Karl Stomberg
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karlstomberg.bsky.social
Karl Stomberg
@karlstomberg.bsky.social
330 followers 170 following 340 posts
Delaware Political Director for Working Families Party. Working to make the first state less of a corporate nightmare.
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karlstomberg.bsky.social
James you have to stop. Your Speech Too Good. Your Heart Too Pure. Your Civil Service Reform Too Incorruptible. They’ll Kill You.
Michael Shannon as James Garfield in Death By Lightning
November 11, 2025 at 1:06 AM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
Didn't want to speak too soon, but as soon as the people starting forecasting doom for Democrats among Latinos, it made me go back to the 2004 to compare.

None of these things are permanent when conditions change, and we can not abandon the necessity of organizing a multiracial working class base.
A table, withe the important row being: Hispanic, Kerry 53% Bush 44% Another table, with the important row being: Latino: Harris 51%, Trump 46%
November 5, 2025 at 2:53 PM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
Screenshot from 30 Rock with Alex Baldwin holding a sign labelled "Programming Priorities Breakdown" with a pie chart. The largest red slice is labeled "The Biggest Loser", a smaller yellow slice is labelled "Make it 1997 again through science or magic", and a very small green slice labelled "Everything Else"
October 4, 2025 at 4:34 PM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
The funniest thing about Trump’s new Tylenol obsession is one of our local MAGA influencers who’s been talking about property taxes and Charlie Kirk now has to try to get really offended at TikToks of pregnant women taking a very standard OTC pain medication
I have tried to avoid posting about this but I can't believe I'm watching this on TikTok right now. Pregnant creators taking 2-3 Tylenol on camera, not for a fever, not for medical need, but to make a POINT about politics after that autism hearing. Through two pregnancies WITH hyperemesis gravidarum, the flu both times, plus sinus infections, l was told explicitly: avoid OTC meds unless absolutely necessary and only after talking to your OB/GYN. The only thing I was cleared to take routinely was prenatal vitamins. And I stuck to it. I'm not saying "Tylenol causes autism." The discussion is about potential correlation and severity being studied, not blanket causation. And im smart enough to know im not smart enough to know. But WHY gamble with your baby's health to score internet points? This is what happens when everything becomes Left vs Right. We've lost the plot. You're carrying life the MOST precious gift from God and you're swallowing pills out of spite? Not because your doctor advised it, not because youre sick, but because you're mad at what an administration just said? Your unborn baby is not a political prop. Viral views AND LIKES are not worth medical risks! No matter WHAT that risk is. Talk to your OB/GYN before you take anything. Use medicine for MEDICAL reasons, not to prove a hashtag. Protect your baby over your politics, good lord... I say this with love and some righteous fire: get a grip. Re enter reality. Re evaluate your thought process. Choose wisdom over clout, and stewardship over spite. DO better. Your child deserves that.
September 24, 2025 at 12:23 PM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
Reading this opinion piece in the Delmarva News from 1963, essentially arguing against the state-level version of the Civil Rights Act by complaining that the white activists and Black leaders were being mean and unstrategic. Amazing how this could've been written by a concern-trolling Dem today.
Scratches In an editorial last week this newspaper tried to analyze the proposed accommodations bill now in committee in the General Assembly. It was an effort to try and clarify the statute for both whites and blacks, because the News believes that such a great number of American Negroes cannot be denied their civil and legal rights, and this nation still remain free and democratic. During the past week we have been reading about the picketing by Negroes of the business firm of House Speaker Sherman Tribbitts in Odessa. The picketing came about on charges by a white minister that Mr. Tribbitts sent the accommodations bill to the Revised Statutes Committee knowing full well that its chairman was opposed to the bill. Such ill-advised action by the Negroes will do little to enhance their justified cause of equal rights, civilly and legally. A closer determination of the facts should be ascertained before overt acts are committed. Had the Negro leaders and the white minister checked into Speaker Tribbitts' record, they would have noticed he has sent ALL bills to the proper committee irrespective if the chairman was opposed or favorable. Negroes say he could get it out of the committee. We doubt very much if Speaker Tribbitts could do it alone. He would need the aid of 18 members of the House to force the bill out of committee. The Speaker also asked the House if any member objected to it being sent to this committee before assigning it. The picketing is discriminatory ... the very thing the colored are fighting against.They are discriminating against Mr. Tribbitts when they really should be picketing the home and business of the chairman of the Revised Statutes Committee. The desire for equal rights seems to be coloring many of the Negroes actions and statements to the point here it may do their cause more harm than good. The importation of rabble rousers from out-of-state, such as the Little Rock Arkansas agitator, this week. She cannot help but be resented by many whites and blacks. Some of the statements issued for public consumption by persons who call themselves Negro leaders would indicated that "preferential" treatment is being demanded. Not just equal rights anymore, but the world with a little white fence around it, seems to be the hue and cry of these leaders now in the public eye. While we can understand how the Negro might feel he is entitled to preferential treatment after the 100 years and more of just the opposite kind, we cannot help but point out that two wrongs have never made a right. Preferential treatment of any kind to any group or class is against the basic concepts of American democracy ... the very same basic concepts that the Negroes are justifiably trying to obtain for themselves. As one who has seen race riots, yours truly urges less militancy and more conciliation on both sides. Just as the Negro today is fighting against discrimination because of color, just so will the whites fight against coercion. Be seeing ya! FRG
September 8, 2025 at 12:20 AM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
The fun thing about doing Delaware historical research is finding labor stuff that I probably won't use but would've never heard of if I wasn't combing through old sources.

