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I was economizing till the end of the month, and was about to use the editorial page of the New Journal for substitute toilet paper, when I saw Ron Williams had digressed on Markell’s speech, which I “cliff noted” in the post below….
His take was ass backwards, archaic, and so old school, that it caused a cascade of thoughts that prompted me to put them down..
In essence, Ron Williams’ take proves that the union, building trades, developers, and old school Democrats, have past their prime…
It is fine to criticize positive thinking, especially if one can provide an better alternative..
Ron Williams can’t, and with that realization, comes the knowledge that the inevitable will come to pass.. A corner was turned with the cross registration that occurred last spring and the removal of John Carney from the Democratic top spot, has meant a sea change in leadership that is sweeping across this state…
The new blood that has matriculated into the Senate and our House, would be better advised to see the trends developing now, and shift their allegiance to the Markell factor, and distance themselves from the conglomerate of old Democratic supporters mentioned above… Because their can be no going back to the old Adams, DeLuca, Minner, Sharpe, McDowell, McCloskey, Roy contingent that dominated state politics for the first three quarters of this decade…
The world has changed… Ron Williams gives us proof in his entertainment piece…
He starts with the idea that Markell began his speech backward…
Of course a journalist always leads with the headline and fills the body with junk… so from that perspective, a backwards person looking at a well formed speech, just might think that the lead should be first, and fluff at the end…
However, those of us that really have to argue and convince others, for real, not just to look good in print, know that an argument is meticulously and creatively structured, so it convinces rationally and emotionally at the same time… Markell’s aim is to sell the CORE prosperity agenda as deliverable.. He does.
His 4000 words describe the need, the tools required, the solution, and the action required to deliver it.. That seems to be lost upon Ron Williams, which if he was reading the speech solely through the eyes of an extinct dinosaur, would be only looking for the parts that relate to his own self preservation…
He derides the eduction of 40 and 50 year olds who will lose their jobs soon.. Unfortunately, he fails to realize that he may soon join them… Who wants to read irrelevance anymore…
What is relevant is that people are losing jobs in the private sector. There is therefore too little money to pay for those in the public sector… Markell’s plan makes sense… If you can tweak it so some may pay less of a share because of their low income, and that is politically more acceptable than the offer that each will accept the same percentage, fine… Fairness is commodity that varies its value upon it’s perception. What one person perceives as fair, another may not. As long as a “fair” method is achieved to scale back the human cost to our state government, then that is the ultimate accomplishment has been achieved.
Since he has nothing substantial to offer, Ron Williams then asks questions… Questions that were asked in December, January, February, March, and April… and have already been answered ad nauseum by everyone else… Yawn…
Examples?
“So why not structure salary cuts based on income”… Because 8,000 hurts a 100,000 earner as hard as a $2320 cut hurts a $29,000 earner… At least the below poverty earner can use other sources to substantiate his income; food stamps, WICK, CHIP for example…. as well as earn EIC when his taxes come around… (I need to do the math.. It occurs to me that he could be better off…after all Federal benefits are added in)…
“and what about that 8 – 10 %…” It is the required amount to meet the $330 million target…
“What about a sales tax?” What good will Delaware shopping be with a sales tax on large purchases? Out of state consumers, why drive here at all? Implementing a sales tax will cause gross sales to decline and taxes on decreased incomes because of those decreased sales will subsequently decrease, aggravating our problems, not solving them..
And of course, the defeatist comes out in the gambling piece… His second to last paragraph can essentially be summed up as this.. Despite both a primary and a general election, this state is really run by the gambling consortium and Markell has no power against them…
Had that mentality existed in the early days of the union movement, when all odds were stacked behind Pinkerton’s men, then today, there would not even be union members reading his column in the paper…
As it is, somewhere in the New Castle County sewer system, his words, and his picture, are currently drifting along with their appropriate company….
