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

Kinder Morgan Deal Is Dead

In today’s Open Thread, SussexWatcher points us to the news. Both the NJ and WDEL have reports up providing a summary of what was in the Kinder Morgan letter and some local reaction. EDIT — WDDE has put up their report with some additional detail on why KM walked away. It looks like the deal is off of the table, although the NJ discussion with KM seems to leave a slim bit of wiggle room for everybody.

Kinder Morgan blames this failure on one of the union leaders at the Port, and it looks like they are pointing the finger at Julius Cephas, who is ILA 1694-1 President. While there isn’t much known about the details here, it seems odd to me that they would blame Cephas, who wasn’t a party to the contract negotiations. Especially since there wasn’t a contract ready to present to the Board next week. And that there were lots of others with serious issues with this deal who own and operate perfectly good businesses just outside of the fence. Still — I’m betting that there is more to this story.

EDIT: from the WDDE report:

Schlosser [KM President – ed.], in his letter, said Cephas’ declared intention not to meet with Kinder Morgan again until the General Assembly approved a lease deal, combined with some legislators’ position that they would not approve a lease deal unless a new union deal is in place puts the company in “an impossible position.”

“Simply put, we have choices in terms of where we will invest substantial resources and the current union leadership at your facility does not make Delaware a good choice at this time,” Schlosser wrote Port Chairman Alan Levin in his letter. Levin is also Director of the Delaware Economic Development Office.

In any event, it gives all of these parties a chance to rethink what needs to happen at this port. Shame though, that Jack Markell is persisting in this bit of delusion:

In a statement, provided to WDEL, Governor Markell calls the failed deal “unfortunate,” adding that the Port of Wilmington won’t be able to capitalize on an opportunity for increased jobs and a capital investment beyond what the state can afford.

We aren’t supposed to remember that KM investment wasn’t going to be especially big at this Port — certainly not at the level that would build out onto the Delaware. It is time, though, for much better strategic planning for this State asset and working at making the kinds of investments that maybe the State can afford. Perhaps the State could start by not giving up revenue to casinos.

Post whatever you are hearing on how this deal fell apart.

Late Night Video –What If You Rammed Every Car That Cut You Off

Ever been cutoff by a clueless driver? Where you had to accomplish the feat of standing on your brakes while also spewing forth every curse you’ve ever known? Me too. So what if you didn’t hit your brakes and just hit the offender’s car? That is what the maker of these videos has done — Alexei Volkov, a bus driver in Zelenograd, Russia not only just hit the cars that cut him off, but he videotaped them. This video (approx. 1 min, 30 secs) is a compilation of some of these events. It is funnier than it should be and I do not endorse this, but damnit, I sure do understand why he did it!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frPUkXM42pI[/youtube]

h/t Thought Catelog

Thursday Open Thread [3/7/2013]

Welcome to No Snow Thursday. So it looks like we come to the end of this winter with No Snow. Sad.

Wish that I could post this piece in its entirety. But here is Jon Talton, The Rogue Columnist from the Tuscon paper, Sequester This:

Let the sequester happen and keep it going. Ever since Ronald Reagan ran for the presidency, politicians have gotten ahead by claiming “government is the problem.” And voters accept this as they accept their Social Security checks, Medicare benefits, safe food and drugs, freeways and roads to drive on, in vehicles powered by gasoline kept artificially cheap by federal subsidies, armies and fleets, live in a Sun Belt made habitable by federal initiatives from the TVA to the SRP, survive airplane flights thanks to government air traffic control…and they think government is the problem. A people this stupid and corrupt deserves the real-life experiment of seeing whether they really are rugged individualists who don’t need no gub’ment. Bring it on. I especially look forward to letting the net-taker red states actually live the Ayn Rand fantasy they rave about. I can imagine how LBJ, whatever the statues say, would ensure that all the military cuts befell states that voted against him and especially the districts of members of Congress who defied him.

Seriously. You can see the bare tip of the iceberg of this conversation in the folks who are complaining that there are no White House tours. Maybe if more folks get to experience just what the elimination of your problem government means, we can get beyond the bullshit.

Great graphic from Business Week on the Geography of the Defense Sequester Cuts:

What interests you today?

Sunday Open Thread [3/3/2013]

The end of the weekend Open Thread — I went to the Home Show yesterday and had the chance to meet the great Jim Westhoff, who we liked ALOT for the DE House a few years back. Just the kind of candidate we need more of IMO, and he is a great guy, to boot. Today I’m thinking about all of the cool stuff we saw at the Home Show yesterday, and wondering if I should go buy myself a house with a proper yard so I can put a hot tub out there.

