The Kinder Morgan proposal to privatize the Port of Wilmington ought to be much in the news this week — their Bond Bill Hearing is set for 10AM this Wednesday (in Dover) and the Wilmington City Council will conduct a hearing into this action on Thursday 28 February at 5pm in City Council Chambers. I know that the Wilmington hearing will be live streamed online, and I don’t know what access we’ll have for the Dover hearing other than in person. One of the things I want to point out today, and I’m hoping that decision-makers keep in mind, is that while DEDO was publicly touting an investment partnership to build out the Port, their RFP (released approx 2 months prior to this article) included a privatization option that customers and businesses at the Port did not know until months later. And still, this privatization deal is quite different than from the talking points DEDO was using to promote this deal as an expansion opportunity.

WDDE took a look at the Port of Wilmington in April 2012 — Port of Wilmington: A gateway to Delaware’s economic development:

According to Bailey [DSPC Executive Director Eugene Bailey – ed.], the port is looking for a commercial partner to expand operations to the Delaware River side of the port property. Currently, ships dock along the Christina River for loading and unloading. “Considering the funding requirements to go to the river and expand our facility, we will need a partner in order to be able to do that. That’s what we’re exploring right now,” Bailey said.

The cost of moving to the Delaware River is estimated at half-a-billion dollars.

“I think if we find the right partner, we will double the capacity of the Port of Wilmington, which will increase the jobs, which will increase the tonnage coming in, and I think will create a great opportunity for Delaware,” Delaware Economic Development Office Secretary Alan Levin said. He also stressed that in no way would pursuing a private sector partner indicate that the state is interested in selling the port.

“It’s too valuable of an asset to sell,” Levin said. “What we’re looking at is a joint venture, a lease of a portion of the port to another company, to help us.”

Read that again — because the business relationships being described by Bailey and Levin is NOT the deal that is currently on the table. And I am hoping that those who go to the Dover hearing on Wednesday find out EXACTLY why the nature of the deal originally wanted changed. Because what is on the table hands over a very valuable state asset for a fire sale price, doesn’t seem to provide any protection for the current interests/customers of the Port beyond whatever contracts they currently have, and does not do what everyone says is needed — expand out into the Delaware.

I had the chance for a tour of the Port facilities — inside and outside of the fence — last week. It was very instructive — especially since I’d never seen it before. What you do see, though, are a number of businesses that are importing products and/or adding value to imported products and businesses that are exporting products. All told, that is approx. $337M in revenues generating approx. $31M in state and local taxes. That’s pretty good, considering that the Port (like the rest of the world) is in the recovery end of the Great Recession. KM may add some revenues and taxes to that number by whatever additional work they can bring to the port — which (if you remember their presentation) is largely limited by the what they can add inside the fence. The current port footprint is pretty much 80% full — meaning that DEDO and the DSPC were quite right in the early stages of this process to focus on expansion of the Port.

One of the other things that you see via this tour, is that while we worry about what the KM deal does for the fruit and juice operations that are a big deal here, but not in KM’s skillsets, we should worry as much about the businesses that are outside of the fence, managing imports and exports of the kind of materials that is in the KM wheelhouse. In other words, privatizing the Port would hand over not just a monopoly to the Port, but would specifically bring a competitor to businesses that are already there. And since KM would have control of the Port, they could easily rejigger fees, access agreements or any other terms handled by current contracts to throw these firms under the bus.

Sound far fetched? Maybe. But it answers the reason why KM would be interested in running a terminal where there is a healthy and growing business that looks alot like their own WITHOUT making any commitments to expand the terminal. But there is still the question of why DEDO and the DPSC are looking to just turn over this asset without any real protections for the current businesses at this Port. You can’t overstate the work going on outside of the Port — bringing in materials for packaging and repackaging, autos that are customized for shipment overseas, export of petroleum coke from DE City, export of scrap materials — and the value added by these businesses. There is some growth in bringing in chemicals from Turkey and there is even a small startup looking to find markets for a product dug up from the ocean around the Bahamas. There is a great deal of entrepreneurial energy going on here and I wonder why the entrepreneurial Governor and his DEDO Director aren’t tapping into this energy in plotting out a way for this Port to take better advantage of some if its niche capabilities.

