Gridlock is Good

Via this piece against the implementation of a Value-Added Tax (ie; "A VAT is a terrible idea if it triggers bigger government, and a VAT is a bad idea if it merely finances bigger government."), I came across the below from a decade-old interview with Milton Friedman. It was 2000 and we had a budget surplus. Why?

Milton Friedman: The...reason you have a surplus today, in my opinion, the credit for that has to be given overwhelmingly to gridlock.

Peter Robinson: To gridlock?

Milton Friedman: If you had had a Democratic House and Senate, as well as a Democratic president, you would not have a surplus today in my opinion. They would have spent it. Similarly if you had had a Republican president as well as a Republican House and Senate, I doubt that there would have been a surplus today. Because they would either have spent it or had tax reductions.

Peter Robinson: So when President Clinton steps forward to take his bows, you don't applaud at all?

Milton Friedman: Well, I applaud. He provided gridlock.

Peter Robinson: Okay, you applaud but for a different reason than the one he supposes.

Milton Friedman: The winning thing that really contributed to our successful economy over recent years is that the government has stayed out pretty much, with the White House and the Congress and the Senate haven't done much.

Seems like the last ten years have pretty much proven him right.

On the Hook, One Way or Another

Local journalist Ted Nesi has moved from the Providence Business News to WPRI.com and is maintaining a column there (although they're calling it a "blog"). One sample from a couple of weeks ago has been nagging at me:

The Daily Beast is out this week with one of its link-drawing listicles — "The Most Screwed States" — and guess who they say is the most screwed of all? You guessed it — good ol' Rhode Island. ...

But those numbers are also very misleading — and more than a little bit alarmist.

Nesi's first step is to update the numbers cited in the article, which adjusts our debt-to-GDP ratio in a little bit healthier a direction. But his next point, which relates to Andrew's commentary about state bonds, seems like it must be ignoring something:

Rhode Island taxpayers are not on the hook for the state's entire $8.9 billion in debt. In fact, we're on the hook for less than half of it. The reason is because a big chunk of that borrowing is what's known as "conduit debt."

Conduit debt is basically when the state goes out and borrows money on behalf of someone else — nonprofits like Brown University or Rhode Island Hospital, or individuals via state agencies like RISLA and Rhode Island Housing. Going through the state makes it easier and cheaper for those entities to borrow money.

Reading the article, one gets the impression that the state's involvement in conduit debt is less than superficial. If that were the case, however, then why would it be true that lenders make the borrowing process "easier and cheaper" when the state is involved? Nesi should be a little more careful with his language: The taxpayer is "on the hook" but is trusting the recipients of the borrowed money to pay it back — sort of like the federal government trusted mortgagees through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to pay for their houses.

Just as significant is the incentive system that conduit loans set up. Particularly when it comes to organizations — perhaps, although I lack the time to confirm, including the City of Central Falls — the state's interest in the health of its sub-borrowers could lead to special arrangements with tax dollars to enable them to pay back the debt before it officially defaults to the state.

In other words, conduit debt essentially makes the borrowers quasi state agencies paying the debt through their own revenue sources — no different than fees and other revenue that state departments take in — for the term of the loan. Perhaps they shouldn't be incorporated into lists tallying annual state debt payments, for example, but it surely shouldn't be written out of consideration.

And whatever the case, for all of the adjustments that Nesi makes, he still only manages to improve Rhode Island's debt problem from worst in the country to seventh or tenth worse (depending whether one looks at income or population). Not a comfort, especially considering that we tie with the collapsing state of California.

Small Cuts Credited, Huge Windfall Ignored

This article, by Neil Downing, is a bit hard to take:

Despite a recession, record floods and high unemployment, Rhode Island managed at least one achievement this year — a state government budget surplus.

Preliminary figures posted Wednesday show that the state recorded a $17.7-million surplus for the year ended June 30, even though it began that year with a $62.3-million deficit.

The article goes on to meander through elected officials and bureaucrats crowing about the hard work that they've done to trim the budget in difficult times. This part comes almost as an unrelated tidbit toward the end (emphasis added):

The state could use the surplus should there be a budget deficit for the year that ends June 30, 2011, he said.

But if there is a surplus for that year, too, the state could use the money to deal with what is scheduled to be a budget deficit of about $320 million for the year that ends June 30, 2012.

That is when the federal government is scheduled to pull the plug on the extra aid it has been doling out to states to help them get through the recession.

There's something pitiful about state officials' slapping themselves on the back for fiscal-management prowess based on a tentative $17 million surplus when a higher form of government is shoveling hundreds of millions in future-taxpayer money to them through the back door. It's a bit like a glutton's claiming success in his diet because he skipped the sorbet in a ten-course meal.

Bonds, Morals, and Conservatism

On last night's Matt Allen Show, Andrew touched on the nature of conservatism and the trustworthiness of the General Assembly when it comes to moral obligations to pay debts. Stream by clicking here, or download it.

What is a "Moral Obligation Bond"?

If you see the words "moral obligation" being repeated in statements and news reports related to the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation's loan guarantee program with 38 Studios (like this one from Jim Baron of the Pawtucket Times, or this one from Ted Nesi of WPRI-TV (CBS 12)), there is a specific reason why: there actually are financial instruments called "moral obligation bonds" that are distinct from "general obligation bonds" and, according to a statement from RI General Treasurer Frank Caprio, that are being used to finance the 38 Studios deal.

