If you haven’t already, read this screed before proceeding. Allow me to focus on the stated rationale from both Senators McBride and Poore as to why they broke their public commitment to release the gun control bills from committee:
“At this time, we are not planning to, or I’m not planning to (send the gun bills to the floor), because we do not have the support of the caucus…I think with any bill, compromise is huge.”-Sen. Nicole Poore.
That is a lie, and now I’ll prove it. Implicit in the word ‘we’ above, is that ‘we’, in this case Senators McBride and Poore, support the bills but, dang it, ‘we’ just couldn’t get enough of our colleagues to go along with us. The truth is that McBride and Poore decided that they opposed the bills, meaning that there weren’t enough votes for passage. Rather than embarrass themselves on the floor, they decided to kill the bills in committee. In other words, they killed the bills, then lied about why they killed the bills.
We can’t move on before highlighting another Profile In Cowardice from this sad situation. Sen. Cathy Cloutier who, some 20-plus years into her legislative service is still afraid of her own shadow, also voted against releasing the bills from committee. Just days after a bunch of NRA hooligans cornered her at her fundraiser to let her know that…They…Were…Watching. Cloutier has played a disingenuous game with her constituents for at least the past 15 years. The game being that she’s really a Democrat, but she is an R out of loyalty to her dead husband, and former state representative, Phil Cloutier who, according to reports, doesn’t give a shit as to what party she identifies with. Real Democrats, especially those representing districts that strongly support gun control, don’t give in to the NRA b/c ‘contributions’ and/or ‘primary threats’. If she wasn’t an R, she wouldn’t face a primary threat based on her support of common-sense gun control bills. I know just what she’ll say: The vote didn’t matter b/c there weren’t enough yes votes to get the bills out of committee anyway. Let’s look at it differently: If she had voted yes, it would have placed tremendous pressure on McBride and Poore. Even a Republican was willing to vote yes, but the D leadership went against their solemn promises, and killed the bills. No, at least two decades after the death of her husband, Cathy Cloutier is still playing the part of a victim who is faced with choices that are unfair to her. A strong D in this district won’t face these self-created dilemmas. It’s time to take her out in 2020.
With the apparent death of these bills, the heart of the legislative session has been left on the operating room floor. In fact, what remains demonstrates the lack of initiative from our sleepy-eyed governor.
I can’t go on. I must go on.
Today’s House Agenda blahblahblah. Well, there’s only one bill that interests me. HB 130(Brady) ‘ enacts a ban on stores providing single-use plastic bags at check-out.’ Yes, yess, YES! Can we pass it w/o it being watered down, please?
Today’s Senate Agenda, brought to you by Prevaricator Pro-Tem Dave McBride, is similarly uninspiring. I guess we could look at SB 74 (Walsh), which allows ‘…qualified employers to pro-rate their job creation activity…’, oh, never mind. Just a bill that put-upon business people wanted.
Today is a whole lot of nothing from a whole lot of nobodies.
Maybe tomorrow will be different.
Don’t count on it.