There’s a good number of people working at these facilities too. And they aren’t all union jobs as the detractors want to portray. This isn’t an effort to just save some union jobs, it is an effort to save a large pool of jobs held by a group of people who are working hard to make the Port (and themselves) a success, and providing a decent amount of revenues to the State while they’re at it. According to the Port’s own economic analysis, there are approximately 2200 direct jobs generated by Port business (maybe a third of these are union jobs?), 444 indirect jobs and a total of 12.5K of related jobs related to Port activity. This is alot of economic activity to lose control over via privatization effort. This is alot of economic activity ripe for building on — not turning over to collect a pittance on.

What’s next? Time to contact the Bond Bill committee to demand that they ask the tough questions that it looks like DEDO hasn’t. Tell us what you think the Bond Bill committee ought to be asking DEDO and Kinder Morgan this week?

Economic Impacts of the Port of Wilmington:

If you don’t know that reference, that is the name that Charlie Pierce has given to the execrable Politico. And it also means that you aren’t reading Charlie Pierce on the regular, which you really must start doing. Anyway, they are having a snit about the access that the Obama Administration does not give to the White House Press Corps. This after the same Press Corps has been whinging about not being able to cover the President while he golfs with Tiger Woods. All of this without getting the irony that they are spending more energy in complaining about the President not hanging around to joke with them than they are in explaining any sequester replacement plans. Or maybe climate change policy.

Frankly, lots of bloggers have been all over this, and mostly, Kevin Drum speaks for me. I don’t have any sympathy for these folks whose tough questions sound like high schoolers testing the boundaries of a clique — “Mr. President, Senator McConnell has called you a doodyhead today — how do you respond to that?” is about the level of questioning that I see, really.

I wish I knew what to think about this. Does Obama keep a very, very tight rein on press coverage? Yes, he sure seems to. In fact, every president seems to keep a slightly tighter grip on the reins than the previous one. I’m not very happy about that.

At the same time, the reporters interviewed for this piece seem to be weirdly upset over the fact that the Obama White House uses Twitter and Facebook and releases lots of its own photos. Why is this a problem? It’s 2013, guys. Why shouldn’t a president communicate with the public using whatever mediums the public happens to consume? Over the past century, that’s evolved from whistle-stop tours to radio to TV to Facebook, but so what? Why should reporters be unhappy about this?

They also complain that although the president gives lots of interviews (674 in his first term compared with 217 for George Bush), they’re mostly with local outlets, not with the national reporters “who are often most likely to ask tough, unpredictable questions.” I’d have more sympathy for this if national reporters really did ask lots of tough, unpredictable questions, but I’m afraid I’m mostly on Obama’s side on this one:

The president’s staff often finds Washington reporters whiny, needy and too enamored with trivial matters or their own self-importance….Obama and his team, especially newly promoted senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer, often bemoan the media’s endless chase of superficial and distracting storylines.

Charlie Pierce gives this bit of business the deconstructing it deserves, this piece focusing on Politico’s odd complaint that the Obama White House is making full use of the technology available to it:

The grammar in that second sentence went briefly to the zoo, but I think they’re saying that the White House has more technology and that the media companies have fewer resources. (Something with which TBOTP has had some recent experience, and one might also mention that “media companies” often are struck stupid by cowardice when confronted by candidates who don’t even win. This also contributes to the aforementioned imbalance of power. We continue.) And this is a surprise to approximately nobody who’s watched as the clowns who run America’s newspapers cratered the industry over the past 20 years. If these guys are really making the case that “do more with less” doesn’t work, let them start with overseas bureaus, and not the various loungers in the White House press corps.

Besides my usual eye-rolling about the White House Press talking about mostly silliness, this really is another part of the overall story about how the media comes to grips with the fact that we all have more access to information than ever before. I can safely bypass whatever the WH Press is doing because I have access to other venues who are working on talking to me about policy and issues. And no matter how much info the White House makes available on its own website (which really is alot if you have time to sort through it), you can’t make the mistake of thinking that all of that data isn’t subject to its own shaping by whoever does that in the White House. It would be awesome if the WH Press could tell you that, but they are too busy pouting about not being on a golf trip. Still — if I had the choice between reading Politico for WH news vs. sifting through the WH’s own data, i”m going to do the latter. The horserace BS that Politico specializes in is useful to the company townies, the aspirants to be company townies and the hinterlands journalists who think that the Politico brand means something.

