Delaware General Assembly Pre-Game Show for Tues., June 13, 2017
From the platform of the Delaware Democratic Party:
Wages: No one who works full time should have to struggle to provide for their family. Delaware Democrats support our state’s working families and strongly believe in a $15 minimum wage, paid sick leave, and short-term disability insurance.
Today’s Senate Agenda features SB 10 (Marshall), which would increase Delaware’s minimum wage to $10.25 an hour by 2020, and would provide for Cost-Of-Living increases thereafter. This bill can be enacted without any assistance from Rethugs. It’s all on the D’s. A similar bill passed the Senate during the last session, but was deliberately buried in a House committee and was never brought up for a vote in the House. Those who put the kibosh on the bill included Gov. Markell, who opposed the bill behind the scenes; Speaker Pete Schwartzkopf, who assigned the bill to an inhospitable committee (The Business Lapdog Committee); and at least three Chamber lackeys on that committee, Chair Bryon Short and members Quin Johnson and Andria Bennett.
Perhaps the most noteworthy take from today’s News-Journal article on the bill is that John Carney (!) appears to be fully on board:
“In an ideal world, the federal government would take the lead on raising the minimum wage in a consistent way across states,” he said. “But there’s nothing ideal about Washington in 2017. And I’ve been clear that Delawareans who go to work every day should not have to raise their families in poverty.”
Good for him. Looking at the Senate vote, the one D at risk of flipping is Brian Bushweller, who often places the desires of the millionaire operators of that Dover casino over those of his working-class constituents. R Senator Cathy Cloutier is a potential yes vote. If either is your Senator, call and let them know how you feel.
Speaking for the Rethugs, Sen. Pettyjohn opined:
“I think it would be deadly to our economy, especially our small businesses,” he said. “In an incremental increase, it’s going to hurt them, some of them are going to lay off people in order to make it. If you make that drastic change, you will kill small business in Delaware.”
Just because all the empirical evidence contradicts Pettyjohn doesn’t make it less of a rote Chamber talking point for the Rethugs.
Assuming the bill passes, it is up to Democrats to demand that their elected officials in the House act as Democrats and not as Chamber mouthpieces. This is a partisan issue. The D platform is right, and the opposition is wrong. As long as D’s stick together the bill will pass. Which is at best a 50-50 proposition.
SB 109 (Townsend), which is also on the Agenda, requires that ‘individuals who receive health care via Medicaid (receive) the same dedication to treatment of substance abuse disorders as individuals who receive health care via private insurance’. With two R senators on the bill (Cloutier and Lopez) as sponsors, the bill has a solid chance of passage.
Today’s House Agenda features a proposed Constitutional Amendment that would:
…advance human dignity and equality for all under the Delaware Constitution, and would correct a constitutional shortcoming. It subjects unequal treatment arising from historical bias to strict scrutiny, and enables courts in Delaware to establish jurisprudence concerning equal rights violations under State law reflecting Delaware values.
That strikes me as meaning that the amendment would codify in the Delaware Constitution the protections that have been enacted by the General Assembly over the last few years.
Kids, when Rep. Spiegelman sponsors legislation ‘relating to conservation’, it invariably means legalizing new ways to kill animals. As is the case with both HB 156 and HB 157. A lesson in knowing your euphemisms.
Lots of committee meeting action tomorrow. I’ll be back with the wrap-up plus a committee preview bright and early Wednesday.
Just laughable… Oh the liberal left commies. Form a party of your own.
You would think the D’s who supported repeal of the estate tax for milionaires could at least support minimum wage increases. It’s just a fig leaf for Carney. Smoke and mirrors.. He has no choice but to support it. The bill only takes you up 50 cents a year for next four years and still only gets you to $10.25. Not anywhere close to the $15 in the Dem Party platform.
To Chris’s point … with the party saying $15 in the goal and the D’s in the GA thinking $10.25 is a great accomplishment, you’ve got to wonder whether the public will believe anything in the state party’s platform.
I realize that successful politics is the art of the possible, but when you compare $10.25 to $15, it appears that the legislative bar is set way too low.
“You would think the D’s who supported repeal of the estate tax for milionaires could at least support minimum wage increases.”
