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“As an outsider looking in, I recognize one thing that most Americans lack. Because America has been free for so long, many have no sense of what tyranny looks like and how quickly physical and intellectual freedom can be lost on the path paved with good intentions.“
I’m skimming Nancy’s account of the Millsboro Vlasic Pickle delimna and my, are they in a pickle.
But some of the data given had me pause and ask questions… Perhaps one of my more astute readers geographically closer to the problem can reassure me that what I’m reading, “ain’t really so?”
“Samples at a central location showed levels of tetrachloroethene and perchloroethene above the state’s drinking water standard, according to the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.”
Does this mean when I eat pickles I am getting tetrachloroethene and percholoroethene in my brine? Where would this contamination come from? What use do these chemicals have with vinegared cucumbers?…
Nitrate was detected in several onsite wells, but the drinking water standard was exceeded in only one onsite drinking water well and two monitoring wells.
The plant sits either in or almost on city limits. Does this mean everyone in Millsboro is drinking water, right now, right before the holidays, Christmas and all that, with family coming in to celebrate, that is potentially deemed harmful? It certainly would imply that it is… When was the last time Millsboro’s water and wells surrounding the town, have their purity checked to deem if they were truly safe, ..or not?
In addition, lead exceeded the state drinking water standard.
How can this happen in 2013? Drinking water? With excessive lead? (And we’re thinking Common Core is going to make these contaminated lead brains smarter?) When was the last time Millsboro wells and drinking water was checked for lead? Children live there, you know!
Other chemicals – including iron, cyanide, mercury, methyl acetate and chloroform – were found in soil samples but none present a risk to human health, DNREC officials said…
Beneficial: Iron, … Harmful:.. cyanide! mercury!, methyl acetate! chloroform!…. Here, drink this poison. It makes you tough, puts hair on your chest as long as you don’t drink too much…( but I’m a girl; I don’t want hair on my chest.)
Gov. Markell and other politicians have focused solely on a vacant site and jobs, and not the resources or impact on the tourist economy the area also depends on,”
For some of my western NY readers… can anyone tell me how much tourist revenue the Love Canal is currently bringing in these days?
A DNREC memo dated May 19, 1997, indicated concern about the Vlasic site.
Based on what was disclosed above….. I SHOULD “EFFIN” HOPE SO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The contamination of off-site shallow domestic wells which lie north and northeast of the Vlasic facility have always been the major concern regarding the potential off-site groundwater impacts of the groundwater plume,” the memo stated.
Translated… the water table will be contaminated some day inevitably, if not done so already. How does one pollute so much from pickles, for heaven’s sake… We EAT pickles!
Bob Wheatley, incoming public policy chairman for the Delaware Association of Realtors.
Oh, man. Like anyone is going to believe a single thing he says is true…..
Rob Arlett, Sussex County Association of Realtors public policy chairman: “This is also about property rights,” he said. “The owners of the building have the right to sell or lease their property.”
Appropriate translation: “Die! Die! You scurvy scum. Haul your bones to your graves will you? Bite off your tongues. You got no right to live! You got no right to be healthy! You got no right to have children without Birth Defects! YOU ARE SCUM. POND SCUM, YOU DON’T MATTER. YOU DON’T MATTER… NO ONE CARES IF YOU LIvE, DIE, OR MOVE. YOU ARE THE LOWEST FORM OF HUMAN EXCREMENT FOUND ON THE SEAT OF ANY PORTA-POTTY…. PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE WHAT ITS ABOUT! NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOU. PROPERTY RIGHTS! PROPERTY RIGHTS! PROPERTY RIGHTS! PROPERTY RIGHTS! PROPERTY RIGHTS! … OUR PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE ALL IMPORTANT! YOU SCUM WHO LIVE, WORK AND DIE IN THIS TOWN… GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT OF HERE NOW! PROPERTY RIGHTS! PROPERTY RIGHTS! PROPERTY RIGHTS…. NOTHING IN SUSSEX COUNTY MATTERS NOTHING NOTHING EXCEPT PROPERTY RIGHTS. PROPERTY RIGHTS, PROPERTY RIGHTS…. SCREW DEAD BABIES! PROPERTY RIGHTS, PROPERTY RIGHTS, PROPERTY RIGHTS… SCREW THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION… PROPERTY RIGHTS, PROPERTY RIGHTS, PROPERTY RIGHTS… SCREW EVERYONE EXCEPT THOSE WHO WILL MAKE MONEY OF THIS DEAL… PROPERTY RIGHTS, PROPERTY RIGHTS, PROPERTY RIGHTS…..
