General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show, Thurs., May 10, 2012

Well. That didn’t take long. If you blinked, you  missed the vetting process for Mark Murphy who, by the end of session yesterday, had been confirmed as Delaware’s Secretary of Education. There can be no doubt that Murphy fits Gov. Markell’s vision for a Secretary of Education. As Head of Vision Network 2015, he’s got the jargon and the chasing of Federal dollars down pat. And, indeed, Vision 2015 is, quoting from the video, “a philosophy and a way of thinking”. Which is one way of looking at it. The (to me) cult-like language in the video makes me wonder if this is just another reform foisted on us by the same people who screwed up the last ‘reform’ of public education. I’m looking at you, so-called corporate leaders. BTW, if one video doesn’t suffice, Vision 2015 specializes in self promotional videos. There are dozens more where this video came from, one featuring Mike Castle’s ever-receding hairline. There’s loads of testimonials. Just like there are for the latest weight-loss cure. All I can say is that Gov. Markell now owns the public education issue. I hope I’m proven wrong, and I’ve got little more than my Spidey Sense to go on, but I’m worried about where this latest Grand Experiment will take our students. Hey, maybe they can all become sheriff’s deputies in Sussex County.

Or, maybe not. The Sheriff of Nuttingham and His Posse Comatosis could be nearing the end of their lawless reign. HB 325(Schwartzkopf), which would make clear that would-be Wyatt Earps can’t mete out their own brand of frontier justice in the untamed badlands of Sussex County, cleared the House Administration Committee, and is on today’s House agenda. It will pass overwhelmingly. The only question is whether any of the bill’s original downstate House R sponsors will vote for the bill they had previously sponsored. My prediction? Most of them won’t, and will go Not Voting, the ultimate cojone-less copout. Undaunted and uninformed, Sheriff Jeff Christopher has filed suit against Sussex County, claiming that the County in essence, seeks to deny him his constitutional rights to carry out his office’s mission. When I say ‘undaunted’, I mean undaunted by legal precedent and common sense. Rep. Schwartzkopf sums it up perfectly:

“If you’re not learned in the law and you’re not familiar with how to read the law … you can’t go around and tell people you have arrest powers in Sussex County,” he said.

Christopher is being backed by an organization called the Legacy Foundation, which, among other things, has prioritized giving undue power to crusading sheriffs, all in the name of ‘individual liberties’. And, let’s face it, Christopher must feel emboldened. When he went mano a mano with the Sussex County Rethuglican delegation, he stared them down. Memo to people in Sussex County: If you want to have people like me stop making fun of Sussex County, you can’t let the inmates run the asylum.

Speaking of the Inmates, can we now just use that phrase to describe the State Rethuglican Party? I wrote yesterday about the, well, let me just quote myself:

SB 161(Lawson) and HB 277(Heffernan): Two dueling bills pertaining to home invasion. AKA ‘Tough and Tougher’. Both bills would create the new offense of ‘home invasion’. Neither is needed for law enforcement purposes, there are literally hundreds of offenses on the books to address the elements contained in the ‘new crime’ of home invasion. Regardless, whichever bill passes, most likely HB 277, will be prominently featured in election brochures from one end of the state to the other. In Senate Judiciary Committee.

Got it? Two bills that would simply add yet another charge or two onto the litany of charges already permitted by law. About 150 existing charges or so. This, of course, was cause for an ACTION ALERT from the fact-challenged State Rethuglican Party. Allow me to excerpt:

In January, Republican Senator Dave Lawson introduced Senate Bill 181, which would make the violent home invasions plaguing our state a Class A Felony, and require that these vicious social predators face imprisonment from 15 years to life.

Several weeks later, in a cynically partisan move designed to undermine Senator Lawson’s efforts, House Democrats introduced House Bill 277, a watered down version Senator Lawson’s proposal that coddles these invading social predators and places roadblocks in the path of law enforcement and prosecution. To their credit, House Republicans were able to amend HB 277 to make it somewhat more realistic, but the Democrat-inspired House version still falls far short of the law enforcement and public safety needs of our community.

