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

Kinder Morgan Starts Talking

Kinder Morgan is making its proposal to privatize the Port of Wilmington to the Diamond State Port Corporation today. We’ll hear more about this (I hope) in tomorrow’s news, but wanted to take a look at this deal via what we know already. The most recent information has come from a few NJ articles — Deal to lease Port of Wilmington at risk; Delaware’s Port of Wilmington plan includes expansion; andKinder Morgan seeks new challenge in Del.

1. This deal is like what Baltimore has done for its Port. I can’t find this immediately, but I have heard Alan Levin make this claim and I think that it is in print in the NJ archives. Certainly, the NJ Editorial on this touches on this claim as a reason to carry on with it. The problem is, it isn’t true. The Port of Baltimore is a BIG facility, with multiple terminals (both public and private, but we are only talking about the public ones here). As of now, the Seagirt Terminal is the one that is leased and operated by Ports America. The other terminals are under the authority of the State of Maryland (although Ports America provides management and/or operating support to the others. PA also runs a packaging operation at Dundalk Marine Terminal.). What would be different about the Port of Wilmington deal as proposed with Kinder Morgan is that the State of Delaware looks quite poised to hand over a monopoly to KM. Because the Port of Wilmington only has this facility and there is no opportunity for taking business to another terminal here. Why is this important? Come with me to Item 2.

2. The interests of existing Port businesses. Right now, the Port of Wilmington handles mostly fruit and containers, with some additional business in salt, fuel (Magellan which does business for WaWa) and some other entities. Kinder Morgan is mostly in the business of handling bulk materials at its other ports. One of the NJ articles does note this (with some analysts pooh-poohing the idea that KM might disrupt what is already at the port in favor of the business it actually knows AND knows it can make money at), but with a monopoly on the Port’s operation, would they have the right to adjust the Port’s business model as they see fit?  Would the lease contract place some restraints on this? Who knows. What is true:

  • The bulk handling business employs far fewer people than the current Port business lines.  You get this from the 2/1 NJ article:

    • The company’s first construction at the port, to accommodate new business and beyond the $200 million, would include three bulk storage buildings, as well as a liquid storage facility, according to a Kinder Morgan presentation. Kinder Morgan projected the expansion opportunities in bulk business would add between 16 and 27 direct jobs.

  • Businesses outside of the port gate doing storage, repackaging, transloading, trucking and so on are pretty much tied to a diversified port business.  These businesses are employing well over 16 or 27 direct jobs and these are the kind of decent-paying blue-collar jobs needed in this economy.
  • Some of what the Port currently handles is fairly specialized cargo.  Fruit and fruit concentrates coming from Central American ports comes to Wilmington then shipped from here to distribution and/or processing plants throughout the east.   One of the reasons why this Port handles so much of this cargo is due to an 800,000 sf cold-storage facility there which is the largest of its kind on this coast.

Cars and other vehicles come and go from this port, with a local business at the Port that will customize vehicles for export (like police fleet vehicles). Cattle is loaded to ships for export from the Port. The Port also manages some bulk products too, like steel, salt and petroleum products, which are the kinds of products that KM is most familiar with.

3. Money. If you closely read the article where the KM folks sat down with the News Journal, you’ll see a great many numbers with little commitment to any of them, but lets look at the numbers that seem to have a commitment:

Kinder Morgan’s director of business development, Kevin Golankiewicz, said the company anticipates making at least $200.5 million in investments over time, while making lease payments of $142.5 million over 50 years – coming out to $2.85 million per year – to the port corporation. Also included would be a $16.5 million upfront payment.

$2.85 million/year doesn’t sound like a great price for giving this firm a monopoly at the Port.
$142.5 million lease payments over 50 years — again, this looks like buying at the bottom of the market for something that ought to be alot more valuable to the State
$16.5 million up front payment doesn’t even wipe out the Port’s debts (mostly to DelDOT)
$38.15 million is what is left of the $200 million investment and that is what is supposed to be for the improvements to the port that the State says they can’t afford.

Additional committed investments look like they will be made in additional cranes, bulk storage buildings and a liquid storage facility — again, investments in the business that KM already knows best.

