Delaware General Assembly Pre-Game Show: Tues., June 21, 2016
Welcome to a Very Special Primal Scream Edition of the Pre-Game Show. Time to cue my best Howard Beale/Howard Dean:
1. General Assembly Refusing to Stop Cops from Just Stealing Stuff.
This is on Patti Blevins and the Senate leadership. I don’t give a bleep what you or they think about Colin Bonini. We all know he’s unfit to be Governor (although, come to think of it, how much worse could he be than John Carney?). HowEVER, that’s a pathetic excuse to keep SB 222 buried in the Public Safety Committee. Blevins has pulled a ‘Schwartzkopf’ here by putting the bill in an inhospitable committee. Besides, the bill’s other two prime sponsors are D’s (Townsend and Baumbach). I mean, check out the sponsors on the bill. As bipartisan as it gets. There is only one reason why this bill has been buried: The cops who have been doing the stealing don’t want it. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Here is the bill’s synopsis:
Civil forfeiture laws represent one of the most serious assaults on private property rights in the nation today. Under civil forfeiture, police and prosecutors can seize your car or other property, sell it and use the proceeds to fund agency budgets—often without so much as charging you with a crime. This Act protects individual liberty and property rights by standardizing forfeitures across all crimes, simplifying procedures, and addressing counterproductive incentives in the law that distort policing priorities. Importantly, this Act does not change the authority of law enforcement to seize property suspected of being associated with crime or limit in any way prosecutors’ ability to charge and prosecute suspected criminals. Moreover, it ensures that those individuals proven guilty of a crime do not keep the fruits of their crime. In doing so, it strikes the right balance between the individual property rights and public safety.
Committee Chair Bob Marshall must bring this bill up in committee. He seems to be reverting to Tom Sharp circa 1988, which is an especially bad role model. There appear to be enough votes to release it if Marshall and Sen. McBride vote for it, especially since Townsend and Lawson (!) are on the bill as co-sponsors. That’s 4 out of 6. It’s time to chip away at the police state that Delaware has become. As for John Carney, maybe he could exercise some leadership and come out in favor of this bill–except (a) he’s still not an official candidate and (b) you can bet that this empty suit is sure to be in mindless (redundant, I know) thrall to law enforcement. Failure to work this bill is a fucking disgrace.
2. Remember the Minimum Wage Bill?
Jack Markell, the State Chamber, and Bryon Short and his Mindless Minions on the House Business Lapdog Committee are hoping that you’ve forgotten. This is an exact replay of the previous paltry minimum wage increase: It passes the Senate on a timely basis after having been emasculated by Jack Markell, Speaker Pete puts it in an inhospitable committee, idiots like Andria Bennett (she’s every bit as useless as her hack father John Viola) quote Chamber talking points as a reason why they can’t even vote to release the fucking bill (I apologize for the cursing today, I generally try to stay away from it, but this is the Very Special Primal Scream Edition, dammit!) to the floor. We’re not talking a $15 minimum wage here, we’re talking a phased-in minimum wage over several years to something like 10 bucks. Never mind that we now have empirical evidence that minimum wage increases have generally been a positive where they’ve already been implemented. Andria Bennett and her (wait for it) ilk will take talking points from the Chamber over facts every single time.
Before I leave this topic, I might as well expose Sean Barney for the phony that he is. I got a campaign letter from the putative candidate. The very first ‘accomplishment’ that he cites is the following:
‘As a former policy director to Governor Markell, I helped raise the minimum wage…’
That, my friends, is a demonstrable lie. Let’s take a trip in the Wayback Machine, shall we? Not only did the bill not come out of the governor’s office, Markell’s only role in the previous minimum wage debate was to successfully emasculate what started out as a decent minimum wage bill. Here’s what I wrote back in 2013:
While we were busy celebrating the passage and signing into law of Delaware’s Marriage Equality Act, the House effectively killed off legislation providing a modest hike in Delaware’s minimum wage. Make no mistake: the killing of SB 6 was deliberate and planned, and the co-conspirators were all Democrats: Speaker Pete Schwartzkopf, Rep. Bryon Short, and Gov. Jack Markell.
Here’s how it happened. After bargaining in what he thought was good faith with Gov.