All of the money paid out to people working for minimum wage gets circulated in Delaware, while the proceeds of the estate tax cut will find their way to the Cayman Islands.
Of COURSE it’s a real low legislative bar.
It’s one that could not be cleared with Markell, Schwartzkopf and the D chamber lackeys running interference in the past.
Let’s at least clear this low bar…or make the DINO’s face the electoral consequences.
John Carney has really lowered the bar for the G.A. Dems. Maybe the new State Party Chair will give him a kick in the ass.
Is there anything about the Coastal Zone Act in Dem platform? or is that a lost issue.
Here’s the platform, Chris:
http://www.deldems.org/sites/deldems/files/2017%20Delaware%20Democratic%20State%20Party%20Platform.pdf
And of course it’s not a closed issue. On some occasions, you revert to political trollery.
I couldn’t find a bill related to the robocall I received, but I got one from dog the bounty hunter talking about putting bail bondsman out of business? It was hard to decipher.
Also noticed the DEGOP put out their list of demands.. ending prevailing wage, consolidating school districts, medicare stuff and blah blah.
Hi folks, Just moved to the Middletown area and would like to talk directly to my Middletown lackey, er, representative and the only number that shows on his bio leads to the Democratic Caucus. I left one previous message asking for his direct line or his staff contact but didn’t hear back so I called that number today to ask the same question.
Anyone out there have his phone number?
TIA
Who is said lackey? There are a couple of Middletown area Reps.
Q Johnson of the Business Lapdog Commitee
Economics 101. Raising the minimum wage won’t help people live better. Nationally, 95 plus percent of the labor force works for more than the minimum wage. The Democrats pretending that raising the minimum wage is helpful is just another feeble attempt to try and get the masses to believe that socialism is the answer. The following shows why raising the minimum wage will NOT help the labor force live better. If you raise the lowest paid workers to $15, then guess what, the workers now making around $15 want $20. And their bosses who were making $20 want $27, and on up the ladder it goes, until you have dramatically raised your cost of doing business without any increase in productivity. Which means massive price increases. Your rent goes up, your food goes up, gas goes up, everything is higher priced. So, $15 Is no longer a living wage. So, a living minimum wage is an economic impossibility, IT Can’t BE DONE. The only way for the labor force to live better is to make more money by producing more or better products, either through improved skill or automation or most likely a combination of both, and then having a robust free enterprise system in place that encourages low or no inflation, coupled with low cost for running the government.
Rusty Dils off his meds 909. Anyone getting a raise other than the rich leads to eternal damnation and the end of days.
It is too easy to debunk Prof Dill. He could debunk himself if he could only turn off Fox News for a minute and look up hourly min wages by country. Australia, according to Dills is a shit hole, suffering under a $13.16 min wage, but Uganda is a paradise with its $0.03 hourly min wage.
Sure, the fat cats in Australia probably own less of their country’s overall wealth than the fat cats in Uganda, but I’m sure they are happy with the trade off.
Here is a quick quiz Rusty might want to take to see if he is right about the pernicious economic effects of a higher minimum wage.
Rusty, Below are five matched sets of countries. Pick the country you’d rather live in if you had to pick between the two.
Cuba or Ireland ?
Bangladesh or New Zealand ?
Iran or Belgium ?
Belarus or France ?
Venezuela or Luxembourg ?
Except for maybe France vs Belarus (because he knows nothing of Belarus, and thinks he hates France), I can guarantee Dills picked the very high min wage country over the very low min wage country.
The point of having power that the public understands is that you USE it. .
He did debunk himself. A high-growth economy always features inflation.
He’s a tool and a moron, not necessarily in that order.
Of course anyone who disagrees with the Demo’s, either get banned from posting or their called names……typical! You’ve made Delaware a Demo, state and now we have to live with the mess!
@anono: Your comment is an indictment of our education system. “They’re” called names, not “their.” It’s a contraction, short for “they are.” “Their” called names are the names they are called. A quick, far-from-complete list would include “scumbag,” “douchenozzle,” “fuckwad,” ” slap-dick” and “shit gibbon.”
The education system does blow in DE. Most elected officials send their kids to private or charter schools.