Queens Politician Proposes Stupid Law

Queens, New York assemblyman Rory Lancman charged out of the gate to propose stupid, stupid, stupid legislation in a knee-jerk response to an alleged incident involving a potentially horny socialist French politician and a New York City chambermaid.

According to NBC New York:

[Lancman] says he wants the state to require hotels to provide their housekeepers with an emergency "panic button" that would help protect them from sexual assaults on the job.

"We send hotel workers, housekeepers into rooms by themselves without any other staff, without any other security," Lancman said at a news conference Sunday outside the Sofitel Hotel, the site of Strauss-Kahn's alleged sexual assault of a hotel maid last week.

Lancman, who has presumably never owned a business of any significance, doesn't think that adding additional expense to a hotel's operation is a big deal:

He estimated a cost of $20 to $40 per device, though he said it would cost "significantly less" for hotels to buy in bulk.

Because politicians are notoriously schooled in that kind of stuff, you see. In unrelated news the Iraq War was only going to cost $80 billion and not $1+ trillion.

The Associated Press said a review of court documents and news reports found at least 10 other hotel housekeepers who say they've been attacked in the U.S. in the last three years.

Ten housekeepers claim they've been attacked in the last three years. That's 3.33 a year! To Rory Lancman, that's an epidemic worthy of legislation! Alert! Alert!

Labor groups said other cases are kept quiet because the victims are illegal immigrants or because hotels are wary of scaring off guests.

The solution to that being they cease being lawbreakers and become legal immigrants unafraid to report lawbreakers.

via Queens Pol Proposes Panic Button for Hotel Maids | NBC New York.