Delaware
updated
9:41 a.m.
A tipster sent me this link to the newly proposed regulations for FOIA requests to the Insurance Commissioners office. There are a few things that look somewhat odd to me. First, there will be no public hearing on these regulations. Not a big surprise, given the IC’s record of backroom dealings. The public has until October [...]...
DelawareLiberal.Net - 7:28 a.m.
Today’s award goes to Bill Keller, the unordained “pastor” and “brains” behind LivePrayer.com. Seems Bill, a convicted felon (insider trading) has decided to open a 9/11 Christian Center near Ground Zero. No problem there – the more, the merrier. But Keller’s ministry is one of hate. He hates gays. He [...]...
DelawareLiberal.Net - Wed 6:27 p.m.
I am sitting here in the Delaware Democratic Party headquarters with time to kill before the Progressive Democrats of Delaware meeting this evening. So I thought I would pass along two press releases from Beau Biden's campaign and then from John Daniello, the illustrious chairman of the state party, concerning the GOP's failure to field a candidate of their own to challenge Beau Biden for reelect...
DelawareLiberal.Net - Wed 4:04 p.m. - 6 clicks 
Once dismissed as a fringe kook, teabagger Christine O'Donnell has picked up a boatload of momentum and credibility in the wake of the shocking Alaska Republican Senate primary results. The Delaware Republican establishment is near panicked : Republican leaders in Delaware describe their 2008 Senate nominee with open contempt, calling her a perennial candidate who runs for office instead of...
DailyKos (Delaware) - Wed 4:04 p.m. - 5 clicks
The original plan was for Mike Castle to just ignore Christine O'Donnell, just as Joe Biden had done twice before. And in so doing, he would conserve his campaign war chest to blow Chris Coons out of the water in October. Well, Castle is no longer ignoring Old Christine. He is going on air before the primary . ...
DelawareLiberal.Net - Wed 12:49 p.m. - 7 clicks
To a gold miner, enough is never enough. In the same way, the $100,000+ salary Velda Jones-Potter brings in as the state's Treasurer must not be enough....
DelawareLiberal.Net - Wed 12:21 p.m.
Speaker Greg Lavelle (in his dreams anyway) will get a challenge from Josh Schoenberg, the current Executive Director of the Delaware Democratic Party. Schoenberg was previously involved in Governor Markell's 2008 campaign. ...
DelawareLiberal.Net - Wed 12:21 p.m. - 4 clicks
Hurricane Watch issued for the Delaware beaches and Sussex County. And the latest models show the storm moving west, or closer to the shore. ...
DelawareLiberal.Net - Wed 10:05 a.m. - 3 clicks
Today we find out if Beau Biden has an opponent for reelection. The general consensus is that the GOP will let Biden be reelected unopposed. Republicans have been both mocked and praised for this move. ...
DelawareLiberal.Net - Wed 7:08 a.m. - 7 clicks
Those are Christine O'Donnell's words in describing herself in her first campaign ad. Yes, she has finally narrowed down her qualifications for the Senate seat to something that is vaguely plausible rather than completely fictitious. ...
DelawareLiberal.Net - Tue 8:26 p.m.
As the Washington Post reports, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II has been stymied in his attempt to subpoena the notes and papers of a climate scientist at the University of Virginia. Cuccinelli wants to go through professor Michael Mann's files in search of evidence that he had committed fraud in his grant applications to support his climate reaserch. A state judge found that ...
TommyWonk - Tue 5:29 a.m.
Conservative Christine O'Donnell has been building some momentum in her Senate primary bid against Rep. Mike Castle. Castle has a reputation as a moderate, which plays well in heavily Democratic Delaware. Unfortunately, it doesn't necessarily play well in a Republican primary. Still, O'Donnell's primary was still seen as the longest of long-shots by most observers. Post-Alaska, however, it...
DailyKos (Delaware) - Mon 12:07 p.m. - 10 clicks
Another attempt to tarnish the reputations of scientists engaged in research on global warming has come up empty. The Guardian reported last week that the head of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been cleared of accusations that he had used his authority for personal gain : The head of the UN's climate science panel did not abuse his position to...
TommyWonk - Mon 6:40 a.m. - 2 clicks
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released its latest analysis of the Amercian Recovery & Reinvestment Act : CBO estimates that in the second quarter of calendar year 2010, ARRA’s policies: • Raised the level of real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent, • Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points a...
TommyWonk - Fri 5:46 a.m. - 2 clicks
Remember the pedictions of lost jobs and oil rigs leaving for other shores after President Obama imposed a moratorium on deepwater drilling? The New York Times reports the oil and gas industry has been crying wolf : Yet the worst of those forecasts has failed to materialize, as companies wait to see how long the moratorium will last before making critical decisions on spending cuts and ...
TommyWonk - Aug 25 - 4 clicks
I had never quite put my finger on what bothers me about having our county council president married to a high powered land use attorney until I read yesterday's News Journal piece on opposition to two large proposals by Stoltz Real Estate Partners . The article includes the standard disclaimer from Paul Clark on how he avoids the appearance of a conflict of interest with his wife, Pam S...
TommyWonk - Aug 23 - 2 clicks
The race to build offshore wind on the east coast is not just about creating clean, renewable energy. It's about creating jobs in a multi-billion dollar industry. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie just signed a measure that creates a target of 1.1 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity . To meet this goal, New Jersey plans to provide up to $10...
TommyWonk - Aug 20
It's time once again for the Philadelphia Folk Fest , which starts tonight with a special concert for campers. Three years ago I wrote that Fest offers "unexpected, luminous moments of musical or visual experience," such as a hula hoop dance to Doc Watson. The Folk Fest is once again offering a stellar lineup including Hoots and Hellmouth, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Chris Smither, Erin Mc...