The difference between moral obligation bonds and general obligation bonds is that moral obligation bonds do not involve a full-faith-and-credit promise by the government to use its sovereign powers (e.g. its taxation powers) to raise the revenue needed to pay off the bondholders. The basic concept is explained in The Financial History of the United States, written by Jerry W. Markham...

Moral obligation bonds were introduced by Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York in the 1960s...[The] idea was that public corporations could be created that would issue housing or other bonds backed by income from the projects being financed, rather than from the state's taxes or other revenues. This avoided the necessity of obtaining voter approval of the bonds.

In fact, with moral obligation bonds, the government doesn't really promise to pay off the bondholders at all; that's why it's called a moral obligation (I'll throw it over to the ethicists, to decide if moral obligation should be considered more or less binding than legal obligation). There are, however, some rules that are supposed to be followed, regarding reserve funds to be used to pay off a moral obligation bond. Here is a brief description from the website of the Council of Development Finance Agencies...

Moral obligation bonds do not carry the full faith and credit pledge of the obligor (i.e. state or locality). Rather, the moral obligation requires the issuer to maintain a debt service reserve fund at a specified reserve requirement, typically maximum annual debt service, and report any deficiencies that arise to an appropriate official of state or local government. The official then is required to request an appropriation from the legislative body to make up any shortfall. Since there is no legal requirement to make the appropriation, timely payment depends on the obligor’s willingness to support the debt.

This newfound knowledge (at least to me) of "moral obligation bonds" leads me to ask if part of the initial wave of opposition to the 38 Studios deal, which came from many sources, was rooted in the fact that using instruments that are supposed to be paid for using future income seems an odd choice for guaranteeing a loan, where money will only be needed if the future income is not realized.

Or am I missing a step in how the chain of finance would work?

Don't Let the Bureaucrats Bite

Cause:

Bedbugs, a common household pest for centuries, all but vanished in the 1940s and '50s with the widespread use of DDT. But DDT was banned in 1972 as too toxic to wildlife, especially birds. Since then, the bugs have developed resistance to chemicals that replaced DDT.

Also, exterminators have fewer weapons in their arsenal than they did just a few years ago because of a 1996 Clinton-era law that requires older pesticides to be re-evaluated based on more stringent health standards. The re-evaluations led to the restrictions on propoxur and other pesticides.

Effect:

Bedbugs, infesting U.S. households on a scale unseen in more than a half-century, have become largely resistant to common pesticides. As a result, some homeowners and exterminators are turning to more hazardous chemicals that can harm the central nervous system, irritate the skin and eyes or even cause cancer. ...

... authorities around the country have blamed house fires on people misusing all sorts of highly flammable garden and lawn chemicals to fight bedbugs. Experts also warn that some hardware products — bug bombs, cedar oil and other natural oils — claim to be lethal but merely cause the bugs to scatter out of sight and hide in cracks in walls and floors.

The government transformation of supposedly too-popular station wagons into too-popular SUVs comes to mind.

Now will come the public cry for widespread use of DDT, where limited, judicious use might have prevented the problem in the first place.

The Confusion of Success with the Meaning of Life

Some strains of Darwinian secularism are speckled throughout with signs of the mansions and vast estates of their most prominent promoters. Such appears to be the case with Matt Ridley's philosophy, as presented in George Gilder's review of his book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves:

Reason, to Ridley's mind, impels us relentlessly forward and upward. Religion, on the other hand, he sees as a reactionary obstacle to growth, progress, and even morality. He cites, for example, the indignation of Israel's prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, along with Homer, against the pride of the Phoenician traders as typical rants of reactionary traditionalists against the creators of wealth.

Instead — echoing his previous books on the evolution of virtue and the superiority of sexual reproduction to reduplicative cloning — Ridley maintains that moral codes naturally evolve from the rise of catallaxy. Cultures that reach out to immigrants and new ideas gain cultural and genetic innovation. As wealth grows, population growth relents; women instead release their energies into the marketplace.

Reason does not have a self-contained direction; it is dependent on circumstances. To those not living on the proceeds of best-selling books, reason alone may very well lead to the conclusion that the world is cold, unfair, and irrational, and life utterly pointless. Religion, in such circumstances, can reorder the individual's sense of reason toward productive ends.

This is no linguistic nitpicking; it is a thematic problem with analyses such as Ridley's. Reason is what allows humankind to take evolution into its own hands in ways broad and discrete, but it requires a larger principle to give it direction. The reference to "immigration and new ideas" is a perfect example: Such intermingling is only fruitful where it provides new perspective on existing principles, and the application of human reason must begin with an assessment of what is worth preserving and what is dangerously attractive. It supposes too much correspondence between cultural evolution and biological evolution to assume a parallel process of "good decisions" through trial and error judged by rates of survival.

As I'm able, I'm reading a book titled The Art Instinct by Denis Dutton, in which the author strives to argue that art is both something more than, say, the weaving of bird nests and something growing out of human evolution. So thoroughly dedicated to the principle of genetic development as a human determinant is Dutton that, in one passage, he gives the impression that he believes that it took a genetic mutation for mankind to cease jumping from cliffs. Those disinclined to such behavior survived, while the other perished. But surely it wouldn't have taken too advanced a brain to notice a bloody lifeless pulp at the bottom of a high drop and to conclude that jumping would not be wise and, moreover, to warn others of that finding.

Such is the function of reason. Even so, a precondition of its application is the principle that it is better to live than to plummet to death. That brings us back to Gilder's review:

That a secular-feminist society, feeding on hedonic incentives, can ultimately sustain a functional national defense capable of standing up to the Vandals and Goths of the 21st century is yet to be proven, but the portents are unpromising. Europe is dismantling its military, while the U.S. increasingly regards its own chiefly as an arena for sex-role gaming.

