Category Archives: Featured

I’m Calling It: Harris Will Win

Not only that–she’ll have coattails that will flip the House and quite possibly at least lead to a 50-50 Senate.

Yes, I think the polls are wrong.  I think that they have failed to account for what I see as being an overwhelming female vote that will result in something like a blue wave.

I see it in the early voting results.  Yes, a lot of the early voters are Republican women.  I see that as good.  They’re not rushing out to vote out of any sense of enthusiasm for Trump.  I think they’re determined to protect their rights as women.

Pundits nitpick every aspect of Kamala’s campaign.  However, none of the mistakes the campaign might have made reach the level of Trump’s refusal to even reach out to Nikki Haley and her supporters:

Former presidential candidate and onetime U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley criticized Trump world on Tuesday for being “overly masculine with this bromance thing” after former President Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.

“This is not a time to have anyone criticize Puerto Rico or Latinos,” Haley said, instead calling for discipline around the campaign. “This is not a time for them to get overly masculine with this bromance thing that they have.”

Haley noted other language used throughout the rally, as well as in Republican ads and messaging, that she called destructive to drawing women into the fold on Election Day. Polls show a major gender gap playing out with this election, with women turning to Vice President Kamala Harris in greater numbers and Trump winning among men.

“This bromance and masculinity stuff, it borders on edgy to the point that it’s going to make women uncomfortable,” Haley said.

‘Borders on’?  Trump’s campaign has been directly aimed at the bros and the MAGAts.  I think it has done him far more damage than good, and it’s driving the early turnout.  I think, without all that much evidence, that Republican women are disproportionately voting for Harris.  I know that Harris’ GOTV operation is far superior to whatever it is that Musk is funding to try to counter it.

Bottom line:  This is a turnout election.  There are more of us than there are of them.  Yes, even in the swing states.  Plus, the Harris campaign has momentum on their side, especially with the contrasting ‘closing arguments’ event.

I’ve been wrong before (see any of my prediction threads or, better yet, don’t).  But I think she wins, and wins far more handily than the polls suggest.

DL Open Thread: Sunday, October 27, 2024

Yes, It Was A Great Speech.  At least in part because Michelle made a very important point:

“If your wife is shivering and bleeding on the operating room table during a routine delivery gone bad, her pressure dropping as she loses more and more blood, or some unforeseen infection spreads and her doctors aren’t sure if they can act, you will be the one praying that it’s not too late,” Mrs. Obama said. “You will be the one pleading for somebody, anybody, to do something.”

And while she acknowledged the anger that many Americans feel about the “slow pace of change” in the country, she warned: “If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women, will become collateral damage to your rage.”

Mrs. Obama’s words — at a rally in Michigan where she introduced Vice President Kamala Harris — amounted to an extraordinary centering of women’s bodies and their private experiences in an American presidential election. She discussed menstrual cramps and hot flashes, describing the shame and uncertainty girls and women feel about their bodies. She told women they should demand to be treated as more than “baby-making vessels.”

And she castigated the media and many voters for holding Ms. Harris to a higher standard than her opponent, for “choosing to ignore Donald Trump’s gross incompetence, while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn.”

Early-Voting R’s May Well Be Voting For Harris.  Check out the over 11-minute video from Meidas Touch.  Might as well get my prediction out there:  Harris will win.  Women are gonna turn out in droves.  The Great Unwashed Angry White Young Males will not.

The History Of American Christian Nationalism.  Hey, it’s Sunday, maybe you have some down-time.  Read this.  Know thine enemy.  Not just great reporting from Pro Publica, but great history as well.  A tiny taste:

Inside a red-rimmed sports arena, more than 15,000 evangelicals gathered with conservative activists to discuss how to get Christians more involved in politics.

They had come to an event known as the National Affairs Briefing because the evangelists Billy Graham and Bill Bright reported that God had issued each of them the same warning: America had only 1,000 more days of freedom. After speaking with the pair, televangelist James Robison said God had urged him to host a conference that would “refocus the direction of America.”

The sea of believers roared as Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan took the podium.

“This is a nonpartisan gathering, and so I know that you can’t endorse me,” Reagan said. “I want you to know that I endorse you and what you are doing.”

The moment underscored an important shift in American politics, helping to cement evangelical Christians as a reliable conservative voting bloc.

But while Reagan took the spotlight, backstage in Dallas, Robert Billings, a Reagan campaign adviser who had helped found the Moral Majority, nodded to a less prominent visionary: R.J. Rushdoony, the father of a more extreme movement known as Christian Reconstructionism.

“If it weren’t for his books, none of us would be here,” Billings remarked, as recalled in an essay by Gary North, an economic historian and Rushdoony’s son-in-law.

You know you want to read more.  Read more.

Could This Issue Doom Rick Scott In Florida?  A longshot–but it should:

Wetter, more destructive hurricanes, like the back-to-back storms that pummeled Florida this fall, are pushing the state’s homeowners insurance market to the brink of collapse.

When asked by Florida Atlantic University pollsters in June who was most responsible for the high cost of insurance in the state, the largest share of surveyed voters blamed Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. But it was his Republican predecessor, Rick Scott, now a U.S. senator, who lured low-quality insurance companies to the state and left Florida’s publicly owned insurer-of-last-resort agency struggling to provide for more homeowners as private insurers went bust or refused to renew policies in hurricane-prone areas.

Now Scott’s Democratic challenger for Senate, former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, is hoping voters can make the connection between Scott’s eight years as governor and the financial squeeze caused as insurers increasingly fail to pay to repair properties damaged in hurricanes Helene and Milton.

As part of a years-long crusade to force more Floridians into the private insurance market, Scott raised premiums and rescinded discounts from the Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the government-backed nonprofit insurer, all while giving private companies extra incentives and protections to operate in the state.

Now that warming-fueled storms are routinely causing billions of dollars in damage across Florida, private insurers are fleeing the state, forcing customers back to Citizens. But now the deals the public insurer offers come with higher premiums and worse coverage.

Not To Pile On, However…:

The climate emergency was already a hot-button political issue in Florida long before devastating back-to-back hurricanes named Helene and Milton barreled into the state in recent weeks.

Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor who considers global warming “leftwing stuff”, angered environmental advocates by signing a bill in May scrubbing the words “climate change” from state statutes and in effect committing Florida to a fossil fuel-burning future.