Desperate times demand bold actions… Yesterday Delaware Governor Jack Markell, who won the past election with the support of many from both parties, addressed the full houses of both Legislatures giving a “state of this State”, message…
The commentary across the blogs and airwaves, is all over the place.. So for those who missed it, here is the meat…
A. We’re in the middle of a Great Depression.
B. Wake Up, Old Farts! We’re short $780 million!
C.We shall share the burden fairly, and not cater to the sqeamy baby whiners…
D. (1) Cut spending by $331M; (2) Cut funding to special funds by $40M; (3) Utilize $155M in one-time federal stimulus funding; (4) Raise at least $55M by re-authorizing a sports lottery and getting a fairer deal for taxpayers; (5) Increase our revenues by $166M; and (6) raise fees and fines by $12M.
E. If you see one of our State’s Casino operators out shopping or walking down the street, do the whole state a favor and bitch slap some sense into the moron.
F. We have 10 weeks; or 70 days; or 1680 hours; 100,800 minutes…. to correctly set Delaware’s course to solubility over the next three years… Every second squandered, every breath of hot air, pushes us backwards from where we came…
G. Only complete openness and accountability can make government more efficient.
H. “We must shift our reliance on expensive institutional care for our senior population by fostering community and home based care.”
I. This state funds local governments.. We wonder what THEY are doing with that money we give them…. Hmmmm.
J. Education sucks up and wastes much money… We will consolidate our school districts as soon as we render inconsequential those legislators who have their tongues permanently stuck up their union’s ass, ….
H. We will free teachers from the impediments imposed upon them by unions and ill informed legislators, and let them teach… Let teachers teach.
I. Teaching to the DSTP — dead
J. Want more money? Then teach better… We’ll make sure you get it.
K. The only long-term answer to our problem is getting Delaware back to work
L. We propose to train 40-50 year olds how to use computers. We propose to use 5 million to leverage 50 million to start up small businesses. We propose to push green energy from the top to generate jobs and cheaper energy for Delawareans than ever Pepco or Delmarva Power could ever provide. Since the blogging world is now keeping a close eye on Harris McDowell, we can use the good parts of his plan, and even mention his name in public again in a positive way… Will wonders never cease?
M. We seek legislation that requires utilities to achieve, by 2015, a per capita electricity consumption reduction and peak demand reduction of 15%.
N. We propose to establish a statewide priority order for new electricity generation – requiring that we look first to cost-effective efficiency measures to meet new demand, followed then by cost-effective renewables. Only after those resources have been exhausted should we look to conventional fossil fuel sources.
O. Delaware must become the center for Green energy. Not China.
P. So let’s work to encourage turbine manufacturers to make the turbines and assemble the towers here in Delaware, with easy access to the Atlantic Ocean. These wind turbines require thousands of parts and we should work to make sure they are made in Delaware.
Q. Nod to Gilliagan, DeLuca, and Carney… Hey… How are you?
R. Look folks, it’s this simple.. We’re dead in the water, the enemy ship is swinging around to rip us apart with a final broadside from 55 cannons…. Do we grapple, tie ourselves, board, and take the fight to them, or…. do what we always have done and quibble about who gets the credit and who carries the blame…
S. Damn it. I’m going aboard. Who is with me?
In typical kavipsian fashion no punches were pulled.. Our crisis is too big for subtle niceties… “Gee, Tony, what nice suspenders!”…. The effectiveness of the speech, lies in the answer to the last question: who is with him?
For one, I am. And I pity whoever gets in my way….
lol.
In Clayton Hall, the heads of two campaigns shared a pitcher of truth serum as well as conversation covering the campaign of last season… David Plouffe, who ran the Obama campaign, sat down in a tan easy chair next to Steve Schmidt, the man who salvaged John McCain’s faltering campaign and made at least a viable run for the office of president of the United States…
There were two surprises… The first was that David, the Democrat, was actually a detailed, district by district, target by target, meticulous type of planner.. Those of us privy to his emails did not seem him as such.. But starting from Iowa through the general campaign, he remained intently focused on how to eventually pull 270 electoral votes out on November 4th.. His real battle was the primary against Hillary Clinton: “We thought that nine times out of ten Hillary Clinton would probably win the primary,” he said. “If we made one big mistake we’d be out of the race.”