Other investments being touted — like building out berths in the Delaware — certainly won’t happen unless there are clients for them. Which is fine — except that many of the municipal or state ports that we are in competition with are building facilities to capture new business (the New Panamax ships, for instance). So we get a fairly puny revenue stream in exchange for monopoly control of the port, additional investments of $38M and new business carved out of KM’s existing cargo. I’m not seeing any of the long term improvements that might build on this Port’s current expertise or add to it. Yet the state will say that it doesn’t have the money to make the kind of upgrades to this port that will make it more competitive. They did find more then $8M for Amazon’s new facility, and how much for Bloom Energy? Not including the fees imposed on Delmarva rate payers to help fund this? But the State can’t figure out a way to get $38M in improvements done at a Port facility that is up and functioning AND is increasing the amount of goods being moved through it.

There’s a few more threads to follow here and we’ll take a look at some of those after we get news on today’s Board Meeting. But here’s hoping that someone is thinking about a better deal than this one.

How’s That Good Guy With a Gun Thing Working Out For You?

Seriously — have you been following the story of the ex-LAPD officer who went on a shooting rampage? It is a horrific story — a fired police officer who decides that he is working out his perceived injustices on other officers or their families. This is a story of a previous good guy — one trained to use guns by the government — who is now just a guy with a bunch of guns seemingly seeking revenge.

The LA Times has been doing a great job of covering this, including the extended manhunt in the mountains west of LA and an effort by the LAPD to re-open their investigation into the events that led to the shooter’s dismissal.

But what about this? In searching for Christopher Dorner, the LAPD has shot two women — mother and daughter — in a blue pickup truck delivering papers. The LAPD is calling this “mistaken identity” — shooting two women in a pickup truck. Which just looks to me that the good guys carrying guns here experienced a pretty big failure in their training. And the LAPD also shot this man who was off to sneak in some surfing while driving a black pickup truck. The man here was not struck by any bullets, fortunately, but his lawyer has some choice words here:

“I don’t want to use the word buffoonery but it really is unbridled police lawlessness,” said Robert Sheahen, Perdue’s attorney. “These people need training and they need restraint.”

Good guys with guns, right? Aren’t they supposed to be the antidote for bad guys with guns? Looks to me like Wayne LaPierre ought to get ready to discuss the LAPD exception to that rule. Because the good guys with guns are causing plenty of mayhem on their own here.

What We Have Here Is A Failure of Deficit Hawkery

Did anyone notice this article on Friday — where Senator Carper is committing to working for continued funding of the deepening dredge of the Delaware while the US Government is getting ready (prioritizing projects) for the cutbacks required by the sequester. And can I remind you that Senator Carper voted FOR said sequester?

Is this theater or is this serious? Frankly, I should be surprised that this reporter didn’t ask Senator Carper why he is in favor of continuing to spend money on this project while he is so busy trying to have his concern for reining in government spending seen in every corner of the land. No doubt this deepening project is important locally — at least the boosters of the PA ports see an opportunity to compete for larger ships — but Senator Carper needs to remember that he is a fan of reining in spending. Especially spending on Social Security which doesn’t add a penny to the deficit or debt until 2028 or so. While this deepening project certainly won’t be paying for itself anytime soon. You’d think that he would be grateful for opportunities to save the government money — except that Senator Carper is the poster boy of the deficit hawks. He is interested in projects that help to benefit his business special interest groups, but not interested in making sure programs of interest to the people he has asked to vote for him routinely are at all made safe to deliver on their longstanding promises.

If you see the Senator any time soon — ask him about this. Ask him why he is so quick to spend more government money on a project with little chance of paying for itself and against the minor work it would take to stop destabilizing Social Security.

The Uselessness of John Sigler — Part 138

John Sigler’s email continues to make a fool of him — this time the email (which I haven’t seen) criticizes the Governor for his overseas trips. Really? Sigler clearly missed the fact that one of the real growth areas in American jobs is importing them from overseas. Still, it is a good bet that Sigler’s email provides no clues as to the places in Delaware where the Governor should be visiting to help bring in new jobs. The man is clearly not supposed to be making sense — just fine-tuning his manufactured outrage. The Governor provided a choice response though:

“The Governor’s trips to Korea and India are about jobs in Delaware for Delawareans. Mr. Sigler should explain to the hundreds of employees of Harim in Sussex County – workers who almost lost their jobs — why he thinks the Governor should not have gone to Korea to show Harim’s leaders what a great workforce and poultry industry we have in Delaware. Or Mr. Sigler can explain to 100 employees of Bilcare in Delaware City why the Governor shouldn’t meet in India with the leaders of that innovative pharmaceutical packaging and materials company. Or Mr. Sigler should explain to Delaware’s current and future technology workers why the Governor should not pitch Delaware to 1500 representatives of the Indian IT industry, which has a growing number of employees in the U.S. Economic development in the modern world doesn’t occur sitting at a desk. You have to work for it and that’s what the Governor is doing.”

