Politicians: The Things They Say & How They Say Them

Here is a troubling story:

...Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from West Virginia...has over the past two years repeatedly accused the Bush administration of deliberately deceiving the American public to take the nation to war. It's hard to imagine a more serious charge. And Rockefeller makes it perhaps more credibly than most Iraq War critics--as the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

It's no surprise then that reporters sought out Rockefeller for his reaction to George W. Bush's address to the nation Tuesday night. The junior senator from West Virginia minced no words. Iraq, he said, "had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden, it had nothing to do with al-Qaida, it had nothing to do with September 11, which he managed to mention three or four times and infer three or four more times."

This, Rockefeller seems to find outrageous. "It's sort of amazing that a president could stand up before hundreds of millions of Americans and say that and come back to 9/11--somehow figuring that it clicks a button, that everybody grows more patriotic and more patient. Well, maybe that's good p.r. work, which it isn't, but it's not the way that a commander in chief executes a war. And that's his responsibility in this case."

It is an attack on President Bush that echoes those we've heard from Democrats--both those on the fringe left and those at the top of the party--for the past 27 months. And it is nonsense...

Odd then that Senator Rockefeller would have spoken of a "substantial connection between Saddam and al Qaeda" just one month before the Iraq War began. In some interviews Rockefeller did say that he hadn't seen evidence of close ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. But asked about an Iraq-al Qaeda relationship by CNN's Wolf Blitzer on February 5, 2003, Rockefeller agreed with Republican Senator Pat Roberts that Abu Musab al Zarqawi's presence in Iraq before the war and his links to a poison camp in northern Iraq were troubling. Rockefeller continued: "The fact that Zarqawi certainly is related to the death of the U.S. aid officer and that he is very close to bin Laden puts at rest, in fairly dramatic terms, that there is at least a substantial connection between Saddam and al Qaeda."...

...other aspects of Rockefeller's 2002 speech. It's worth noting, however, that the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee told his colleagues that "there is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years." And: "Saddam's existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now." And: "We cannot know for certain that Saddam will use the weapons of mass destruction he currently possesses, or that he will use them against us. But we do know Saddam has the capability."

Unmistakable evidence. Existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities. We do know Saddam has the capability. Remember these things the next time you hear Rockefeller and his colleagues accuse the Bush Administration of exaggerating or fabricating the threat from Iraq.

Rockefeller ended his 2002 floor speech with yet another direct reference to September 11--his fifth.

"September 11 has forever changed the world. We may not like it, but that is the world in which we live. When there is a grave threat to Americans' lives, we have a responsibility to take action to prevent it."

Do you find it troubling when politicians radically change their tune - and the only reason for it seems to be politics? Do you find it troubling when those changes relate directly to the national security of America - at a time when we are at war?

And then, on top of it, they are so full of themselves:

...can you imagine George Washington referring in public, or in private for that matter, to his many virtues? In normal America if you have a high character you don't wrestle people to the ground until they acknowledge it. You certainly don't announce it. If you are compassionate, you are compassionate; if others see it, fine. If you hold to principle it will become clear. You don't proclaim these things. You can't, for the same reason that to brag about your modesty is to undercut the truth of the claim...

How exactly does it work? How does legitimate self-confidence become wildly inflated self-regard? How does self respect become unblinking conceit? How exactly does one's character become destabilized in Washington?...

What is wrong with them? This is not a rhetorical question. I think it is unspoken question No. 1 as Americans look at so many of the individuals in our government. What is wrong with them?

Normal people just don't act this way.

Yet more arguments for term limits. Yet another argument for limited government.

And another reason why a diligent citizenry is so essential to ensuring our freedoms are protected.

Sadly, it is an uphill battle, isn't it?

FEC Hearings on Blogging Regulations

FEC hearings on blogging have begun. A previously mentioned posting entitled Will FEC Draft Regulations Lead to Greater Regulatory Control Over Blogging Community? provides background information.

A subsequent posting is entitled More on Potential FEC Restrictions on Blogging Community.

Michael Krempasky testified today before the FEC on potential issues arising from placing regulations on blogging:

Today you consider rules that will affect millions of people. Not just the eleven million blogs currently indexed by the search engine Technorati, but the millions of people who currently have the freedom to take a few minutes, join the blogosphere and add their voice to our political conversation.

I’ll focus my testimony this morning on the media exemption. My hope is that the Commission will take specific and discrete steps to ensure that no blogger, no amateur activist, and no self-published pundit ever need consult with legal counsel in fear of the regulatory might of the federal government.

Our current campaign finance regulations touch nearly every area of political participation by associations, corporations, candidates, political parties and individuals. But one group is notably and, for practical purposes, completely exempt – the news media. The Commission is now considering the proper scope of that exemption. As it has asked, "Should the exemption be limited to entities who are media entities and who are covering or carrying a news story, commentary, or editorial?"

With respect, the question properly formed should have been, "can the exemption be limited?" The answer must be an emphatic no. There is no doubt that bloggers are media entities. Nor is there any doubt that the tradition of citizen journalists is a long accepted part of our national culture. From before very founding of our country, individuals and relative unknowns have contributed to this great conversation...

Time and time again, it is the new media – these bloggers – that fill the information gap. The vast resources of the blogosphere as a whole, its expertise, creativity and motivation – dwarf any newsroom in the country. Indeed, free of the constraints of bureaucratic hierarchies and concerns of column inches, blogs can provide news coverage that is both faster and more in depth than anything the mainstream media can hope to provide...

This very rulemaking is an even better case in point. What newspaper or television station could afford to devote time and space every day to covering the actions or potential actions of a relatively small government agency? None did, and none could. Meanwhile, bloggers wrote thousands of words about the Commission’s rulemaking, educating their readers and encouraging them to participate in the process.

There is no doubt that the Commission recognizes the difficulty in extending the media exemption to these citizen journalists. It is imperative that it does so. What goal would be served by protecting Rush Limbaugh’s multimillion dollar talk radio program – but not a self-published blogger with a fraction of the audience? How is the public benefited by allowing CNN to evade regulation while spending corporate dollars to put campaign employees on the airwaves as pundits, while forcing bloggers to scour the Record and read Commission advisory opinions?

Worse yet, if the Commission were to adopt a policy of examining individual blogs on a case-by-case basis, how is that to be distinguished from a government license to publish free of jeopardy – only granted (or denied) after the fact? Unlike previous Commission investigations in the offline world, these cases would affect not large corporations or interest groups with the ability to hire the best firms in Washington, but instead unsophisticated and unfounded individuals poorly suited to navigate the Commissions regulatory process...

The Commission should extend the media exemption to bloggers and other online publishers with the broadest possible terms. The American people, when given the chance tend to make choices that best serve them. The more voices, the more outlets, the more "media entities" – the more informed our public – and our voters will be.

Here is some further information posted on the same blog site and this links to all their FEC postings.

Here is a news article on the day's testimony.

Reporting False Performance Data Under No Child Left Behind: Why Are We Surprised At Dishonest Behavior By The Educational Bureaucracy?

The New York Times published an editorial yesterday entitled False Data on Student Performance:

Americans often can't find reliable information about how the schools in their state compare with schools elsewhere. The No Child Left Behind Act ["NCLB"] was supposed to change that by requiring states to file clear and accurate statistical information with the Education Department. The news so far is less than encouraging. Many states have chosen to manipulate data to provide overly optimistic appraisals of their schools' performance.

A distressing example emerged last week in a study of graduation rates by the Education Trust, a nonpartisan foundation in Washington. For the second year in a row, the Education Trust has found that many states are cooking the books on graduation rates - using unorthodox calculation methods or ignoring students who drop out. Some states submitted no graduation data at all...

The secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, says she is concerned about accuracy. But Congress itself needs to take up this issue and force the states to use accurate methods of calculation when it reauthorizes No Child Left Behind in 2007. Until changes are made at the federal level, student performance data in the United States won't be worth the paper it's printed on.

Several thoughts:

Corporations caught filing false information to the public get publicly attacked and sued? Where is the comparable outrage for this behavior which has a much broader societal impact as it is about how well we are educating our children?

Why does the NY Times think more federal involvement in state-level educational issues is going to change behaviors? The only logical extension of the NY Times' argument is to reach for total federal micro-management and control. But, the Soviet Union showed that model of government just plain doesn't work. Think further about the silliness of their argument: Within the state of Rhode Island alone, there are nearly 40 school districts, some with multiple high schools. As a further example, how is Congress going to ensure my town - with its roughly 150 graduating seniors every year - files proper data? And how will the Congress define and enforce penalities if my town were not to do it properly? Sheer folly.

No, the false performance data reporting occurs because there is a fundamental structural problem in public education. NCLB may highlight problems like this false reporting but it cannot fix the real problems because school bureaucracies and teachers' unions receive no tangible rewards from excellent performance and suffer no adverse consequences for non-performance.

The only thing that will change that dynamic in public education - which unfortunately hurts our vulnerable children the most - is the power of competition implemented via educational choice. This Milton Friedman posting explains both the structural problems of the public education monopoly and the power of education choice.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON EDUCATIONAL ISSUES:

EAST GREENWICH NEA TEACHERS' UNION CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS
In a nutshell, here is what I think the negotiating position of the East Greenwich School Committee should be on some of the key financial terms of the contract.

Other postings include:
Background Information on the East Greenwich NEA Labor Dispute
The NEA's Disinformation Campaign
East Greenwich Salary & Benefits Data
More Bad Faith Behavior by the NEA
The Debate About Retroactive Pay
Would You Hurt Our Children Just To Win Better Contract Terms?
The Question Remains Open & Unanswered: Are We/They Doing Right By Our Children?
Will The East Greenwich Teachers' Union Stop Their Attempts to Legally Extort Residents?
You Have To Read This Posting To Believe It! The Delusional World of the NEA Teachers' Union
So What Else is New? Teachers' Union Continues Non-Productive Behaviors in East Greenwich Labor Talks
"Bargaining Rights are Civil Rights"
The NEA-Rhode Island's Pathetic Attempts to Manipulate East Greenwich Residents

OTHER RHODE ISLAND PUBLIC EDUCATION/UNION ISSUES
In addition to financial issues, management rights are the other big teachers' union contract issue. "Work-to-rule" or "contract compliance" only can become an issue because of how management rights are defined in union contracts. The best reading on this subject is the recent report by The Education Partnership. It is must reading.

Other editorials and postings include:
ProJo editorial: Derailing the R.I. gravy train
ProJo editorial: RI public unions work to reduce your family's quality of life
ProJo editorial: Breaking the taxpayer: How R.I. teachers get 12% pay hikes
Selfish Focus of Teachers Unions: Everything But What Is Good For Our Kids
Tom Coyne - RI Schools: Big Bucks Have Not Brought Good Results
The NEA: There They Go, Again!
A Response: Why Teachers' Unions (Not Teachers!) Are Bad For Education
"A Girl From The Projects" Gets an Opportunity to Live the American Dream
Doing Right By Our Children in Public Education Requires Thinking Outside The Box
Debating Rhode Island Public Education Issues
The Cocoon in which Entitled State Employees Live
Are Teachers Fairly Compensated?
Warwick Teachers' Union Throws Public Tantrum
Blocking More Charter Schools Means Hurting Our Children
RI Educational Establishment: Your Days of No Vigorous Public Oversight & No Accountability Are Ending

BROADER PUBLIC EDUCATION ISSUES
The Deep Performance Problems with American Public Education
Freedom, Hard Work & Quality Education: Making The American Dream Possible For ALL Americans
Parents or Government/Unions: Who Should Control Our Children's Educational Decisions?
Now Here is a Good Idea
Milton Friedman on School Choice
Issuing a Call for a Higher Quality Public Debate About Education
Is Merit Pay for Teachers a 'Crazy Idea'?

Pigs at the Public Trough, Revisited

Time Magazine has an unflattering story about lobbyist Jack Abramoff which builds on some of the points highlighted in this earlier posting:

...The spreading scandal is a particular concern to Republicans in light of next year's midterm elections. Abramoff's name has become associated in Washington with more than just typical lobbying excess. He is an intimate of the self-described revolutionaries who took power on the Hill in 1994 on promises of cleaning house after decades of Democratic control and, as such, is seen as the personification of the Republican revolution gone awry. It doesn't help that the Indian tribal money that made Abramoff so influential around town came mostly from profits from gambling, which many conservatives view as immoral. Some Republicans are even arguing that the party should distance itself from those tied too closely to Abramoff. "If someone within your family is doing something that's certainly wrong, if not illegal, you have a duty to say, That's not us," says David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union. "That's what people are saying."

Last week's e-mail dump was the first detailed look the public has got into how Abramoff combined his top-tier connections with vast sums of money from his tribal clients to advance his interests. It shows how easy it is for seasoned operators to violate the spirit of the law--possibly while staying within the letter of it--as they peddle influence...Most of all, it shines a bright light into the dark places of Washington where money, politics and lobbyists meet.

Norquist, Abramoff and Reed first worked together in 1981 as members of the college Republicans organizing protests against communism in Poland. From there, the three rose steadily to the tops of their fields. Reed, as leader of the Christian Coalition, built a national grass-roots following of religious activists. Abramoff tapped into massive casino profits by representing newly rich tribes. And Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), established himself as the high priest of tax cuts...

Abramoff's spokesman released a statement last week saying that with an investigation ongoing, "Mr. Abramoff is put into the impossible position of not being able to defend himself in the public arena until the proper authorities have had a chance to review all accusations." Norquist says he believes the direction of the Indian Affairs Committee's probe is being driven by an old rivalry between him and the committee chairman, Republican Senator John McCain. "This is completely political," Norquist says. McCain said last week's hearings sought to uncover fraud against the Choctaws, not investigate Norquist or Reed...

What of the friendship among the three men? In 2002 Abramoff came to see Reed as competition and cut him off the Choctaw gravy train. "He is a bad version of us! No more money for him," Abramoff wrote Scanlon. Norquist was still standing by Abramoff last week, in a way. "I've known Jack for a long time," he said. "He's never approached me for anything improper. But we have led very different lives over the last 20 years."

The WSJ also published a story on the issue, available here for a fee.

When politicians of both parties compete for power and money in the political arena, they cause all sorts of unfortunate outcomes, none of which benefits working families and retirees across our land. Consider these examples:

First, here is a related story about Ralph Reed.

Second, here is an example of government waste within the pork-laden highway bill.

Third, here is a story about the FEC blogging regulation debate which shows that, even within the Republican Party, John McCain's proclivity for political machinations could end up reducing freedom of speech for average Americans.

Fourth, here is a story about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and his political opponents which shows how the drive for political power affects the behaviors of both DeLay and his political opponents.

Fifth, here is a story about how the Supreme Court now says government can take our homes away when there is money to be made.

So what is the average American supposed to deduce from all this? Here are some thoughts that I wrote in this posting:

I remember well that election night in November 1994 when it seemed real change might occur. Unfortunately, we have - yet again - relearned the lesson from the words of Lord Acton who taught us how power corrupts, regardless of party affiliation.

Big government means there are plenty of spoils to divide among the many powerful pigs at the public trough.

The next time your Senator or Congressman tries to impress you with the spoils he or she is bringing home to your district, take a step back and remember that the true price you are paying for any suggested benefit must also include the pro-rata cost of feeding every other pig across America who eats from the public trough.

Most importantly, what is often forgotten is that the spoils they are so eager to divide up represent a meaningful portion of the incomes of American working families and retirees - who are usually unrepresented at the table when these spoils are given away.

We must never forget that all families pay quite a price for these giveaways: It means less of their own hard-earned incomes is available to be spent on their own tangible needs, on things such as food, clothing, medical care, education, etc.

And that is why big government means less freedom for American working families and retirees.

In summary and to expand on the initial comments, here are some other conclusions taken from the DeLay posting:

Two takeaway thoughts that can help us regain perspective:

First, the intensity of the partisan fighting is directly correlated to what is at stake and big government means there is more to fight over. One of the reasons the Founding Fathers encouraged limited government was their deep understanding of human nature.

Second, since politicians and bureaucrats have no incentive to behave well, a diligent citizenry is crucially important to the ongoing success of our American experiment in ordered liberty.

Read this posting for more on the misguided incentives that drive public sector taxation.

Others have said it more eloquently. Here is a public policy viewpoint offered by Lawrence Reed in a speech entitled "Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy," which includes these words:

The "Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy" that I want to share with you today are pillars of a free economy. We can differ on exactly how any one of them may apply to a given issue of the day, but the principles themselves, I believe, are settled truths...They are not the only pillars of a free economy or the only settled truths, but they do comprise a pretty powerful package. In my belief, if every cornerstone of every state and federal building were emblazoned with these principles-and more importantly, if every legislator understood and attempted to be faithful to them-we'd be a much stronger, much freer, more prosperous, and far better governed people...

Public policy that dismisses liberty or doesn't preserve or strengthen it should be immediately suspect in the minds of a vigilant people...Ben Franklin went so far as to advise us that "He who gives up essential liberty for a little temporary security deserves neither liberty nor security."

Too often today, policy makers give no thought whatsoever to the general state of liberty when they craft new policies. It if feels good or sounds good or gets them elected, they just do it...

I would encourage you to read the entire Reed speech to get a more detailed view of the seven principles.

And here is a political philosphy viewpoint:

Roger Pilon wrote the following in a 2002 Cato Institute booklet containing the Declaration of Independence and Constitution:

Appealing to all mankind, the Declaration’s seminal passage opens with perhaps the most important line in the document: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident." Grounded in reason, "self-evident" truths invoke the long tradition of natural law, which holds that there is a "higher law" of right and wrong from which to derive human law and against which to criticize that law at any time. It is not political will, then, but moral reasoning, accessible to all, that is the foundation of our political system.

But if reason is the foundation of the Founders' vision – the method by which we justify our political order – liberty is its aim. Thus, cardinal moral truths are these:

…that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.

We are all created equal, as defined by our natural rights; thus, no one has rights superior to those of anyone else. Moreover, we are born with those rights, we do not get them from government – indeed, whatever rights or powers government has come from us, from "the Consent of the Governed." And our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness imply the right to live our lives as we wish – to pursue happiness as we think best, by our own lights – provided only that we respect the equal rights of others to do the same. Drawing by implication upon the common law tradition of liberty, property, and contract – its principles rooted in "right reason" – the Founders thus outlined the moral foundations of a free society.

Dr. Pilon concluded his essay by writing:

In the end, however, no constitution can be self-enforcing. Government officials must respect their oaths to uphold the Constitution; and we the people must be vigilant in seeing that they do. The Founders drafted an extraordinarily thoughtful plan of government, but it is up to us, to each generation, to preserve and protect it for ourselves and for future generations. For the Constitution will live only if it is alive in the hearts and minds of the American people. That, perhaps, is the most enduring lesson of our experiment in ordered liberty.

...may all of us live up to that vision authored by our Founders as we strive to be engaged citizens who are vigilant stewards of freedom and opportunity for all Americans.

The Kelo Decision Revisited: An Ironic Twist

The Kelo decision by the Supreme Court has stirred a lot of controversy, as noted in an earlier posting.

The following twist comes from Justice Souter's home state of New Hampshire:

Could a hotel be built on the land owned by Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter? A new ruling by the Supreme Court...might allow it. A private developer is seeking to use this very law to build a hotel on Souter's land...

Justice Souter's vote in the "Kelo vs. City of New London" decision allows city governments to take land from one private owner and give it to another if the government will generate greater tax revenue or other economic benefits when the land is developed by the new owner.

On Monday June 27, Logan Darrow Clements, faxed a request to Chip Meany the code enforcement officer of the Towne of Weare, New Hampshire seeking to start the application process to build a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road. This is the present location of Mr. Souter's home.

Clements, CEO of Freestar Media, LLC, points out that the City of Weare will certainly gain greater tax revenue and economic benefits with a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road than allowing Mr. Souter to own the land.

The proposed development, called "The Lost Liberty Hotel" will feature the "Just Desserts Café" and include a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America. Instead of a Gideon's Bible each guest will receive a free copy of Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged."...

"This is not a prank" said Clements, "The Towne of Weare has five people on the Board of Selectmen. If three of them vote to use the power of eminent domain to take this land from Mr. Souter we can begin our hotel development."...

The Just Desserts Cafe in the Lost Liberty Hotel, proposed to be built on what would have been called - one week ago - Justice Souter's private property, free from theft by the government.

How ironic.

But, then again, maybe all of us are approaching this with the wrong thought process. Since government itself neither creates economic value nor generates tax revenue, why don't we we interpret the Kelo decision in a more creative way:

Any time a government agency decides to take away our families' private property, let's make that agency's physical location the replacement target to convert from a government building to a private sector entity that generates lots of tax revenue.

This approach would have several benefits: First, it would save our homes. Second, it would shrink the size of government. Third, it would accelerate the further reduction of our taxes.

Sounds about as logical as the Kelo decision, no? And in doing so, we would simply be abiding by the laws of our land. Any takers?

President Bush, Polls and Iraq

On the eve of the President's press conference to buck up America with regards to Iraq, the pollsters are busy trying to set the table for their spin. First, we have this from CNN/USA Today:

As Bush prepares to address the nation Tuesday to defend his Iraq policy, just 40 percent of those responding to the poll said they approved of his handling of the war; 58 percent said they disapproved. . .

The lone bright spot for the president in the poll was his handling of terrorism, which scored a 55 percent approval rating, compared to just 41 percent who disapproved.

Then, we have this from ABC/Washington Post:

As President Bush prepares to address the nation about Iraq tonight, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that most Americans do not believe the administration's claims that impressive gains are being made against the insurgency, but a clear majority is willing to keep U.S. forces there for an extended time to stabilize the country.

The survey found that only one in eight Americans currently favors an immediate pullout of U.S. forces, while a solid majority continues to agree with Bush that the United States must remain in Iraq until civil order is restored -- a goal that most of those surveyed acknowledge is, at best, several years away.

Further, ABC/WaPo continues that

So far, continuing spasms of violence in Iraq are competing with regular declarations of progress in Washington. Few people agree with Vice President Cheney's recent claim that the insurgency is in its "last throes." The survey found that 22 percent of Americans -- barely one in five -- say they believe that the insurgency is getting weaker, while 24 percent believe it is strengthening. More than half -- 53 percent -- say resistance to U.S. and Iraqi government forces has not changed, a view that matches the assessment offered last week in congressional testimony by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. John P. Abizaid.

But Chrenkoff, the erstwhile updater of the "hidden" news going on in Iraq, makes the point that

Putting aside the discussion whether the insurgency in Iraq is getting worse, or better, or has stayed pretty much the same, the problem with those sorts of questions is that they contrast the opinion of Administration officials who have access to a broad range of detailed, and sometimes classified information, with the opinion of the average Joe and Joanne, formed from reading newspapers and watching TV. And if just about the only news coming out of Iraq in the mainstream media are suicide bombings and more American bodybags - as opposed to security successes - it will be very difficult for the majority to ever have a positive feeling about the situation in Iraq.

For contrast, he points to Col. Brad MacNealy, whose actually been to Iraq, in the rubble, on the streets, not holed up in some hotel in Baghdad.

There are a lot of good and positive things going on there that the national news media just won't tell you about, so I'm here to tell you what's really going on over there and not what you hear on the television or read in the newspapers. They're not putting the true picture out there, so don't believe everything you see on TV.

So, setting the reality vs. the media portrayal aside (you know, perception is reality...), what explains the seeming difference in the two aforementioned polls? Here's a theoretical comment from a theoretical person on the street: "Well, in an ideal world in which ideal wars are fought, in which it is possible to make no or few mistakes, President Bush has fallen short and I disapprove (CNN/USA Today) of his handling of things and don't have a lot of confidence in his plans because he hasn't told me of any (or at least, I haven't heard them much). Nonetheless, we are now in Iraq and we have to see it through. Again, I'm not as optimistic as the Administration seems to be--after all, our men and women are dying every day--but we can't cut and run and give our enemies a victory." In short, yes it's tough, but we're Americans, we don't quit. If only our politicians would be so unbending.

[Cross-posted at Ocean State Blogger.]

State House Passes Budget

The State House passed the budget last night:

By an overwhelming majority, the House last night passed a new $6.35-billion state budget which cuts pension benefits, lowers the car tax and drastically increases the fee developers pay to receive historic tax credits.

In stark contrast to last year, the debate in the House was generally orderly and civil, leading to a 71-to-2 vote in support of a new budget for the year starting Friday.

With Republican Governor Carcieri backing the budget for the first time in his three years in office -- and calling it a "great win for our citizens" -- all 15 House Republicans voted yea.

"Obviously I think it was a good night," Carcieri said shortly after the 8:22 p.m. vote. "I mean, everybody came together."

While he said the 6.5-percent increase in spending "is still too high," Carcieri applauded the pension changes, tax-relief efforts and aid package for cities and towns.

House Speaker William J. Murphy, D-West Warwick, said "all parties involved realized that we were working for the best interests of the people of Rhode Island," even those who didn't support him as speaker and tried to kill last year's budget...

The Senate Finance Committee expects to consider, and approve, the budget at a 3 p.m. hearing today, with the goal of a floor vote by the full Senate tomorrow. Murphy says he hopes to finish this session by Thursday...

One of the most important budget items was the changes in state pension rules:

After close to two hours of debate, the House approved a "pension reform" package aimed at shaving $44 million off the spiralling cost of public employee pensions. The final vote was 60 to 12.

For those hired after July 1 and those not yet vested, the new pension rules will establish a minimum retirement age for the first time since 1984; place new curbs on the 3-percent, compounded cost-of-living increases state retirees get now; and reduce the pension-dollar value of each year of work in such a way that the maximum benefit goes from 80 percent after 35 years, to 75 percent after 38.

While today's state employees and public school teachers can retire at any age, and begin collecting a pension immediately, after 28 years of work, new and non-vested workers will have to wait until age 59 to get a pension, after at least 29 years of work, or age 65 after 10 years of work....

You will never guess who was whining about these changes:

Angry union leaders papered the State House earlier in the day with fliers decrying the moves and questioning both their legality and fairness.

Rhode Island Federation of Teachers President Marcia Reback went another step to try to dispel the notion that she and other unions leaders did not attempt to negotiate or offer a counterproposal until it was too late.

Reback said union leaders thought they were still in negotiations -- up until the final hours -- of how to eke out enough savings elsewhere in the budget to blunt the blow of the proposed changes. She said they came up with $3 million and asked if that would do -- but never got a response.

"The leadership let us down," she said.

But Senate Finance Committee Chairman Stephen Alves, D-West Warwick, said at an afternoon budget briefing for colleagues that House and Senate leaders had wanted to extend the COLA changes to all employees, regardless of service.

But, Alves said, "the unions rejected that proposal," and union leaders said they would have gone to court.

Union leaders watched, from the House gallery, as the lawmakers beat back one effort after another by Representatives Peter Wasylyk, D-Providence, and Arthur Handy, D-Cranston, to loosen the new age-and-work requirements, leave the retiree COLAs untouched, reduce employee contributions and insulate pension benefits from future tinkering by making them a "contractual right."

Opponents of the pension cuts said they would unfairly penalize today's workers for "sins of the past," and make them pay first-class employee-contribution rates for second-class benefits.

But Rep. Joseph Trillo, R-Warwick, argued: "This is still the greatest deal. . . . You and I should have such a deal, but we don't."

After the final vote, the union leaders said they would try again next year. "It's unfair, inequitable," said Larry Purtill, president of the NEA-RI. "Seven thousandteachers and 4,000 state employees are going to be paying for past sins."...

They just don't quit complaining, do they?

There were additional issues in the area of education funding:

...The House approved what some lawmakers -- including the president of the Providence teachers' union, Rep. Steven Smith -- decried as an inadequate $19.3-million increase in school aid.

