Delaware Liberal

Delaware General Assembly Pre-Game Show: Tuesday, March 16, 2010

They’re ba-a-a-a-ck. For three weeks…before they break for Easter. The ‘honorables’ (shout out to Ralph Moyed) return to Dover with expansion of casino gambling apparently at the top of the ‘to-do, or not to-do’ list.

I support expansion beyond the current race-track sites, not b/c I was a strong advocate for casino gambling in the first place, but because the ‘fig leaf’ of using casino gambling to save the horse racing industry always was, and remains a joke. Either you have casino gambling or you don’t. We do, so it only makes sense to open it up to more than a highly-dubious and unworthy monopoly. I ‘get’ the arguments against casino gambling, and I am not unsympathetic, but those arguments were already rejected when the racetracks got gambling. The only debate now is whether casino gambling should be arbitrarily restricted to the racetracks. I see no reason why that should continue to be the case.

But I digress. And that’s because there’s little of interest on today’s agenda.

Once again, the Senate appears to have been completely taken by surprise by the reconvening of session, and its agenda is no agenda.

By contrast, the House has some fairly interesting bills on its agenda. Two of which would fall under the purview of the Insurance Commissioner’s office, aka the purview of the hopelessly inept, if not corrupt, Karen Weldin Stewart:

HB 314 (Rep B. Short) would enable certain types of captive insurance companies to be incorporated in Delaware. While the intent of increasing economic development through fully implementing Delaware’s captive insurance laws is admirable, something about linking ‘Karen Weldin Stewart’ with ‘captive insurance companies’ sets my Spidey Sense to tingling. I hope that this legislation is literally ‘fool-proof’, because we’re dealing with a fool as IC and some unsavory characters actually running the show.

HB 137 (Rep. D. Short) requires the IC to arrange for random audits for small business insurance carriers. Excellent legislation, but be aware that some agencies have histories of ‘ignoring’ mandates like this. It will be up to the General Assembly to make sure that the IC, especially THIS IC, carries out this mandate.

Also on the agenda is Sen. DeLuca’s ill-advised constitutional amendment, SB 60, which would enable the General Assembly to impinge upon the judiciary in determining what offenses bail should not be permitted for. Unfazed by their  disastrous excursions into minimum mandatory sentencing, the Socratic Solons, led by Tom Sharp’s spiritual successor DeLuca, want to prove they’re ‘tough on crime’ by using ‘bail conditions’ for campaign fodder. The House should put this piece of crapola out of its misery with dispatch.

Which puts an end to this dispatch with dispatch. Tune in tomorrow for my wrap-up and preview.

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