I’d bet that the Governor wanted to add to this: “If Delaware Liberal isn’t having any of your shenanigans, don’t come shopping that shit at my door. Good DAY, sir!”

Sheesh. I bet Sigler is paid a pretty penny for this idiocy.

QOTD — Is The Culture War Over?

Mark Morford over at SF Chronicle thinks that it is, that the GOP lost and that the Godless Liberal Sickos Win Again. This is a great piece by Morford, taking a good look at the movement — a longtime movement — towards inclusiveness and equal rights for all:

Perhaps you’ve heard? Perhaps you’ve noticed? The infamous “culture wars” officially declared in the Reagan era and then hissed forth through the years by everyone from George W. Bush to Rick Warren, the Tea Party to groupthink megachurches, Rush Limbaugh’s giant mouth to Bill O’Reilly’s sad little book, Palin and Bachmann and Karl Rove, too, all ultimately landing with an inglorious splat on poor Rick “please don’t Google my last name” Santorum’s head, the culture wars of yore are essentially over.

And the Republicans lost.

The culture wars! What a silly idea. What a ridiculous and lopsided fight. All about gay marriage, women’s rights, pornography, censorship, “elitist” higher education, support for the arts, for science, immigration, the environment, legal marijuana, gays in the military, a black president, self-determined spirituality versus the deep poison that is organized religion.

The culture wars! Been around for ages, but most recently determined to mean constricted, God-fearing, red state “family values” versus “immoral” ‘60-style open-mindedness, all spinning off the timeless argument that the moral fabric of this great nation would surely be shredded to bits if too many Americans were allowed to have a free abortion after enjoying joyful sodomy in church with their college-educated gay husband’s blasphemous public sculpture that looks like a freedom-loving handgun shaped like a recreational vagina. Or something.

Evidence of the GOP’s glorious, ongoing loss? Everywhere and palpable. Gay marriage, to the vast majority of the nation and certainly to nearly everyone under 30, is a foregone and no-big-deal conclusion. Gays are now allowed to serve openly in the military and attend military academies (though not, of course, in the NFL), and now we hear that women have just been given the OK to serve in combat, too, which of course means we are all doomed – because as everyone knows, women are too weak and easy to rape, and gays just want to have sex with the enemy.

So what do you think? Tell us in the comments if you think that the culture war is over.

Wayne LaPierre Gets Beat up by Fox News

Chris Wallace interviewed LaPierre yesterday and by most accounts it seems that Wallace did not deliver a softball interview. This clip of the interview has been in wide circulation, and in it, Chris Wallace is not just tough on LaPierre and his talking points, but also lets LaPierre just hang from the rhetorical noose he creates. Interesting that this is from FOX News — especially since Rupert Murdoch has been on Twitter actively dissing US gun laws and attitudes to guns. This video is approx. 10 minutes long:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAaxexi53zg[/youtube]

Fox News doesn’t often get too far off of the conservative reservation, and is often determining the boundaries of the conservative reservation. This willingness by Wallace to let LaPierre look as out of touch as he is may just be a reflection of where Americans are — who want most of the minor changes to legislation that have been proposed. Or maybe it is something else — what do you think?

What Happens When Americans Find Out That Social Security is Not In Trouble

Today’s WONKBLOG has a great bit of reporting on a new survey from a group called the National Academy of Social Insurance, which conducted a survey of Americans and found that most Americans want to fix the long-term shortfall by raising the cap on contributions and they want to increase the benefits. Shockingly, Americans come to this conclusion once they learn (via this survey) that Social Security is not in immediate crisis. Which it isn’t.

The survey found that most major benefit cuts — including chained CPI, means testing and raising the full retirement age to 70 — strongly decreased respondents’ likelihood of supporting a deal. By contrast, revenue-raisers, such as increasing the payroll tax rate or eliminating the cap, elicited strong support and made respondents significantly more likely to support a deal. More mild measures, like raising the payroll tax cap to include 90 percent of wages, and raising the retirement age to 68, elicited mild support. The only benefit changes that people really liked were benefit increases. The following chart shows what the raw numbers looked like.

Interesting, yes? But for those of us who have been following the Social Security numbers and issues, this isn’t much of a surprise. The crisis is largely a manufactured one by DC and Wall Street interests whose views are apparently the only ones who count here. (Yep, I’m lookin’ at you, John Carney and Tom Carper.) The crisis narrative has been the only one you hear — in spite of clear evidence to the contrary that comes from the yearly Social Security Actuaries’ report. But the NASI survey looks at this narrative too:

Which is why we need to constantly remind folks that the people who keep claiming that Social Security is in crisis are not telling you the truth.