Smith, D-Providence, demanded to know why school districts were being forced to lay off staff while the state Department of Education was getting more money for new jobs for "political friends and relatives." Whatever message House budget writers meant to send about "fiscal responsibility," he said, the message he heard was: "We don't care about the conditions in your building[s]."

Republicans also objected to a change in the formula of what cities and towns qualify as a "distressed community." Under the new formula, North Providence will again become eligible for aid in the coming year.

Rep. Nicholas Gorham, R-Coventry, said he hadn't heard "one scintilla of data" as to why the qualifying line should be moved...

Rhode Island Politics & Taxation, Part XXII: Will Financial Disclosure Requirements Be Dropped?

H. Philip West, Jr., Executive Director of Common Cause in Rhode Island, has written an important editorial:

If you think that citizens have a right to know about campaign contributions and lobbyist payments to public officials, here's some scary news from the Rhode Island House of Representatives. In the final hours of the 2005 legislative session, two dangerous bills are being rushed toward passage. Each would sabotage the public's ability to follow the money that sometimes drives government decision making.

On June 7, the House Finance Committee, with Democrats and Republicans unanimously voting together, approved legislation that would gut new lobbyist-disclosure requirements enacted only last year, in the wake of the scandals that brought down two state Senate leaders...

Common Cause drafted and lobbied for the legislation that now forces such payments into the open. The 2004 Lobbyist Disclosure Law required lobbyists and those who employ them to file public reports of "all money and anything of value" worth more than $250 that they pay to "any major state decision maker" in a calendar year.

The underlying goal was simple disclosure: Those who lobby for legislation or other government decisions must report payments to major state decision makers in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches of state government. Whether or not payments are technically for lobbying, lobbyists and those who hire them must file annual public reports.

Nothing in the new law limits or bans such payments. It simply requires disclosure...

Common Cause offered simple, straightforward language to address [concerns highlighted in the full editorial], but nothing satisfied the House Finance Committee...

With negotiations stalled, this year's amended bill (05-H 5477SubA, filed by House Majority Leader Gordon Fox [D.-Providence]) may yet surface on the House floor in the final hours of the legislative session. Its passage would nullify the lobbyist-disclosure requirements, which Mr. Fox sponsored only last year.

More ominously, last Thursday the state Senate rammed through a campaign-finance amendment that would dismantle a 2001 law -- also enacted in the wake of scandal -- that requires electronic filing and disclosure of campaign-finance reports.

The goal of that 2001 law was to let journalists and ordinary citizens analyze pertinent information via computer about who contributes to political candidates' coffers. Its passage put Rhode Island in the good company of 13 other states that now mandate electronic filing for campaigns that raise or spend specified threshold amounts.

Under the Rhode Island law, any campaign that raises or spends more than $5,000 in a year must file electronically. Thousands of Rhode Island campaign contributions are thus already available for public review...

As approved by the full Senate on Thursday, the legislation (05-S 1123SubA, filed by Sen. Roger Badeau [D.-Woonsocket]) guts the requirement that candidates, political parties, and political-action committees "commence filing campaign-finance reports electronically." Instead, it says that they "may commence" filing electronically. Beyond making electronic data merely optional, it also entirely deletes a back-up filing requirement for campaigns that raise or spend more than $5,000 a year.

If enacted, this change would carry Rhode Island back to the bad old days when campaigns printed out thousands of pages of campaign documents from their computers and submitted them to the Board of Elections. Journalists and other citizens who sought to analyze those data were forced to spend hundreds of hours keypunching the numbers into their computers before they could start to connect the dots...

Both 5477SubA and 1123SubA appear to offer only minor amendments, yet each would scuttle open-government requirements born of scandal. Each bill would slam the door on public access to vital information about money that flows from deep pockets to powerful public officials.

Only forceful calls to every member of Rhode Island's General Assembly will persuade lawmakers to protect tools that allow voters to follow the money. Amid the haste and heat of these final legislative days, only vocal constituents will persuade lawmakers to kill these bad bills.

What will it take for these people in the State House to wake up and realize the citizens of Rhode Island want a government that is responsible to its citizens?

These bills deserve to be defeated. If they are not, then we will add some new names to the Hall of Shame. It should be quite a list by the time we reach the 2006 elections.

This posting continues a periodic series on Rhode Island politics and taxation, building on twenty-one previous postings:

I - Guiding Principles for Sound Public Policy
II - The Outrageous Tax Burden in Rhode Island
III - 2004: The Year in Review
IV - The NEA's Disinformation Campaign
V - Governor Carcieri's State of the State Address
VI - "Citizens for Representative Government's" Deceitful Manipulation of the Constitutional Convention Vote
VII - The Extreme Tax Burden in the City of Providence
VIII - Rhode Island Gets a C+ on its Report Card
IX - How Speaker Murphy's Changing of the Rules of the House Reduces Your Freedom
X - East Greenwich Teachers' Salary and Benefits Data
XI - What Was Rep. Fox Doing in Portsmouth?
XII - Why Do RI Citizens Passively Consent to Governmental Control by Powerful Interests?
XIII - RI House Leaders Show No Respect for Rule of Law by Undermining Separations of Powers, Part I
XIV - More Bad Faith Behavior by the NEA
XV - RI House Leaders Show No Respect for Rule of Law by Undermining Separations of Powers, Part II
XVI - Tom Coyne - RI Schools: Big Bucks Have Not Brought Good Results
XVII - RI Public Pension Problems
XVIII - Union Doublespeak, Again
XIX - Another Stab at Killing Off Future Economic Growth
XX - Defining a Core Problem in Rhode Island
XXI - Blocking More Charter Schools Means Hurting Our Children

Thoughts on Staying Married

I rarely agree with Froma Harrop's politics but she has a very perceptive editorial on what makes long-term marriages happen:

You know the quip: A wife is asked on her silver anniversary whether she has ever contemplated divorce. "Divorce, never," she replies. "Murder, frequently."

That sums up the truth about long-term marriages. Their success doesn't rely on everybody's being compatible or happy or a champ in the sack. The people who stay married are the people who won't consider divorce.

This sounds circular, I know, but it's the case...For the moment that divorce becomes a card on the table, there will be a temptation to play it...

...when a spouse blows up with rage -- and the best of us do -- true commitment is the only glue that can hold things together...

Several states have passed laws letting couples opt for a stricter kind of union, called a covenant marriage...

But what can withstand the modern love of freedom? An unhappy partner can get out of covenant marriage quicker than Houdini could pick the lock on a piggy bank...

Marriage counseling, meanwhile, can do only so much. By the time the angry couple decides to hire a therapist, it's usually too late...

And in going through the reasons for discontent, therapists often unwittingly add fuel to the fire...Therapy can take lots of little stuff and roll it into one big unhappy ending...

But for the person truly dedicated to staying married, the answer is somewhat different. It is "I don't want to spend the next 30 years living like this, but I'm going to do it anyway."

People marry for different reasons now than they did two generations ago, which helps account for today's higher divorce rates. Marriage used to be about economics and child rearing, according to David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project, at Rutgers University. Now it's a love-based decision....

Finding money for new wallpaper is not impossible. But re-creating That Old Black Magic month after month is. After a while, the flame of passion dims into an occasional spark, if the couple is lucky. And restoring it is beyond the powers of Shakespeare, Dr. Phil or Barry White.

...according to Popenoe...[h]is studies show that marriages today are, if anything, a bit less happy than they were 20 or 30 years ago. Work stress is a big reason.

But this is not necessarily bad news for couples struggling to stay together. Sometimes it helps knowing that one is not supposed to be happy all the time.

Two dear friends recently marked their 55th anniversary. I asked the husband whether they ever wanted to strangle one another. He said, "Yes, like last night." But they're married for life, and that's it.

The couple that stays together is the couple that stays together.

Food for thought, isn't it?

Is Merit Pay for Teachers a 'Crazy Idea'?

Stan Greer comments on the debate about merit pay for K-12 teachers:

...Needless to say, assessing the performance of [higher education] faculty members is not an exact science...Yet, somehow, universities make overall assessments and reward faculty accordingly, because the various players in higher education understand that the alternative of rewarding faculty solely on the basis of seniority and/or paper credentials is far worse.

The fact that merit pay is already the norm in higher education is somehow overlooked in most media reports concerning current efforts to implement merit pay in K-12 education. How can it be that most private and public colleges and universities, bastions of socialist ideology that they are, are positively Randian in their compensation philosophy by comparison with public schools? The primary reason is the extensive monopoly power to speak for K-12 teachers wielded by union officials. Were it not for this factor, the practical difficulties of rewarding public school teachers according to their performance wouldn’t be greatly different from the routinely overcome difficulties of pay-for-performance in higher education.

Most university faculty are union-free...But K-12 teacher unions are both pervasive and radical. Under state policies that either explicitly authorize or tacitly sanction union monopolies, roughly two-thirds of K-12 public school teachers nationwide, including union members and nonmembers alike, are forced to accept an "exclusive" union agent as their sole spokesman in contract negotiations. Effectively, that means teacher union officials dictate what the compensation policy is.

And for decades, teacher union officials have manifested a marked hostility toward outstanding teachers. The example of world-famous math teacher Jaime Escalante, while especially outrageous, is instructive. According to Escalante (the subject of the 1988 Hollywood movie Stand and Deliver), who over the course of many years of hard work developed the most successful inner-city math program in America, teacher union officials chastised him for attracting "too many" students to his calculus classes. When Escalante finally resigned from the high school he and his students had made famous, local teacher union officials circulated a celebratory note that read: "We got him out!"

Delegates to the summer 2000 convention of the National Education Association (NEA), which now has 2.7 million members, made their union’s contempt for "uppity" teachers explicit policy. They declared their categorical opposition to "any . . . system of compensation based on an evaluation of an education employee’s performance." Up to now, the bosses of the NEA union and the likeminded men and women who run the 1.3 million-member American Federation of Teachers (AFT/AFL-CIO) have had their way when it comes to teacher compensation, with only a handful of exceptions.

But now change seems to be in the air. A number of elected officials are saying publicly that teachers should be rewarded when they do a superior job, just like university faculty. For example, GOP Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger (Calif.) and Don Carcieri (R.I.) are advocating merit pay for teachers...

...to propose that teachers be rewarded based on merit, as Schwarzenegger did in his January 5 State of the State speech, is simply insane, according to teacher union officials.

"It’s a crazy idea," sneered San Diego Education Association union President Terry Pesta. "That’s la-la land," chortled United Teachers Los Angeles union President John Perez...

...Experience with merit pay in K-12 education and federal employment is extremely limited because union officials have opposed it tooth and nail, and worked to sabotage it when they couldn’t stop it flat out. But in the occasional cases where teacher union bosses have been unable to block or undermine merit pay, teachers appear to appreciate being treated as individuals...

..."Just rewarding people for having put in a lot of years, that’s one of the things the public gets upset about – and justly so," said high school English teacher Kris Sandy. It’s "perfectly reasonable" to tie raises to fulfilling performance goals, as long as teachers are given a clear presentation of what they need to do, Sandy continued. Former California public school teacher Arana Shapiro was more blunt in recently explaining to journal editor Naomi Riley why she switched to a private, nonunion school in New York City: "[I]n public schools there are teachers who have been there for ten years but haven’t changed one thing they’ve done . . . and they’re making a high amount of money. Yet teachers who have been there five years but are constantly improving on their practice are stuck" at a low pay level.

The real obstacle to the successful implementation of merit pay isn’t teachers or federal employees, it is the monopoly-bargaining system imposed on public education and federal employment by politicians acting at the behest of union officials. Discussions about teacher merit pay in California, Rhode Island, Minnesota and the 31 other states that have laws authorizing and promoting monopoly bargaining in public schools will be fruitless unless their basic labor-relations policies change. To have a chance of succeeding, merit-pay proposals must abolish monopoly bargaining or, at the very least, sharply restrict its scope...

For a perspective on how some Rhode Island teachers view merit pay as well as more on the dynamic that arises out of union monopolies, go here. With attitudes and restrictions on excellence like those described in that posting and the article featured above, is it now clear why we have a performance problem with public education in Rhode Island and across America?

Another part of the problem is here.

It is a structural problem with only one viable solution: The monopoly bargaining rights held by teachers' unions must go away. Our children deserve so much better and the unions stand between today's status quo of mediocrity and tomorrow's possible shot at a globally-competitive excellence.

Why do we tolerate what amounts to a form of child abuse?

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON EDUCATIONAL ISSUES:

EAST GREENWICH NEA TEACHERS' UNION CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS
In a nutshell, here is what I think the negotiating position of the East Greenwich School Committee should be on some of the key financial terms of the contract.

Other postings include:
Background Information on the East Greenwich NEA Labor Dispute
The NEA's Disinformation Campaign
East Greenwich Salary & Benefits Data
More Bad Faith Behavior by the NEA
The Debate About Retroactive Pay
Would You Hurt Our Children Just To Win Better Contract Terms?
The Question Remains Open & Unanswered: Are We/They Doing Right By Our Children?
Will The East Greenwich Teachers' Union Stop Their Attempts to Legally Extort Residents?
You Have To Read This Posting To Believe It! The Delusional World of the NEA Teachers' Union
So What Else is New? Teachers' Union Continues Non-Productive Behaviors in East Greenwich Labor Talks
"Bargaining Rights are Civil Rights"
The NEA-Rhode Island's Pathetic Attempts to Manipulate East Greenwich Residents

OTHER RHODE ISLAND PUBLIC EDUCATION/UNION ISSUES
In addition to financial issues, management rights are the other big teachers' union contract issue. "Work-to-rule" or "contract compliance" only can become an issue because of how management rights are defined in union contracts. The best reading on this subject is the recent report by The Education Partnership. It is must reading.

Other editorials and postings include:
ProJo editorial: Derailing the R.I. gravy train
ProJo editorial: RI public unions work to reduce your family's quality of life
ProJo editorial: Breaking the taxpayer: How R.I. teachers get 12% pay hikes
Selfish Focus of Teachers Unions: Everything But What Is Good For Our Kids
Tom Coyne - RI Schools: Big Bucks Have Not Brought Good Results
The NEA: There They Go, Again!
A Response: Why Teachers' Unions (Not Teachers!) Are Bad For Education
"A Girl From The Projects" Gets an Opportunity to Live the American Dream
Doing Right By Our Children in Public Education Requires Thinking Outside The Box
Debating Rhode Island Public Education Issues
The Cocoon in which Entitled State Employees Live
Are Teachers Fairly Compensated?
Warwick Teachers' Union Throws Public Tantrum
Blocking More Charter Schools Means Hurting Our Children
RI Educational Establishment: Your Days of No Vigorous Public Oversight & No Accountability Are Ending

BROADER PUBLIC EDUCATION ISSUES
The Deep Performance Problems with American Public Education
Freedom, Hard Work & Quality Education: Making The American Dream Possible For ALL Americans
Parents or Government/Unions: Who Should Control Our Children's Educational Decisions?
Now Here is a Good Idea
Milton Friedman on School Choice
Issuing a Call for a Higher Quality Public Debate About Education

Issuing a Call for a Higher Quality Public Debate About Education

Robert Gordon, a former education policy advisor to John Kerry, has written a provocative article in The New Republic magazine about the Democratic Party's actions on educational matters.

Ed Achorn has recently commented on the article here, noting:

...Mr. Gordon contends that Democrats should stop letting Republicans eat their lunch on education. Democrats, given their traditional support of a vigorous government and their historic allegiance to the belief that America should be a country "where birth doesn't dictate destiny," should be strong advocates of education reform. They should be carrying the flag especially for minority children in poor school districts.

Instead, Mr. Gordon notes, they too often march in lockstep with the teachers' unions, chanting their mantra of "money, money, money" while mounting "unprincipled attacks" against reform. Even if Democratic politicians (including Mr. Kerry) support reform in theory, Mr. Gordon observes, their principles "wither in the heat of Democratic politics."

As a result, Republicans have been leading the charge on education reform -- and voters are noticing...

There seems to be a lesson here for many Rhode Island Democrats, too, who may be turning off parents and taxpayers with their apparent lack of compassion for children in public schools, and their slavish devotion to the state's very powerful and often arrogant teachers' unions.

The state has among the nation's highest per-pupil costs, fueling skyrocketing property taxes -- and the absolute highest per-pupil costs devoted to teacher compensation -- but its students, on average, perform poorly on tests. Rhode Island's young are being poorly prepared to compete in a world where brainpower will be essential.

...Experience confirms what common sense would argue: Accountability, high standards and excellent teachers are the key. Mr. Gordon cites a study by the Education Trust that had found that "good teachers are the single most important factor in good schools -- affecting student achievement more than race, poverty, or parental education."

Unfortunately, teachers' unions have become an impediment to such achievement, because they fiercely defend a culture of mediocrity over merit. "Onerous hiring procedures discourage able candidates, while the lockstep pay scale rewards seniority and accumulated degrees, not success," Mr. Gordon writes. Tenure makes it almost impossible to fire bad teachers...

Mr. Gordon offers rational reforms for Democrats to embrace:

Change the pay system to stop rewarding mediocrity and start rewarding effort and merit. The "usual liberal solution -- across-the-board pay hikes -- perpetuates the maldistribution of good teachers and reinforces the irrelevance of achievement."

Use bonuses to attract good teachers to poor schools.

Attract better people to the profession with promises of higher pay for better results.

Develop methods for evaluating teachers fairly, so that they are not punished arbitrarily or for political reasons -- then reward the best performers and weed out the worst. With peer and principals' involvement, teacher evaluations could be at least as fair as those "in other professions where performance pay is the norm."

Why should Democrats tackle this problem? Because their traditional values argue for helping children -- especially the poor -- get a better education, and have a fairer shot at the American dream...

Voters -- and one hears this constantly in Rhode Island, certainly -- are coming to the conclusion that throwing more money at the schools is useless if the money simply goes for lavish adult entitlements, mediocre performance and a tax-them-into-the-stone-age political machine.

To make changes, Democratic politicians will have to put the interests of children ahead of the demands of one of the most important and powerful elements of the Democrats' political base. "But there has to be a distinction between supporting the rights of unions and supporting their every demand," Mr. Gordon notes...

...If [progressives] give up on that philosophy to serve the greed of a powerful interest group, they will continue to lose their once-dominant edge as the party of education...

I would encourage you to read the entire Gordon article.

For further information on the magnitude of the performance problems in American education, go here.

Let's focus on the one thing that matters most: Providing a quality education to all children in America so each of them gets a fair shot at living the American Dream.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON EDUCATIONAL ISSUES:

EAST GREENWICH NEA TEACHERS' UNION CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS
In a nutshell, here is what I think the negotiating position of the East Greenwich School Committee should be on some of the key financial terms of the contract.

Other postings include:
Background Information on the East Greenwich NEA Labor Dispute
The NEA's Disinformation Campaign
East Greenwich Salary & Benefits Data
More Bad Faith Behavior by the NEA
The Debate About Retroactive Pay
Would You Hurt Our Children Just To Win Better Contract Terms?
The Question Remains Open & Unanswered: Are We/They Doing Right By Our Children?
Will The East Greenwich Teachers' Union Stop Their Attempts to Legally Extort Residents?
You Have To Read This Posting To Believe It! The Delusional World of the NEA Teachers' Union
So What Else is New? Teachers' Union Continues Non-Productive Behaviors in East Greenwich Labor Talks
"Bargaining Rights are Civil Rights"
The NEA-Rhode Island's Pathetic Attempts to Manipulate East Greenwich Residents

OTHER RHODE ISLAND PUBLIC EDUCATION/UNION ISSUES
In addition to financial issues, management rights are the other big teachers' union contract issue. "Work-to-rule" or "contract compliance" only can become an issue because of how management rights are defined in union contracts. The best reading on this subject is the recent report by The Education Partnership. It is must reading.

Other editorials and postings include:
ProJo editorial: Derailing the R.I. gravy train
ProJo editorial: RI public unions work to reduce your family's quality of life
ProJo editorial: Breaking the taxpayer: How R.I. teachers get 12% pay hikes
Selfish Focus of Teachers Unions: Everything But What Is Good For Our Kids
Tom Coyne - RI Schools: Big Bucks Have Not Brought Good Results
The NEA: There They Go, Again!
A Response: Why Teachers' Unions (Not Teachers!) Are Bad For Education
"A Girl From The Projects" Gets an Opportunity to Live the American Dream
Doing Right By Our Children in Public Education Requires Thinking Outside The Box
Debating Rhode Island Public Education Issues
The Cocoon in which Entitled State Employees Live
Are Teachers Fairly Compensated?
Warwick Teachers' Union Throws Public Tantrum
Blocking More Charter Schools Means Hurting Our Children
RI Educational Establishment: Your Days of No Vigorous Public Oversight & No Accountability Are Ending

BROADER PUBLIC EDUCATION ISSUES
The Deep Performance Problems with American Public Education
Freedom, Hard Work & Quality Education: Making The American Dream Possible For ALL Americans
Parents or Government/Unions: Who Should Control Our Children's Educational Decisions?
Now Here is a Good Idea
Milton Friedman on School Choice

More on Potential FEC Restrictions on Blogging Community

A previous posting provided a substantive introduction to ongoing FEC regulation risks facing the blogging community.

Win Myers at the Democracy Project continues his good work on this subject with these two recent postings here and here.

It is in the blogging community's self-interest as lovers of freedom to stay informed about FEC developments and all the surrounding politics - and ensure the debate is visible to the American people. Read closely and stay alert.

After all, if the government can take away our private property with ease, why should we assume they wouldn't take away our free speech with similar ease?

Why is it even necessary to have these concerns in America? Sad and worrisome, isn't it?

China: A Lurking Threat

Respected defense analyst and journalist Bill Gertz writes:

China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials.

U.S. defense and intelligence officials say all the signs point in one troubling direction: Beijing then will be forced to go to war with the United States, which has vowed to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack.

China's military buildup includes an array of new high-technology weapons, such as warships, submarines, missiles and a maneuverable warhead designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses. Recent intelligence reports also show that China has stepped up military exercises involving amphibious assaults, viewed as another sign that it is preparing for an attack on Taiwan...

China's economy has been growing at a rate of at least 10 percent for each of the past 10 years, providing the country's military with the needed funds for modernization.

The combination of a vibrant centralized economy, growing military and increasingly fervent nationalism has transformed China into what many defense officials view as a fascist state.

"We may be seeing in China the first true fascist society on the model of Nazi Germany, where you have this incredible resource base in a commercial economy with strong nationalism, which the military was able to reach into and ramp up incredible production," a senior defense official said...

The release of an official Chinese government report in December called the situation on the Taiwan Strait "grim" and said the country's military could "crush" Taiwan.

Earlier this year, Beijing passed an anti-secession law, a unilateral measure that upset the fragile political status quo across the Taiwan Strait. The law gives Chinese leaders a legal basis they previously did not have to conduct a military attack on Taiwan, U.S. officials said...

The advances give the Chinese military "the ability ... to reach out and touch parts of the United States -- Guam, Hawaii and the mainland of the United States," he said...

China's rulers have adopted what is known as the "two-island chain" strategy of extending control over large areas of the Pacific, covering inner and outer chains of islands stretching from Japan to Indonesia...

The official said China's buildup goes beyond what would be needed to fight a war against Taiwan.

The conclusion of this official is that China wants a "blue-water" navy capable of projecting power far beyond the two island chains.

"If you look at the technical capabilities of the weapons platforms that they're fielding, the sea-keeping capabilities, the size, sensors and weapons fit, this capability transcends the baseline that is required to deal with a Taiwan situation militarily," the intelligence official said...

...A recent Japanese government defense report called China a strategic national security concern. It was the first time China was named specifically in a Japanese defense report.

For China, Taiwan is not the only issue behind the buildup of military forces. Beijing also is facing a major energy shortage that, according to one Pentagon study, could lead it to use military force to seize territory with oil and gas resources.

The report produced for the Office of Net Assessment, which conducts assessments of future threats, was made public in January and warned that China's need for oil, gas and other energy resources is driving the country toward becoming an expansionist power...

The report also highlighted the vulnerability of China's oil and gas infrastructure to a crippling U.S. attack.

"The U.S. military could severely cripple Chinese resistance [during a conflict over Taiwan] by blocking its energy supply, whereas the [People's Liberation Army navy] poses little threat to United States' energy security," it said...

The report stated that China will resort "to extreme, offensive and mercantilist measures when other strategies fail, to mitigate its vulnerabilities, such as seizing control of energy resources in neighboring states."

U.S. officials have said two likely targets for China are the Russian Far East, which has vast oil and gas deposits, and Southeast Asia, which also has oil and gas resources...

Richard Fisher, vice president of the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said that in 10 years, the Chinese army has shifted from a defensive force to an advanced military soon capable of operations ranging from space warfare to global non-nuclear cruise-missile strikes.

"Let's all wake up. The post-Cold War peace is over," Mr. Fisher said. "We are now in an arms race with a new superpower whose goal is to contain and overtake the United States."

Here is Gertz' second article entitled Thefts of U.S. technology boost China's weaponry.

Here is an additional article by Gertz entitled Beijing devoted to weakening 'enemy' U.S., defector says.

Related topics can be found in previous postings entitled Sobering Possibilities and The Geopoliticization of World's Oil & Gas Industry.

The NEA-Rhode Island's Pathetic Attempts to Manipulate East Greenwich Residents

Sometimes there are simply not words in the English language which can communicate sufficient disdain.

Welcome to a posting which reviews various pathetic attempts by the NEA teachers' union to manipulate public opinion in East Greenwich. The NEA's false comments, stupid comments, and errors over the months would almost be humorous if their efforts weren't focused on trying to legally extort the taxpayers of East Greenwich while simultaneously hurting our children.

So what happened most recently? Well, the NEA sent out a glossy flyer to all town residents. Calling itself a 2004-2005 report card on the School Committee, it gave them all F's.

Two of the comments on the flyer said:

• Failing our children as the School Committee members fumbled their way through the school year.
• Failing homeowners as the School Committee dismantles a once proud school system - and starts your property values on a downward slide.

These words have the sophistication of a 2nd grader trying to mimic George Orwell. Just to point out the obvious:

• Who refused to provide academic assistance to our children? The teachers, not the School Committee. So who was failing our children?
• Who refused to even discuss a 6%-10% health insurance premium co-payment proposal? The NEA union representatives, not the School Committee who offered those terms. So who was looking after the interests of homeowners?

The so-called report card has stirred one of two reactions in town: Laughter at the juvenile nature of the mailing or outrage at the union's attempt to mislead and manipulate residents.

Nice try NEA, but your pathetic actions backfired on you - again.

Oh, I didn't tell you the funniest part about the mailer: One side has a list of all 7 School Committee members with phone numbers to call in an attempt to have residents put pressure on the members. Only one problem: 2 of the 7 phone numbers were wrong!

But their pathetic behavior is nothing new. Consider what they were saying in January:

Comments by National Education Association (NEA) teachers’ union officials remind me of words spoken years ago by Soviet officials, whose views of the world were subsequently shown to have no connection to any form of reality.

As the union cranks up its disinformation campaign to intimidate East Greenwich residents, let’s contrast their Orwellian comments in recent newspaper articles with the facts:

Comment #1: The School Committee needs to get serious…Taxes in East Greenwich aren’t that high compared to other communities. FALSE...

Comment #2: The School Committee offer was completely unacceptable…It must make a financially reasonable offer. IT DID...

Comment #3: We do not deserve a pay cut in any fashion...Teachers would ultimately be getting the raw end of the deal. FALSE...

Comment #4: Teacher pay is lower than what other districts offer. FALSE...

Comment #5: The union takes exception to comments that teachers were hurting students by working under [minimal] contract compliance...TOO BAD THE TRUTH BOTHERS YOU...

Comment #6: Teachers are still accomplishing what is expected of them legally…If we are not working the hours that we are supposed to work, then they should take us to court...BAD NON-PROFESSIONAL ATTITUDE...

