Are voters in the 20th represented by a certified whackjob?
The evidence points to – yes. The Cape Gazette Reports that at his latest January constituent coffee meeting, Rep. Smyk expressed concerns that the State Police and Delaware National Guard are not up to the task of ensuring order in the event of some “major occurrence.” And that these agencies are in need of reinforcement from a whackjob militia composed of local whackjobs.
In a Facebook update from that day,(appearently used as a source by the Cape Gazette) Smyk’s whackjob-iness comes out in full force as Smynk agrees with and appears to egg on his whackjob constituents.
On another topic, Rep. Smyk said he had some concerns regarding the state’s preparedness to respond to a statewide emergency, noting a major occurrence could strain the capabilities of the Delaware National Guard and police agencies. He said these agencies could benefit from the creation of a citizen auxiliary unit. Trained and tasked to perform low-level functions, such citizen volunteers could allow limited Guard and law enforcement personnel to concentrate on critical issues.
“It’s time to bring citizens to the defense of our state,” said Robert Fischer, one of more than a dozen local residents taking part in the discussion. “We have volunteer fire departments. We need to have a volunteer militia.”
In terms of craziness, this sort of denigration of the capabilities of existing civil authorities rates up there with another Sussex County legislator’s speculation that our moon-landings were elaborate frauds.
is a “major occurrence” anything like the “major award” the dad one in A Christmas Story?
If so I can see how the glow of electric sex in the windows down there would require military forces to satisfy that whack-a-doos of that area
major occurrence = black guy seen with a gun
In defense of whackjobs, many of today’s weapons can be deployed with just one hand.
Can you imagine the number “accidental” and/or “imminent threat” shootings that members of this Citizens Auxiliary Unit would be party to?
Perhaps Jeff Christopher drank a polyjuice potion (Harry Potter reference) and is impersonating Smyk, advocating for all these crazy powers that are only granted to the State/County Police… While the real Smyk is bound and gagged in some large trunk in Christopher’s garage
I wonder how they all would feel about the black panthers patrolling inner cities. hmmm
in that case I understand. Have you seen the news? Black guys with guns are freakin scarey. Much scarier than a lacey stripper leg in a window
If this is a real need, why don’t we call all the retired DSP back to active duty?
Or, better yet, require DSP to work 25, perhaps 30 years, before becoming eligible for full retirement?
(I know, I know … if hey worked 30 years and pulled in a bit of overtime, their pensions would put the triple-dipping members of the General Assembly to shame.)
Leave it to the folks here to see conspiracies and insult people over nothing. When Smyk spoke about straining the capabilities of local officials, the context makes clear he was talking about numbers, not professionalism or ability. You guys are just as bad as those you criticize — quick to jump to extreme conclusions and always ready to insult others you don’t like.
Anyone who remembers, or who’s seen pictures of, the ’62 nor’easter will understand the type of situation Smyk was referring to. And if something like that happened today, I suspect that the State Police and National Guard would be strained. Certainly the government response was strained in NJ after Sandy.
Having said that, is there much merit to Smyk’s concerns? Probably not. But give me a break, you folks just embarrass yourselves with discussion threads like this. You look foolish, petty and arrogant all at the same time.
This is one of those cases when the craziness escapes from the crazy bubble. I’m sure these nuts talk about militias endlessly and they think it sounds perfectly same.
Well actually, Smyk referred to a “citizen auxiliary unit” which an attendee referred to as a “volunteer militia” auxiliary units of volunteer fire departments as well as units like “Civil Air Patrol” have a long tradition of vital service. Smyk was correct in his use of the term. An attendee (Robert Fischer) translated that into a militia.
Now it could be that Smyk meant “militia.” What is more like is that Fischer has a comm filter or lens that processes information in manner that conforms to Mr. Fischer’s beliefs (aka a typical Fox News adherent). I’m going to give Smyk some rope, figuring that in his second term he has a modicum of common sense.
Time will tell of course.
Smyk also fails to acknowledge there is a federal program under FEMA operating in the State of Delaware called C.E.R.T. Citizens Emergency Response Teams. It is volunteer and they train for emergencies and disasters. They have not been activated in Delaware but have been activated in other States for Emergencies.
No, they don’t have guns. They train for the stuff we would really need in case of emergency, “fire safety, light search and rescue, team organization, and disaster medical operations.”
Not to mention, where is the money going to come from to pay for a Delaware program?
If it costs, where’s the money going to come from?
If I’m Steve Smyk, I’m looking for a piece of Matt Denn’s $36 million pie.
Many workers in DELDOT are considered essential and are subject to call up for disaster relief evacuations etc.
