Welcome to a Very Special Primal Scream Edition of the Pre-Game Show. Time to cue my best Howard Beale/Howard Dean:
1. General Assembly Refusing to Stop Cops from Just Stealing Stuff.
This is on Patti Blevins and the Senate leadership. I don’t give a bleep what you or they think about Colin Bonini. We all know he’s unfit to be Governor (although, come to think of it, how much worse could he be than John Carney?). HowEVER, that’s a pathetic excuse to keep SB 222 buried in the Public Safety Committee. Blevins has pulled a ‘Schwartzkopf’ here by putting the bill in an inhospitable committee. Besides, the bill’s other two prime sponsors are D’s (Townsend and Baumbach). I mean, check out the sponsors on the bill. As bipartisan as it gets. There is only one reason why this bill has been buried: The cops who have been doing the stealing don’t want it. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Here is the bill’s synopsis:
Civil forfeiture laws represent one of the most serious assaults on private property rights in the nation today. Under civil forfeiture, police and prosecutors can seize your car or other property, sell it and use the proceeds to fund agency budgets—often without so much as charging you with a crime. This Act protects individual liberty and property rights by standardizing forfeitures across all crimes, simplifying procedures, and addressing counterproductive incentives in the law that distort policing priorities. Importantly, this Act does not change the authority of law enforcement to seize property suspected of being associated with crime or limit in any way prosecutors’ ability to charge and prosecute suspected criminals. Moreover, it ensures that those individuals proven guilty of a crime do not keep the fruits of their crime. In doing so, it strikes the right balance between the individual property rights and public safety.
Committee Chair Bob Marshall must bring this bill up in committee. He seems to be reverting to Tom Sharp circa 1988, which is an especially bad role model. There appear to be enough votes to release it if Marshall and Sen. McBride vote for it, especially since Townsend and Lawson (!) are on the bill as co-sponsors. That’s 4 out of 6. It’s time to chip away at the police state that Delaware has become. As for John Carney, maybe he could exercise some leadership and come out in favor of this bill–except (a) he’s still not an official candidate and (b) you can bet that this empty suit is sure to be in mindless (redundant, I know) thrall to law enforcement. Failure to work this bill is a fucking disgrace.
2. Remember the Minimum Wage Bill?
Jack Markell, the State Chamber, and Bryon Short and his Mindless Minions on the House Business Lapdog Committee are hoping that you’ve forgotten. This is an exact replay of the previous paltry minimum wage increase: It passes the Senate on a timely basis after having been emasculated by Jack Markell, Speaker Pete puts it in an inhospitable committee, idiots like Andria Bennett (she’s every bit as useless as her hack father John Viola) quote Chamber talking points as a reason why they can’t even vote to release the fucking bill (I apologize for the cursing today, I generally try to stay away from it, but this is the Very Special Primal Scream Edition, dammit!) to the floor. We’re not talking a $15 minimum wage here, we’re talking a phased-in minimum wage over several years to something like 10 bucks. Never mind that we now have empirical evidence that minimum wage increases have generally been a positive where they’ve already been implemented. Andria Bennett and her (wait for it) ilk will take talking points from the Chamber over facts every single time.
Before I leave this topic, I might as well expose Sean Barney for the phony that he is. I got a campaign letter from the putative candidate. The very first ‘accomplishment’ that he cites is the following:
‘As a former policy director to Governor Markell, I helped raise the minimum wage…’
That, my friends, is a demonstrable lie. Let’s take a trip in the Wayback Machine, shall we? Not only did the bill not come out of the governor’s office, Markell’s only role in the previous minimum wage debate was to successfully emasculate what started out as a decent minimum wage bill. Here’s what I wrote back in 2013:
While we were busy celebrating the passage and signing into law of Delaware’s Marriage Equality Act, the House effectively killed off legislation providing a modest hike in Delaware’s minimum wage. Make no mistake: the killing of SB 6 was deliberate and planned, and the co-conspirators were all Democrats: Speaker Pete Schwartzkopf, Rep. Bryon Short, and Gov. Jack Markell.