WalkerMarkell, Sen. Robert Marshall agreed to amendments that significantly reduced the impact of SB 6. Specifically, he agreed to push back the effective date, to decouple subsequent rate increases from the rate of inflation, and to lower the amount of the increase. Markell praised the eviscerated finished product, and said he could support the bill. Which was the last ‘support’ he provided. And Speaker Pete got the memo loud and clear: Kill the bill!And he did. How? By assigning it to the House Business Lapdog Committee, aka the House Economic Development/Banking/Insurance/Commerce Committee, instead of to the House Labor Committee. Chaired by Rep. Bryon Short. You may recall that this is precisely the same tactic that former Speaker Bob Gilligan employed when Markell wanted him to kill the bill last session. And, for the second straight session, Short did not disappoint. SB 6 was passed in the Senate on March 21. It did not receive its hearing in the committee until May 8, and that was deliberate. Short allowed the bill to languish until the last day that, according to House rules, it had to be considered in committee. Many of you are aware of the full-court press opposition led by the respective Chambers of Commerce in the past two weeks. By delaying consideration of the bill, the committee chair enabled that campaign to have optimal effect. To the point where empty tabula rasas like Andria Bennett were reciting Chamber talking points verbatim in opposition to as Democratic a bill as you’ll ever find.
It was only after a massive public outcry that the bill got worked at all in 2014. Which is why Delaware’s minimum wage is now…$8.25. Eight fucking twenty-five. If Sean Barney played any role at all, it was in negotiating the evisceration of the original legislation. The guy’s a liar and a phony.
3. Bryon Short: Government for Sale for $20K.
This whole thing about cutting ‘bureaucratic red tape’? That’s only if you’ve got big bucks. I know, I know, that should come as no surprise in Delaware (Can you say ‘Chemours’?). But, seriously. This is Orwellian. ‘All projects are created equal, some more equal than others’. This is not about those who will pay, it’s about those whose timelines will be pushed even further back. If the process needs to be streamlined for some, then it can and should be streamlined for all. BTW, my favorite snippet from the linked News-Journal article?:
“I’ve certainly had a number of people express to me that they don’t want to do projects here because of the lengthy process,” said state Rep. Bryon Short, D-Highland Woods, who is the bill’s primary sponsor.
Short’s comments echo a common complaint from business groups and developers. Neither Short nor officials for the Delaware Homebuilders Association, which is pushing the bill, had any statistics comparing approval times in Delaware to other jurisdictions.
Short’s just doing what Short always does: Taking business lobbyists’ word for it. And their campaign contributions.
4. Who Better to Scuttle a Gun Purchase Background Check Bill Than a…Gun Range Owner?
OK, kids, this is your job for the day. There is an important criminal background check bill on today’s Senate Agenda. HB 325 (Osienski):
closes a loophole to our gun background check laws. The current loophole allows for guns to be given to a potential purchaser if the background check is delayed for 3 days or more. In some cases a gun is given to a person who should not be in possession of a firearm. This leads to law enforcement having to retrieve a gun from a person prohibited if the background check provides that a person should not have a gun.
The bill passed the House by a 22-17 margin. So, a close vote is almost inevitable in the Senate. Call your State Senator.
Standing in the way, though, are a series of, pardon the expression, ‘killer amendments’ sponsored by Sen. Dave Lawson, who just happens to own his own gun range. Frankly, passage of any amendment, whether it’s considered a ‘friendly’ amendment or not, could threaten a possible second House vote. So I hope that the bill passes unamended.
And I’ll close with this question for the Democrats: Are you seriously gonna let Senator Lawson run unopposed this year? He ALMOST lost to a late-starting opponent last time around. He’s vulnerable. Of course, that would assume that there’s a functioning party apparatus in Kent County. My bad.
I may return with the more traditional format tomorrow. Suffice it to say that, after eight years of doing this, I have no intention of trying to slog my way through the ‘Carney Years’. Like sands through the hourglass…
El Som has it right on Sean Barney and the minimum wage…”liar and a phony.”
Politics 101: If you were standing in the room and something happens, you claim it.
As if Barney is the only one doing this…..
My issue is not his claiming it, as some here seem so obsessed about it. But how terrible the increase actually was.
That’s my point as well. What he’s claiming credit for is the evisceration of what would have been a decent minimum wage increase had Markell/Barney not shredded it.
I just want people to know what he’s really claiming credit for.
That’s not what he is claiming credit for — and he is specifically claiming to have helped get what did pass to pass. It wasn’t the original bill, but you already documented the headwinds this bill faced, but somehow the Governor’s Policy Director was supposed to do something different? His campaign page does note that he is in favor of a $15 minimum wage, so how come he doesn’t get credit for the stance he is officially allowed to take?
And while we are at the questions, I want to know — in detail — how Sean Barney as the Governor’s Policy Director was supposed to do something other than what his boss sent him to get done?
I’ll wait, but there won’t be an answer — just more Sean Barney Derangement Syndrome.
You’re the one with Sean Barney Derangement Syndrome. Again.
