Author Archives: El Somnambulo

Delaware Political Weekly: April 5-11, 2024

1.  Three-Way In RD 14.  No, we’re not talking about any shenanigans between Lopez, McGuiness, and Speaker Pete.  Although you’re welcome to.  We are talking KMG entering the RD 14 primary, which already features Claire Snyder-Hall and Marty Rendon.  She announced at this week’s RD 14 committee meeting, and has filed her committee.  As you’d expect, she has the support of bosom buddy Pete Schwartzkopf.   Nobody epitomizes Delaware Way insiderism quite like McGuiness.  Elections commissioner deemed her an eligible candidate despite her having voted in Park City, UT;  named Pharmacist Of The Year even though she wasn’t a practicing pharmacist (she was ostensibly Delaware’s Auditor at the time); gave her daughter a no-show paid job in the Auditor’s office; had an affair with a State Senator, destroying his political career and his marriage; figuratively attached herself to the hip (and vice versa) with Delaware’s most powerful House member; oh and was convicted of a misdemeanor and driven from office.  Yes, she can win. Maybe.  But this race, along with at least two others, Kamela Smith vs. Our PAL Val,  and Monica Shockley Porter vs. Bill Bush, represent potential death rattle contests that could drive a stake through the heart of the Delaware Way.  (Links provided in case you would like to donate.)

2. Speaking Of Delaware Way Death Rattle Candidacies…John Paradee is hosting a big bucks fundraiser for Bethany Hall-Long at his home on April 18.   Featuring sell-out Kerri Evelyn Harris, Lumpy Carson, Bill Bush, Kyra Hoffner, Trey Paradee and Sean Lynn.  If you don’t remember how Trey carried John’s dirty water in Dover, this should refresh your memory:

The Paradee name has been big in D circles for decades. The old man was chair of the Kent County Democratic Party.  John got a job as a staff attorney when I worked for the Senate. While we had some excellent staff attorneys (Frank Murphy, Jeff Clark and Tim Willard come to mind), there was always room for someone whose only credential was political cronyism. John Paradee, who pretty much everybody grew to dislike, and quickly; and Becky Batson, who called the President Pro-Tem without irony ‘Uncle Thurm’. He’s now an attorney wired into all sorts of projects, and she lobbies on behalf of the powerful and connected.

Fast-forward to June of this year. SB 178, to be quickly followed by two substitute bills, is introduced on June 25.  The bill ‘allows the Kent County Levy Court to impose a lodging tax, not greater than 3%, in Kent County‘. The Bill is sponsored by Sen. Trey Paradee, aka Charles Paradee III. On its surface, the bill appears innocuous as it follows on similar legislation being enacted for the other two counties, plus some select municipalities, throughout the state.

However, this bill is different. Although it was not properly noticed in the bill synopsis quoted above, SB 178 provides that:

…The revenue collected from the imposition of the local lodging tax shall, when collected, be directed to the Kent County Regional Sports Complex Corporation, a nonprofit organization, which operates the County-sponsored DE Turf facility located in Kent County near Frederica. The Kent County Regional Sports Complex Corporation shall use the revenue provided exclusively for the DE Turf facility to allow the facility to remain competitive by advertising, promoting, and providing incentives for use of the facility, to establish a program to benefit youth by providing to youth organizations and scholastic institutions the opportunity to use its facility at reduced cost, and to maintain, improve, and support the facility through the payment of costs, expenses, and associated debt.

No other lodging tax legislation included such language specifying how the money was to be used.

Enter John Paradee, who has been involved in this controversial project since at least 2017.  In 2017, Kent County Levy Court went against the recommendation of its Planning Services division and approved, by a 4-3 vote, a rezoning that enabled the continuation of the project. John Paradee was an attorney for those seeking the rezoning.  (BTW, Paradee’s fingerprints are all over legislative initiatives pertaining to Kent County development proposals, including this plan for a publicly-funded access road to the Dover Mall). The bills were passed, but the expansion plans have stalled. Nobody wants to talk publicly about this. But, I digress.

The Delaware Turf Sports Complex had already benefited from an $18 million DELDOT project to open an interchange at South Frederica specifically for the purpose of providing access to the complex. which opened in the summer of 2018.

John Paradee is a member of the DE Sports Turf Board Of Directors, along with the usual suspects.  This board is the Kent County definition of the Delaware Way. Paradee not only actively pushed for the passage of his brother’s legislation, but, according to this News Journal article, which is a must-read:

With the hotel tax revenue, DE Turf says it would be able to bid for tournaments with more teams and bigger crowds.

John Paradee filed an application with the state for the development of ‘a hotel, restaurant and retail development on a 21-acre field adjacent to the sports complex’ two days after his brother’s bill passed the General Assembly. On the application, there were three listed owners of the 21-acre field, all limited liability companies.

John Paradee’s name is listed on the LLC’s filings held by the Delaware Department of State. He has represented at least one of the entities, JMER Properties LLC, at municipal government meetings.

In an email, John Paradee disputed the assertion that he would benefit from the proposed lodging tax “in any fashion whatsoever,” calling any suggestion otherwise “wholly unfounded and utterly reckless.”

He also said he was “not at liberty to divulge” information about the LLCs ownership stakes.

This proved too dirty for even the Delaware Way insiders to get away with.  Including Paradee’s sister, who was (is?) one of Carney’s attorneys.  Trey introduced legislation basically rendering this piece of shit null and void.  But only public exposure stopped this insider corruption from proceeding.  We already know that BHL has benefited from insider corruption via her husband, at the very least.  This is the Kent County branch of the Delaware Way.  Voting for someone other than BHL is a great way to rid ourselves of this stain on our state.

3.  D Files Against R State Rep. Jeff Hilovsky In RD 4.  To be precise, he has filed his campaign committee.  His name is Gregg Lindner.  While this is not his first foray into politics, it appears to be his first race in Delaware.  He displayed success and some sharp political elbows as a Democratic member on the Unionville-Chadds Ford School Board in Pennsylvania. Real sharp political elbows.  I like that.  After being reelected to the Board in 2015, he blistered Rethugs as follows:

“During the 2013 reorganization meeting, I was nominated to be the vice president of the school board, as was Mr. Hellrung,” Lindner said. “The head of the Republican Party of Chadds Ford showed up at our meeting for the only time in my four-year tenure to watch the Region C board member vote for Mr. Hellrung. Her attendance lasted 90 seconds. Now let’s move to the recent election. If Mr. Hellrung or any other board member wants to get involved in an election outside their region, that’s their right. But to torture the truth in order to get people elected is not OK. At least not OK for a school board election. And Mr. Hellrung did all those things in an editorial in [local online media]. Mr. Hellrung, among other things, said our political team was composed of political operatives. If that is the case, Kathy Do, Bev Brookes and I are a sad team of political operatives, because we had no party machinery, and a political committee that included only the three of us.”

Yet they won.  Might be worth keeping an eye on this race.  RD 4 is the district that was transferred from Wilmington (Gerald Brady) to Suxco in 2022.  It features a lot of communities that have sprung up in the beach area south of Rehoboth from Marshtown to Oak Orchard.  The district skews R, 7849 D, 9139 R, and 6506 I.  Hilovsky got 61% in an R primary against Bradley Layfield, then defeated D Keegan Worley with over 57% of the vote in 2022.

