Here is the thing about the buzz this proposal will get. …With AOC it is like regular people finally have a representative in Congress. Have you ever felt represented by Chris Coons? I haven’t. Have you ever felt represented by Tom Carper or Lisa Blunt Rochester? Nope. They have their constituents, but unless you are a board member of a bank – you ain’t their constituent.

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Yeah, Trump is a criminal and hypocrite and an asshole. If you are paying attention to current events, you get those facts confirmed dozens of times a day.  At this point, it is yawn-inducing.

Even this story which ties together the whole criminal-hypocrite-asshole kit and kaboodle, isn’t getting much airtime.

The president, who claims to be tough on crime and the best friend of the police, is in fact a criminal. He claims that America is being invaded by immigrants from Mexico and Central America who are committing crimes and taking American jobs. He’s on the verge of declaring this a national emergency so he can use extraconstitutional powers to build a border wall, but he’s been employing undocumented Latinx workers in his hotels and resorts for decades, in violation of the law.

When stories like this fail to elicit the proper amount of outrage and get wall-to-wall media coverage, it permits people to proudly wear their MAGA hats and say that the message is to “buy American, hire American.” In truth, Trump doesn’t hire American if he can help it. He’s running the biggest con I’ve ever seen.

Throwing billions of dollars at companies because “jobs” isn’t what it used to be. I mean…$4.1 million per job created? Christalmighty! Just give me the $4.1 mil, I can create 20 jobs with that level of public largess.

When GOP darling Scott Walker offered to hand billions in subsidies to Chinese manufacturing giant Foxconn, he was warned: the Foxconn MO is to suck up billions in public money for ambitious megafactories, then scale them back into small, largely irrelevant facilities (or cancel them altogether).

But that didn’t convince Walker: instead, he got right to business, seizing and bulldozing Wisconsinites’ homes to make way for the “factory,” and allowing the price-tag to rise by more than a billion dollars without blinking, even as the company started to hedge about the scale of the factory it would build in exchange for Walker’s huge welfare handout.

Now the other shoe has dropped: Louis Woo (special assistant to Foxconn chairman Terry Gou), who negotiated the Wisconsin deal, has told Reutersthat “In Wisconsin we’re not building a factory. You can’t use a factory to view our Wisconsin investment.”

Instead of the planned megafactory with its 5,200 blue-collar jobs by 2020, now the company proposes to hire 1,000 skilled R&D researchers — who will likely come from out of state.

But they still get more than $4 billion: so if the 1,000 jobs ever materialize, each one will have cost the state $4.1 million.

Let’s get away from our flat income tax structure that pretends $60,000 is “wealthy”. Let’s stop allowing hundreds of billions in corporate profits to be laundered through The Corporation Trust Center at 1209 North Orange Street, then moved to the Cayman Islands.

John Kowalko and others have had reasonable revenue proposals. Let this be the year that Democrats finally get behind tax fairness. There is plenty of money in this state. We simply need the guts to make the Walmarts, and Ken Simpler’s among us pay their fair share.

Balloon Juice has become a go-to for me. I endorse this post. Fuck the Coffee Boy.

‘Memba when Dover Downs’ Denis McGlynn told anyone who would listen that sports betting wouldn’t make his racino profitable? According to this new Matt Bittle story quoting Captain Poormouth in the State News, Dover Downs cleared $666,000 last year on sports betting. Not coincidentally, its profits leaped in the year’s fourth quarter — football season.

More importantly to McGlynn, and probably to the state, DD’s sale is on track to finalize shortly. As has been noted many times, if present management couldn’t turn a profit, surely other operations would like the chance to get into Delaware’s closed casino market. It turns out all McGlynn’s whining about unprofitability were aimed at winning concessions to make that inevitable sale more profitable for Denis McGlynn and other major stockholders — probably unnecessary considering Twin Rivers is buying in for the access to sports betting.

There will be a progressive challenge to the directionless governorship of John Carney.

Looking at possible progressive primary challengers, you have to put Kerri Harris at the top of the list. She has a statewide profile and has stayed active up and down the state. She has kept her campaign peeps close, and she still has some Senate campaign debt to retire. It all adds up to Kerri Harris being the frontrunner to knock off the rudderless and widely disliked John Carney.

Harris sees her campaign as part of a movement of what she calls “insurgent candidates” across the country.