There were enough votes to pass the bill in the Senate. But Markell let it be known that he wouldn’t sign the bill as it was. So Marshall agreed to ‘to push back the effective date, to decouple subsequent rate increases from the rate of inflation, and to lower the amount of the increase’. Not to get the bill passed, but to earn the Governor’s support. But then the Governor went back on his word. There were enough votes to pass the bill in the House, but Pete sent it to a business-friendly committee where it languished for eight months.
Sean Barney is now taking credit for helping to pass a minimum wage increase in his role as the Governor’s policy director. What, exactly, did he do? Did he engineer the ‘compromise’ with Sen. Marshall?
The bottom line is that all that Markell did was make the bill far worse than it could have been. Barney has claimed credit for it, and now he owns it.
And here we are two years later, you’re still peddling the meme that Barney is somehow a progressive, and you still don’t have anything to back it up.
It may have been a better bill, but it is still an increase in the minimum wage. Better than before bur certainly not perfect. And if you want to know what he did to get the bill passed, why wouldn’t you ask? Because I suspect you are the only person here who doesn’t know what the Governor’s Policy Director does. Or who the Governor’s Policy Director reports to.
And I am still waiting to hear how Barney could have derailed his boss’ wishes to get the original bill passed.
Barney got the PDD endorsement in 2014, so you can stand down with your bullshit Progressive Kingmaker crap.
That may be the most pathetic response you have ever written.
It was a worse bill than it could have been because the Governor and Sean Barney made it so. It is not up to me to determine what the fuck Sean Barney did. I didn’t mention his name back in 2013 and 2014 b/c I didn’t know that he had anything to do with the bill.
I didn’t mention it THIS year until I got a letter dated June 9 from Sean Barney himself in which he claimed credit for helping to raise the minimum wage. If you don’t like the fact that Barney was called on that claim, that’s your problem. HE took credit. I gave him neither credit nor blame up until that point.
It’s obvious why he wants to claim credit. Most Democrats support an increase in the minimum wage. He wants to make it seem that he’s right there with most Democrats. It therefore is only fair to point out that Markell and (by his own claims) Barney sought to gut and largely succeeded in eviscerating the 2014 minimum wage increase. It frankly is ludicrous not to point this out to the voters. I don’t know what your problem is other than SBDS.
As to “Barney got the PDD endorsement in 2014, so you can stand down with your bullshit Progressive Kingmaker crap”, all I can say is temper, temper.
……because touting a half-assed neutered bill that Markell didn’t want to having anything to do with is……winning!
I am not disappointed in him for being involved because as a policy guy, he is on “Team Markell” and marches to Markells orders. I find it troubling that he is touting this as his moment of triumph somehow when the team he was on delayed and destroyed meaningful minimum wage increases. It’s inside baseball B.S. that they masses will never know or hear about but those who know how it went down cannot call this a success.
And if that is his moment of awesomeness, then no thank you.
Right. It’s a deliberate attempt to mislead the voters.
Is anyone besides Cassandra having difficulties in understanding this?
If you could get our of your Sean Barney Derangement Syndrome to answer this question, you would have made a point.
Otherwise, stop with your more progressive than thou Bullshit. There were people responsible for derailing this thing and it was not Barney.
I believe Barney. Many of those legislators couldn’t count $15.00 without the Governor’s staff helping them.
Please. I’m not playing this phony ‘if you don’t answer my very specific question, you’re full of shit’ game any more. Had way too much of that during the Hillary/Bernie Wars. These word games are, or at least used to be, beneath you.
Sean Barney has claimed credit for helping to pass a minimum wage bill. He is claiming credit for one reason: He wants to make political hay out of it. Which is why he put it in a letter along with an envelope and a plea for funds.
His claim is fraudulent. Markell, who has publicly said that he is ‘proud’ of the bill, did everything he could to weaken it significantly, and weaken it he did. Sean Barney is taking similar credit. It doesn’t even matter what Barney did/didn’t/could/couldn’t do.
And it sure as bleep (enough cursing for one day) isn’t up to me to try to figure that out. I didn’t tout ‘helping to pass a minimum wage increase’ in a political brochure as a singular accomplishment.
You can rattle on all you’d like from now on. I can’t make the point any clearer. And I think, by this time, any reasonable reader could figure out that he made that claim in order to appear that he worked very hard to help enact a meaningful minimum wage increase that most Democrats could support.
The claim is fraudulent and the facts do not bear this out.
This whole argument is kind of pointless. No one I know who worked in the General Assembly in 2013-14 even knew that Sean Barney was the Governor’s Policy Director. The consensus is he didn’t do much of anything on minimum wage or anything else.
Being “policy director” means … what exactly? Are you setting policy or getting it passed? Are you doing high-level think work & planning, or attending to the tactical nuts & bolts of legislative hand-holding & lobbying? Who’s the staff you’re directing – kids in their mid-20s who have a few years working in Leg Hall or actual respected policy experts?