Author Archives: cassandra_m

About cassandra_m

"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas." -Shirley Chisholm

Progress on Delaware’s National Park?

That is what I thought I was going to get in this USN&WR blog post. But basically this tells us that Senator Tom Carper is now leading the charge on this thing now that Biden is VP. And that the stars seem to be aligned for us to finally get this park:

Delaware doesn’t have what most national parks do—vast acreage. But at the suggestion of First State citizens, Interior is looking at a unique model that would connect historical and cultural landmarks in a collection of spoke and hub patterns, like a bike. “A hub with spokes leading to maybe the Golden Fleece Tavern where the Constitution was first debated and ratified in 1787,” suggests Carper. “Or the spokes could lead to stops on the Underground Railroad.” Legislation is required, but with the support of Biden and Salazar, says Carper, “I like our chances.”

I hope we get this park too, and I’m very interested in how they seem to be structuring it — it will encourage visitors to roam all over the state, I think. I wish we had some news other than Carper is working on it. But this is not a bash Carper post — this is an effort that I think we all agree could be a fantastic thing for us.

A New Mike Castle Decision Window –UPDATE

Allan Loudell spoke to Mike Castle on WDEL news today (noon hour) about a number of subjects, and Castle indicated to Allan that he would be making a decision re: his electoral future in the “next month or so”. Castle noted that he needed to make a decision relatively shortly in fairness to the state party, who would need some time to plan in reaction to whatever his decision was. I don’t think that Allan got much else out of Castle on this subject, but I didn’t hear all of the interview — people kept calling me today.

Did any of you hear this? Did you hear anything in Castle’s response that might give you reason to think he would run or not run? And what else did Castle have to say?

UPDATE: Allan has posted his entire interview with Mike Castle on his blog.

The C Street “Family” or, How To Understand Right Wing Hypocrisy

Jeff Sharlet wrote a book called The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, which expands on an article he wrote for Harpers called Jesus Plus Nothing. Sharlet actually had a chance to live with these guys for awhile and has an amazing (and chilling) story to tell about this group that is apparently Ground Zero for Christianists in power or who want to be in power.

Sharlet was on Bill Maher recently — here is the complete interview and it is worth every minute:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr69bhccD-Q[/youtube]

In a recent Salon article, Sharlet describes the group thusly:

If sexual license was all the Family offered the C Street men, however, that would merely be seedy and self-serving. But Family men are more than hypocritical. They’re followers of a political religion that embraces elitism, disdains democracy, and pursues power for its members the better to “advance the Kingdom.” They say they’re working for Jesus, but their Christ is a power-hungry, inside-the-Beltway savior not many churchgoers would recognize. Sexual peccadilloes aside, the Family acts today like the most powerful lobby in America that isn’t registered as a lobby — and is thus immune from the scrutiny attending the other powerful organizations like Big Pharma and Big Insurance that exert pressure on public policy.

But it goes further — after telling this group of men (mostly) and women (with at least two Democrats that I count in the current group) that they are “Chosen by God”, they are told that there is nothing that they can do wrong, as long as they were doing it in the service of the work (of gaining power) that they were chosen for. So they are accountable to no one — not even the people who vote them into power in the first place. This explains alot about the wide and deep strain of GOP hypocrisy (Christianists mostly) — they can say and do anything they need to in the service of power, but being accountable for actions or what they say never has to be part of the calculus. It would explain how David Vitter could get away with visiting prostitutes and keep his job while Eliot Spitzer is working his way out of his own disgrace. It would explain how a group of people who badly want to have the 10 Commandments posted damn near everywhere don’t mind relying on routine lying and character assassination to achieve heir ends. Apparently the ends are more important than living by the Commandments.

When You Mess with the Delaware Majority Leader, You Get the Horns

I wish I had thought of that title first, but it is the title of a blog post over at The Sporting Blog, part of The Sporting News. But Rep. Pete Schwarzkopf is shaping up to be something of a hero among some sports blogs.