4.  Mike Spencer Drops Out.  He had filed to primary incumbent D State Rep. DeShanna Neal in RD 13, but withdrew his candidacy on April 5.

5. Filing(s): State Rep. Bill Bush (D-RD 29).

That’s all I’ve got this week.  What’d I miss, and whaddayathink?

DL Open Thread: Thursday, April 11, 2024

Throwing Bad Money After Worse Money Going After Court Of Chancery.  Sombrero tip to Al Catraz for citing this incomprehensible (to me) ad:

Could I point this out? Nobody in Delaware gives two shits about this.  I’d like to know just who the audience is for these ads.  I mean, hasn’t Musk already moved to reincorporate in Texas?  Plus, just what the bleep is the point of this ad?

Arizona Rethugs Run Themselves Over Once Again On Abortion.  Even they know that this total ban is a political disaster.  However:

Democrats, who seized on the decision to resurrect the 160-year-old ban as a pivotal election issue, tried to push bills through the Republican-controlled Legislature to repeal the ban, a move they said would protect women’s health and freedom, and also force Republicans to take a formal vote on the law.

But Republican leaders in the Senate removed one bill from the day’s agenda on Wednesday, legislative aides said. In the House, a Republican lawmaker who had called for striking down the law made a motion to vote on a Democratic repeal bill that has sat stalled for months. But Republican leaders quickly scuttled that effort by calling for a recess, and later adjourned until next Wednesday.

The decision and subsequent backlash has exposed divisions among Arizona Republicans over their support for abortion restrictions. And it has highlighted how abortion has become a political vulnerability for Republicans since the overturning of Roe v. Wade two years ago, even in traditionally conservative states.

Some Arizona Republicans who had previously voted to support abortion restrictions or give legal protection to fetuses abruptly shifted course after the ruling on Tuesday and called for a repeal or some other legislative fix.

They don’t want to pass a Democratic bill, but they’re terrified of the backlash from the anti-abortion folks should they try to introduce similar legislation on their own.  Plus, many of them love the decision, including the Rethug Speaker of the House:

The Senate president and House speaker, both Republicans, issued a joint statement emphasizing that the court’s ruling had not yet taken effect and probably would not for weeks, as the legal fight over the 1864 law heads back to a lower court for additional arguments over its constitutionality.

They said they were reviewing the ruling and would listen to their voters to determine what the Legislature should do. But Axios reported that the House speaker, Ben Toma, opposed a repeal and said that he would not allow a vote on it.

They broke it, they bought it.

‘Doggone Dangerous’ Gun Loophole To Be Closed.  At least until the Supreme Court overturns this:

The sale of firearms on the internet and at gun shows in the US will in future be subject to mandatory background checks, the justice department said on Thursday as it announced a “historic” new action to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals.

The closing of the so-called gun show loophole, which exempts private transactions from restrictions that apply to licensed dealers, has long been a goal of the Biden administration, and is specifically targeted in the rule published in the federal register today.

“Under this regulation, it will not matter if guns are sold on the internet, at a gun show, or at a brick-and-mortar store: if you sell guns predominantly to earn a profit, you must be licensed, and you must conduct background checks,” attorney general Merrick Garland told reporters on a press call announcing the measure.

The White House estimates that 22% of guns owned by Americans were acquired without a background check and that about 23,000 more individuals will be required to be licensed as a dealer after the rule’s implementation.

“There is a large and growing black market of guns being sold by people in the business of dealing and doing it without a license, and therefore they are not running background checks the way the law requires,” ATF director Steven Dettelbach said.

A big F-ing deal.

‘Non-Persons’ Voting On The Agenda For Seaford Elections.  Candidates stances on this and other local issues are informing the April 20 election. From this opinion piece:

Negative “continuity” not needed in Seaford:

  • Voting to raise electric rates without first considering budget cuts to reduce/eliminate the need for increases
  • Overturning the will of the people by trying to allow hundreds of nonpersons to vote in municipal elections
  • Closing Magnolia Drive with a farm gate, while ignoring citizens’ complaints of violations of charter and bylaw legal requirements
  • Using highly political legal theories to pursue an illegal “fetal remains” ordinance, resulting in a resounding defeat in an impartial Delaware court
  • Failing to attempt to remedy the severe problem of 4,680 eligible voters not voting in the April 15, 2023, municipal election
  • Multiple legal violations of the Freedom of Information Act and election laws, as ruled by the impartial Delaware Department of Justice and the impartial Delaware Department of Elections, respectively

Check out their voting records, showing that the two current city councilmen running for mayor and City Council were/are right in the middle of support of these negative actions.

Sounds reasonable to me.

What do you want to talk about?

Comment Rescue: Retired Legislators To Get Windfall

Will the General Assembly act to stop this?  They absolutely should.  Mediawatch spotted this Karl Baker article for us:

Pension snafu will soon pay retired state lawmakers more

This should clear up the mess we find ourselves in:

Last month, retired legislators received letters from Delaware Pension Administrator Joanna Adams that outlined a forthcoming change in their monthly pension payments. The letter stated that the change is happening because Delaware’s legal code “was never updated” following the apparent passage of a law in 1997 that altered how legislative pensions were calculated.

Prior to the change, lawmakers’ pensions payouts were anchored to that of the highest-earning retired legislator.

After the change, the pension office implemented a more standard system, whereby lawmakers who entered the General Assembly after 1997 received payments that were based on a percentage of their own highest years’ earnings.

Now, the legislative pension will revert back to pre-1997 format, Adams said in her letter.

One former lawmaker who shared Adams’ letter with Spotlight Delaware, and asked for anonymity to discuss the issue in-depth, said their pension check is likely to go up many hundreds of dollars each month, as a result of the change.

The lawmaker said another boost in their pension is likely to occur following the retirement at the end of this year of Rep. Peter Schwartzkopf (D-Rehoboth Beach), who served for a decade as Speaker of the House.

The cynicism of the members of the General Assembly back then cannot be overstated.  In his final term in office, Sen. Herman Holloway Sr. was accorded the highly-unusual honor of serving both on the Joint Finance Committee and in Senate leadership.  Since both involved payments over and above the normal legislative salary, Holloway’s pension ballooned, meaning that all other legislators with sufficient service time had their pensions balloon as well because, as Baker wrote, “Prior to the change, lawmakers’ pensions payouts were anchored to that of the highest-earning retired legislator.”

Senate rules had precluded someone in leadership from serving on the Joint Finance Committee or the Bond Bill Committee at the same time.  The Senate changed the rule precisely so that everybody’s pension would balloon along with Sen. Holloway’s.

Which isn’t the end of the General Assembly’s perfidy in this matter.

It used to be that the Delaware Compensation Commission would recommend salary levels for non-Merit System employees, like judges, cabinet officials and legislators.  The General Assembly would then vote on those recommendations.  That changed somewhere around 1997 as well, as the General Assembly passed legislation specifying that the recommended salary increases would take place unless the General Assembly voted against the recommendations.  In other words, they could increase their own salaries without ever having to vote on it.