They saw his comments and actions as merely the latest acts of an extended period of climate denialism by state leaders – including Rick Scott, his predecessor as governor who is seeking re-election as US senator next month in a tight race with the Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.

Scott also censored talk of the climate crisis. Nicknamed “Red Tide Rick” by opponents for slashing $700m in water management funding intended to fight toxic algae blooms, Scott “systematically” disassembled “the environmental agencies of this state”, according to the Democratic former senator Bill Nelson.

What do you want to talk about?

DL Open Thread: Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024

The Relentless Rethug Campaign To Disenfranchise Voters.

Virginia:

On Friday, a Virginia judge ruled that Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s recent purge of close to two thousand voters from state rolls—within 90 days of November’s election—was illegal. Now, with that election less than two weeks away, the state must reinstate all 1,600 revoked registrations.

Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Patricia Giles found that Youngkin’s purge violated the National Voter Registration Act, a federal law that prevents states from removing ineligible voters from the rolls within 90 days of the election.

While advocates hailed the ruling as a significant victory for voting rights, for many, the damage was already done. Since Monday is the deadline for anyone seeking an absentee ballot, those purged can no longer request one.

Mississippi:

A conservative federal court said Mississippi cannot count mail-in ballots that arrive shortly after Election Day, however Friday’s decision was not expected to affect the Nov. 5 election.

The outcome may be negligible in most elections in heavily Republican Mississippi, but the case could affect voting in swing states if the Supreme Court ultimately issues a ruling.

The three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a July decision by U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr., who had dismissed challenges to Mississippi’s election law by the Republican National Committee, the Libertarian Party of Mississippi and others. The appeals court order sent the case back to Guirola for further action.

UCLA law professor Richard Hasen wrote on his election law blog that the appeals court ruling was a ”bonkers opinion” and noted that ”every other court to face these cases has rejected this argument.”

All three judges on the three-judge panel were appointed by Trump.  Remember, kids, in a fascist state, ‘bonkers opinions’ are the rule, not the exception.  Every day, these lawsuits, all based on the Big Lie.

North Carolina: ‘Just give NC’s electoral votes to Trump because of the flood‘:

A Maryland Republican raised the prospect of awarding North Carolina’s 16 Electoral College votes to GOP candidate Donald Trump even before the Nov. 5 presidential election, citing storm damage in the western portion of the state and purported certainty over how voters would have cast their ballots.

Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), the chair of a group of hard-right and libertarian House Republicans called the Freedom Caucus, made the comments Thursday at a GOP dinner event after a speech by pro-Trump activist Ivan Raiklin, who has argued that states should give their votes to the former president if they believe the 2024 election has been tainted.

This Is All Planned:

But this year the Trump ticket’s efforts to pre-emptively deny the results in case of a loss of the election go beyond rhetoric. They are now backed up by widespread party support and a highly organized, massive legal apparatus.

“The effort to try to subvert the outcome is more thought-out, more strategic, more organized, more coordinated in 2020,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Republicans are primed to support Trump’s efforts. Nearly one in five Republican voters believe Trump should declare the election result invalid if he loses, according to a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (12% of Democrats said Harris, who has committed to accepting the election results, should do the same).

Dozens of people who have challenged the results of the last presidential election are in local offices where they have power over certifying vote totals. Led by Cleta Mitchell, a Trump ally who aided his efforts to overturn the election four years ago, Republicans have organized a massive effort to monitor election offices, challenge voters, and work in election precincts.

Israel Now Fighting A Four-Front War?  Let’s see…Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, and now, Iraq.

Israel carried out a wave of strikes on military targets in Iran early Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces said, in an attack that lasted about four hours and which Israel characterized as a response to “continuous attacks” from Iran. Iranian state media said two soldiers were killed as a result of the strikes, as the government and air defense corps sought to downplay the impact of the strikes, saying only “limited damage” had been inflicted. The United States was made aware of the attacks in advance but was uninvolved in the operation, U.S. officials have said.

Hey, Trump gave Bibi the go-ahead, and Bibi returned the favor.

I’m not a polls guy.  But for those of you who are freaking out, there’s a lot of good news in this polling/state-of-the-race roundup.  If you read only one piece on what the polls show, make it this one.

Education Funding: “The Delaware Way Equals Delaware Delay”.  No guts, no reform:

A new commission created to overhaul Delaware’s public education funding formula may already lack the political will to make big changes. The Public Education Funding Commission started meeting last month.

Task force members have already started pushing back on the timeline for issuing final recommendations, frustrating at least one education advocate who previously sued the state. American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware Legal Director Dwayne Bensing said officials must act urgently to fix a failing system, including adding hundreds of millions of dollars more in funding.

“This is the Delaware way, which has been the Delaware delay,” he said. “We have had year after year of workforce, task force, WEIC [Wilmington Education Improvement Commission], [Wilmington Education Advisory Committee], Redding Consortium and now this commission to sit there and stare at our belly buttons, apparently, because what we haven’t had is legislative action addressing the dire need of our disadvantaged students in the state.”

Delaware is required to invest more money in public education due to a legal settlement with the ACLU of Delaware and others. A report released last year by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) as a result of the lawsuit showed Delaware was underfunding high-needs students by $600 million to $1 billion. Public education advocates sued the state in 2018, alleging it was underfunding disadvantaged public school students. The parties settled in 2020.

Memo To Matt Meyer And Kyle Evans Gay:  This is a Day One priority of the highest order.

What do you want to talk about?

DL Open Thread: Friday, October 25, 2024

Melissa Brayman For NCC President.  Monique Johns’ behavior since she won a five-way primary has revealed who she is:  A money-grubbing grifter and a narcissist. The best that we could hope for her in office is that she becomes a laughingstock.  The worst?  She and the County wind up with a bunch of lawsuits on their hands.  It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.  And Johns has all the same earmarks of utter incompetence as Karen Hartley-Nagle did.  Wonder who Johns’ ‘behavior coach’ will be…

Melissa Brayman is, at the least, what’s the word I’m looking for…competent.  Check out her bio for yourself.  There’s no comparison with Johns’ sketchy and limited resume.  Although Brayman has yet to come up with anything as bizarre or entertaining as The Johns’ “Love Doctors” podcast.