Sports betting in Delaware has gotten a decent amount of attention this week, covering the lawsuit filed against the State by the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and NCAA to stop the implementation of the newly approved sports betting scheme. These leagues have gotten an assist from Senators Orrin Hatch and John Kyland Congressmen Heath Schuler, Gregory Meeks and Spencer Bachus who all oppose Delaware’s plan and who are urging the DOJ to work to stop not just this effort, but the NJ lawsuit looking to neutralize the law grandfathering in sportsbetting.

But while the sports leagues and certain congresspeople are gearing up to fight the State on betting, the sports blogosphere (the little that I’ve looked it) seems to be solidly rooting for us — or at least for these leagues to get a well-deserved smackdown on something. The SportsBlog above took at look at Pete Schwartzkopf’s reaction to the lawsuit and has admiring words:

Unusually for a politician, Delaware majority leader Peter Schwarzkopf does not live under a rock. Nor does he take obviously hypocritical crap from anyone:

It is hard to imagine why moving forward with sports betting in Delaware will undermine the integrity of professional or college sports. Las Vegas has promoted sports betting for many years, so Delaware is not covering new ground here. When it comes to expanding state sponsored gaming, legitimate debate and discussion should continue among Delaware’s elected representatives and its citizens. But the self-serving, hypocritical pronouncements and legal threats by these for-profit sports leagues that have sued Delaware should be rejected.

Oh, snap. And that goes double for the NCAA, which is threatening to prohibit postseason events in Delaware at the same time they do this:

We also learned that the NCAA … sponsored the Las Vegas Bowl last year, housing its players in hotel casinos where bets are taken on games.

The SportsBlog likes this taking on the hypcritical from our Majority Leader and hope that they get to see Pete on Around the Horn soon as an improvement on the current lineup. The Dagger (a blog on college hoops) praises the Majority Leader and so does Rush the Court in just as colorful language.

Congratulations are due to Rep. Schwarzkopf for providing the impetus to remind people just how much they don’t like these sports leagues and we hope he gets a turn on Around the Horn (the real ESPN one) soon.

Right Wing Townhall Harassment Strategy

So I guess given the persistent ratcheting up up the paranoid, hateful and just plain fact-challenged rhetoric of the wingnuts this can’t be a surprise — one of the teabagging organizers is providing detailed directions on how to disrupt townhalls held by Democratic congresspeople this August:

The lobbyist-run groups Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, which orchestrated the anti-Obama tea parties earlier this year, are now pursuing an aggressive strategy to create an image of mass public opposition to health care and clean energy reform. A leaked memo from Bob MacGuffie, a volunteer with the FreedomWorks website Tea Party Patriots, details how members should be infiltrating town halls and harassing Democratic members of Congress.

Their marching orders? Look here:

– Artificially Inflate Your Numbers: “Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up. The Rep should be made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington.”

– Be Disruptive Early And Often: “You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep’s presentation, Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early.”

– Try To “Rattle Him,” Not Have An Intelligent Debate: “The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions.”

Lee Atwater before he repented would have been really proud of this. Joe McCarthy would have been delighted to see his own tactics refined so well. Don’t even pretend anymore to anything resembling an intelligent debate or basic respect. Just get out to these townhalls, be really disruptive, get as much media attention as possible and hope that the bullying actually intimidates both Congresspeople and attendees. And all of this from the Party of Victimization — who apparently aren’t so victimized that they don’t mind bullying other people. Change the conversation to your own personal bad behavior so that those interested in talking with their Congressperson never get a real chance to do so.

Brandywine Valley Drive of a Lifetime

The National Geographic Traveler magazine has a feature called Drive of a Lifetime, and the Brandywine Valley makes this list in this month’s issue. So check it out:

It is always nice when a local treasure gets deserved recgnition. Many of you reading are native Delawareans, so help me out here:

  • Would you add any Must See stops to this Brandywine Valley Drive?
  • What are other Drives of a Lifetime here in Delaware?

Tell us what you think in the comments.

CRI An Honest Broker? — Part 3

This installment is going to get a bit further afield from the fine work that ‘Bulo has done in taking a look at this conservative “think tank”. Here we take a look at the connection of Ceasar Rodney Institute to the large and highly networked institutional apparatus that is the conservative think tank business. David Brock wrote at length about the multiple families and foundations that provided the majority of the funds to create the policy, training and advocacy institutions that exist to further their personal interests and to pull the country to the right. Markos Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong detailed alot of this in their book, Crashing the Gates (a book that advocated that the left do some of this institution building). To be sure, there is little right now on a national level of right-wing ideology that has much purchase, but the institutions soldier on and even increase.

