Happy Arden Faire Day! If you’re planning on coming, the pick-up spot for the buses has been changed due to wet grounds at the Hanby YMCA. Instead, go to:
the Claymont Transit Center located on Philadelphia Pike in Claymont.
Buses will pick up and drop off fairgoers at the Claymont Transit Center.
Will ChristianaCare Get To Build Its Georgetown ‘Micro-Hospital’? Not without a fight:
ChristianaCare’s plans for a new health campus in Georgetown are facing opposition from three other health systems, with Bayhealth, TidalHealth and Beebe raising questions about whether the proposed micro-hospital can move forward under Delaware law.
ChristianaCare has proposed a $65.1 million, 42,000-square-foot health campus at 20769 DuPont Blvd. The project would include primary care, specialty care and behavioral health services, along with what ChristianaCare calls a neighborhood hospital or micro-hospital with eight emergency department beds and eight inpatient beds.
Bayhealth, TidalHealth and Beebe have each sent letters to state health care regulators raising legal, licensing and ownership concerns about the proposed hospital.
Bayhealth has asked the Delaware Health Resources Board to resolve legal and regulatory questions surrounding the proposed facility before conducting a substantive review of ChristianaCare’s application.
TidalHealth has asked state leaders to deny, dismiss or pause the neighborhood hospital portion of the application. The health system argues the proposed facility may not meet Delaware’s statutory definition of a hospital and says the state does not currently have a licensing classification for a micro-hospital. TidalHealth also raised questions about the proposed ownership and operational arrangement involving ChristianaCare and Emerus Holdings, a for-profit company.
Beebe has also opposed ChristianaCare’s application for the proposed neighborhood hospital, arguing the proposed facility does not meet statutory requirements for a general hospital and raising questions about its proposed ownership and operational structure.
ChristianaCare said the proposed project is intended to address longstanding gaps in access to health care in Sussex County.
Delmarva Power Asks Courts To Enable Massive Fee Increase:
Delmarva Power filed a legal appeal in a Delaware court on Friday afternoon, seeking to overturn regulators’ cuts to its interim rate hike – a move that, if successful, could raise customers’ bills faster than expected.
The appeal was reportedly filed in Delaware Superior Court, the company said. It came just hours before the court closed for the Labor Day holiday weekend, despite the Public Service Commission (PSC) approving the interim rate schedule on Aug. 5.
Delmarva Power Region President Marcus Beal told the Daily State News on Friday, however, that the utility sought to exclude a temporary price hike known as a Distribution System Improvement Charge from the PSC’s calculations. He was unavailable to speak to Spotlight Delaware on Friday evening.
The PSC, a five-member appointed body that oversees Delaware’s regulated utilities and rules on their expansions and investment returns, further cut interim rate hikes for Delmarva Power after the company voluntarily reduced its initial request by about a third.
In a Friday statement, the electric utility, which serves about 300,000 customers across all of New Castle County and parts of Kent and Sussex counties, said that the PSC’s decision “departed from Delaware statute by arbitrarily reducing the company’s interim rate further.”
(Of course, in the past, the PSC ‘arbitrarily’ approved pretty much every Delmarva rate increase request. But this is a new PSC.)
The utility and its rate case – the third rate hike sought in five years by Delmarva to recoup the costs of its infrastructure investments in recent years – have become a bipartisan target for criticism as energy costs have skyrocketed in the last two years.
Delmarva Power initially asked for $44.6 million in new revenue from base rates, as well as moving $23.2 million from a temporary price hike known as a Distribution System Improvement Charge into the base rate, making those costs permanently higher for customers.
That request, totaling $68.6 million, would have raised the electric bill of an average user by $6.42 per month, or 4.13%, according to Delmarva.
But after political pressure, the utility voluntarily lowered the total interim request in July to $45.9 million, with escalation factors that would kick in at seven and 12 months following their approval in conjunction with recent state legislation that aimed to lower the temporary costs for consumers.
Instead, the PSC rejected that plan and approved an interim rate that would start at $34.3 million – or half of the utility’s original request.
And to make matters more dramatic for consumers, the utility filed an update to its request earlier this week that increases its total request to $75.6 million, or about 10%. It would be the largest single rate case increase in state history, if ultimately approved.
That Pete Hegseth: Hollowing out the military:
U.S. government investigators have taken the extraordinary step of subjecting roughly 50 members of the U.S. military’s Joint Staff to polygraph tests over leaks to journalists, including about how the Iran war has created a shortage of crucial munitions, according to officials briefed on the move.
The investigators asked military officers and civilian employees on the Joint Staff if they disclosed classified information to members of the press, and about whether they provided information about diminished U.S. munitions stocks.
The polygraph tests were conducted in August after a flurry of news reports detailed diminished stocks of crucial munitions, including of long-range missiles and Patriot interceptors. The show of force appeared aimed at not just ferreting out anyone who may have shared information, but intimidating others who might do so in the future, according to people with knowledge of the effort.
Because we don’t have a right to know.
Sad–Trump’s Holding On To All His Money:
It isn’t every day that Republicans admit that Donald Trump is harming their midterm hopes. After all, that would require an admission of Trumpian fallibility, which is unacceptable to MAGA. But on Thursday, Kentucky Representative James Comer dropped a revealing admission on Fox News while discussing the money woes of embattled GOP incumbents.
“A lot of the individual members’ online donations are down because more of the small-dollar donors have gravitated towards MAGA Inc.,” Comer said, referring to the super PAC overseen by Trump.
Comer’s revelation came during a discussion on Fox about the news that MAGA Inc. has spent little on midterm races out of the pot of $400 million it had raised as of July 31. Comer—a senior Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee—said he hopes Trump’s PAC will spend more on GOP contests going forward.
“We’re going to need every penny of it,” Comer said. He carefully suggested he’s in no way criticizing Trump. Instead, he praised the president, insisting he’s “managed” his super PAC money “well” by not yet spending it on House races, supposedly to hold it for the home stretch.
But—by specifically clarifying that small donors are giving to Trump’s super PAC rather than to GOP incumbents and candidates—Comer shed light on a deeper way that Trump is screwing his party. Here’s why: If small donors are giving to MAGA Inc. to the exclusion of Republicans, it’s in no small part because Trump is helping make that happen.
Recall that Trump has repeatedly broadcast a message to his voters—in many different ways—that the GOP Congress has failed him. Trump recently elevated a long screed from a MAGA influencer who sharply criticized congressional Republicans for letting Trump down by continuing to “slow walk” everything Trump voters expect from the president’s agenda.
That sparked widespread media discussion, but it’s hardly a one-off. Trump himself recently declared that his voters are “not angry at me, but they are angry at Republicans.” He emphasized this several times to drive it home, even suggesting his supporters might not turn out: “The question is, will they vote?”
Those barbs are aimed at discouraging exactly the Trump voters that Republicans need big turnout among this fall. It’s just the sort of talk that could induce small-dollar Trump supporters to … give to MAGA Inc. rather than to GOP candidates. So Comer’s admission that this is now happening underscores how badly Trump is screwing the GOP. That he’s also hoarding the money—and not spending it on GOP races—is just the cherry on the melting sundae.
Trump has $400 Mill at his disposal. We all know where that money is going–to Trump.
What do you want to talk about?
