The January 4, 2017 Thread

Starting today, I will be mixing in more Delaware news and opinions into the Open Thread. Going local was one of the most repeated suggestions by our readers over the last week after my Moving Forward post. Cassandra and I will be launching a new Vote Accountability project that will be similar to our prior Vote Tracking efforts, but I will explain that in later post. El Somnambulo’s posts regarding the General Assembly will be replaced by that project, in that we will be posting the Daily Agenda and Hearing Schedule as part of that project, but that will be detailed later this week.

I will also be posting more Agenda items for Governor Markell and Carney, Senator Carper and Senator Coons, and Congresswoman Blunt Rochester, just to keep you informed as to their daily activities. We want DL to be the clearing house of all federal, state and local activity. Yes, even Sussex County.

Column: By every conceivable measure, Delaware’s criminal justice system is a failure. https://t.co/r8yZdJnUN9 #netDE

— delawareonline (@delawareonline) January 3, 2017

James Hohmann explains the secret and surprise decision by House Republicans to strip the Office of Congressional Ethics of its independence is such a big deal, even if they reversed it yesterday.

“If the story breaks through, and it’s so blatantly outrageous that it could, Republicans are in danger for owning that narrative too (which will not be helpful at the ballot box). In 2006, Iraq was a drag on the GOP majority – but it was Jack Abramoff and Mark Foley who cost Republicans controls of Congress as much as anything else. The smartest operatives and leadership aides, especially the ones who lived through the bitter defeat in those midterm elections, recognize this.”

This was an early victory for progressives and liberals that they were able to mobilize overnight and get the phones in the offices of every single GOP Congressman and woman. That’s important because we will have to do that many more times in the coming years.

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) told Bloomberg: “We have got just a tremendous number of calls to our office here and district offices concerned about this.”

Whoa.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) is proposing to offer free tuition at New York public colleges to eligible residents, the AP reports. “Cuomo’s plan would provide free tuition to a State University of New York or City University of New York college, including two-year community colleges, for residents whose families earn less than $125,000.”

So Cuomo makes an earlier bid in the 2020 stakes. Don’t be fooled. He has been horrible for Democrats and progressives in New York State. Read all about that here.

Gov Carney taps Shawn Garvin to lead DNREC – https://t.co/P2qWcMi90r #netDE.#delriverwatershed

— Restore the Delaware (@firstgreatwater) January 3, 2017

President-elect Donald Trump rang in the new year together with Joseph “Joey No Socks” Cinque — a convicted felon with ties to notorious Gambino crime family boss John Gotti, the New York Daily News reports. “Cinque can be seen in a video obtained by the Palm Beach Daily News, cheering loudly as a tuxedo-clad Trump runs through a number of campaign promises before the hundreds of guests attending the New Year’s Eve bash the President-elect threw at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Saturday.”

Delaware finishes 31st in state health rankings. https://t.co/IKOlDjSJDF #netDE #HealthDE pic.twitter.com/1Z3i2moNks

— DHIN (@DHIN_HIE) January 3, 2017

The Cape Gazette reports that three members of the now all-Republican Sussex County Council was sworn in yesterday at a council meeting. Councilmen Mike Vincent (1st District) and Sam Wilson (2nd District) were reelected in the 2016, and they were joined by newly elected Councilman I.G. Burton (3rd District), who replaces the retiring Joan Deaver, perhaps the last Democrat to ever serve on the Council. Councilmen George Cole (4th District) and Rob Arlett (5th District) are next up for election in 2018. Vincent was elected President of the Council and Cole was elected Vice President at the same meeting. Fellow Republican Norman “Jay” Jones was also sworn in as the county’s new clerk of the peace replacing the retiring John Brady. Those are two huge losses for Sussex County: Deaver and Brady.

Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester has the heart of a servant. She will be a positive force for Delaware in Congress https://t.co/M84fCGRnfr

— Senator Tom Carper (@SenatorCarper) January 3, 2017

I hate to be that guy, but… poor choice of words by Senator Carper?

Charlie Cook: “Barack Obama’s two White House vic­tor­ies ob­scured dev­ast­at­ing losses in 2010 and 2014 on the state level in both le­gis­lat­ive and gubernat­ori­al races. An aging con­gres­sion­al lead­er­ship and little turnover due to high reelec­tion rates caused stag­na­tion in the House, prompt­ing many up-and-com­ing Demo­crats to leave be­cause they saw no near-term pro­spects for ad­vance­ment.”