Comment #7: For the last twelve years there haven’t been any previous problems during negotiations...SORRY, THE PILLAGING GIG IS OVER

Comment #8: Upset that the School Committee publicly releases specific details of the negotiations instead of working with the union to finalize a deal...IT'S HARD TO LEGALLY EXTORT RESIDENTS IN FULL PUBLIC VIEW, ISN'T IT?

Welcome to the surreal world of the NEA, completely disconnected from the economic reality of working families and retirees of East Greenwich - who pay for the teachers' salaries and benefits out of their hard-earned monies.

More recently, the NEA officials made a series of over-the-top, delusional public comment blunders that had residents shaking their heads in bewilderment at the utter stupidity of the words:

1. "The teachers had to do [contract compliance] to show parents how much extra teachers really do." NONSENSICAL BLABBER.

2. "[Work-to-rule] simply means we won't do anything extra." TELLINGLY TRUE.

3. [Tutoring (i.e., any form of academic assistance) before or after school] is not part of their job description." FALSE.

4. "Teachers have been doing more than what's required for no money in the past." FALSE.

5. "...a majority of East Greenwich residents can afford to hire tutors for their children but have been receiving these services free from public school teachers for years." FALSE.

6. "More than 50% of East Greenwich residents have a very high income, $500,000 or over." FALSE.

7. "In the private sector no one works overtime without getting paid. And if they're off the clock at 5 p.m., you can bet they're out the door at 5." FALSE.

8. "...contract compliance is not hurting the children. Not going on a field trip isn't hurting a child." FALSE.

It is hard to shake down a community after you insult residents so directly.

What is most pathetic is that the NEA did all of this to themselves.

Welcome to the world of the NEA-RI, where having any connection to a fact-based reality is not a requirement for employment. And they want to tell us how to run our schools! Scary thought, isn't it?

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON EDUCATIONAL ISSUES:

EAST GREENWICH NEA TEACHERS' UNION CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS
In a nutshell, here is what I think the negotiating position of the East Greenwich School Committee should be on some of the key financial terms of the contract.

Other postings include:
Background Information on the East Greenwich NEA Labor Dispute
The NEA's Disinformation Campaign
East Greenwich Salary & Benefits Data
More Bad Faith Behavior by the NEA
The Debate About Retroactive Pay
Would You Hurt Our Children Just To Win Better Contract Terms?
The Question Remains Open & Unanswered: Are We/They Doing Right By Our Children?
Will The East Greenwich Teachers' Union Stop Their Attempts to Legally Extort Residents?
You Have To Read This Posting To Believe It! The Delusional World of the NEA Teachers' Union
So What Else is New? Teachers' Union Continues Non-Productive Behaviors in East Greenwich Labor Talks
"Bargaining Rights are Civil Rights"

OTHER RHODE ISLAND PUBLIC EDUCATION/UNION ISSUES
In addition to financial issues, management rights are the other big teachers' union contract issue. "Work-to-rule" or "contract compliance" only can become an issue because of how management rights are defined in union contracts. The best reading on this subject is the recent report by The Education Partnership. It is must reading.

Other editorials and postings include:
ProJo editorial: Derailing the R.I. gravy train
ProJo editorial: RI public unions work to reduce your family's quality of life
ProJo editorial: Breaking the taxpayer: How R.I. teachers get 12% pay hikes
Selfish Focus of Teachers Unions: Everything But What Is Good For Our Kids
Tom Coyne - RI Schools: Big Bucks Have Not Brought Good Results
The NEA: There They Go, Again!
A Response: Why Teachers' Unions (Not Teachers!) Are Bad For Education
"A Girl From The Projects" Gets an Opportunity to Live the American Dream
Doing Right By Our Children in Public Education Requires Thinking Outside The Box
Debating Rhode Island Public Education Issues
The Cocoon in which Entitled State Employees Live
Are Teachers Fairly Compensated?
Warwick Teachers' Union Throws Public Tantrum
Blocking More Charter Schools Means Hurting Our Children
RI Educational Establishment: Your Days of No Vigorous Public Oversight & No Accountability Are Ending

BROADER PUBLIC EDUCATION ISSUES
The Deep Performance Problems with American Public Education
Freedom, Hard Work & Quality Education: Making The American Dream Possible For ALL Americans
Parents or Government/Unions: Who Should Control Our Children's Educational Decisions?
Now Here is a Good Idea
Milton Friedman on School Choice

RI Educational Establishment: Your Days of No Vigorous Public Oversight & No Accountability Are Ending

Five years ago, fighting the Rhode Island educational establishment of bureaucrats and teachers' unions reminded me of Sisyphus, who mythology says was condemned to constantly pushing the rock up the hill - only to have it slide back down so he would have to repeat the senseless effort again and again.

But the winds of change are blowing...

For example, consider the union response to pension reform. After years of actively resisting any change, they weighed in last week with a late-to-the-game attempt to modify the pension reform train that had already left the station. It came across as an act of desperation.

Now there is another example of how the winds of change are blowing. A recent ProJo article carries an interesting message to the educational establishment in Rhode Island:

The powerful House Finance Committee stuck with Governor Carcieri's proposal to boost school financing by just 2.2 percent, allocating $666 million to education in next year's budget being hammered out in the General Assembly.

For the second year in a row, it mirrored the governor's spending plan for schools. In previous years, the General Assembly has broken with the governor to give cities and towns more school aid than he sought.

"The message we are trying to send to school districts is no more business as usual," said Rep. Paul W. Crowley, D-Newport, who is deputy chairman of the finance committee.

Lawmakers have become frustrated, according to Crowley. They feel that the state's investment in schools has been so broad that lawmakers have been unable to see tangible results, Crowley says.

"There's a concern about where the money is going," he said. "Is it just going into health-care and retirement benefits for teachers, or is it going to services for students?"

Crowley says Rhode Island needs to negotiate a single state contract with teachers or set some standards for benefit packages.

"We aren't going to keep investing in a system we have no control over," he said.

This perspective angers school superintendents such as Catherine M. Ciarlo, who runs the Cranston school system and says she has been counting on additional state aid for next year...

The problem with public education in Rhode Island can be summarized easily: We over-pay for under-performance.

We spend roughly 25% more than the national average on a per-pupil basis. Depending on the survey, we have the 7th-to-9th highest highest paid teachers.

And what do we get for that investment: Based on various NAEP test results, RI schools rank between 34th-to-38th among the 50 states. And don't forget that the average student performance in the United States is average-to-below-average among students in the industrialized world.

How could this be? There are two major reasons: Outrageously generous financial terms and extraordinarily restrictive management rights terms in the teachers' union contracts.

With respect to financial terms: Handing out 8-14% annual salary increases to all but the top job step. Providing for little or no health insurance premium co-payment. Offering cash buybacks when health insurance is not used. Longevity bonuses. Rich pension benefits. And the list goes on.

With respect to management rights: The Education Partnership's report is an effective way to learn how the union contract decimates effective decision making in our schools.

There is indeed concern about where the education money is going. As Warwick and East Greenwich negotiations have shown, the unions are relentlessly pushing their non-stop attempts to legally extort the residents of each town with no focus on how their demands impact programs and resources that are needed by our children.

But, the word is out about the games played by the educational establishment at the expense of our children. There is no turning back. And, in time, the educational establishment will either change radically to become a high performance operation or become extinct.

This is a moral crusade. Access to a quality education is the great equalizer in enabling all children to have a fair shot at living the American Dream. We cannot and will not continue to deny the most needy of our children what is their birthright as citizens of this great land.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON EDUCATIONAL ISSUES:

EAST GREENWICH NEA TEACHERS' UNION CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS
In a nutshell, here is what I think the negotiating position of the East Greenwich School Committee should be on some of the key financial terms of the contract.

Other postings include:
Background Information on the East Greenwich NEA Labor Dispute
The NEA's Disinformation Campaign
East Greenwich Salary & Benefits Data
More Bad Faith Behavior by the NEA
The Debate About Retroactive Pay
Would You Hurt Our Children Just To Win Better Contract Terms?
The Question Remains Open & Unanswered: Are We/They Doing Right By Our Children?
Will The East Greenwich Teachers' Union Stop Their Attempts to Legally Extort Residents?
You Have To Read This Posting To Believe It! The Delusional World of the NEA Teachers' Union
So What Else is New? Teachers' Union Continues Non-Productive Behaviors in East Greenwich Labor Talks
"Bargaining Rights are Civil Rights"

OTHER RHODE ISLAND PUBLIC EDUCATION/UNION ISSUES
In addition to financial issues, management rights are the other big teachers' union contract issue. "Work-to-rule" or "contract compliance" only can become an issue because of how management rights are defined in union contracts. The best reading on this subject is the recent report by The Education Partnership. It is must reading.

Other editorials and postings include:
ProJo editorial: Derailing the R.I. gravy train
ProJo editorial: RI public unions work to reduce your family's quality of life
ProJo editorial: Breaking the taxpayer: How R.I. teachers get 12% pay hikes
Selfish Focus of Teachers Unions: Everything But What Is Good For Our Kids
Tom Coyne - RI Schools: Big Bucks Have Not Brought Good Results
The NEA: There They Go, Again!
A Response: Why Teachers' Unions (Not Teachers!) Are Bad For Education
"A Girl From The Projects" Gets an Opportunity to Live the American Dream
Doing Right By Our Children in Public Education Requires Thinking Outside The Box
Debating Rhode Island Public Education Issues
The Cocoon in which Entitled State Employees Live
Are Teachers Fairly Compensated?
Warwick Teachers' Union Throws Public Tantrum
Blocking More Charter Schools Means Hurting Our Children

BROADER PUBLIC EDUCATION ISSUES
The Deep Performance Problems with American Public Education
Freedom, Hard Work & Quality Education: Making The American Dream Possible For ALL Americans
Parents or Government/Unions: Who Should Control Our Children's Educational Decisions?
Now Here is a Good Idea
Milton Friedman on School Choice

Rhode Island Politics & Taxation, Part XXI: Blocking More Charter Schools Means Hurting Our Children

The latest news on charter schools in Rhode Island is bad news for our children, especially those who need our help the most:

The House Finance Committee's decision to impose a two-year moratorium on new charter schools has derailed plans to open such a school in East Providence this fall.

Dennis Langley, chief executive officer of the Urban League of Rhode Island, said his organization had planned to open a school with 140 students in grades 8 through 11, but the moratorium, approved Tuesday, has put plans on hold.

"We're very disappointed," he said yesterday. "When you see so many youngsters wanting a choice and wanting to reach the unreachable, it's very sad."

The Academy of Science, Art and Technology would place a heavy emphasis on math and science instruction and would enroll students from Providence and East Providence, Langley said. The school would eventually grow to 300 students in grades 8 through 12.

If the General Assembly concurs with the House Finance Committee, it appears that Rhode Island would be the only state in the country whose legislature has imposed a moratorium on charter schools, according to the Center for Education Reform, a national reform organization.

(The education bill goes to the full House on Monday.)...

Charter schools are public schools paid for with public money. They tend to be small, innovative schools that are free of the bureaucracy that controls traditional schools. Rhode Island has 11 charter schools, four of them in Providence.

Yesterday, charter school leaders in Providence speculated about the fate of a movement that they say offers parents and children a valuable alternative to the traditional system.

Richard Landau, the outgoing CEO of the Textron Chamber of Commerce Academy, said, "It's obvious that the battlelines have been drawn and that a tremendous number of people who are entrenched" are trying to stall the momentum of charter schools. Textron was the first charter school in Rhode Island.

"Education is a huge industry," Landau said. "It's their livelihood and these people are threatened by change. Well, we better wake up. While we're feeling comfortable, all of these other countries are licking their chops. They're going right by us."...

Thompson thinks that charter schools are encountering resistance partly because of their success.

"Charters are a force to be reckoned with," he said. "They are demonstrating that within their scope, kids can master skills that they haven't been able to do in schools that are large and overcrowded."...

The bill is here.

As one educational activist wrote me:

...I would love it if people would scream about this moratorium. The paper talked about thousands of dollars flowing out of the public schools, but charters ARE public schools and not one of them is low-performing. And I believe strongly in choice and with the unions having a stanglehold on schools, choice is one of the few ways to get some of these kids educated.

We should scream loudly. The resistance to educational reforms led by unions and the educational bureaucracy is hurting our children. That is indefensible and morally repugnant behavior.

This posting continues a periodic series on Rhode Island politics and taxation, building on twenty previous postings:

I - Guiding Principles for Sound Public Policy
II - The Outrageous Tax Burden in Rhode Island
III - 2004: The Year in Review
IV - The NEA's Disinformation Campaign
V - Governor Carcieri's State of the State Address
VI - "Citizens for Representative Government's" Deceitful Manipulation of the Constitutional Convention Vote
VII - The Extreme Tax Burden in the City of Providence
VIII - Rhode Island Gets a C+ on its Report Card
IX - How Speaker Murphy's Changing of the Rules of the House Reduces Your Freedom
X - East Greenwich Teachers' Salary and Benefits Data
XI - What Was Rep. Fox Doing in Portsmouth?
XII - Why Do RI Citizens Passively Consent to Governmental Control by Powerful Interests?
XIII - RI House Leaders Show No Respect for Rule of Law by Undermining Separations of Powers, Part I
XIV - More Bad Faith Behavior by the NEA
XV - RI House Leaders Show No Respect for Rule of Law by Undermining Separations of Powers, Part II
XVI - Tom Coyne - RI Schools: Big Bucks Have Not Brought Good Results
XVII - RI Public Pension Problems
XVIII - Union Doublespeak, Again
XIX - Another Stab at Killing Off Future Economic Growth
XX - Defining a Core Problem in Rhode Island

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON EDUCATIONAL ISSUES:

EAST GREENWICH NEA TEACHERS' UNION CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS
In a nutshell, here is what I think the negotiating position of the East Greenwich School Committee should be on some of the key financial terms of the contract.

Other postings include:
Background Information on the East Greenwich NEA Labor Dispute
The NEA's Disinformation Campaign
East Greenwich Salary & Benefits Data
More Bad Faith Behavior by the NEA
The Debate About Retroactive Pay
Would You Hurt Our Children Just To Win Better Contract Terms?
The Question Remains Open & Unanswered: Are We/They Doing Right By Our Children?
Will The East Greenwich Teachers' Union Stop Their Attempts to Legally Extort Residents?
You Have To Read This Posting To Believe It! The Delusional World of the NEA Teachers' Union
So What Else is New? Teachers' Union Continues Non-Productive Behaviors in East Greenwich Labor Talks
"Bargaining Rights are Civil Rights"

OTHER RHODE ISLAND PUBLIC EDUCATION/UNION ISSUES
In addition to financial issues, management rights are the other big teachers' union contract issue. "Work-to-rule" or "contract compliance" only can become an issue because of how management rights are defined in union contracts. The best reading on this subject is the recent report by The Education Partnership. It is must reading.

Other editorials and postings include:
ProJo editorial: Derailing the R.I. gravy train
ProJo editorial: RI public unions work to reduce your family's quality of life
ProJo editorial: Breaking the taxpayer: How R.I. teachers get 12% pay hikes
Selfish Focus of Teachers Unions: Everything But What Is Good For Our Kids
Tom Coyne - RI Schools: Big Bucks Have Not Brought Good Results
The NEA: There They Go, Again!
A Response: Why Teachers' Unions (Not Teachers!) Are Bad For Education
"A Girl From The Projects" Gets an Opportunity to Live the American Dream
Doing Right By Our Children in Public Education Requires Thinking Outside The Box
Debating Rhode Island Public Education Issues
The Cocoon in which Entitled State Employees Live
Are Teachers Fairly Compensated?
Warwick Teachers' Union Throws Public Tantrum

BROADER PUBLIC EDUCATION ISSUES
The Deep Performance Problems with American Public Education
Freedom, Hard Work & Quality Education: Making The American Dream Possible For ALL Americans
Parents or Government/Unions: Who Should Control Our Children's Educational Decisions?
Milton Friedman on School Choice
Now Here is a Good Idea

Countering the Intolerance of Left-Wing Secular Fundamentalists

Hugh Hewitt has written an important article entitled Real Religious Intolerance. In the article, he provides a speech by American Roman Catholic Archbishop Chaput that is worthy of reading in full:

The Los Angeles Weekly's "The New Blacklist" is author Douglas Ireland's attempt to equate consumer boycotts of gay-themed entertainment sponsors with McCarthyism.

That's a stretch to begin with...

Ireland's piece is full of over-the-top rhetoric, including repeated use of the term "Christers," which many view as nakedly bigoted.

But Ireland is a proud radical atheist, as blogger-theologian Mark D. Roberts discovered as he began a lengthy assessment of Ireland's piece...the harshest language in his article didn't come from him, but from the associate dean of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communication, Martin Kaplan. Kaplan, a long-time Democratic activist turned professor, called the trend among Christians refusing to buy products advertised on shows such as Will & Grace, ""theocratic oligopoly." Dean Kaplan continued: "The drumbeat of religious fascism has never been as troubling as it is now in this country."

Kaplan's absurdity would have lacked the context to make it other than the silly excess of a tenured Trojan had the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe not just held a conference in Cordoba Spain on the rise of anti-Semitism and other forms of religious intolerance in Europe...an American delegation attended...Among the delegation was Denver's Archbishop Charles Chaput. Archbishop Chaput's remarks deserve widespread distribution...

Because Dean Kaplan's bigotry and historical amnesia is not unique, we reprint the entire text of Bishop Chaput's remarks here:

For a few weeks two months ago, the City of Rome doubled in size. People from around Europe and the world came to the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Some 600,000 people viewed his coffin on the first day. More than 1.4 million paid their respects before his burial. That should remind us of two things.

First, Europe remains obviously religious--not simply in its nominal and active believers, but also in its culture and assumptions about the dignity of the human person.

What we know as "Europe" was shaped, in vital ways, by the Christian faith. Judaism and Islam also clearly made important contributions to the European experience. But the founders of the European unity movement were all professed Christians. Their commitment to the great project of Europe's future came from their moral convictions, which in turn grew out of their religious identity and Christian heritage.

Second, John Paul II's appeal to people of every faith--and no faith--did not come simply from his personality but from his actions. His devotion to human freedom and his role in liberating Eastern Europe were rooted completely in his Catholic faith. In one sense, he embodied the greatness of Europe. And he did it by being a son of Europe's Christian imagination and history.

We know from the totalitarian regimes in Europe's recent past that a determined minority can persecute other minorities, and oppress even a majority of a nation's citizens. Discrimination and intolerance toward Christians and minority religious groups are rising in several areas of the world today. Europe, despite its heritage, is not immune. And unfortunately, other parts of the OSCE region show similar troubling signs.

Discrimination and intolerance take two forms: direct and indirect. Direct discrimination has the shape of legal restrictions, and often police harassment and legal barriers, designed to stamp out unauthorized or unpopular religious communities or to limit the legitimate exercise of their religious freedom. The intolerant behavior of some OSCE states continues to violate the basic human rights of belief and worship.

In several OSCE states, regimes discriminate against religious communities by creating structures of prejudicial treatment. High membership requirements prevent small congregations from obtaining legal status which, in contrast, is granted to other "traditional" religious communities. Lack of historical presence can block newer religious groups from qualifying for basic rights and privileges. Denial of legal standing has the very real consequence of either violating individual rights or stigmatizing entire groups. This is state-sponsored discrimination, and it violates OSCE commitments to promote religious freedom for all.

An equally dangerous trend now dominates other OSCE states, where public expressions of religious faith often seem to be ridiculed as fundamentalism. In the name of respecting all religions, a new form of secular intolerance is sometimes imposed. Out of fear of religious fundamentalism, a new kind of secular fundamentalism may be coerced on public institutions and political discourse.

At the same time, various media in the OSCE area now often allow symbols of Christian identity, Christian believers and their faith to be publicly abused. Programs like "How to cook a crucifix" and sacramental confessions recorded without the confessor's knowledge are deeply contemptuous of Catholic believers. This is unworthy of Europe's moral dignity and religious heritage. Furthermore, it stands in stark contrast to OSCE commitments to promote religious freedom.

Europe has given the whole world the seeds of democracy. Today's growing anti-religious and often anti-Christian spirit undermines that witness.

As with anti-Semitism, the OSCE must employ its practical commitments on combating discrimination to also fight discrimination and intolerance against Christians and members of other religious communities. Moreover, the OSCE must carefully monitor their implementation.

OSCE participating states must strive to protect Christian communities and other religious groups from discrimination and intolerance. The media should be encouraged to offer truly balanced coverage of religious faith. Educational systems should teach the value of faith in people's lives. The specific contribution given to public life by Christian communities and other religious groups should be remembered.

Democracy depends on people of conviction taking an active, visible part in public life; peacefully and respectfully, but vigorously. That includes Christians, Jews, Muslims and all religious believers, as well as non-believers. Public debate without a free and welcoming role for religious faith does not produce diversity or pluralism. It can easily do the opposite. It can create politics without morality, and public institutions without enduring ideals.

My hope is that OSCE participating states will do everything in their power to discourage all forms of religious intolerance - including any disrespect for Europe's own Christian roots."

As a broader counter-argument to the arguments of the secular left fundamentalists, I would offer the following postings grouped loosely by subject matter:

The Founding Principles of America
Honoring The Land We Love
Our Declaration of Independence

America's Tainted Public Discourse & Competing Worldviews
Liberal Fundamentalism, Revisited
The Naked Public Square Revisited, Part I
The Naked Public Square Revisited, Part II
The Naked Public Square Revisited, Part III
The Naked Public Square Revisited, Part IV
The Meaning of Tolerance
Respectful Competition: A Basic Requirement for a Healthy Democracy
What Does "Social Justice" Mean?
Coerced Charity vs. Voluntary Charity
John Paul II, Requiescat in pacem
A Poignant Reflection on Pope John Paul II
Pope Benedict XVI: Offering Faith as an Antidote to Relativism
Discussing Justice, Rights & Moral Common Sense

Ideological Problems in Academia
Where is the Moral Outrage?
Where is the Moral Outrage? Part V
Where is the Moral Outrage? Part VI

Public Policy Structural Challenges
Lawrence Reed on "Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy"
Misguided Incentives Drive Public Sector Taxation

Summing It All Up
Discussing the Incivility in Today's Public Discourse
A Reasoned Alternative to the Ongoing Name-Calling in America's Public Discourse: Additional Commentary
Rediscovering Civility and Purpose in America's Public Discourse

Rediscovering Proper Judicial Reasoning

The public debate about proper judicial reasoning is often so ill-informed because the focus is only on short-term partisan agendas, a bad habit which damages the fabric of our society and respect for the rule of law.

Into that morass and using the recent Supreme Court decision on medical marijuana use in California, Charles Krauthammer elaborates on the meaning of "original intent" and shows how far away the courts have moved away from a strict interpretation of the Constitution. Here is the link to his very helpful and educational editorial on judicial reasoning:

...In our current, corrupted debates about the judges, you hear only about results. Priscilla Owen, we were told (by the [ultra-liberal] Alliance for Justice), "routinely backs corporations against worker and consumer protections." Well, in what circumstances? In adjudicating what claims? Under what constitutional doctrine?

The real question is never what judges decide but how they decide it. The Scalia-Thomas argument...was about what the Constitution's commerce clause permits and, even more abstractly, who decides what the commerce clause permits. To simplify only slightly, Antonin Scalia says: Supreme Court precedent. Clarence Thomas says: the Founders, as best we can interpret their original intent.

The Scalia opinion (concurring with the majority opinion) appeals to dozens of precedents over the past 70 years under which the commerce clause was vastly expanded to allow the federal government to regulate what had, by the time of the New Deal, become a highly industrialized country with a highly nationalized economy.

Thomas's dissent refuses to bow to such 20th-century innovations. While Scalia's opinion is studded with precedents, Thomas pulls out founding-era dictionaries (plus Madison's notes from the Constitutional Convention, the Federalist Papers and the ratification debates) to understand what the word commerce meant then. And it meant only "trade or exchange" (as distinct from manufacture) and not, as we use the term today, economic activity in general. By this understanding, the federal government had no business whatsoever regulating privately and medicinally grown marijuana.

This is constitutional "originalism" in pure form. Its attractiveness is that it imposes discipline on the courts. It gives them a clear and empirically verifiable understanding of constitutional text -- a finite boundary beyond which even judges with airs must not go.

And if conditions change and parts of the originalist Constitution become obsolete, amend it. Democratically. We have added 17 amendments since the Bill of Rights. Amending is not a job for judges.

The position represented by Scalia's argument in this case is less "conservative." It recognizes that decades of precedent (which might have, at first, taken constitutional liberties) become so ingrained in the life of the country, and so accepted as part of the understanding of the modern Constitution, that it is simply too revolutionary, too legally and societally disruptive, to return to an original understanding long abandoned.

And there is yet another view. With Thomas's originalism at one end of the spectrum and Scalia's originalism tempered by precedent -- rolling originalism, as it were -- in the middle, there is a third notion, championed most explicitly by Justice Stephen Breyer, that the Constitution is a living document and that the role of the court is to interpret and reinterpret it continually in the light of new ideas and new norms.

This is what our debate about judges should be about. Instead, it constantly degenerates into arguments about results.

Two years ago, Thomas (and Scalia and William Rehnquist) dissented from the court's decision to invalidate a Texas law that criminalized sodomy. Thomas explicitly wrote, "If I were a member of the Texas Legislature, I would vote to repeal it." However, since he is a judge and not a legislator, he could find no principled way to use a Constitution that is silent on this issue to strike down the law...

As we approach a time of new Supreme Court nominations, it would be a service to the country if the Senate and the major interest groups across the political spectrum could conduct a reasoned public debate on these important principles.

Since we know that they have lost the ability to conduct that kind of debate over the last 20 years, recovering such a debate will only occur if the requisite public pressure from citizens across America demands it. I hope we are up to the challenge.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Here are other postings on this site about the related issue of the judicial filibuster debate:

The Filibuster...Continued

The Injustice of Smearing A Fellow American For Political Gain

The Senate Judicial Filibuster: Power Politics & Religious Bigotry

Mac Owen's open letter to Senator Chaffee

Senator Mitch McConnell on the Judicial Filibuster

The Foolish Fourteen: An editorial by the former Dean of BU's Law School

A Power Line overview of the filibuster debate

Revisiting the Case for Janice Rogers Brown

2006 Election Year Targets: Heave Ho, They Must Go

Here is the Hall of Shame showing who voted for the childcare unionization bill.

We will never forget. They all deserve to be defeated in 2006.

For the full story on the childcare unionization bill and political dynamics, read this posting.

Rhode Island Unions Again Resist True Pension Reform

Marc rightfully noted the good news on pension reform passed earlier this week, followed by a word of caution.

The caution flags are now out in full force because the week wasn't even over before the unions of Rhode Island were out attacking the pension changes passed in the State House:

Unions representing state employees are objecting to proposed changes in the state's pension system and are presenting their own plan, which they say is fair to taxpayers and workers affected by the cuts.

The proposal put forward...by Working Rhode Island would restore some of the benefits that state employees would lose under a proposal endorsed this week by the House Finance Committee.

The unions' proposal, billed as "The Fair Pension Amendment," would also reduce pension contributions from workers affected by the cuts.

"We're asking the governor. We're asking the General Assembly to embrace these proposals as a fair compromise," Bob Walsh, secretary-treasurer of Working Rhode Island, said at a press conference today at the State House...

Walsh estimated that the unions' proposal would save $25 million to $30 million next year, while state lawmakers estimated their proposal would save the state and local communities about $44 million.

The pension reform package...would cut benefits to some 4,350 state workers and 7,000 teachers. The changes would affect only those workers who haven't served the 10 years required for vesting. It would not affect state troopers, judges or correctional officers and employees at quasi-public agencies...