Monique Johns is the logical extension of ‘one-party rule’–a winner of a five-way primary who got nothing approaching a majority.  Not even elected yet, and looking to steal county tax dollars for a party to celebrate–herself.

Unless you’re the type of Democrat who ‘roots for the laundry’ regardless of how soiled it is, voting for Melissa Brayman is the right thing to do.

Sculpture Of The Day:

A new installation on the National Mall features a bronze poop atop a desk with a rendering of an office phone and nameplate belonging to Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The memorial “honors” those who participated in the Jan. 6 riot. (Allison Robbert for The Washington Post)

MAGAt Rethugs Go After–Nuns.  Nuns Fight Back:

A number of concerned persons in various states have alerted the Benedictine Sisters of Erie to a new post on X that claims 53 voters are registered at the monastery’s address and “NO ONE lives there.” The poster, Cliff Maloney of PA CHASE, claims “Our attorney’s [sic] are reviewing this right now. We will not let the Dems count on illegal votes.”

According to a March 2024 post from the Lincoln Institute, “The ‘PA Chase’ is an effort led by Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania (CAP) to knock on 500,000 doors and raise the GOP mail-in ballot statewide total from 20% to 33%.” Cliff Maloney is listed as the CEO of Citizens Alliance.

The Benedictine Sisters take no issue with knocking on doors to increase citizen participation in elections. We do take issue with claiming false information as true in an effort to discredit differing views or affiliations.

“We want to call Cliff Maloney to account for his blatantly false post that accuses our sisters of fraud. We do live at Mount Saint Benedict Monastery and a simple web search would alert him to our active presence in a number of ministries in Erie. We also want to alert those who subscribe to X and other social media platforms to be vigilant and seek additional information before accepting these posts as truth,” said Sister Stephanie Schmidt, prioress. “A free republic depends on free and fair elections. It depends equally on a discerning and conscientious citizenry who do not unquestioningly accept the word of anyone who has a social media platform.”

Musk And Putin: Perfect Together.  Lest you were wondering where Putin gets his talking points, and vise versa:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has held several discussions with Elon Musk over the past two years, during which he also requested a favor from the tech billionaire on behalf of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, according to a new Wall Street Journal report published Thursday.

Several current and former U.S., European and Russian officials cited by the Journal said the regular contact between the Russian leader and the tech billionaire started in late 2022 and covered “personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions.”

As part of their talks, Putin also asked Musk to not activate the Starlink service over Taiwan to appease Xi, a former Russian intelligence officer with knowledge of the request told the Journal. Russia has become close and increasingly dependent on China for trade and navigating sanctions placed on the country over its invasion of Ukraine. An official from the Chinese embassy in Washington told the outlet they had no comment on the topic.

Musk has so far not commented on the contents of the Journal’s report.

Musk’s reported discussions with Putin, a major U.S. adversary, raise potential national security concerns for the U.S. government as his company SpaceX is involved in several U.S. intelligence and military projects.

Musk has also taken an elevated role in former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, donating millions to his own Trump super PAC and also headlining events promoting his White House bid.

Gee, having a tough time connecting the dots.  Can you help?

A Pretty Decent Dive Into ‘The Delaware Way’.  Which recognizes the Working Families Party as the force it’s become:

Another aspect of this is the rising presence of the Delaware General Assembly’s progressive wing – of which many were supported by the Working Families Party that, since 2018, has overhauled the makeup of the General Assembly.

The grassroots efforts of the Working Families Party have made waves in the legislature, as eight current members of the state House were supported by the group – including Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton, D-Newark, the state’s first practicing Muslim legislator; Rep. Eric Morrison, D-Glasgow, the first openly gay man to serve in the legislature; and Rep. DeShanna Neal, D-Elsmere, the first nonbinary member of the General Assembly.

The Working Families Party also supported Sen. Marie Pinkney, D-Bear, who became the first openly gay woman elected to the General Assembly in 2020 after defeating then-Senate President Pro Tempore Dave McBride.

Similarly, Democrat Kamela Smith – a Working Families Party-backed candidate – upset Speaker of the House Valerie Longhurst, D-Bear, in the Sept. 10 primary election.

What do you want to talk about?

DL Open Thread: Thursday, October 24, 2024

Monique Johns Is Who We Thought She Was.  A grifter only in it for personal gain.  Rarely has our Tip Line lit up (OK, the Tip Line doesn’t technically light up, but bear with me here) as it has. for what is the first of what presumably will be many attempts to rip off the taxpayers by the Democratic nominee for New Castle County President Monique Johns.  She hasn’t been elected yet, but…

Y’see, she says that she has a prior engagement for the time when everybody else will be sworn in.  She may be telling the truth as there is a first time for everything.  Check it out for yourselves at the time stamp around 1:10:00:
If you weren’t yet voting for her opponent, Melissa Brayman, you might want to reconsider your vote.

Been holding off on discussing the brilliant Spotlight Delaware series by Nick Stonesifer on Bethany Hall Long’s Opioid Slush Fund as the third installment of the three-part series hasn’t yet been posted.  But the first two articles will fill in a lot of gaps for you:

https://spotlightdelaware.org/2024/10/22/delaware-opioid-fund-part-1/

https://spotlightdelaware.org/2024/10/23/delaware-opioid-fund-part-2/

We’ll no doubt write extensively about this once the final article drops, as the details of this scandal require the public disinfectant of sunlight.

Why The Bleep Hasn’t Kamala Harris Responded To This Ad?  Every time I see it, I just know it’s having an impact.  Especially since the answer is that she’s following the same law that Trump did. Political malpractice.

The big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the tools to its own destruction.

Josef Goebbels

Just thought I’d drop that in here.  Along with the observation that anyone who yearns for Hitler’s generals is not only ignorant of military history, but is a Fascist:

A desire to force U.S. military leaders to be obedient to him and not the Constitution is one of the constant themes of Trump’s military-related discourse. Former officials have also cited other recurring themes: his denigration of military service, his ignorance of the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, his admiration for brutality and anti-democratic norms of behavior, and his contempt for wounded veterans and for soldiers who fell in battle.

Just Another Law-Abiding Citizen–with 120 guns and over 250,000 rounds of ammo:

‘Bulo’s XPN Top Ten Songs Of The 21st Century

For all of you, those of you, any of you(?) clamoring for more musical content, I’m your man.