Lawmakers are more than a little pissed off that this development was sprung on them.  (BTW, it is now inescapable that legislators, particularly in the Senate, have lost patience with the ongoing incompetence and secrecy of the Carney Administration.  Another story on this coming up, well, whenever I get around to writing it.)  From the News-Journal story on the same issue:

Delaware Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend said lawmakers weren’t aware of the pension payout problems until local reporters reached out seeking clarity on the issue, and are still trying to gather information.

“My understanding is that the (pensions) office has been looking at this for 12 months now and to me, it defies statistical probability that there would not have been some kind of outreach to the legislature to let us know of some kind of discrepancy whether 27 years ago or 27 days ago,” Townsend said. “We should have been informed that something was amiss.”

After refusing to provide the total costs associated with the snafu, the Office of Pensions on Monday said the one-time payment amounted to $900,000 and the changes will add an additional $9,000 per month cost to the state pension plan.

This money comes out of the State Pensioners’ accounts, meaning more for retired legislators, less for everyone else.

The pensions office would not say how many legislators the change impacts, but indicated it affects those elected between Feb. 1, 1997 and Jan. 1, 2012. The office declined to provide a dollar figure on how much total is owed to pensioners citing state code that dictates that records maintained by the Office of Pensions “shall be confidential.”

Am I allowed to say this on the blog?  BULL-FUCKING-SHIT.  We’re talking about dollars that are public dollars.  The Carney Administration has hid behind the Cloak Of Confidentiality on countless matters.  I once thought it was just unwarranted caution on their part, but I now think they’ve been hiding rampant incompetence from the public.

The General Assembly must not allow this to stand.  I await the first bill to right this wrong on the very first day the General Assembly gets back in session.  Tuesday, April 16.  We’ll be watching.

‘State’s Rights’ On Abortion Comes Home To Roost In Arizona

I think you can cross Arizona off your list of competitive states for November.  Check this out from the NY Times:

Arizona’s highest court on Tuesday upheld an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions, a decision that could have far-reaching consequences for women’s health care and election-year politics in a critical battleground state. The 1864 law, the court said in a 4-2 decision, “is now enforceable.” But the court put its ruling on hold for the moment, and sent the matter back to a lower court to hear additional arguments about the law’s constitutionality.

The Arizona Supreme Court said that because the federal right to abortion in Roe v. Wade had been overturned, there was no federal or state law preventing Arizona from enforcing the near-total ban on abortions, which had sat dormant for decades.

The ruling concerned a law that was on the books long before Arizona achieved statehood. It outlaws abortion from the moment of conception, except when necessary to save the life of the mother, and it makes no exceptions for rape or incest. Doctors prosecuted under the law could face fines and prison terms of two to five years.

The 1864 ban had sat mothballed for decades, one of several sweeping state abortion-ban laws that were moribund while Roe v. Wade was in effect but became the focus of intense political and legal action after Roe fell.

A proposed constitutional amendment declaring abortion a ‘fundamental right’ could be on the ballot in Arizona in November.  Whether it is or isn’t, I believe that today’s decision puts the state in the Biden column and dooms Kari Lake’s candidacy for the Senate.

 

Delaware Political Weekly: March 29-April 4, 2024

1. BHL AWOL. SOL?  She’s apparently trying to still raise money.  But, she’s been missing campaign events, including a Suxco Candidates’ Forum.   She also missed a recent event in the Ardens.  Both Meyer and O’Mara attended, as did a host of other candidates.  I think she’s in the death rattle phase of her campaign.  The numerous fundraisers is a ‘tell’.  She needs to raise money.  She’s not raising nearly enough online.  Physical fundraisers are expensive and require a lot of time to put together.  We saw pictures of the sparsely-attended event that Our PAL Val held for her in December.  Pretty much everybody in the picture were from the building/construction trades.  Not a lot of smiles.  Didn’t do much to help her year-end financial report either.  Meyer and O’Mara have plenty of money in the bank for the campaign.  She doesn’t.  She’s got two ‘virtual’ fundraisers set to try to activate a national network of nurses who, hopefully for her, haven’t read about her campaign finance three-card monte game.  BTW, while Carney hasn’t officially endorsed her, he’s doing weaselly behind-the-scenes stuff.  You know, like this from her Facebook page:

Thank you to Lt. Governor Bethany Hall-Long for promoting health resources in our community. The Health and Wellness Fair is a reminder to schedule your annual screenings and connect with the resources available in our community.
If you or someone you know is making a difference in the health and wellness space, nominate them for the Lt. Governor’s challenge by Monday, April 1. https://ltgovernorschallenge.org/how-to-nominate.
Come to think of it,  Carney is weaselly.  His non-endorsement endorsement of BHL. His endorsement of Eugene Young, which has nothing to do with Eugene Young.   Were it not for the Carper push for him to be Lt. Governor, Carney would be Sean Barney.  Actually, Carney never would have run for anything on his own.  An accidental politician.  A bad one at that.
Back to BHL.  What’s the over/under date on when she drops out?  To me, that’s the only remaining question.
2.  Well, Look Who Just Filed A PAC Committee.  Yep, the Delaware Healthcare Association.  Yes, it has everything to do with the possibility that their charges/costs could be reviewed by a public body.  Their state purpose:
Delaware Healthcare Association Political Action Committee (DHAPAC) represents healthcare executives in their role of promoting effective change in health services through collaboration and consensus.
Whatever you say.
3.  James Taylor Running Again In RD 2.  Presumably against Stephanie Bolden.  Once again, a missed opportunity.  His website doesn’t suck.  Hard to believe there isn’t a decent candidate anywhere to be found in this Wilmington district.  We don’t need an anti-progressive homophobe in Dover (‘You’re Not One Of Those Wokies, Are You?’), even if it means two more years of Bolden.
4.  Is Terrell Williams The New Dennis E. Williams?  Nothing against the guy, but does he have a plan to win, and/or why is he compelled to run every time around?  Decent, guy, decent platform, but he pretty much defines the term ‘history repeating itself’.  In 2020, he ran in a State Senatorial primary against incumbent Bruce Ennis and challenger Kyra Hoffner.  Finished third with 21.8%.  In 2022, challenged Kevin Hensley, got 44.1%.  Hey, maybe if Hensley doesn’t run, he might win.  Even Dennis E. Williams caught lightning in a bottle.  Briefly.
That’s all I’ve got for this belated report.  What’d I miss and whaddayathink?

DL Open Thread: Sunday, April 7, 2024

A little detail from yesterday’s campaigning.  I arrive at this self-contained community. It’s gusty.  One of those oversized balloon things, an ‘I Love You’ balloon in the shape of a heart with golden plastic ‘legs’, blows down some lawns, crosses the street, and winds up in some shrubbery behind a massive Delaware Tire Center complex.

Hey, I’m never gonna write the Great American Novel,  felt it would be a shame not to share this.

But, I digress.

Yet Another Healthcare Plan Vampire:

The answer is a little-known data analytics firm called MultiPlan. It works with UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, Aetna and other big insurers to decide how much so-called out-of-network medical providers should be paid. It promises to help contain medical costs using fair and independent analysis.

But a New York Times investigation, based on interviews and confidential documents, shows that MultiPlan and the insurance companies have a large and mostly hidden financial incentive to cut those reimbursements as much as possible, even if it means saddling patients with large bills. The formula for MultiPlan and the insurance companies is simple: The smaller the reimbursement, the larger their fee.