Cultural innovations may benefit individuals for a period of time, but what is supposed to set human beings apart is our ability to foresee pitfalls and to step around them and to carry non-biological lessons from the past that tell us which paths are likely to be perilous. We do so through mechanisms of religion and tradition.

John Robitaille (And Clearly John Robitaille) on Today's 38 Studios Development

As of 8:45 this evening, Katherine Gregg's 7-to-7 item on today's developments in the 38 Studios deal contains what appears to be a typographical echo...

Urging them both to cease their attempts to "interfere'' with the $75 million loan guarantee agreement with Schilling's 38 Studios, Carcieri said: "Businesses and the bond market should not be subject to political posturing. The attitudes and positions taken by Mr. Caprio and Mr. Chafee serve only to undermine the positive economic development steps the state has taken in recent years."

He also defended the deal, citing the Economic Development Corporation's unanimous vote "to move forward with the 38 Studios deal,'' after "months of due diligence.''

"It is a gross overstatement to imply that the Job Creation Guaranty Act reflects poorly on the state's financial management or could have an adverse impact on the state's bond rating. The fact is that a loan guarantee bond of this size or type has no impact on the state's general obligation or its bond rating,'' he asserted.

"It's obvious that Linc Chafee and Frank Caprio are anti-business and do not understand economic development. They are sending a 'keep out' message to any businesses that might consider moving to Rhode Island. With their opposition to the 38 Studio loan guaranty they are killing jobs and hurting Rhode Island families."

And his former communications director John Robitaille, the endorsed Republican candidate for governor said: "It's obvious that Linc Chafee and Frank Caprio are anti-business and do not understand economic development. They are sending a 'keep out' message to any businesses that might consider moving to Rhode Island...They are killing jobs and hurting Rhode Island families."

Despite rumors perhaps circulating amongst MSM journalists and their editors, all Republicans don't sound alike. According to representatives from the Robitaille campaign, the bolded quote is theirs; the prior quotes are from Governor Carcieri.

38 Studios Loan Guarantee: the General Treasurer Pivots, Then Switches to Offense

Further to Andrew's post. Remember that it was just last month that the G.T. was telling Ian Donnis that he favors the Schilling deal.

Now, however,

R.I. General Treasurer Frank T. Caprio said Tuesday he is attempting to block the state’s $75 million loan guarantee promised to Curt Schilling’s video game company, urging the rating agencies reviewing the deal to hold off until a new administration is in office.

Caprio, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, said he voiced concerns about the loan guarantee to Moody’s Investors Service on Monday and to Standard & Poor’s on Tuesday morning. Both agencies have been commissioned by the state and Schilling’s 38 Studios to issue bond ratings on the deal for institutional investors.

Jeepers, he's mucking around with the bond rating agencies.

Look, no question, this is a bad idea. The loan guarantees issued recently to 38 Studios and other companies should be the last ones issued by the state. We cannot substitute taxpayer funded loan guarantees for the good business climate that the General Assembly inexplicably refuses to create. So I'm pleased that anyone, with or without a bully pulpit, would speak out against this arrangement.

What's confusing is the G.T.'s volte face. Keep in mind that this is his area of expertise. Wasn't he well positioned to examine and understand all aspects of this guarantee before he gave the thumbs up to Ian D? So what has changed in the last thirty days that this went from a deal for which the state should do "everything in a top-shelf fashion" to "a risky moral obligation for the state, which could adversely affect the state’s bond rating"?

Ken Block, on Frank Caprio's Move in the 38 Studios Saga

In the course of an interview with Moderate party Gubernatorial Candidate Ken Block, I had the opportunity to get Mr. Block's immediate reaction to the news that General Treasurer and Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Frank Caprio had taken steps today to prevent the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation loan-guarantee deal with 38 Studios from being implemented...

"I've been firmly and emphatically against the 38 Studios deal right from its announcement. Frank has been all over the map on it...He's apparently has gone directly to the ratings agencies and has been stirring the pot with them. I don't know if Frank has overstepped any boundaries or not, in his formal capacity, as either a citizen or as a Treasurer..."

Audio: 27 sec

"For me, it's been abundantly clear from day 1 that this deal was the wrong deal for Rhode Island. It's unfortunate. I'm not sure we can unring the bell. I'm not sure that we should unring the bell, because if a state begins reneging on deals, that could have a negative impact on other deals you might do with other entities down the line..."

Audio: 34 sec

"I know that I'm still adamantly against the deal, but will anybody do a deal with us in the future, not being able to be sure that the deal is going to go through?...I wish that Frank was clearer all the way along. Like I said before, he's been all over the map in terms of where he is. He's against it today, we'll see what happens tomorrow..."

Audio: 35 sec

Katherine Gregg has details on the steps taken by Treasurer Caprio, at the Projo's 7-to-7 newsblog.

Ian Donnis of WRNI radio's On Politics blog has extended reaction from RI Governor Donald Carcieri.

Even Unto the Primaries

It's hard enough to get people motivated about learning about and voting for General Assembly candidates in the general election; the primaries require a whole 'nother level of commitment, but just as important, in some cases. I bring that up because Jim Hummel recently noted that a North Kingstown candidate running in the Republican primary has appeared in his investigative reporting before:

Three years ago North Kingstown's school superintendent was forced out by the school committee under a cloud of controversy. The state Department of Education determined his administration improperly spent nearly a quarter of a million dollars of restricted special education grant money. Now, James Halley is back, asking the voters of North Kingstown to send him to the General Assembly.

