Author Archives: cassandra_m

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

When Delaware Democrats Vote to Cut Food Stamps

The Farm Bill (S. 954) was being worked by the Senate the last few weeks, in an effort to get a bill done and voted on before the recess. This bill looks much like last year’s bill (but adding some additional support for Southern crops such as rice, cotton and peanuts). As this bill came out of the Agricultural Committee, it had cut $4.5 BILLION from the food stamp program over the next 10 years. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand offered an amendment (#931) to restore those cuts:

Both Senator Coons and Senator Carper voted NO on this amendment — ensuring that the unemployed, the underemployed, the elderly and the young get to struggle even harder in an economy that these two have done remarkably little to help repair for these families. As you can see, they were not alone in this — 26 other Democrats also joined them. But there’s more!

And then there’s this:

Senator David Vitter offered — and Senate Democrats accepted — an amendment that would increase hardship and will likely have strongly racially discriminatory effects. [It] would bar from SNAP, for life, anyone who was ever convicted of one of a specified list of violent crimes at any time — even if they committed the crime decades ago in their youth and have served their sentence, paid their debt to society, and been a good citizen ever since…. The amendment would [also] mean lower SNAP benefits for their children and other family members. So, a young man who was convicted of a single crime at age 19 who then reforms and is now elderly, poor and raising grandchildren would be thrown off SNAP, and his grandchildren’s benefits would be cut…. Senator Vitter hawked his amendment as one to prevent murderers and rapists from getting food stamps. Democrats accepted it without trying to modify it to address its most ill-considered aspects.

Vitter’s Amendment was ADOPTED by Unanimous Consent. Meaning that both Senators Carper and Coons agreed to this.

We already know that both Carper and Coons voted against letting states make their own determinations as to the labeling of GMO foods.

So what is going on here? I have no idea, really, but I’m pretty mad about this. Senator Coons spent some time with the Delaware Anti-Hunger Coalition specifically committing to support for anti-hunger programs.

“It is hard for me to accept that there are some in Congress who don’t see this as a moral challenge for our country,” Senator Coons said. “Teachers know, parents know — all of us know — that a child who begins their school day hungry doesn’t focus on their lesson, doesn’t absorb what their supposed to learn, is much more likely to be a problem in the classroom, and is much less likely to be able to grow, achieve, and to dream big.”

And because of this vote, Senator Coons has helped a few more children to be less likely to be able to grow, achieve and to dream big. There is NOTHING balanced about a deficit reduction program that asks more of the folks who can least afford it than it asks of the corporate farmers who get to do their work certain that they’ll get paid by taxpayers. But Senator Carper was there too, promising to support efforts to reduce hunger (without comitting to SNAP), but this is what is attributed to Senator Coons:

“Thousands of Delawareans – men and women, many of whom work full time, as well as children – go to sleep at night unsure of where their next meal will come from,” said Coons. “That is a moral challenge we must meet and a wrong we must right. Even in these times of tight budgets and program cuts, our values demand that we put a circle of protection around the most vulnerable of our neighbors. I will keep fighting to protect SNAP and other nutrition programs that Delawareans depend on.”

Apparently the fight for a circle of protection around our most vulnerable neighbors was too much for Senator Coons.

Senator Coons was a signatory to a letter urging the restoration of funding for Second Chance Act grant programs — programs that help to fund prisoner re-entry efforts that reduce recidivism. Why would he vote to undermine the efforts of those released from prison to feed themselves and their families as they try to get back on their feet? Senator Carper doesn’t have much of a trail on re-entry services, except for when he was working with Joe Biden to get more law enforcement dollars to Delaware.

So what do we have? A Farm Bill that undercuts the people who most need the help while handwaving at any reform of the Farm subsidies programs — making certain that big agribusiness maintains access to taxpayer money (with little to nothing for family farmers) and crop insurance companies get a big payday. In other words — it is one more bit of bipartisan fraud on Americans, with Democrats enabling the GOP to get their agenda done. While any Democratic agenda — the one that feeds people — gets left on the floor.

Both of these Senators are routinely seen at Food Bank and other food support programs all over the state — if you see them there, ask them why they voted to cut Food Stamps. In the meantime, call their offices this week and ask specifically why they voted to increase hunger insecurity in Delaware.