Here’s how it works: The most common way Americans get health coverage is through employers that “self-fund,” meaning they pay for their workers’ medical care with their own money. The employers contract with insurance companies to administer the plans and process claims. Most medical visits are with providers in a plan’s network, with rates set in advance.

But when employees see a provider outside the network, as Ms. Lawson did, many insurance companies consult with MultiPlan, which typically recommends that the employer pay less than the provider billed. The difference between the bill and the sum actually paid amounts to a savings for the employer. But, The Times found, it means big money for MultiPlan and the insurer, since both companies often charge the employer a percentage of the savings as a processing fee.

In some instances, the fees paid to an insurance company and MultiPlan for processing a claim far exceeded the amount paid to providers who treated the patient. Court records show, for example, that Cigna took in nearly $4.47 million from employers for processing claims from eight addiction treatment centers in California, while the centers received $2.56 million. MultiPlan pocketed $1.22 million.

Good Fracking?  We’re talking geothermal energy.  Wonder about the earthquakes, though…:

Geothermal capacity could increase 20-fold by 2050, generating 10 percent of the US’s electricity, according to a recent road map released by the US Department of Energy. Joe Biden’s administration has also funded new projects aimed at pushing forward the next generation of geothermal that aim to make the energy source available anywhere on America’s landmass, not just easy-to-reach hot springs.

“The US can lead the clean-energy future with continued innovation on next-generation technologies, from harnessing the power of the sun to the heat beneath our feet, and cracking the code to deploy them at scale,” said Jennifer Granholm, the US energy secretary, who added that she saw “enormous potential” in geothermal.

Expanding the geothermal footprint to the entire US will take time, as well as plenty of money—the department of energy estimates as much as $250 billion will be needed for projects to become widespread across the country, providing a major source of clean power.

But advocates of geothermal say that such growth is within reach, because of a wave of geothermal technologies as well as government support. In February, the Biden administration announced $74 million for up to seven pilot projects to develop enhanced geothermal systems that, the government said, hold the potential for powering 65 million American homes.

Hey, just couldn’t find much that interested me this morning.  Perhaps you can help fill out this abbreviated column.

What do you want to talk about?

DL Open Thread: Saturday, April 6, 2024

When Is A Bond Not A Bond?  When it’s not valid in the State of New York.  Watch the video:

The video explains the details behind NY AG Letitia James’ objections to the $175 million bond that TFG filed against the $454 million judgment in the tax fraud case. Turns out the company that posted the bond, Knight Specialty Insurance, doesn’t have enough assets to meet the NY requirement for a bonding company to make such a large bond.

Here’s the best part. Knight Specialty has argued that they don’t have to meet the NY requirements because — ahem — they are NOT A LICENSED NY BONDING COMPANY. Sure, that will work.

Judge Engoron has scheduled an April 22 hearing to discuss.

Trump Really Doesn’t Want The Hush Money Case To Go To Trial.  Last-minute desperation.  Will it work?:

Former President Donald Trump is demanding a new judge just days before his hush-money criminal trial is set to begin, rehashing longstanding grievances with the current judge in a long-shot, eleventh-hour bid to disrupt and delay the case.

Trump’s lawyers — echoing his recent social media complaints — urged Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan to step aside from the case, alleging bias and a conflict of interest because his daughter is a Democratic political consultant. The judge rejected a similar request last August.

In court papers made public Friday, Trump’s lawyers said it is improper for Merchan “to preside over these proceedings while Ms. Merchan benefits, financially and reputationally, from the manner in which this case is interfering” with Trump’s campaign as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Explain To Me Just How RFK Jr’s Candidacy Hurts Biden.  He’s shaped his appeal to the nuttiest of the RWNJ’s.  AKA Trump’s base.  Here’s but one example:

On March 23, Steve and Tracy Slepcevic hosted a fundraiser for independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the San Diego area. Tickets started at $575, and those who paid $2,750 were to be treated to a “private sunset reception” before RFK Jr. would chat with the assembled and pose for photos. It was hardly surprising that the Slepcevics were supporting Kennedy, given that Tracy is a long-time anti-vaxxer prominent within the autism community. But the personal politics of the Slepcevics illuminate the weird currents propelling Kennedy’s White House bid, for the pair have hobnobbed with QAnoners, Christian nationalists, election deniers, and other pro-Trump extremists. Steve, who has a checkered past as a businessmen that includes an arrest (but not a conviction) for allegedly defrauding victims of Hurricane Katrina, was in the crowd of Trump devotees outside the Capitol on January 6.

Last year, Tracy Slepcevic published a book called Warrior Mom about her years raising a son with autism that she blames on routine childhood vaccines. The book was endorsed by Kennedy and championed by Michael Flynn, the disgraced former national security adviser for President Donald Trump who has become a QAnon-friendly Christian nationalist and a leader within the far-right patriots movement. The Kennedy campaign sells signed copies of the book for $150 a pop. Tracy has been an ally of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vax nonprofit that Kennedy ran before entering the 2024 contest. In November, she spoke at CHD’s annual conference in Savannah, Georgia, where she hawked her book and palled around with Kennedy, a longtime peddler of Covid and vaccine misinformation. On Facebook, she declared, “Had a great time at the CHD conference in Savannah with some amazing people…I’m so blessed to be on this journey with each and every one of them.” In promoting her book and activism, she has shared platforms with Stew Peters, a far-right anti-vaxxer who has been tied to QAnon advocacy and has spread (according to the ADL) antisemitic tropes, and with Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced scientist who wrote a discredited paper linking autism to vaccines.

What am I missing here?  Seems to me the only D’s who might support his campaign would be those who have Rip Van Winkled since the ‘Sixties.  The, uh, 1960’s, for you newbies.

Ron Poliquin In Hall Of Fame?  He may not be Delaware’s Worst Lawyer, but were there a Hall of Fame for such, he’d be on the short list for induction.  However, we’re talkin’ ‘The Honorable RGP’ going into the Dynamite Champion Wrestling Hall Of Fame:

So how does Poliquin envision his persona as a real life attorney operating The Poliquin Firm in Dover?

“I always tell potential clients, ‘I don’t ever claim I’m the best attorney, but I am the best attorney for certain situations,’” he said.

“Ultimately, I find being an aggressive and tenacious advocate for my clients puts them in the best situations to make the right decision for their case — whether that be settlement or trial.”

Hmmm, reminds me of an ancient post of mine.  An excerpt:

If elected, Poliquin could become the first Delaware public official to have shared a bill with Women’s Oil Wrestling and taken part in an event featuring “VIP Couch Seating With a Personal Waitress” for $20.  Seriously. It’s in the article. Ladies and Gentlemen: Your Republican Family Values Candidate. Although, to his credit, he keeps his unibrow neatly-trimmed (he’s a lawyer, after all).

What do you want to talk about?

Bob Marshall: An Appreciation

When I went to work for the Delaware State Senate in 1985, all I knew about Bob Marshall was what I had been told–he was the nephew of Wilmington City Democratic Boss Leo Marshall, and that he had benefited from that relationship.  Our paths hadn’t crossed during my first two years in the House and my time as staffer for the Joint Sunset Committee.  I pretty much assumed that he’d be a back-bencher.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  He was one of the best collaborative legislators one could imagine.  He was an empath.  While not a grandstander, once he got his teeth into an issue, he wouldn’t give up.