This year, XPN is counting down the 885 Best Songs Of The 21st Century as chosen by You, The Listeners.

It’s an impossible task, so here’s what I did.  I made a list of favorites that I’m not certain will make the countdown, then prioritized them so that a song that I love that I fear won’t make it was #1.  The choices on each list are weighted 1-10. Oh, the list?

10:

9.

8. 

7.

6.

5.

4.

3.

2.  Gives me chills.  First song I ever heard from Phoebe Bridgers:

 1. Gives me chills.  First song I ever heard from Bon Iver.  It’s still my favorite, and I want people to hear this under-the-radar masterpiece:

OK, kids,  what are your faves from the 21st Century?

Our PAL Val Tries, Fails, To Designate Her Successor As Speaker From Beyond The Political Grave

We start, however, with a juicy bit of schadenfreude from primary night.  Turns out Val didn’t see her defeat at the hands of Kamela Smith (!) coming.  She and her political team are in her basement adding up the totals while, upstairs, a joyous victory celebration is taking place.  Because the celebrants don’t see it coming either.  Val and her people realize that they have lost.  Rather than going upstairs to address her supporters, Val has one of her political team go upstairs and, wait for it, throw everybody out of the house.  Classy until the very end.  Oh, the source(s)?  People who got thrown out of the party.

Never let it be said, however, that defeat has caused Val to reflect on how to best live the rest of her life.  She instead, has tried to exact retribution on someone she now regards as a turncoat by pushing for, wait for it, ‘Sellout’ Kerri Harris to succeed her as Speaker, presumably in exchange for a guarantee from Kerri that the money spigot to the Police Athletic League will continue to flow.  She thinks that Mimi Minor-Brown was a stealth supporter of Kam.  All I can say is that, in all the times I was down there and knocking doors and being involved with Kam’s campaign, I never heard even a whisper about that.  Oh, and also that, if Kerri ‘runs’ as hard for Speaker as she ‘ran’ for Congress, she has no chance.

Anyway, both Kerri and Mimi are running.

I am told, however, that there is a third candidate, someone with ties to both moderate and progressive elements in the caucus.  I can’t say for sure who it is, but I’m also told that, from a personality perspective, this person would be the Anti-Val as Speaker.  Someone who would help to restore a collegial environment in the House.  Based on that, give me Door #3.

More to come if/when people’s lips loosen.

DL Open Thread: Friday, October 18, 2024

The Big Story Is That Trump Is Unhinged And Suffering From Something Very Much Like Dementia:

“What’s alarming is how the rate of Trump’s bizarre speech and political decisions have been increasing. He gave an answer about childcare to the Economic Club of New York so incoherent that even his supporters were concerned. Last week he got cognitively lost in a rally and began to talk about the ‘eight circles’ that Biden filled up with journalists. No one on his staff has been able to explain the reference.

“Trump has shown evidence of dementia for the past year as indicated by his strange gait, phonemic paraphasia—when he begins a word and can’t finish it—and decline in the complexity of his words and concepts. This limited capacity explains his poor debate performance, but there are two more disturbing signs of his decline.

“First, he is avoiding events where he has to respond coherently and spontaneously: He has refused a second presidential debate and abruptly cancelled a 60 Minutes interview. Second, he has become more impulsive, another sign of incipient dementia. This explains his strange behavior in Philadelphia – his abrupt decision to play DJ is yet another sign of his accelerating cognitive decline.”

This is what a responsible press would be reporting 24/7.  This is what the Harris Campaign must emphasize 24/7.  Even Trump knows it.  It’s why he keeps canceling events.  Including, wait for it, an NRA-sponsored rally in Savannah, Georgia.  This is the story. Should the Harris campaign fail to make it the story, it will have been political malpractice.  We already know that the press would rather report on some incremental change in the polls than on the real story.  Although, Axios has a pretty comprehensive report on what we know about Trump’s health.  And one columnist has sounded the alarm:

Though cautioning that they could not diagnose Trump without examining him, experts said his speech patterns match those of people experiencing the effects of things like mood changes, aging, and dementia.

“There’s reasonable evidence suggestive of forms of dementia,” clinical psychologist Ben Michaelis told STAT. “The reduction in complexity of sentences and vocabulary does lead you to a certain picture of cognitive diminishment.”

Yet Trump’s party has not urged him to step aside for the good of the country, as Biden’s did. And much of the press is doing the American people a disservice by treating Trump’s obvious cognitive slippage as just “Trump being Trump.”

Yes, the press has a lot to wrestle with when it comes to Trump, including his embrace of authoritarian strongmen, his refusal to vow to accept the election results, his criminal conviction and civil judgments for fraud and sexual abuse, and his racism and disparagement of women, LGBTQ people, and immigrants.

But his diminishing cognitive ability can’t be ignored. He may not be able to get a grip, but it’s long past time the news media and Republicans stop participating in the gaslighting. We can see reality with our own eyes.

BTW, I’m not a professional joke-writer, but Tim Walz is the perfect guy to blow up Trump’s bragging about ‘The Weave’.  That joke tells itself:

“You know, I do the weave,” he said. “You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about like nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”

One way that Walz could respond:  ‘You see this hair? I don’t do the weave.’  (Note to Harris Campaign:  Please send me a million dollars, and you can use the joke.)

Vance And Religious Right–Scofflaws:

Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance’s appearance at a far-right Christian revival tour last month may have broken tax and election laws, experts say.

On Sept. 28, Vance held an official campaign event in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, in partnership with the Courage Tour, a series of swing-state rallies hosted by a pro-Trump Christian influencer that combine prayer, public speakers, tutorials on how to become a poll worker and get-out-the-vote programming.

Ziklag, a secretive organization of wealthy Christians, funds the Courage Tour, according to previously unreported documents obtained by ProPublica and Documented. A private donor video produced by Ziklag said the group intended to spend $700,000 in 2024 to mobilize Christian voters by funding “targeted rallies in swing states” led by Lance Wallnau, the pro-Trump influencer.

Even before the Vance event, ProPublica previously reported that tax experts believed Ziklag’s 2024 election-related efforts could be in violation of tax law. The Vance event, they said, raised even more red flags about whether a tax-exempt charity had improperly benefited the Trump-Vance campaign.