Changes proposed by the lawmakers' include the institution of a minimum retirement age of 59.

The lawmakers' plan would also reduce the maximum benefit available to retirees and make them work longer to get it. For example, workers can now receive 80 percent of their salary after serving 35 years. Under the lawmakers' proposal, workers would have to serve 38 years to receive a maximum benefit of 75 percent of their salary.

Cost-of-living increases would also be tied to the Consumer Price Index and capped at 3 percent under the proposal.

Walsh said..."these proposals went far beyond anything we thought was fair."

For example, he complained that non-vested employees would see their benefits reduced without a reduction in their contributions to the system. He said teachers currently contribute 9.5 percent of their salary to their pension, while other employees contribute 8.75 percent.

Under the unions' proposal discussed today, those contributions would drop to 8.5 percent and 7.75 percent, respectively, starting in July 2006, then drop further as the pension fund becomes healthier.

Walsh said the problems in the pension system were not created by the employees who would be affected by the lawmakers' proposed cuts...

Walsh blamed the system's unfunded liability in part on government decisions, such as early retirements in the late 1980s and underfunding during the state's banking crisis. He said poor investment decisions had also hurt the system. He also acknowledged that longer life expectancies were playing a role.

The union also takes issue with the lawmakers' proposal to cut the maximum benefit from 80 to 75 percent. Under the unions' plan, the service time required for the maximum benefit would increase to 38 years, as the lawmakers have proposed, but workers serving that long would receive 80 percent of their salary in retirement...

The unions also reject the idea of tying the cost-of-living adjustment to the consumer price index, with a 3 percent cap...

Here is another ProJo article:

A spokesman for Republican Governor Carcieri said: "The union leaders' proposal appears to be a cynical attempt to head off real reform.

"The governor has been working to reform the state pension system for two-and-a-half years. He has had a comprehensive pension-reform proposal on the table since January. The union leadership has resisted the governor's efforts every step of the way," spokesman Jeff Neal said

"Now, at the eleventh hour, after the governor and the General Assembly appear to have reached agreement on this issue, the union leadership has come up with a half-hearted proposal that doesn't do nearly enough to solve the state's pension crisis.

"If the union leaders were serious," Neal said that they would have come forward months sooner. "Instead, they waited until the very last minute when they realized that their efforts to crush the reform movement had failed."

General Treasurer Paul Tavares, a Democrat, keyed his objections to the unions' suggestion that the state string out, over a longer period of time -- in the same way a homeowner refinances a mortgage -- the payments it needs to make each year to the state retirement fund to cover about $8 billion in pension obligations to state workers and teachers.

The notion: pay less now even if it costs millions more over the longer payment period.

The state has about 25 years left on the last pension refinancing by the state Retirement Board in 2001. Doing so again now, when "the system has a significant unfunded liability that is growing," would be "counterproductive to the system's fiscal health," Tavares said yesterday.

The unions just don't get it. RI Public Pension Problems are well documented and doing less is not a financially viable option. They appear willing to bankrupt this state - as long as they get theirs.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Bankrupt pensions, extraordinary healthcare insurance benefits, related issues with private and public sector unions, and the misguided incentives that exist in public sector taxation have been discussed previously on Anchor Rising:

Public Sector Issues
Misguided Incentives Drive Public Sector Taxation
Bankrupt Public Pensions: A Time Bomb That Will Explode
Why Truly Free Markets & Timely, Transparent Information Are Needed to Protect the Freedom of American Citizens
RI Public Pension Problems
The Cocoon in which Entitled State Employees Live
The Union's Solution for the Future: Get More People in Unions
Bankrupt Public Pensions, Part II
How Public Pensions Make People Well-Off at Taxpayers' Expense
Public and Private Unions
Making Headway Toward Fiscal Sanity
Now Here is a Good Idea
Be Watchful

Private Sector Issues
If You Won't Deal With Economic Reality, Then It Will Deal With You
Underfunding Pensions, Public and Private, can Hurt Taxpayers
Why Truly Free Markets & Timely, Transparent Information Are Needed to Protect the Freedom of American Citizens
Outrageous Employee Compensation Liabilities Continue to Haunt General Motors; Will American Taxpayers End Up Paying the Bill?
Why the Big Three Auto Companies Could Easily Fail

The Kelo Decision: When Private Property Rights are Eroded, Our Freedom is Diminished

Private property rights have always been central to our free society. That right is now gravely weakened after the Supreme Court issued a ruling that expands the ways in which the government can seize our homes:

The Supreme Court today effectively expanded the right of local governments to seize private property under eminent domain, ruling that people's homes and businesses -- even those not considered blighted -- can be taken against their will for private development if the seizure serves a broadly defined "public use."

In a 5-4 decision, the court upheld the ability of New London, Conn., to seize people's homes to make way for an office, residential and retail complex supporting a new $300 million research facility of the Pfizer pharmaceutical company. The city had argued that the project served a public use within the meaning of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution because it would increase tax revenues, create jobs and improve the local economy.

A group of homeowners in New London's Fort Trumbull area had fought the city's attempt to impose eminent domain, arguing that their property could be seized only to serve a clear public use such as building roads or schools or to eliminate blight. The homeowners, some of whom had lived in their house for decades, also argued that the public would benefit from the proposed project only if it turned out to be successful, making the "public use" requirement subject to the eventual performance of the private business venture.

The Fifth Amendment also requires "just compensation" for the owners, but that was not an issue in the case decided today because the homeowners did not want to give up their property at any price...

The majority endorsed the view that local governments are better placed than federal courts to decide whether development projects serve a public purpose and will benefit the community, justifying the acquisition of land through eminent domain...

New London officials "were not confronted with the need to remove blight in the Fort Trumbull area, but their determination that the area was sufficiently distressed to justify a program of economic rejuvenation is entitled to our deference," Stevens wrote. "The City has carefully formulated an economic development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including--but by no means limited to--new jobs and increased tax revenue."

Stevens added that "because that plan unquestionably serves a public purpose, the takings challenged here satisfy the public use requirement of the Fifth Amendment."...

Dissenting were justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, as well as Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.

In a strongly worded dissenting opinion, O'Connor wrote that the majority's decision overturns a long-held principle that eminent domain cannot be used simply to transfer property from one private owner to another.

"Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power," she wrote. "Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded -- i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public -- in the process."

The effect of the decision, O'Connor said, "is to wash out any distinction between private and public use of property -- and thereby effectively to delete the words "for public use" from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment."...

This article contains excerpts from oral arguments on the case. Here are the formal opinions from the case.

There are a lot of strong reactions to this ruling and Michelle Malkin provides links here and here to many of them. Professor Bainbridge offers his thoughts. John Eastman offers some historical perspective as does Ken Masugi, whose comments include:

...From the original intent to eliminate slums, the use of eminent domain has degenerated into corruption masquerading as statesmanship and delusion sold as sound public policy...

The Wall Street Journal, in its editorial (available for a fee) entitled Kennedy's Vast Domain, writes:

The Supreme Court's "liberal" wing has a reputation in some circles as a guardian of the little guy and a protector of civil liberties. That deserves reconsideration in light of yesterday's decision in Kelo v. City of New London. The Court's four liberals (Justices Stevens, Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg) combined with the protean Anthony Kennedy to rule that local governments have more or less unlimited authority to seize homes and businesses…

… the plain reading of th[e 5th] Amendment's "takings clause" also appears to require that eminent domain be invoked only when land is required for genuine "public use" such as roads…

The founding fathers added this clause to the Fifth Amendment -- which also guarantees "due process" and protects against double jeopardy and self-incrimination -- because they understood that there could be no meaningful liberty in a country where the fruits of one's labor are subject to arbitrary government seizure.

That protection was immensely diminished by yesterday's 5-4 decision, which effectively erased the requirement that eminent domain be invoked for "public use."…

…Justice Kennedy wrote in concurrence that this could be considered public use because the development plan was "comprehensive" and "meant to address a serious city-wide depression." In other words, local governments can do what they want as long as they can plausibly argue that any kind of public interest will be served.

In his clarifying dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas exposes this logic for the government land grab that it is. He accuses the majority of replacing the Fifth Amendment's "Public Use Clause" with a very different "public purpose" test: "This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a 'public use.'"…

…the unsual coalition supporting the property owners in the case, ranging from the libertarian Institute for Justice (the lead lawyers) to the NAACP, AARP and the late Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The latter three groups signed an amicus brief arguing that eminent domain has often been used against politically weak communities with high concentrations of minorities and elderly. Justice Thomas's opinion cites a wealth of data to that effect.

And it's not just the "public use" requirement of the Fifth Amendment that's undermined by Kelo. So too is the guarantee of "just compensation." Why? Because there is no need to invoke eminent domain if developers are willing to pay what owners themselves consider just compensation.

Just compensation may differ substantially from so-called "fair market value" given the sentimental and other values many of us attach to our homes and other property. Even eager sellers will be hurt by Kelo, since developers will have every incentive to lowball their bids now that they can freely threaten to invoke eminent domain…

These kinds of judicial encroachments on liberty are precisely why Supreme Court nominations have become such high-stakes battles…

Justice Clarence Thomas' dissenting opinion included this comment:

Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's interpretation of the Constitution.

Sheldon Richman writes about the decision and further discusses Justice Thomas' dissenting opinion:

O'Connor's words are to be savored, although she largely accepts the precedents, striving only to distinguish them from the current case. But it is to Justice Clarence Thomas we must turn for a model of proper constitutional interpretation and reasoning. His dissenting opinion goes further than O’Connor’s by calling the precedents into question. It is refreshing indeed.

Thomas writes: "Today's decision is simply the latest in a string of our cases construing the Public Use Clause to be a virtual nullity, without the slightest nod to its original meaning. In my view, the Public Use Clause, originally understood, is a meaningful limit on the government's eminent domain power. Our cases have strayed from the Clause's original meaning, and I would reconsider them."

Thomas proceeds to show, first, that it is sound constitutional principle to regard every word in the Constitution as meaningful and purposeful; second, that use at the time of the framing meant the "act of employing"; third, that to construe use more broadly would make the takings clause duplicative of powers already expressly delegated; and fourth, that the common law and great legal authorities such as Blackstone support this narrow reading of the word.

Thus, "The Constitution's text, in short, suggests that the Takings Clause authorizes the taking of property only if the public has a right to employ it, not if the public realizes any conceivable benefit from the taking…. The Takings Clause is a prohibition, not a grant of power.… The Clause is thus most naturally read to concern whether the property is used by the public or the government, not whether the purpose of the taking is legitimately public."

Since that is the case, the issue of deference to the legislature is put into perspective: "[I]t is most implausible that the Framers intended to defer to legislatures as to what satisfies the Public Use Clause, uniquely among all the express provisions of the Bill of Rights."

He concludes: "When faced with a clash of constitutional principle and a line of unreasoned cases wholly divorced from the text, history, and structure of our founding document, we should not hesitate to resolve the tension in favor of the Constitution's original meaning."

Richard Epstein, in a WSJ editorial (available for a fee) entitled Supreme Folly observes:

…for in [Justice Stevens’] view New London had made its case when it asserted, without evidence, that the new projects would both increase tax revenues and create new jobs. It hardly mattered that its projections had been pulled out of thin air and were already hopelessly out of date when the case reached the Supreme Court. All that need be shown to Justice Stevens was procedural regularity and some claim that the proposed project served some "public benefit."

Astute readers will quickly note that the phrase "public benefit" is far broader than the constitutional words "public use." That last phrase clearly covers only two situations. The first arises when land is taken to build government facilities, such as forts, or to construct infrastructure, such as highways, open to all. The second covers those cases where property is taken by, or conveyed to, private parties who are duty bound to keep it open to all users. Private railroads and private grist mills, both of which are subject to the common carrier obligation of universal service, are two obvious examples. Note too that once a given use is properly identified as public, it does not matter for constitutional purposes whether the project is wise or is as foolish as New London's redevelopment program. The constitutional inquiry is over once it is proved that the project falls into these categories. Factually, the standard of review hardly matters, for it takes little genius to prove that a given structure is a fort or a highway.

There are, however, good reasons why the public use language has long been extended to cover some cases of takings for private purposes with indirect public benefits. One recurrent problem of social coordination arises when one party is in a position to blockade the productive ventures of another…

The great intellectual blunder of the public use law over the past 50 or so years is that it has wrenched the public benefit language out of this narrow holdout context. In the mid-1950s, the Supreme Court held that takings were for public use when they were intended to relieve various forms of urban "blight" -- a slippery term with no clear constitutional pedigree. Thirty years later, the Court went a step further by allowing Hawaii to force landlords to sell their interests to sitting tenants, as a means to counteracting ostensible "oligopolistic" market conditions. Now any "conceivable" indirect social benefit would do, without regard to the attendant costs.

Given this past legacy, Justice Stevens found it easy to take New London at its word. Any comprehensive public project will produce some benefit for someone…his test always allows the legislature to gin up some rationale for taking public property for just compensation…

The Court could only arrive at its shameful Kelo ruling by refusing to look closely at past precedent and constitutional logic. Courts that refuse to see no evil and hear no evil are blind to the endemic risk of factional politics at all levels of government. And being blind, this bare Supreme Court majority has sustained a scandalous and cruel act for no public purpose at all.

This decision is a complete and total outrage. Tom Bethell, in his book entitled The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Throughout the Ages, offers an explanation on why it is such an outrage:

...There are four great blessings that cannot easily be realized in a society that lacks the secure, decentralized, private ownership of goods. These are: liberty, justice, peace and prosperity...private property is a necessary (but not a sufficient) condition for these highly desirable social outcomes.

Of these, the relationship between liberty and property is by now fairly well understood...Milton Friedman has said that "you cannot have a free society without private property."...

Rights are held against the state, and property is an important bulwark against state power...like all genuine rights, property rights protect the weak against the strong...

The institution of private property also plays a key role in establishing justice in a society. This is one of the most important arguments in its favor, yet the connection between private property and social justice has rarely been made, mainly because social justice has been equated with the distribution of already existing goods. Inequality is equated with injustice. Nonetheless, a private property regime makes people responsible for their own actions in the realm of material goods. Such a system therefore ensures that people experience the consequences of their own acts...Both the prudent and the profligate will tend to experience their deserts...As Professor James Q. Wilson has said, property is a "powerful antidote to unfettered selfishness."

Property is also the most peaceable of institutions. In a society of private property, goods must be either voluntarily exchanged or laboriously created. As long as such ownership is protected by the state, goods cannot easily be taken by force. Furthermore, a society with legal institutions that encourage the creation of wealth poses a diminished threat to the wealth of neighbors...Private property also allows a country to become rich enough to defend itself against aggressive neighbors, thereby reducing the likelihood of conflict.

Private property both disperses power and shields us from the coercion of others...It leaves us free to act without interference, within our own autonomous spheres..

Prosperity and property are intimately connected. Exchange is the basic market activity, and when goods are not individually owned, they cannot easily be exchanged. Free-market economies, therefore can only be built on a private property base...

This Supreme Court decision highlights another reason why the nomination of any new justice to the Court is so important to our freedom. And why the appointment of Janice Rogers Brown to the D.C. District Court of Appeals was so important.

Power Line offers further valuable insights that re-connect us with the Founding principles of America:

...The right to property was central to our founding; it occupied a vital place in the system of free government the founders built. The right to property was an instrument to defend common people from the power of the establishment...

For the past hundred years the attack on private property has been central to the Progressive assault on the Constitution, beginning with J. Allen Smith's The Spirit of American Government (1907) and continuing most importantly with Charles Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (1913). Smith and Beard portrayed the constitutional protection of private property by the founders as the weapon of an elite interested in preserving its privilege...

The American Revolution is of course the appropriate place to begin to understand the role of property rights in the American legal order. The American Revolution was in part a rebellion against the feudal order...In the feudal order all property belonged to the King; the King retained ownership but conditionally granted the use of property to his subjects.

By contrast, the idea that men possessed the right to acquire and enjoy property separate and apart from the prerogative of sovereign government was one of the "unalienable rights" grounded in "the laws of Nature and Nature's God" at the heart of the American Revolution. In the founders' view, property rights did not emanate from government. Rather, they emanated from the nature of man, and it was the function of government to protect the rights conferred on man by nature. Indeed, Jefferson characterized property rights as "the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone [of] the free exercise of industry and the fruits acquired by it." As Jefferson's comment suggests, the right to acquire property was the critical right for the founders; it made property rights the friend of the poor by allowing them to earn and safeguard wealth ("the fruits acquired by" work).

Accordingly, when the founders crafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights, they provided numerous protections of property rights...

Further, putting property on a par with life and liberty, the Constitution prohibited the government from taking property in any criminal case without due process. And in the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, the government was prohibited from taking private property for public use without just compensation; the government was not even afforded the power to take private property for anything but public use.

The founders extended these and other specific protections to the property of Americans in the fundamental law of the United States for the sake of freedom. The freedom to exercise and profit from one's abilities without regard to caste or class was in the view of the founders the essence of freedom.

As James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers, "the first object of government" is the "protection of the diversity in the faculties [abilities] of men, from which the rights of property originate." In the eyes of the founders, the protection of property rights was a bulwark for the poor in assuring them that the wealth earned with the sweat of their brow could not arbitrarily be expropriated by the heavy hand of government.

It was precisely on this ground that Lincoln sought to persuade Americans of the injustice of slavery...He often spoke of the heart of slavery as a denial of property rights: "It is the same tyrannical principle that says, 'You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.'"...

The founders' study of history taught them that majority rule was susceptible to tyranny and that the protection of property rights was an indispensable condition for the preservation of freedom and for the growth of national wealth. The founders observed that tyrannical rule and material scarcity had by and large been the fate of man through the ages. They saw the confiscation of property by government in the name of the sovereign power of the state as an old and sorry story. Through the protection of property rights they aimed to forge a new order of the ages. It lies to us to regain their understanding and act on it.

The Kelo decision goes against the Founding principles of America. Slowly but surely, our freedom is being diminished. And don't forget that the people most at risk of losing their freedom are those least able to fight against the tyrannical power of government. Professor Bainbridge reinforces this point with a quote from Justice O'Connor's dissenting opinion:

Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.

Turning Discord into Harmony

My latest column, "Juggling Spheres in the Marriage Debate," begins with activists' invasion of Notre Dame Cathedral and makes its way to suggestions for resolving the current impasse in the same-sex marriage battle.

Beacon Mutual

Governor Carcieri has been "vexed" over Beacon Mutual's plan to expand beyond Rhode Island state lines. Why is the governor upset? Well, Beacon Mutual was started by the State to ease the skyrocketing Worker's Compensation rates in the late '80's. By all measures, Beacon Mutual has been successful and is on solid financial footing. (For both a more in-depth history and proof of Beacon's strong financial standing, see this PDF document). This is good news for the State and quite a return on a $5 million investment of public money. However, Beacon seems to be angling to turn that public investment into private gain while stating otherwise. With a surplus of around $100 million last year, it returned around $2 million back to its policy-holders. Why not more? And why does it want to take steps that would essentially turn it into a private, profit-making entity with little or no government oversight? But I'm getting ahead of myself. What follows is a recap of what Beacon Mutual has been trying to do and what the Governor and others are doing to try to stop them.

The debate started last year when Beacon Mutual decided to create another company, Castle Hill Insurance, in hopes of being able to underwrite insurance in other states, though it was a little more than that.

Beacon Mutual Insurance Co., Rhode Island's largest workers' compensation insurance writer that was formed in 1990 as a state fund, is taking steps to write coverage outside of the state.

The Warwick company has put up $20 million to license and create a subsidiary, Castle Hill Insurance, which will sell workers' compensation insurance to cover out-of-state employees of Rhode Island companies, according to Cynthia Lawlor, Beacon Mutual chief financial officer.

Beacon Mutual had been making available coverage for employees who work in other states through a fronting arrangement with another insurer, Fairfield Insurance, but after Sept 11 Fairfield indicated its unwillingness to continue that arrangement, Lawlor told Insurance Journal. So Beacon is looking to replace that capacity by creating its own insurer.

The company's plans ran into a snag last fall at the insurance division within the Department of Business Regulation, which required the company to agree that its expansion would be limited to employees of companies from Rhode Island and would not include any other employees in other states.

Director of Business Regulation Marilyn Shannon McConaghy told Insurance Journal her agency has "serious issues" with further expansion by Beacon Mutual.

The company also sought legislation authorizing its expansion but gave up on that after some opposition. Lawlor said the insurer was seeking the legislation in order to make the process of getting licenses in other states easier but it does not feel a legislative change is necessary for it to proceed with its plans.

"We're going to test the law," she said.

Lawlor says the insurer does not have a problem limiting its expansion to out-of-state employees of the state's employers as requested by state officials, at least for now. "It probably makes sense to go forward in other states at some point," she added.

Unfortunately for Beacon, other states weren't sure if the scheme would pass muster and have been reluctant to accept Castle Hill.

To get around restrictions on the sale of coverage out of state, Beacon created a subsidiary, Castle Hill Insurance. But other states have refused to license Castle Hill because of "regulations that prevent companies that are state controlled from conducting business out of state," [Joe] Solomon [CEO of Beacon Mutual] told the committee.

Thus, the new attempt to legalize Beacon Mutual's expansion.

... proponents of the bill say it had its genesis when Carcieri proposed removing Beacon’s tax exemption from next year’s budget.

Losing the state tax exemption could cost the company about $3.1 million state officials said, but Beacon President Joseph Solomon said that might also jeopardize the company’s federal tax exemption, "so we could be talking $6 million."

Solomon said that when the governor proposed eliminating the exemption, the company had two options - fight it, which Solomon said he didn’t think would be successful, or "find a way to make up those costs." [The new budget did indeed remove Beacon's exemption.]

Beacon was successful in getting their bill through the Senate, no doubt the lobbying helped, though some senators objected.

Beacon "was created to provide the lowest priced workers' comp possible," said Sen. Marc A. Cote, D-Woonsocket. "That's being eliminated. . . I believe we're straying from the original intent" of the law.

Meanwhile, the vote is still pending in the full House, though it passed through committee by a vote of 10-2. At this, the Governor really raised his hackles.

"The governor fears that this bill could be a disaster for Rhode Island business," Carcieri's deputy chief of staff wrote in a letter to House committee chairmen. The legislation "might further restrict competition and increase Beacon's monopoly in workers' compensation insurance in this state."

The letter compared Beacon's marketplace might in Rhode Island with that of health insurer Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, saying, "yet in Beacon's case we are considering legislation that might further restrict competition and increase Beacon's monopoly . . . "

If approved, the legislation would rewrite the law enacted by the General Assembly in 1992 to create a state Workers' Compensation Insurance Fund. The fund was to provide Rhode Island employers with low-cost coverage for on-the-job injuries to their employees. At the time, private insurers faced with skyrocketing costs for workers' compensation coverage were leaving the state.

But don't take just the Governor's word for it.

An analysis of the House bill conducted at the request of the DBR by the national consulting and actuarial firm Milliman raised questions about the freedom the bill would grant Beacon in setting rates.

While other states have allowed individual carriers to create sub categories based upon the rates developed by a national rate-setting organization, the bill would "appear to give the corporation (Beacon) a vast amount of rating freedom." That, in turn, "raises some equity issues" with respect to other carriers in the market, according to the Milliman report.

The language of the bill also makes it unclear, the Milliman report stated, as to whether it would allow Beacon to write other lines of insurance besides workers' compensation. "This would be a major step," the report said, "that should be studied carefully."

The governor and the director of the DBR asked for more time to study the bills.

Among the concerns raised are:

The legislation could increase Beacon's competitive edge in the marketplace.

It could remove regulators' ability to find rates "excessive."

It could restrict regulators' authority to hold hearings on rate filings.

It could restrict public access to rate filings.

It could weaken public participation on Beacon's board of directors.

It could allow Beacon to "take great risks in new out-of-state markets."

It could allow Beacon to set rates "according to an unproven and still secret formula."

It could remove the state and DBR's influence over the corporate governance and organization of Beacon.

It could eliminate Beacon's role as "a public corporation established for the good of the people of Rhode Island."

Joseph Solomon has offered up a more detailed explanation (available from Providence Business News via Google cache).

The proposal before the General Assembly would scrap most of the company’s legislative charter and write a new one that, as Solomon put it, makes The Beacon “like every other insurance company.”

Gone would be the language defining the company as a nonprofit independent public corporation, and its purpose as ensuring “that all employers in the state of Rhode Island have the opportunity to obtain workers’ compensation insurance at the lowest possible price.”

Gone would be the governor’s power to appoint four of The Beacon’s seven board members, as well as the state labor director’s seat as an ex officio board member.

And gone would be any restrictions on where The Beacon operates – it can now do business only in Rhode Island, with a limited exception – and what lines it can sell.

At the same time, however, The Beacon would forgo not only its tax exemption, but also its exclusion from the state workers’ comp insolvency fund, which competitors have long said gives the company an unfair advantage.

(Former R.I. Department of Business Regulation Director Marilyn Shannon McConaghy, however, used to argue that the insolvency fund in particular couldn’t afford to include The Beacon, because the company’s liabilities, if it went under, would overwhelm the fund.)

The only part of the company’s original mission that would remain is its status as the insurer of last resort. But to offset the expense that comes with that, Solomon said, The Beacon needs “rate flexibility” – and for that, it’s seeking two things: the right to structure its rates independently from the National Council on Compensation Insurance’s regular loss-cost filings, and the right to “file and use” its rates, without a public hearing and with only 30 days for the DBR to raise any concerns.

The NCCI, an independent industry group, regularly analyzes the loss history and trends in each market and suggests how much carriers should charge each type of employer to ensure they’ll be able to cover the loss costs. Each carrier then sets its rates by filing a proposed “modifier” factor that builds in operating costs as well as any discount programs it offers. The NCCI’s filings are subject to public hearings and extensive scrutiny by the DBR and the attorney general’s office. The modifier filings are just reviewed and approved by DBR staff.

In January, the DBR approved a revised version of the NCCI’s latest filing calling for an average 20.2-percent cut to workers’ comp rates in the state – but as much as a 50.3-percent cut for some employers, and hikes of up to 11.9 percent for a few.

The Beacon has not adopted the NCCI guidelines, and with this legislation, it’s hoping to get clearance to file its own set of guidelines, relying on its extensive database of Rhode Island claims. Solomon said the NCCI’s system is “antiquated” and not an accurate predictor of local loss costs. As an olive branch to competitors, the bill would allow other carriers to also use The Beacon’s guidelines as an alternative to the NCCI’s.

As for the change in the company’s board membership, Solomon said it’s not only a matter of letting policyholders choose the people who run their insurer, but also essential to clear the way for The Beacon to do business outside Rhode Island.

The company has no interest in establishing a major presence out of state, Solomon stressed, but it serves many employers who have a presence outside Rhode Island. The Beacon now meets their needs through some “extremely expensive” fronting arrangements, Solomon said. But Castle Hill, the company’s long-term solution to the problem, is having trouble getting licensed in various states because The Beacon’s board membership qualifies it as a “state-controlled” entity, which many states won’t allow to operate within their borders.

Yet Neal, at the governor’s office, said loosening The Beacon’s state ties and eliminating its state-defined mission would contrast sharply with what legislators did last year with Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, another state-created entity. It took almost a year and a lot of collaboration to develop “a good package of reforms” for Blue Cross, Neal said. If The Beacon is going to be redefined, he argued, it should be done with just as much care.

Solomon claims that Beacon isn't looking to grow substantially out of state, but Lawlor (in 2004) seemed to intimate that such plans were in the future. This doesn't smell right. This "corporation" was set up using the public's money, but those running it seem to want to change it into something else. This is worth keeping our eye on. If Beacon Mutual is so successful, they should lower their rates even further, which would help to attract business to Rhode Island, reduce the burden on Rhode Island employers, and facilitate economic growth. It seems that the only economic growth that BM is interested in now is their own.