A must read of the day — if anything because we have real commenters here who subscribe to this theory (for other issues than this so far, though) — The Green Lantern Theory of Sequestration:

While it’s true that the president does have some agenda-setting power, these commentators greatly overstate Obama’s ability to create political consensus through proposals and rhetoric (absent him simply yielding to GOP demands). As the political scientist John Sides pointed out on Twitter, “No theory of political or policy change should hinge on how presidents ‘talk.’” Green Lantern-ites have been seduced by the myth of the bully pulpit and do not seem to appreciate the relatively limited powers of the president on domestic policy issues.

The media should instead focus greater attention on Congress, which writes the tax and budget legislation that determines how the federal government spends its money. Obama has relatively little leverage over the Republicans who control the House of Representatives, almost all of whom represent districts he lost in 2012. And while the sequester was designed to be so onerous that it would force both parties to compromise, the sequester would still require substantial political pain, making it difficult for the administration to herd legislators toward a deal.

Quite right. What is head-scratching about The Green Lantern Theory (at least among the media) is that they abandon their favorite horserace narrative for this, when in this instance it really is the process that is a big part of the problem.

This is a great read from Ezra Klein — This is Why Obama Can’t Make a Deal with the Republicans. They are so wrapped up in their own narratives, that they can’t see the deal on the table:

The question my column left open was whether improving the lines of communication would actually change anything. Chait’s view is no, it wouldn’t. He begins by quoting Upton Sinclair’s famous line: “It is impossible to make a man understand something if his livelihood depends on not understanding it.” Chait continues:
If Obama could get hold of Klein’s mystery legislator and inform him of his budget offer, it almost certainly wouldn’t make a difference. He would come up with something – the cuts aren’t real, or the taxes are awful, or they can’t trust Obama to carry them out, or something.
What happened next on Twitter proved Chait’s point in every particular.

And he proceeds to break down that Twitter exchange. And it feels eerily familiar.

What a difference a few years makes — Californians Now Support Gay Marriage by 2:1 Margin

A record 61 percent of Californians now approve of allowing same-sex couples to marry, according to a poll released Thursday. 32 percent of Californians oppose.

This was done by the Field Poll group, which is probably the best CA-specific pollster out there.

HAHAHAHAHAHA! Sheesh:

What interests you today?

Saturday Open Thread [3.2.13]

Welcome to the weekend! DD is over on Facebook predicting snow for next week. He’s been predicting snow ALL WINTER, and we’ve had bupkis. That guy!

Did you catch the NJ story yesterday, reporting on how NCCo is firing one of its pension managers?

The portfolio managed by Friess Associates, the Greenville-based pension manager that has invested some of the county’s pension funds for nearly 32 years, has lost an average of 7.5 percent from 2008 to 2012, county Chief Administrative Officer David Grimaldi said, which Friess acknowledges.

Does the name Friess ring any bells? Foster Friess almost singlehandedly kept Rick Santorum alive through much of the 2012 GOP primary. He was the same guy who advised women to use an aspirin held between your legs as a contraceptive. Friess Associates was his investment firm, until he sold the controlling interest elsewhere. I think his family still has a stake in this firm, but I’m not so sure on that. But given their fund performance, you wonder how they were kept on for so long.

The State Department goes on record with No Major Objections to the Keystone XL Pipeline. That is the finding of the draft EIS and opens a 45 day period for public comment. But this:

The lengthy report says Canadian tar sands are likely to be developed, regardless of whether the U.S. approves Keystone XL, which would carry oil from western Canada to refineries in Texas. The pipeline would also travel through Montana, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

The report acknowledges that development of tar sands in Alberta would create greenhouse gases but makes clear that other methods to transport the oil — including rail, trucks and barges — also pose a risk to the environment.

I think is the signal that this thing will get built.

Roger Ebert used his column yesterday to contemplate How He Is A Roman Catholic after watching Pope Emeritus Benedict leave the Vatican yesterday. I loved this and identify with it almost completely, even though we are a generation or two apart.

It was from these nuns, especially Sister Nathan and Sister Rosanne, that I learned my core moral and political principles. I assumed they were Roman Catholic dogma. Many of them involved a Social Contract between God and man, which represented classical liberalism based on empathy and economic fairness. We heard much of Leo XIII’s encyclical “Rerum Novarum”–“On Capital and Labor.” When I hear self-appointed Catholic “spokesmen” like William Donohue of the Catholic League, I wonder if he has come across it in his reading.

Through a mental process that has by now become almost instinctive, those nuns guided me into supporting Universal Health Care, the rightness of labor unions, fair taxation, prudence in warfare, kindness in peacetime, help for the hungry and homeless, and equal opportunity for the races and genders. It continues to surprise me that many who consider themselves religious seem to tilt away from me.

If you are a Catholic — practicing or no, this is worth every minute to read.

And then there’s this, Benedicto XVI Closing Party at El Vaticano Club:

What interests you today?