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As said… looking for clarification… Thanks Nancy for stirring the pot… Never knew Millsboro had such a poisonous aquifer. And I eat pickles…
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….
January 1-3
January 11-13
I getting a bad feeling about this. Who can tell us? What’s this mean?
Btw. There is a monster hurricane approaching Alaska with a low of 943mb. Category 4 if it were an actual hurricane. It is so huge it would stretch from the East Coast of the US to Denver.
Courtesy of the Delaware Energy Office
Hillary announced her health care proposal today. She calls for universal health care that is privately run, not government run.
Edwards and Richardson say their health care plans are better, and that they offered theirs sooner….
But the most fun will be had with Mitts remark. Today, Republican Mitt Romney, in New York City for a fundraising stop, criticized Clinton’s proposal, saying, “‘Hillary care’ continues to be bad medicine … in her plan, we have Washington-managed health care. Fundamentally, she takes her inspiration from European bureaucracies.”
However…………you know he slipped up, ……..he is Mitt after all.
The centerpiece of Clinton’s latest effort is the so-called “individual mandate,” requiring everyone to have health insurance just as most states require drivers to purchase auto insurance. The plan that Romney helped institute while governor of Massachusetts requires the same individual insurance mandate as Clinton’s and uses state subsidies to help reduce the cost of private coverage.
Since then, Romney has said he would leave it up to the states to decide whether they supported such a mandate.
So if one uses pure logic, assuming that Hillary’s plan is bad medicine, and Romney implemented the same type of plan in Massachusetts, then it must also follow that Romney’s plan is bad medicine……..
So Mitt Romney, tell us if her plan is so bad, why did you do it when you were governor? Or are you implying that only ideas that come from you are good, from all others suspect?
If that is so, then no thanks Mitt……We have already suffered from 7 years of someone who makes his decisions “because I/m right” and it doesn’t work…………
He may survive because his slip was over shadowed by Giuliani’s comment. While campaigning in Florida, Republican Rudy Giuliani said Clinton’s plans was a “pretty clear march to socialized medicine.”
Which means (as was previously pointed out with Giuliani’s Iraq policy), that he has no idea of what he is talking about, because of course,…..his time is spent being far too engaged with the ladies.
photo courtesy of College Humor.
The Petraeus Report is coming! The Petraeus Report is coming! Today it is hard to miss the calls echoing Paul Revere’s famous ride. For indeed we will soon have the White House report all have been waiting for since the surge began……. only a click away…….Of course we originally thought it would be written by Petraeus himself……(we were so naive.)
Since objectivity is out, I decided to search around and catalog the opinions of those who support the continued surge, and those who want us to withdraw.
First the Good. These will see the Petraeus report as representing what is actually going on in Iraq…….and recommend that we stay.
Bush/Cheney, Israeli lobby,Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and other high level republicans. Mike Castle, the lobbyists being paid to support the war, Lieberman (I-CT). 12% of Americans, corporate mainstream media, defense contractors, and trolls.
I am sure there may be some more, but Google couldn’t find them. (It did include Delawareonline: how funny?_)
On to the bad. Ever since Milton’s Paradise Lost in the seventeenth century, studying bad has been much more fun. This group believes the opposite of the White House report. They see Iraq a imploding and think we should get out……sometime….eventually.
The British, Democrats, all Democratic presidential candidates, 85% of Americans, 99.9% of other nations, all of Delaware’s bloggers, Keith Olberman, Hollywood, the GAO, Association of Catholic Nuns, Vietnam Vets, US Labor, poets, environmentalists, the city of Austin, Texas, historians, military families, the NIE report, the General Jones report, artists, women, 1 million New Yorkers, West Point Graduates, lawyers, the City of Rochester, NY, librarians, and a (shock) surprising number of Republicans on the Armed Services committee listening to David Walker testifying in defense of his GAO report.
Thus we can judge by the support, that this war seems to be supported solely by one political party; and no one else. It is quite an odd situation to be in, the country which once was the standard the whole world looked to, now intently venturing down a path supported by only a handful of people. We will be paying for our mistake a long time.
As for the ugly? We touched on that with the picture at the top of this post…..Enough is enough. We have seen enough ugliness for a day…….
photo by SUCHAT PEDERSON, News Journal
kavips 