FYI, here are the members of Beacon Mutual's Board of Directors:

Mr. Sheldon S. Sollosy, Chairman, President Manpower, Inc.of Providence

Mr. J. Thomas Chellel, Vice Chairman, President, AFSCME Council 94

Mr. William C. Clifton, Esq., Secretary/Treasurer, Attorney-at-Law, William C. Clifton &Associates

Marvin Perry, Acting Director, Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training

Mr. Henry Boeniger, Government Relations Specialist, NEA Rhode Island

Mr. John Holmes, President, Holmes Consulting Group,Ltd.

Mr. Carl I. Hayes, President, C.I.Hayes,Inc.

Mr. George H. Nee, Secretary Treasurer, Rhode Island AFL-CIO

Mr. Joseph A. Solomon, President &Chief Executive Officer, The Beacon Mutual Insurance Company

Be Watchful

In my last post on the apparent passage of the 2006 RI State Budget in which Gov. Carcieri won important concessions, such as reducing pension benefits for state workers, I commented

. . .now is no time to let up. This is just the first battle and there is no guarantee that it has actually been won just because the politicians seem to be saying so. The foot-dragging over implementation of Separation of Powers should remind us all that nothing is ever guaranteed. If we sit back and think it's over, we may soon find that we're right back where we started. . .Let's keep the pressure on and keep supporting this Governor.

Well, it didn't take long, now, did it?

Nothing with the Assembly is set is stone until the final votes are cast -- something the state's labor unions are counting on.

"It's neither fair nor equitable," Marcia Reback, president of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals said of the changes.

Other union leaders had similar responses or refused to comment.

George H. Nee, secretary/treasurer of the state AFL-CIO, wouldn't discuss the pension package yesterday afternoon as he waited outside Speaker Murphy's office, saying the unions would respond at their own news conference today.

There they will unveil suggestions "to correct the potential injustice" the Assembly's plan would bring.

Moments after the House Finance Committee approved the changes Tuesday night, House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox, D-Providence, said there might be more modifications.

Specifically, he said there could be a future reduction in the 8.75 percent of pre-tax salary state workers, and 9.5 percent local teachers contribute to their pensions. Language might be added, Fox said, that if in some future year the pension system is better funded -- say 80 percent of actuarial value -- then new and non-vested workers could see a quarter-percent decline in their contributions.

"At some point," Fox said, "you've got to balance the fact that employees are going to shoulder the lion's share of this."

We need keep a close eye on the Legislature in the coming days to make sure they don't slip. I suspect the Governor won't let them.

Now Here is a Good Idea

This article, entitled California Union Blues: The Golden State's unions fight to keep their members from controlling their own money, informs us about an issue that often gets limited public scrutiny:

The leadership of California's largest public labor unions declared a crisis last week--and it had nothing to do with outsourcing, Enron, WorldCom, the minimum wage, healthcare, or any of the other causes that usually whip union bosses into frenzy. Instead, the controversy surrounds an initiative called "paycheck protection" which is now headed to Golden State voters in a special election this fall. The measure would require public sector unions to receive written permission from rank-and-file members before spending their dues on political activities.

While the issue doesn't sound earth-shattering, the consequences for organized labor could be devastating...if the measure passes, union leaders will only have themselves to blame for supporting political candidates and positions that don't square with a sizeable chunk of their membership.

In almost every election cycle, labor's leadership takes millions of dollars in dues from rank and file members and ships it off to Democratic headquarters without asking...The system is highway robbery for union members who are forced to fund politics with which they don't agree.

Exit polls and campaign finance data make the divide clear. For example, nationally, 38 percent of union members voted for George W. Bush in 2004. But according to the Center for Responsive Politics, 87 percent of all labor donations either went to John Kerry or other Democratic candidates. Republican presidential candidates aren't alone...

The initiative which will go before the voters this fall only applies to public sector unions. Under current law, public sector union members have very few mechanisms to influence how their dues are used. While some unions technically allow members to get a refund of the portion of their dues that is spent on politics, doing so is complicated, cumbersome, and unadvertised...

Paycheck protection acts as an opt-in clause, forcing the leadership to get the written consent of union members before any of their money is spent on politics...

Of course the unions will not go quietly into the night. They defeated a similar measure in 1998 and are optimistic about their abilities to win political battles with the Governator, having sunk a Schwarzenegger plan earlier this year which would have moved state workers into 401(k)-style retirement plans...

The campaign's biggest irony is that labor leaders are fighting the initiative by raising rank and file union dues. The California Teacher's Association did exactly that recently, telling their membership that the dues increase will go to fight the paycheck protection provision. Their message: We want to take more of your money to make sure you won't be able to control any of your money.

It's a strange situation for union leaders to find themselves afraid of their own members.

It is indeed a strange situation. And yet another example of how unions raise cash to pursue their own political agenda, regardless of whether that agenda matches up with the beliefs of the people supplying the cash to the union's coffers.

Here is another, relevant posting on the union dues issue entitled Learning More About How Dues Paid To Big Labor Are Spent. Here is another tangentially related posting on Union Pension Fund Politics.

Making Headway Toward Fiscal Sanity

At first glance, it would appear that there is good news coming out the State House today.

Just before the stroke of midnight, a key House committee approved a new state budget that includes major cuts in public-employee pensions.

The move is expected to save the state and local communities $44 million in the coming year.

The much-vaunted pension reform was the cornerstone of the proposed new $6.3-billion state and federally financed budget for the year that begins July 1. At 11:54 p.m., the House Finance Committee gave its unanimous support of the measure, sending it on to the full House for a vote as early as Monday.

The pension package reinstates, for the first time in nearly two decades, a minimum retirement age.

To get a full pension, new state workers and public-school teachers -- and people in either group without the 10 years needed to be vested -- would have to be at least 59 years old and have worked for 29 years. That group includes about 4,350 state workers and 7,000 teachers.

The proposal also limits the maximum pension benefit to 75 percent of salary for workers with 38 years of service, and ties annual cost-of-living increases to inflation, with a cap at 3 percent.

"We're trying to do real reform and balance the equities and unfortunately it's going to land on the backs of some," said House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox, D-Providence. But, "even what we've come out with, with the worst-case scenario, it's still a very good pension for a life's work."

The pension changes closely mirror what Governor Carcieri recommended in January, with minor tweaks around the age of retirement.

"I'm happy that the House Finance Committee seems to have accepted much of my plan for reforming the state pension system," the Republican governor said in a statement last night.

The Assembly also adopted Carcieri's suggestion of allowing workers to retire at age 65 with 10 years of service. The lawmakers' plan would allow earlier retirement for workers age 55 with 20 years service, but with a reduced pension.

The House and Senate plan to study changes to the pensions of other state employees not included here, such as state police, judges and employees at quasipublic state agencies.

Overall, the budget adds $95 million to the one proposed by Carcieri in January and is 6.5 percent larger than the spending plan for the current year.

Yes, it is good news/bad news, with the pension cuts counterbalanced with spending in other areas, but it cannot be doubted that the Governor has made headway. It would also seem that the Democrat leadership in the legislature has stuck their finger in the wind and can tell which way it's blowing. I think they can tell that the public is finally fed up and in an effort to save their political skins, they have acquiesced. Thus, now is no time to let up. This is just the first battle and there is no guarantee that it has actually been won just because the politicians seem to be saying so. The foot-dragging over implementation of Separation of Powers should remind us all that nothing is ever guaranteed. If we sit back and think it's over, we may soon find that we're right back where we started. In fact, a letter to the ProJo from Phil Stone of Providence reminds us all what else has gone on in just the last week:

Let's see if I've got this right: During the week of June 13, members of the Rhode Island General Assembly voted to legalize the smoking of marijuana. They voted against arresting prostitutes who work inside a building. They voted to unionize child-care providers, even though the program that we have is costing the state over $80 million a year. And, finally, they entertained a proposal to charge all full-time college students in the state $100 per semester, even though the cost of education is at an all-time high.

What a week! I can't wait to see what our senators and representatives vote on next.

Do you think it might be time to elect some new people to represent the taxpayers of Rhode Island? If this were not so absurd, it would be funny.

Let's keep the pressure on and keep supporting this Governor.

Risk Analysis

Anne Applebaum, writing about airport security, also touches on cost-benefit risk analysis.

By their own account, federal screeners have intercepted "7 million prohibited items." But of that number, only 600 were firearms. So, according to the calculations of economist Veronique de Rugy, 99.9 percent of intercepted items were nail scissors, cigarette lighters, penknives and the like. . . this isn't a country that has ever been good at risk analysis. If it were, we would never have invented the TSA at all. Instead, we would have taken that $5.5 billion, doubled the FBI's budget, and set up a questioning system that identifies potentially suspicious passengers, as the Israelis do. Even now, it's not too late to abolish the TSA, create a federal training program for airport screeners, and then let private companies worry about how many people to hire, which technology to buy and how long the tables in front of the X-ray machines should be. But every time that suggestion is made in Congress, someone denounces the plan as a "privatization" of our security and a sellout.

E. Howard McVay, Jr., a merchant-marine captain and a Narragansett Bay pilot licensed in Rhode Island, just wrote a piece on the NIMBYism inherent in the anti-LNG debate, in which he sought to destroy a few myths. [Link is no longer available for free].

I would like to address a few of the statements that I know to be misleading if not wrong. . .

. . . The passage of LNG tankers would affect commercial fishing.

Since long before the 9/11 attacks, liquid-propane-gas (LPG) tankers have been going in and out of Narragansett Bay with a moving security zone around the vessel -- similar to what would probably be required for LNG ships. The escort vessels of the Coast Guard and the state Department of Environmental Management have many years' experience running ahead and alerting commercial fishing vessels of a gas ship's heading their way, requiring them to move out of the way. A fishing vessel may have to stay out of the way for 10 to -- at most -- 15 minutes before returning to where it had been fishing.

. . . The passage of LNG ships would affect recreational boating.

The LPG vessels have been plying the Bay's waters for years without an impact on the many world-class yachting events that take place here. Why? Because the schedulers of the events work closely with the pilots aboard most vessels on these waters. Indeed, ideally most ships are in their berth and starting cargo operations before most sailing events start. Thus they rarely bother each other.

. . . LNG vessels passing under bridges would cause major traffic delays.

After 9/11, the Coast Guard started closing the Newport Bridge to traffic while an LPG tanker passed under it. During the learning curve of the first bridge closings, there were some delays. But once we had perfected the technique, we reduced the bridge-closure time to about eight minutes -- enough to clear the bridge of traffic while the LPG passes under it.

My life has been focused on the waters of Narragansett Bay since early childhood; besides being a ship pilot, I fish, race sailboats, and cruise these waters. If the passage of LNG ships in and out of Providence were not to be safe, the Rhode Island State Licensed Pilots of Narragansett Bay would work to prevent these vessels from passing through our waters. Our job is to protect the waters of the Bay from unsafe navigational practices of any foreign-flag vessel in our state's waters.

Therefore, should you read an article stating that LNG tankers cannot pass through our waters safely, the chances are you're reading the writings of a NIMBY ("Not in my backyard") person, who is grasping at anything to prevent a project from moving forward -- not the writings of Rhode Island's navigational experts, who regulate such activity.

These two issues raise the question: what price "safety"? How far should our fears of terrorists attack extend before responsible precautions expand into near-hysterical measures? Also, we should take care to be cognizant of the fact that some will seek to take advantage of these fears for their own advantage.

Those who are proponents of big government programs (such as the Transportation Safety Authority) or are, for whatever reason, against responsible, common sense energy infrastructure expansion (such as responsibly expanding our local ability to store and distribute LNG) appeal to the raw emotional fear of terrorist attacks to help make their arguments. Thus, every LNG ship or tank is a "potential" terrorist target and every airport passenger is a potential terrorist, even Grammy or Grampa. This despite the fact that terrorists can be profiled and the targets they appear to most value are much more symbolic than "practical." In the case of airport security, we are inconvenienced and the entire airline industry is rendered less efficient. In the case of the LNG threat, we are left with few options but those that will lead to increasing prices and restrictions in our energy supply. Given this environment, President Bush's call for more nuclear power plants is probably a non-starter.

It is impossible to apply a dollar figure to life, but, before complaining about price inflation or long lines at the airport or expensive heating bills, remember that we have made the choice. So long as we allow fear to exercise an over-sized role in defining our behavior and dictating our actions, we will pay the price, both from our wallets and our psyche. Fear is natural, but irrational fear, like it or not, can be very expensive indeed.

East Greenwich Fire District: Taking Some Heat From Residents

A previous posting identified some important questions in the new budget for the East Greenwich Fire District.

The first news report on tonight's annual financial meeting of the District is in from the ProJo and it sounds like it was an appropriately contentious meeting:

The largest turnout of East Greenwich Fire District voters in years heaped criticism on the district's leadership during a four-hour annual meeting last night, but nevertheless adopted a $4.3-million budget virtually unchanged from the one proposed by the Board of Fire Commissioners.

The only thing they cut was a $28,200 proposal to pay for health insurance for the five commissioners in the fiscal year beginning July 1. That item was removed from the budget in a unanimous voice vote.

There were 127 voters at the meeting at its peak, although some trickled out of Swift Gym as the evening wore on. Last year's meeting drew one-fourth as many.

Voter after voter criticized the commissioners, questioning the need for a string of new spending proposals and urging the board to tighten its purse strings...

The voters also fired the chairman of the board in a landslide vote...

In what seemed a reflection of the crowd's mood, the voters removed Joseph Carnevale Jr., the chairman and the only commissioner whose post had expired, and replaced him with newcomer Christine Mattos...who spoke skeptically about new spending proposals.

Mattos prevailed 111 votes to 25 in a paper ballot...

The voters also rejected a proposal to borrow $550,000 in bonds to buy a two-acre parcel at 1454 South County Trail for an eventual third fire station...

But the voters approved one contentious proposal included in the budget measure, to hire four additional firefighters in the next fiscal year, at a projected cost of $165,000...

...the department eventually needs eight more firefighters, which would bring the department's total to 40...

The spending plan adopted last night represents a 16 percent increase over the budget for the current fiscal year. It would raise taxes...by about 19 percent. A new tax rate was not announced last night, as district officials were recalculating based on the voters' changes.

Thanks to all the residents who showed up. Christine will be a great addition as a new Commissioner. She is smart and tenacious, attributes she will need in spades given the spendthrift ways of this Fire District Board.

A 16% increase in spending leading to a 19% increase in taxes. Hardly a successful bottom line. (Nearly one-third of the increase was due to required state pension contributions, something that is out of their control.)

To put the 16% spending increase in personal terms, consider this question: What would your spouse say if you came home and announced you had unilaterally increased family spending by 16% even though your family's income only increased by 3-4%? Your spouse would be rightfully indignant and point out that the money to cover the new spending would have to come from (i) reducing your savings; (ii) incurring new debt; and/or (iii) reducing spending on current items like clothes or medical care - all of which would reduce your family's standard of living.

Why are the spending behaviors of families so different from the public sector's spending habits? Because families spend their own hard-earned monies, not somebody else's money. Which is why Calvin Coolidge is reported to have said:

Nothing is easier than spending the public money. It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody.

More on the East Greenwich Fire District meeting as people write or call me with updates from tonight's meeting.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

An EMT has written the following in the comment section to this posting:

I suppose that if the residents of East Greenwhich don't want the fire protection they deserve, that is their right. I've come to the conclusion that you can't force people to care about themselves or even their families.

Besides, fires happen to someone else, right?

But I don't want to hear a single complaint when someone's house burns down or someone dies waiting for medical aid.

Talk about changing the subject! But, it is the classic "fear" comment used to intimidate taxpayers which has been referenced in an earlier posting. After all, residents approved a budget that includes hiring the requested additional firefighters.

The issue here is a 16% spending increase in a 2% inflation world. It is not about providing enough to do fire coverage right.

To reinforce these points, consider this commentary from one resident who attended the meeting:

The commissioners underestimated the growing level of unrest in Town...and the willingness of residents to embrace so many (expensive) projects concurrently. It has been my experience (and frustration) with the presentation...of the Fire District Budget that little if any consideration is given to the audience. There is a tremendous amount of information to synthesize and make sense of in short time. Most residents do not have much if any experience in reading financial statements. The Deputy Chief tried very hard to justify the wants...there just wasn't any common sense justification for the needs. A formal PowerPoint presentation would have been helpful along with a comprehensive budget narrative. Expenditure line itemizations, grant accounting, and multi year forecasting would have been helpful. Most disappointing of all was the motion made by Commissioner Berlyn to move to vote on the budget, thus ending any debate, or modifications beyond the $22k for health insurance (for commissioners)...Mr. Delfino did not present a good 80% of the budget, but rather touched on items of interest to him...

In other words, they are increasing spending by 16% and did not give attendees - who fund their operation - the courtesy of even an attempt at explaining the nature of the increases. Instead they cut off the debate and forced a vote.

Plus there was no information on actual spending for the fiscal year just ended. If actual spending for that year came in below budget, then the new budget represents an increase of over 16%. Instead of answering that question, they cut off debate and forced a vote.

Plus they have $1.8 million of cash sitting in their bank account, which means they have overtaxed the residents by a hefty sum in recent years. There was no explanation about how that cash might be properly utilized. Instead of addressing that issue, they cut off debate and forced a vote.

All of this is irresponsible behavior and deserving of criticism. After all, we are talking about their use of OUR money. Let's try to stay on topic.

A new ProJo article notes that the 16% spending increase will "only" increase taxes by a lesser amount - currently estimated at 8% - due to a growing tax base in town. That doesn't change any of the conclusions noted above.

Be sure to read the second posting in the comment section for additional thoughts on what is going on in the Fire District.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION II:

The East Greenwich Pendulum reports:

While the issue of health insurance for the volunteer commissioners drew many to the meeting, residents spoke out against the 19 percent increase of the budget over last year.

"Somebody's got to look at these numbers. I've done budgets my whole life and they just don't add up," said four-year resident Doug Axelsen, scrutinizing the 13 percent salary and 43 percent fringe benefit increases. "How can everyday citizens afford these increases? I think we can make (the town) better, but not on the backs of everybody."

Axelsen's comment drew applause and cheers from the 130-plus in attendance. Living in a "modest" home, Axelsen said the $6000 he pays in town and fire taxes represents ten percent of his family's total income.

Aren't you a bit curious about why and how salaries had to increase 13% and fringe benefits increase 43% in one year? Do people feel like the Fire District offered responsible answers to all residents?

But there are even bigger governance and accountability issues, as noted in this story from the North East Independent on the Fire District meeting:

...The $4.3 million budget, which included a proposal to add four firefighters to the force, passed narrowly. A resolution to purchase a new pumper truck at a net cost of $251,000 also passed...

...residents were highly critical of plans to build the new station and add up to eight new firefighters, saying the district had not adequately looked at other solutions before proposing such high-cost answers.

Fire officials were stunned as the land measure was defeated in a vote in which many resident firefighters voted against the proposal. Fire Chief Thomas Rowan, clearly upset by the vote, said he and Deputy Chief John McKenna did all they could to show that the new station was necessary.

"I am a professional. I make recommendations based on my years of professional experience," Rowan said after the meeting adjourned. "If they want to vote to reject that recommendation, they certainly have that right. We'll see, down the road, if it costs somebody their lives.

"I don't live in East Greenwich," he added. "I've got nothing to lose."

Officials sought to purchase a two-acre parcel near the Rocky Hill fairgrounds because of development planned for that property. The board had negotiated a deal to purchase the land for $675,000, a price that would have been partially offset by more than $130,000 in impact fees. From there, board members planned to introduce plans for the new station over the next year, with the whole process taking up to five years.

Residents accused district officials of springing the plan on them without doing their homework first. Town Planning Board member Robert Holbrook said the town will have a lot on its hands with discussions about a referendum for a new police station and other plans already taking place. He said the district should complete a needs assessment, formulate a plan and allow time for proper public discussion.

"It warrants more attention than is being paid to it tonight at this meeting," he said...

The vote to deny the land purchase came even though McKenna warned the residents in attendance that the district's fire coverage was woefully inadequate. With only two firefighters on at a time at the Frenchtown Road station and four at the Main Street station, studies showed that 33 percent of the district's runs were outside of acceptable standards, with 21 percent of those clocking in at six or more minutes...

The Fire Chief's behavior is arrogant and even incompetent. As these postings have noted, they did not prepare the community for their major request in advance of the meeting and they did not present a thorough analysis of their request at the meeting. And, if it was such a good proposal, why did EG resident firefighters vote against it?

This is about Governance 101 which leads to Accountability 101. As a corporate CEO, I wouldn't dare think of proposing such a major change without first having talked to my investors (equivalent to residents on this issue) and Board members. I certainly would never ask any of them to approve such a major issue immediately after hearing about it for the first time - which is what the Fire Chief did. And my Board would shred me - with just cause - if I told them to approve it without rigorous analysis and simply because it made sense in my professional judgment. All corporate Boards have a fiduciary responsibility to all shareholder investors and that means their governance role is to hold the CEO accountable and to certain minimum performance standards. Accountability 101 is what the residents attending the FTM did to the Fire District leadership.

A leader with integrity would have responded by accepting the legitimate nature of the criticisms and developing solid plans in response to the limits approved by residents.

Instead, the Fire Chief responded like a petulant child who didn't get his way: "We'll see, down the road, if it costs somebody their lives. I don't live in East Greenwich. I've got nothing to lose."

He, indeed, does have something to lose - his reputation and credibility as a professional. He severely damaged it this week with those words. People will remember his performance this week when he makes his next request of taxpayers.

Instead of accountability in the public sector, all we get are threats. And that leads to a lack of trust in our public officials.

We can only hope the Fire Chief gets a dose of reality in the coming days and does what is right for our town. After all, that's what real professionals do.

Hillary Rodham Clinton II

To further enable investigation, here is the rundown on Sen. Clinton provided by Project Vote Smart. Concerning "Issue Positions," one will be confronted by this disclaimer:

In 2000, this candidate was contacted repeatedly over several weeks by Project Vote Smart staff members and by prominent political leaders, and asked to do the right and honorable thing by providing citizens with the critical information that the 2000 National Political Awareness Test supplies. On each occasion this candidate failed to provide voters with this information.

However, a catalogue of "Interest Group Ratings" is available. Here are some of her ratings according to a variety of conservative groups (whose mention doesn't mean endorsement, by the way).

Fall 2004 Senator Clinton supported the interests of the Conservative Index - The John Birch Society 33 percent in Fall 2004.

2004 Senator Clinton supported the interests of the Eagle Forum 20 percent in 2004.

2004 On the votes that the Family Research Council considered to be the most important in 2004, Senator Clinton voted their preferred position 0 percent of the time.

2004 On the votes that the Christian Coalition considered to be the most important in 2004 , Senator Clinton voted their preferred position 0 percent of the time.

2004 Senator Clinton supported the interests of the American Conservative Union 0 percent in 2004.

2003-2004 Senator Clinton supported the interests of the Concerned Women for America 7 percent in 2003-2004.

2003-2004 On the votes that the Family Research Council considered to be the most important in 2003, Senator Clinton voted their preferred position 14 percent of the time.

2003 On the votes that the Christian Coalition considered to be the most important in 2003 , Senator Clinton voted their preferred position 0 percent of the time.

2003 On the votes that the Eagle Forum considered to be the most important in 2003, Senator Clinton voted their preferred position 13 percent of the time.

2003 Senator Clinton supported the interests of the Concerned Women for America 0 percent in 2003.

2003 On the votes that the Campaign for Working Families considered to be the most important in 2003, Senator Clinton voted their preferred position 5 percent of the time.

2003 Senator Clinton supported the interests of the American Conservative Union 10 percent in 2003.

2002 On the votes that the Eagle Forum considered to be the most important in 2002, Senator Clinton voted their preferred position 25 percent of the time.

2002 Senator Clinton supported the interests of the American Conservative Union 10 percent in 2002.

2002 Senator Clinton supported the interests of the Conservative Index - The John Birch Society 25 percent in 2002.

2001-2002 Senator Clinton supported the interests of the Concerned Women for America 25 percent in 2001-2002.

2001-2002 On the votes that the Campaign for Working Families considered to be the most important in 2001-2002, Senator Clinton voted their preferred position 7 percent of the time.

2001 On the votes that the Christian Coalition considered to be the most important in 2001 , Senator Clinton voted their preferred position 0 percent of the time.

2001 Senator Clinton supported the interests of the American Conservative Union 12 percent in 2001.

2001 Senator Clinton supported the interests of the Conservative Index - The John Birch Society 5 percent in 2001.

The site provides a much more in-depth breakdown on issues, and I'd recommend reading those and not simply relying on this list. Make up your own mind.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

National Review Online has an interview with Edward Klein, author of the new book on Hillary Rodham Clinton entitled The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President.

The interview attempts to get beyond/behind the recent controversy about an excerpt from the book.

Those of us who disagree with her politics, such as her previous attempt to socialize medicine in 1993, must deal with her in a more effective way than many people dealt with Bill Clinton. Let's focus on the substance of her policy beliefs and not let her whitewash her own history.

To put things in perspective, consider these words about Bill Clinton from this posting:

We cannot forget that the real price America is likely to pay for the Clinton-Gore years will not be from inappropriate sexual dalliances, but from that administration's peculiar dealings with China, which Bill Gertz outlines in his 2001 book entitled Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security. Character does matter in the end.

Gertz has also elaborated previously on the growing threat from China in his 2000 book entitled The China Threat: How the People's Republic Targets America.

In other words, Bill Clinton's legacy will be about how how he did not deal with bin Laden and how he permitted untoward things to happen with China. Let's bring a cool-headed, laser-like focus to Hillary Rodham Clinton and not let her get the upper hand in any public debate about important policy matters.

Dick Morris comments on Hillary with an editorial entitled Personal attacks on Hillary will only embolden her. Here is more commentary on Klein's book. Michelle Malkin directs us to a number of other reviewers of the book.

Public and Private Unions

Robert Whitcomb, of the ProJo editorial page, has written an editorial entitled Public and Private Unions, which includes this excerpt:

I write as an ex-member of three unions, in one of which I was grievance chairman. Private-sector unions, such as these, are different creatures from public-sector unions.

In the private sector, the complexity, churn and competition of capitalism -- as well as anti-trust, anti-corruption and other laws -- restrain companies and the unions that dwell with them. After all, companies rise and fall, as do whole industries, and they take their unions with them. But then unions themselves are businesses, selling labor...

But public-sector unions are something else: They're virtually untrammeled monopolies. They control services to which the public has few alternatives. That politicians benefit financially and otherwise from public-sector unions, and vice versa, further strengthens the monopoly. Together, the two groups do pretty much what they want, whatever the citizenry's needs and desires.

Thus, to raise concerns about public-sector unions is not to be "anti-union." Nor is it to condemn civil-service protections for public employees. It is simply to face reality.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Bankrupt pensions, extraordinary healthcare insurance benefits, related issues with private and public sector unions, and the misguided incentives that exist in public sector taxation have been discussed previously on Anchor Rising:

Public Sector Issues
Misguided Incentives Drive Public Sector Taxation
Bankrupt Public Pensions: A Time Bomb That Will Explode
Why Truly Free Markets & Timely, Transparent Information Are Needed to Protect the Freedom of American Citizens
RI Public Pension Problems
The Cocoon in which Entitled State Employees Live
The Union's Solution for the Future: Get More People in Unions
Bankrupt Public Pensions, Part II
How Public Pensions Make People Well-Off at Taxpayers' Expense

Private Sector Issues
If You Won't Deal With Economic Reality, Then It Will Deal With You
Underfunding Pensions, Public and Private, can Hurt Taxpayers
Why Truly Free Markets & Timely, Transparent Information Are Needed to Protect the Freedom of American Citizens
Outrageous Employee Compensation Liabilities Continue to Haunt General Motors; Will American Taxpayers End Up Paying the Bill?
Why the Big Three Auto Companies Could Easily Fail

Happy Father's Day, Dad!