As expected, the “Progressive” view of the world relies on the government being able to take care of you. In reality, there is not enough money in the entire budget to insure their capability to do so. Being prepared for emergencies is always a wise idea & FEMA does a great job of providing information to help citizens to do so. However, they consistently leave out the possibility that you will need to protect yourself & your family from looters, thieves & maybe even terrorists. After the Boston Marathon bombing it took thousands of police officers to locate only 2 perpetrators. Imagine if it had been part of a coordinated plot that involved a dozen or more actors spread out along the I-95 corridor. These days, thinking about these possibilities is not paranoia & just might be prudent.
Just maybe, some community security & defense training for those so inclined to participate could be a very good idea.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
This question was answered by Plato:
“We will instill in them a distaste for power or privilege; they will rule because they believe it right, not because they desire it.”
Choose:
A: An over militarized & over worked police force with no connection to the community.
B: Family & neighbors with a vested interest in keeping their homes safe from
an imminent threat.
Also, a tempered version of the Black Panthers, willing to coordinate with the usual authorities, may very well be a viable solution if the situation warrants in certain neighborhoods.
“As expected, the “Progressive” view of the world relies on the government being able to take care of you.”
And yet, you want a gov’t program set up to train people to care of “us” in the event of an Emergency. How very “Progressive” of you. CERT is a volunteer program. It trains people for an actual highly probable event: a natural disaster. Doomsday boogieman terrorist scenarios are fun for Saturday matinees, but the adults in the room are working on things, thanks.
But I can see why DE CERT “now with guns and authoritah!!” has an appeal to some people. If you want to prepare to defend your home, feel free to do so. There are already SHTF groups that can train you for that. You don’t need to gov’t to do so, unless you want the evil progressive gov’t to give you some extra special magical powers of authority. Which is what this sounds like.
Perhaps Mr. Smyk should pay a visit to DEMA and get some insight on their challenges and strategies.
@radef16 “However, they consistently leave out the possibility that you will need to protect yourself & your family from looters, thieves & maybe even terrorists. ”
While I am fairly certain that Smyk was talking about natural disasters, it is obvious you have a more apocalyptic vision. Even so, why wouldn’t we beef up the National Guard who are already the state’s militia?
Visions of doomsday is a great premise for a TV show about preppers, but really are you suggesting we spend money on such stuff?
@radef16 – What a false choice! Two options that you so clumsily offered. So much ham-handed bullshit from the fucking “patriot” crowd.
I completely reject the entire fake dichotomy, because there is absolutely no imminent threat to anybody. There isn’t now and the chances there will be is infinitesimally small. This is all a little game played out like children’s literature inside the walnut-sized mind of the irrational distrust of government crowd.
I suspect somebody just screened American Sniper. Am I right?
First we should probably outlaw Sharia. That’s a big threat as well.
so basically if I get this right, we need more people to protect us from something that might not ever come but if and when it does, then well, god damnit we’ll be ready.
Pay for it? lmao…we’ll cut social services and privatize everything (anarcho capitalism)…which will eventually lead to riots or revolution…which will then in turn lead to us actually needing all this firepower he said we needed for a catastrophe just like the scenario we created by needing to pay for the people and hardware needed for a said catastrophic, bone chilling, zombie-esque event!
I’m beginning to think this guy is onto something
A neatly self-reinforcing worldview of doom.
I think you are onto something with that statemen
Interesting idea Representative Smyk but Eric Bodenweiser beat you to it in early 2009 when he formed the Sussex County Organized Regiment. Sheriff Jeff Christopher also beat you to it with his dreams of a posse in 2010.
Poor Sussex County. They get rid of Bodie and then Christopher pops up. They get rid of Christopher and Smyk pops up. There’s more wack-a-mole going on with sane citizens trying to smack down crazy Sussex politicians than you see at Funland in July.
@macarthur: Skip the whack-a-mole, play the horse race game. Great way to teach the kids how to gamble.
Ain’t no horseracing in Sussex County, Mr. Geezer, gambling is the Devil.
“… there is absolutely no imminent threat to anybody. There isn’t now and the chances there will be is infinitesimally small.”
Emergency Preparedness is, by definition, a study of highly improbable events.
To classify the possibility of these events happening as a vision of doom & gloom is extremely shortsighted. (Until a few years ago, turning two of the tallest buildings in the US into piles of rubble was pretty close to the bottom of the reality list.)
My only expectation from the government is to acknowledge that some level of preparation is necessary and to add the possibility of citizens needing to defend themselves into the agenda. This would require only a negligible amount of tax dollars.
You can be for emergency preparedness while being opposed to empowering gun fetishists and wackos. Smynk knows his audience, so he knows that constantly kissing the asses of gun fetishists and wackos is part of what he signed up for. What plays in the West Bumfuck coffee shop, however, isn’t what most people consider normal.
I like how you slipped that “citizens needing to defend themselves” into the emergency preparedness plan. It’s one thing to be ready to clean up after a disaster or help displaced people. That would be important after something like the 11 Sept attacks or a major weather event (i.e., Katrina). But you can’t “defend” against those… You’re conflating two things in a very obvious way and I can only wonder why.
