Odds and ends number 118
Since I'm using the concept from monoblogue, I'm keeping the numbering system, too. Here are thinner slices of bloggy goodness.
Back after about a month with some new nuggets, including a post I decided was too small originally.
A new lack of interest?
On May 14, it was supposed to be another day in the restoration of common sense to Delaware public schools, which have become overly expensive and under-performing. Instead, in many districts, it will either be more of the same or a day where no election is held because only one person signed up to run, as will be the case in my home district here in Laurel. For the first time since 2019, there will be no election here.
That trend is expressed mainly in the more conservative areas of the state, though: all five of New Castle County’s districts have a contested election for the first time since 1999, according to data provided by the State Board of Elections. But Kent County, which saw a contest in all five of its districts as recently as 2022, will only have one, and Sussex County is down to just three in its six districts for the first time since the pandemic-delayed election of 2020. Prior to that, you have to go back to 2018 for a year where just one district (Woodbridge) had a contested school board election.
I think people have just thrown up their hands because the deck is stacked against them: most Delaware school districts have a glacial rate of change because only one of their five members is elected in any given year. While a law that took effect in 2022 trimmed the term from five years to four - meaning the 2026 election will be to re-elect those who won in both 2021 and 2022 - the law didn’t go far enough in my opinion.
To me, Ohio had a good system: on a five member school board, three are elected in one odd year and two are elected in the next odd year. So an election can turn over the board yet provide for some continuity. One mistake my old county (Wicomico County, Maryland) made when they finally got an elected school board after years of trying was having all their school board members elected at the same time, meaning you’re stuck with a bad board for four years.
A sane Delaware General Assembly will make that Ohio-style reform for next year and put it into effect for 2027, with members elected in 2025 and 2026 having a shorter term.
Good Substack links to read
I bet I read 15-20 Substacks a day, some with multiple articles per diem. There’s a lot of good writing there, but sometimes I come across things worth re-reading, even a couple weeks later. So I saved a couple to share here.
There are times I feel like a Luddite, but
wrote a
nice piece about being grounded. Even those who are in the worst shape can teach us lessons.
Maybe we are stronger at some subconscious level than we give ourselves credit for. It takes a lot to truly knock us down. Even these people, who have deteriorated into hollow shells of their former selves, still possess some kind of inner resolve which keeps them on their feet.
It seems likely that this resolve is innate. If so, it could be harnessed by all of us, not just those in the grips of such addictions. It may also be true that these same behaviors are already detectable in our own lives, only less visibly so.
It’s a very hopeful piece, despite its opening talking about the drug-riddled Kensington area of Philadelphia.
Not all that far away from that benighted area is a place described by
as an “engineering masterpiece.” The Horseshoe Curve was built in the mid-19th century as a way for trains to reduce the steepness of their climb up (or descent down) the Alleghany Mountains in central Pennsylvania. As he says, “You will discover triumph, intrigue, tragedy, and the sight and sound of a modern freight train passing by on the curve.”
I was never into trains that much to build a model railroad or anything like that, but much of my life has been close by railroad tracks. We have a siding by my work that can have 4 trains a day, and I used to live 100 feet from the main line between New York and Chicago.
But this article was fascinating to me, and well put together enough I thought it worth sharing here. I also liked another recent one of his about the Gandy Dancers, making Fred a must-read railroad historian.
Breaking the bank
Every state (except one, I believe) has to have a balanced budget, and this is the time of year we start to see the plans for the next year and how they’ll be paid for. Delaware is no different, but I tell you what…they are trying to break the bank.
Having just left the legislature because she was honest enough to concede she was moving out of her district, former Rep. Ruth Briggs King penned a piece for A Better Delaware outlining some of the problems, and asking the obvious:
Did you ever wonder why Delaware’s economy is not growing? Increasing energy costs, expensive mandates, and labor issues impact not only state spending, but business revenue and personal income. Policies in these areas adversely affect Delaware’s primary sources of income – personal income tax, corporate tax, and lottery earnings.
During a previous budget shortfall, the legislature enacted the highest realty transfer tax in the nation. The promise that it, and other taxes that were increased at that time, would be reduced when our economy improved, was forgotten, and several attempts to reduce those taxes recently have failed. At the same time, however, we had billions of surplus funds and enacted millions of dollars of new spending.
That transfer tax increase cost us a couple thousand dollars, and a previous change made it so we would be well past 65 before we were eligible for a homestead discount, extending the waiting period from three years to ten. All these “temporary” increases and taxes have a bad habit of sticking around because the state gets used to spending the money, and the last Carney budget is a case in point.
