The 62 Project: #’s 30, 31, 32

The 62 Project: #’s 30, 31, 32

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We begin the ranking of the 62 legislators smack dab in the middle. As a listaholic, the thought of doing a double countdown, both up to the top and down to the dregs, is close to orgasmic. And, um, the foreplay is just starting. I laid out my criteria here. I'll let the articles speak for themselves. In addition to expressing opinions on the rankings, please let me know how you'd like to see this countdown improved. I'm sure there will be subtle format changes as this moves forward. To me, here's the lede of today's rankings: Being in the middle of the rankings does not mean 'meeting expectations'. As it turns out, all three of the legislators profiled here should be better and should be ranked higher, making their performances so far disappointing, at least to me.
Announcing the 62 Project

Announcing the 62 Project

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I am El Somnambulo, and I'm a listaholic. Today I announce The 62 Project, which will ultimately yield my rankings of legislators from 1 to 62. However, I intend for it to be much more than just a list. I will write a selective bio, some brief, some lengthy, on each state legislator. I want to give people who don't really know the legislators that well the opportunity to know them better. For better or worse. I also don't want this to be just a snarkfest, although, to put it mildly, THERE WILL BE SNARK. Lots of it. Hey, can't help myself. So, how have I ranked the legislators?
Why is the Delaware NAACP Bullying Councilwoman Lisa Diller?

Why is the Delaware NAACP Bullying Councilwoman Lisa Diller?

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This past Tuesday, the NCCo County Council met for usual business, but ended with an extraordinary bit of public commentary directing actual threats at Councilwoman Lisa Diller. We talked about the original incident here. But the NAACP President, Richard Smith, read a letter into the record that you can hear via the County's audio of the meeting. The full meeting is about 30 minutes long, but if you go to about the 26 minute mark you can hear from Mr. Smith and Mr. Roosevelt Nichols (not sure I heard the name correctly) who read the letter sent to Ms. Diller. The letter recommends that Ms. Diller take Diversity Training and Anger Management Training. It also says that "...we will monitor your future County Council behavior from now on." (my transcription of the audio). Mr. Smith then takes the mike to also recommend Diversity Training and ask for a meeting with Ms. Diller. And if that doesn't happen, "We'll do what we have to do -- you can take that any way you want to." 'Refuse to take the black community for granted" and he'd have 14-18 NAACP states here to protest or something. Got that? The Delaware NAACP suits up in County Council to defend the indefensible behavior of Bernard Pepukayi -- that behavior being an inept dodge of a valid request from a Council Member for a briefing on a the status of an appeal of a recent court decision in the Pike Creek Golf Course case.
Making Teajhadis Cry — Delaware Edition

Making Teajhadis Cry — Delaware Edition

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Chris Coons leads Christine O'Donnell in a new poll for the upcoming U.S. Senate race -- 50-27.  50-27! That is the result of a poll recently (before the government shutdown) from University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication:
The Center for Political Communications acting director Paul Brewer says often times early polling simply reflects candidate name recognition, but he does not believe that’s the case here after the well-publicized race between Coons and O’Donnell in 2010. “I know from other poll results that Coons and O’Donnell were equally familiar to the public,” said Brewer. “Coons does not have a substantial name recognition lead over O’Donnell. It’s more reflecting that views of him are more favorable than they are of O’Donnell.” Brewer adds the 50-27 spread in this poll is similar to the result in the 2010 race, which Coons won by 57-40 margin.
Looks like O'Donnell is going to have to cast quite the spell to make up this ground. AND it looks to me like Coons has plenty of room here to sign on to Mark Begich's Fix Social Security Bill. Which I still don't know why he hasn't.

The 6th Most Dangerous State in America

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That's Delaware's ranking in 24/7's most recent ranking of violent states based upon FBI's Uniform Crime Report (2012). They did this last year too, and we were 6th then. Even though violent crime has mostly been on the decline, that decline hasn't hit all areas of the US evenly. They use the FBI's definition of violent crime, which includes: violent crime includes murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. Both Maryland and Delaware make both lists, even though they both have relatively high educational attainment and relatively low poverty. What makes both states outliers is the violent crime that persists in sections of our biggest cities -- Baltimore in Maryland and Wilmington here in Delaware.