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General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Weds., May 18, 2016
I need our readers to enlighten me on two roll calls that took place yesterday: 1. HB 330 (Heffernan), which unanimously passed the House, was defeated in the Senate. 7 Y, 13 N, 1 NV. That’s rare, especially with both houses in control of the D’s. And this vote didn’t reflect a partisan split. Here’s […]
General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Tues., May 17, 2016
I’m back from Oregon, and I see that I didn’t miss much.
The General Assembly is currently in collective thumbs-twiddling mode. I now understand why they took a week off recently. It’s not like they have nothing to address (like minimum wage), it’s just that they’ve chosen not to address much of consequence. Cowardice in an election year, who’dathunkit?
Can we just talk about minimum wage? Please? While places across the country are passing $15 an hour minimum, idiot/legislators like Andria Bennett and Quin Johnson turn up their noses at a far less ambitious proposal by accepting Chamber talking points w/o even looking on their own at how higher minimum wages have impacted communities that have implemented them. Plus, if one of them should ‘falter’ and eventually go against the Chamber, there is always the no-longer-running-for-Congress business lackey Bryon Short waiting to deep-six the proposal. When it comes to minimum wage, Delawareans did better when the R’s controlled the House than they do now.
As to the notion of raising taxes on Delaware’s wealthiest, I wrote about this last year. If it wasn’t even gonna be considered in an off-year (thanks, Pete), it certainly isn’t gonna be passed in an election year. The General Assembly made the decision to give more to the 1%, hence the corporate bailouts that were rushed through in January. More and better Democrats are few and far between in Dover.
Did GOP Moderates Just Become Relevant?
Stephen Greenberg, a Democratic pollster and author of American Ascendant, writes, “Moderate Republicans will have the last word in this dramatic presidential election year.” Greenberg believes that moderates make up 31% of Republican party.
The Inauthenticity of So-Called Progressives Repeating Right Wing Talking Points
So let’s take a look at where this “Clinton is inauthentic” talking point comes from. Because with the exception of one thing, we’re going to be listening to so-called progressives lazily repeating bullshit talking points from wingnuts for a few months. For this cycle, it seems to have started as early as 2 years ago:
The Dislike Is Strong In This Election
It’s like Cersei Lannister v Ramsay Bolton. As Senator Sasse says, “There are dumpster fires in my town more popular than these two ‘leaders.’ ”
Delaware Democrats Elect Delegates for DNC
Yesterday, in Dover, the state Democratic Party elected their delegates for the Democratic National Convention this summer in Philadelphia.
4,497 Reasons Why There Are No Do-Overs in War
Hillary Clinton’s colossal fuck-up of one of her most important political decisions of her career.
Trump and Sanders win in Dem’s blind spot
Clinton may agree with Sanders on 95% of the issues, but it is the 5% of the time that she is on the side of the financial industry and not the people that voters still want to talk about.
Sanders is a one issue candidate, and it has always been within Clinton’s power to eliminate Sanders from the race by co-opting his message on the rigged economy. That she hasn’t done it suggests to me that she can’t bring herself to do it.
General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Tues., May 3, 2016.
By far the most important bill on the House Agenda is SS2/SB 130(McDowell). The bill:
defines criteria for a local government to enter into an agreement with the Department of Transportation (“Department”) to create transit-oriented development districts, called Complete Community Enterprise Districts (“District”), for the purposes of promoting economic development. A District may be designated in downtown or urban core areas, traditional towns or villages, or regional activity centers. A District is characterized by its mix of land uses, efficient use of public infrastructure, efficient use of public services, and multiple modes of public transportation combined with environmentally friendly private transportation.
I look for this bill to pass some time this week.
Why Lisa Dean Moseley Matters–Even If Her Death Doesn’t.
Sherry Freebury. Elmer Setting. Lisa Dean Moseley.
We all know that Freebury and Setting, at the time they accepted favors from Moseley, were/are among the most powerful people in New Castle County and deeply connected to the county police.
Freebury received, and publicly admitted that she would never have had to repay, a $2.3 million sweetheart loan from Linda Dean Moseley allegedly in exchange for county approvals for a country club that Moseley wanted. At the time she received that loan, she was Tom Gordon’s CEO, as she was from 1997 to 2004. She previously was the head of NCC police, as was Gordon. There’s so much more on Freebury and Gordon. This article serves as a good starting point.
More recently, the longstanding ‘rent-free’ deal that current NCC Police Commissioner has enjoyed from Moseley was documented in the this WDEL story. He claims he provides ‘security and maintenance’ for the property. (BTW, didja know that one of Lisa Dean Moseley’s marriages was to her gardener? Another was to her gynecologist. But more on that later.)
Lisa Dean Moseley died recently. Here is the obit from the paper.
I searched for anything recent in the News-Journal to place her life and death in context. After all, context is everything. So far, nothing. If she had merely had the two clearly inappropriate relationships with Freebury and Setting, that alone would have warranted such an article. Two law enforcement officers at the highest level being paid off for their ‘services’.
But here’s another reason why anyone from law enforcement should have had nothing to do with Moseley, and perhaps a reason why they did.
Delaware Political Weekly: April 22-28, 2016.
While the Trumpster talks about building a literal wall between the US and Mexico, Bryan Townsend is building a figurative electoral wall around the greater Newark area. His campaign HQ is in Newark, the preponderance of his grassroots efforts so far have been in the greater Newark area, and all of these endorsements are from legislators who more or less are from that area. It makes sense to me. Shows that his grassroots campaign is paying off. He now starts with a solid group of supporters largely based on geography. That’s a nice chunk of voters who he can count on. The question will become: To what extent can he expand and replicate that grassroots either throughout the state as a whole or in a more specific sense. A great start though. Haven’t contributed to his campaign for, oh, three weeks or so. Might be time to ante up again.
Delaware General Assembly Pre-Game Show: Tues., April 19, 2016
Oh, Jeez, Frank Luntz must be consulting with the House R’s again. Today, Greenville’s Debbie Hudson and Monsignor Greg Lavelle are pushing the, wait for it, Parent Empowerment Education Savings Account Act in the House Education Committee. If the bill’s title leads you to suspect that this is another scheme to take $$’s away from public schools, you are correct:
This bill provides opportunities to parents of special needs students to select the most appropriate and productive educational pathway for their children by using funds otherwise allocated to their residential school district.
The co-sponsors of this legislation appeal to the General Assembly to dignify parents of special needs children, by approving an innovative experiment to empower certain parents with the authority to design their special needs children’s education plan, subject only to state approval of vendors to be managed by the state Department of Education or its designee.
And, of course, those parents who aren’t ’empowered’ will find resources even scarcer than ever. Why do Rethugs hate public education?
Delaware Political Weekly: April 8-14, 2016.
NCC Councilman Joseph Reda passed away yesterday at the age of 73. A ‘sheet metal worker, union man, bartender, husband and politician’, Reda earned the affection and admiration of all of his colleagues, regardless of political differences. I encourage you to read the obituary. He did a lot of good for a lot of people. People really liked him. Folks like that deserve to be remembered.
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