Tag: Featured
A Time For War
First off, I must admit, I was wrong. I was wrong in my national predictions. With all the polls in the competitive races close, within the margin of error and most within 2-3 points, I wrongly assumed our superior GOTV operation would make up the deficit like it had before. But our voters just did not turn out. And I am very pissed about that. Some of them are emo-progressives who feel it is their right to punish the party by not voting whenever they feel like the party has not been pure enough. Others of them just cannot be bothered unless the only politician that they know of, i.e. the national leader, i.e. the President, is on the ballot. To all of them I say, fuck you. I am almost tempted to argue that the Democrats in Washington should immediately repeal the entire social safety net, all regulations, everything that they take for granted, FDA, EPA, etc. etc. etc. and then let them all suffer horribly, just to prove to them that these elections matter, and that you actually are voting for policies and not people. Then I pull myself back from that. Because I know it is what the GOP wants. Not out of any respect or concern for my lazy and/or purist colleagues.
We lost last night for a very simple reason….
Dems Running From Obama-Headed Where Exactly?
Ok, so where exactly are you going, Democrats running away from President Obama ? I hope into oblivion, a suitable place for the oblivious.
A Kent County Example of a Lack of Clean Hands: Sign Stealing in the Recorder of Deeds Race
I warned Republicans not to get too triumphant and self righteous last Thursday when it was revealed that Dana Long, the husband of Senator Bethany Hall Long, was caught stealing GOP signs that threatened Delaware with a return to their Depression-causing economic policies. What Mr. Long did was wrong, and he will pay the consequence for his crime. But certain Republican Party officials and commenters here acted like all Democrats engaged in sign stealing, and no Republican ever did. I warned them because, at that moment, I was aware of an incident in Kent County allegedly involving Lamar Gunn, the Republican candidate for Kent County Recorder of Deeds, who allegedly and personally removed the signs of his opponent, the Democratic Recorder of Deeds, Betty McKenna. I commented that I knew some evidence had been turned over to the Delaware State Police at the Troop 3 barracks. We held off on publishing the allegations until I had the evidence in hand and reviewed it. I received it last evening.
First, we have a sworn affidavit of the witness, Ronnie Allen. And we have a video….
More on the Illegal GOP Mailers
We have multiple violators here. There is the House Republican Campaign Committee. The Delaware House Republicans themselves. The Reform Delaware Now PAC and the Common Sense Delaware PAC. Common Sense is funded by Delaware GOP National Committeewoman Ellen Barrosse. Reform Delaware is largely funded by Dan Anderson, Delaware’s version of the Koch Brothers. If you look at the Barosse piece propping up Bryant Richardson below, and the Reform Delaware now, you’ll see that the iStock images and graphics are identical. So even though these are two separate PACs, they are clearly coordinating with messaging. That is also illegal.
Please view each of the violating and illegal mailers inside. The sections of code they’re violating are also inside.
Each candidate on whose behalf these mailers were sent should immediately denounce this illegal activity, lest they be complicit in it. I await their press releases and condemnations by close of business today.
2014: My Predictions
Everyone knows who the President of the United States. But after that, it’s a crap shoot. A Jimmy Kimmel (I think, maybe it was a Jimmy Fallon skit) revealed that some people in New York don’t know who Joe Biden is. And we know moving down the electoral ladder, from governor to U.S. Senator to your representative in Congress to your state Senators and Representatives and your local councilpeople, that the smaller and more local a position, the less likely it is that people are going to know who they are. So the people who have the most power to affect your daily and everyday life, i.e. your county and city councilmen and women, your state representatives and senators, are strangers to you. But everyone knows Obama.
As a local political blog, we strive to keep you informed as to who the most important politicians to you are. But even we fail at that sometimes. National political news is easier to follow, because you know the players and the players want to be known, and you have many people wanting to tell you the story. If you want to follow local politics, your choices are limited, hard to find, and often lacking much substance. And its hard to follow events because the players are lesser known to you.
So to help in that, let’s start in talking about and predicting all of the offices up and down the ballot. And as you see below, I have included all the statewide and county level Row offices, even though I think some of them should not be elected offices (yeah, we shouldn’t be electing sheriffs, treasurers, recorders of deeds or wills, at any level of government).
Now, El Somnambulo has already posted his predictions for you. And he, along with our illustrious founder, Jason330, are very pessimistic, in their attitude, and in some of their predictions. I am a little more optimistic and realistic.
El Somnambulo Predicts ‘Em All For You!
