Marshall’s uncowed.

Del. Bob Marshall has prefiled dumbass bill after dumbass bill after dumbass bill after dumbass bill this year — 31 thus far, and there’s no sign that he’s slowing down. (Here’s the RSS feed to keep up with his bills.) I’d pick apart these bills, but most of them are so patently ridiculous that logic doesn’t apply, and nobody’s going to disagree with me, anyhow. Most of them, if thought through for more than a fraction of a second, are obviously useless or actually harmful. Marshall’s just batshit insane, anyhow, so there’s no point talking about sense.

None of them will pass, anyhow — none of his colleagues takes him seriously. Marshall is the single most ineffective legislator in the General Assembly, with just a tiny percentage of his bills passing each year.

The DPVA should tie Marshall to every Republican in the House. Make them embrace him or reject him, but get it on the record. If they embrace him, that can be used against ’em all. If they (wisely) reject him, then dump lots of money into Bruce Roemmelt’s second run against Marshall in ’07. Marshall will go down like Dick Black.

Published by Waldo Jaquith

Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Char­lottes­­ville, VA, USA. more »

10 replies on “Marshall’s uncowed.”

  1. I agree with you about most of what this fella is proposing, but what is wrong with this one?

    “Safety belts in school buses. Requires school buses purchased by, or for use by, any school or school division on or after July 1, 2006, to be equipped with safety belts or safety belts and shoulder harnesses of types approved by the Superintendent of State Police. The Board of Education must adopt policies, guidelines, and regulations to ensure that all passengers, including the driver, wear these belts or harnesses or both, whenever the bus is in motion. However, a school bus driver may not be held personally liable for the failure of passengers to wear safety belts as required by the Board’s regulations.”

    I have always thought it insanity to require children to ride in carseats, and everyone else with seatbelts, unless folks are riding in a schoolbus. Did I miss the magical rule that makes schoolbusses exempt from accidents?

  2. And yet, he keeps kicking the butt of every bozo you guys put up, including (most recently) Bruce Roemmelt, whose most significant pre-election comments were his enthusiasm for that far-Left loon/liar Michael Moore.

  3. While it’s true that most of Marshall’s ridiculous bills never see the light of day, his latest filing — apparently a “Full Employment for Virginia Penises Act” — ought to be dragged out and exposed.

    I’d like to know where Mick Staton stands on the issue. And on the old Cosgrove miscarriage reporting requirement bill, too, while we’re at it.

    Staton, the son-in-law of recently trounced ex-Delegate Dick Black, is running to fill the Senate seat vacated by Bill Mims. We’ll need to know where Staton stands on backward-assed caveman legislation like this.

    Let him run on those issues here in what’s now David Poisson country.

  4. I have always thought it insanity to require children to ride in carseats, and everyone else with seatbelts, unless folks are riding in a schoolbus. Did I miss the magical rule that makes schoolbusses exempt from accidents?

    Every study that has ever been done on school bus safety has shown that installing seatbelts in buses drastically increases the injury rate, and modestly increases the death rate. For starters, kids don’t die in school bus accidents right now — it averages about 11 each year. It’s a ridiculously low death rate, particularly given the number of passenger-miles racked up on buses each year, which is in the billions. Without checking, I can guarantee you that way more kids choke to death on lollipops, have allergic reactions to legumes, or get their heads caught in the toilet. (I totally made that last one up.) The injury rate in accidents goes way up with seatbelts on buses. Why? Kids don’t wear the belts correctly. They wear them too high, above their hips, so an accident results in a snapped spine.

    Also, the seat belts make great weapons for kids pissed off at their seatmates — a thwack in the head with a half pound of aluminum isn’t pleasant. It sounds silly, but when added up across the whole nation, that’s a lot of head injuries.

    The school bus safety standard is “compartmentalization.” The idea is that each seat is padded behind and in front, so in case of an accident, the kid just bounces around in there, yielding very few injuries. When kids die in collisions, it’s generally because the vehicle is hit from the side, collapsing the school bus right where they’re sitting. A seat belt would do nothing to help there.

    I’m telling you all of this from memory, not because I’ve studied the topic, but because I once read an article about it a decade ago. I guess Marshall missed that article. But if I were going to file a bill requiring school bus safety belts, I’d probably look into it first. Doing for just a minute yields a couple of studies that demonstrate that both the U.S. and Canadian governments have determined that there ain’t no sense in putting seat belts in school buses.

  5. And yet, he keeps kicking the butt of every bozo you guys put up, including (most recently) Bruce Roemmelt, whose most significant pre-election comments were his enthusiasm for that far-Left loon/liar Michael Moore.

    “Keeps” and “every” overstates the case a bit, James. He’s had two Democratic challengers. Marshall has clearly been losing his mind over the years. We’ll keep running Bruce Roemmelt, and the voters will gradually realize that the man representing them is quite genuinely insane, and that’ll be that.

    Ah, the divide-or-join strategy is already working. I’ll mark you down as a Bob Marshall fan, James. :) I didn’t know that you were so in favor of big government. You learn new things every day, I guess.

  6. Wow, I had no idea. Here I was thinking that if seatbelts made kids safer in cars, the same must be true for buses. Thank you very much for this information, it makes me feel a lot better about my kids riding the bus. Just another example of why it pays to stop here everyday – you never know what you might learn. :-)

  7. > The DPVA should tie every Marshall to Republican in the House.

    shouldn’t this read something like, “The DPVA should tie Marshall to every Republican in the House” ?

    also, what’s the DPVA?

  8. D’oh — right you are, James. Fixed accordingly.

    Sorry about the abbreviation. It’s the Democratic Party of Virginia. I’ve tried to be better about not tossing around acronyms and abbreviations. It’s not just cryptic, but it’s also really obnoxious.

  9. Malena I could be very wrong about this, but I believe the physics of collision in a big vehicle like a bus are very different from that of a small car. I seem to recall that a collision in a big bus is not felt as much, so the padded seats are usually sufficient. Of course what this means when two large vehicle collide, I am not sure…

    In wider issues it is absolutely incomprehensible to me that anyone could vote for Marshall. He is clearly stating his stand on a variety of issues and his bills are a matter of public record. He does not resort to subterfuge to hide his history of lunatic bills – he stands by them proudly. So he does falsely take credit for transportation improvements he fought against, but he is at least open about his crazy bills on social issues and it baffles me that anyone would want him as their representative.

    Clearly not enough voters are paying attention, and I hope to correct that by 2007. I suspect most people who voted for him could not pick him out of a police lineup, and simply vote party line. Waldo’s suggestion that we try to get Republicans to clearly state wether they support him or not is a great one.

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