There used to be a formula for determining the “proper” budget increase called TABOR, which was basically the population increase plus inflation. Anymore, we blow by TABOR on the regular because health care spending has surged.
While our salaries haven’t increased all that much, the price of government is bankrupting the rest of us. Our state is planning to spend six billion dollars on a million people, when just a few years ago about the same number of people had $4 billion spent on them when John Carney took office. That’s a problem which we need to address.
A huge opportunity in energy
David Stevenson is a familiar name to odds and ends readers, as he works for the Caesar Rodney Institute, one of the few common-sense organizations in Delaware. Recently, though, his “chance meeting” with Delaware’s Senator Tom Carper may have led to an energy breakthrough:
As a leading advocate for nuclear energy and the head of the US Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works (EPW), Senator Carper's interest was piqued when I shared the idea of reusing nuclear waste and connected me with his staff at the EPW Committee. As a result, I helped draft the amendment to Senator Carper’s Atomic Energy Advancement Act.
But it gets even better:
Currently, nuclear fuel rods go into a reactor for only 18 to 24 months and retain 96% of their potential energy when pulled out and before they are put into onsite storage indefinitely.
Efforts to build permanent storage facilities have failed, and the rods need to be securely stored for up to half a million years… However, the emergence of new technology presents a game-changing opportunity: placing "reprocessed fuel rods" into higher temperature reactors, with refueling required only once every 30 years.
This approach of continued recycling would reduce waste by 95% and remove dangerous components, reducing the storage duration to approximately 100 years, compared to the daunting half-million-year prospect.
Astoundingly, our current pile of waste rods contains enough energy to power the entire US electric grid for about 200 years! (Emphasis in original.)
Just like technology has eliminated “peak oil,” here is a potential use for technology to extend the lifespan of our existing nuclear facilities (remember, they’re stored onsite, making renovation a logical choice.) While nuclear facilities are occasionally shut down for planned maintenance, they’re certainly a more viable method of reliable electrical production than solar or wind power, which is by nature capricious.
Recycling fuel rods for a carbon-free system? What’s not to like for greenies - unless they want to reduce our lifestyle and lifespan?
EVs as fire enhancement
Driving around, we’re beginning to slowly see more Teslas as well as EVs from other domestic manufacturers. In a few years we may see China enter our domestic EV market by building their cars in Mexico, creating a “bloodbath” for the Big Three.
Yet there’s an issue with EVs that hasn’t gone off the back burner, and with a fire-fighting force locally that’s mostly volunteer, at some point there’s going to be an issue with these unique vehicles.
Former Georgetown mayor and longtime firefighter Bob Ricker explains:
The electric vehicle industry presents the fire service with challenges that we are not 100% prepared to deal with properly, electric vehicle fires and electric vehicle accidents.
EV fires, most often originating in the batteries, are extremely dangerous, a risk to the environment and, many times, uncontrollable until they burn themselves out. They burn in a jet-engine like fashion and can easily explode, sometimes that happens in a garage and affects the entire dwelling.
(…)
(M)isuse or failure to properly use EVs have consequences far more serious than we have seen with gas powered vehicles, and require different equipment, tactics, and safe response protocols, for which we have not yet been fully trained.
Sooner or later an EV is going to get into an accident and some unlucky volunteer is going to be fried by 600 volts of juice he or she unknowingly touched in trying to extricate a victim or putting out a fire. Standardizing these components between automakers and providing additional training will help, Ricker adds, but perhaps the best solution is slowing down the adoption of rules forcing those seeking new cars to buy EVs.
It almost makes me wonder if the EV market would have ever expanded beyond the curiosity of having a city-dweller’s third car for showing off on their run to Whole Foods had it not been for these government mandates addressing a problem (that may not really be a problem) that we didn’t create anyway. Both my wife and I bought new cars this past year (my old one was seventeen years old and hers six) but until sanity returns, they’ll be the last new cars we buy.
I’m choosing not to be in a market that was a folly to start with.
Programming note
As I mentioned Wednesday, I’m going on a short hiatus with new stuff - this is the second of two articles for which I needed a few paragraphs to wrap up, but now my “drafts” folder is empty. (Odds and ends are easy because I can use a previous post as a template - secrets of the Substack revealed!) So I’ll be back with new stuff in a week or two once I finish my work backlog - if I find a moment I may update a “50 year plan” post or two so I’m not totally dark.
Until my next edition of odds and ends, remember you can Buy Me a Coffee since I have a page there.
Thanks for the mentions. I am honored!
Well done!