millbrook Capital Management, Inc. (MCM), a private investment firm that manages a manufacturing company, a vineyard and wine group, and a hedge fund.
- Michael Edwards, deputy CIO of investment adviser Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisors.
- Andrew Feldstein, CEO and Co-CIO of BlueMountain Capital Management, board member of PNC Financial Services Group, former managing director of JPMorganChase.
- Brian Frank, founder and managing partner of Declaration Partners LP, an investment firm seeded by the founder of a large private equity firm.
- David Greenwald, chairman of finance law firm Fried Frank, former international general counsel and a deputy general counsel of Goldman Sachs.
- Derek Kaufman, former head of global fixed income at Citadel and a member of the firm’s Portfolio Committee, former managing director at JPMorganChase.
- Derek Kirkland, managing director and co-head of the Global Financial Institutions Group at Morgan Stanley’s Financial Institutions Group in Investment Banking.
- Doug Lawrence, CEO of DPL Green Investment and also managing principal and co-founder of 5 Stone Green Capital, formerly a managing director at JPMorganChase.
- Joseph Zimlich, CEO of private family financial manager the Bohemian Group, board member of First Western Trust Bank.
- Mark Spilker, founding member of GPS Investment Partners LLC, chairman of Chiron Investment Management LLC, former co-head of Goldman Sachs’s Investment Management Division, former president of Apollo Global Management, former member of Google’s Investment Advisory Committee.
- Barbara Manfrey Vogelstein, former venture capitalist, former partner at Warburg Pincus and Apax Partners & Co. Ventures.
- William Reeves, co-founder of BlueCrest Capital Management, former managing director at JPMorganChase.
In 2020, Third Way claimed that Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All plan would add more than $13 trillion to the federal deficit, although most other analyses — including one by the Koch-funded Mercatus Center — found that Sanders’s plan would save trillions while providing healthcare to millions of uninsured Americans.
Well, of course Third Way attacked Bernie’s plan. Among Third Way’s donors are pharmaceutical giant Amgen, pharmacy benefit manager CVS Health (which acquired health insurance giant Aetna in late 2018), and health products and drug company Baxter International.
Other corporate donors to Third Way are or have been members of the GOP-aligned American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate bill mill that links lobbyists with state lawmakers. Amgen, Baxter Healthcare, CVS Caremark, DuPont, and trade groups the Consumer Technology Association and NCTA – The Internet and Television Association are members.
The Third Way is not now, nor has ever been, a centrist Democratic organization. Repeated lazy and incorrect reporting by the NYTimes does not make it one.
Donald Trump In Catering. Insert jokes here:
Top administration officials engaged in an elaborate deception to spirit President Trump out of Turkey during the NATO summit there last month, transporting him in a catering container to a military jet because of a threat against him and Air Force One from Iran, two senior U.S. officials said on Monday.
Mr. Trump and other officials had said publicly that he would be leaving Turkey on July 8 aboard one of the older versions of Air Force One rather than a luxury 747-8 donated by Qatar that he had flown in on. Mr. Trump told reporters at the time that he was making the switch for “old time’s sake.”
Mr. Trump boarded the older plane from the left-side door in view of cameras, and news organizations, including The New York Times, reported that he had traveled on it to Britain, where he switched back to the newer plane. The Times reported at the time that the decision was driven in part by concern about the security of the new plane donated by Qatar, which had not been equipped with all of the defensive capabilities of older versions.
But instead of flying out aboard that older, powder blue, modified 747, Mr. Trump was whisked off that plane via a catering container that had been lifted to the opposite side of the plane from where the journalists traveling with him boarded, one of the U.S. officials said. The president was then taken to a third plane, which he flew in secret to Britain, the official with knowledge of the matter said.
Inquiring minds want to know: Was the catering container stocked with cheeseburgers? Did anyone conduct a before/after cheeseburger inventory? (I know you can do better than this. Snark away.)
Anybody Heard Of The Patriot Games? Yet another miserable Trump brainstorm:
The premise sounds almost fictional: one boy and one girl from every state, territory and some tribal nations, flown to a private campus in Ohio to compete in a televised athletic contest called the Patriot Games — a Trump-backed youth competition with obstacle courses, patriotic testimonials and inevitable comparisons to The Hunger Games.