The second was the candidness of Steve Schmidt, the Republican, who acknowledged the Republican Party was a long shot from winning. “We were running a campaign under extra difficult circumstances — the state of the Republican Party, the president’s unpopularity, the economy — a lot of issues that were not John McCain’s fault, but were John McCain’s problem in this race,” He used this analogy that will become the historian’s caricature, as they look back over this past campaign…“It was the strategic equivalent of throwing a football through a tire at 50 yards”
The two campaign chairs were joined by two Delaware Students, who write for the Review. Josh Shannon, and Stephanie Krause… The moderator’s position was held by by professor and former CNN world affairs correspondent, Ralph Begleiter, who recognizing the significance of the opportunity, did away with introductions ( “we all know how to use Google“) and jumped directly in with the first question… : “Was there a time when you wanted to say to the opposite teams chairman… what were you thinking?” David responded with “yeah, when they picked Sarah Palin”… a choice that later Steve defended when he said….”
“Sen. John McCain passed over his first choice for vice president — Democrat-turned-Independent Joe Lieberman — in favor of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to avoid an all-out GOP civil war. It was communicated back to us very clearly from within the party that not only was Senator Lieberman not acceptable, but any pro-choice nominee was not acceptable, [and] it would lead to a floor fight at the convention with an alternate nominee for vice president put into play. Blowing up the party wasn’t one of the menu items of things that were going to improve our situation,” he said.
When asked if there was a moment when the outcome was known before the actual election, Steven Schmidt say “Yeah, when Lehman Brothers collapsed in the fall I knew pretty much right away that … from an electoral strategy perspective, the campaign was finished. We were posting 5% in the right direction…. that is when asked if they felt the country was going in either the right or wrong direction, only 5% of the public was saying the right one, a historically low number by the way, no one ever gets negatives that low on that question, but shows the uphill battle that we fought...”
Steve said the Palin plan was to excite the base…”The first night of our convention was President Bush and Vice President Cheney. I literally thought by the second night of our convention we could be down 25 points.” Her pick excited the base, drove up the scores of women, showed McCain to be a maverick. The Republican’s grand plan was to focus on National Security during the month of September, and then drive home their tax policies during the month of October… The Lehman Brothers collapse, and the subsequent collapse of the stock market, immediately shifted the electorate’s focus towards the economy and as we all know, their candidate was on record as admitting he knew very little about the economy….
Steve when describing the impact of the Katie Couric interview, said it was the “most devastating political interview ever “since Roger Mudd interviewed Ted Kennedy who could not answer the question as to why he wanted to become the president…
When asked about the current president’s first hundred days, both chairs dismissed the title as a line drawn in the sand and as nothing to worry over… Steve characterized Obama’s first 100 days as being successful… He called out the Republican counter strategy, by saying the only thing that ever matters is where the mind of the electorate is on election day.. David reiterated by saying the “”I think the scoreboard of how many House Republicans voted for a certain bill is a flawed measure, because the truth is there’s very few House Republicans that worry about the middle of the electorate anymore,” the current president’s campaign manager said: .”We’ve won all there is to win in the House, so these folks are worried about their primaries, and Newt Gingrich is calling all their shots and pulling out the dusty playbook from 1994 and saying, ‘Just oppose the president, and maybe if things don’t go well you’ll profit. The world needs to understand. Republicans in Washington, are different from…. Republicans. ”
On the Republican Party, Steve went further.. “It is near-extinct in many ways in the Northeast, it is extinct in many ways on the West Coast, and it is endangered in the Mountain West, increasingly endangered in the Southwest . . . and if you look at the state of the party, it is a shrinking entity.”