The first time I remember working an event for him, it was a community meeting in Browntown to consider a Browntown Truck Route.  It was designed to get commercial traffic off the residential streets while ensuring that businesses still got their deliveries.  DELDOT was there with maps featuring the impact on every household.  There was a lot of bickering, bitching and squabbling amongst the neighbors.  I remember saying to Bob that maybe he ought to make sure the meeting didn’t get out of control.  He said, relax, I know these people, this is their way of working things out.  By meeting’s end, everything was worked out and everybody was happy with the plan.  I realized that my first impression of him had been incorrect.

Some Things You May Not Know About Bob Marshall, In No Particular Order:

1. Bob was the first legislator to push for Medical And Family Leave.  We had a really good legislative fellow named Tanny Higgins, and at Bob’s behest, she did great research that informed the bill’s final form.  This was unpaid medical and family leave (it was the ’80’s, after all) and the bill did not pass.  Why?  Because the Chamber was more powerful then, and convinced enough senators that this bill would start the ‘slippery slope’ down the path to paid medical and family leave, a path with which Bob, Harris McDowell, and a few others, were not uncomfortable.  The Feds ended up beating us to the punch.  And, decades later, we finally got paid medical and family leave.

2. Bob, at the request of Jane Pierantozzi and several other animal welfare supporters, created a Spay/Neuter Task Force that led to the use of a statewide Spay/Neuter van.  Quite an accomplishment.  Also indirectly led to my daughter volunteering at Faithful Friends, which directly led to a cat adopting her and coming home with us.  Quite the cat, her meow sounded like a duck quacking.

3.  Bob insisted on having the most racially and ethnically diverse district in the city and in Delaware.  Our Senate attorney, Frank Murphy, ensured that it was so.  Didn’t matter to him that it was not a white-majority district.  In fact, he welcomed it.  He loved to partner with people like Maria Matos at the Latin American Community Center, Keith Lake at Peoples’ Settlement, and Paul Calistro at West End Neighborhood House, among many others.

4.  When progressives were concerned that Bob wouldn’t publicly commit to supporting Sarah McBride’s SB 97 back in 2013, I wasn’t.  No, I wasn’t lobbying him on the bill, but I knew that his silence was that, as a Roman Catholic, he didn’t want to rub the St. Hedwig’s parishioners noses in it.  But he had often told me that, on civil rights, he was a Hubert Humphrey Democrat, meaning equal rights and equal opportunity for all.  I can’t recall a single vote where he went against those principles.  Yes, he voted for SB 97.

5.  Bob blew the whistle on privatizing Port operations in 2013, which was almost a done deal before he raised a stink.  One of the key purposes for privatization was to get rid of the ILA, the Longshoremen’s Union.  We’re seeing it again, Jeff Bullock’s gonna bullock everything up.  Clueless and malevolent.  Wonder who, if anybody, will stand up for the port workers now?

6.  Bob successfully pushed for several minimum wage increases.  However, time after time, that success was weakened by a succession of Democratic governors who were closely tied to the Chamber.  Carper, Markell and Carney.  He never stopped trying, though.  He got everything that was possible to get for working families.

7.  Perhaps the coolest event that he helped coordinate was attracting the Polish tall ship, the Dar Mlodziezy,  as part of an amazing Tall Ships event at the Wilmington Riverfront.  I’m thinking early 90’s.  He arranged for lodging for the captain and the crew, involved the Polish community around St. Hedwig’s in Wilmington.  He then invited my entire family, along with a host of others, to an event on the ship.  My wife, my daughters, and especially my dad, who had served in the Navy, had one of the best times ever.  The ship was by far the cleanest and most ship-shape of all the ships, the captain was gregarious.  Oh, the entertainment for the evening? Dionne Warwick.  My wife’s band teacher played in her backing band.  Bob was very inclusive, treating people as extended family.

8. Bob and Councilman Bud Freel joined forces with community leaders in the Hedgeville/Hilltop area to force absentee landlords to either care for their properties or get the hell out.  We’re not talking photo op stuff, we’re talking block-to-block painstaking effort.

9. Bob and Paul Calistro joined forces on a building rehab program designed to turn renters into homeowners.  Even arranged for financial literacy training for prospective buyers.

10.  Bob led a city initiative for community policing, the idea being forming alliances between police and the neighborhoods they’d be assigned to.  It had some success, but  lack of support from police leadership and some mayors kept the initiative from taking hold.

His Most Notable Accomplishments.

Two come to mind.  I’ve already talked at length over the years about his nursing home reform efforts.  Inspired by citizens who came to Leg Hall with horror stories, which motivated Bob to put together quite a working group.  We heard from hundreds of people up and down the state, each with their own story, many of them on the phone to me.  We read every single nursing home survey dating back several years.  We conducted public hearings in all three counties and in Wilmington.   We conducted several working sessions, one of which coincidentally took place at Buena Vista on 9-11.  We came into contact with so many special people during that time, private citizens like Phyllis Peavy and Pat Englehardt, operators like Jerry Spilecki at the Mary Campbell Center, and public servants including Carper attorney Tom McGonigal, Mary McDonough, Barb Webb, and so many others.  It was a collaboration.  What Bob was best at.  The result?:  The single most progressive package of reform legislation that had been enacted nationally at the time.

Yes, it’s unfortunate that unsympathetic governors, especially Minner and Carney, bought into the corporate propaganda and watered down those efforts.  But the laws are still there, just waiting to be enforced.

His other most notable accomplishment, IMHO, is one that surprisingly hasn’t yet been mentioned in the articles I’ve read.  That is the revitalization of Wilmington’s Riverfront and, in particular, the creation of the Russell W. Peterson Urban Wildlife Refuge.  That was Bob’s baby.  He had fished those waters in his youth, although I don’t believe he ever ate a three-eyed fish.  He created the Task Force and, as was typical, it was his ability as a collaborator that brought everybody together.  Mike Castle, Toby Clark, Russ Peterson, Dr. E. A. Trabant, Mike Purzycki of the Riverfront Development Corporation, environmentalists, birders, some great people from DNREC.  I remember the fireboat trip down (or is it up?) the Christina, starting in Southbridge.  I remember the very first river clean-up, although I think the iconic shirt I got that day has long since disintegrated.  I remember the planned burning of the, um, phragmites(?), stalagmites(?) to help pave the way for the refuge.

Last year, my wife and I took a brief getaway weekend to the Hotel DuPont.  We walked down to the Urban Wildlife Refuge, and then slowly walked through it.  It may be the most peaceful place in Delaware.  A refuge for wildlife and humans alike.  Bob Marshall helped to create this sanctuary, a sanctuary he had envisioned.  When I thought of Bob at his passing,  I thought of this peaceful place.  It is how I will remember him.

 

DL Open Thread: Friday, April 5, 2024

First, A Public Disservice Announcement:  Delaware Political Weekly will be a little late this week.  As in  tomorrow.  I’m working on the Bob Marshall piece, and I think I’ve finally figured out how to write it.

