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Delaware’s Unions, particularly the Building and Trades, have over-stepped. In a world where the one percent owns 45% of America’s assets, where billions are being spent to destroy unions in every capacity, where the middle class has succumbed to its worst level since 1880, the rat-demon that the Building and Trades chose to blacken, was Delaware’s biggest friend of labor, John Kowalko.
There is something very sick in Delaware’s unions… That this was ever allowed shows complicity with the 1%.
The only people hurt by not putting the power plant inside the University of Delaware, were those investors who spent $800,000 and got nothing. It would be safe to say none of them were of the 99%. When something else goes in, those jobs will be there as well. Labor did not lose one job…
Instead, we just got further proof that in Delaware, labor has been coerced, infiltrated, and is being run by the 1%… No normal working man would want to poison 30,000 people into cancer by his efforts. We all know the 1% have no qualms with killing people as long as they make over 5%…..
Organized labor is no longer working for its members. Whether it is the DSEA, AFSCME, or the Building Trades, the lack of new jobs here in Delaware is due to only one thing. Their coziness with those with money… the big 5 developers and their friend, the governor.
I know the details of why there is a history behind it this coziness.. But there was also a history behind Colonial America and Great Britain… But at some point a split had to occur.
When you have Quisling leaders telling their members that “yeah, they are doing everything they can”, and at the same time telling the Delaware Way that they “got their people handled”, it is their members who are getting royally screwed…..
It is past time to scrap old leaders. It is past time for new aggressive leadership, someone in their 30’s.. It is time for work stoppages again. It is time for muscle… When you have our ex-heroes, “organized labor”, those who built the America we had (at least up through 2000), attacking their most ardent legislative supporter in the General Assembly because he wouldn’t go along and maliciously kill 30,000 of his constituents with cancer, you have a corrupt and poorly lead organization…. They are not working for their members; they are working for Charlie Copeland!
I hereby pull my support for prevailing wage…. and urge John Kowalko and every legislator elected from the Greater Newark Area up through Hockessin to do so as well. …
Until unions get new aggressive leadership who will daringly take on the Delaware Way and grind it up and crush it, forget it, I won’t reconsider.
The predominant face of the poor is white.
Economic insecurity among whites is said to be more common than is shown in the government’s poverty data, engulfing over 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60..
Economic insecurity approaching 76%….. How does this end the middle class designation?
Let us review what is the middle class. It is the class in the middle… Start and stop points and change depending on who want to show what, but for the most part, the middle class would have a center point around the 50% margin… Hence: middle class….
10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%
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Sort of what you’d expect… the area above the poverty line and just below the rich……But based on current data now released from the Census Bureau, (and this is no secret to people in public schools) over 80% of America has been at or below poverty levels in its lifetime… It really doesn’t matter when. You could be financially stable through your whole life and then get termed at age 60. The effect is the same. You could face 50% age group unemployment right out of college and use odd jobs and part time jobs to stay alive. The effect is the same. The mark today is that 80% face economic insecurity. Can we just call that poor? Isn’t that the definition of poor? Someone who doesn’t have enough to be secure in today’s society?
Therefore if we take the middle of those from where the poor end at 80%, then we get a middle class graphic looking like this:
10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% XXX
This is the official version of today’s America rendered by the US Census bureau…. Times have changed…
Compare that to where it was under Bill Clinton in 1999 before Republicans took over….
10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%
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No offense to my Republican friends but this (which sad to say is exactly what I predicted in 2000), is what you get when you don’t tax progressively. We now have only 2 classes; The 1% and the 99%.
The fix? Is to tax the top 1% who can well afford even a purely theoretical 100% taxation without hardship, and use that money for jobs…. Just jobs. More government contracts. This is America’s quick answer… and it must be decided in this election 2014 that we will take it. Against all odds, we need both chambers in Democrats’ hands., not for Democrats, but for America. It’s the only way is to defeat Republicanism… We are not talking individual candidates. We are talking about a philosophy that stresses the lazy poor 80% must continue to suffer even more to pay for the one percent’s excesses, and not as it should be, … the other way around…
We hear about a divided America. But look at our at-large candidates in the Senate. Fairly even after all.
