El Somnambulo's Latest Posts
General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up & Pre-Game Show: Wednesday, June 3, 2015
The big news: Legislation decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use passed the House Tuesday. Despite an amendment that weakened the bill, not a single ‘small government’ Rethug voted for the bill. BTW, the amendment sucks. I can only guess that it was required to secure a sufficient number of votes to pass the bill. Otherwise, it should not have seen the light of day.
Delaware General Assembly Pre-Game Show: Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Let’s not mince words. Not since 2009 has the General Assembly entered June with so much uncertainty and so much unfinished business. I’d argue that it will even be a more difficult June than June of 2009.
Back then, everyone recognized that Delaware, like virtually every other state, was suffering from an economic downturn. The newly-minted governor was able to work with the General Assembly to craft a series of ‘revenue-enhancers’ to address the budget shortfall. R’s released just enough yes votes to enable bills to pass, in exchange for provisions sunsetting the revenue enhancers.
Fast-forward six years. This governor has lost a huge amount of political influence. So much so that his press flak has said that he’ll watch what the General Assembly does, and not actively broker any settlements. He has, in particular, lost a lot of leverage with Democrats. Some of this is inevitable. Lame ducks almost never have much political capital to spend by Year 7. Markell has also wasted political capital in ways that have earned him the enmity and distrust of D’s in particular. Whether it’s the disaster of Race To the Top, his attempt to bypass the General Assembly while looking to get rid of the Port of Wilmington, his sabotage of a meaningful minimum wage bill, his inability to rally support for his gas tax increase, his cheerleading for charter schools, his refusal to consider any tax increase on his wealthy pals, and so much more, he is as close to feckless as any governor facing a budget shortfall can be.
Except…he HAS, by Executive Order, created a panel to look at long-term changes to how Delaware funds government. Unfortunately, Markell has chosen to place a vast majority of DINO’s and Rethugs on the panel, ensuring that any recommendations it might make would not in any way address inequities in who pays what. The good news: the ideas that are being put forward by this group are likely to be DOA. I mean, eliminate the estate tax? Really? These are not serious proposals except in a world where ALEC is king.
News Journal Finally Reports Walker Job…Leaves A Few Key Things Out.
Well, the story was broken here at DL, and it will remain an open question as to whether the so-called ‘paper of record’ would have even covered it if we hadn’t. At least, they finally have covered it. The story, which is a good one, raises as many questions as it answers. Oh, and it leaves out one of the key elements of the whole stinkin’ mess: Walker getting the job with an agency under the purview of the state police after carrying the cops’ water in burying the death penalty bill in her committee. Under the approving eye of former state cop and current Speaker Pete Schwartzkopf.
The questions revolve around how she got the job. First, read these excerpts from the News-Journal article…
JFC Cuts Markell’s Bloated Education Budget for Bureaucrats
Some real good news to start the Memorial Day weekend. Some of the cuts were to positions that had previously been funded by Race To The Top but are now transitioning to the state. They actually cut $3.75 mill in bloat:
The Joint Finance Committee voted to eliminate 10 controversial, high-paid positions in the Department of Education to find more than $1.5 million in savings as they continued to mark up Markell’s $3.9 billion budget proposal.
Lawmakers on the budget-writing committee also reduced funding for additional education initiatives, including teacher preparation programs, data analysis and recruitment efforts.
They almost did even more, as a proposal to cut an additional $2 mill in “additional funding related to Race to the Top failed by a 7-5 vote.”
BREAKING: Ex-Legislator Rewarded For Burying Death Penalty Repeal Bill
Remember Rebecca Walker? She’s the former chair of the House Judiciary Committee who buried the death penalty repeal bill in her committee for most of 2013 and all of 2014.
Remember Rebecca Walker? She’s the former legislator who claimed she was running for reelection in 2014, had actually filed, waited until after the filing deadline, then withdrew her name, thus denying the Democratic voters in her district the right to choose her successor via primary. Remember why Rebecca Walker claimed she withdrew? She said that her work would not enable her to continue to serve. As if she just found that out right after the filing deadline.
Well, guess what ‘good fortune’ has been bestowed upon former State Rep. Rebecca Walker?