Apart from the risk of new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss legislators on an individual basis, such controversies can create weak links for broader initiatives, like the Clean Slate campaign for Republican and independent candidates. The corruptibility of public office is already too great a concern even without candidates with a record.

One Workforce for the Price of Two

Providence real estate agent Mark Van Noppen notes the numerical consequence of one aspect of the city's labor practices:

Not a bad gig: Become a Providence firefighter at age 20, work the 23 years required to collect a pension and retire at 43. But Providence taxpayers — its property owners — have to pay a pension to that retired 43-year-old for at least 20 years more than they should. There are 2,905 retirees in the system. City councilors say that there about 250 firefighters waiting only for the full passage of their contract before retiring.

The city now pays for more than two health-insurance plans for every full-time permanent worker still on the job. Try running a business with that anchor round your neck!

He closes by noting that local politicians appear willing to let this train run the state right off a cliff, rather than muster the will to make dramatic corrections. As I've long been arguing, the gravy coalition may have so strong a grip on the levers of power that its constituencies simply outnumber those who live and die by the economic health of the state, creating the self-reinforcing conclusion that those who wish to strive and thrive do best just to leave.

In that way, public discussion of what reforms would be reasonable wallows in the shallows of "don't touch mine." Why, for example, shouldn't it be the case that pensions and retiree healthcare starts at a certain age no matter the year that an employee transitions out of his or her job? The fact that firefighting, for example, takes its toll on the mind and the body shouldn't mean second careers must be fully underwritten for those who've put in their time with public service. Go on and enter that new phase of life, but you'll still have to wait until a minimum age before you're considered "retired" for pension and public healthcare purposes.

Even to make such suggestions is considered a hostile attack, and too few Rhode Islanders will dare to come to their defense for reforms ever to be seriously entertained, even, ironically, if those expecting the fantastic deals will ultimately see them undermined by their own weight.

An Argument for a Burqa Ban

The Islamic practice of women's veiling, extending to the absurd and offensive burqa, presents difficult questions for the West. Who are we, we wonder, to trample other cultures voluntarily perpetuated? Worse yet is the question of whether a society can stop intolerance once it has granted itself permission to discriminate against that which it finds offensive.

Yet, journalist Claire Berlinski argues that veiling itself tends to be a metastasizing intolerance:

... the burqa must be banned. All forms of veiling must be, if not banned, strongly discouraged and stigmatized. The arguments against a ban are coherent and principled. They are also shallow and insufficient. They fail to take something crucial into account, and that thing is this: If Europe does not stand up now against veiling — and the conception of women and their place in society that it represents — within a generation there will be many cities in Europe where no unveiled woman will walk comfortably or safely. ...

The debate in Europe now concerns primarily the burqa, not less restrictive forms of veiling, such as the headscarf. The sheer outrageousness of the burqa makes it an easy target, as does the political viability of justifying such a ban on security grounds, particularly in the era of suicide bombings, even if such a justification does not entirely stand up to scrutiny. But the burqa is simply the extreme point on the continuum of veiling, and all forced veiling is not only an abomination, but contagious: Unless it is stopped, the natural tendency of this practice is to spread, for veiling is a political symbol as well as a religious one, and that symbol is of a dynamic, totalitarian ideology that has set its sights on Europe and will not be content until every woman on the planet is humbled, submissive, silent, and enslaved.

To be sure, the United States is nowhere near such a point, but even here, the intellectual dynamic exposed by the questions has relevance. Neither the Constitution nor the principle of tolerance should be a suicide pact, and sometimes it may be the case that one side in a cultural battle will inevitably prevail and wipe out the very rules of competition that enables such thorough pluralism. There may be no rational reason for veiling to win over liberty, from an enlightened standpoint, but it is utterly predictable of human beings to behave irrationally and to rationalize.

Berlinski hits the core of the matter when she asserts that there is no such "thing as a neighborhood where the veil is the cultural norm and yet no judgment is passed upon women who do not wear it." In agreement with her subsequent assertion that "our culture's position on these questions is morally superior," one is inclined to suggest that we let those neighborhoods pass judgment, and dismiss them when they do so. Provided no violence transpires and the law does not ultimately flip from allowing the practice to imposing it, we can expect no legal shield against interpersonal judgment. And if the particular neighborhood in which the shifting attitudes is a concern, then we must individually fight the cultural fight.

The concern, ultimately, is that the West lacks the confidence to pass its own judgment when the rule isn't written into the law. There's a tendency — emanating from our "nation of laws" mentality — to feel as if anything not codified into law is too ambiguous to form so strong a personal or group opinion about that we impose compliance as a condition of our personal good will. The foundation of that self-doubting ideology is clear: it gains the upper hand in the intrawestern culture war if the law demarks legitimate judgment and values are banned from the "whereas" clauses of legislation.

The fatal flaw, however — the dangerous risk — is that the shallowness of a libertine society won't form the basis of adequate cultural confidence to defend against foreign principles that don't begin with the assumption of tolerance.

How Central Falls's Property Tax Rate Nearly Doubled Year Over Year

There's been some question, in the comments sections, about differing tax rates reported for property in Central Falls. John Hill explains what happened:

Last year, the total value of residential, commercial and industrial real estate in the city was just under $685 million. The new valuation, based on sales figures from the past year, was $411.6 million, a loss of $273 million, or 40 percent.