Next look at the House, where districts are gerrymandered. In this case it was done by the Republicans in 2010. …. We don’t really have a divided country. We have a country arbitrarily divided.
The Golden Flush Award /Click Image for Past Winners
Usually this is an after thought…” Oh, wow, year’s over, let’s get a person of the year”… And then once we elect one, we go… “holy crap… we totally forgot so and so….”
So to try to stir up some old simmering coals of memory, both mine and others, and perhaps even to (heaven forbid) get some debate going in the blog sphere, I thought I’d make an initial run on Thanksgiving Week, and then add people into the nominating category as others mention various ones I should kick myself for forgetting.
It will also force me to review the year which is something I rarely do… because face it, as a human being, I am slave of the moment…. If I did this last year, come December 14th the entire world would have been turned upside down and all the old priorities of 2012, would in one day become trivial….
And so starting early gives me the chance to make the argument for each of those I decide to enroll with your kind recommendations included….
Julius Cephus: Particularly this one man organized and stopped an end run around the Port of Wilmington. The Kinder Morgan deal did not go through, and the Wilmington Port is bustling like never before… Kinder Morgan was to strip the union of power, and drop the rates of pay, further dampening the economy of Wilmington proper. It was also the first defeat of a Lavine-Markell development project, .. Fisker and Bloom had gone forward without a hitch. Julius and other’s push back resulted in a General Assembly motion that stated they, not the governor, had final approval. It was the first time we were exposed to the current Governor’s manipulations. They were to play a significant part across this year’s tapestry.
Steve Newton: A blogger who has written infrequently, but effectively. His piece on SB 51 is what alerted us to the end run being performed by Dave Sokola on lowering the current standards being used for educating teachers. It is brilliant. It took an evening of reading the legislation line by line and cross referencing it with Steve’s analysis, to understand the huge negative impact this bill would cause. By the time this was done, the Bill had already passed the Senate unanimously without comment, and with an friendly amendment added that was voted upon without even being read. Some public outcry was mustered within the House, both in committee and on the floor, but under the Governor’s direction, the Speaker of the House, pushed the bill to the floor before significant outcry could be mustered. Only 4 House members were not on record for it’s passing. Our educational schools now have to water down their teaching standards to meet the new law. Steve also has brought the Highmark story to Delaware. His research in the increase of medical costs in Western PA as a result of knocking out competition by unfair practices, leads one with a cold chill of what to expect in Delaware’s future. We are already there. As an insurer, Highmark is only paying medical claims in its own affiliated clinics. As the new Blue Cross/Blue Shield owner, that is a huge percentage of Delaware’s residents. None can go to any other hospital. He has properly fingered Karen Weldham Stuart for not catching this prior to implementation. Without Steve, this would have passed unnoticed. The News Journal still has not once mentioned the takeover of Delaware’s health field under one owner.
Ernest Lopez. If Kennedy were still writing Profiles of Courage, he should include this man. Ernest Lopez is a conservative, and voted with Libertarian values to pass the gun legislation recommended by Markell and Biden. Reflecting the views of his district, instead of taking the threatening message sent to him down from the NRA, he voted for his district. A very vocal minority, who is always vocal, and always in the minority, swore they would unseat him. He disregarded their idle threat, and voted both his and his constituents conscious. A major billboard was put up to call him out. His vote caused the passage of us now requiring background checks at public gun sales. Now a certifiably insane person cannot slap cash and get a gun. It is a no-brainer, and Ernie was the only Republican with brain enough to even know what a no-brainer is….
Cathy Cloutier: her vote allowed gays to marry. Again, she is a Republican who said enough is enough… Tired of voting against her conscious just so Sussex County would not flip over to the Democrats, she finally did not toe the line and voted along the lines of her own constituents, all overwhelmingly in favor of gay marriage. In doing so, she went against the entire grain of her party, who firmly feel that gays are second class citizens, even though most Republicans in office are closeted gays.