If you guessed a $96K state job that required no public posting and which reunites her with her police pals with whom she scuttled death penalty repeal, you would be correct.
Carper & Coons Back Together Again
Both voted for fast track yesterday.
Well, that didn’t take long.
Delaware General Assembly Pre-Game Show: May 12-14, 2015
That was quite the interesting little week. HB 50 passes overwhelmingly, Gov. Markell announces he will sign death penalty repeal legislation should it reach his desk, and the General Assembly apparently has come up with a sorta-gimmick to close at least some of the gap in infrastructure spending. At least the D’s have. And my daughter graduated college with honors in Mathematics and Japanese, and now proceeds to a Masters of Arts in Teaching Program. She wants to teach and inspire high school students to fully realize their potential in mathematics. I sorta doubt that she sees the ‘Smarter Better Test’ as a means to that end.
While it looks like there’s gonna be some new funding for road projects, the Rethugs appear hell-bent on getting some sort of ‘right to work for less’ concessions in exchange for votes to close the budget shortfall. Because, you know, nothing furthers economic prosperity more than paying workers less. Hey, it’s why they’re Rethugs.
The big showdown of the week takes place in the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday at 11 am in the House Chamber. SB 40(Peterson), which repeals Delaware’s death penalty, and has already passed the Senate by an 11-9 margin, will be considered.
Delaware General Assembly Pre-Game Show: Week of May 5-7, 2015
“The budget is broken,” said Delaware Sen. Harris McDowell, a Wilmington Democrat who co-chairs the General Assembly’s budget-writing Joint Finance Committee. “The options to fix it are to recognize that we have gotten to the end of the line of tricks.”
That’s the truth. Some of the tricks upon which we relied to balance the state budget, ‘abandoned property’, gambling revenue, even our incorporation fees, have peaked, and will soon be in decline, if they’re not in free-fall already.
Of course, if you read the linked article by Jonathan Starkey, you have to wonder if the proposed solutions can or will in any way address the broken budget. I think there’s no chance in hell that they will. First off, whose bright idea was it to create a bipartisan committee with at least as many R’s as D’s, with some of those D’s being Markell appointees? Uh, they’re the same as R’s. Oh, it was Markell’s idea, executed in an Executive Order he issued back in January. I guess he wants to assure that his legacy of kowtowing to his wealthy Greenville buds is locked in for decades.
Here are some of the ”solutions’ this bipartisan committee is considering, according to Starkey’s article…..
General Assembly Pre-Game Show: April 28-30, 2015
OK. Let’s put a stop to the idiocy that was the rumor that Gov. Markell would cut some kind of deal with the Rethugs on ‘Right to Work For Less’. It never made sense. Why? Because the bills won’t pass the General Assembly, and will not get a single D vote. Plus, the governor has little influence over the General Assembly any more. He would have zero if he made that move. ‘Multiple legislators’, Nancy? I call bullshit. Any legislator who would float that rumor should recognize that doing so makes it less likely, not more likely, that HB 50 would pass.
Yes, Monsignor Lavelle’s SB 54 is scheduled for ‘consideration’ in Wednesday’s Senate Labor & Industrial Relations Committee. Now, before you conspiracy theorists get your collective knickers in a bunch, here is the membership of that committee:
Chairman: Marshall
Members: Cloutier
Hocker
McBride
Peterson
Poore
4 D’s, 2 R’s, one of the R’s generally votes with labor. Now, do you really suppose that Jack Markell asked Marshall for a ‘solid’, and that Marshall agreed? Markell emasculated Marshall’s last minimum wage bill, and tried to privatize the Port of Wilmington over his objections. Use your heads, pipples. You’re better than this.
BREAKING: 50 Years For Viewing Disgusting Pictures?? Utterly Insane.
Breaking from the News-Journal: Former Tower Hill headmaster Christopher Wheeler was today sentenced to a 50-year sentence for having and viewing 25 pictures of kiddie porn on his computer. Two years for each picture.
Following the sentencing, the DAG said that Wheeler had been offered a 4-year sentence if he pled guilty, but he chose to go to a trial by judge.