Algorithms Decide Assisted Living Staffing Levels.  Which is why the government must:

Two decades ago, a group of senior-housing executives came up with a way to raise revenue and reduce costs at assisted-living homes. Using stopwatches, they timed caregivers performing various tasks, from making beds to changing soiled briefs, and fed the information into a program they began using to determine staffing.

Brookdale Senior Living, the leading operator of senior homes with 652 facilities, acquired the algorithm-based system and used it to set staffing at its properties across the nation. But as Brookdale’s empire grew, employees complained the system, known as “Service Alignment,” failed to capture the nuances of caring for vulnerable seniors, documents and interviews show.

In emails and phone calls to Brookdale executives, building managers repeatedlycomplained that the company’s algorithm underestimated the amount of labor they needed to meet resident needs, according to court records, internal company documents reviewed by The Washington Post and interviews with more than 35 current and former Brookdale employees. Several managers said they quit or were fired after objecting to the system, including Patricia McNeal, 53, who spent six years overseeing Brookdale facilities in Ohio and Florida.

While assisted-living chains promote their properties like all-inclusive resorts with round-the-clock care, many operate more like assembly lines, where low-wage workers perform a series of discrete, predictable tasks, documents and interviews with industry veterans show. Brookdale, based in Brentwood, Tenn., pioneered staffing systems based on algorithmic formulas, an approach experts say is ill-suited to caring for the elderly, who are growing more frail and are more likely to suffer from chronic conditions than previous generations.

It’s been over twenty years since Bob Marshall passed what was likely the most progressive package of legislation designed to protect residents in long-term care nursing facilities in the entire country.  It never dawned on us at the time that the industry would shuttle more frail and infirm residents into assisted living facilities with virtually non-existent staffing requirements.  But this low-life industry did.  Governors dating back to Ruth Ann Minner believed the bleats of industry apologists like Yrene Waldron and refused to require that the laws be carried out.  John Carney took it a step further by making Waldron the regulator of the industry in Delaware.  Idiocy.  Meredith Newman chronicled this in the News-Journal before moving on to greener pastures.  Sen. Spiros Mantzavinos is working to hold this rogue industry accountable.  If you are considering options for your loved ones, be informed.  The alternatives could be deadly.  And were, during the Carney Administration.

“Now I’m Getting REALLY Mad.”  OK.  What’re you gonna do about it? Joe has no feck. He’s feckless:

President Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that the United States would reassess its policy toward the war in Gaza if the Jewish state does not take immediate steps to address the disastrous humanitarian situation in the enclave and protect aid workers.

Don’t you think he should have started reassessing the policy before now?

Economy Doesn’t Suck At Least.  303,000 new jobs in March:

The U.S. economy added 303,000 jobs in March, and the unemployment rate dipped slightly to 3.8 percent, according to new Labor Department data released Friday.

The March jobs report once again beat expectations. Economists had expected that the economy would gain 200,000 jobs and that the jobless rate would dip to 3.8 percent.

The latest data comes after several months of strong jobs numbers and the longest stretch of sub-4 percent unemployment since the late 1960s.

The labor market has remained surprisingly resilient in the face of the Federal Reserve’s decision to hold interest rates at a two-decade high in recent months. The central bank raised rates to their current range of 5.25 percent to 5.5 percent over the past year and a half in an effort to tamp down on inflation.

A Blue Wave–Of Hydrozoans?  I dunno–that picture looks like a bunch of used condoms to me.  Apparently, there are two types–one that eats, and one that reproduces:

From Oregon to California, blankets of alien-like blue creatures are washing up on rocky beaches. They are Velella velella, tiny colonies of organisms with a sombrero-esque fin sticking out the top and tentacles dangling down.

Though they look like one organism, velella – also known as by-the-wind sailors – are actually colonies of creatures from a class called hydrozoa that use the wind to speed along. They spend most of their lives out in the open ocean, searching the water column below them with tentacles that sting fish larvae or zooplankton, but are harmless to humans. One part of the colony is responsible for eating, another for reproduction. Coral is another colonial organism – but it’s uncommon to encounter such colonies on land, says Anya Stajner, a doctoral student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

What do you want to talk about?

DL Open Thread: Thursday, April 4, 2024

Truth Social Was Kept Alive By Russian Money Launderer.  Great reporting from The Guardian:

Trump Media almost did not make it to the merger after regulators opened a securities investigation into the merger in 2021 and caused the company to burn through cash at an extraordinary rate as it waited to get the green light for its stock market debut.

The situation led Trump Media to take emergency loans, including from an entity called ES Family Trust, which opened an account with Paxum Bank, a small bank registered on the Caribbean island of Dominica that is best known for providing financial services to the porn industry.

Through leaked documents, the Guardian has learned that ES Family Trust operated like a shell company for a Russian-American businessman named Anton Postolnikov, who co-owns Paxum Bank and has been a subject of a years-long joint federal criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the Trump Media merger.

The existence of the trust has previously been reported by the Guardian and the Washington Post. However, who controlled the account, how the trust was connected to Paxum Bank, and how the money had been funneled through the trust to Trump Media was unknown.

The concern surrounding the loans to Trump Media is that ES Family Trust may have been used to complete a transaction that Paxum itself could not.

Paxum Bank does not offer loans in the US as it lacks a US banking license and is not regulated by the FDIC. Postolnikov appears to have used the trust to loan money to help save Trump Media – and the Truth Social platform – because his bank itself could not furnish the loan.

Trump doesn’t just need the Presidency to stay out of jail–he needs it to service all of the unsavory enterprises to whom he each owes more than a pound of his not-insubstantial flesh.  Read the entire article.  You’ll understand why Trump wants to jail reporters.

Trump Sues Business Partners.  Why?  Because he wants all the cash to himself:

Donald Trump is suing two co-founders of Trump Media & Technology Group, the newly public parent company of his Truth Social platform, arguing that they should forfeit their stock in the company because they set it up improperly.

The former U.S. president’s lawsuit, which was filed on March 24 in Florida state court, follows a complaint filed in February by those co-founders, Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss. Their lawsuit sought to prevent Trump from taking steps the two said would sharply reduce their combined 8.6% stake in Trump Media. The pair filed their lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery.

Trump’s lawsuit claims that Litinsky and Moss, who were both contestants on Trump’s reality-TV show “The Apprentice,” mishandled an attempt to take Trump Media public several years ago, allegedly putting the whole project “on ice” for more than a year and a half.

But it also targets the pair over their Delaware suit against Trump, saying that it was one of several attempts they made to block Trump Media’s ultimately successful plan to go public. Trump Media accomplished that goal by merging with a publicly traded shell company called Digital World Acquisition in March.

Perhaps it’s just me.  But when you hire former contestants on “The Apprentice” to handle highly-complex legal matters, the onus is on you, not them.

Coral Reef Restoration–It’s Happening!  Hey, not everything I write is apocalyptic:

Out among a scattering of islands spilled like beads into the Indonesian shallows, an extended experiment in coral restoration has revealed something marvelous: With a tender touch and a community to care for it, a reef can fully recover from the devastation of blast fishing in just four years.

