{"id":35336,"date":"2013-03-22T07:59:14","date_gmt":"2013-03-22T12:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=35336"},"modified":"2013-03-22T07:59:24","modified_gmt":"2013-03-22T12:59:24","slug":"paymar-above-the-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=35336","title":{"rendered":"Paymar: Above The Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

I went to the House Public Safety Finance committee hearings on the Paymar and Lesch gun bills last night.<\/p>\n

More on the event itself a little later.<\/p>\n

But I thought this bit was interesting.<\/p>\n

The hearings were scheduled for 5:30. \u00a0At around 4:45, House staff started passing out copies of an amendment that Paymar reportedly planned to propose for the bill. \u00a0Here’s the link to the amendment<\/a>. \u00a0Paymar – the committee chair – waived the Legislature’s new 24 hour waiting period on amendments to get it in for the hearings. \u00a0 He also passed the word that no public testimony would be taken.<\/p>\n

Recap: \u00a045 minutes before the committee hearings – which took place at 5:30PM on March 21<\/strong> – the DFL committee chair distributed an amendment that fundamentally changed the tenor of Rep. Lesch’s bill.<\/p>\n

Now take a look if you will at the time-stamp on the file. \u00a0I circled it, so that even I\u00a0<\/em>can’t miss it:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

9PM the night before. That’s right around 20 hours.<\/p>\n

So I have a few questions:<\/p>\n

Rules, Apparently, Are For Peasants<\/strong>: From the House permanent rules, section 6.22<\/a>:<\/p>\n

6.22 PUBLIC TESTIMONY. Public testimony from proponents and opponents must be allowed on every bill or resolution before a standing committee, division or subcommittee of the House.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Paymar’s amendment substantially changed Lesch’s bill, by adding a niggling background check restriction to a bill that largely focused on reporting information and sentencing criminals.<\/p>\n

How does this not rate public testimony?<\/p>\n

Ethics Are What The DFL Says They<\/strong> Are<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Paymar waived his party’s own rule on the waiting period for amendments to jam down a fundamentally bill-changing amendment, sitting on it for nearly a day after reneging on his “promise” to Rep. Hilstrom before dumping it outside the hearing room 45 minutes before the hearing.<\/p>\n

If only the ethics committee could hear about it.<\/p>\n

If Only We Had An Institution, Full Of Highly-Trained People With Years Of Experience Asking Questions And Who’ve Convinced Themselves That They Are A Monastic Elite Apart From Society With A Mission Of Keeping Institutions On The Straight And Narrow. \u00a0Perhaps With Printing Presses And Transmitters<\/strong>: \u00a0More on this later.<\/p>\n

Michael Paymar is going to attempt to jam down amendments wrecking perfectly good bills – like Hilstrom’s and, to an extent, Lesch’s – which are supported by a bipartisan majority of the House. \u00a0He’s going to do it because the DFL’s lotus-eating metrocrat pandits find guns in the hands of the plebeians distasteful.<\/p>\n

There’s really no other reason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went to the House Public Safety Finance committee hearings on the Paymar and Lesch gun bills last night. More on the event itself a little later. But I thought this bit was interesting. The hearings were scheduled for 5:30. \u00a0At around 4:45, House staff started passing out copies of an amendment that Paymar reportedly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,22,100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mn-legislature","category-victim-disarmament","category-your-papers-please"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35336"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35340,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35336\/revisions\/35340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}