Friday Open Thread [5.31.13]

Yesterday, there was a protest at the Sallie May HQ down in Newark:

They carried signs, chanted and sang as they marched to Sallie Mae’s offices before the company’s annual shareholder meeting. They came demanding to meet with company leaders in hopes of airing their concerns with rocketing student loan debt. “We were sold degrees that aren’t worth what they were worth,” said Sara Fitouri, a first year law school student at the University of Denver who is $145,000 in debt. “We don’t believe students should have to pay those debts.”
The students were successful in getting company officials to agree to a sit down meeting with leaders. Sallie Mae Board Chairman Anthony Terracciano told the students they would get their meeting, but not today because company leaders were all busy in board meetings.

Student Debt is a problem, but the solution is likely more complex than not paying the debt. We have to remember that colleges have lost huge amounts of state funds over the past 30 years, and students have been making that up. There are other drivers of the cost of higher education, (including purely competitive ones and ones targeted at parents who are looking for WAY more amenities — not necessarily educaton — than mine would have cared about), but addressing student loans is low-hanging fruit that should be an easy fix. I’m still a fan of fixing loan rates to the rates that banks pay to borrow money from the Fed — and Elizabeth Warren idea.

Added because the headline is awesome: The GOP Is Too Juvenile to Govern It’s true, of course, and it is still a crime that the Democrats can’t hang this fact around their collective necks better.

This completely slays me — Phyllis Schlafly is having NONE of the GOP outreach to minorities. NONE of it, I tell you:

Schlafly told PolicyMic she believes that Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election because “his drop-off from white voters was tremendous” and the GOP doesn’t “know how to relate to grassroots Americans.”

“The propagandists are leading us down the wrong path,” Schlafly said on the radio program. “There is not any evidence at all that these Hispanics coming in from Mexico will vote Republican.”

This seems to be a wingnut thing –that somehow there were just tons of white people who didn’t show up to vote for the white guy, or something like that. But this is in line with their basic innumeracy — ignoring the demographics that simply don’t support them.

What interests you today?

Wilmington Budget Follies

For the past few weeks, the back and forth over coming to some agreement over the Wilmington budget for the next fiscal year has been a source of a great deal of cynicism, exasperation and a fair amount of entertainment. While there is not alot to be proud of here — at bottom we have a new administration who seems to think that they can get things done by fiat. For all of the yelling and screaming about what the Wilmington City Charter says — it still gives the Administration the power to spend the money that City Council allocates to it. That is pretty basic everywhere. Even though the Council spent much of its time rubber-stamping much of the Baker Administration’s work, I wish I could be more hopeful in a more energized Council who will actually do what the Charter expects of them.

Andrew Staub of the NJ has done a pretty good job of documenting the atrocities. Here are the links:

Overview of the final Council budget and veto threat
Williams vetos the budget (6 days later)
Williams and Gregory can’t reach an agreement
Williams calls for a Special Meeting, Gregory says No
Mayor Baker advises Williams to relent
Details on the Council Special Project that is supposed to be at issue
Chancery Court won’t order the Special Meeting

Now the thing to recognize here is that while this Council started off on the right budget direction (defunding positions, defunding Executive Office raises, adding to the Water & Sewer fund, reducing the amount of money taken from reserves), at the end of the day, the Mayor got pretty much everything he asked for. Early in this process, the Mayor claimed he was vetoing the budget because it wasn’t balanced as required by law. This was a ham-handed play to get more positions in the Finance Department funded. Once it was pointed out that everyone could see through the unusual accounting done to make that claim, the only thing left was the $250K that Council appropriated to itself for Special Projects.

For all of the sturm and drang, it is pretty clear that Council has the sole authority to appropriate funds and they can appropriate funds to themselves. Which they’ve pretty routinely done. Special Projects aren’t new to the City Council. And members get an allocation of funds to spend in the community as they see fit. Are any of these a good use of taxpayer funds? Probably not. But I do know that there are neighborhood groups (including mine) and youth groups that have had projects funded via these funds.

About half of the $250K is supposed to fund an educational advocacy group. The contracts have already been let for this (and, interestingly, approved by the City Solicitor) some months back and it isn’t clear to me whether the entire Council knew of or approved of this. Still, the goals of this advocacy group are great ones and one of the individuals involved here has a great reputation as a student advocate. This is a badly needed service for students. I just don’t think that City taxpayers should be paying the freight for this work. This is the kind of thing that the school districts (and the DDOE) should be funding — and since they’ve been especially neglectful of City students, Wilmington ought to have some leverage to get them on board for this. But this also points out the extremely small ball approach by the City to educational issues. I would much rather see a serious and focused working group that would sort through the options the City might have to force better attention to its schools — keeping all options on the table, including lawsuits. Because the thing that ought to concern City leaders is how to entice people to live in the city when the choices for educating their kids are less than optimal.