Bethany Hall Long: on the same vote, made a viable personal decision, and also voted for the legalization of gay marriage. Unlike Cathy’s vote, this was accomplished at great personal sacrifice, for all of those in her personal life, were solidly against this policy from taking effect. In voting for what was morally right, she had to contend against those whose influence she could not escape. She went with the correct vote, over the easy one. As a result, Gay marriage is now legal in Delaware.
Paul Baumbach: gave great ammunition against the fight for SB51, and later against HB 165. Both bills which will damage Delaware’s education for years to come. He was one of the four who put up a fight on the House floor. Paul also arranged for the meetings in Newark to discuss the new Power plant that figured in this past week’s election.
John Kowalko: also was against SB51, HB 165, as well, being against the power plant. In fact, John was the first person to sound the alarm over how big the power plant would be. Without his big voice, it may have slid through unnoticed. The power plant has defined northern Delaware politics since September.
Kim Williams; responsible for HB 40 which investigates Charter School’s meddling into our educational systems. She was as an acting state representative, allegedly refused entrance into a committee hearing on education, for fear she might say something damaging to the bill being rushed through…. She brought to the public’s knowledge, that the Charter School bill was drafted illegally without public input, and the charter group constructing it, was also under FOIA, to which the private group denied. The Attorney General backed up her assertion, that the bill was formulated illegally but their decision was moot, because the bill was passed both houses anyways. Kim Williams also in the HB 40 task force, led the group to realize that charter schools unlike public schools, do indeed filter those entering charters to weed out those who might lower their test scores….
Mark Murphy, Rodel, Sweeney, Hefferman, and the Fake Educational Reform Establishment: I almost purposefully did not post this. Although the first person’s name is usually followed by explicatives whenever mentioned, it is unlike Voldermort’s, still getting mentioned. Mark Murphy was not put in his position based on his ability. He was placed there for his loyalty to the cause of corporatizing public education. Markell pulls the strings, Murphy figures how to get it done… It is hard to make a puppet the most influential person of the year… So I was going to skip him… But at the last minute, remembered that every time he or anyone of these make an op-ed, it resonates as gigantic news. The entire community rises up to counteract each op-ed, usually with the word “lies” thrown liberally about…. So, they do exert an influence. I looped all of them together, as the group of liars in a Greek play, who stand on the stair steps and taunt the protagonists. Well,… they are part of the play…….
Dan Short: Sometimes villains get noticed too. Primarily a single issue candidate, who personally supports the NRA, he actively campaigned and organized to create enough backlash so Markell’s gun laws could not get enough votes… Without him, there is a possibility that all four of Markell’s gun control pieces of legislation would have passed both houses of Delaware’s legislature. Dan Short should be given the credit for stopping them.
John Sigler: Single handedly by his very brief tenure as the re-elected head of the Republican Party, he pointed out through his pigeon shooting, just how inept the Republican Party was at everything else. With his leaving, all fissures cracking the Republican bedrock, were impossible to ignore. Blogs split. The IPOD’s split. Former candidates of the same party just months earlier, now not talking to each other. The Delaware Republican Party is dead; no it is past dead. More dead than a pigeon shot inside a box by John Sigler, former head of the Delaware Republican Party.
Nancy Willing: Her blog, the Delaware Way, is the go-to site for local information. Whether about Dover, about New Castle County, about any of New Castle County’s associations, Nancy combs all sources and puts them down in aggregate form. Heavily involved in the Power Plant controversy, The Delaware City Rail Yard controversy, Barley Mill controversy, the Woodlawan controversy, the Kinder Morgan controversy, the Charter School Controversy, the Common Core Controversy, Nancy has who is saying “what”, and links to “why”. One can expend less energy by using her blog to follow all the stuff the News Journal neglects, in a few quick empty steps.
Amy Roe: a head of the Sierra Club, who emerged from nowhere to lead the fight against the power plant, and give quite a run against the establishment candidate. Becoming the face the anti- power movement could coalase behind, she gave the anti power plant movement both dignity and grace. Coming up short only 115 votes, she has awakened Newark now politically as never before… The power plant if it goes forward, now has a strong group of Newarkeans against it. Hopefully they will be monitoring it regularly and helping authorities keep in in compliance with all local law.