One of the efforts at conservative institution building is at the state level — trying to replicate their national apparatus that at one time brought us to the brink of financial ruin in every single state. Ceasar Rodney Institute is connected to one such group — the State Policy Network. Their mission (from their website):

State Policy Network is the capacity building service organization for America’s free market, state-focused think tank community. We advance a free society by providing leadership development, management training and networking opportunities for think tank professionals and by promoting strategic partnerships among market-oriented organizations.
Founded in 1992, SPN is the only group in the country dedicated solely to improving the practical effectiveness of independent, non-profit, market-oriented, state-based think tanks.

Does that language look familiar? It should — because the Ceasar Rodney Institute also labels itself “Market-oriented” as a way to avoid saying the word “conservative”.

But SPN is specifically in the business of helping to propagate this kind of conservative apparatus — complete with tools to get started and some funding help — this past year saw them get all 50 of their “think-tanks” in place. And once up and running, these various “think tanks” spend their efforts writing up ‘research” pieces trying to push their bete noirs and trying to push local policymaking efforts to the right. All while hiding behind “free-market” and never saying “conservative”.

Members or affiliates of the SPN have very similar mission wording as does Ceasar Rodney Institute — none of the ones I looked at said “conservative” , either. And they run the gamut — the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota seems to have the energy to provide links to the work and commentary of other people and organize a conference or two; while the infamous Heartland Institute is still banging the drum on the evils of tobacco control as well as poo-pooing climate change science. These are the people funded by tobacco companies and EXXON and subject of the recent NYT reporting that showed that even though their funders knew that they were wrong on climate change, they still kept on trying to discredit it. Just scroll through their member sites an you see the usual litany of conservative complaints, but this time arrayed against state-level initiatives and almost always behind a mission statement that never mentions the word “conservative”.

But back to SPN and its connections to the river of wingnut welfare — this (it is a cached copy) shows some of their major donors over the years. To those familiar with the families and foundations funding the conservative movement over the last 30 years, this list will look vary familiar. The Roe Foundation, Olin Foundation, Lambe Foundation and many others have been ground zero for what we often call “wingnut welfare”. Take a spin through the bios of the Board of the SPN and you’ll see a number of folks who have worked for some of these foundations or for some of the institutions these foundations fund — including Heritage and AEI. This is why we call it “wingnut welfare” — conservatives have established enough institutions to be able to employ those they think are talented and who pass the right litmus tests.

So how does this relate back to Ceasar Rodney Institute? Well, they do pretty openly state their connection to the SPN. According the the SPN Annual Report, the Ceasar Rodney Institute was one of the last startups the SPN needed to complete their 50 state network. Here’s what the report says:

The Caesar Rodney Institute came out of the starting blocks strong in 2008 as the organization increased its Board of Directors to seven and committed to making transparency its primary project for 2009. To date, CRI has made significant progress on its two open government efforts, “DelawareSpends. com” and “SunlightonSchools.com,” both of which are planned to go live by July 2009. CRI’s progress is noted by the fact that Delaware’s new governor declared his commitment to increase transparency in Delaware on the heels of the Institute’s announcement to post state spending online.

That timeline looks misrepresented to me, but hey, these are the people with the money. SPN does not detail exactly the flow of funds to each of their affiliates, but they make a big deal in this report about being able to provide funds to a number of the “think tanks” for (21)Investigative Reporters and for “transparency” websites. Perhaps this is one of the places CRI is getting its funding from? This report does say that they provided startup funds for the 5 startups in 2008.