So, the bottom line — the Council got more engaged with forming the budget, but largely gave back all they took away. Both the Council and the Mayor have “discretionary funds” that aren’t subject to review or accountability. The Mayor and his partisans seem to think that just because the Mayor wants it, the Council should just roll over. And that the Mayor, should force his way with the Council, which completely upends all of their BS about abiding by the City Charter. (I listened to Rick Jensen on this yesterday after El Som was off and Jensen was positively giddy over the prospect of police rounding up City Council members.) Which bypasses the entire idea of professionally working together. I’m very fond of the idea of an independently elected City Auditor watching over the process, since I’m REALLY clear that neither party is up to it. But the net here seems to be that the Mayor and his people don’t quite know how to work with people as equals and the City Council is prepared to go to the mat for its prerogatives (rather than better budgets).

That’s my take. I know that there are folks commenting on Facebook and the NJ who are pushing bad information and generally bullying people who disagree with them. But I don’t think that the legality of the actions is the problem here — leadership and accountability for taxpayer funds is.

Yuck — A 4th Grader’s Short Documentary About School Lunch

This all started when young Zachary Maxwell wanted to start packing and taking his lunch to school. His parents, however, thought that the school lunches as described and pictured on line looked like they would be just fine. So young Zachary smuggled in a camera to school in order to show his parents the reality of those school meals. He kept filming (even got busted once) and made a short documentary called Yuck — A 4th Grader’s Short Documentary About School Lunch. Love this kid. Anyway, this doc has won some awards and has been playing the festival circuit. I’m posting the trailer and another piece with clips below. It sounds as if this entire film will be online shortly, but I don’t know when:

Trailer: Yuck – A 4th Grader’s Short Documentary About School Lunch from Maxwell Project on Vimeo.

Introduction for Zachary Maxwell (World IP Day Event 4/24/2013) from Maxwell Project on Vimeo.

One of the things I’d like to see (especially from the NYT — linked above) is some questions for Mayor Bloomberg. He is famously on a health kick that he wants to enforce on the rest of the city, yet the one place where he has direct control of the nutritional choices, isn’t looking all that nutritional. I don’t doubt that plenty of schools aren’t exactly serving food choices that would make parents happy, either. But I hope that this little bit of filmmaking moxy gets repeated in school cafeterias all over the country.

Memorial Day Open Thread [5.27.13]

Memorial Day has come to be a day when we are all urged to remember those armed services members who have served and who are currently serving the country. This is important and I hope we all have some time to reflect on the sacrifices made by these men and women on our behalf.

Sebastian Junger has a great piece in the WaPo this AM on exactly this point — noting that the wars of this country don’t just belong to its soldiers:

I am no pacifist. I’m glad the police in my home town of New York carry guns, and every war I have ever covered as a journalist has been ended by armed Western intervention. I approved of all of it, including our entry into Afghanistan. (In 2001, U.S. forces effectively ended a civil war that had killed as many as 400,000 Afghans during the previous decade and forced the exodus of millions more. The situation there today is the lowest level of civilian suffering in Afghanistan in 30 years.) But the obscenity of war is not diminished when that conflict is righteous or necessary or noble. And when soldiers come home spiritually polluted by the killing that they committed, or even just witnessed, many hope that their country will share the moral responsibility of such a grave event.

Their country doesn’t. Liberals often say that it’s not their problem because they opposed the war. Conservatives tend to call soldiers “heroes” and pat them on the back. Neither response is honest or helpful. Neither addresses the epidemic of post-traumatic stress disorder afflicting our veterans. Rates of suicide, alcoholism, fatal car accidents and incarceration are far higher for veterans than for most of the civilian population. One study predicted that in the next decade 400,000 to 500,000 veterans will have criminal cases in the courts. Our collective avoidance of this problem is unjust and hypocritical. It is also going to be very costly.

Do yourself a favor and go read the whole thing.