Except unlike the dystopian book and movie franchise where kids are pitted in a televised battle of survival, the stakes in the Patriot Games won’t be life and death. The male and female winners will each receive $125,000 in college scholarship money.
For 16-year-old Tylee Herrmann, the pitch was simple. In her video application, she gave her age, her school in Arizona and her reason for wanting to compete: she wanted to help “bring patriotism back to the US.”
Streaming live over the weekend on ESPN with a primetime special airing on ABC Aug. 13, the Patriot Games are the latest example of the Trump administration elevating the politics of athleticism and toughness in celebration of America’s 250th birthday.
They come amid a long summer of spectacles put on by Freedom 250, the President Donald Trump-backed group that organized the UFC fight night on the White House lawn featuring a military flyover, plus the Great American State Fair on the National Mall and the immense July 4th fireworks display in Washington, DC.
Last year, Trump vowed that the games would feature “the greatest high school athletes.” However, the event appears to be shaping up to be more of a highly produced display of youth patriotism than athletic excellence.
Trump will attend the finals. You can look for him in catering.
What do you want to talk about?
re: the patriot games – all i can hope for is the announcer says “and may the odd be ever in your favor”
The State Auditor dropped an audit of compliance with dual employment laws designed to prevent double dipping. When you see language like “The absence of reliable records prevented us from obtaining sufficient, appropriate evidence to fully assess compliance and resulted in scope limitations.” It means the state failed the audit.
Was that the state in general, or were there specific agencies that didn’t comply?
You know, like our august state educational institutions?
Asked, and answered:
https://auditor.delaware.gov/2026/08/11/dual-employment-performance-audit-fy23-25/
This is for FY’s 2023-2025. The key takeaway:
“The audit revealed that the State continues to lack a comprehensive process for classifying, identifying, and monitoring dual employment relationships and activities. AOA continued to face longstanding challenges previously identified in prior audit cycles. AOA could not successfully develop AOA was unable to fully assess whether State agencies and political subdivisions complied with the Law. This condition existed because the State continues to lack a comprehensive process for classifying, identifying, and monitoring dual employment relationships and activities. AOA could not successfully develop a complete and accurate population of dually employed individuals by combining information from the Payroll Human Resources Statewide Technology (PHRST) system, Public Integrity Commission (PIC) disclosure documents, and Legislative Hall records.
AOA continued to face longstanding challenges previously identified in prior audit cycles. Significant weaknesses in both statewide oversight and Covered Organizations level compliance are outlined below:
At the statewide level, the PIC, the entity responsible for administering the State’s dual employment requirements, lacks sufficient staffing, technological resources, and centralized data collection processes to effectively carry out its oversight responsibilities. The PIC currently relies primarily on annual self-disclosure filings and has no automated system capable of identifying individuals employed concurrently by multiple public entities.
At the statewide Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system level, the absence of standardized, enterprise-wide reporting of individuals with dual employment relationships materially limits the State’s ability to consistently monitor compliance, detect potential instances of noncompliance, and provide complete and reliable audit evidence.
At the Covered Organizations level, AOA found inconsistent implementation of statutory requirements. Many organizations did not maintain the separate verified time records required by the Law, had not incorporated dual employment requirements into their internal control processes, and lacked formal procedures to ensure supervisory verification of work hours or appropriate payroll adjustments for coincidence hours.
AOA encountered significant scope limitations affecting the engagement. Most notably, the University of Delaware declined to provide certain requested personnel, payroll, and scheduling records, limiting AOA’s ability to independently verify compliance for employees may have been subjected to State appropriations.
Overall, the audit concludes that Delaware’s current dual employment oversight framework is fragmented and largely dependent on manual processes and employee self-reporting. The absence of centralized oversight, monitoring, automated detection capabilities, and clearly defined accountability significantly increases the risk that coincident hours worked by dually employed individuals will not be identified or corrected.”
Where are you seeing that Claire is supporting Ruby? This would be a huge betrayal. I know there’s controversy and a difference of vote between Alonna and Claire on SB23, but I’ve seen no public statement by Claire that she’s supporting Ruby.
She is.
Right, Claire?