I am fortunate to have been blessed with a wonderful Dad. And on this Father's Day, his special day, I want to pay a special tribute to him.

Dad, who turned 80 last month, grew up in the Depression years. It was kids from his high school class year of 1943 who joined the World War II efforts in places like the Battle of the Bulge, although the effects from an earlier bout with rheumatic fever ended up disqualifying him from serving.

He went on to become the baritone soloist in his college choir, touring parts of North America. That was one of the earlier experiences in what has been a passionate lifetime love affair with music. Whenever music played at home during my childhood, I remember Dad often losing himself in the music - a practice made much easier by his deep knowledge of most classical music compositions. I also remember many years later, when the Three Tenors were first hitting it big with the general public, calling home to ask him the name of a certain piece they were performing on television, which he rapidly identified after I held the phone in the direction of the TV. Few things brought him more pleasure than attending musical performances at the Music Academy of the West when they lived in Santa Barbara for nearly 20 years or attending first-rate musical performances in downtown Los Angeles over the years by the Los Angeles Opera or Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has had the pleasure of seeing many of the great performers and conductors.

As a family, music was an active part of all of our lives and we had a number of particularly memorable musical traditions. One of my favorites was visiting the homes of numerous friends on Christmas Eve and singing Christmas carols as a family to those friends.

I will always remember the look of horror (or was it just outright disgust?) on his face over 30 years ago when, as the oldest child, I introduced Deep Purple records into a house in which Dad's definition of modern music was Brahms - with only a few 20th century exceptions! I was convinced back then that riffs from Ritchie Blackmore's guitar or Jon Lord's organ were far more interesting than Mozart or Beethoven. In response to such youthful moments, it seemed like Dad would just smile. Now, with the perspective that comes with time and some maturity, it was probably more of a pained grimace!

Dad, a retired Presbyterian minister, met Mom when they were both attending Princeton Theological Seminary. They will celebrate their 53rd wedding anniversary next week.

I remember how supportive he was nearly 25 years ago when Mom began to develop what became a passion in her life, a love for art. That love has led her to be an active docent first at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and, more recently, at the Huntington Art Collections in Pasadena where she remains active today at the age of 78.

Dad has always loved nature. He maintained a garden at our homes and yardwork brought him great satisfaction - a concept I cannot comprehend even today! To this day, he can tell you the names of all sorts of trees, plants, and flowers.

Dad and Mom moved out to California in 1955, with the entrepreneurial charge to start a new Presbyterian Church in La Mirada, a then-small town of just several thousand people surrounded by orchards near the border of Los Angeles and Orange counties. Ever modest, we kids only found out many years later how Dad helped the Jewish synagogue get organized as he was building up his own church, including providing a meeting place at the Presbyterian Church until they had their own site. Or how, when his building was the only non-school public building in town, providing the first meeting place for the Boy Scouts. Dad built the church to over 600 members in his eight years of service in La Mirada.

Dad was a pastor's pastor. Kind, empathetic and always willing to help others. The helping of others took various forms ranging from assisting individuals with a variety of needs, speaking out for civil rights in the early 1960's long before it became politically fashionable, and being one of the original organizers of the Hospice of Santa Barbara - the second oldest hospice in the United States - where he subsequently served as Board member and President of the Board. To this day, he still provides counseling to others as well as periodic seminars focused on providing helpful tools to others in need.

Dad's work schedule created numerous logistical challenges, to say the least, for our family life. We did not spend a lot of time together when I was growing up. His busiest times of the year were Christmas and Easter - when we were out of school. His work week peaked on the weekend - when we were out of school. He had Monday's off - when we were in school. And he often had evening meetings at church on Tuesday through Thursday nights - when we were at home.

Nonetheless, we always had dinner together as a family where active conversations were a given. Whether discussing the activities of our individual days or discussing current events, some of the happiest memories of my childhood were from those times around the dinner table and afterwards when we moved into the living room.

Dad had the month of August off for vacation and some of the other happiest memories of my childhood happened during that month. We took two driving trips across the country. Whether it was seeing the grandeur of our great country - like Washington, D.C. or Colonial Williamsburg or Philadelphia or Cranberry Island in Maine or Route 66 or the Smoky Mountains or Utah - or just locking the keys inside the car at our Wyoming hotel, we always had fun. We still chuckle about that one scenic view stop which consisted of looking out upon acres and acres of corn fields. Mom used to read books to us during those trips, books such as Cheaper by the Dozen and the Trapp Family Singers' story.

We got lost a number of times on those driving trips and it was Dad's good humor about it that made experiences such as being lost in the warehouse district of Chicago - after dark - or in the heart of Boston - on a Friday afternoon - both memorable and a source of ongoing delight. To the point that we almost looked forward to getting lost again.

Other vacation trips included driving to Victoria, British Columbia and taking annual treks to see one set of grandparents in Northern California. It was on the latter trips where I discovered the majestic physical beauty of that great state and fell in love with its characteristics that have now, unfortunately, been largely lost forever.

Dad taught me some important personal values, usually by example and sometimes by explicit coaching. For those lessons, I will always be grateful.

A particularly happy recent memory was a weekend the two of us spent together several years ago in the Bay Area. Whether it was walking through Muir Woods, touring Napa Valley or having lunch in the beautiful City of San Francisco, it was an experience I will cherish forever.

Over ten years ago, he was able to overcome complications following prostate cancer surgery. He now has what is called smoldering (asymptomatic) multiple myeloma, against which his treatment regimen has been successful so far.

Last month, the L.A. Times did a wonderful article entitled These Retirees Have Centuries of Service to Faith, which was "about people who live at Monte Vista Grove Homes, a Christian retirement community in Pasadena in the shadows of the San Gabriel Mountains. It's an unusual center for 130 veteran Presbyterian leaders and their spouses, including many of whom have worked around the world." One part of the article briefly mentioned Mom and Dad:

Even in retirement, many of these Presbyterians are busy. They volunteer at local churches, schools and nonprofit groups.

At home, they deliver mail, staff the reception desk, stand security watch at night, and help frail residents in the assisted living and skilled nursing facilities that are open to nonresidents.

For example, on Thursday, when residents gathered for a presentation of Mark Twain's "The Diaries of Adam and Eve," residents in wheelchairs from the assisted living quarters also were in the audience.

After a prayer and a hymn, the Rev. Donald Hawthorne -- also known as the whistler of Monte Vista Grove -- and his wife, Lee, an art historian, set the tone for a contemporary adaptation of Twain's commentary on the first man and woman. She read the creation story from Genesis 1. And he did a "musical overture" by whistling such Broadway hits as "Some Enchanted Evening" and "Wouldn't It Be Lovely."

Then the Rev. Jack Lorimer, who served 40 years as a missionary in Egypt, and Nancy Macky, a retired English professor from Westminster College in New Wilmington, PA., stepped on stage to read from Twain's diaries - with gestures and all. They're no amateurs; both taught drama in college...

Oh, the whistling. He is good at it and, when you know music well and have a bounce in your step, there is much to whistle about!

Dad, I am proud to be your son and to share your name. Happy Father's Day!

How Public Pensions Make People Well-Off at Taxpayers' Expense

Here is another editorial entitled Government pensions fund second careers about the outrageous problems with public sector pensions:

Manchester Town Manager Steven R. Werbner has applied to become Tolland's (Conn.) town manager, and he'd probably be a fool not to take the job if it is offered, because if he goes to Tolland, Manchester will make him rich.

Having worked in various town-government positions in Manchester for almost 30 years, Werbner is now entitled to collect an annual pension of about $90,000 a year, even though he is only 52. While the salary Tolland is advertising for its manager's job -- $88,000 to $114,000 -- would be as much as $40,000 less than the $129,000 Werbner earns in Manchester, that $90,000 annual pension payment from Manchester would cover at least twice any reduction in Werbner's total income if he took the job in Tolland.

Given his experience, Tolland probably will offer Werbner something closer to $114,000, so if he accepts the job he probably will end up with annual income of more than $200,000 a year.

If he holds the Tolland job for 10 years or so until he reaches the age at which most people stop working, Manchester will have paid him about a million dollars, not really as retirement compensation but instead as a bonus for working elsewhere.

Werbner's situation is no fluke...

Indeed, retirements that are really the start of second careers underwritten by generous pension benefits are common in public employment in Connecticut. The rationale for extravagant pension benefits is that they are necessary to attract and keep good people in government. But increasingly these extravagant pension benefits are causing people to leave, not to stay.

The public that pays for making Connecticut a public employee paradise may think that "pension" or "retirement" benefits are meant to support people when they are no longer working, not to give government administrators more compensation than the governor. The public also may think that times are hard in government in Connecticut and that this or that service must be curtailed because public needs are becoming overwhelming even as tax support of those needs is drying up.

In fact government in Connecticut is always rolling in money even as elected officials lack the political courage to confront the primary beneficiaries of that money, the government's own employees, whose unions are the most politically influential special interests...

...Government-pension benefits should support people who are no longer working, not subsidize people in beginning second careers. State law and municipal ordinance alike should prohibit payment of such benefits to any public employee before a traditional retirement age, such as 62 or 65, or before his or her incurring a disability that prevents him from working, or at least should reduce benefits in proportion to income a beneficiary continues to earn by working...

...should make it an issue in this year's municipal-election campaign. Connecticut should want its veteran public employees to be able to retire comfortably. Connecticut should not want them to collect luxurious retirement benefits when they are still working and getting paid so much better than ordinary taxpayers.

Making public sector employees well-off, another benefit brought to us by the public sector unions and paid for by the rest of us - the working families and retirees across America.

It is important to remember that the public sector unions oppose any reforms to these rich pension benefits.

Now ask yourself again who represents working people and retirees in Rhode Island and across America?

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Bankrupt pensions, extraordinary healthcare insurance benefits, related issues with private and public sector unions, and the misguided incentives that exist in public sector taxation have been discussed previously on Anchor Rising:

Misguided Incentives Drive Public Sector Taxation
If You Won't Deal With Economic Reality, Then It Will Deal With You
Underfunding Pensions, Public and Private, can Hurt Taxpayers
Bankrupt Public Pensions: A Time Bomb That Will Explode
Why Truly Free Markets & Timely, Transparent Information Are Needed to Protect the Freedom of American Citizens
RI Public Pension Problems
The Cocoon in which Entitled State Employees Live
The Union's Solution for the Future: Get More People in Unions
Bankrupt Public Pensions, Part II
Outrageous Employee Compensation Liabilities Continue to Haunt General Motors; Will American Taxpayers End Up Paying the Bill?
Why the Big Three Auto Companies Could Easily Fail

What Do These Comments Say About Our Culture in Rhode Island?

It often seems like a culture of fear and intimidation pervades Rhode Island.

As I have spoken out publicly during my tenure on the East Greenwich School Committee and during the years since then, the single most frequent comment town residents have said to me was "We agree wholeheartedly with you but we cannot speak out publicly because we are afraid teachers and administrators will retaliate by treating our children unfairly."

(All of this is quite ironic because one of the primary criticisms upon my appointment to the Committee centered on our children attending a private school. However, time has shown that the lack of involvement has liberated me and other people in similar situations to speak out.)

During the current teachers' union contract stalemate in town, people have told me stories about how certain teachers - who are not supporting the hard union line - are being socially isolated by the hard line union supporters.

Now, after I emailed out yesterday's posting which identified the many unanswered budget questions for the East Greenwich Fire District annual meeting next week, one town resident wrote back and said:

Years ago I heard that people do not show up to the Fire District Financial meeting is because they are afraid of retribution--may call for help/assistance and be refused because of their opposition to any increases. May or not be true, but if people feel that way, what can be done?

These are signs of a bad political culture, of preserving an under-performing culture which is dominated by special interests. These are signs of an establishment that is focused on maintaining the status quo - at all costs.

Fortunately, technology has enabled facts to become more broadly available to citizens in this state via blogsites and active citizens. The facts tell a damning story and it is liberating more and more people to speak out. Try as hard as they might - and even as they win short-term political victories - the defenders of the failing establishment cannot turn back the clock. That means they will only get more desperate over time as their ability to dictate outcomes weakens.

There is a budding revolution against those who protect the status quo to the detriment of working families and retirees across Rhode Island.

Now watch that revolution grow.

Anti-establishment RI voters

I'm trying to figure something out here. President Bush, and RI Republicans running for statewide office, generally run very strong in South County. According to a report, South County is among the nation's leaders in marijuana "consumption." Given that smoking pot is (I think) safely associable to anti-establishment behavior and that South County votes for "anti-establishment" Republicans more regularly than for "establishment" Democrats, is it possible that we conservative Rhode Islanders should propose the legalization of marijuana statewide in hopes of toppling the current Democrat establishment in our legislature?

We Are Paying Quite a Price for Our Historical Ignorance

David Gelernter of Yale has written this editorial:

...Our schools teach history ideologically. They teach the message, not the truth...They are propaganda machines.

Ignorance of history destroys our judgment. Consider Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill), who just compared the Guantanamo Bay detention center to Stalin's gulag and to the death camps of Hitler and Pol Pot - an astonishing, obscene piece of ignorance. Between 15 million and 30 million people died from 1918 through 1956 in the prisons and labor camps of the Soviet gulag. Historian Robert Conquest gives some facts. A prisoner at the Kholodnaya Gora prison had to stuff his ears with bread before sleeping on account of the shrieks of women being interrogated. At the Kolyma in Siberia, inmates labored through 12-hour days in cheap canvas shoes, on almost no food, in temperatures that could go to minus-58. At one camp, 1,300 of 3,000 inmates died in one year.

"Gulag" must not go the way of "Nazi" and become virtually meaningless...

...I have met college students who have never heard of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge - the genocidal monsters who treated Cambodia in the 1970s to a Marxist nightmare unequaled in its bestiality since World War II.

And I know college students who have heard of President Kennedy but not of anything he ever did except get assassinated. They have never heard JFK's inaugural promise: that America would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to ensure the survival and the success of liberty." But President Bush remembers that speech, and it's lucky he does.

To forget your own history is (literally) to forget your identity. By teaching ideology instead of facts, our schools are erasing the nation's collective memory...

There is an ongoing culture war between Americans who are ashamed of this nation's history and those who acknowledge with sorrow its many sins and are fiercely proud of it anyway. Proud of the 17th century settlers who threw their entire lives overboard and set sail for religious freedom in their rickety little ships. Proud of the new nation that taught democracy to the world. Proud of its ferocious fight to free the slaves, save the Union and drag (lug, shove, sweat, bleed) America a few inches closer to its own sublime ideals. Proud of its victories in two world wars and the Cold War, proud of the fight it is waging this very day for freedom in Iraq and the whole Middle East.

If you are proud of this country and don't want its identity to vanish, you must teach U.S. history to your children. They won't learn it in school. This nation's memory will go blank unless you act.

With those insights in mind, it is astounding that a United States Senator would say what Senator Durbin has said.

Some reactions to Senator Durbin's comments are here and here. Plus these comments from the Chicago Tribune, in his own home state. Hugh Hewitt has more. Power Line also has more here and here. The latter references a Hugh Hewitt article which provides readers with exactly what Senator Durbin said. The editors at National Review add their comments.

Since Durbin's comments relate to the Amnesty International debacle, there are two related links here and here to postings on AI's actions.

Senator Durbin apologizes, well sort of. Here is actual transcript of what he said.

We Are Paying Quite a Price for Our Historical Ignorance

David Gelernter of Yale has written this editorial:

...Our schools teach history ideologically. They teach the message, not the truth...They are propaganda machines.

Ignorance of history destroys our judgment. Consider Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill), who just compared the Guantanamo Bay detention center to Stalin's gulag and to the death camps of Hitler and Pol Pot — an astonishing, obscene piece of ignorance. Between 15 million and 30 million people died from 1918 through 1956 in the prisons and labor camps of the Soviet gulag. Historian Robert Conquest gives some facts. A prisoner at the Kholodnaya Gora prison had to stuff his ears with bread before sleeping on account of the shrieks of women being interrogated. At the Kolyma in Siberia, inmates labored through 12-hour days in cheap canvas shoes, on almost no food, in temperatures that could go to minus-58. At one camp, 1,300 of 3,000 inmates died in one year.

"Gulag" must not go the way of "Nazi" and become virtually meaningless...

...I have met college students who have never heard of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge — the genocidal monsters who treated Cambodia in the 1970s to a Marxist nightmare unequaled in its bestiality since World War II.

And I know college students who have heard of President Kennedy but not of anything he ever did except get assassinated. They have never heard JFK's inaugural promise: that America would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to ensure the survival and the success of liberty." But President Bush remembers that speech, and it's lucky he does.

To forget your own history is (literally) to forget your identity. By teaching ideology instead of facts, our schools are erasing the nation's collective memory...

There is an ongoing culture war between Americans who are ashamed of this nation's history and those who acknowledge with sorrow its many sins and are fiercely proud of it anyway. Proud of the 17th century settlers who threw their entire lives overboard and set sail for religious freedom in their rickety little ships. Proud of the new nation that taught democracy to the world. Proud of its ferocious fight to free the slaves, save the Union and drag (lug, shove, sweat, bleed) America a few inches closer to its own sublime ideals. Proud of its victories in two world wars and the Cold War, proud of the fight it is waging this very day for freedom in Iraq and the whole Middle East.

If you are proud of this country and don't want its identity to vanish, you must teach U.S. history to your children. They won't learn it in school. This nation's memory will go blank unless you act.

With those insights in mind, it is astounding that a United States Senator would say what Senator Durbin has said.

Some reactions to Senator Durbin's comments are here and here. Plus these comments from the Chicago Tribune, in his own home state. Hugh Hewitt has more. Power Line also has more here and here. The latter references a Hugh Hewitt article which provides readers with exactly what Senator Durbin said. The editors at National Review add their comments.

Since Durbin's comments relate to the Amnesty International debacle, there are two related links here and here to postings on AI's actions.

Senator Durbin apologizes, well sort of. Here is actual transcript of what he said.

Rhode Island Politics & Taxation, Part XX: Defining a Core Problem in Rhode Island

Solving a problem first requires acknowledgement of the problem's existence followed by having the will to fix it.

Rhode Island resident Thomas Wigand offers a compelling view of what is structurally wrong in our state in his editorial entitled Public-sector lords, Social-Security serfs:

Czarist Russia was inhabited by a subservient class, called serfs, the fruits of whose labor -- beyond that necessary for a meager subsistence -- were taken to enrich aristocrats. In 1861 Czar Alexander II issued an emancipation proclamation, ending this feudal system and freeing the serfs.

Although less draconian than Russia's serfdom, the Rhode Island General Assembly has imposed a stealth form of serfdom upon a group of Rhode Island citizens.

Our "serfs" are not necessarily poor or working-class individuals exploited for the benefit of the rich. In today's Rhode Island, serfdom encompasses the private sector: ditch diggers and doctors; union and non-union workers; and senior-citizen retirees.

And who are the new "aristocrats"? Public-sector employees and their public-sector-union bosses.

In the private sector, compensation is determined by the free market, so, over time, it reflects what a particular occupation is actually worth, as based on skills and supply and demand. Therefore, to be balanced and fair for all workers, the average compensation of public- and private-sector workers should be roughly equal.

Such is not the case in Rhode Island, where average public-sector compensation far exceeds average private-sector earnings -- meaning that on average, public-sector workers are overpaid...

...no matter how high our appreciation, public-sector workers' compensation should be comparable to that of the private-sector workers who ultimately pay them.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data for 2001 showed that average salaries in the public sector were nearly 25 percent higher than in the private sector ($41,880, against $33,871). The higher pay also accompanied a shorter workweek: 35 hours, instead of 40 (about 14 percent shorter).

But that is just the edge of the compensation chasm separating the public and private sectors. The really big money in public-sector compensation resides in the state-pension system.

Public-sector employees may receive far more taxpayer money in retirement than they did during their working years. Meanwhile, most of the private-sector workers, who pay for the state pensions, will not receive any pension; they will merely get Social Security.

Let's compare the "serfs" on Social Security with one group of "aristocrats": public-school teachers, who, instead of Social Security benefits, receive taxpayer-funded pension benefits:

Private-sector employees contribute 6.2 percent of their pay to Social Security; public-school teachers contribute 9.5 percent of their pay to their pensions. So the contributions are comparable. The benefits, however, are not.

Rhode Island teachers need work only 28 years to get a full pension, with no minimum age at which to start collecting. So teachers can retire at 50-ish and, given current life expectancies, their pension checks may well cover more years than they worked!

Meanwhile, private-sector workers must typically labor for 40-plus years, until they reach 60-something, before becoming eligible to collect Social Security -- by which time our comparably aged retired teachers will have been lolling on the beaches of Florida for a good 15 years.

And while the average Social Security benefit is only about $14,000 a year (the maximum being $23,268), teachers' pensions are calculated according to three consecutive years of their highest pay. So the typical Rhode Island teacher can retire at 50-ish with a pension of well over $50,000 a year -- or about 3 1/2 times the average Social Security benefit, and more than twice the maximum Social Security benefit.

State pensions are legally protected; once a participant's benefits "vest," they cannot be reduced. Social Security benefits are not legally protected; they do not "vest." At its whim, Congress can reduce Social Security benefits, even for those already collecting...

Little wonder that the favorite currency of the realm at the General Assembly is "aristocratic titles" bestowed upon friends and family -- i.e., state jobs!

Why is public-sector compensation so out of whack? The answer lies in the General Assembly's power to tax.

In the private sector, revenues are generated and incomes derived from a voluntary exchange of goods or services. Conversely, in the public sector, revenues are generated and incomes derived from compulsory taxation.

The Democratic Party, which has controlled the General Assembly for some 70 years, is itself to a large extent composed of members of the public-sector "aristocracy."

Meanwhile, the Democrats in the General Assembly -- many of whom intend later to be employed in a state job -- prostrate themselves before the public-sector-union bosses, who are also their de-facto party bosses.

At election time, this party claims to be the one representing "working families." If that were ever true, it is true no longer.

The Democratic General Assembly has enacted a panoply of income, sales, excise, estate, and property taxes, ensuring that everyone in the private sector -- rich and poor alike -- suffers a burdensome extraction of his or her wealth...

(Public-sector beneficiaries would have you believe that they are taxpayers, too. Nonsense. The money they receive from taxes far exceeds the money they pay in taxes -- so on a net basis, they are not taxpayers, but tax consumers.)

Ultimately, excessively taxing working families reduces their standard of living. The current state-pension system faces a severe shortfall and, absent major reforms during this legislative session, will require a bailout comprising enormous infusions of working-family taxpayer dollars.

The General Assembly has the power to avoid this. It can thoroughly restructure the state retirement system so as to bring back into balance the overall average compensation between public- and private-sector workers.

The extent to which the Democratic General Assembly levels the compensation field, or declines to do so, will for us "serfs" provide an acid-test demonstration of whom it represents: the working families or the public-sector unions.

Now, do we have the will as working families and retirees across the state to do something about this problem?

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

A URI professor responds to Wigand. Anyone who starts their argument by suggesting questioning teachers' unions is unreasonable and ends their argument by implying private sector pension problems are more serious than either public sector pension problems and Social Security funding problems can only be a leftist who willfully insists on selective use of empirical data. Tom Coyne has a similar take on the response, as found in his June 25 edition of OnTheRadar, where he says:

Unfortunately, as we have shown in this analysis, the story of why Rhode Island has the nation's highest ratio of average public sector to average private sector pay is more complicated than he cares to admit. And not flattering to the public sector unions he's implicitly trying to defend...

This posting continues a periodic series on Rhode Island politics and taxation, building on nineteen previous postings:

I - Guiding Principles for Sound Public Policy
II - The Outrageous Tax Burden in Rhode Island
III - 2004: The Year in Review
IV - The NEA's Disinformation Campaign
V - Governor Carcieri's State of the State Address
VI - "Citizens for Representative Government's" Deceitful Manipulation of the Constitutional Convention Vote
VII - The Extreme Tax Burden in the City of Providence
VIII - Rhode Island Gets a C+ on its Report Card
IX - How Speaker Murphy's Changing of the Rules of the House Reduces Your Freedom
X - East Greenwich Teachers' Salary and Benefits Data
XI - What Was Rep. Fox Doing in Portsmouth?
XII - Why Do RI Citizens Passively Consent to Governmental Control by Powerful Interests?
XIII - RI House Leaders Show No Respect for Rule of Law by Undermining Separations of Powers, Part I
XIV - More Bad Faith Behavior by the NEA
XV - RI House Leaders Show No Respect for Rule of Law by Undermining Separations of Powers, Part II
XVI - Tom Coyne - RI Schools: Big Bucks Have Not Brought Good Results
XVII - RI Public Pension Problems
XVIII - Union Doublespeak, Again
XIX - Another Stab at Killing Off Future Economic Growth

Warwick Teachers' Union Throws Public Tantrum

This latest response by the Warwick teachers' union reminded me of when our children were quite young and did what kids that age do when they don't get their way - throw a tantrum:

The Warwick Teachers Union, responding to what it called a School Committee "ultimatum" over the issue of retroactive pay, says it is prepared to abandon contract negotiations until after the next election, in November 2006.

Mary M. Pendergast, the union president, made that statement during a May 18 meeting of principals in the talks, according to John F. Thompson, the School Committee chairman. Since then, two bargaining sessions were canceled and no more have been scheduled.

The teachers, whose last contract expired in August 2003, have demanded that any new agreement include retroactive pay raises for last year and for the year about to end.

"If we're not willing to give them what they want, they'll just wait until they get a School Committee that will," Thompson said yesterday. "[Pendergast] said that they've been through this before and they're willing to wait."...

Pendergast yesterday confirmed her remark at that meeting but said it was forced by Thompson's intransigence on retroactivity.

"To suggest that that's a plan of ours is ridiculous, totally ridiculous," Pendergast said. "If anyone is responsible, it's [Thompson]."

The School Department's latest contract offer, unveiled in March, includes a 3.5 percent pay increase for this year and in each of the next two years. It includes no money for raises retroactive to the 2003-2004 school year.

Now, though, school officials say their $142-million budget for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1, contains no money to pay teachers retroactive raises for the current fiscal year either.

"John Thompson gave us an ultimatum: we have to forget about retroactive pay or wait out a new School Committee," Pendergast said. "We are not going to back away from retroactive pay."

James Ginolfi, a union executive board member, hinted at a more hard-line position on June 1, when he recalled a past contract dispute during a union rally in front of the State House.

"In Warwick, we're going through a tough situation, but we have a strong union," Ginolfi said. "In the early nineties we had a similar situation in Warwick, and guess what: you'd think some of the people on the School Committee in Warwick would have learned a lesson because the Warwick Teachers Union is still there and they're long gone."...

Now, "They would be prepared to wait until someone came to office who was willing to give them what they wanted," Healy, the school board's lawyer, said yesterday.

School officials, however, hope an agreement can be reached sooner. The sides have been in arbitration for almost nine months, and the School Department is trying to arrange an intense nine straight days of meetings with the neutral arbitrator in August.

The arbitration proceeding, which the union has opposed, is nonbinding on monetary issues, which could end up in court...

Now you have another example of why I have labeled such union behavior toward taxpayers as a form of legalized extortion.

As I have written about the East Greenwich contract dispute, the teachers' union has NO incentive to be reasonable on contract terms if they expect to get retroactive pay - because receiving retroactive pay means they are made whole financially and therefore have no time pressure to reach an agreement.

Just to remind readers, this is the same teachers' union that recently proposed free lifetime family health insurance for all teachers.

