That was quite the mixed bag on Thursday.
The bad? The House ‘cut the baby in half’ on relief to the racinos. Hey, as long as Rep. Lynn is happy, I can’t be too upset. Still, rewarding Denis McGlynn for his serial incompetence hardly seems fair.
The really good? The House pushed back against the Carney/Simpler/Chamber cabal, and rejected their push for ‘budget-smoothing’, a thinly-veiled attempt to balance future budget deficits on the backs of those most in need of services. Carney even addressed the House Caucus and begged them for support for his green-eyeshaded vision. It’s official. Carney and Simpler are the same person. I think the next General Assembly, especially the House, will be less hospitable to the Chamber’s entreaties. More on that as we get closer to the elections.
Both the Budget Bill and the bonuses for state employees/retirees were signed into law. To be fair to Carney, I’m not sure that Markell would have set aside his hatred of state employees to do that. He really was a condescending elitist.
Here are today’s House and Senate (The Senate agenda will materialize if and when Dave McBride gets around to it) agendas. There will no doubt be other bills considered as ‘must lists’ pass back and forth between to the House and the Senate. As to the colors listed in the House Agenda(s)? The bills will be in binders on the legislators’ desks, and they will be referred to by the color of the binder.
OK, I’m gonna try this one more time. HB 165, which would permit the direct shipment of wine to Delaware consumers, has been completely misrepresented by opponents, most of whom, I suspect, don’t even understand the bill’s purpose. Let’s say you travel to California, the Pacific Northwest, the Finger Lakes, or other burgeoning wine regions like Virginia or New Mexico. In your travels, you may well encounter wonderful small-production wineries that essentially sell only to their mailing list and perhaps some local restaurants. They have no interest in marketing their wines to retailers throughout the country as they don’t need to, and they don’t make enough wine to warrant it. My wife and I generally travel to the Pacific Northwest at least once or twice a year to visit our youngest daughter. We love wine. We’ve discovered wineries that we love, both for the wine and for the personal relationship we’ve developed with the winemakers over the years. There are literally thousands of wineries like this throughout the country whose wines are not, and will never be, available here. This bill would enable people like us to purchase limited quantities of these artisan wines that are not available in Delaware. Period. We’ll still frequent Kreston’s and Moore Brothers because they are great retail purveyors of wine. But these wines aren’t available at either store, or even at the gargantuan rip-off that is Total Wines (BTW, looks like David Trone successfully bought his seat in Congress). So, any legislator who is reading this and may be on the fence, this is what the bill would do. You know that the opponents are just throwing shit up on the wall. I mean, 17-year-olds importing expensive pinot noirs in order to drink before they legally can? Seriously? They’re a bit more, um, resourceful than that.
I’m sure I’ll add to this post as the day goes on and the Senate Agenda is presumably posted. For now, time to hit the doors for Chris Johnson before the heat gets too oppressive.