Yesterday, NPR did a long piece about the astonishing backlog adjudicating disability benefits at the VA. Besides not delivering on the promises to take care of these individuals hurt by the wars we send them to fight, I want to know where all of the war hawks and military queens are (and you know who I’m talking about — each and every legislator who never gives up a chance to be seen in the company of someone wearing a uniform and mouthing some stupid platitude or another) on making sure that the VA is working the way it is supposed to. AND in making sure the VA is funded to keep the promises made to help veterans who’ve certainly done their part. For all of the time that John McCain and Lindsay Graham spent bullshitting the world about Benghazi, they could have been working on fixing this.

Remembering the sacrifice is important and necessary — but we’ll be judged as a country not by how many flags are flying at gravesites, but on how well we take care of those who came back from our wars needing some support to fully heal from the experience.

What interests you today?

Sunday Open Thread [5.26.13]

Even more details of how DelDOT was organized as a conduit of taxpayer dollars directly to developers is in this morning’s News Journal. This is a remarkable story — including some detail on how DelDOT specifically locked in higher appraisal values just to ensure that developers could loot the Treasury for the maximum amount.

The land buys offer a glimpse of how Delaware’s $512.7 million U.S. 301 construction plan became a road to riches for some developers at taxpayers’ expense. Despite an intervening recession, DelDOT in some cases paid developers five and six times more per acre than the amounts investors paid a few years earlier when buying land for development in the path of the highway.

The deals also show how developers were able to win settlements seldom given to smaller landowners, including some who owned their property for decades.

What is really galling about this is that these deals were being locked in during the worst recession of most of our lifetimes. The State and taxpayers went through a great deal to come out on the other side of this — while State employees were forgoing raise after raise, Delaware developers were cashing in at the expense of taxpayers. While I get that some of the princpals involved in this mess are gone, it is nowhere near clear to me that DelDOT has fundamentally fixed any of their problems here. And their fundamental problem seems to be that they don’t understand who it is they work for. Also — if DelDOT is paying a premium for land acquisition, it wouldn’t surprise me if they aren’t paying a premium for construction too. Maybe the Governor needs to pick a handful of recent DelDOT projects and subject them to a total 3rd Party review — including a review of how funds were spent. And pick a 3rd Party Reviewer who isn’t writing campaign checks to Delaware legislators.

And, ugh, there’s more on the Vance Phillips sex abuse allegations.

Today’s Stupid Conservative Trick is from Kansas, where their Senate passed a reduction in taxes on groceries. The Kansas House isn’t sure that reducing taxes for everybody (rather than just the rich, as is their habit) is a good idea. One of them decides to apply his Who Would Jesus Starve values to the question:

A Republican state lawmaker in Kansas says that he opposes cutting the taxes on groceries because it would be a form of “social engineering” that encourages people to buy food over other items.

The Kansas Senate on Thursday voted to cut the state sales tax on food from 6.3 percent to 4.95 percent, but Sen. Jeff Melcher (R) led opposition against the measure, arguing that it would lead to people eating more.

“It seems to me we are encouraging the behavior of purchasing food and discouraging the behavior of purchasing anything else,” Melcher reportedly told his colleagues.

You can see how fundamental sheer disdain for most of the citizens of this country is absolutely essential to their ideology.

Hope you are enjoying this weekend — what interests you today?

Saturday Open Thread [5.25.13]

In case there is anyone taking a break from holiday festivities long enough to check in here, here’s an Open Thread for you!

Are you following the shenanigans going on between Wilmington’s Mayor and City Council? Basically, the City Council has re-discovered that it is a co-equal branch of the government and that it has some leverage in the face of a Mayor who essentially doesn’t speak to them. This is being played out over the City’s budget which needs to be in place by 1 June. After some back and forth, City Council is sticking to its defunding of a couple of positions in the Finance Department and in keeping the $250K it added to its own budget. The Mayor seems to think that the defunding of these positions reduces tax revenue — which may or may not be true — but it is his job to spend funds allocated to get the job done. I’m not crazy about the Council adding more to their own budget for reasons that aren’t clear (and apparently not auditable), either, but they have some right to do this. So the Mayor has vetoed the budget and called for a “special Meeting” on Tuesday. The President of City Council has said IxNay on the “Special Meeting”, they’ll meet as scheduled on 30 May to vote on overriding the budget veto. Andrew Staub at the NJ got former Mayor Baker to weigh in on this too. He thinks that Williams needs to find a path to working with City Council. What I’m hoping is the City Council finds a way to have a more functional place at the governing table and that Mayor Williams figures out how local government works, but quick.