In 1953, the CIO led a pretty large, violent strike in Selbyville, DE. Hardly known as a center for union activity.
September 3, 2025 at 1:35 AM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
Edited Anthony Bourdain quote: Once you've been to Milford, you'll never stop wanting to beat Bryant Bowles to death with your bare hands.
August 12, 2025 at 5:27 PM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
"As for businesses being 'harassed' by such things as taxes and environmental control regulations, I am sure you will agree with me that both are essential in the best interests of all Delawareans." - Governor Pete du Pont, Delaware's Reagan
Dear Mrs Wilson: Thank you very much for your January 18. 1978 letter commending my efforts to attract new businesses to Delaware. As for businesses being "harassed" by such things as taxes and environmental control regulations, I am sure you will agree with me that both are essential in the best interests of all Delawareans. The problem that you have noted is not inherent in either the imposition of taxes or the enactment of environmental controls. The problem you believe has resulted requires an assessment of the way taxes are proposed and the way state laws are administered. We are doing our best to improve the administration of both and make Delaware a state attractive for business. I appreciate your writing to me and bringing the matters to my attention. Sincerely, Governor
August 11, 2025 at 11:42 PM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
August 6, 2025 at 8:58 PM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
July 24, 2025 at 4:53 PM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
Written in a very different context, but makes me think about this section from Nixon Agonistes. In elite intellectual circles, the mere suggestion that these "heterodox" ideas are part of any more systemic attack with real world harms and consequences is seen as gauche and anti-intellectual.
But we must give him credit to get at his real, his deeper error: he calls unacceptable thoughts "ideological" by a natural (if illogical) inversion of his belief that all systems of thought are "bad." Already planted in his definition of an ideology was the assumption that systematic thought is not fruitful (I will not say "false," since here we are getting to the core of liberalism, where one must stay open to questions of truth or falsehood). The only good idea is the "particular insight." Make one idea capable of coupling with another, and it is already turning into a bad idea. Why? Because such combinations are like cartels, to stifle competition, in the marketplace of ideas. As long as one sticks to particular insights, one is already "open": no large segments are even given partial "monopoly." It is the great myth of liberalism that this openness toward ideas exists in the academy; and it is the vulnerable nature of this myth that gives Marcuse's young disciples an easy target. All the institutionalized insincerities of the academy grow out of this myth — the conflict between egalitarian justification and privileged practice, between state support and disestablishmentarianism, between equal rating (to enlighten every citizen) and invidious rating (exclusion from entry, comparative grading, expulsion on academic grounds), between disinterestedness and professional competition, between dissent and conformity. The historical context — hardly the cause — of the students' attack on the myth is the Vietnamese war. It did not matter to them that the university and the national government were interlocking institutions when it was simply a matter of research grants, of student fellowships, of Washington consulting the economics department. But on a moral issue like the war, the kids asked some difficult questions. How can the morality of the war be treated as an open question while long-term projects favoring its prosecution are conducted by the university, when the university cooperates with the draft in rating students according to their academic achievement, when military training is conducted on the campus for academic credit? A department that is three weeks into an eight-week research project does not assembly each morning to reconsider, objectively and ab ovo, whether the project is a proper activity for the university to undertake. If it did this, its failure to produce results would cut off future contracts. But if it does not do this, or is not prepared to do it when students raise questions, what happens to the pretense that the university is open, at any minute, to all questions? If there are ties with the government, and the academy refuses to ask these questions, over and over, then has it not lost moral responsibility, become a mere technician in servicing the government.