Both Lance Wallnau Ministries and Ziklag are 501(c)(3) charities, the same legal designation as the Boys & Girls Club or the United Way. People who donate to charities like these can deduct their gift on their annual taxes. But under the law, such charities are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office,” according to the IRS.

Quick, someone wake up Merrick Garland.

Big Document Dump A’Comin’ Today!:

Judge Tanya Chutkan on Thursday denied former President Donald Trump’s request to delay until after the election the unsealing of court records and exhibits in the 2020 election interference case and said the court would release evidence submitted by the government on Friday.

In her five-page order, Chutkan said there was a presumption that there should be public access to “all facets of criminal court proceedings” and that Trump, in claiming the material should remain under seal, did not submit arguments relevant to any of the factors that would be considerations. Instead, Trump’s lawyers argued that keeping it under seal for another month “will serve other interests,” Chutkan wrote. “Ultimately, none of those arguments are persuasive.”

Wilmington Debates Locations And Restrictions For Marijuana Dispensaries:

With less than six months until the scheduled start of legal recreational marijuana sales in Delaware, the Wilmington City Council is still debating one of the most important questions in the process: where retail shops and other marijuana-related businesses can open.

A proposal recently put before the Wilmington City Council aims to designate those areas but has sparked a healthy debate over what areas work best and how to align them with sensitive institutions like schools.

What do you want to talk about?

DL Open Thread: Thursday, October 17, 2024

Brett Baier Tries To Mansplain Trump’s Superiority To Kamala Harris.  If the Fox interview accomplished anything, it likely turned women off to Trump’s toxic masculinity as channeled through Baier:

The interview with Mr. Baier gave Ms. Harris access to a large audience of Republican women whom her campaign is trying to win over. Her advisers believe there is a sliver of conservative women who might be receptive to the character contrast she is trying to draw with Mr. Trump — or who are at least willing to hear her out.

During this portion and others, the viewers Ms. Harris and her campaign are trying to appeal to also saw Mr. Baier repeatedly interrupt her as she tried to answer his questions.

The back-and-forth recalled how Matt Lauer talked over Hillary Clinton during a televised NBC News forum in 2016. Mr. Lauer was roundly criticized for being sexist.

“You have to let me finish, please,” Ms. Harris said at one point during the exchange on immigration. “I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re raising, and I’d like to finish.”

Glad she did it.  Now move on.

Don’t Think This Will Spark Latino Support For Trump:

Jimmy Carter Lives To Cast Vote For Kamala Harris.  One of the greatest Americans of my lifetime:

Former President Jimmy Carter cast his ballot in the presidential race in Georgia on Wednesday, the second day of early voting in his home state.

He voted by mail, the Carter Center said, fulfilling his wish to live long enough to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. Carter turned 100 earlier this month, becoming the first former president in U.S. history to do so.

“President Carter, thank you for your support,” Harris wrote in a social media post Wednesday night.

He has been in hospice care at his home in Plains, Georgia, since February 2023. Carter lost his wife, Rosalynn Carter, in November, after 77 years of marriage. The former president attended his late wife’s memorial service in a wheelchair.

Carter had told a family member that he was “only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris,” according to his grandson, Jason Carter, who recounted the comment to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in August.

Why I Hate ‘Politico’.  Read the article with its gloom-and-doom implications in the title.  By the time you finish it, you realize it’s much ado about nothing.  Wash, rinse, repeat, and you have the Politico formula down pat.

Feckless Joe Threatens To Curtail Shipments To Israel…:

…and gives them thirty days to inflict whatever additional carnage they can before they ‘allow’ humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza.  Hmmm, thirty days.  Takes us past the election.  Anybody believe he’ll follow through?  Didn’t think so.

How A Small Regional Hospital Chain Became A Behemoth And Jacked Up Prices.  Could this happen here?:

Over more than a decade, Parkview Health has demanded that the people of north-eastern Indiana and north-western Ohio pay some of the highest prices of any hospital system in the country – despite being headquartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which currently ranks as the No 1 most affordable metro area to live in the United States. For 10 of the last 13 years, Parkview hospitals on average have been among the top 10% most expensive in the country, a Guardian US analysis of cost estimates based on data submitted to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid shows.

Parkview’s steep prices are the product of a more than two decade campaign by hospital executives to establish market dominance in Fort Wayne and to squeeze revenue from a pool of patients and employers who feel they have no better alternatives, according to interviews with more than 40 current and former Parkview employees, patients, local business leaders, lawmakers and competitors, as well as leaked audio recordings of meetings and hundreds of internal billing, patient and policy documents obtained by the Guardian.

During this period, Parkview has taken over six former rival hospitals and built up a network of almost 300 sites for its physicians and providers, forming a ring around its gleaming regional center, which some staff refer to in private as the “Big House” or “Emerald City” for its ritzy amenities and green corporate branding.

This consolidation, former employees say, has allowed Parkview to control referral flows, routing primary care patients to their own costly specialists and facilities, even if those patients could get the same services elsewhere for less. It has also increased Parkview’s leverage in negotiations with health insurance companies, as they bargain over procedure prices on behalf of employers that offer the insurers’ health plans to their workers.

Great investigative reporting from The Guardian. Now answer my question:  Could this happen here?  Or, to be more precise, is this happening here?

Delaware ACLU Ensures Access To Tubman-Garrett Park For Public Protests.  Cool heads prevailed on all sides:

New exemptions negotiated by the American Civil Liberties Union and the owner of Tubman-Garrett Park along Wilmington’s Riverfront will ensure that protesters will have access to a longtime meeting place for advocacy.

Those conversations began after Jeremy McDole Police Reform Now, a community organization that advocates for meaningful police accountability and transparency measures in the memory of a man killed by Wilmington police nearly a decade ago, planned to hold a small rally at the park near the South Market Street Bridge last summer.

Dwayne Bensing, the legal director for ACLU of Delaware, credited RDC leaders with engaging in the discussion rather than forcing the issue to be litigated in courts, like some other First Amendment questions in Wilmington. They noted that requiring such a lengthy advance notice limits the community’s ability to organize quickly in response to current events, and the significant fees limit the participation of low-income people.

The executive director of the RDC, Megan McGlinchey, emphasized that her organization waived its requirements when it learned of the purpose of the Police Reform Now group. She added that they were not contacted about concerns regarding its permitting and fees for about 10 months afterward.

