Outside the Perimeter
Courtesy of Department of Defense

Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend. This will be the first post of Outside the Perimeter vis a vis the new round robin version of Around the Horn……..

If you missed it there can be no better way of catching up to where Delaware was last Friday than by visiting the Around the Horn Edition II posted at Merit Bound Alley. Next week, the edition will be posted by our favorite Curmudgeon, Shirley, Considering her weekend, it is something many of us are anticipating with fervor.

But the point of this posting is that as one steps back and looks at the large picture over the local arena, the prominent theme wallowing through every topic, is that WE, THE PEOPLE just don’t matter………..

It doesn’t matter how we vote………Primaries? Who cares?…..The use of super delegates and those coming from Florida and Michigan, two primaries where only one candidate ran…….to seal the nomination. After all the people don’t matter. Delaware Liberal has the breakdown here as well as a metaphor for one of Hillary’s staff meetings…….

And Joe M at Merit Bound Alley, has uncovered the real reason Obama is winning. Bill Clinton supports him….

Apparently our own Congressman cares little for the plight of the common man. If so, he is in good company. He can be joined by four state senators I know who have elevated the tragic up two notches to the realm of comedy. Shirley has a true story of one good local politician…….but click on the comment and “guess who” shows up with muck on his face? Once again obviously to those inside the General Assembly, WE, THE PEOPLE are scum who interfere with noble squandering the state’s resources in order to insure the economic power and security of that said Senator…… (Outside the General Assembly, it is called corruption.)

Tommywonk calls out Delmarva Power for their misstated calls that they are looking out for the people’s interests Obviously they have only their own interests at heart……..lest we forget,…..they ‘re a corporation…. And apparently they are not the only corporation in league with trying to stomp out wind before the public catches on that renewable energy can be cheaper and lex polluting too. Tommywonk comments on the silence of the national media as “fossil fuels” battle “The Age of Information” in the darkened chambers buried deep within the Delaware Senate.

This weekends two best examples of royalty’s disdain for the peasants among us both show up in Sussex County, the hot- bed of real homegrown politics. Delaware Politics.Net (FSP) has an interview that should be seen in its entirety. Those who previously saw videos of Copeland and Simpson, and politely say “Uh, no thanks” would be well advised to rethink their position. You can reach the interview from here or ……..here. (just to show the broad breadth of appeal.)

Worthy points:

“Once it became clear that it was the publics choice, a lot of misinformation came out.”

“Scare tactics by Delmarva…..none of that is true.”

“What does it say for business who want to come to Delaware and you have this project of Bluewater Wind that does not go forward because of this inside relationship……what does that say to other businesses, and we have politicians that are always saying we need more businesses coming to Delaware, ….it says that…that this realationsiip in Delaware, between legislators and their current business partners is a obsticle you will not be able ot overcome.”

if we fail to pass this project, and fail to move forward with Bluewater Wind, it sends a signal to a lot of voters……that you know,……even if you have 100%, and Bluewater has over 90% of the voters supporting it…..it doesn’t really matter. It really doesn’t matter to us. The only thing that matters to us is the cozy relationship between our current business partners, and us, legislators of the General Assembly…..

“No one took a vote. Russ Larson is the one who comes back and says we’re not going to do this. I think if you look at a lot of controversial decisions being made in Delaware’s legislature, you will see they are all decided without a vote…..It doesn’t get out of a desk drawer, it doesn’t get on the floor of the session, then you can say with plausible denialability……I didn’t kill that project……….”

The whole interview is one expose after another on how and why our government is hamstrung.

But, an even more illuminating case of ……….arrogance, perhaps? is this link provided by Maria Evans on her blog at WGMD. I wasn’t going to read the link, but after her second entreaty I said what the hell. Some exerpts you have to read in order to believe:

    Now, am I correct in understanding that the

1 permit that we are talking about here expired in 1992?

2 MR. HANSEN: Yes.

3 MR. MULLER: Okay, 16 years ago?

4 MR. HANSEN: Yes.

5 MR. MULLER: Somehow that doesn’t seem

6 expeditious to me. I am not trying to be sarcastic.

7 MR. HANSEN: That’s absolutely correct.

8 MR. MULLER: Well, can you explain to us what’s

9 been, why 16 years have gone by?

10 MR. HANSEN: No.

11 MR. MULLER: You can’t?

12 MR. HANSEN: Not in the timeframe — I would be

13 happy to talk to you afterwards, unless everybody

14 wants to hear.

VOICE: Yes, yes! We want to hear!

16 MR. MULLER: I want to hear. That’s why I am

17 asking.

18 MR. HANSEN: Okay, it’s complicated. It’s a

19 complicated permit. It has taken us a very long time

20 to figure out what we needed to do to get to this

21 point. We have been working on this permit for

22 approximately ten years.

23 VOICE: Talk into the mike. We can’t hear.

24 VOICE: We need your name and —

20

1 MR. HANSEN: I’m sorry. Again, my name, as

2 stated before, my name is Peder Hansen. I am the

3 environmental program manager for the Surface Water

4 Discharges Section.

5 We have been actively working on this permit

6 for approximately ten years. It’s extremely

7 complicated. Rules and regulations over that course

8 of time have changed. It took time to get the studies

9 needed, to update the studies that were last done in

10 the seventies so we have got the current information

11 to be able to do it. And it’s complicated. We have

12 no other excuse than that.

13 MR. MULLER: Okay, thank you. Now, with regard

14 to expired permits, does the plant have a permit now

15 that’s legal —

16 MR. HANSEN: Yes.

17 MR. MULLER: — under which it is discharging?

18 MR. HANSEN: Yes.

19 MR. MULLER: Okay, can you explain how that

20 comes about? I mean if the permit expired 16 years

21 ago, but you are saying they have a legal permit, how

22 do we understand that?

And again:

13 MR. AUSTIN: Mr. Muller raised the point about

14 copper concentrations. I am sitting here looking at

15 the National Ambient Water Quality Criteria for the

16 U.S. That’s from the EPA website.

17 The ambient water quality criteria for copper,

18 for fresh water acute and chronic. For acute, it’s 13

19 parts per billion. The chronic for copper is nine

20 parts per billion. The limit in this permit is 5.5

21 parts per million. That’s 500 parts per billion.

22 They are not consistent with the ambient water quality

23 criteria, even after considerable allowing for

24 dilution.

41

1 MR. HAYNES: Thank you. The next person —

And finally an insight as to why we never hear of these things in the News Journal or otherwise……..

12 Along the same lines, I notice that the address

13 given in the public notice, Millsboro Senior Center,

14 322 Wilson Highway, Millsboro, Delaware. This is the

15 DelDOT official highway map of Sussex County, and on

16 there there is no mention of a Wilson Highway.

17 And if you look on the outside of this

18 building, it doesn’t say Millsboro Senior Center. It

19 says Indian River Senior Center, it’s something else,

20 and so it strikes me as possible that there might be

21 people not here tonight because they were unable to

22 find the meeting.

23 And I think that — I don’t know if it’s

24 illegal, but I think that DNREC has a good-faith

28

1 obligation to make it reasonably possible for people

2 to know about the hearing and to have found the

3 building, and I am not sure that that was

4 accomplished,

Nancy has some meeting times that need coverage by someone who represents us….THE PEOPLE.

It has become obvious that no one else gives a damn………………………………