But here is the best thing out there about this new bit of journalists stamping their feet — John Cook from Gawker took a look at the last interview that Mike Allen (of Politico) did with a President, then he tweeted out the questions that Mike Allen asked of GW Bush in 2008. Go see what counts as hard-hitting questions and tough followups. Seriously.

President Obama ended his SOTU speech last night by calling on Congress to at least vote on the proposals made to try to rein in some of this country’s gun violence. It was, in my opinion, perhaps the finest moment of this speech — reminding us of the price of a violent society, honoring recent victims of gun violence and making the GOP actually participate in a standing ovation for gun control. One article I read today noted that the repetition of “They deserve a vote” wasn’t in the prepared remarks — prepared or no, President Obama delivered a little bit of church yesterday and walked away with a great rallying cry:

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

President Obama is delivering his State of the Union Address tonight and the usual suspects are spinning up expectations and related goo. DD covered a report from Politico that noted that President Obama won’t be extending any olive branches to Republicans this year, and I have been listening to NPR a decent portion of the morning and they are repeating the same thing. What I don’t hear is WHY the President should be extending olive branches to a party who works hard at not cooperating in the business of government. I suspect it is the same old — Democrats are supposed to cooperate and Republicans get a pass on obstructing (with the excuse of sticking to their principles). Anyone else noticing this narrative?

Members of Congress Camp Out All Day for a Chance to Meet the President

Having the president greet dozens of lawmakers as he enters and exits the House chamber for the State of the Union already seems like a huge waste of time, and the situation is even worse than it appears. To secure an aisle seat, members of Congress have to claim the spot ten to twelve hours in advance. According to the Washington Post, there’s a devoted group of State of the Union squatters, and scoring five seconds of inane conversation with the president involves a surprising amount of preparation.

Competition for aisle seats is fierce, and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy sent out a note on Monday reminding members of Congress that simply leaving your jacket on a chair doesn’t count. “Members may reserve their seats only by physical presence,” he said.

I’m not sure that I knew this. But I note that they don’t mind asking for a physical presence for reserving seats to this event, but a talking filibuster is out of the question.

The list of the President and First Lady’s guests for the speech includes quite a few victims of gun violence — including a teacher from Newtown.

Marco Rubio is supposed to deliver the GOP response to the SOTU in both English and Spanish. Except some of his party think that English-only is the only way to go:

“There’s a conflicting message that comes out from the Republicans if we want to recognize the unifying power of English, and meanwhile, we send out communications in multiple languages,” King said in an interview with National Journal. “Official business and documents needs to be in English.”
The resistance behind closed doors contrasts with the public posture taken by most Republican Party leaders since seven out of 10 Hispanic voters rejected Mitt Romney in the 2012 election, and may give the party more reasons to worry about King’s possible run for the soon-to-be-open Senate seat in Iowa. Already, the Karl Rove-backed super PAC American Crossroads has launched the Conservative Victory Project to help quash primary candidates it views as outside the mainstream and destined to lose a general election. Since he is often seen on the fringe of the party, King could be a target if he runs for the seat left vacant by retiring Democrat Tom Harkin.

Way to fumble the ball again, gang.

Research on the influence of video games on violent behavior — basically the games might be one small factor out of many:

A burst of new research has begun to clarify what can and cannot be said about the effects of violent gaming. Playing the games can and does stir hostile urges and mildly aggressive behavior in the short term. Moreover, youngsters who develop a gaming habit can become slightly more aggressive — as measured by clashes with peers, for instance — at least over a period of a year or two.

Yet it is not at all clear whether, over longer periods, such a habit increases the likelihood that a person will commit a violent crime, like murder, rape, or assault, much less a Newtown-like massacre. (Such calculated rampages are too rare to study in any rigorous way, researchers agree.)

“I don’t know that a psychological study can ever answer that question definitively,” said Michael R. Ward, an economist at the University of Texas, Arlington. “We are left to glean what we can from the data and research on video game use that we have.”