“While we have always had a practice of accommodating such speech, we did engage in a conversation with the ACLU and agreed to revisions of our policy to ensure that there was no confusion with respect to the right of members of the public to engage in free speech on our grounds. We look forward to a continued partnership with the public to ensure that First Amendment rights can be exercised and access to Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park is provided,” she said.

Props to everybody involved in settling this.

What do you want to talk about?

Towards A Delaware Transparency Agenda

Premature?  No.

It’s long past time to drive a stake through the secrecy that practitioners of the Delaware Way have used to perpetuate the casual corruption at its core.

We’ll have a new governor who ran against some of the worst elements of the Delaware Way.  We’ll be free of the likes of John Carney, Bethany Hall-Long, and their minions.

We’ll have a far less corrupt General Assembly, rid of the likes of Pete Schwartzkopf, Val Longhurst, and Mike Ramone.

Delaware Way secrecy has been employed for decades precisely to keep the prying eyes of the public away from what goes on behind the curtain.  Even though the deals that are cut are paid for by, wait for it, the public.

This agenda is by no means complete, and I urge you to add to the list.  Let’s start.

1.  Create an Office of Inspector General.  I have admittedly been an agnostic on this proposal in the past, and it’s imperative that the office be free from the influence of those who would appoint the IG.  However, we now know that there are next to no safeguards on all manners of governmental corruption in Delaware.  Were it me, I’d appoint someone like Karl Baker to the position and give him carte blanche to investigate all the stuff that the insiders don’t want exposed.  Oh, and to have the power to refer wrongdoing to the Attorney General.

2.  Pass Rep. Kim Williams’ Bill On ‘Dual State Employees’.  Not only have several elected state employees gotten away with it, they have been aided and abetted by their other employers, all of whom receive large sums of state money.  Williams’ bill as proposed would address both issues.

4. Require Transparency for all State-Elected Officials.  Remember when Ruth Ann’s minion at the Department of Labor refused to release the timecards of Tony DeLuca and his paramour, citing privacy of personnel records?  He was simply hiding their double-dipping from the public.  As was Del-Tech when it employed Larry Mitchell as ‘Director Of Security’.  As good as Rep. Williams’ proposals are, they don’t assign enforcement power to anybody, nor does it enumerate consequences for those defrauding the public. Larry Mitchell committed fraud against the taxpayers of this state.  So did Bethany Hall Long.  Hold future fraudsters accountable.

3.  Pass Comprehensive LEOBOR Reform.  Never again should police agencies cite personnel policies as a means of hiding police misconduct from the public. Legislation should also create a statewide police review board with real teeth, including public hearings.

4.  Inventory ALL Quasi-Public State Agencies, And Eliminate Their FOIA Exemptions.  By which I mean all agencies created by state government that spend public dollars, but are exempted from FOIA.  We should start by sunsetting John Carney’s secret Business Development scheme whereby millions of dollars are approved in rubber-stamp fashion by a group of insiders with no public deliberation or disclosure required.  That, BTW, used to be the way the Joint Sunset Committee functioned under Nancy Cook–they’d go into ‘executive session’, make their decisions, and then simply do a series of pro-forma votes once they came back into public session.  Many others should be terminated, including the cops’ cash stash call SLEAF, where all the money stolen by the cops via civil forfeiture are divvied up to, wait for it, police agencies.  Yep, they exempted themselves from FOIA.  Oh, did I mention the University Of Delaware? We saw how they fought the State Auditor’s attempt to get basic information out of them.  Stop playing around–they want all that money, they open the books, and they comply with the law. There must be dozens of other agencies using this loophole.  That’s where you come in.

5. Strengthen Lobbyist Disclosures.  Including that lobbyists reveal not only which bills they have lobbied on, but what positions they took on said bills and on whose behalf, and specify which legislators they lobbied. Also, find a way for the Public Integrity Commission to interface with the Department Of Elections so that there’s a one-stop shop to see contributions from lobbyists and their clients to specific legislators.  If they’re gonna buy legislators, we have a right to know which ones, how much the legislators were paid, and on behalf of which pieces of legislation.  Perhaps such a data base could be overseen by the Inspector General.

6. Strengthen Enforcement Of Election Laws.  Enough of this Alphonse-Gaston dance where the AG can’t/won’t investigate anything unless the Department of Elections refers something to it.  We saw how Bethany Hall Long and Anthony Albence conspired to keep blatant election law violations ‘in-house’.  DOE has demonstrated neither the interest nor the capability to investigate anything, so I think that responsibility might as well be given to the Attorney General with the attendant transfer of funds, and have some staff specifically assigned to review all of the reports and to take action when appropriate, with the added component of a complaints-driven process as well.

7.  Strengthen Legislative Ethics Procedures.  The House Democratic Caucus turned this into a travesty.  When you have unethical members in leadership, you will almost invariably either have rules that are too lax, or you have leaders who won’t enforce rules on their buddies. In particular, they can strengthen the rules on conflict-of-interest voting.  As in, you can’t vote for any appropriation where a legislator will personally benefit from it.  As in Nicole Poore and Jobs For Delaware Graduates,  Val Longhurst and the Police Athletic League, Larry Mitchell and Del-Tech.  You get the picture.  This stuff is rampant.  Mike Ramone was one of the worst flouters of ethics in Dover.  Had his entire caucus refuse to cooperate until he got that bill passed so he could short-change the lifeguards at his swim facility, voted for that ‘penny-stock’ exchange in which he was heavily invested.  This stuff has to be made transparent.  We didn’t know about Ramone’s conflict of interest until the Philly papers uncovered it after the fact.  Legislators must be made to publicly state their conflicts of interest with perhaps the possible sanction of losing a day’s pay if they fail to do so.

8. End ALL Unnecessary Secrecy Engaged In By the Department Of State.  How many failed port deals have Bullock, Carney, et al closed with no public input?  Is there no way to protect Delaware’s corporate status without encouraging world-class criminals to hide assets here?  We’re talking drug money, arms shipments, things that most people consider ‘bad’. I’d like to see the new Governor appoint a working group to seriously determine how to make DOS’ machinations more transparent.