When asked about the irony that Steve was central to the anti gay-marriage bashing by Bush- Cheney 04, which gave them just enough of an edge to hang on to Ohio and Florida, and this year had recently given an address to the Log Cabin group of gay Republicans, thanking them for what they do, and encouraging them not to give up hope, but to work harder to change the party for the better… Steve spoke with kavipsian wisdom….
“People who are born into their sexuality, should not be disallowed for that, and have one of the basic tenants of the Declaration of Independence withheld from them: their right to pursue happiness. Steve said. “These dividing singular issues are what have hurt the Republicans.. Achieving the concept of the Big Tent theory, is the way to winning…
Steve got a big laugh to this line describing the current climate of his party… “Republican’s abhor a vacuum of leadership… Currently we are in our “Lord of the Flies” period, when there is no leader, and now is the time when the next generation rises… The party is a shrinking entity.. No longer can your winning philosophy be to hold the South, and every 4 years spend 80 million dollars to win Ohio….. Republicans need to be competitive in all races, in all 50 states…
The Democrat David Plouffe acknowledge that the choice of Sarah Palin motivated a lot of new money and volunteers towards the campaign.. When questioned how he was able to mastermind the ground game of volunteers across 50 states, David had surprising information… Due today’s technology, and social networking, many states organized themselves. In fact, paramount to the decision of whether to send paid staffers into various states, was the reality that having a state with a network structure already in place, made adding money and staffers relatively easily… They didn’t have to search out “now who do I talk to”; “who might volunteer”; it was in place before they arrived.
Outside during the reception, he pulled out his mauve colored blackberry and said the whole world has changed because of” this”.. The next campaign has changed, because of “this”. Video, news casts, placed right in your hand, almost the instant that they happen. Picking up on a theme expressed inside, he asked who do we trust? In today’s world we don’t trust the media, or political operatives, talk-show hosts, or the medical profession.. We trust our family members and our neighbors… even if our neighbor is crazy, we trust where he is coming from.. When he steps up and says “You know, I’ve always hated Democrats, maybe voted for a few, certainly would never send them any money, but i like what I’m hearing from this Obama guy” it resonates….So when a family member sends you an email with a video attachment, you tend to accept that piece of information as valid… Our social networks are less face to face and more and more electronic. It matters not that a familiar newscasters face is on TV. What matters is who sent that piece of information, whether that someone was someone we liked or didn’t like, that becomes the emotional seed or basis of how we form an opinion… In four years, the campaign will all be different again.
But the current president’s key to his success, was utilizing this social networking. It’s an organic movement, he said. “The Obama campaign has 4 million donors and the average was 85 dollars per person. Young people played a huge role.. In Iowa, usually the over 60 crowd is twice as large as the under thirty crowd. This time the under 30 crowd was doubled, equalizing or beating out the over 60 crowd. That is unheard of..”.
“We changed the electorate” said David. Steve also acknowledged the youth vote completely changed the playing field. With unblemished admiration for the opposing candidate, Steve linked the campaign run by Obama to that of unfinished one run by Bobby Kennedy, calling him a once in a lifetime candidate…”This was, in my view, the unfinished Bobby Kennedy campaign — the idealism, the passion, the inspiration he gave to people, it was organic and it was real and it wasn’t manufactured at a tactical level in the campaign,”
Those of us who study strategy, live for the post battle scenarios when two warriors sit down and discuss for history, the importance of what they did… For those who study politics, this is as good as it gets… Just the nature of the Obama campaign, with its insurgent candidate who took on its preordained appointee in a long primary, then went on to beat the best human being the Republicans could have offered, (if you don’t believe me, revisit his concession speech) is a once in a lifetime event for politicos…. I may never see such in my lifetime…
Surprisingly both went to the University of Delaware… where equally surprising, neither of them graduated. Yesterday before the public session, arrangements were quietly made to take care of that small part of their impressive resumes….