Occupy Wall Street is Suing All of the Wall Street Fed Regulators

I’m impressed by this — suing all of the Federal Wall Street regulators, pointing out that Dodd-Frank still isn’t fully implemented by its responsible regulators.  Specifically, they are interested in the Volker Rule not yet being implemented within the timeframe dictated and that this is against the law.

The organization is suing every Federal regulator that resides in the pocket of Wall Street – which means they are suing every Federal regulator of Wall Street. And, spunky group that they are, they’re naming individuals too. Here’s the rundown: Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Martin Gruenberg, Chairman of the FDIC, Elisse Walter, Chair of the SEC, Gary Gensler, Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Thomas Curry, Comptroller of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Mary Miller, Under Secretary for Domestic Finance at the Treasury, Neal Wolin, Acting Secretary of the Treasury. […]

The lawsuit informs the court that Dodd-Frank required that regulators adopt rules relating to this section “within nine months after the completion of a study by FSOC [Financial Stabilization Oversight Council] relating to the Volcker Rule. The FSOC completed that study in January 2011.” The complaint proceeds to explain that the legislative language “is unequivocal in setting this mandatory deadline, which the Defendants and the agencies under their control have missed.” […]

The complaint explains to the Court that “this delay puts Plaintiffs’ deposited money at risk, because banks can continue to speculate with it as long as the Volcker Rule has not been implemented.” The recent example of the implosion of insured deposits at JPMorgan Chase is cited:

I wish Occupy the SEC every bit of luck in this.

Late Night Video — A Serious Cause for Mourning

So sad (and I’m not especially a fan of the stuff) —

The night shift at a Chivas Brothers distillery screwed up this week and accidentally flushed about 6,000 gallons of Scotch whisky down the drain, according to reports from Scotland.

The 80-proof goof happened early Tuesday at a bottling plant in Dumbarton, where workers were cleaning equipment. Instead of purging the wastewater, they instead expelled 18,000 liters of bulk whisky into the local sewage system.

“It was like someone turned on a tap, and it just ran straight down the plughole,” an “insider” told The Scottish Sun.

City Council Hearing on the Port of Wilmington

Yesterday evening there was a Wilmington City Council joint committee hearing — the Economic Development Committee and the Public Works Committee — to gather viewpoints and input on the proposed privatization of the Port of Wilmington to be run by Kinder Morgan. While invited, no one from the Governor’s office spoke on this project, but there were a number of businesses from outside of the Port fence who did speak on the potential conflicts and downside that this deal presents for them. I think that this may have been the first public forum that provided these businessmen (as well as the ILA) a chance to make their concerns heard. Senator Bobby Marshall was also in the audience, but did not speak.

John Vitale, the President of ICS, made a point about the informal public-private partnership that already exists at the Port. According to him, the Port has been pretty clear for some time that the fruit, cars and containers business that makes up the bulk of the Port’s business didn’t mix well with the bulk import and export business. So the informal agreement was that the bulk business would operate outside of the Port fence — meaning that bulk shipments could come in to the Port, be offloaded and moved directly through the main gate to the businesses like his that manage and provide value-added services to these materials. What this has done has been to allow the Port of Wilmington to expand its business and business opportunities with minimal additional investment by taxpayers. In the military, they call this a force multiplier, and you can tell how well this works given the $330 (+/-) of business generated by the businesses outside of the gate vs. the $34M (FY2012) in revenue generated by the Port itself. So that for every million dollars that this Port generates itself, another ten million is generated just outside of the fence. This is fantastic, since the vast majority of the additional business needs little in the way of additional public investment to get there.

Almost all of the businesspeople who spoke noted that handing KM control over the Port with little oversight by the State means that KM has the ability to undermine these businesses in order to privilege its own. One long time owner noted that they had approached the Port to use some of the unused land there to store some bulk products before moving them to their own warehouses. The Port told them no — that the bulk products presented a risk to the fruit, cars and containers that are their mainstay. This makes sense (and I suppose that I should remind you that bulk cargo products include chemicals, minerals and so on), especially if you are protecting the customers that are your bread and butter. But if you go back and look at the KM presentation, KM is proposing to use these same No Go areas for storage of *their* bulk products, meaning that the Port people should answer why storing bulk products so close to more sensitive (and key) cargo is OK now.  They also made the point that KM would be operating their bulk business without the overhead that the folks outside of the fence live with — and certainly could increase the costs and overhead of the firms outside of the fence pretty much at will (at least when contracts expire).