Only in Rethug La-La Land, could adding yet more charges to the existing 150 or so be construed as ‘coddl(ing) these social predators’. The real word to describe what’s in this Action Alert is ‘lies’. Can the fundraising appeal be far behind? When you got nothing, gin up a phony controversy. Well, the Senate Judiciary Committee released both bills from committee. Hey, maybe the Senate will even pass both bills. Maybe put an amendment on HB 277 so that both bills can be sent back to the House. Betcha the House only passes one and sends it to the Governor, though…

Here’s yesterday’s Session Activity Report.

Virtually all the action is in the House today. The aforementioned HB 325 leads off the agenda, and will head to the Senate by day’s end. By the end of next week, it will be on the Governor’s desk.

I admit that I was quite surprised to see that HB 140(Carson) made it out of committee, and is now on the agenda. Well, once it makes it out of commitee, and once the sponsor makes the request, the Speaker will place the bill on the agenda. For those of you who have forgotten just what this nominee for Worst Bill of the Year, HB 140, does, allow me to quote from the bill’s synopsis:

prohibit(s) slower moving vehicles from driving in the left lane and blocking traffic, which commonly leads to road rage and has motivated several other states to adopt “left lane” laws. This bill provides that vehicles may overtake slower moving vehicles on the left, but otherwise shall not drive in the left lane, which is intended to serve as the passing lane.

I have a few questions: (1) What exactly constitutes a ‘slower moving vehicle’? If you’re driving, say, at 10 miles over the speed limit and some car roars up from behind going 25 miles over the speed limit, is it your responsibility  to cede to the extreme speeder in order to forestall ‘road rage’? (2) The bill asserts that slow drivers in the left lane ‘commonly lead to road rage’. By whom? Your average driver or your average driver who is predisposed to road rage? I assume that the always well-prepared Rep. ‘Lumpy’ Carson has empirical evidence to back up this assertion. (Confidential Memo to Lumpy Carson: Getting stuck behind a slow-moving driver while racing up Route 1 to a Happy Hour in Smyrna is perhaps not the most effective example you could provide.) (3) How the bleep do you propose that the cops enforce this? Are they supposed to respond to angry calls by would-be left lane speedsters and drop whatever they’re doing to engage in a pursuit?

Look, I get it. I get frustrated when I’m stuck behind a poky driver too. But, IMHO, this bill can only escalate road rage b/c it’s virtually unenforceable. We passed laws to prohibit hands-on talking on your cell phone while driving. I still see it everywhere. Especially when I’m stuck behind some slow-moving vehicle in the left lane whose driver is chattering away while oblivious to the road rage building behind them. That makes me angry. And, yes, as angry as I can get, I, um, recognize that I can’t simply run the car in front of me off the road.  If enacted, this bill would merely provide the false hope that poky drivers would no longer drive in the left lane. Rep. Carson, if you, as the exalted chair of the House Transportation Committee, can get DELDOT to address this through signage, be my guest, I’m all for it. But this is a stupid ill-advised bill that is indeed worthy of your intellect. Meaning, undeserving of passage by a presumably serious legislative body.

There’s only one bill on today’s Senate agenda, and while I certainly agree with the issue it addresses, I don’t know whether this is the way to do it. SB 205(Ennis):

provides that if an owner desires to raise the average rentals charged to homeowners in a manufactured home community more than the increase in the Consumer Price Index For All Urban Consumers for the preceding year, the owner must seek approval of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Manufactured Housing. The Council will consider evidence regarding increases in the cost of operating and maintaining the affected community. If the Council finds that the owner has demonstrated that the cost of operating and maintaining the community has been more than the CPI-U, it will approve an appropriate increase.

My question is simple: How can you give statutory authority to an advisory council which, by definition, advises? Wouldn’t you have to change both the name and the stated mission of the body before you could give it this type of authority? Barristers Assemble!

Enough second-guessing by me today. Time to do something about my increasingly-injury-ravaged fantasy baseball squad.