The drop in the value of taxable real estate meant the city had to increase the 2010-2011 tax rate just to generate the same amount of revenue as last year. Last year, the property-tax rate was $10.78 per thousand of assessed value; this year it went to $19.22 per thousand.

State receiver Mark A. Pfeiffer, who oversees the city's municipal finances, announced last week a 10-percent increase on top of that, to $21.14.

This is one of those ambiguities of taxation that comes up from time to time. Is the amount that you are taxed, for your property, better thought of in context of the rate or of the amount? Most RI towns treat your property essentially as a share in the government's cost and tax you according to your share more than directly according to the value of the asset that they're taxing. Personally, I think that slyly saddles homeowners with all of the risk for local property values, insulating municipal governments from the effects that their own policies can have thereon. But given all of the other things wrong with the way government operates in this state, it's not really worthy of a crusade.

The Mystery of Good Teaching

Monique has already mentioned the headline revelation of an article reporting statements of the states' two teacher union heads before the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council (that they've recognized the advantage of regionalization to them), but I'd like to highlight an unrelated statement from Rhode Island Federation of Teachers President Marcia Reback:

"[Education] Commissioner [Deborah] Gist said it earlier," Reback said. "You know good teaching when you see it. You can't test it."

The only way such a statement can be otherwise than total bunk is if we restrict the meaning of "test" to a written document that seeks to quantify without the need for human judgment. Even then, I'd dispute the conclusion, but at least it would be a real matter of debate. Many grades throughout my schooling were based on "tests" that involved a panel reviewing, for example, my piano playing. Many steps and sidelines in my adult employment have been related to managers' judgment of my work. One can test teachers by the success of their students and their contribution to schools, generally.

Of course, such a test has too many variables for some distant test author to incorporate. It is not, however, beyond the capacity of parents and principals, which is why public education is suffering for lack of two qualities:

• Parents' ability to easily move their children from one school to another, with an actual consequence to the losing school when the move is made.
• Principals' ability to manage their teachers as employees rapidly and easily enough to correct problems before they become institutionalized, which also has the effect of reducing the degree to which we can hold those principals accountable for institutional failure.

Laffey Leaves

Well, it's old news now, but Steve Laffey and family have up and moved to Colorado.

In May -- a month after he canceled a Tea Party speaking engagement in Rhode Island -- Laffey paid $2 million for a four-bedroom home in Fort Collins. An MLS listing states that the house was sold on May 25: it was recorded in Larimer County records on May 26.

The property, nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, includes 36 acres of land, a music room, exercise room, art studio, barn, tack room, and a pond, the listing states.

Laffey and his wife, Kelly, registered to vote in Colorado on July 21st, according to Nancy Wurl of the Larimer County Voter Registration office.

Laffey, the darling of the conservative movement in Rhode Island and one-time U.S. Senate candidate, registered as a Republican. He missed the deadline for voting in the state's primary election this month.

"We are now sending notification to Rhode Island that he registered here," so that his Rhode Island voter registration can be canceled, Wurl said on Thursday.

If a hard-charging change agent like Laffey has given up on Rhode Island, what does that say? No "Hope" after all? Or does it say less about the state of the Ocean State and more about Laffey? Commenters, take it away...

ADDENDUM: I didn't mean to cop out, there. It's not exactly speculative to conclude that the Laffeys simply thought it best for their family to move to Colorado and it's hard to take them to task for that personal decision. Putting a finer point on it--whether you agree or disagree with his prescriptions--Laffey was one of the most passionate politicians in recent memory. He truly believed he could help his home state but was discouraged when not enough people seemed to be willing to make the changes along with him and he publicly said as much. After years of going "all in" with Rhode Island, it looks like he decided to cut his losses and move on. At least for now.

Self-Serving Accusations of Hypocrisy

I'm not sure what inspired the Providence Journal to transport this essay from one coast to another, but with the assumption that the objective was to begin debate, rather than conclude it, I thought it worth taking up. The argument of William Lobdell's broadside on religious Americans, initially published in the LA Times, is that folks are losing their faith because religious people are hypocrites:

How to explain the Grand Canyon-sized gap between principles outlined in the Gospels and the behavior of believers? Christians typically, and rather lamely, respond that shortcomings of the followers of Jesus are simply evidence of man’s inherent sinfulness.

But if one adheres to the principle of Occam's razor — that the simplest explanation is the most likely — there is another, more unsettling conclusion: that many people who call themselves Christian don't really believe, deep down, in the tenets of their faith. In other words, their actions reveal their true beliefs.

As evidence that Christians don't behave as they believe appropriate, Lobdell cites broadly and generally research from the Barna Group, founded by evangelical pollster George Barna. This section of the essay functions by jumbling together demographics, eliding through terms that really must be differentiated in this context, and layering assumptions onto the findings. For example:

Barna has found that born-again Christians are more likely to divorce (an act strongly condemned by Jesus) than atheists and agnostics, and are more likely to be racist than other Americans.

Lobdell leaves unmentioned that born-again Christians are also more likely to be from demographic groups — economic and geographic — in which these traits and behaviors are more likely regardless of religion. Correlation, as the intellectuals like to tell people of faith, is not causation. More relevant, though, is Lobdell's failure to address the fact that born-agains, being typically Protestants, adhere to sects that find divorce to be acceptable. I happen to agree with him that one cannot legitimize divorce within a Christian context, but from that perspective, Protestants are wrong, not hypocritical. It certainly doesn't mean that applying looser doctrine to Christianity — as would be the reflexive response to accusations of hypocrisy — is any sort of solution.