The tough races are really tough, the easy races are really easy. I know I’m not running the table, but I don’t know where I’ll falter. I just know that I will. If there’s a unifying theme, I think it’s that D’s will struggle in Delaware more than usual, which is exactly what I expect to happen nationwide. Hope I’m wrong. These predictions are also going up a week out, and there’s plenty of movement in some of the races.
With that depressing, but not hopeless, forecast out of the way, here we go:
United States Senate: Chris Coons over Kevin Wade, 58-40%, with Andrew Groff of the Green Party at 2%. I’ll be among the 2 percenters.
US Representative: This provides the true measure of how many people will vote Republican no matter what. Does Rose Izzo get over 30%? I’m going Carney 67%, Izzo 29%, with the Green and Libertarian candidates maybe getting 4%. For me, it’ll be August in November.
Attorney General: Matt Denn will win, does he break 60%?
Your Vote Should Be For The Party.
I argue that when you vote, your vote should be for the Party. I do not buy the concept “I vote for the candidate, not the Party”. Sorry, but it is not unsophisticated or unthinking to vote a “straight ticket” in the case of partisan elections.
Tom Wagner charging $1,200 to see his schedule
What do you do if you are a lazy do-nothing auditor who has been sucking on the government teet for 25 years, and someone asks to see your schedule? You try to wrap yourself in an expensive FOIA estimate and hope the request goes away. That was Wagner’s plan when Brenda Mayrack asked to see his schedule to check up on why his office has been chronically understaffed.
From Mayracks FB page:
* Is the State Auditor’s Office attending local job fairs? After not seeing the office on the list of attendees at a University of Delaware job fair for accounting students, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the State Auditor’s schedule: “For the year 2014, the public schedule of R. Thomas Wagner, Jr., including all meetings and public events.” The response from his office: “In order to construct information in response to request below and based what we have available in the Office, I estimate it will run approximately $1,191.” And that’s the cost for sending it by email so we didn’t incur any copying or mailing fees.
Is This What’s Happening at the News Journal?
We all know that the NJ is working on the lastest Gannett revenue extraction scheme — the Newsroom of the Future — that mainly looks like a way to implement a staff reduction while re-orienting their attention to their website, rather than the paper. This article from the Nashville Scene provides some details of what is going on at The Tenneseean (another Gannett property going through the same thing):
Rep. Smyk Thinks Delaware Casinos are Being Raped
So he says in this recording of a debate answer defending his vote for bailing out casinos. Smyk is — surprise — an ex-cop and the district he represents is the area where Bradley committed his crimes against children. And this career cop wants you to believe that the taxes paid by casinos are the equivalent of rape. A comment that completely diminishes the violence of real rape and completely devalues the real trauma endured by its victims. To be sure, plenty of Ds voted for this bailout too — but none of them would tell you they were somehow in the rape prevention business. His opponent, Marie Mayor, has a great response — that the revenues from casinos ought to be in use the fix Delaware infrastructure, which is exactly right. So the choice is between the R who wants to reduce the casino taxes vs the D who wants to help get our roads and bridges fixed. There’s no point in re-electing Smyk if the only people he plans to represent are a handful of casino owners.
Come inside for the video….
KWS Goes to Bat For Mega Insurance Company
Our purported insurance regulator, Insurance Commissioner Karen Weldin Stewart, is instead trying to run interference for Met Life. Check out this article from the state government website: fer cryin’ out loud:
DOVER, DE – In a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and other federal regulators, Delaware Insurance Commissioner Karen Weldin Stewart has urged them to reconsider their vote to propose that MetLife be labeled as a “systemically important financial institution” (SIFI) and therefore subject to tougher federal regulation. “Based on my experience as an insurance regulator (insert joke here), and a regulator of one of MetLife’s larger insurance subsidiaries, I do not believe that MetLife’s businesses and corporate structure create the kind of systemic risk that Dodd-Frank’s SIFI designation process was designed to address,” she said. Stewart argues explicitly against the designation of MetLife and said state regulators are capable and competent to continue the oversight of the company (insert joke here).
Burn…
NEWARK, DE – The Executive Director of the Delaware Republican Party, John Fluharty, just p—ed a b—r over this tid-bit.
Mayrack’s LinkedIn profile summary states that the candidate has “extensive experience in all aspects of unclaimed property advising.” However auditing itself—the primary job of the State Auditor—is not mentioned a single time.
Tom Wager has the word auditor on his linked in page, but it is enclosed in quotation marks.
I’m Delaware’s “auditor”
Combating The National Republican Fear Campaign?
It is well understood by communications experts that fear is an extremely powerful emotion to reverse. The RNC is executing a powerful national campaign of fear, based mostly on ISIL and Ebola. It is grounded in their national and local messaging strategy that government doesn’t work, especially an Obama/Pelosi government.
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