Friday Open Thread [2.1.2013]

YAY! The weekend! Anyone got any special Superbowl party plans in the works? And those of you avoiding the Superbowl like the plague, sound off……

Let’s make sure we get some GOP Atrocities accounted for — the Arkansas legislature passed an utterly unconstitutional bill banning abortions for pregnancies past six weeks. The teajadi behind this atrocity noted in a 2011 rant his overarching governing goals:

RAPERT: I hear you loud and clear, Barack Obama. You don’t represent the country that I grew up with. And your values is [sic] not going to save us. We’re going to take this country back for the Lord. We’re going to try to take this country back for conservatism. And we’re not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in!

No word yet on whether the minorities in Arkansas are arming themselves.

The Most Overused Words in Journalism — you have to read the whole thing, but this one is my favorite today:

Some say, experts say, critics say: Varieties of this weasel phrase are employed to provide “balance” and authority to stories, often where none is needed. How many experts say that vaccines are harmful to babies? What qualifies them as an expert? How many people are required for a journalist to write that “some say” something? The answer is usually one—the cab driver who picked up the journalist from the airport will usually suffice.

There you go.

The irascible Ed Koch — NYC Mayor for Life — died this morning from heart failure.

And CBS in Philly provides a guide to the Silliest Superbowl Bets available to you. These are nuts, but WTF is up with this one:

SUPER BOWL XLVII SPECIALS – Will Beyonce’s hair be Curly/Crimped OR Straight at the beginning of the Super Bowl Halftime show?
Straight -140 (5/7)
Curly/Crimped EVEN (1/1)

What interests you today?

Kinder Morgan Doesn’t Like to be Bashed

This is what Alan Levin had to say reacting to Kinder Morgan’s comment that the DE Legislature’s insisting on doing their job might kill the deal to privatize the Port of Wilmington. The NJ’s front page story on this today accounts for Kinder Morgan’s new found nervousness over this deal, telling an analysts’ conference call that the GA may have scuttled whatever deal is in being secretly negotiated:

“We were very disappointed in the decision by the Legislature this past week, which we think may end up killing the deal,” John Schlosser, president-elect of Kinder Morgan terminals, said during a conference call with analysts Wednesday. Schlosser said that Kinder Morgan is exploring roles in six such port facility spinoffs after he was asked about the Wilmington deal.

Kinder Chief Executive Officer Rich Kinder added: “We were disappointed in the legislation, which seemed to be more intent on protecting union jobs than it is in the economic well-being of the port. But that’s their decision.”

Senator Bobby Marshall responds:

Sen. Robert I. Marshall, D-Wilmington, said later that Kinder Morgan’s comment “clearly indicates that they don’t like anyone, elected or otherwise, having any review.” Marshall said that legislators have an obligation to examine and protect the state’s interests.

“Corporations on Wall Street don’t want any transparency by the public and by a publicly elected entity like the state Legislature,” said Marshall, who described Kinder Morgan as having “a very aggressive approach to their end goal of maximizing profit. “When you privatize, it is usually at the expense of workers, their pensions and their middle-class lifestyle,” Marshall said. “So the review of the Bond Bill Committee is a significant responsibility.”

Right. And maybe the State of Delaware should not be doing business with folks who can’t manage the light of the Democratic process. The real pity here is that there are alot of people (myself included) who aren’t especially opposed to privatizing the port — we just don’t know enough about it to be able to make our own decisions as to this effort’s usefulness. And we are all reminding the Markell Administration that we do get to make up our own minds on what to support and on what to advocate for with out legislators. The legislature should be weighing in on any deal that disposes of or privatizes a major state asset. *That* is the deal that Markell has to live with, for better or worse.

One of my original questions was how Kinder Morgan was going to be able to make money while making a fairly large capital investment when the State could not. I think that the Kinder Morgan executive’s snide comment re: protecting union jobs seems to point in the direction of the answer to that question. The state’s interests certainly include stabilizing the port AND in making it competitive for the long term. But that also needs to be balanced by the interests of people working at the port, and specifically degrading a bunch of jobs so that Kinder Morgan can make money doesn’t look like balance (or delivering on Markell’s often repeated committment to middle class jobs) from here.

Governor Markell and Mr. Levin should tell Kinder Morgan that it is the secrecy that is the problem and they shouldn’t have tried to do this behind the backs of the Legislature or the people who own that port.