I hope history will realize that despite coming from this tiny state, just how big these guys really are……
Since this conversation was overheard, I cannot vouch for its validity… I am vouching that I overheard it.. lol.
One drunk was telling another, that he had asked for constituent help from someone within the Markell administration named Josh, in dealing with some intertwining issue taking place in one of the state bureaus…
The person in the governor’s office who received the call, said something during the conversation along the lines of….” for us to move this along faster we will need your birth date… ” Dealing with the office of the governor, one whom actually the teller of this story had supported, the private information was given out tout de suite, even though that information was in no way relevant to the request..
The help this person was looking for, was actually not for him, but for another acquaintance… and Josh did not need that person’s birth-date even when prompted by the caller….
Now everyone knows, that all one needs to acquire the full police record unseen over any telephone, is a persons birth date, and their driver’s license or social security number… Birthdays need to be guarded.
So why would Josh be asking for a birthday which was irrelevant to the process, unless he was trying to phish through private records to dig up dirt?
Now if there is any truth to this tale, (there is), then it is incumbent upon those legislators who regularly visit here, to find out why this practice (if it is sanctioned) is continuing in today’s era of instant information? Or was this informational request coming from someone working on their own agenda?
Just askin…. I think it’s time we found some answers…
entertwining
I mean no disrespect. What I’m attempting to show is how a third party needs to operate if it is to achieve some form of credibility, by making its presence felt on issues that are local…
It can by splitting its views, out maneuver a larger party who cannot afford to take a position hot on the local farm, for alienating a big supporter half a state away..
It was Brian of Morning Constitution who pointed the way….
He is describing the Libertarian Party in Sussex County, and notes how the issues are divided along some east – west access…
…Citizens of each side of the county have very different issues facing them. Eastern and Western Sussex have very separate newspapers, covering very localized areas as well. The Seaford and Laurel Stars covers Western Sussex very well, where the Cape Gazette is the go to paper for beach politics. Eastern Sussex is focused on property usage and limiting excessive growth, whereas Western Sussex WANTS growth. Eastern Sussex is more open to personal freedoms and Western Sussex is more… religious.
It is like Georgetown is a portal to another world, politically.
It is an interesting analogy. And our prayers go out for both his father and mother in laws…
It has been an amazing day on the international news front… These three stories are all tied together, thanks to the skill of the new administration…
1) The opening of dialogue with Cuba.
2) The handshake with Chavez of Venezuela
3) The UN walkout of the president of Iran’s diatribe of Israeli racism…
All three show a break from outdated Republican policies….
First with Cuba… A State Department’s go-slow approach was shocked by the admission of Raul Castro, that he is ready to discuss “human rights, freedom of the press, political prisoners… everything.” He said: “We could be wrong.. We admit it. We’re human beings too.
Ok, so how long have we had the embargo? And now…. we get the admission.. If you want progress, you must have dialogue… Those who punish first, expecting capitulation, are just plain wrong.. That of course includes the entire Republican Party…As most of you are now just finding out, they are just plain wrong…
The handshake from Chavez was motivated more by how much Obama is worshiped in Venezuela than by any policy change… Chavez cannot afford the appearance of being the enemy of one so admired by his own constituents… Therefore as long as the US interests do not directly impinge upon the welfare of Venezuela’s citizens, we should have an ally in Chavez who must appear to be on our side, especially since he may have his own domestic challengers… And as most of America knows, the criticism Chavez leveled at our former administration, was shared by 65% of Americans as well… In fact, America went to the polls in record numbers to elect our current president, simply because our last one was so bad…
Now with a simple handshake, we have far more political inroads into Venezuela than we ever would have had Obama dissed Chavez as did Bush… You might remember how stupid every American was seen to be, because Bush would never mention Chavez by name? We were the joke of civilization… and well deserved we should be.. Anyone out there who still thinks we should treat Chavez as a stepchild, is simply ignorant… And yes, they are also all Republicans….