TommyWonk - Aug 19
The financial reform bill that passed last month contains an important provision to open up corporate governance. Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports that a little noticed provision in the bill could have a dramatic effect on board elections : Buried on page 1,257 of the legislation is language authorizing the Securities & Exchange Commission to let investors nominate directors on corp...
TommyWonk - Aug 17
Earlier this year, Barack Obama established the Interagency Task Force on Carbon Capture and Storage to look at the technology's feasibility. Carbon capture and storage (or CCS), also known as "clean coal," involves digging coal out of the ground, burning it and pumping the resulting CO2 back into the ground. The task force has issued a report that is not encouraging for proponents of the tec...
TommyWonk - Aug 13
This graph from the Washington Post clearly illustrates the difference between Republican and Democratic tax plans: The Post describes the difference : A Republican plan to extend tax cuts for the rich would add more than $36 billion to the federal deficit next year -- and transfer the bulk of that cash into the pockets of the nation's millionaires, according to a congressiona...
TommyWonk - Aug 13
The current Bloomberg BusinessWeek has an interesting interview Charlie Rose conducted with financier Wilbur Ross . Ross, who became a billionaire buying and selling banks and steel companies, is a conservative fellow. But he thinks the U.S. needs an industrial policy, and one that focuses on renewable energy: Does manufacturing in the U.S. have a future? I think it does. What I'm wo...
TommyWonk - Aug 11
The recession was worse than we thought. It started earlier, and from a lower peak than we previously calculated. The Economist has this chart showing how bad we thought it was, and how revisions to the data show that it was worse : The revised report shows that the recession started in the 4th quarter of 2007, more than a year before George Bush left office. As for the depth of the p...
TommyWonk - Aug 10
In response to some persistent comment spam, I have been forced to switch to comment moderation, which means that comments will not appear until I have approved them. I have no wish to stifle legitimate discussion on this site. Since I started this blog, I have deleted a handful of comments for profanity or bigoted comments. But I will not tolerate attempts to use my blog to sell term papers or e...
TommyWonk - Aug 9
Barack Obama's intervention may have saved the U.S. auto industry, but he still can't get any love. Over at the Guardian's Comment is free America, I take a look at why some have trouble admitting that the rescue worked : Billionaire publisher and erstwhile presidential candidate Steve Forbes refuses to praise Obama for his intervention and gives all the credit to GM's chief execut...
TommyWonk - Aug 6
David Stevenson of the Caesar Rodney Institute has weighed in on offshore wind for the Institute's new Center for Energy Independence . The piece is critical of the proposal by governors Jack Markell of Delaware and Martin O'Malley of Maryland that the federal government be brought in as a buyer of offshore wind. This "factual analysis" offers several unsourced assertions. Let's lo...
TommyWonk - Aug 3
A Tea Party rally in Philadelphia to try to build some support among minorities set me to thinking about the movement's secure placement on one side of the divide between blacks and whites in America. As the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, the inclusion of Andrew Breitbart on the speakers' platform probably didn't help integrate the crowd of 300. Breibart's deceitfully edited video of U.S....
TommyWonk - Aug 2
The Economist has published this clear chart of global temperatures by decade . Pay attention to the confidence range, which is similar to what pollsters call the margin of error. As you can see in the chart, the confidence range (which is 95 percent) is considerably smaller than the rate of change over the last several decades, which means that that it is extremely unlikely that the inc...
TommyWonk - Jul 30
New York Times economics writer Dave Leonhardt succinctly captures the reason that greenhouse gas emissions can't be curbed without some intervention in the market : The fact that carbon emissions are warming the planet doesn’t make it more expensive to produce those emissions. That's it. The costs associated with global warming will be considerable, but will not be born by those who e...
TommyWonk - Jul 28
It may seem like the distant past. But only two years ago, John McCain, then presumptive Republican nominee for the presidency, proposed cutting carbon emissions to combat climate change. Specifically, he called for going back to 1990 emission levels by 2020, and achieving 60 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. That was then, this is now, and McCain is in the midst of a primary fight agains...
TommyWonk - Jul 26
Climate change won't just affect ice caps and polar bears. As the News Journal reports, the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary has released a report detailing some of the impacts of global warming on the Delaware watershed : The levees and dikes that hold in fresh water to create waterfowl habitat and protect communities like historic Old New Castle from flooding wouldn't stand up t...
TommyWonk - Jul 22
News from the corporate earnings front illustrates why the financial reform bill (which President Obama will sign today) is needed. The bill includes a fairly strong version of the Volcker rule, named for former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, which limits the of banks to trade on their own accounts. In other words, a firm can either be a bank or a hedge fund, but not both. The New Yo...
TommyWonk - Jul 21
DNREC announced earlier this year that it was negotiating with NRG to shut down Unit 3 of the Indian River Power Plant by the end of 2013. NRG had already agreed to shut down Units 1 and 2 and install new controls on Unit 4. Yesterday, Governor Jack Markell and Secretary Collin O'Mara announced that a consent agreement has been reached to close the three coal burning units and invest in clean ene...
TommyWonk - Jul 16
The Delmarva Community Wellnet Foundation is holding a fundraising event for the EDEN (Energize Delaware Now) project this Friday night at the Milton Theater. Collin O'Mara is the keynote speaker. EDEN, which promotes green entrepreneurship, environmental education and sustainable markets, is led by some veteran activists, including Kim Furtado, whom I got to know through Citizens for C...
TommyWonk - Jul 15