I've written before about the pitfalls of Christianity Lite (see, for example, here, here, and here), and evidence can be found even in the Pew study that Lobdell, himself, cites (PDF). If the hypocrisy thesis is correct, one would expect more stringent religious groups to experience greater losses of members. Consider, however, that 14% of those raised Catholic became "unaffiliated," which includes no belief, but that the percentage of Anglicans/Episcopalians who made the same move was 20%.

For those not familiar with comparative Christianities, the Anglican/Episcopal Church is arguably the most Catholic of the Protestant sects, its main differentiation being a willingness to compromise with the mores of the time — with divorce, of course, and with married and female clergy, actively homosexual bishops, and all that. If hypocrisy is to blame for departures, the less demanding religion should have more success retaining its members, because adherents should be better able to follow the rules.

The next question is whether Christians move from stringent sects to lax sects before they exit the religion altogether. There's a conspicuously significant hole in Pew's data, here, inasmuch as the tables don't allow the reader to discern how many departing Catholics moved into the more conservative evangelical protestant sects versus the more liberal mainline sects. Of current Evangelicals, however, 11% were once Catholics, while the same percentage for mainline churches was 9%. Were the numbers presented from the perspective of the Catholic Church, they would probably be a lot more skewed, because the evangelical religions are larger.

In other words, even if we ignore the different strains within Catholicism, it appears to be the case that dissatisfied Catholics move toward more conservative expressions of faith.

It’s also problematic that the study has no qualification of "raised as." What percentage of those leaving the Church were only nominally "raised" within it? It strikes me as entirely plausible that the real dynamic is of people who are brought up with a merely cultural Christianity, as opposed to a church-going, religious Christianity, recoiling from attacks and accusations such as Lobdell's, rather than from actions of actual Christians whom they know. This supposition is especially reasonable in light of this finding from Barna:

Most of the people who have made these changes did so as a teenager or young adult. The study discovered that the median age at the time they changed faiths or significantly altered their faith perspective was 22.

One-third of those who experienced a significant faith shift did so during their twenties and another one-third did so before age 20. In total, two-thirds of people who had a major faith change experienced that outcome before the age of 30 (68%). In fact, among respondents over 40, only 5% of them reported making a major shift in their religious affiliation after the age of 40.

The picture is of young adults — as susceptible to the mandates of pop culture as they are — giving up whatever religious practice they had as they move into the phase of life in which they must find motivation for their own activities. In many cases, no doubt, the "practice" that they abandon has mostly to do with religious sayings and trappings. It isn't hypocrisy that ushers them away, but laxity.

The most stunning aspect of Lobdell's essay, though, is the degree to which the definition of hypocrisy has been diluted beyond recognition. Apparently, difficulty following a regimen is hypocrisy, whether or not the individual is vocal about instructing others about how they should live. Indeed, it should be proven, for such accusations to be reasonable, that those who most strenuously speak the doctrine are also the most apt to fail, themselves, and that those around them are more likely to lose faith altogether. The attempt is not even made to prove such at thing.

The likes of Lobdell talk of "losing their religion" (a cliché incorporated into the title of his book) and seek to blame the religious. They appear mostly interested in justifying their own inability to live up to standards that they once espoused on the grounds that others can’t do it either. Their actions, and the actions that they so delight in highlighting in others, are driving their philosophy, while the thrust of religion ought to be in the other direction.

I suppose I can’t fault them for that, but it hardly justifies their presumption of being the most clear-thinking party. It also raises questions about the propriety of secularists' handing over poison and then complaining that it makes the faithful sick.

Robert Healey on the Tenth Amendment

At the Tenth Amendment rally at the Rhode Island statehouse a week ago Saturday, I asked Robert Healey, who has litigated Ninth and Tenth Amendment issues before the courts, about the current legal interpretation of the Tenth Amendment, and whether he believes the goal of Tenth Amendment activists should be to hold the Federal Government to the existing interpretation or to reverse the current precedents. He went through a brief history of the history that has shaped the modern interpretation of the Tenth Amendment, which anyone who is interested in this issue needs to be aware of...

"...Everybody, including the Supreme Court, understood the value of the Tenth Amendment...all during the antebellum period. Once we had the Civil War, that's where it became kind of interesting...During the period of Reconstruction, the South came back into the union but realized, hey, legally why can't we utilize this Tenth Amendment kind of concept to do what we wanted to do anyway."

Audio: 45 sec

"Obviously, there were some issues there and it fell into disrepute, because eventually what had to happen in order to being the South back into the unification picture was pretty much a squashing of that Tenth Amendment argument that the Southern states had frequently used based on their own concept of sovereignty, and it became discredited because it was used in that manner..."

Audio: 53 sec

"What happens after that is that was we had a period where you could then impose income taxes, we had the constitutional Amendment passed...and once you put that piece to the puzzle, you realize that when the Federal [Government] has the power to tax, it has the power to control. And if it's power is the strongest power in terms of taxation, it's the strongest power in terms of control..."

Audio: 44 sec

"The Federal Government has, in essence, gone around the Tenth Amendment by saying to people, hey, you want transportation funds, you've got to honor our concepts, not your own state concepts..."

Audio: 47 sec

"You had FDR imposing programs on a Federal level, because states were unable to balance budgets, and the Federal Government could print money and could tax -- they could do both -- therefore it became a disaster. Since the 1930s it's gone it that direction generally, as I see it."

Audio: 20 sec

"...I think that what has to happen is that the people have to assert their Tenth Amendment rights and make it known to the Federal Government that this is going to be it..."