Here’s how it happened. After bargaining in what he thought was good faith with Gov.
WalkerMarkell, Sen. Robert Marshall agreed to amendments that significantly reduced the impact of SB 6. Specifically, he agreed to push back the effective date, to decouple subsequent rate increases from the rate of inflation, and to lower the amount of the increase. Markell praised the eviscerated finished product, and said he could support the bill. Which was the last ‘support’ he provided. And Speaker Pete got the memo loud and clear: Kill the bill!And he did. How? By assigning it to the House Business Lapdog Committee, aka the House Economic Development/Banking/Insurance/Commerce Committee, instead of to the House Labor Committee. Chaired by Rep. Bryon Short. You may recall that this is precisely the same tactic that former Speaker Bob Gilligan employed when Markell wanted him to kill the bill last session. And, for the second straight session, Short did not disappoint. SB 6 was passed in the Senate on March 21. It did not receive its hearing in the committee until May 8, and that was deliberate. Short allowed the bill to languish until the last day that, according to House rules, it had to be considered in committee. Many of you are aware of the full-court press opposition led by the respective Chambers of Commerce in the past two weeks. By delaying consideration of the bill, the committee chair enabled that campaign to have optimal effect. To the point where empty tabula rasas like Andria Bennett were reciting Chamber talking points verbatim in opposition to as Democratic a bill as you’ll ever find.
It was only after a massive public outcry that the bill got worked at all in 2014. Which is why Delaware’s minimum wage is now…$8.25. Eight fucking twenty-five. If Sean Barney played any role at all, it was in negotiating the evisceration of the original legislation. The guy’s a liar and a phony.
3. Bryon Short: Government for Sale for $20K.
This whole thing about cutting ‘bureaucratic red tape’? That’s only if you’ve got big bucks. I know, I know, that should come as no surprise in Delaware (Can you say ‘Chemours’?). But, seriously. This is Orwellian. ‘All projects are created equal, some more equal than others’. This is not about those who will pay, it’s about those whose timelines will be pushed even further back. If the process needs to be streamlined for some, then it can and should be streamlined for all. BTW, my favorite snippet from the linked News-Journal article?:
“I’ve certainly had a number of people express to me that they don’t want to do projects here because of the lengthy process,” said state Rep. Bryon Short, D-Highland Woods, who is the bill’s primary sponsor.
Short’s comments echo a common complaint from business groups and developers. Neither Short nor officials for the Delaware Homebuilders Association, which is pushing the bill, had any statistics comparing approval times in Delaware to other jurisdictions.
Short’s just doing what Short always does: Taking business lobbyists’ word for it. And their campaign contributions.
4. Who Better to Scuttle a Gun Purchase Background Check Bill Than a…Gun Range Owner?
OK, kids, this is your job for the day. There is an important criminal background check bill on today’s Senate Agenda. HB 325 (Osienski):
closes a loophole to our gun background check laws. The current loophole allows for guns to be given to a potential purchaser if the background check is delayed for 3 days or more. In some cases a gun is given to a person who should not be in possession of a firearm. This leads to law enforcement having to retrieve a gun from a person prohibited if the background check provides that a person should not have a gun.
The bill passed the House by a 22-17 margin. So, a close vote is almost inevitable in the Senate. Call your State Senator.
Standing in the way, though, are a series of, pardon the expression, ‘killer amendments’ sponsored by Sen. Dave Lawson, who just happens to own his own gun range. Frankly, passage of any amendment, whether it’s considered a ‘friendly’ amendment or not, could threaten a possible second House vote. So I hope that the bill passes unamended.
And I’ll close with this question for the Democrats: Are you seriously gonna let Senator Lawson run unopposed this year? He ALMOST lost to a late-starting opponent last time around. He’s vulnerable. Of course, that would assume that there’s a functioning party apparatus in Kent County. My bad.
I may return with the more traditional format tomorrow. Suffice it to say that, after eight years of doing this, I have no intention of trying to slog my way through the ‘Carney Years’. Like sands through the hourglass…