So now we are at the place that interests me. Delaware itself is a fairly insular place — not unaffected by national trends and politics, but how often does Delaware get the attention of the very big money behind some of these politics? Specifically getting a taste of the billions of dollars from the funders of movement conservatism? There is no doubt that Delaware is currently a Blue state and getting bluer. A new “think tank” with real ties to part of the traditional movement conservative funders, institutions and modus operendi seems out of character for this state where everyone asks you where you went to high school. Think tanks of any stripe exist to influence policy or to advocate for it. In a place where movement conservatism has little traction and little interest, the Ceasar Rodney Institute seems to exist to advocate for its very right wing ideas without ever having to say “conservative”. So what gives? Some of their sibling institutions won’t say the word, either. It is possible that the word is too toxic and they think that they’ll get a better listen without the label. But I wonder if Delawareans of their political stripe will be especially appreciative of lots of out of town money trying to move state policy to the right. In the meantime, though, Delaware gets its very own piece of wingnut welfare to observe up close and personal.

UPDATED: Of Cops and Recovery Funds

Yesterday, VP Joe Biden traveled to Philly to announce the awardees of grants from the Recovery bill designed to bolster funding for law enforcement in states, counties and cities. These funds, as I understand it, are meant to be a backstop for governments facing cuts in law enforcement due to budget shortfalls. Delaware was awarded $5M in these grants yesterday.

Today, the NJ reports:

Mayor James Baker, who declined to comment, said in a statement he would not commit to accepting the money and hiring the officers. He said city officials were reviewing their options.

A couple of things to remember about Baker’s reaction to this:

  • The City of Wilmington did not layoff any cops — they did get a wage freeze AND did cancel an Academy.
  • The last time Mayor Baker took money to increase the strength of the WPD (money from NCCo 5 or so years back), he took a lot of heat from people who were apoplectic about the increase to the budget 2 or 3 years back when the NCCo grant ran out. The apoplectic never acknowledged that the City had to take on those costs or cut back force strength.

The last point seems important here. If this grant is to pay for additional police officers or to stop layoffs of current staff, it makes sense to me to think about how you pay for these new personnel after the Federal money runs out. Certainly next year’s budget isn’t going to be any better than this one, so some caution in taking on additional commitments seems reasonable. They can’t keep asking for new taxes from residents.

That said, I am sympathetic to Kevin Kelley’s sentiment here:

“We’ve stayed the course for years and the course has needed to change for years,” Kelley said. “I’m at the point where I would not be in favor of accepting the money because I have no faith that the officers would be dedicated to community policing or a dedicated homicide unit.”

City Council and city residents are really clear that they want an expansion of the Community Policing program — and expansion that the Mayor and Chief Szczerba have been hugely resistant to. It would be nice to know that getting the WPD closer to full strength might also get us 24/7 Community Policing.

UPDATE: The Mayor’s office sent out a Community Advisory trying to clarify his position re: accepting this money:

The Mayor is NOT and has NOT rejected the COPS money. Nor did the Mayor or anyone in his office even imply that Wilmington is rejecting or “balking” at accepting COPS money. The report presents a FALSE impression that the Mayor is not interested in accepting the money.

And wanted to repeat the statement given to the NJ from the Mayor re: these funds:

“I express my thanks, on behalf of all of our citizens, to the President, Vice-President and the Congress for focusing the economic recovery program on the issue of public safety which is one of the top concerns facing cities today. Wilmington is very grateful to be awarded a grant under the COPS stimulus program.

Over the next few weeks we will determine what options are available to us for use of the money under the policies set forth in the COPS stimulus program.

At this time, I would hope to have a plan in place by early September concerning the use of the COPS stimulus grant which I will then share with City Council and all of our citizens.”

You can read the rest — basically the rest reminds people that they applied for these funds when they thought they would belaying people off. Since they didn’t the Mayor’s office wants it known that they are reviewing their options in using this grant money — not that he is rejecting the funds.

h/t for the update info to multiple anons. Thanks!

At Least We’re Not the Only Ones

From Katerina vanden Heuvel:

Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor may be a GOP rising star, but he sure is a hypocrite.

How else to describe someone who is a leading critic of President Obama’s Recovery Act and yet also joins his congressional colleagues to urge Virginia’s Department of Transportation to apply for stimulus money for high-speed rail? If that isn’t two-faced, what is?

So the Gopers have a memo to do this? Slam the Recovery projects but take advantage of every opportunity to help get more money for your state?

I’m waiting on you, Liberal Media, to ask these guys about this.