“Our elected officials are now trying to prove that they are truly the elected officials for the people. And that is something that they didn’t have to do before,” she said.

How worried should John Carney be?

He would be a fool to not be worried. He is frankly terrible. He hasn’t built any real base of support inside or outside of the party. If he sees Ken Simpler ramping up a campaign, all the alarm bells will be ringing on the 12th floor of 820 N. French Street. Will those alarm bells stir Carney to try and govern as a Democrat? Sadly, no. Because the alarms will be warning him about Ken Simpler, not Kerri Harris.

What does Simpler have to do with this?

There is no way Simpler runs if he thinks Carney is going to be the nominee. What would be the point of two centrists “budget smoothers” facing off against each other? If, however, he thinks Harris can pull off an upset, he would probably think he has an opening. He wouldn’t in a Presidential year, but he could be persuaded to try and win over some “dems” who think they have more in common with an Ivy League legacy millionaire than they have with someone who works for a living. Without hope (and his millions) what else does Simpler have?

“…my vote is locked in for Sanders because he’s the only one who has demonstrated a consistent and appropriate vision for our future.”

That’s great. Be passionate. Work hard. But if someone else wins the nomination, lock in for that person in the general even if it is your fifth choice for the nomination. Even it is your 5oth choice for the nomination.

Building up your candidate. Make your case. And fuck every one of you who think your job is to tear down fellow Democrats. Fuck you, very much.

And BTW – Lord knows, it is tough. You see these candidates with real problems… (why doesn’t everyone see it?) It is incredibly tough to keep the hatchet in the hatchet drawer. It is going to take all of your maturity and dignity. But you can do it.

I wonder if Brexit voters knew that they were voting to turn back the clock to 1878? Muton for Sunday dinner and scratchy woolen cloths that always feel damp.

Supplies of medicine should be deemed more important than shipments of food if there is a no-deal Brexit, the health secretary has told MPs.

Matt Hancock made clear his view when answering questions at the health and social care select committee. “The thing is that medicines will be prioritised in the event of a no-deal Brexit,” the health and social care secretary said when asked by the former Labour health minister Ben Bradshaw which would be given precedence.

Bradshaw responded: “Over food? Over vital food?”

Hancock replied: “Of course medicines will be prioritised. And we have been through detailed, line-by-line analysis of the 12,000 licensed medicines in the UK. In fact we had our latest meeting on it this morning, the three of us were there, in order to ensure there is a plan for the continuity for all medicines in the event of a no-deal Brexit.”

Donald Trump
Hillary Clinton
Joe Biden
Bernie Sanders

In that order. ugh… get off the fucking stage!!

Is there any lyricist more self-lacerating than Squeeze’s Chris Difford? His typical narrator can most often be found at the pub, confessing his sins and blaming himself for yet another failed love affair. This tune, from the band’s underrated “Play” LP, seems to have a broader point these days.

While a primary challenge is probably political suicide given the empty-headed religious zeal of is bedrock base, the President is historically unpopular. That is a fact.

If Trump continues to look uncompetitive in 2020, someone is going to be drawn into a primary. According to the oddsmakers, these are the most probable primary challengers.

John Kasich 48%
Mike Pence 12%
Nikki Haley 11%
Ted Cruz 11%
Paul Ryan 11%
Bob Corker 10%
Joseph Scarborough 8%
Mark Cuban 7%
Steve Bannon 3%

Let him run. An avowed Third Way middle of the road white guy in this political climate? Who made his fortune peddling overpriced burnt coffee?  He’s like a moneyed version of Sean Barney:

Asked if he would consider changing his mind and run as a Democrat, he said, “I feel if I ran as a Democrat I would have to be disingenuous and say things that I don’t believe because the party has shifted so far to the left.”

“When I hear people espousing free government-paid college, free government-paid health care and a free government job for everyone — on top of a $21 trillion debt — the question is, how are we paying for all this and not bankrupting the country?” Mr. Schultz said.

The only people I see him appealing to are the Goldman Sachs crowd.  And that crowd is too self-interested to vote for someone who has no chance of winning.

I look at the race differently: Two white guys running against a more progressive D will only split up the white guy vote. A minority within a minority.

Run, Howard, Run. It’s your money. Burn it. Like your coffee.