Posts by El Somnambulo

Another week down, another 8-figure payout of taxpayer money transferred to the corporate giants. We're told that we have to do it, otherwise someone else will.  You see, the people who keep getting their pittance of health care cut, the state workers who have to beg for a pittance of a raise, they don't count. We don't have to do anything for them, they're lucky they get what we give them.  No, we need the big-paying jobs, or, to be accurate, the tiny fraction of those jobs that will remain, more than we need a more equitable and humane system.  Oh, and to go ever-so-slightly off-topic, our sleazy County Executive is gonna throw yet millions more of taxpayers' money at these extortionists. $7.5 mill for starters.  Our money going to pay the big corporations and their biggest earners.  That is what's known as a transfer of wealth.   BTW, all those Rethugs who publicly rended their garments in outrage over Gov. Markell's efforts to at least bring new industries to Delaware?  They all voted for both (so far) of these corporate bailouts.  They don't object to transfer of wealth, they just object to it not going to the usual suspects.  What this Governor and this General Assembly just did is pretty much similar to throwing money at the casinos...except that these jobs pay more.  More money for ever-diminishing returns. Our money. Yes, SB 200 (Blevins) passed the House and was immediately signed into law by the Governor Thursday.  Nobody even had to be late for their St. Patty's Celebrations.  Betcha there was some passin' 'o the green to go along with the wearin' o' the green that night.  Only people who got screwed? Delaware taxpayers.  And maybe an inebriated legislator and an appreciative lobbyist or two. Before I move on, I have a question for my County Council member.  These companies are staying, at least for now, whether or not the County hands them $7.5 mill of our money.  Could you at least please vote no against this unnecessary and unwarranted giveaway? Thanks for reading.  You, the reader, may want to call your Council member to express similar sentiments.

The proposed constitutional amendment mandating that $10 mill must go to Agriculture Lands Preservation annually did not come close to a 2/3 majority in the House.  20 Y, 17 N, 4 A. The only upstate D's to vote for the bill were Gerald Brady (?) and...Bryon Short (!).  Oh, did I mention that there are 8,000 Delaware Farm Bureau members? A cheap (it wasn't going to pass with or without his vote), politically expedient, and intellectually dishonest vote by the least progressive D candidate for Congress in Delaware. Guess there was no controversy surrounding SB 202 (Sokola) after all. Mitch Crane was right, the bill merely reflects the self-insured nature of the state and its school buses in this matter. Bill passed unanimously in Senate.

This entire session has been one giveaway after another to the corporate behemoths.  Thursday's session continued the trend with the Senate voting unanimously to fatten the corporate coffers (at the expense of the state's coffers) by $10.6 mill by FY 2019.  Look, I understand that we don't want to lose any more jobs, but the state has essentially become a one-trick pony in recent years.  And, for all that we've doled out in corporate welfare, we've only retained a small fraction of the jobs that once were the backbone of our economy.  And now the county is jumping on the bandwagon.  And all the public officials are praising each other for moving so swiftly to 'save' the paltry number of DuPont jobs that were 'saved'.  What is lacking is the 'vision thing', to quote Bush the Elder. Plus, a thoughtful discussion as to whether the millions we're tossing to the companies extorting us would be better spent elsewhere.  Thankfully, we've got John Carney bringing his inspiring vision to--uh, never mind.

We already know what won't be addressed by the returning General Assembly this week: Abolition of Delaware's death penalty. However, it's for the best of reasons.  It's quite possible that the United States Supreme Court has already sounded the, um, death knell for Delaware's capital punishment statute.  The ironies involved in this are dee-lish.  The Delaware legislative hardliners some twenty years ago decided that juries were sometimes too namby-pamby when it came to doling out the death penalty, so they decided to give the judges (who must come before the State Senate for  nominations and renominations) the exclusive life and death authority. Which is precisely why Delaware's statute appears to have run afoul of the recent Supreme Court ruling, which 'deemed unconstitutional part of a Florida statute that grants exclusively to judges the right to determine a sentence of death in capital cases'.  Delaware has the same language in its statute, which is why the Delaware Supreme Court has placed a moratorium on any capital case moving forward until it can review the statute and determine whether Delaware's statute can pass constitutional muster.