The Spermonde Archipelago, which lies a dozen miles off the coast of South Sulawesi, Indonesia, was long home to some of the most dynamic reefs in the world, where schools of fish rainbowed over coral blanketing the seafloor. But dynamite fishing turned swaths of those wonders into wastes.

Promoting this recovery in Sulawesi is particularly important, because the island sits at the center of the Indonesian archipelago and in one corner of the Coral Triangle. This region, and Indonesia in particular, is home to the largest concentration of reefs and coral habitat in the world. Yet many of these vibrant ecosystems were pulverized by decades of fishers dropping explosives into the water to concuss fish they could then scoop out of the sea. With loose rubble then left to tumble in the currents, corals had little hope of recovering on their own. Any coral spawns that might settle and grow were liable to be crushed by errant rocks.

OK, that’s my quota of encouraging words for the day.

The ‘Church-Going Bust’ And A Vast Disconnect?  An interesting read, regardless of your relationship, or (in my case) lack thereof, to a church, mosque, or synagogue:

On an individual basis, people can give any number of valid-sounding reasons for not frequenting a house of worship. But a behavioral shift that is fully understandable on the individual level has coincided with, and even partly exacerbated, a great rewiring of our social relations.

And America didn’t simply lose its religion without finding a communal replacement. Just as America’s churches were depopulated, Americans developed a new relationship with a technology that, in many ways, is the diabolical opposite of a religious ritual: the smartphone. As the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt writes in his new book, The Anxious Generation, to stare into a piece of glass in our hands is to be removed from our bodies, to float placelessly in a content cosmos, to skim our attention from one piece of ephemera to the next. The internet is timeless in the best and worst of ways—an everything store with no opening or closing times. “In the virtual world, there is no daily, weekly, or annual calendar that structures when people can and cannot do things,” Haidt writes. In other words, digital life is disembodied, asynchronous, shallow, and solitary.

Religious rituals are the opposite in almost every respect. They put us in our body, Haidt writes, many of them requiring “some kind of movement that marks the activity as devotional.” Christians kneel, Muslims prostrate, and Jews daven. Religious ritual also fixes us in time, forcing us to set aside an hour or day for prayer, reflection, or separation from daily habit. (It’s no surprise that people describe a scheduled break from their digital devices as a “Sabbath.”) Finally, religious ritual often requires that we make contact with the sacred in the presence of other people, whether in a church, mosque, synagogue, or over a dinner-table prayer. In other words, the religious ritual is typically embodied, synchronous, deep, and collective.

Baltimore Issues Notwithstanding, Wilmington Port Workers Face Uncertain Future. Great reporting by, wait for it, Karl Baker:

During an early March meeting of the Delaware government board that oversees the port, Enstructure executive Bayard Hogans said a transition toward containers started last year. But, it became more “drastic” during this fruit season, in part, because the Panama Canal gave priority to container ships after a drought reduced the number of allowable passages allowed through the corridor.

Hogans also noted that his company recently purchased new “container handling equipment to the tune of $4 million,” among other infrastructure upgrades.

Following the meeting, Delaware Secretary of State Jeffrey Bullock, who oversees the Port of Wilmington’s contracted lessee, said a transition to containers could mean less work for members of Harrison’s local, but argued that the droughts in Central and South America are the primary reasons for the current downturn.

Still, he contended that the port’s shift to more containerized cargo would open up year-round opportunities for the facility, and relieve it of a dependence on a fruit season that occurs only during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer months.

“It’s a vulnerable place to be,” Bullock said. “What is it? A 12-week or so fruit season. It wasn’t the best situation.”

Such comments have long sparked fear among members of Harrison’s embattled union – today called the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) Local 2076. They also add to additional perceived pressures on the workers from the construction of a state-supported cold storage warehouse that will sit outside the gates of the Port of Wilmington in Claymont.

Last year, officials from Georgia-based Agile Cold Storage, which received millions of dollars in state grants to support the construction of its $170 million project and hire 130 workers, said they intended to draw business from ports across the mid-Atlantic region. They do not intend to use ILA workers. 

“They want to take our jobs from us,” said Malik Davidum, who has worked for three decades within the Port of Wilmington warehouses.

Seems like it.  Somewhere, an Enstructure exec will be buying Jeff Bullock a drink.  Then offering him yet another job for which he is unqualified.

What do you want to talk about?

DL Open Thread: Tuesday, April 2, 2024

The Billionaires Who Prop Up Trump:  We already know about Jeff Yass, Pennsylvania’s richest man, who has bankrolled the Trump pump-and-dump shell company housing Truth Social.  We also know that Trump has not invested one penny in the shell company.  We know that the company literally has no chance to make money, meaning the only purpose for the company is to hand Trump a financial lifeline.  And to ensure that Yass will benefit greatly from a Trump presidency.  It is beyond my understanding how this stock was allowed to go public.

Enter the billionaire who gave Trump that $175 mill bond.  One Don Hankey, chair of Knight Specialty Insurance.  He’s bailed out Trump before:

Hankey told Forbes that his company had initiated the deal, reaching out to Trump just a few days before an appeals court lowered the amount Trump would have to pay while his appeal was heard. “This is what we do at Knight insurance,” said Hankey, who confirmed he had supported Trump’s political campaigns in the past. “I’d never met Donald Trump. I’d never talked to him on the phone. I heard that he needed a loan or a bond, and this is what we do. So, we reached out, and he responded.” The deal, Hankey said, came together in just a few days.

Hankey, a billionaire who presides over an auto-services empire, may never have met Trump, but he was the largest individual owner of Axos Financial, the lender that bailed out Trump by refinancing his mortgages at Trump Tower and his Miami resort in 2022. Axos also previously had done business with the family of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

When billionaires bail out Trump, they don’t do so out of public spiritedness.  They expect serious considerations in return.  They’re betting on him winning the election.

Is Florida In Play?  I don’t think so–for Biden.  However, the US Senate incumbent Rick Scott is unpopular, and the D’s have a competitive candidate in Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.  Ultimately, though, I expect D’s to make gains at the statewide and local levels.  BTW, it’s not just the abortion issue that will be on the ballot:

The Florida Supreme Court issued rulings Monday allowing the state’s voters to decide whether to protect abortion rights and legalize recreational use of marijuana, rejecting the state attorney general’s arguments that the measures should be kept off the November ballot.

At the least, we’re likely to see whether D’s have any short-term future in Florida.  BTW, not gonna be easy to pass the ballot initiatives.  Why?  Because a 60% vote in favor is the law in Florida:

First, in Florida ballot initiatives have to get 60% rather than 50% of the vote. That’s a particularly big deal for abortion rights because 60% is where support tends to top out. Most of the states which have held these referendums have tended to be fairly red states. That makes sense. If they weren’t fairly red they wouldn’t have banned abortion rights or drastically limited them in the first place. So for instance, the big vote in Kansas in 2022 which kept abortion legal got 59% of the vote. The recent one in Ohio got 56.6%.