So, let me get this straight…the AG’s office felt that 4 years was an acceptable term, otherwise they wouldn’t have offered it, but he gets 50 years instead.
Delaware General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up: Week of April 21-23, 2015
Common Corporate, Race To the Top, No Textbook Publisher Left Behind, these will be legacies of a lost decade-plus in education reform. Bloated bureaucracies full of bean-counters will hopefully shrink and vanish.
Make no mistake, while HB 50 is just one bill in one small state, it reflects a burgeoning movement nationally to reject the K-12 reform that was foisted on us by people with next to no experience in, you know, educating children.
Thinkers like Nicholas Kristof are already focusing on where our efforts would be best allocated in the post-reform era. Yes, the notion of reform was well-intended, still is, for that matter, in a time when there continue to be inequities in education. However, charter schools and one-size-fits-all testing have proven to help perpetuate and accelerate those inequities, as opposed to alleviating them. Which is what happens when there are huge piles of money thrown at the issue, and greedy corporations and individuals looking to pocket the proceeds. In fact, one could argue (and I will) that the most vocal proponents for this reform were those who (or in the case of Dubya, his family) stood to gain the most financially from the reforms.
HB 50(Kowalko) is important less for what it would do, than for what it represents. The bill serves as a reflection of the mounting dissatisfaction with both the disastrous education reform policies of the past decade and also the Bigfoot approach that this governor and his corporate comrade cum Secretary of Education have tried to impose/inflict on those with the nerve to fight back. “We may be wrong (although we’re not), but we have the power to crush you like a bug” does very little to win friends and influence people. With knowledgeable education-oriented legislators joining the likes of John Kowalko in the General Assembly recently (Kim Williams, Bryan Townsend, and Sean Matthews, among others), legislators are starting to understand how bad the current policies are. Plus, teachers, parents, and students have found their voices on these issues. Which is why getting HB 50 out of committee is/was important. There is also a bipartisan coalition forming on this issue, with many conservative legislators joining their progressive counterparts in support of HB 50. The question is whether the Chamber of Commerce types still have the numbers to outvote them. Might I point out that the Chamber of Commerce has embraced this disastrous reform going back to Phase One during the unlamented Carper years? If you support this bill, it is absolutely essential that you contact your legislators, especially, for now, your state representative. Kevin Ohlandt has done all the work for us, so click on this to get your specific marching orders. BTW, thanks, Kevin, for your contribution to the cause! Exceptional Delaware is an exceptional blog.
Delaware General Assembly Pre-Game Show: Tues., April 21, 2015
Something quite remarkable has happened over the past six months. So much so that I doubt that those most responsible for it even recognize what they’ve accomplished.
There is an emerging recognition that the state’s education policy is an unmitigated disaster that will, I believe, almost inevitably have to be reversed or, at least, deep-sixed.
An education policy that began with Jack Markell deciding to go all-in and do whatever it took to get that Race To the Top money.
Students, teachers, and parents have become victims of the Common Corporate Curriculum, and the only beneficiaries have been corporations peddling snake oil in the form of tests and texts, and the oversized education bureaucracy that Race To the Top funded. If the bureaucracy was a burger joint, it’d be called ‘240 Fat Guys’. The governor’s legacy on this issue is already sunk, but he can’t/won’t admit the inevitable. It is, after all, his legacy. Which is why legislators and emerging policy leaders are taking up the slack. First step is to make sure that the governor does no more harm before he exits. Now, if only Mike Matthews and Pandora would run for the General Assembly…
Before we refocus our attention from the Governor to the General Assembly, can someone explain to me why…four years after Markell signed the legislation, we still don’t have a single medical marijuana dispensary up and running in Delaware? This quote from Jonathan Starkey’s News-Journal article says it best:
“Why did he (Markell) sign the bill if he had no intentions of enacting it?”
Why, indeed. Incompetence or ideology? You decide.
BTW, today’s Al Show will be a Very Special Primal Scream Therapy Edition. So much bad stuff, so little time (10-12 noon). Now on 101.7 FM, as well as the traditional 1150 AM. Or, you can just tune in here.
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