Audio: 55 sec

"...there is a strong argument, that's the one I brought to the Supreme Court, that the Ninth Amendment also applies. The citizen is the sovereign. The citizen gives the power to the state. The citizen gives the power and defines power for the Federal government. The citizen can take it back..."

Audio: 48 sec

"There are plenty of legal plays that are going to have to happen, far out into the future, but unless you can get support and unless you can get it started with things like this, a Tenth Amendment rally, it's never going to happen."

Audio: 13 sec

Glenn Beck's Rally: Where to Access Coverage (or Please Provide Your Own!)

Beck's Restoring Honor rally kicks off at 10 this morning.

C-Span will cover it live.

Members of Rainy Day Patriots will be posting photos here.

If so inclined, any Rhode Islanders in attendance are encouraged to send photos, videos or live action reports to A.R. during or after the event.

Some Sacrifice

Sometimes people have to say what they have to say, I suppose, but this comment out of Cumberland really points to the different world in which some Rhode Islanders live:

School Supt. Donna A. Morelle stated that the committee and the administration "are greatly appreciative of the sacrifice made by the teachers."

So what "sacrifice" are the teachers making? Giving up a vacation week or two? Higher health insurance payments? More realistic retirement expectations? Not quite (emphasis added):

Teachers this year will defer half of a 2.5-percent salary increase, half of an increase that comes with a new salary step and half of the payment teachers with credits or degrees beyond a bachelor’s degree receive, according to Roderick McGarry, president of the Cumberland Teachers Association. ...

Also in the agreement, announced Monday after the Cumberland Teachers Association and School Committee approved it Wednesday, is waiving a 2.5-percent salary raise in the academic year that begins September 2011.

The new accord adds another year to the contract, which the union president stated would give teachers additional security through the 2012-2013. Teachers will get a 1-percent salary increase in the first half of that year and an additional 1.5-percent salary increase in the second half, McGarry said.

So payments expected during the coming school year will be deferred until the future (when, the school committee inexplicably assumes, finances will have improved), raises next year will be eliminated (although the teachers will presumably see an actual increase because the deferral will end), and their guaranteed raise in the subsequent year will be less than expected. In effect, the contract uses accounting gimmicks to downplay the fact that union members will be receiving 1.25% raises (on top of step increases and other remunerative opportunities) during an era of crippling government deficits, high unemployment, and general economic malaise.

That, in the public sector, is called "sacrifice."

Re: Regionalization? You May Want to Consider Who is Standing With You

UPDATE:

Commenter "Brassband" points out that Article XII of the Rhode Island Constitution expressly makes education a state matter, and gives the state legislature broad authority to reglate it. This removes education from being one of the "local matters" under Article XIII and indeed, the school committee system we have here in RI is defined, not in a series of town and city charters, but instead at the state level in Title 16 of the Rhode Island General laws...

16-2-2 Except as specifically provided in this section, every city or town shall establish and maintain for at least one hundred eighty (180) days annually exclusive of holidays a sufficient number of schools in convenient places under the control and management of the school committee and under the supervision of the board of regents for elementary and secondary education...

So in theory, the state could create a single-statewide district by changing the statute above to read "the state shall establish and maintain...a sufficient number of schools in convenient places", etc.

Which means, of course, that it's doubly important to find out what your legislator's position is on local control versus a statewide district.

---

The issue of combining all of Rhode Island school systems into a single statewide district, highlighted by Monique in a previous post, is an example of why people need to be paying attention to the recent events in Central Falls, and thinking about how far they are willing to allow the different branches of state government to collude in ignoring the home-rule provisions of the Rhode Island Constitution, before they say "stop".

On its face, the state Constitution is pretty clear: you cannot change the form of government in any city or town unless the people of that city or town agree via a referendum. That means that state shouldn’t be able to take governance of a school system away from local control by statute-alone unless residents agree. This, in turn, means that creating a single statewide school district should require either 1) a Constitutional amendment or 2) city-by-city, town-by-town approval in a set of referenda.

If that is the route that single-district advocates are planning, it is likely to be a long one.

However, in Central Falls this year and West Warwick before that in the 1990s, Rhode Island’s governing class, including Governor, legislature and courts, has basically ignored the state Constitution’s home-rule provisions. And if Central Falls becomes the standard by which future home-rule cases are judged, you could see legislation creating a single statewide RI school district upheld by the RI courts, based on an argument along the lines of 1) education affects the whole state, so it’s not just a local matter and 2) as long as school committees are still elected, even if they become just advisory boards, it’s not a change in the form of government, therefore[, but Article XII of the Rhode Island Constitution means that] 3) it is entirely constitutional to place all schools under state control, based on an act of the legislature alone.

The question of how far state government should be able to go in ignoring the home-rule provisions of the RI Constitution would be a pretty good one to ask the next set of nominees to the RI Supreme Court -- as well as to your legislative candidates in the upcoming election.

Extreme Screening: Only One Gov Candidate Gets a Questionnaire or Invite from the NEA RI

... before the endorsement (of that same candidate).

The gubernatorial campaigns of John Robitaille (R), Ken Block (M) and Frank Caprio (D) have all confirmed the absence of an NEA RI candidate questionnaire in the inbox and the non-ringing of the phone for the invitation to be interviewed that never got made.

In fact, following upon the AFT endorsement in late July, the Block campaign specifically asked the NEA RI for an audience. The silence from that organization continued uniformly deafening. And John Robitaille clarified that while he is seeking no union endorsements, he has agreed to meet with any labor union which extends an invitation to him and, on that basis, has met with the executive boards of the SEIU and Carpenters Local 94.