9.  Weaken The Governor’s Absolute Right To ‘Executive Privilege’.  From this WHYY article:

The governor’s office has what the Delaware Attorney General’s Office has recognized in state law as “executive privilege.”

Gov. Carney has used it in the past, for example to redact correspondence regarding the moving of the Rodney Square bus terminal in 2018. The documents were heavily redacted. Delaware Coalition for Open Government spokesman John Flaherty, who requested the emails, appealed the censorship to the AG’s office, but it decided the governor’s emails could stay private.

Meyer said as governor, he would want to give government employees and elected officials space to communicate freely without “everything showing up on the front page in the newspaper.” But he said the public also has the right to know if there are any backdoor deals happening.

“I think there are situations now where the public’s not getting access to information and emails they should have a right to access,” he said.

If elected governor, Meyer said he supports the release of his emails in certain circumstances. However, he would want to protect attorney-client communication, which is a current FOIA exemption.

Carney has perhaps been the most blatant practitioner of hiding stuff from the public.  This needs to be dialed back as much as possible to prevent these backdoor deals from staying hidden.

10.  Roll Back The Number Of FOIA Exemptions Currently Used By State Government. Again, from the WHYY article:

There are 19 exemptions that Delaware government agencies and public entities can use to withhold documents from the public. Those include criminal records, investigative files and autopsy records. That means police reports, inmate causes of death and restitution paid to victims are excluded from public disclosure.

Meyer appears amenable to some trimming down of the exemptions:

Meyer said he would direct his administration to review the exemptions to make sure they’re not being misused.

“I can think of situations where we would want some FOIA protections, or for situations under investigation,” he said. “But I think it’s being too often used today to withhold information that the public has a right to know.”

BINGO.

There is legitimate hope for enacting some of these proposals as early as next year.  With a governor who doesn’t trade in secrecy and a more progressive General Assembly, this can and should be a priority for the next Legislative Session.

I’ve clearly not covered everything.  Please share what items you would like to see as part of a Transparency Agenda, and let us know what you like, don’t like, or would like to see changed, about the proposals I’ve laid out there.

WHYY Reports On Progressive Agenda For Transparency

Matt Meyer makes clear that transparency on police actions would be part of that agenda:

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Matt Meyer said he supports absolute transparency in policing and would assess if more needed to be done beyond last year’s legislation, if elected governor.

“You can’t have a system where a small group of police officers and former police officers evaluate police officer conduct,” he said. “The general public needs to have the right to evaluate police officer conduct.”

The article even quotes Yours Semi-Truly:

November’s election could bring more sunlight to Delaware’s state government. Open government advocates said they expect lawmakers to take up changes to the state’s Freedom of Information Act with the support of a new administration.

About a decade ago, Delaware got an “F” for government accountability and ethics. Since then, little has been done to improve the system. Recent scandals involving government cover-ups of missing taxpayer funds and campaign finance violations have advocates ready to see change.

“I am really optimistic and hopeful that issues concerning transparency, and just concerning ethics in government, can and will be front and center this coming session,” said Steve Tanzer, political news blogger for delawareliberal.net. He’s been campaigning for progressive House candidates.

Advocates hope the new administration voters elect next month will support significant changes they’ve been clamoring for over several years. That includes reducing exemptions where documents can be withheld from the public or narrowing how agencies apply them, overhauling the police bill of rights and making legislators’ emails subject to public view.

There are a lot more items that should be part of that Transparency Agenda other than those listed in the WHYY article.  I’ve started an article listing these proposals and soliciting your ideas.  I’ll post it no later than tomorrow (this is my way of giving myself a non-negotiable deadline as I’ve not been making as much progress on this as I should).

DL Open Thread: Sunday, October 13, 2024

Yep, JD Vance’s Mom Owes Her Health Insurance To–Obamacare:

In Vance’s telling, his family members’ experience reflects Trump’s stewardship of the nation’s health-care markets — a perspective shared by some conservatives, who say that Trump took steps to stabilize the Affordable Care Act after Republican repeal efforts collapsed in 2017. Even as the president publicly demeaned the law — “Obamacare is a joke!” Trump wrote on social media in 2020 — his administration continued to administer most of its initiatives, and some consumers saw the cost of their insurance premiums decline.

But to many health policy experts, Vance’s story reveals something else: the benefits of “Obamacare,” even to its critics, and the audacity of Trump’s attempts to take credit for the work of President Barack Obama and Democrats, who crafted and defended the Affordable Care Act at great political cost. After Democrats enacted the law in 2010, Republicans spent the next seven years vowing to overturn it, culminating in a Trump-led repeal effort that fell one vote short.

John Roberts Can’t Grasp Reality:

…as the analysis itself makes clear, it’s not the former president who is confounding the chief. It’s the general public. Roberts, according to observers, “was shaken by the adverse public reaction to his decision affording Trump substantial immunity from criminal prosecution. His protestations that the case concerned the presidency, not Trump, held little currency.” As a consequence, reports Biskupic, “Unlike most of the justices, he made no public speeches over the summer. Colleagues and friends who saw him said he looked especially weary, as if carrying greater weight on his shoulders.” (Poor baby.)

This echoes precisely the blockbuster New York Times reporting from last month from Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak, who also pointed out that Roberts had convinced himself last term that he would be able to razzle-dazzle the nation with soaring constitutional rhetoric in his immunity opinion, in ways that would lower the temperature in the public fury at the high court post-Dobbs.

Donald Trump And The Fake Scranton Firefighters:

“Local 60 would like to address the rally held earlier today in Scranton for former President Trump and the Office of President of the United States. This is not a political post, rather a clarification post for anyone who sees or may see the event. Multiple CITIZENS were seen with “Scranton Firefighters for Trump” signs at today’s rally. It is noted that no member of Local 60 were carrying those signs as the IAFF has chosen not to endorse a candidate this election. We honor and respect each and every person’s political opinions as well as our members own opinions on what they believe is the right choice for them. We just want to clarify that Local 60 has not endorsed a candidate for the Office of President following the path of the IAFF. The signs seen were not a representation of SFD Local 60 nor an endorsement of any candidate.”

In a phone interview Thursday, Local 60 President Allen Lucas said he had no idea where the signs came from, and none of the people holding the signs in photos that he saw were Scranton firefighters, active or retired.