Tom Gorden; although much quieter than his first term in office, Tom Gorden is rapidly rolling back the privileges the previous Clark administration handed over to our state’s top developers. The Barley Mill plaza which had a green light, is now parked at a red. In a big sea change, though handled quietly, community groups are now no longer persona non grata in county government. It is no longer accepted as a matter of course that the Woodlawn Trust will be gobbled up by developers. If enough fight can be mustered, it can be stopped. Furthermore, with Tom there is closer coordination with the City of Wilmington, than we have experienced anytime in our lifetimes. In the county, local policing has been stepped up, particularly in neighborhoods prone to crime…
Dennis Williams: Came in with grand expectations, which looked deliverable for a while. The tide is turning and his relevance on this list, is because every day, the headline reality in Wilmington’s streets, brings his electioneering boasts back to haunt him, like a sizzling hot branding iron. Time, Dennis, to say “Damn the torpedoes… Their punk asses are going in jail no matter which blowhard on City Council spouts off,before mine gets tossed in jail for impersonating a mayor..”
Alan Levin: Jack Markell’s second in command, he was instrumental in defending Markell’s position on Kinder Morgan and the port, as well as the new power plant for the data center. He also had a hand in keeping Dole in Delaware, and worked to slip the power plant past a slew of unsuspecting Newark City officials.
Jack Markell: had his hand in everything. He was behind Kinder Morgan’s takeover. He was behind SB 51 and HB 165. He was behind the illegal charter group, requiring HB 40. He also was the driving force for the four rational steps to gun legislation, 2 of which were passed. He was also the driving force behind the passage of gay marriage, signing the bill in the chambers just moments after its passage. He also supported the transgender bill in its travels through the labyrinth of Legislative Hall. He as behind keeping Dole in Delaware. He was behind changing an icon in Millsboro away from pickles, over to poultry. He pushed the bill to curtail Flowers. Despite your opinion over whether these were good or bad, they still showed a ubiquitous and wide reach across the state of Delaware. Seems like nothing got done that didn’t have his fingerprints all over it.
John Young: As head of Christina board, John Young led the board in standing up to Mark Murphy and Jack Markell, by refusing the RTTT funds slated for his district. Although some hired fools, (Jea Street) tried to paint Young into a corner, it served the opposite purpose and gave Young a platform. For the fist time, Common Core was getting publicly bashed. For the first time, many were finding that aligning themselves blindly to this sham of improving standards, was probably going to hurt them politically in the next couple of years. It was the fist salvo back, so the damage estimates were not high, but it did open eyes of many who had been on the sidelines of all educational issues, making them also become vocal in fighting Common Core. His blog Transparent Christina has channelled a lot of detailed information into the Delaware market, and had made Common Core an apprehension, instead of the savior it was supposed to be….
Kilroy: Kilroy has always been haranguing over education. In fact he was doing such a good job I left that issue alone for years, because other issues for me, like the economy and elimination of guns from the hands of the mentally ill, were more important. But as the issue has shifted back into the limelight, Kilroy’s hard hitting is making its mark… Kilroy is blunt, and right now, that is the language that needs to happen. Blunt descriptions of what takes place in the stratosphere of he academic field…. Kilroy often breaks stories before the News Journal, especially ones embarrassing to the Murphy/Markell cartel of education. If you have read Kilroy over the past couple of years, you would already know that Common Core is not the panacea we have been promised. It is a power grab for taxpayer dollars, financed by Wall Street itself…. If you think otherwise, you haven’t been reading a balanced reading list….
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That is what I have so far. In retrospect I am surprised that education has played so much, as even I have only come to that topic lately… But if one looks over the News Journal op eds, education really did dominate the discussion in the 2nd smallest state this year….
I may have forgotten some big ones. To reiterate, that is why I am posting this early, to catch those big mistakes as they get brought to my attention….
Let us start here. A good leader takes his people where they want to go. A good leader does not force his people to go where they definitely don’t want to go… That is ruling. Not leading.
A good leader convinces his people why they must do something. He makes sure he puts in how it will benefit them. If it doesn’t benefit them, he is ruling. Not leading.