July 24, 2025 at 2:58 PM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
My only reaction to the Ezra Klein interview
Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate By George Lakoff
June 18, 2025 at 4:19 PM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
Something to keep in mind jacobin.com/2021/03/mark...
Micah Uetricht What’s funny about what happened after that, when you and other former SDSers founded Weather, was that at one point in Cuba, the Vietnamese comrades told you, basically, what would be best for them would be for you to go back to the United States and build a broad antiwar movement. You didn’t listen to them. Mark Rudd We didn’t want to build a broad antiwar movement. We wanted to get to the root of the problem. Radicals always go to the root, and the root is imperialism and capitalism. We wanted to jump many, many steps. Instead of building the base, we just wanted to go forward. I picked up a slogan in Cuba from José Martí, the poet who was the soul of the Cuban Revolution: “Now is the time of the furnaces, and only light should be seen.” Micah Uetricht What was wrong with the approach that you all were taking? Mark Rudd It didn’t work! We thought we’d start a revolution and everybody would join us. It was a fantasy; it was a delusion.
June 2, 2025 at 1:44 PM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
The Delaware City Refinery has been spewing toxic chemicals for the last week and the speaker of the house would like you to know that she talked to the refinery and it's all fine www.delawareonline.com/story/news/l...
Facebook screenshot from Rep. Melissa Minor-Brown This weekend, many people in our community saw reports about a potential toxic release at the refinery - some even got alerts on their phones. That kind of news is definitely alarming and I completely understand why residents are concerned. I reached out directly to the refinery to get more clarity on the situation and in the interest of transparency, I will share their statement below. As a nurse, I take the health of our community seriously, so I specifically asked about any health or environmental impacts and was reassured that this incident does not pose an immediate risk to public health or the environment due to the release being hundreds of feet above our surface level. I’ll continue to monitor the situation and provide any updates as they become available. Statement from the Delaware City Refinery: "On May 25, 2025, an operational issue occurred at the Delaware City Refinery that necessitated the shutdown of an emissions control device, resulting in an exceedance of sulfur dioxide limits. All mandatory reports were submitted to local, state, and federal agencies. The refinery is currently working to repair this equipment on an expedited basis." Comment from Amy Roe: Sulfur dioxide is very much a health risk. https://www.epa.gov/so2-pollution/sulfur-dioxide-basics Reply from Rep. Melissa Minor Brown: Amy Roe The refinery shared with me that because the release was so far above ground level, it doesn’t pose an immediate threat to us. But that’s not to downplay the fact that these dangerous chemicals can pose significant health risks, and that’s why we need to continue to monitor this closely. I’ll continue to keep everyone updated through my social media pages and e-newsletter as I receive more information.
May 31, 2025 at 6:01 PM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
The more things change
It started in April 1978 with Alexander Giacco, president of Hercules Inc., then the state's second-largest employer. In a luncheon speech to the Wilmington Rotary Club, Giacco asserted that Delaware's government was just too fat, and that Hercules might consider taking its headquarters to some other state. "Delaware's got too much government. The income tax is just the end result. Why are taxes so high? Because we have such a high amount of government services," Giacco told a friendly and supportive audience. Two days after Giacco fired the first salvo, the chairman of the DuPont Co., Irving Shapiro, delivered another broadside. While the governor was in California, trying to recruit new businesses for the state, a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal quoted Shapiro as saying he couldn't encourage leaders of other businesses to move to Delaware because the state's income-tax rate was so high. The statements from Giacco and Shapiro focused public attention on how "dysfunctional" Delaware had become in the previous decade. Not only were the governor and the General Assembly unable to work together, but the state's business leaders had little confidence in the government. And the government, most notably the elected members of the General Assembly, had little respect for the leaders within the business community.
May 22, 2025 at 2:45 PM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
Who wants to sing this with me?
May 18, 2025 at 8:57 PM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
True Delaware royalty
Du Pont married his cousin
May 9, 2025 at 2:02 AM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
So adorable 🤗
May 9, 2025 at 12:12 AM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
April 27, 2025 at 12:44 AM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
Did my best to find the top-20 private employers in 2000 (on the left) and 2025 (on the right), using an old News Journal article and a more recent database from Delaware Business Times. I excluded public employers and universities/colleges, but I did keep in health systems.