There’s No Such Thing As A ‘Climate Haven’:

Some in the media later reported accurately that climate havens don’t actually exist. But that still raises the question: Where did this climate haven concept even come from?

Well before humans began putting billions of tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, entire populations would migrate toward better conditions in search of a place with milder weather or more fertile soil or the absence of drought. Because of its speed and scale, however, human-caused climate change is especially extreme, and everywhere will be impacted by some degree of risk. There is no completely safe haven.

Which is part of how we ended up talking about the idea of climate havens. It’s wishful thinking. At least that’s what several experts told me after Helene laid a path of destruction across the Southeast and as Hurricane Milton barreled toward Florida. As the impacts of climate change became more real and apparent, the media, as well as local leaders, started looking for a better story to tell.

What do you want to talk about?

DL Open Thread: Saturday, October 12, 2024

Trump Comes Out For Full-Fledged Fascism.  Not bothering to hide it:

Donald Trump wants to immediately invoke a more than 200-year-old wartime law that grants the president unilateral authority to deploy federal law enforcement for rounding up and deporting immigrants as soon as he enters office.

The former president, speaking from Aurora, Colorado on Friday, told supporters that he plans to revive the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which would give the president unprecedented ability to target foreigners for removal, without a hearing or due process, based solely on their place of birth or citizenship.

His “Operation Aurora” — named after the Colorado city he has denigrated as a “war zone” from “migrant crime” — would also dispatch “elite squads of ICE, border patrol, and federal law enforcement officers to hunt down, arrest, and deport every last illegal alien gang member until there is not a single one left in this country,” he said.

The law states that the president may order the arrests and removal of noncitizens during times of “declared war” or during an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” by “any foreign nation or government.”

Well, if he declares war against immigrants, I guess it’s a war, right?  He’s normalizing fascism and the press is not calling him out on it.

Former Chair Of The Joint Chiefs Of Staff Calls Trump ‘Fascist To The Core’:

Mark Milley, the US Army general who Donald Trump appointed as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, now says the current Republican presidential nominee is a “fascist to the core” and says no person has ever posed more of a danger to the United States than the man who served as the 45th President of the United States.

Rethugs Continue Politics of Disenfranchisement. Do I need to mention fascism again?  Oh, I just did.

In Virginia:

The Justice Department on Friday sued Virginia over a state program that prosecutors said systematically sought to remove people from voting rolls too close to the Nov. 5 elections and improperly included some citizens who are eligible to cast a ballot.

In Virginia, prosecutors say Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) signed an executive order in early August directing the state Elections Department to make daily updates to state voter rolls. The process included comparing lists of people identified as noncitizens by the Department of Motor Vehicles to lists of people who had registered to vote.

According to the federal lawsuit, the program, which continued at least until late last month, violated a federal law restricting local jurisdictions from purging voter rolls within a 90-day “quiet period.” That statute exists, officials said, because such actions are often error-prone and can cause voter confusion with too little time to fix any mistakes or problems.

In Wisconsin:

As early voting for the November election begins and Wisconsinites receive their absentee ballots, they have choices on how to return them. Mail them. Deliver them in person to the municipal clerk. Or, in some communities, deposit them in a drop box, typically located outside a municipal building, library, community center or fire station.

Though election experts say the choices are designed to make voting a simple act, the use of drop boxes has been anything but uncomplicated since the 2020 election, when receptacles in Wisconsin and around the country became flash points for baseless conspiracy theories of election fraud. A discredited, but popular, documentary — “2000 Mules” — linked them to ballot stuffing, while a backlash grew over nonprofit funding that helped clerks make voting easier through a variety of measures, including drop boxes.

With all that fuss in the background, Wisconsin’s conservative-leaning Supreme Court outlawed the boxes in 2022. But then this summer, with the court now controlled by liberals, justices ruled them lawful, determining that municipal clerks could offer secure drop boxes in their communities if they wished.

This year, four of Wisconsin’s largest cities are using drop boxes — Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay and Racine. But numerous locales that offered drop boxes in 2020, including Kenosha, the fourth-largest city in the state, have determined they will not this year.

Voters have been getting mixed messages from right-wing activists and politicians about whether to use drop boxes, as the GOP continues to sow distrust in elections while, at the same time, urging supporters to vote early — by any means.

…Wisconsin’s GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate, Eric Hovde, has urged citizen surveillance brigades to watch the boxes. “Who’s watching to see how many illegal ballots are being stuffed?” Hovde told supporters in July, according to a recording of his remarks obtained by The Washington Post. “Look, we’re probably going to have to have — make sure that there’s somebody standing by a drop box everywhere.”

‘Citizen Surveillance Brigades’.  Sound innocuous to you?  Sounds like voter intimidation to me.

Trump ‘Outsourced God To China’.  You didn’t think the Trump bibles were published here, did you?

Tim Walz is the latest politician to tear into Donald Trump over his “God Bless The USA” Bibles.

During a rally in Michigan on Friday focused on American labor and manufacturing, the Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate pointed out that Trump outsourced the production of his patriotic scripture to China. 

“Trump had his branded Bibles printed in China. This dude will even outsource God,” Walz joked. “I don’t blame Trump for not noticing the ‘Made in China’ sticker. They put them on the inside, a part of the Bible that he’s never looked at.”

Possible Automation At Edgemoor Port Big Issue In Labor Negotiations.  Karl Baker also sheds light on the secrecy surrounding how this proposal is being paid for:

In May, Gov. John Carney announced that he would pull $195 million out of a little-known pot of public money to fund about one third of the construction cost for the Edgemoor terminal.

With the announcement, state officials pledged that the new terminal would be a “green” facility that largely operates on electric, rather than internal combustion, power. They notably did not make similar pledges about automation. 

A spokesman for the Port of Wilmington newest operator, Enstructure, did not return a call Monday seeking comment about the prospect of automation at Edgemoor.

Insights into how the private operator of Delaware’s taxpayer-owned port would seek to develop its future port are tough to come by. The concession agreement signed by Enstructure – obtained by Spotlight Delaware via a Freedom of Information Act request – only requires the company to hire all existing ILA employees at the time they took over the Port of Wilmington from Gulftainer.

A two-page section regarding the development of the future Port of Edgemoor is almost entirely redacted.

Yet another item for a legislative transparency agenda.

What do you want to talk about?