A good leader creates good out of evil. There is a moral equivalency to leadership. It can be defined shallowly at times. Such as calling Hitler good leader based on his strategy of conquering France. But time makes such affirmations short lived. I don’t think anyone looking over the rubble left of Germany in 1945 at that moment considered Hitler a good leader after viewing his legacy.
A good leader does not follow the rules… He decides when and where the rules apply. Some would apply the name “great leader” to one who never wavered. Well, such a leader would have ruined the life of a little boy whose grandmother sent along a knife to cut the cake, not knowing that knives in school were grounds for expulsion. A lot of misdirected people in leadership positions in that particular school district, made bad decisions based on their mistaken view of what makes a good leader. A good leader does not always follow the rules.
A good leader decides when and where the rules apply.
In Syria we have controversy. We have one argument stating that Syria must be punished. We have the other that says War must be reserved only for something Huge. That “Huge” is of course undefined and fits in with “we know it when we see it.”
As the executive of the world’s largest force, militarily, economically, and morally, our president pretty much get to decide.
Here is what a great leader would do. He would find a way to unite the two sides into one… He would find a way to punish Assad of Syria in a way that would scare any other despot thinking of using chemical weapons, and do it without going to war.
That would be great leadership.
So what would scare Assad the most? It’s hard to tell, but my guess is that his biggest fear as a man, is if his palace is overrun by Syrians, who basically tear him apart, and do his wife and children, then systematically erase any acknowledgement that he or his dad ever existed… That whole reign of terror becomes ridiculed, laughed at, for the rest of History. i would guess that is how you could get to Assad.
So, we, (not just the US but the rest of the world) have to make that threat real.. We don’t have to carry it out necessarily, but we have to make it real. How can that happen?
I think first, is that we make crossing the border out of Syria a real good move for Syrians… Send the signal, that if you leave Syria, the world community will settle you somewhere, give you a job, and a chance to begin a life of freedom and prosperity. ideally what we are doing is a Cold War. Over time we are saying: “See how great the Rest of the world lives? Oh, you poor Syrians… Escape and come join us”. Where could we relocate them? Iran could step up, Jordan,, and Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States,
This is how your hurt Assad… Turn his own people against him… No ruler can rule a group of people who don’t want to be ruled. He can use brutality to a certain extent, but the numbers are completely on the side of the population wanting him gone. With our intelligence capacity, he will never be safe… Every bodyguard is a potential killer..
And that, more or less, is what we should do… It is what a great leader does… He solves problems in ways where the evil get punished and the good win out.
Going to war, rewards those doing evil, and hurts the good….
It is time our President, become the great leader. Not by digging down and reinforcing the costly methods promoted in the past.. But to devise and implement new methods which because of their success, will be utilized far into the future….
The report found that the (Indiana) state education department underestimated the administrative and technical challenges associated with implementing a new accountability system. Because of the loss of key personnel, the department simply ran out of time to perform adequate programming and quality-control work. What’s more, the report said that significant parts of the education community did not trust that the new rating system was accurate and fair.
The report called for more transparency around school-grading decisions in Indiana, and for piloting any new changes to the school accountability system before full implementation. It also recommended a school-rating system that is “as simple as possible, more easily understood…”
Now years later, Delaware is headed down the exact same road, with the exact same policies, and is hitting the exact same potholes….
Just a note: Indiana decided to throw out those politically connected with school reform and replace them with more nuanced and balanced individuals…
Especially if you enjoy videos that don’t have things jumping around in the background every nanosecond….
If you watch this, use it to judge Corporates influence in America today. I think one can begin to see who is the true architect of our “Downsloping Century” demise
Courtesy of Frank Capra
Any investor knows you buy low and sell high. Buying high and selling low makes you a loser. The same goes with a business. Buying a business doing very well, will leave you no room for growth. Your pie can only get smaller, as more businesses arrive on your block and begin exploiting the fact you are so busy, by offering similar quality and prices with lower wait-times. Their profits grow; while both your market share and profitability decline.
This is why people like monopolies so much. One can consistently almost guarantee one’s income and profitability.