Table with Business Name, Business Type, and Employees at the top: DuPont Co, Science/Technology, 13250 MBNA Corp, Banking, 10133 Bank One Corp, Banking, 3300 General Motors Corp, Manufacturing, 2600 Household International Inc, Banking, 2500 American International Group, Banking, 2500 Chase Manhattan Inc, Banking, 2200 Manhattan Trust Corp, Banking, 2090 Conectiv, Utilities, 2000 Sears Roebuck & Co, Logistics/Retail, 1900 PNC Financial Services Group, Banking, 1815 Computer Sciences Corp, Science/Technology, 1800 Albertons/ACME, Logistics/Retail, 1726 JP Morgan & Co, Banking, 1297 Bell Atlantic Corp, Science/Technology, 1250 Hercules Inc, Science/Technology, 1250 First Union Corp, Banking, 1200 Citigroup, Banking, 1100 May Department Stores, Logistics/Retial, 920 Phillip Morris Cos Inc, Tobacco, 850 Table with Business Name, Business Type, and Employees at the top: ChristianaCare, Health Care, 13982 JPMorganCase, Banking, 11300 Amazon, Logistics/Retail, 7000 Bank of America, Banking, 6000 Nemours Children's Health, Health Care, 5249 Bayhealth, Health Care, 4803 Mountaire, Agriculture, 4800 WalMart, Logistics/Retail, 4221 WL Gore & Associates, Science/Technology, 3500 Perdue Farms, Agriculture, 2893 Beebe Health Care, Health Care, 2800 DuPont de Nemours, Science/Technology, 2600 WSFS Financial Corp, Banking, 2371 Capital One, Banking, 1839 Sallie Mae, Banking, 1690 Incyte, Science/Technology, 1600 AstraZeneca, Science/Technology, 1600 TidalHealth Nanticoke, Health Care, 1600 CSC, Legal, 1500 Allen Harim, Agriculture, 1129
April 24, 2025 at 2:41 PM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
Damn, how about that. It's almost like SB 21 was passed to benefit the interests of a small subset of people and wasn't actually going to benefit the vast majorities of companies and certainly not of shareholders www.delawareonline.com/story/money/...
A number of the publicly available proxy documents that spell out reasons for leaving Delaware cite increasing franchise tax obligations in the state. According to the Delaware Division of Revenue, all corporations incorporated in the state have a maximum tax of $200,000 and “large corporate filers” have a tax capped at $250,000. So, even trillion-dollar-companies like Meta pay a maximum of $250,000 in franchise taxes to Delaware - a price that more companies are citing as too high to stay in Delaware. In terms of the “judicial uncertainty” referenced by many of the corporations threatening to re-incorporate, Cunningham believes the “drama may be overdone.” “It’s true that businesspeople value certainty when making decisions,” Cunningham said. “I have not detected the pattern that is being described.”
April 24, 2025 at 11:58 AM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
They would really just occasionally throw something real baffling in there
April 11, 2025 at 1:32 AM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
Delaware schools this year, for some reason
The showdown scene from "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" with three men spaced equally apart with hands on their guns
April 10, 2025 at 4:53 PM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
Died 2024, Born 2025 Welcome back Malaise Presidency With pictures of Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump
April 7, 2025 at 5:52 PM
karlstomberg.bsky.social
I’d argue that the 2020 protests influenced a lot of voter behavior. Definitely increased the likelihood to vote for Black candidates in primaries in my experience, and there were a couple studies that showed that apart from a couple examples, they boosted 2020 Democratic persuasion
Do mass mobilizations drive social change? This paper explores this question by studying how the Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd’s death influenced the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Using rainfall as an instrument for protest participation and complementary difference-in-differences analyses, we show that protest activity significantly increased Democratic vote share in affected coun- ties. Our research makes three key contributions. First, we show causal evidence for the effect of one of the largest protest movements ever recorded on electoral out- comes. Second, we provide evidence of novel temporal dynamics: while protests ini- tially triggered a conservative backlash, they ultimately generated progressive shifts in voting behavior. Third, we identify mechanisms driving these effects, showing that rather than merely mobilizing existing Democratic voters, protests substantively shifted political preferences and beliefs about racial inequality. Can protest influence elections? We examine whether Black Lives Matters (BLM) protest during the summer of 2020 shaped the November presidential election. We hypothesize that BLM demonstrations are associated with increased voting for the Democratic candidate. We examine a secondary hypothesis that more contentious events (with arrests, injury, or violence) are likely to produce a negative impact. We use data collected from news media, official election returns, and survey data combined with demographic and political control measures to test our hypotheses. We find strong evidence that BLM protests were associated an increased likelihood of voting for the Democratic candidate, with this effect concentrated among the less contentious protest events. Our findings bolster and extend the emerging theoretical claims and evidence that protest plays a substantial role in shaping electoral behavior.
April 6, 2025 at 2:12 PM