These AFT union people are as delusional as the East Greenwich NEA union people. See You Have To Read This Posting To Believe It! The Delusional World of the NEA Teachers' Union for an example of equally odd behavior by the NEA in East Greenwich.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON EDUCATIONAL ISSUES:

EAST GREENWICH NEA TEACHERS' UNION CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS
In a nutshell, here is what I think the negotiating position of the East Greenwich School Committee should be on some of the key financial terms of the contract.

Other postings include:
More Background Information on the East Greenwich NEA Labor Dispute
The NEA's Disinformation Campaign
East Greenwich Salary & Benefits Data
More Bad Faith Behavior by the NEA
The Debate About Retroactive Pay
Would You Hurt Our Children Just To Win Better Contract Terms?
The Question Remains Open & Unanswered: Are We/They Doing Right By Our Children?
Will The East Greenwich Teachers' Union Stop Their Attempts to Legally Extort Residents?
You Have To Read This Posting To Believe It! The Delusional World of the NEA Teachers' Union
So What Else is New? Teachers' Union Continues Non-Productive Behaviors in East Greenwich Labor Talks
"Bargaining Rights are Civil Rights"

OTHER RHODE ISLAND PUBLIC EDUCATION/UNION ISSUES
In addition to financial issues, management rights are the other big teachers' union contract issue. "Work-to-rule" or "contract compliance" only can become an issue because of how management rights are defined in union contracts. The best reading on this subject is the recent report by The Education Partnership. It is must reading.

Other editorials and postings include:
ProJo editorial: Derailing the R.I. gravy train
ProJo editorial: RI public unions work to reduce your family's quality of life
ProJo editorial: Breaking the taxpayer: How R.I. teachers get 12% pay hikes
Selfish Focus of Teachers Unions: Everything But What Is Good For Our Kids
Tom Coyne - RI Schools: Big Bucks Have Not Brought Good Results
The NEA: There They Go, Again!
A Response: Why Teachers' Unions (Not Teachers!) Are Bad For Education
"A Girl From The Projects" Gets an Opportunity to Live the American Dream
Doing Right By Our Children in Public Education Requires Thinking Outside The Box
Debating Rhode Island Public Education Issues
The Cocoon in which Entitled State Employees Live
Are Teachers Fairly Compensated?

BROADER PUBLIC EDUCATION ISSUES
The Deep Performance Problems with American Public Education
Freedom, Hard Work & Quality Education: Making The American Dream Possible For ALL Americans
Parents or Government/Unions: Who Should Control Our Children's Educational Decisions?
Milton Friedman on School Choice

Another Year of High Spending Increases by East Greenwich Fire District

This East Greenwich Fire District news article highlights the latest actions of a group that has a historical tendency to increase spending at a far faster rate than the incomes of East Greenwich taxpayers:

The Board of Fire Commissioners will seek voter approval to begin the process of constructing and staffing a new fire station at its annual financial meeting June 20.

The proposal comes at a time of uncertainty in the district's $4.1 million budget, with about $300,000 in revenue in question as Warwick considers whether to renew its contract for fire coverage in the Potowomut section of the city.

The board will present four separate questions at the financial meeting, one of which is a proposal to purchase a yet-to-be determined piece of land for the new station.

The board...and Fire Chief Thomas Rowan would like to see the new station, if approved, built in the area of the Rocky Hill fairgrounds because of the plans set for that land...

Under the plan, the Frenchtown Road station would remain open at full capacity, while the Main Street station would be reduced to a substation and would mostly serve the downtown and Post Road areas of town. While some may question the need for three fire stations in such a small town, Rowan said the town has continued to grow over the years, while the Fire District, physically, has not...

Commissioners refused to give a purchase price for the land, citing ongoing negotiations, but said they would seek only the land this year, putting off presenting a plan for the construction of a new station until the 2006 financial meeting.

The final price, including land acquisition and constructing and equipping the new building, could be in the $4 million range, Rowan said.

Fire officials stressed that the construction of the new station would not be coming solely out of the residents' pockets, with some funding coming from impact fees on new construction in town.

Enacted in 2002, the fees builders pay help the Fire District keep up with expansion in town. District Treasurer Craig Delfino said there is about $100,000 in the account already, but that does not include several projects, including most of the construction set to take place at the Rocky Hill fairgrounds...

In addition to the land purchase, the board will ask voters to approve an increase in staffing as it looks to add eight firefighters to the rolls, a move that will cost approximately $160,000.

Commissioner Robert Berlyn said the additions would not necessarily come all at once and may not even affect this year's budget, but the board would like to fully staff Station 2 at the Frenchtown station and look to the future as it proposes a new station.

Residents might be more shocked at the proposed increase in their fire taxes if the Potowomut contract falls through. The board recently completed a three-year contract with the city that paid the town $200,000 for the fire coverage.

Thinking that the contract may have short-changed the district, fire officials analyzed the number of calls and increased the requested amount to $350,000 this year...

Carnevale said he has sent two letters to Warwick mayor Scott Avedisian without response. He said he would contact the board's legal counsel to notify the city that the board must have an answer by the end of this week so the commission can adequately plan for the budget, which will swing to a huge increase without the planned revenue.

Although spending in the budget increased more than 12 percent, an increase in the tax base this year would keep the overall increase in taxes to around 7.5 percent. However, if the district were to lose $300,000 in revenue, the increase could be in the neighborhood of 17 percent.

The budget itself represents an increase of $375,000 in spending, but, like many suffering school districts across the state, a large portion of that is due to an unplanned increase in pension payouts.

This year, benefits contributions shot up more than 300 percent over last year, more than $300,000 more than last year's budgeted numbers...

Other questions that will be proposed at the annual meeting include a request to grant single health care coverage to the members of the Board of Fire Commissioners, a request that residents rejected in a 12-11 vote at last year's meeting.

Commission members, in a 5-0 vote, elected to add the item to the meeting agenda again, noting that the town's elected officials are offered coverage and that the members of the commission have not received a raise in their $1,000 pay in more than 20 years...

The Fire District will also seek the approval of a new pump truck at the cost of $300,000. The purchase of the vehicle will be offset by the sale of a tanker truck for $99,000.

The board's next meeting, where it will continue the budget discussion, will be Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the conference room of Station 1, 284 Main St.

So many questions and so few answers that the taxpayers deserve answers to before anything is approved:

A $4.1 million budget means spending is up $375,000 or 12% from last year's budget. The Fire District Commissioners need to identify all budget line items which increased or decreased by more than $20,000 over last year's budget.

What is actual spending for the current budget year and what level of increase ($ and %) does the new budget represent over this year's actual spending? (Several years ago, the Fire District district budget increase for the new year was understated because they did not compare it to actual spending in the prior year - which was below budget and effectively gave them a much bigger budget increase for the new year.) How much cash does the Fire District expect to have at the end of the current budget year?

If the Warwick contract of $350,000 doesn't happen, then taxes will go up roughly 17%. Otherwise, they "only" go up 7.5%.

What expenses would be cut if the Warwick contract is dropped so taxes don't go up 17%? I.e., what is the contingency plan?

Pension costs are up over $300,000. We understand the Fire District has no control over this expense.

If pension cost increases represent over 75% of the total spending increase, that leaves less than $75,000 for all other spending increases - which is hard to understand if they are hiring 8 new firefighters and buying land and a truck. How much is assumed in the new budget for the purchase of the land for a new station and for the new firefighters?

What is the capital budget for next year? Is that where the land and fire truck purchases are?

How many firefighters does EG have now and what percentage increase does 8 new firefighters represent? Does that percentage increase correlate with the percentage increase in the town's population?

If Main Street is being reduced to a substation, does that save headcount? If so, why are 8 additional heads needed? If not, why not?

Why do 8 firefighters cost only $160,000? What is the full salary and benefits expense for all 8 firefighters when they are on staff for an entire year? What is the total financial commitment for new headcount expenses that the Fire District is seeking approval on next week? One Commissioner says not all of the new headcount will be being hired in the new budget year; if so, why is approval being sought now?

How many additional capital expenditure and operating expense dollars are being submitted for approval next week but won't hit the tax bills or residents until future years? I.e., how much of the estimated $4 million for the new station land and construction costs and the new headcount expense will be paid for after the end of the new budget year?

Has a formal feasibility study been done on the new fire station? I.e., what sort of formal analysis - with hard data - has been done to justify a new station with a $4 million commitment? If not, why should it be approved now?

I recall a new firetruck being purchased several years ago; not sure what kind of truck it was. Why is another truck needed at this time? What is the age of the old truck and what is typically the useful life of such trucks?

Will the new truck be financed or paid for via an outright cash payment like last time - which makes no economic sense?

I have been told the healthcare insurance coverage is free to the commissioners and the cost will be roughly $5,300 per person. Is this true? Why do they get free healthcare coverage when the taxpayers don't get free coverage? Why are they putting this up for vote after it was defeated last year? Why when the School Committee is asking the teachers' union to accept a co-pay are Fire District personnel proposing free insurance?

By being separate from the town and school budgets, the Fire District budget manages to escape the level of scrutiny that it deserves. With a tax increase of as high as 17%, the Fire District is not being financially responsible. I hope they are not seeking approval now for large spending increases that will only hit future years' budgets. Frankly, it would be kind - at best - to call such behavior disingenuous.

If we can consolidate the Finance departments of town and school, we should consolidate the Fire District back into the town and put their financial actions under a much brighter spotlight.

I hope nothing will be approved by taxpayers next Monday until after they receive satisfactory answers to questions like those shown above.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

An email from Town Council member John McGurk on June 20 includes some words from the Town Manager, Bill Sequino:

From the Town Manager's office:

I have been asked by several people how the Fire District budget could go up 16% if the state law on a tax cap was 5.5%. It has always been my understanding that the District has to abide by the same law. In an abundance of caution I checked with the Office of Municipal Affairs today and was informed that, the tax cap statute is silent about the Fire District's tax setting ability. They have no tax cap.

Bill

A more recent ProJo news article provides additional and somewhat different information:

Voters at tonight's annual financial meeting of the East Greenwich Fire District will be asked to approve a fiscal 2006 budget of nearly $4.4 million -- a 16 percent, or $614,000, increase over current spending -- and to authorize a bond issue to buy property for an eventual third fire station...

Fire Chief Thomas Rowan said Friday that he was unsure what increase the budget would require in the district's property tax rate, currently $1.61 per $1,000 of assessed valuation...

Among the new costs reflected in the budget increase, Rowan said, are $178,000 in additional pension contributions, which have been mandated by the state, and $165,000 to hire four additional firefighters.

Rowan said that the district is also applying for federal grant money to hire four more firefighters, for a total of eight new firefighter positions in the coming fiscal year...

In addition to tonight's budget discussion, Rowan said that the district will stage an "in-depth" presentation on why the town, he said, needs a third fire station to supplement the stations on Main Street and Frenchtown Road.

The new station, Rowan said, would help the fire district keep up with the town's development -- particularly in and around the intersection of South County Trail (Route 2) and Division Road, the prospective site of a new corporate headquarters for Brooks Pharmacy...

The district is eyeing a two-acre site on South County Trail just south of Division Road.

Rowan said that the district has negotiated a purchase price for the property that will be disclosed at tonight's meeting...

Many of the same questions noted above still remain valid. Here are some additional questions and comments:

Why does spending need to go up 14% when pension expenses only total roughly 30% of the total increase, the Consumer Price Index is increasing by about 2%, and taxpayers' incomes are going up 1-4%?

It is still not clear why 8 new firefighters are necessary, particularly if Main Street is downsized to a more limited operation.

How long does a government grant for new firefighters last? I.e., when will the financial burden be borne fully by the taxpayers of East Greenwich? What percentage of their costs does it pay?

I hope the "in-depth presentation" will be more than just a sales pitch and will include meaningful analytical data to prove the need for a new fire station is real. It would be more credible if a formal feasibility study was done by an independent third party.

I must say I find it galling that approval for a bond issue will be voted on when there has been NO public discussion in town about such a claimed need.

I now understand the Fire District has $1.8 million of cash in its bank account, an awfully high amount given a $4 million budget. In other words, residents have been overtaxed in recent years by a rather hefty sum. Why do they continue to overtax the residents of our town?

We need answers to some important questions before anything gets approved. That is all we ask so we can make informed decisions at tonight's meeting.

Principled Democrats Against Organizing Day Care Providers

To give credit where it is due, I note that Warwick Democrat Al Gemma has taken a principled stand against the "organizing" of Home Day Care providers. From the ProJo:

House leaders succeeded in passing a bill last night that would force the state to negotiate with home-based child-care providers over the terms of their work and pay, although the vote fell short of the margin needed to insulate the measure from Governor Carcieri's promised veto.

The final vote on the bill, sponsored by Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox, D-Providence, was 41 to 27, with 2 abstentions and 5 members absent. Proponents could require as many as 44 votes for a veto override.

Lawmakers spent nearly three hours debating various amendments that made, or proposed to make, significant changes to the legislation. One that succeeded, from Rep. Paul W. Crowley, D-Newport, would no longer require the providers to vote to unionize in order to gain negotiating power with the state.

But Republicans protested fiercely that Democrats were "stifling debate" when House Whip Peter F. Kilmartin, D-Pawtucket, moved to limit discussion on the bill itself to just 10 minutes. That motion succeeded on a vote of 37 to 30.

"Go ahead, you puppets!" hollered Rep. Joseph A. Trillo, R-Warwick, at colleagues as the final vote to pass the bill was tallied.

Still, at least five loyalists broke ranks with House leadership on the issue, including Rep. Arthur J. Corvese, D-North Providence, Rep. Fausto C. Anguilla, D-Bristol, and Rep. Al Gemma, D-Warwick, who called the bill's ramifications "crazy."

Even though it passed, there aren't enough votes to override the veto promised by Gov. Carcieri. I applaud these Democrats for showing some common sense and standing where they always should: with the Rhode Island taxpayer. I hope they maintain this outlook when it comes to pension reform.

Update: The RI Senate passed their own version and the House's version of the same bill, but, unlike in the House, the Senate passed it with enough margin to override any veto. Nonetheless, a few Democrats crossed the aisle to vote against the proposal.

Sen. Joseph M. Polisena, D-Johnston, one of seven Democrats to join the chamber's Republicans in opposition, said the bill would cost the state "millions upon millions of dollars." Polisena said he believed providers would still seek pensions and full family-insurance coverage in the future.

"The taxpayers in this state, in my opinion, are about to revolt," he warned. "They'll do so in about 17 months when it comes to election time. They've had it, that's what they keep telling me.

"Remember, your constituents are watching, no doubt about it, and they're counting on you to protect their pockets," he said.

Like Polisena, Sen. Michael J. Damiani, D-East Providence, said rank-and-file union members he spoke with told him they didn't support the bill. He said the supporters were the union leaders who wanted more dues.

Damiani said he'd never been told why the bill was really necessary.

"There's a skunk in this woodpile -- something smells. I haven't put my finger on it yet," he said, but, "I'm going to call it a feeling in my bones."

Sen. June N. Gibbs, R-Middletown, chairwoman of the Permanent Legislative Child Care Commission, said the state had set up a "remarkable" child-care system and had steadily improved it with the cooperation of home-based and center-based providers.

"'Why would we want to change it?" she said. "Why would we do something that could split these coalitions, possibly setting one group [of providers] against each other? It just doesn't make any sense."

Liberalism's Dilemma

Andrew writes about Liberalism's Dilemma at Tech Central Station.

The River Campaign in Iraq

This is my piece on Iraq from today's New York Post.

ROLLIN' ON THE RIVERS

By MACKUBIN T. OWENS

MAY was a costly month in Iraq: 700 Iraqis and some 80 Americans died, making it one of the bloodiest months of the war. While bombings in Baghdad decreased over the last two weeks as the result of a major sweep by some 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen, backed up by 10,000 troops (Operation Lightning/Operation Thunder), insurgent attacks against Iraqi civilians and police have resumed.

The continuing attacks have generated the usual sort of stories in the U.S. press: America is mired in a Vietnam-style quagmire. Thus a recent Boston Globe report began by claiming: "Military operations in Iraq have not succeeded in weakening the insurgency."

But the Globe is wrong. Coalition operations in Iraq have killed hundreds of insurgents and led to the capture of many hundreds more, including two dozen of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's top lieutenants. Intelligence from captured insurgents, as well as from Zarqawi's computer, has had a cascading effect, permitting the Coalition to maintain pressure on the insurgency.

Vice President Dick Cheney's recent claim that the insurgency was in its "last throes," however, was clearly an overstatement. But while the outcome in Iraq is far from certain — and even a favorable one won't come overnight — evidence suggests the United States and the new Iraqi government are on the right track to ultimate success. To understand why, it is necessary to grasp the essentials of the current U.S. strategy in Iraq and how it seems to be playing out.

The Globe's problem, one shared by most of the American press, is the tendency to see events in Iraq as isolated. They fail to see the overall campaign: a series of coordinated events — movements, battles and supporting operations — designed to achieve strategic or operational objectives within a military theater.

No force, conventional or guerrilla, can continue to fight if it is deprived of sanctuary and logistics support. Accordingly, the central goal of the U.S. strategy in Iraq is to destroy the insurgency by depriving it of its base in the Sunni Triangle and its "ratlines" — the infiltration routes that run from the Syrian border into the heart of Iraq.

One ratline follows the Euphrates River corridor — running from Syria to Husayba on the Syrian border and then through Qaim, Rawa, Haditha, Asad, Hit and Fallujah to Baghdad. The other follows the course of the Tigris — from the north through Mosul-Tel Afar to Tikrit and on to Baghdad. These two "river corridors" constitute the main spatial elements of a campaign to implement U.S. strategy.

This campaign began last November with the takedown of Fallujah.

Wresting Fallujah from the rebels was critically important: Control of the town had given them the infrastructure — human and physical — necessary to maintain a high tempo of attacks against the Iraqi government and coalition forces.

In and of itself, the loss of Fallujah didn't cause the insurgency to collapse, but it did deprive the rebels of an indispensable sanctuary. Absent such a sanctuary, large terrorist networks cannot easily survive, being reduced to small, hunted bands.

With Fallujah captured, the Coalition continued a high tempo of offensive operations. After losing the city, Zarqawi apparently tried to reconstitute the insurgency in Mosul, but was unable to do so because of continued U.S. pressure. In Mosul as in Fallujah, Coalition forces killed and captured insurgents — forcing Zarqawi to move west into Al Anbar province. In March, an Iraqi special operations unit captured an insurgent camp near Lake Tharthar on the border of Anbar and Salaheddin provinces. Such operations forced him back to positions along the Syrian border.

Next came the rivers campaign — to destroy the insurgent infrastructure west and northwest of Fallujah, and so shut down those "ratlines" — which continues apace.

May saw four operations within that campaign:

* The first, Operation Matador, was a week-long Marine action centered on Qaim, near the Syrian border. Matador sought to kill and capture followers of Zarqawi known to be located there and to interdict the smuggling routes they used to move downriver to Baghdad. Some 125 insurgents died in the fighting.

* Next came Operation New Market, another Marine operation, in the Haditha area southeast of Qaim. Here, a major highway from Syria crosses the Euphrates and then branches north toward Mosul and southeast toward Fallujah and Baghdad. While the insurgents did not stand and fight as they had in Qaim, the operation still netted substantial intelligence.

* The third was a joint U.S.-Iraqi operation in the Mosul-Tel Afar region that contains the Tigris River ratline.

* The fourth operation of this campaign was the aforementioned Lightning/Thunder in Baghdad itself, which led to the capture of a former general in Saddam's intelligence service, who (according to the U.S. military) led "the military wings of several terror cells" operating in west Baghdad. Hundreds of other insurgents were captured as well.

The rapid tempo of Coalition operations will likely continue. Indeed, as U.S. and Iraqi forces shut down these ratlines, the insurgency will likely fall back on its "strategic rear" in Syria. Thus, "hot pursuit" into Syria may soon become an issue.

The U.S. strategy in Iraq is limited by a number of factors: the U.S. forces available, Iraqi politics and the time it is taking to create a competent Iraqi military. But the ongoing river campaign indicates that America has chosen to go on the offensive, taking advantage of the success in Fallujah to deny the insurgents respite. The high operational tempo is intended to rapidly degrade the rebels' lines of communication at both ends of the two river corridors, while killing and capturing as many of the enemy as possible.

But while military operations have weakened the insurgency, military means alone cannot defeat an insurgency. That is why it is necessary to bring the Sunnis into the government. Recent evidence suggests that the steps so far have already begun to drive a wedge between the Sunni and the foreign jihadis who have come to fight for Zarqawi.

Indeed, one of the reasons U.S. forces have been able to go on the offensive — despite the fact that U.S. troop strength is actually lower than it was earlier this year — is an improvement in actionable intelligence. Some of this is coming from captured insurgents. But much of it is coming from Sunnis who realize that their best chance for a future requires them to choose the new Iraqi government and reject the jihadis.

If current trends can be sustained, Zarqawi and his jihadi murderers will soon run out of time and space.

Mackubin Thomas Owens is a professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I.

Curious About History?

I am hosting History Carnival #10 at Spinning Clio this week. The History Carnival is a bi-weekly roundup of blog posts that deal with history with the goal of giving the general public an idea of what historians and others are thinking about history and how they are applying it to contemporary matters. There is a wide variety of topics covered and a wide variety of interpretations: expect a diversity of opinion. (And keep that in mind before firing off an email to me!)

More Incompetent Arguments from RI Union Leaders

Go to RIPolicyAnalysis' OnTheRadar and check out the June 12 posting about certain union leaders' responses to Tom's recent ProJo editorial, which starts off:

There’s an old saying in life: if you can’t attack an argument’s facts and logic, attack the person making it. It thus came as no surprise that, on the Arlene Violet show on Friday, Marcia Reback and Guy Dufault referred to me as a "sleazy weasel." Coming from these two, this is a high compliment that I will long cherish...

Don't stop there. Read the entire posting!

Governor Don Carcieri on NPR

Here is the link to an interview on National Public Radio with Rhode Island Governor Don Carcieri where he talks about pressing state issues, including public pensions.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan: A Man of Principle?

Articles here and here have raised fresh questions about U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's behavior in the oil-for-food program controversy.

The first article notes:

Investigators of the U.N. oil-for-food program said Tuesday they are "urgently reviewing" new information that suggests U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan may have known more than he revealed about a contract that was awarded to the company that employed his son.

The December 1998 memo from Michael Wilson, then a vice president of Cotecna Inspections S.A., mentions brief discussions with Annan "and his entourage" at a summit in Paris in 1998 about Cotecna's bid for a $10 million-a-year contract under oil-for-food.

If accurate, the memo could contradict a major finding of the Independent Inquiry Committee - that there wasn't enough evidence to show that Annan knew about efforts by Cotecna, which employed his son, Kojo, to win the contract. Cotecna learned it won the contract on Dec. 11, 1998, days after the meeting.

The statement from the Independent Inquiry Committee, led by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, said it would "conduct additional investigation regarding this new information."...

Both Annans also deny any link between Kojo Annan's employment and the awarding of the U.N. contract to the company...

The memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, Wilson said he "had brief discussions with (Kofi Annan) and his entourage" about Cotecna's effort to win the contract.

Cotecna "could count on their support," Wilson wrote.

The memo, dated Dec. 4, 1998, was written a week before the company won the U.N. contract...

In an interim report in March, Volcker's committee accused Cotecna and Kojo Annan of trying to conceal their relationship after the firm was awarded the contract.

It said Kofi Annan didn't properly investigate possible conflicts of interest surrounding the contract, but cleared him of trying to influence the awarding of Cotecna's contract or violating U.N. rules.

The second article notes:

...evidence, obtained by FOX News, appears to contradict Annan's claim that he knew nothing about the awarding of a major Oil-for-Food contract to a company that employed his son.

Kojo Annan worked for Cotecna Inspection Services, a Swiss firm which won one of the most lucrative contracts in the multi-billion-dollar program.

One of Kojo Annan's supervisors there was a man named Michael Wilson...

The secretary-general has consistently denied ever discussing the Cotecna contract with any of the company's executives.

"I have no involvement with granting of contracts either on this Cotecna one or others," Kofi Annan said in November.

But Cotecna has given a new document to investigators with the Independent Inquiry Committee [IIC], the U.N.-approved panel headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker charged with looking into corruption associated with the Oil-for-Food program.

The document is an e-mail from Wilson, the old Annan family friend, to other executives at Cotecna describing a meeting in Paris just weeks before the Oil-for-Food contract was awarded.

The e-mail refers to the U.N. Iraq Program and says: "We had brief discussions with the SG [the acronym for Secretary-General] and his entourage. Their collective advise [sic] was that we should respond as best as we could to the Q and A session of the 1-12-98 and that we could count on their support."

The numbers "1-12-98 " refer to a Dec. 1, 1998, meeting between Cotecna executives and U.N. officials in New York at which the contract was discussed.

Asked to explain the contradiction between this evidence and Kofi Annan's claim never to have been involved in contract discussions, a spokesman for the secretary-general said the office was looking into it...

The e-mail from Wilson adds to doubts about Kofi Annan's denials of familiarity with the Cotecna contract.

In March, a report from the Volcker panel concluded there was no evidence the U.N. chief tried to influence the world body's decisions in order to benefit his son's business interests. The panel reached its conclusion despite Annan's own omissions about his contacts with Cotecna. [For more information, see this article.]

Annan at first did not tell investigators that he had met twice with Cotecna representatives as the Swiss company began soliciting United Nations business. One investigator for Volcker reportedly was so concerned with Annan's veracity that he sought to make note of it in the report.

But the final report toned down the language offered by Robert Parton. He and another member of the IIC quit the panel following the report's release...

Here is another news article.

Kofi Annan has no credibility.

Electromagnetic Pulse: A Real Threat to the Security of the United States

Frank Gaffney delivered a speech on May 24, 2005, in Dallas, Texas, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar on the topic, "America’s War Against Islamic Terrorism."

An adapted version of that speech can be found in the latest edition of Hillsdale College's Imprimis publication and is entitled "EMP: America’s Achilles’ Heel".

...[What if the] destruction [of America] could be accomplished with a single attack involving just one relatively small-yield nuclear weapon—and if the nature of the attack would mean that its perpetrator might not be immediately or easily identified.

Unfortunately, such a scenario is not far-fetched. According to a report issued last summer by a blue-ribbon, Congressionally-mandated commission, a single specialized nuclear weapon delivered to an altitude of a few hundred miles over the United States by a ballistic missile would be "capable of causing catastrophe for the nation." The source of such a cataclysm might be considered the ultimate "weapon of mass destruction" (WMD)—yet it is hardly ever mentioned in the litany of dangerous WMDs we face today. It is known as electromagnetic pulse (EMP)...

Estimates of the combined direct and indirect effects of an EMP attack prompted the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack to state the following in its report to Congress:

The electromagnetic fields produced by weapons designed and deployed with the intent to produce EMP have a high likelihood of damaging electrical power systems, electronics, and information systems upon which American society depends. Their effects on dependent systems and infrastructures could be sufficient to qualify as catastrophic to the nation.

...The EMP Threat Commission estimates that, all other things being equal, it may take “months to years” to bring such systems fully back online. Here is how it depicts the horrifying ripple effect of the sustained loss of electricity on contemporary American society:

Depending on the specific characteristics of the attacks, unprecedented cascading failures of our major infrastructures could result. In that event, a regional or national recovery would be long and difficult and would seriously degrade the safety and overall viability of our nation. The primary avenues for catastrophic damage to the nation are through our electric power infrastructure and thence into our telecommunications, energy, and other infrastructures. These, in turn, can seriously impact other important aspects of our nation’s life, including the financial system; means of getting food, water, and medical care to the citizenry; trade; and production of goods and services...