Now because of “math” it is easier to show great gains on low profitability options, more bang for the buck, than on high ones. The closer one is to zero the higher percent increase one can show their clients. If you have just one customer sale, it is easy to have a 100% increase by having 2 customer sales; someone just has to walk into your store. But if you have 1000 customer sales per day, then it is rather hard to jump up to 2000 customer sales per day. Where are you going to put them?
Understanding this is critical to growing the economy.
History lesson. In the summer of 2007 ARM’s started defaulting as the higher rates kicked in, starting a mushrooming effect up and down the securitized mortgage chain. In 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed, all hell broke loose. The world financial markets came within 20 minutes of collapsing entirely. But the US under George W. Bush restored confidence in the dollar, and people decided to leave their investments alone and let them ride. That is his most defining moment. That is one memoir I want to read.
Fortunately Ben Bernanke was an expert on the Great Depression. Bolster the banks, keep money solvent, coddle corporations, and keep the infrastructure intact. Knowing full well, if it totally collapsed (like a small town losing its factory) there would be no economic driver to hammer the economy back into shape.
For this reason, great pains were taken to assist big business on their bounce-back.
They bounced back very well. Only this time, they didn’t need as many people to work for them. Over the last decade, software had become smart enough to replace many jobs people had previously occupied.. Just that before the recession, it wasn’t that obvious, It was only after one let people go and ran well or better without them, that one realized how just how fat you were beforehand.
So this brings us to the point. We have invested in corporate bounce-backs as far as we can go. We have hit the ceiling as far as getting a return on our investment. On the other hand, now on the labor side, we have great opportunity. Every little investment over there into into putting people to work, will return great dividends very quickly.
We have to realize there as simply some jobs in society that cannot be performed by machines inside corporate establishments or a banks. Those jobs, simply put, are ones whose duty is to watch corporate giants and banks to insure that they comply within the law and prosecute them fully when they step out.
We need these jobs. We really need them now. After all, people do not work best without any accountability. In fact the opposite is mostly true. When you have to personally answer to a boss, you are more productive. Even when that demanding boss is oneself; they still answer to someone. Consider the opposite. If you could be paid whether you did work or not, would you be as productive as you are now, where if you don’t do work, you don’t get paid? Or would you take advantage of that opportunity, to heck with productivity, and seek to experience some of the quality of life you missed hereto? Our corporate entities and banks need to answer to a boss. That boss should be the American People via their proxies. the government watchdogs.
Those record breaking Corporate profits which are achieved by cheating society, are not really profits towards society’s benefit at all. Some one has to eventually pay for them. If you pump toxic chemicals into the ground to avoid paying for their disposal, at some future point when they hit a water table, society will have to pay to remove them and the damage they caused as well.
It is cheaper now to prevent that action while we have tons of money, than it will be to fix it when we simply do not.
The small business method to fix our economy, is to hire more government workers (invest in a brand new business) and pay for them out of the corporate earnings (our business already tapped out) because they can run with less people.
It is really no change from before. Except for the person writing the check. Prior to the recession these people worked for a corporation and got paid by their company. Where we need to go, is to have these people work watching over their former corporations, now getting their pay checks written by the government, which gets its extra funding to cover their pay, from taxing the excessive profits those corporations are making. Why are the making them? Because they aren’t working as many people….
This is quite sustainable when viewed from this perspective, as would be readily seen by the owner of a small business. If we were happy in the nineties, back when everyone was better off each year than they were before, then we can be happy again, just by keeping all portions similar, just moving labor from the private to the public, and increasing assessments on the private sector to pay for it.
There are those who will scream. They are selfish. They will be proven wrong.
As our planet becomes more crowded, we need more solutions. Some solutions are not very profitable and for that reason, we need a government capable to grow to meet them.
The old arguments of government being the problem, are long gone. They weren’t true ever, though a lot of people believed them back in the day. The opposite is certainly true now. As a society we need more watchdogs working to make our lives better. As a society we really don’t need more profits. We have too many of them now and really, what good are profits really doing for us? None. Instead, we need more people working and buying things.. Nice things that someone’s got to make…
It is time to pivot in how we view the entire American economy. Let’s hire us some watchdogs and cut the deficit while doing so, by increasing the rate of taxes on all those profits being sucked up in excess because a lot of workers got fired..
kavips 