Third, the president of Iran got up and railed against Israel’s racist policies… He was jeered off stage and half of the crowd walked out… Here we gave him the rope, and he hung himself… Today he gave the United States’ cause for the support of Israel, far more credibility than had we as the old administration would have done, forbid him from coming and speaking… The old policy gave him support among his allies… Today, based on his personal implosion, his allies are running away for cover…. He is far more isolated upon the world’s stage, than at any time over the past administration’s misjudgements….
Hence the brilliance of the Biden/ Obama tact… Let our enemies do our work for us.. Let them ruin their stature in the world by themselves, without us damaging ours in the process…
But if one of our former enemies can outmaneuver us on the global stage, so that they truly appear willing to change, and anxious to open new relations up with us, then after all these wasted years it appears they weren’t really our enemies after all…
Of course Republicans will complain they are… But then, by now, we all know that when it comes to governing, Republicans don’t know much of anything.
Lol. I’ll let you know.
Yesterday the EPA moved forward with the pronouncement that Greenhouse gases were a threat to public health. They overturned 8 years of inactivity by the previousl administration, in recognizing the threat of global warming…
It is hoped that the prospect of the White House taking action could push Congress to come to an agreement.
In the post below, I posted Delaware’ CO2 emissions from the year 2006, as compiled by Delaware’s Energy Office. These corporations will no doubt suffer some economic ill effects if Carbon Taxes go into effect..
You will no doubt hear how your electric bill will rise if we began to tax carbon…
Here is how you have to look at it… You have to look at your energy bill and health costs as one lumped together expense… If you pay more for energy, but drop your health bill down to zero, your overall financial stature will be improved…
That is how this must be seen… As long as your total health and energy bills combined, do not grow, you are holding at the same level… If total of both grow, you are worse off; if the total of both drop, you are better off….
Therefore those families living around Delmarva’s power plant near Fox Point, need to consider the asthma medicine they spend on all their children when they pay their electric bill.. If, they can by God’s grace, eliminate that asthma medicine due to the fact that they need it no more, then their family’s income-after-expenses will grow…
That is how Carbon taxes must be viewed..
Now those who actually read Chapter 4 of the Kavipsian Theory of Economics, already know how Carbon Taxes benefit the United States economy… You know who you are..
For the rest of you, here is a refresher….
On the global scale, Carbon taxes will be levied as are tariffs today… For instance, if the United States refuses to sign on to the Carbon tax arrangement, then those other countries buying our products, tack on a tariff to cover the Carbon tax we did not collect.. That makes our products as high or higher than those of other nations…which on a global scale, hurts us economically.
On the reverse, if we enact a carbon tax upon our power plants and other sources of carbon, then we can trade with other nations doing so because our tariffs cancil out.. We don’t pay an excess.. Our prices are more competitive..
Developing nations, who do not tax their carbon, must pay our tariff on their products coming into our country. This makes them more expensive, and less competitive against our own manufacturing, despite the difference in the costs of labor…
So as the largest consumer, if the United States moves quickly to the forefront of this policy and begins to tax carbon before others can catch up, we gain an economic advantage, even though our carbon energy costs will rise by that taxed amount…
If you were an investor, doing manufacturing within the United States, now appears to be cheaper than offshoring all factories.. What’s the point, when the economic advantage of manufacturing offshore, has just been negated?
Speed is essentual.. Those nations playing catch up do not see a competitive economic advantage… The US due to our size and wealth has the potential to lead, and in doing so, creates a better marketplace for investors to put their money here…
So as some decry that raising the cost of energy in a bad economy will dampen growth, you can now inform them that doing so, brings investment back into the US… It also raises the costs of other nations imports, making our own products more competitive…
And it does all this, while dropping our medical bills at the same time….
Courtesy of the Delaware Energy Office