When a company or government agency has an RFP for which they have a certain vendor in mind, they might tailor the RFP as much as possible towards that vendor. Most of the time, though, they at least go through the motions of offering the RFP publicly or to all qualified vendors.

In this case, however, the "agency" or "company" is comprised of rank-and-file union members. Did the NEA RI leadership individually poll every single member to determine that support for Senator Chafee was 100%? Or did they make the top-down decision to formally "vet" only one candidate for consideration?

If the latter, wasn't that a little disrespectful of their membership?

Fighting Tyranny Inherently Breaks the Rules

I've been meaning to comment on the latest development in the governance of Central Falls: the city council's decision to hire an independent lawyer, apparently without knowing how it will pay the bill if Receiver-King Mark Pfeiffer, appointed by the state, refuses to allow it.

The move by the council is a reaction to state-appointed receiver Mark A. Pfeiffer's announcement last week that to close a $2.1-million deficit in last year's budget and a projected $6.3-million hole in the current year, he will need to raise the tax rate by 10 percent. For homeowners, that will mean the rate per $1,000 of assessed value will go from $19.22 to $21.14. There are different rates for commercial and industrial buildings.

On the limited matter of whether the council should be spending scarce resources on such a thing, it's difficult to argue with Amy Kempe, here:

[The council's prospective lawyer, Lawrence] Goldberg said the council needed its own lawyer in cases where it disagreed with Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer has told the council to use the city solicitors, but Goldberg said they now answer to Pfeiffer.

"They have divided loyalties," Goldberg said.

Amy P. Kempe, spokeswoman for Pfeiffer, said Tuesday night that Pfeiffer wouldn't approve a new lawyer.

"They should utilize the services of the solicitor's office so as not to add extra expense to the city of Central Falls," Kempe said.

But this is the problem with dictatorship. People lose trust in the process for addressing grievances or (rightly) conclude that the route is unduly long and complicated. To resolve differences with the receiver, the people of Central Falls would have to change enough state officeholders to halt a targeted law. Otherwise, they'd have to argue to a judge that the law or the actions being taken in its name are illegal. To expect city solicitors to take on their own boss in the name of residents, through their elected council, is little more than a banana republic pretense toward representative democracy.

Of course, beneath all of these fine procedural points, we can only shake our heads at the capacity of the state government of Rhode Island to come up with a way to make the mayor and city council of Central Falls look like victims.

Unless It's in a Trust Fund that has Magic Powers, You Can't Spend the Same Dollar Twice

In Wednesday's Projo, op-ed columnist Froma Harrop defended (well, more like asserted) the idea that Social Security is our collective national trust fund...

Republicans have never loved Social Security, but they know that plans to privatize the program remain deeply unpopular. A few holdouts still carry the privatization flag, but most others prefer another tack: undermining faith in the program’s solvency. Hence all this loose talk about the Social Security Trust Fund’s being “a fiction.”

Matt Bai of the New York Times, on the other hand, is more specific about why the concept of the "trust fund" should be considered a fiction (h/t Peter Suderman)...

The coalition [of defenders of the Social Security structure status-quo] bases its case on the idea that Social Security is actually in fine fiscal shape, since it has amassed a pile of Treasury Bills — often referred to as i.o.u.’s — in a dedicated trust fund. This is true enough, except that the only way for the government to actually make good on these i.o.u.’s is to issue mountains of new debt or to take the money from elsewhere in the federal budget, or perhaps impose significant tax increases — none of which seem like especially practical options for the long term.

For further information, I went to the official Social Security website, to get the official word on how Social Security works...

By law, income to the trust funds must be invested, on a daily basis, in securities guaranteed as to both principal and interest by the Federal government. All securities held by the trust funds are "special issues" of the United States Treasury. Such securities are available only to the trust funds...

Tax income is deposited on a daily basis and is invested in "special-issue" securities. The cash exchanged for the securities goes into the general fund of the Treasury and is indistinguishable from other cash in the general fund.

I think what this says is that money comes into to a special "Social Security" area (account?) of the Federal Government and from there is transferred to the U.S Treasury, where it can be used for any purpose that Treasury funds might be used for. In its place, government-backed "securities" are left behind, to keep track of how much money that originated with Social Security might eventually need to be put back (with interest).

If this is any more than the concept of loaning yourself money, someone has to explain to me how.

And even most people who loan themselves money (for instance, from their own 401(k)) realize that once they've loaned themselves X dollars, the pile of money they've loaned from is now X dollars lighter, even if they leave a note saying 'remember to pay back the X dollars taken from here'. Likewise, the same dollar cannot be in a "trust fund" and in the Treasury Department's "general fund" at the same time. You can't spend the same dollar twice.

If there really is a Social Security "trust fund", in the sense that most people understand it, this extra step of replacing the initial funds with government-backed securities shouldn't be necessary. But since the step is there, for the government to pay real money to SS beneficiaries from "the trust fund", it has go get real money from somewhere else first -- i.e. pay back its loan to itself -- by issuing debt, cutting spending somewhere else, or raising taxes -- the set of options succinctly put forth in the Bai article.

So how does the Social Security Administration justify the trust fund concept? By saying that...

Far from being "worthless IOUs," the investments held by the trust funds are backed by the full faith and credit of the U. S. Government.

This sounds to me, given the current state of Social Security, like an argument which boils down to "when the government does it, that means it's not a Ponzi scheme", which I find to be as compelling as Richard Nixon's old line that "when the President does it, that means it is not illegal".

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