“Those state-le­gis­lat­ive losses amoun­ted to des­troy­ing the seed corn for the fu­ture in the lower cham­ber, and gubernat­ori­al losses de­pleted the ranks of fu­ture Sen­ate and pres­id­en­tial as­pir­ants.”

“Scour­ing the coun­try like base­ball scouts look­ing for new and un­re­cog­nized tal­ent is something that the Demo­crat­ic Party hasn’t done in years. Rather than just re­cruit­ing for spe­cif­ic races, the party needs to find and groom pro­spects for fu­ture races. Many of the com­pre­hens­ive train­ing pro­grams that the Demo­crat­ic Na­tion­al Com­mit­tee sponsored in the 1960s and 1970s are a shad­ow of what they used to be, if they ex­ist at all.”

Pleased Bishops mediated agrmnt to hold 2017 elections in #drcongo. Encouraged Pres Kabila plans to step down. All should stick to agrmnt

— Senator Chris Coons (@ChrisCoons) January 3, 2017

Chris Coons’ focus will be on foreign policy over the next four years.

“The Democratic National Committee is building a ‘war room’ to battle President-elect Donald Trump, pressure the new Republican administration on a variety of policy matters and train a spotlight on Russia’s alleged cyberattacks to influence the 2016 election,” the Washington Post reports.

Don't forget! Tomorrow. 5pm. @ChelseaTavern. Ring in the New Year with us! RSVP here -> https://t.co/B6Kv3S4dL6#opendata #civictech #netDE

— Open Data Delaware (@opendatade) January 3, 2017

The meet up is today. The tweet was from yesterday.

Vox: “When 2009 began, the Republican Party looked like a smoking pile of rubble. The GOP had lost the presidency, and much of their outgoing president’s legacy seemed set to be reversed. They had fallen into the minority in both houses of Congress. And in the states, they held less than half of governorships and only about a quarter of state legislatures.”

“The party has since, of course, made a remarkable comeback. But that comeback didn’t unfold entirely in 2016. The seeds for it were sown all the way back in 2010 with the first midterm elections of Barack Obama’s presidency.”

Court upholds law/regulations 2 prohibit firearms from DE parks/forests except for designated hunting seasons #netde https://t.co/MbZd1zjTlr

— Paul Baumbach (@PaulBaumbach) January 3, 2017

Julia Edwards Ainsley reports on a disturbing request from the Trump transition team to the Department of Homeland Security.

The transition team also asked for copies of every executive order and directive sent to immigration agents since Obama took office in 2009, according to the memo summarizing the meeting.

Trump has said he intends to undo Obama’s executive actions on immigration, including a 2012 order to allow children brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents to remain in the country on temporary authorizations that allow them to attend college and work.

The program, known as DACA, collected information including participants’ addresses that could theoretically be used to locate and deport them if the policy is reversed. Another request of the transition team was for information about whether any migrant records have been changed for any reason, including for civil rights or civil liberties concerns, according to the internal memo seen by Reuters.

A Department of Homeland Security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agency interpreted the request to mean the transition team wanted to make sure that federal workers were not tampering with information to protect DACA recipients and other migrants from deportation.

First day hike at the Point of Cape Henlopen #delaware @DEStateParks #netde #letsmove pic.twitter.com/V6o69xroWx

— Lewes Hist. Society (@HistoricLewes) January 2, 2017

J.B. Silvers writes: “I’m a former health insurance CEO and this is what Obamacare repeal will do.”

Some in Congress seem to think that passing the “repeal” part immediately but delaying its implementation for two or three years will somehow leave everything as it is now. But this naive notion misses the fact that the riskiness of the Obamacare individual insurance exchange markets will have been ramped up to such a level that continuing makes no sense.

Even if a company reaches break-even in the “delay” years, it will lose when the repeal is effective. If the premium subsidies now available to lower-income enrollees go away immediately and the mandate to sign up for an insurance plan disappears, then the number of people purchasing individual policies on the exchanges will drop like a rock. In fact, it is clear that even debating this scenario is likely to be self-fulfilling, since insurers must decide on their participation for 2018 by the late spring of 2017. Look for many to leave then…

It is easy to predict that this induced uncertainty from Congress will effectively kill the exchanges even if it delays the implementation of repeal. As a result, all of the individuals who have benefited from coverage and subsidies will lose out. They will either not be able to gain insurance because of a pre-existing condition, or they won’t be able to afford the higher premiums.