I don’t wonder. The apocalyptic world view explains a lot.
“Emergency Preparedness is, by definition, a study of highly improbable events.”
No. It is not. FEMA’s definition: “The term ‘emergency preparedness’ means all those activities and measures designed or undertaken to prepare for or minimize the effects of a hazard upon the civilian population, to deal with the immediate emergency conditions which would be created by the hazard, and to effectuate emergency repairs to, or the emergency restoration of, vital utilities and facilities destroyed or damaged by the hazard.”
And if you knew anything at all about the subject you would not have said “the study of improbable events.” Emergency preparedness is actual preparation. And every potential hazard has a probability of occurrence and an associated consequence if it were to occur. We, as a nation, have never, ever prepared for events that are improbable.
That’s the whole point of risk management. You spend your time, effort, and resources on things that have a high probability of occurrence and a high consequence if they do occur.
Risk management (in a national security sense) also assesses (using actual intelligence, science and mathematics, among other things), vulnerabilities and threats to quantify the probability and impact. Even if something has a relatively high probability of occurrence, if the impact is low, we do not expend resources mitigating the vulnerability or the threat.
Your assertion that we do something about “improbable events” is not just ludicrous, it’s insane. We have more to fear from folks like you, than we have from any external threat of a world gone mad. And if you knew anything about emergency preparedness you would know that the government has already acknowledged such things as you suggest and that risk of people like feeling the need to defend themselves against a low probability apocalypse is why you and yours are prime candidates for the FEMA concentration camps. Oh, wait I’m not sure I’m allowed to talk about that.
1. The DNG has never said it does not have the manpower to step up during any type of crisis in Delaware.
2. Police should love the overtime they’ll get during a crisis, it may rival the $700 an hour they get working at the State Fair.
3. Two other politicians have suggested this type of bullshit. One is awaiting trial for raping a child, the other got booted out of office by the citizenry. Lets hope we’re looking at the latter for Smyk.
Apparenlty this boils down to world view. Some of us think “Katrina” when the concept of emergency preparedness come up. While others think of Red Dawn invasion scenarios.
As I said, thanks for the input, but the adults are already working on this. If Smyk really thinks this is an issue, he should meet with DEMA.
Sharia Law is a Huge threat to Sussex County, Delaware, in the same way that Voter Fraud is a “Threat” to our “Democracy” (Sarcasm is one of my many traits)
Also the United Nations and vaccine, huge threats.
and now measles because of the anti-vaxxers
We can’t even keep our regular poiice from shooting unarmed civilians during peacetime… what makes anyone think some crackpot West Sussex militia wlll be any better disciplined?
Was this guy a Wilmington Police Officer before becoming a state trooper?????
Maybe this was a reference to the existing CERT program that Delaware recently put into place, including the City of Wilmington and NCC, Kent, and Sussex.
http://www.delawarecitizencorps.org/home
(from the CERT website)
“The State CERT Team has targeted and continues to target local businesses, faith based groups, and the general public for CERT training. Among its successes, Delaware Citizen Corps formed a CERT Instructors Team that conducted CERT programs in all Delaware counties, training approximately 1500 hundred people to this date. The state also conducted several Train-the-Trainer courses, and as a result, New Castle County Citizen Corps, Ocean View Citizen Corps, and the Church of Latter Day Saints have established their own CERT Instructors Training Teams.
Both the City of Wilmington and New Castle County conducted CERT training for their communities this year. Faith based, civic organization and youth groups all received CERT.
Delaware State University and Kent County Emergency Management Agency sponsored Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training and CERT teams so that Police Cadets from DSU serve both the University and the County.”
It should be pointed out that even probable situations are being ignored by Smyk’s constituents, primarily the effects of climate change. We could be doing things to mitigate the threat, lower the severity and make contingency plans for sea-level rise, weather intensification, etc. But since climate change is a liberal hoax, it’s not considered a possibility. But a terrorist attack on a dairy farm in Harrington? Totally plausible.
LOL! So true, LG.
“But a terrorist attack on a dairy farm in Harrington? Totally plausible”
Which is probably why they want to form the Farm Assault Response Team.
I see what you did there. 😉
Maybe if we formed a climate change militia and let them bring their guns, they would be in lol
That actually checks out.
I saw some hispanics in a chicken truck. I’m betting they were smuggling in some arab Muslim terrorist to kill our chickens
I heard the Amish in Dover have been infiltrated with Sharia law and its spreading to Dover. Keep your guns loaded
For you wonderful people who live north of the ditch:
1. Harrington is in Kent County
2. The 20th RD is in eastern Sussex, not western. It is Milton east to Lewes and south to Harbeson.
The promise land for future yankee immigrants
FWIW, I didn’t actually say that Harrington was in Sussex. I just know it’s south of Dover in a vast sea of double-wides and chicken coops.