ALSO — if you are on Facebook, Peaceful Rioters for Wilmington, DE is providing some interesting commentary on this and other city issues. LIKE them if you are interested in what goes on in Wilmington.

In other news, there are global marches against Monsanto and GMOs today. You can get updates on the activity here. No idea where the Delaware marches are, but if you have any details, please let us know in the comments.

Then there’s this:

What Do You Call 242 Republicans in One House?

What interests you today?

Friday Open Thread [5.24.13]

It is the beginning of a long weekend — for me, this is the first long holiday weekend of the year. From here on out, there is a scheduled holiday weekend pretty much every other month now. Yay!

The Boy Scouts split the Gay Baby and decided to accept openly gay scouts, but that they would still discriminate against openly gay adult leadership. I suppose this is a step in the right direction, but it is a completely weird message to send to these kids. You are worthy to be a part of us if you are under 18 years old and gay, but if you are over 18 and gay you aren’t worthy to be a part of us. The Assemblies of God are predicting that there will be a mass exodus (!) from scouting now. It was really interesting to listen to the NPR report on this decision this morning. The people lamenting the fact that their values of gay bigotry are dying don’t have a clue. One of the signature American experiences is of *increasing* acceptance and inclusion of its citizens. Too bad these bigots don’t love their country enough to get with those values. But this isn’t over until gay adult leadership are just as welcome as gay scouts.

Harry Reid has one small win in beating back the McConnell filibuster obstruction. Sri Srinivasan was finally approved as a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals by 97-0. That’s a unanimous vote, people, meaning that the planned filibuster was just about gunking up the works. This is pretty despicable from people are are supposed to be governing.

Elizabeth Warren has a bill in the Senate that would provide student loans at the same rate that the Feds lend money to banks. This is nothing but awesomeness. Since it is Memorial Day weekend, you might see Senators Coons and Carper out and about. Please ask them if they’ll support this great bill.

Locally, Harris McDowell wants to build a companion ship for the Kalmar Nyckle. That’s fantastic, but I’m hoping that he’ll give a raise to state workers OR restore the staff that schools are getting ready to lose support staff. Priorities, people!

What interests you today?

President Obama and the Guantanamo Heckler

Hecklers of speeches — especially major ones — aren’t new. A public disruption of a speaker is meant as an attempt to embarrass the speaker and get attention for the heckler and the heckler’s cause. Yesterday, Medea Benjamin of Code Pink attended the President’s speech at the National Defense University at Ft. McNair yesterday and proceeded to heckle him 3 times during the speech. The video below (approx 8 minutes long and I apologize for the commercial) shows that segment of the President’s speech. I couldn’t hear everything she said, but it seems clear to me that she was calling for the immediate release of some number of the Gitmo prisoners. While the President was proposing a new plan to close Gitmo. What is fascinating to me about this clip is the President’s reaction to Ms. Benjamin’s interruptions. Not only did he appear to be listening to her, but he validated her concerns (or some of them) as important and worth listening to. I can’t imagine GWB managing this kind of respect towards someone yelling at him, and whoever was yelling at him would have been immediately hustled away from the event — not given two more times to disrupt. I haven’t had a chance to see the entire speech to know what exactly the President said, so I’m not here agreeing or disagreeing with what he proposed yesterday. But I am pretty proud of the way he handled this:

Buycott, Shop Your Conscience

Have you heard about this app? Buycott installed on your smartphone can scan products you intend to buy and give you a rundown of that product’s corporate history. It can also give you data on what those corporations do with the money they earn from your purchases. Interesting, right? For people who are trying not to buy anything from Koch Industries, for example, data from the scans you take can help you leave their stuff on the shelf.

This app goes a step further, and lets you join official boycott campaigns, so your scan will also tell you about products that should be left on the shelf for those campaigns. The whole thing is intriguing, because if you want to vote with your dollars, it can be tough to either remember what you are supposed to boycott OR have enough information from the basic packaging to know if this product is connected to a firm or cause you want to disincentivize.

This app is available for Android or iOS devices. (Oops, seems that the Android app was pulled. Apparently this announcement went viral a few days back and the Android app had crashing issues.) I have it installed on my phone but haven’t had a chance to use it yet, so I’m not certain how well it works or how extensive its database is. One thing I do predict, though, is that scanning everything in my grocery cart will be something of a drag. But still. Is this something you would use?