Councilman Bud Freel had the most interesting questions that the City should get answered about this deal:

  1. The City of Wilmington is still owed money on the sale of the Port to the State years back.  If KM takes over the Port, how will that debt be settled?
  2. Wilmington charges most parcels a Stormwater Utility Fee that is meant to help finance the costs of the stormwater and combined sewer overflow management.  The Port of Wilmington — while in the city limits — currently does not pay this fee (and it would be substantial at that facility).  Would KM be liable to pay this fee now?
  3. DNREC requires a surface water management plan for this kind of industrial or commercial facility.  Currently, the Port does  not have one — would KM be required to develop and implement one?
  4. Currently, the Port is still covered by the City’s NPDES and Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems permits.  The City probably would not want the liability of covering Kinder Morgan under its own permits, so they’d want the process to get this addressed detailed.

None of these things is necessarily a deal killer, but this does remind us that this is a complex undertaking with a great many stakeholders — stakeholders that have been quite deliberately kept in the dark.

Democrats — This Is How You Treat Fox News!

Rep. Keith Ellison called out Sean Hannity in an interview yesterday that was supposed to be about the sequester. Ellison starts after watching a lead in that plays stupid scary music over a mashup video intended to show President Obama in a bad (not objective! not both sides do it!) light:

“I mean, you know, quite frankly, you are the worst excuse for a journalist I’ve ever seen. Quite frankly, you are the worst excuse for a journalist I’ve ever seen. …What you just displayed was not journalism. It was yellow journalism. It wasn’t anything close to try to tell the American people what’s really going on. I mean it’s just shocking.

…Every journalistic ethic I have ever heard of was just violated by you.

…You are a shill for the Republican party. …You alibi them 100% of the time.”

Called.Him.Out.Son. This, really, is how you treat the Fox Noise entertainers — don’t let them get away with pretending they are journalists. The following is TPM’s highlight reel of the entire 10 minute interview. If you have the 10 minutes, you should see the whole thing.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIVW_0ZYGA0[/youtube]

Today is the Port of Wilmington Bond Bill Hearing

It started at 10AM in Dover and it doesn’t look like it is being live streamed anywhere — which is a pity. I’m hoping to hear from those of you who did go in the comments below. But in the meantime, I want to repeat what I think is one of the two most compelling reasons why the port shouldn’t be privatized — having over a monopoly for the running for the ONLY port shipping terminal that Delaware has to a private entity is not a business decision that is in the best interests of taxpayers.

You’d also think that the Governor and DEDO wouldn’t want to hand over this asset to a private firm, either. I can’t imagine that you could still run around the world telling people about how great it is to do business in Delaware, when you have to tell them that your only Port facility is in the hands of Kinder Morgan and you need to make sure it would be OK with them before making an new import or export deals. And given what we know about this deal — which admittedly isn’t much — people who have been at briefings note that the state is planning to do this lease deal with minimal oversight of Kinder Morgan. The Port will be pretty much theirs to do what they need to do to make money — and the only protections businesses and workers may have are limited by the length of current contracts. And handing over a port monopoly without getting an iron-clad commitment to extend out into the Delaware ought to be considered malpractice of some kind.

A monopoly interest at the Port lets one firm extract a great many taxpayer resources, while reducing the competitive environment the Port, its clients and stakeholders live in. And this monopoly interest doesn’t even compensate taxpayers for their significant interest in this asset, much less commit to the kind of big improvements that would fundamentally change the competitive stance of this port. I’ll also remind you of our current experience with casinos — where the State is apparently enough of a “partner” in these operations that casinos can improve their profitability by getting the State to reduce its cut when the going gets rough, rather than figure out a better way to compete. Even though the money is paltry, I don’t imagine it would take much of a downturn for KM to come back looking for the State to reduce its lease payments.

So what to do? If I were in charge, I’d send KM packing, since they can’t get to the real change the Port needs. I would also convene a working group of Port customers and businesses led by an outside group to work through a structured planning process — one focused on short term, medium term and long term improvements and initiatives that would help current operations be more competitive. Make a commitment to implement these changes. I would also revisit the DSPC’s Board. The current board is clearly political appointees, with Alan Levin as the only one that I can ID as actually running a significant operation and one emeritus member who has maritime experience. I’d try to professionalize this board, by bringing in better expertise in logistics and/or transportation and give this board the charge to make sure that the results of the planning process got implemented. A more professional board probably won’t be so quick to throw away this asset, either.

Are you hearing anything about the hearing yet? Let us know in the comments or email me if you prefer to send info that way.

Monday Open Thread [2/25/2013]

The best thing about this Monday is that a business trip I had scheduled got cancelled. No traveling into the blizzard!

USA Today has an interesting poll that they’ve published with their new polling partner (Pew Research) assessing how Americans would prioritize current issues. Take a look:

Interesting, right? People are pretty much weighing in endorsing what they already voted for back in November. But my biggest takeaway is that we should probably replace Congress with the people who took this poll, and pronto.

What interests you today?