One Of My Fave Black Roots Musicians On Beyonce’s ‘Country’ Album.  Yasmin Williams is as authentic as you can get.  That’s why I place more value in her opinion than on the raft of (mixed) reviews that have accompanied the release of the album:

I’m an internationally touring acoustic guitarist from Virginia who has studied American vernacular music. The promise of Beyoncé’s country album was exciting to me, as were the personnel on its two lead singles: the musician-scholar Rhiannon Giddens playing banjo and viola on Texas Hold ’Em and pedal steel player Robert Randolph – of the Sacred Steel tradition, the southern Black Pentecostal church music dating back to the 1930s – appears on 16 Carriages. These are Black country and folk artists who work within Black traditional lineages that deserve to be highlighted and celebrated for their specificity. However, on hearing Cowboy Carter this weekend, I felt as though little work had been done to utilise the breadth of knowledge of Beyoncé’s collaborators or the Black country/traditional music community at large. Beyoncé settled for using Giddens’ banjo and Randolph’s pedal steel as props to back up the overall production on the record, instead of boosting these traditions to the forefront on an album with an artificial sheen. Moreover, it felt in greater conversation with an exclusionary mainstream – and like a capitalist gesture to insert itself into that world.

Even as an album fusing genres, Cowboy Carter lacks the execution of a record such as Ray Charles’s Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. Modern Sounds reworks country standards into pop, jazz, and R&B song forms by fusing the older traditions of country western music with the more modern popular music at that time. Perhaps if Cowboy Carter had featured more working-class Black country artists, or leaned on the scholarship of the likes of Dom Flemons, formerly of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, or collectives such as Black Opry, which represents Black artists, fans and industry workers, or the now-defunct Black Country Music Association of the 1990s, it might have been as thrilling as Modern Sounds.

What do you want to talk about?

A Double-Edged Abortion Ruling If Ever There Was One

BREAKING:  From The NY Times:

The Florida Supreme Court overturned decades of legal precedent on Monday in ruling that the State Constitution’s privacy protections do not extend to abortion, effectively allowing Florida to ban the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy.

But in a separate decision released at the same time, the justices allowed Florida voters to decide this fall whether to expand abortion access. The court ruled unanimously that a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to abortion “before viability,” usually around 24 weeks, could go on the November ballot.

DL Open Thread: Monday, April 1, 2024

An Attorney Who Is Holding MAGAt Rethugs Accountable.  Hey, he can pocket that corporate lucre as long as he’s paying it forward like this:

Michael J. Gottlieb can never remember the exact amount — it’s $148,169,000— that a jury ordered Rudolph W. Giuliani to pay the Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. But Ms. Freeman’s words after the December 2023 victory are indelible to him.

“Don’t waste your time being angry at those who did this to me and my daughter,” said Ms. Freeman, 65, who with her daughter Ms. Moss, 39, was falsely accused by Mr. Giuliani of aiding an imagined plot to steal the 2020 presidential election.

“We are more than conquerors.”

Less than a decade ago, the two women would have struggled to find a lawyer. But Mr. Gottlieb, a partner at the firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher and a former associate counsel in the Obama White House, represented them for free. Convinced that viral lies threaten public discourse and democracy, he is at the forefront of a small but growing cadre of lawyers deploying defamation, one of the oldest areas of the law, as a weapon against a tide of political disinformation.

Mr. Gottlieb has also represented the owner of the Washington pizzeria targeted by “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorists as well as the brother of Seth Rich, a young Democratic National Committee staff member whose 2016 murder ignited bogus theories implicating his family. In the Giuliani case, Mr. Gottlieb, his law partner Meryl Governski and other members of his team worked with Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group that pushes for laws and policies to counter what it sees as authoritarian threats.

‘Things Tumbling In Israel’?  I never bet against Josh Marshall’s Spidey Sense:

Keep an eye on the events out of Israel. It seems possible they’re reaching some kind of turning point, though one hesitates to use that phrase about a country which has been in such an extended political paralysis for so long. The key to understand is that whatever crisis or shift may be in the works isn’t driven by the issues animating coverage in the U.S. To the extent it is tied to the Israel-Hamas war it is about the hostages and the widespread belief that the Netanyahu government isn’t that focused on striking a deal to get them home. Hovering around this is the fact that the government has at best tended to ignore and shun the hostages families. The communities along the border with Gaza tend to be made up of left-leaning Kibbutznik types. So they’re not Netanyahu’s people by any stretch of the imagination. That’s been a subtext to much that has happened over the last six months.

You also have the anti-judicial coup coalition which was holding massive weekly protests for almost a year before October 7th going back to the streets. All of that had stopped cold on October 7th. It’s been slowing reassembling since. But the protests this weekend are bigger than any since just before the massacres in southern Israel. They are now a coupled message for the government to resign and to bring the hostages home.

Then there’s the issue of the continuation of the draft exception and public subsidies for the ultra-orthodox community. This is too complex a topic for anything but a thumbnail description. But here goes. Men from the ultra-orthodox community are exempted from the draft and a great proportion of their families live on public assistance, notionally because they spend their days in religious study. This has been a simmering issue for years. But for a complicated set of reasons it came to a head last week when there was a deadline to formalize a new system which would either continue these privileges and benefits, scrap them or do something in between.

The critical context is that over the last three decades the ultra-orthodox parties have become a central pillar of any right-wing government. They supply about a quarter of the seats. The issue is basically irresolvable if you rely on those votes and seats. No them, no majority. That all hit the fan last week. There was no decision Netanyahu could make and hold his government together. So basically he just didn’t. And we’re now seeing how long that lasts. This seems to have both thrown new light on the precariousness of Netanyahu’s government and shown again that the whole country is hostage to the Prime Minister’s need to give them basically anything they demand. In the context of a national emergency the existence of a whole community that refuses to serve in the army and lives off everyone’s taxes is simply too much for many people.

I recommend that you join Talking Points Memo.  Some of the best reporting and analysis out there.

Why Do Rethugs Hate Students?  And why haven’t D’s made this a bigger campaign issue?:

Last summer, the Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration’s plan to wipe out more than $400 billion in student loans for about 40 million Americans. The plan would have canceled up to $10,000 in debt for low- and middle-income borrowers, and double that amount for borrowers from the poorest backgrounds. The decision responded to two cases brought by conservative groups, and came down months before loan payments were set to restart after a historic halt during the pandemic—dealing a double blow to millions of borrowers.

Now, 11 Republican-led states are at it again, with a new lawsuit aimed at killing the administration’s latest effort to lower the burden of student debt on households. On Thursday, they sued the Biden administration to undo a new income-driven repayment plan, launched in August to lower required loan payments for many borrowers.

In other words, this is an income-driven plan that requires decades of payment from most borrowers—a far cry from simple debt cancellation. But it is a financial lifeline for households drowning under large monthly loan payments after years of high inflation. Yet these 11 states argue that just like the old effort to cancel student debt, Biden’s SAVE plan reaches beyond his presidential authority, recreating the argument against debt relief that won at the Supreme Court last year.

One City’s Disaster Is Another City’s Boon?  We’ll see if this trend continues:

The Port of Wilmington is already seeing “close to double” the expected number of ships in the early days of the Baltimore port closure, said Bayard Hogans, Mid-Atlantic president of Port of Wilmington operator Enstructure.

“This horrible tragedy has really affected the maritime community,” Hogans said. “And being really the closest gateway to Baltimore, we have a customer base … that immediately reached out to us, and we’ve been working with them to support their supply chain needs here in Wilmington.”

What do you want to talk about?