Unfortunately, today’s strategic environment has changed dramatically from that of the Cold War, when only the Soviet Union and Communist China could realistically threaten an EMP attack on the United States. In particular, as the EMP Threat Commission put it:

The emerging threat environment, characterized by a wide spectrum of actors that include near-peers, established nuclear powers, rogue nations, sub-national groups, and terrorist organizations that either now have access to nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles or may have such access over the next 15 years, have combined to raise the risk of EMP attack and adverse consequences on the U.S. to a level that is not acceptable.

Worse yet, the Commission observed that "some potential sources of EMP threats are difficult to deter." This is particularly true of "terrorist groups that have no state identity, have only one or a few weapons, and are motivated to attack the U.S. without regard for their own safety." The same might be said of rogue states, such as North Korea and Iran. They "may also be developing the capability to pose an EMP threat to the United States, and may also be unpredictable and difficult to deter." Indeed, professionals associated with the former Soviet nuclear weapons complex are said to have told the Commission that some of their ex-colleagues who worked on advanced nuclear weaponry programs for the USSR are now working in North Korea.

Even more troubling, the Iranian military has reportedly tested its Shahab-3 medium-range ballistic missile in a manner consistent with an EMP attack scenario. The launches are said to have taken place from aboard a ship—an approach that would enable even short-range missiles to be employed in a strike against "the Great Satan." Ship-launched ballistic missiles have another advantage: The "return address" of the attacker may not be confidently fixed, especially if the missile is a generic Scud-type weapon available in many arsenals around the world. As just one example, in December 2002, North Korea got away with delivering twelve such missiles to Osama bin Laden’s native Yemen. And Al Qaeda is estimated to have a score or more of sea-going vessels, any of which could readily be fitted with a Scud launcher and could try to steam undetected within range of our shores.

The EMP Threat Commission found that even nations with whom the United States is supposed to have friendly relations, China and Russia, are said to have considered limited nuclear attack options that, unlike their Cold War plans, employ EMP as the primary or sole means of attack...

What makes the growing EMP attack capabilities of hostile (and potentially hostile) nations a particular problem for America is that, in the words of the EMP Threat Commission, "the U.S. has developed more than most other nations as a modern society heavily dependent on electronics, telecommunications, energy, information networks, and a rich set of financial and transportation systems that leverage modern technology." Given our acute national dependence on such technologies, it is astonishing—and alarming—to realize that:

Very little redundancy has been built into America’s critical infrastructure. There is, for example, no parallel “national security power grid” built to enjoy greater resiliency than the civilian grid.

America’s critical infrastructure has scarcely any capacity to spare in the event of disruption—even in one part of the country (recall the electrical blackout that crippled the northeastern U.S. for just a few days in 2003), let alone nationwide.

America is generally ill-prepared to reconstitute damaged or destroyed electrical and electricity-dependent systems upon which we rely so heavily.

These conditions are not entirely surprising. America in peacetime has not traditionally given thought to military preparedness, given our highly efficient economy and its ability to respond quickly when a threat or attack arises. But EMP threatens to strip our economy of that ability, by rendering the infrastructure on which it relies impotent.

In short, the attributes that make us a military and economic superpower without peer are also our potential Achilles' heel. In today’s world, wracked by terrorists and their state sponsors, it must be asked: Might not the opportunity to exploit the essence of America’s strength—the managed flow of electrons and all they make possible—in order to undo that strength prove irresistible to our foes? This line of thinking seems especially likely among our Islamofascist enemies, who disdain such man-made sources of power and the sorts of democratic, humane and secular societies which they help make possible. These enemies believe it to be their God-given responsibility to wage jihad against Western societies in general and the United States in particular...

We have been warned. The members of the EMP Threat Commission—who are among the nation’s most eminent experts with respect to nuclear weapons designs and effects—have rendered a real and timely public service. In the aftermath of their report and in the face of the dire warnings they have issued, there is no excuse for our continued inaction. Yet this report and these warnings continue to receive inadequate attention from the executive branch, Congress and the media. If Americans remain ignorant of the EMP danger and the need for urgent and sustained effort to address it, the United States will continue to remain woefully unprepared for one of the most serious dangers we have ever faced. And by remaining unprepared for such an attack, we will invite it.

The good news is that steps can be taken to mitigate this danger—and perhaps to prevent an EMP attack altogether. The bad news is that there will be significant costs associated with those steps, in terms of controversial policy changes and considerable expenditures. We have no choice but to bear such costs, however. The price of continued inaction could be a disaster of infinitely greater cost and unimaginable hardship for our generation and generations of Americans to come.

You will learn much more by reading the entire article.

In addition, this link leads to a release from the Center for Security Policy, which Gaffney leads, and the executive summary of the classified EMP Commission report.

Remembering Stalin's Gulag: Further Perspective on Amnesty International's Comments

Ned Rice's article entitled Amnesty Irrational: Lessons in "gulag" provides a valuable history lesson on the Soviet gulags:

...For their edification, the Soviet gulag consisted of hundreds, possibly thousands of forced labor camps that existed from the time of the Russian revolution right up through the Gorbachev era...Here somewhere between 18 million and 25 million Soviet citizens — not foreign-born terrorists or enemy combatants, but Soviet citizens, mostly — were housed in POW-style barracks and given just enough nourishment, usually, to survive. Unlike POWs, or the current residents of Guantanamo, gulag residents performed slave labor in the mines, forests, and farms of the Soviet empire. This vast pool of unpaid labor was, in fact, instrumental in propping up the otherwise unsustainable Soviet economy.

Solzhenitsyn writes that the gulag interrogators weren't content to simply torture until the pain became so unbearable...fought for their lives while suspended from a ceiling by their heels with electrodes stuck in their various orifices.

...Plus, many of the camps were located in virtually uninhabitable Siberia...The kind of place where any day in which the temperature approached zero degrees Fahrenheit was considered balmy...

...to get into the old Soviet gulag...All you had to do was say or write something against the Soviet government, or even be suspected of doing so...And if all else failed you could just get on the wrong side of some petty military bureaucrat like Solzhenitsyn did and it was goodbye, civilian life, hello gulag!...

Much has been written about real and alleged abuses in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. But by way of perspective, consider this: In the current war on terror coalition forces, mostly American, have liberated some 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of these 50 million newly liberated people, about 68,000 have been detained as possible enemy combatants, terrorists, or both. Of these 68,000 detainees, (many of whom were trained to claim that they were tortured after being released), about 325 have formally claimed some degree of abuse. Each of the claims is being investigated, and 100 people found guilty have been punished...

Comparing even the reprehensible criminal acts of abuse during the current war to the breadth and depth of the decades-long horrors of the Soviet gulag is, frankly, an obscenity...The abuses in question now were initially uncovered as the result of internal military investigations that were under way long before the Abu Ghraib photos were publicly disseminated. Guilty parties have been charged, and punished, and further adjudicating is an ongoing process.

To date, according to the Pentagon, at least ten major probes have been launched into the current abuse allegations, and so far not a single one of them has found that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ever knew of or condoned so much as a single act of torture, much less ordered any of them. Compare this to the Soviet gulag, where decades of daily torture and forced labor under starvation conditions were official, explicit Soviet policy. Yet the administration's critics insist that we still haven't gotten to the bottom of things yet and that more studies are needed...

All of which is lost on the "new American gulag" crowd because they don't really care about prisoner abuse. If they truly cared about the mistreatment of the incarcerated they would have demanded the liberation of Iraq long ago. And Afghanistan, and Cuba...These Bush haters aren't even focusing on the genuine outrage of the few cases in which detainees were genuinely tortured and even killed. No, most of their ire is over the embarrassment of few dozen prisoners by a handful of sick people at an understaffed military prison called Abu Ghraib. The same prison where Saddam's surgeons practiced punitive amputations. Where men and children watched their wives and sisters and daughters being gang raped. Where tens of thousands were murdered, and then dumped into unmarked trenches. And on, and on, and on.

No, the real goal of these Bush haters is to delegitimize this war and this scandal is just another weapon in their feeble arsenal...As anyone familiar with history and warfare knows, Amnesty International's characterization of the U.S. prisons as being a "the gulag of our time" are more than just obscene. They are, as President Bush recently noted, absurd.

JunkYardBlog comments here.

Then JunkYardBlog comments further, including this Power Line link, which shows how disingenuous Amnesty International has been throughout this entire affair they created.

For further information on Amnesty International's behavior, go to posting entitled Amnesty International's "Gulag" Claim: Is It Real OR Is It Just Partisan Politics?.

Extending/Expanding the Patriot Act

We are at war. We are a land of liberty. We have a federal government whose appetite for meddling seems to be growing.

Two recent news articles have raised questions about the extension of the Patriot Act:

Patriot Act Push Angers Some on Right: A Senate panel vote riles conservatives concerned about the reach of federal power

Conservatives, liberals align against Patriot Act

These articles relate to an earlier posting entitled FBI Asks Congress For Power to Seize Documents.

There are people who have the expertise necessary to judge the merits of the arguments on these issues. I am not one of them.

What I do know is that a public debate about these issues is more than appropriate.

Why the Big Three Auto Companies Could Easily Fail

An earlier posting entitled Outrageous Employee Compensation Liabilities Continue to Haunt General Motors; Will American Taxpayers End Up Paying the Bill? highlighted pension and healthcare cost issues that have made American auto makers like General Motors cost the high cost producer in a competitive global marketplace.

These points and the structural problems that sustain them are highlighted in a Wall Street Journal article entitled UAW Is Facing Biggest Battle In Two Decades:

...UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and other UAW leaders face the union's worst crisis since the late 1970s and early 1980s, when oil price shocks and a surge of Japanese cars forced thousands of layoffs at Detroit's Big Three, and drove Chrysler Corp. to seek a government bailout. How Mr. Gettelfinger handles the challenge could be critical in whether General Motors Corp. and several major U.S. auto parts makers pull out of their recent financial crises.

...the UAW is again facing management demands to give back some of what it has won, particularly in health benefits, or risk even more job losses...

"I do get a little bit irritated when I constantly hear and read that the problems are UAW," Mr. Gettelfinger told a popular Detroit morning radio host, Paul W. Smith, Wednesday morning on ABC-affiliate WJR. The question, he says, should be why the U.S. can't create a single-payer, universal health-care system. And he says the U.S. needs a tougher trade policy. "You say we can't rely on Washington," Mr. Gettelfinger told Mr. Smith and his Detroit audience. "Well, why can't we? These people are elected by us, and I think our expectation is way too low."

You know the economic debate about uneconomically high American car manufacturing costs is getting off to a good start when the ideas of socialized medicine and some sort of tariff/import restrictions - both of which would raise costs - are the initial counter proposals to the challenges arising from global competition. Are these UAW people really that economically illiterate? E.g., see Canadian Supreme Court: "Access to a Waiting List is NOT Access to Health Care" for more information on the failures of socialized medicine.

The article continues:

...Rick Wagoner, GM's chairman and chief executive, used Tuesday's annual shareholder meeting to deliver his strongest public warning yet that the No. 1 auto maker is prepared to take action to cut its $5.6 billion U.S. health-care bill -- with or without the UAW's agreement...an agreement with the union to cut health costs is "our very strongly preferred approach"; then he added, "Either way, it is crystal clear that we need to achieve a significant reduction in our health-care cost disadvantage and to do so promptly. We are committed to do that."...

Yesterday, UAW leaders representing union locals from GM and Delphi plants throughout the country gathered in Detroit for the first of two meetings to review the two companies' situations. Officials who were there say the focus of the first session was on GM and health care. Richard Shoemaker, the UAW official charged with negotiating with GM and Delphi, spelled out GM's dire situation. A Power Point presentation highlighted its declining market share, rising health-care costs and legacy burden of retiree benefits. The message was grim: Each percentage-point drop in market share means 170,000 fewer vehicles built by UAW members.

Mr. Shoemaker's thrust: What can the UAW do within the confines of the contract to help GM? But he also said the UAW wouldn't reopen the contract, which isn't set to expire until 2007, the officials said...

A crisis is at hand - and has been for years now - and the UAW's response is to say "see you in 2 years."

The article continues:

Mr. Coven said several officials stood up and said that while they would bend on health-care issues for current workers, they wouldn't be willing to bend on retiree issues...

Retirees form an increasingly large share of all UAW members. Since 1980, active membership in the UAW has fallen by more than half to just over 622,000, according to the UAW. The union says it currently has more than 500,000 retirees.

Two-tier contracts are already becoming more common at auto suppliers...

Think about how much the current employee contracts are going to have to change if nearly one-half of the costs (for retirees) are defined as off-limits. It begs the question of whether they can change enough to even make a competitive difference to General Motors.

Here are further excerpts from the article:

Workers in China earn an average of $1.96 an hour, compared with $36.55 for the average American auto worker, says automotive consultant John Hoffecker of AlixPartners, Southfield, Mich. Chinese car makers are gearing up for a major export push, he says, as their car-making capacity outstrips that nation's demand.

But even more threatening for auto workers is the grim scenario playing out now in the airline industry: Unionized carriers, such as UAL Corp.'s United Airlines, have sought bankruptcy-court protection, then shed their union pension plans and forced through big wage cuts.

While none of the Big Three auto makers has suggested bankruptcy protection as a way to shed health-care or pension obligations, several big auto suppliers have made Chapter 11 filings in bankruptcy court in recent months...

The health-care coverage GM currently offers hourly retirees is more generous than the coverage it offers white-collar retirees and the coverage many comparable large companies offer their retirees. GM's UAW retirees pay no premiums, compared with monthly premiums of $75 paid by GM's white-collar retirees and an average of about $166 paid by retirees at comparable large firms, according to Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Brian Johnson.

Note the key words: UAW retirees receive rich healthcare benefits - and pay no premiums for that coverage. And the UAW says changing that is off limits - when they finally get around in 2007 to negotiating a new contract.

What could the impact of such changes be?

Raising the monthly premiums for hourly retirees to $50 would improve GM's annual earnings by about $1.44 per share and its cash situation by about 73 cents per share, Mr. Johnson said. If the monthly premiums were raised to $100, GM's earnings per share would be boosted by $2.93 a share and its cash would be improved by $1.45 a share, Mr. Johnson wrote in a report published recently. GM has more than 565 million shares outstanding.

According to Mr. Shaiken, the labor expert, only two times in the UAW's history has its agreed to reopen a master contract. Once was in the 1950s; the second time was in 1982. He described the 1982 re-opening as "politically explosive" and "a very painful process."

In 1982, the UAW agreed to concessions with GM. But after the agreement was officially ratified, GM disclosed a new, more-generous bonus plan for the company's top executives. "You can imagine how that played," Mr. Shaiken said. "So, when the UAW says, 'Let's figure out what else we can do,' that doesn't come out of thin air. There's a history behind that."

What sort of buffoons in management would introduce a new, self-serving bonus plan at the same time they are taking away compensation from hourly workers? It is hard not to reach the conclusion that these management and union personnel deserve each other.

Economics 101 is the ultimate reality show. If you won't deal with economic reality, then it will deal with you - on its own terms.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Bankrupt pensions, extraordinary healthcare insurance benefits, related issues with private and public sector unions, and the misguided incentives that exist in public sector taxation have been discussed previously on Anchor Rising:

Misguided Incentives Drive Public Sector Taxation
If You Won't Deal With Economic Reality, Then It Will Deal With You
Underfunding Pensions, Public and Private, can Hurt Taxpayers
Bankrupt Public Pensions: A Time Bomb That Will Explode
Why Truly Free Markets & Timely, Transparent Information Are Needed to Protect the Freedom of American Citizens
RI Public Pension Problems
The Cocoon in which Entitled State Employees Live
The Union's Solution for the Future: Get More People in Unions
Bankrupt Public Pensions, Part II
Outrageous Employee Compensation Liabilities Continue to Haunt General Motors; Will American Taxpayers End Up Paying the Bill?

For a Chuckle...

ScrappleFace does it like no one else.

Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, we forget to do what ScrappleFace does - poke fun at political actors. Here are two great recent examples:

GOP Senators Shocked: Judge Brown is Black:

Republican Senators, who yesterday confirmed President Bush's appointment of Judge Janice Rogers Brown to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, today expressed shock at learning that the California Supreme Court justice is black.

The revelation comes in same week that Democrat party Chairman Dr. Howard Dean released his research showing that Republicans, and especially their leaders, "all look the same" because they're "white Christians."

"I'm concerned about how this is going to play with the white base," said an unnamed Republican Senator upon learning of Judge Brown's non-mainstream race. "I feel betrayed by President Bush, who has now managed to sneak a number of non-whites, not to mention women, into high-ranking government positions. The White House tricked us into focusing on the accomplishments of nominees, distracting us from the key genetic and theological markers that Dr. Dean has identified as determining factors of Republicanism."...

Rumsfeld: Move U.N. to Guantanamo:

On the day that a bipartisan U.S. commission reported that the United Nations is stuck in a quagmire of mismanagement, corruption and 'dismal' staff morale, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested moving the headquarters of the global organization to the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay...

The panel probing the U.N. found that the organization has failed to stop genocide, mass killing and major human rights violations.

"Even if you believe Amnesty International's outrageous claims," said Mr. Rumsfeld, "It would be, ethically speaking, a big step up for Kofi Annan to associate himself with the name Gitmo."

The defense secretary said that if Mr. Annan accepts his proposal, the U.S. would throw in several thousand free copies of the Koran as a "signing bonus."

Will FEC Draft Regulations Lead to Greater Regulatory Control Over Blogging Community?

This interview with FEC Commissioner Brad Smith again reminds us of the potential ongoing threat to our freedom of speech as bloggers via FEC draft regulations on Internet communications. The editor's note at the beginning of the interview defines the issues:

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is currently under court order to consider extending regulation and restriction of political speech outlined by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA, also known as McCain-Feingold). The court order was the result of a lawsuit filed by advocates of regulated speech, including the architects of BCRA, Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold. Users of the Internet, such as online publications and blogs, so far have enjoyed a broad exemption from the speech restrictions favored by reformers. But the court-ordered rule-making by the FEC could change that.

Brad Smith then makes these comments in the interview:

...one of the problems I think with campaign finance law and regulation is that it adds complexity and makes it more difficult for citizens to participate in politics -- it puts legal hurdles in their way.

So it's not necessary that the FEC would be setting this rule-making determined to shut down blogs before bloggers have to get concerned or before people should be concerned about their rights to participate in politics; or before people should be concerned about what effect the regulation might have on what has been a very democratizing medium.

And what this rule making does is it sets the stage. We will have changed the presumption from the idea that the Internet is not regulated to one that it is regulated. And once we have made the presumption that it's going to be regulated, it's only a matter of time before people will find things that they think therefore ought to be regulated.

Politics is a dirty business...People who lose in political battles don't like to admit that they lost because maybe their ideas weren't good enough or they weren't persuasive enough, or people just don't agree with them. They would like to say, well, those guys must have an unfair advantage that must be regulated. That's the way that the political system works here and we have now set up the presumption that when things come up that people are unhappy about, government should regulate them.

I go back to a First Amendment perspective, that the First Amendment was there for us to keep government out of this. Now we are past the stage in which we can say that the courts will strike down all campaign finance regulation. But we really need to ask ourselves: is there not one area of American political life that can be unregulated? Is it absolutely required to regulate every area? And if there is one area that could be unregulated, one would think it might be the Internet, given that it's one area where the little guy -- the average citizen -- really can get in there and compete with the big, well-financed interests...

We have been forced into a position that there will be some regulation; and that alone will mark a substantial change in the whole disposition towards the Internet. I think that the commission can and should adopt a broad exemption for personal activity on the Internet and also for paid ads to be on the Internet.

We need to make clear that bloggers are press, these are periodicals and people update them regularly; that the first amendment does not only apply to people who are members of the National Press Club, that it is not limited to people who have a little press card in their hat band like some 1930s movie.

The press is everybody; every citizen has a right to publish his views and to promote his views and if the Internet is blurring a distinction between traditional media and just average citizens, I am not sure that's a bad thing. That's a good thing, a democratizing thing, it is exactly the type of thing that the reformers claimed for years to want. They ought to rejoice in it. That they don't is interesting in itself...

...oddly, with the type of regulation in which the more money you have the more free you will be to participate. A wealthy guy like George Soros, who can spend his millions, or Rupert Murdoch who can own a network, will have heightened influence. Your average small business doesn't have that possibility. They can, however, go onto the Internet. But now we are going to say, "No, you can't take it on the Internet either." Systematically we are working again exactly backwards.

Here is some further background on this topic:

Thanks to Mike Krempasky at Red State, here are the original set of FEC proposals from March 2005 which were more severe than the subsequent draft regulations issued in April for public comment. As one blogger wrote me at the time:

Proof of just how accurate Brad was in his March interview came when Mike Krempasky at Red State published an earlier draft of the proposed FEC rules for the Net. They were, in fact, far more severe than the actual draft proposal that came out later that month, and Brad of course knew that, absent his own efforts to publicize the potential harm that lay just over the horizon, such rules might take effect.

This earlier Anchor Rising posting presents some thoughts on Correcting the Bizarre Incentives Created by Campaign Finance Reform Laws.

Another Anchor Rising posting entitled The Looming Threat of Government Regulation to Blogsphere, Brought to Us by Campaign Finance Reform links to this Democracy Project posting about another Brad Smith interview done at the time when the March draft proposals were the latest version.

This informative posting by Democracy Project entitled Why Are They Smearing Brad Smith? provides a lengthy and valuable rundown of Bradley Smith's relationship with Senator John McCain and the left. The posting gives readers a context for understanding the strong words often said about Smith by many politicians and their allies.

Here is the link to Brad Smith's FEC website.

[Note on June 15, 2005: Brad Smith has resigned from the FEC, effective August 21, 2005. Here is a Democracy Project posting on his resignation. Smith said the following in the resignation press release:

Noting that the Commission’s regulations now are nearly 400 pages long, Smith added, however, that he remained, "concerned about the effects our campaign finance laws are having on grassroots political participation. Political activity is more heavily regulated than at any time in our nation’s history."]

On April 4, 2005, the Federal Election Commission issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Internet Communications. The comment period closed June 3, 2005.

Here are the links on the FEC's website to comments received in response to that notice.

There will be hearings on the draft regulations in Washington, D. C. on June 28-29.

For regular updates on the topic of FEC possible regulations on bloggers, check out RedState.org's FEC section.

Here is some parting thoughts from Mike Krempasky:

...But perhaps it's worthwhile to speak very clearly: I tend to think that the electorate - the citizenry is best served by competitive elections - not the inevitable incumbent protection that breeds an out-of-touch political establishment. And make no mistake - that's what these laws do. It's like allowing Microsoft to write our anti-trust laws. I want activists to be able to throw the bums out - on the left or right - or at least make a credible threat to do so.

I think that ideas matter. Money in the coffers of challengers is worth many times that of the incumbent's - and just about any idea, cause, or candidate with a shread of legitimacy can find enough money in this country to be competitive...

I believe ideas spoken by small people matter. I believe that the so-called damage that big money can do in politics is more than balanced by the force of lots of tiny voices. And the internet is the best place for those tiny voices to band together and form (to borrow Dr. Schumpeter's phrase) a "gale of creative destruction."

Does anyone really think that I'm worried in any significant way that someone who can give 100K to a candidate is going to be overburdened by regulations? That this is some shadow campaign to help Richard Scaife and George Soros start buying elections at wholesale prices? Hooey. They hire lawyers, they distribute their gifts, they band together in giving clubs with their wealthy friends - they'll find a way.

As far as the work Markos and I have done fighting potential regulations of political activity on the internet - take whatever shot you like at him, but it's pretty clear that putting aside our individual principles - we both believe that when you put politics in the hands of small speakers - that our respective sides will be advantaged.

And I say - outstanding. Let's let everybody into the show, let's encourage everyone to participate. And yes, I happen to think that in the long term, the more access that Americans have to the views I happen to hold - the more successful conservatives and Republicans will be on election day. But Markos surely believes the same thing about progressives.

What's the problem again? Let's have at it.

Ideas do have consequences. And strong people who love liberty are not afraid of competition, of having their ideas publicly vetted by the best and brightest minds put forth by their opponents -- and letting the best ideas win in the political marketplace. Or, to go back to what Brad Smith said in the interview:

...But we really need to ask ourselves: is there not one area of American political life that can be unregulated? Is it absolutely required to regulate every area? And if there is one area that could be unregulated, one would think it might be the Internet, given that it's one area where the little guy -- the average citizen -- really can get in there and compete with the big, well-financed interests...

Voter Initiative

I was at the Gaspee Days parade over the weekend and was canvassed by a representative of Operation Clean Government who was looking for signatures supporting a Voter Initiative referendum question this November. I signed it, with some trepidation, but the proximate situation of the current state of Rhode Island politics won out over my more philosophic, long-term reservations. I took a look at OCGRI's logic and their specific, and I must add, limited version of the voter initiative (ie; OCGRI claims their's is not as broad as that of California) and I encourage you to do the same. I think it's worthy of the consideration of Rhode Island conservatives. A voter intitiative isn't a magic pill by any means, but any method that will allow Rhode Islanders to bypass the currently entrenched members of the status quo seems like a good thing. In the end, it seems to me that the willingness to support the initiative is derivative to how dire one views the current political situation here in the Ocean State.

Rhode Island Politics & Taxation, Part XIX: Another Stab at Killing Off Future Economic Growth

A new ProJo editorial comments on the plan to unionize babysitters in Rhode Island:

...the Rhode Island General Assembly is roaring ahead with a very bad plan to unionize babysitters -- and send the gigantic bill to the taxpayers...

...The bill would create a new and very powerful special interest added to the one that often rules the roost on Smith Hill. In doing so, it would also create an astronomically expensive and permanent entitlement.

The plan, to be voted on in both the House and the Senate Tuesday, represents a very big present to the public-sector labor leaders who exert enormous influence in the legislature, and another assault on good government, the common interest and common sense. The only thing that will stop it is citizens rising up before Tuesday and saying to their legislators: Wait a minute, represent the public's interest!

Here is what the labor chiefs want the legislature to do: force the state to start negotiating pay and benefits with about 2,600 certified and non-certified "day-care providers" -- in some cases, no more than untrained friends and neighbors who babysit.

It would be an absurdity to treat such self-employed day-care providers as the near-equivalent of unionized employees, simply because they receive some subsidy from, and are licensed by, the state. Imagine all the money that would have to flow from the taxpayers to pay for the additional pay, health care, pensions and other benefits!

Babysitters would become a vast state monopoly and entitlement, wrapped in rigid and irrational rules.

And that would be just the start. What other people who sell some service to the state would be next in line for similar goodies?...

This has nothing to do with helping women and children. It has everything to do with further empowering the public-employee-union leaders and squeezing more money out of citizens.

If the union leaders get their way, millions of dollars in dues will pour into their coffers, and they will expand their armies of campaign workers, further strengthening the public-sector unions' power in state government.

We know where that has gotten the state to this point...

It has to stop...

State Senator June Gibbs and State Representative Susan Story, who serve as Chair and Vice-Chair of the Permanent Legislative Child Care Commission respectively, have contributed to the public debate with this important editorial:

...we are disappointed and disturbed by the Service Employees International Union Local 1199's recent push to expand its membership at the expense of the working families and child-care workers who have been helped by our Starting RIght system. Through glossy brochures and news releases, the union leadership has made some grossly unfair and inaccurate statements about child care in Rhode Island. With our experience and knowledge of the state's child-care industry, we want to set the record straight about the harmful effects that unionizing the private, home-based family child-care providers would have...

Read the entire editorial to get the real story.

Bruce Lang calls it:

...the most raw power grab I've ever seen in Rhode Island. There is absolutely nothing good or fair about this effort...

There is one advantage to the voters: If this does come up for a vote in the legislature, we all will get the clearest proof ever of which senators and representatives are truly against the people of our wonderful state. Those "public servants" who vote yes for this outrageous legislation certainly do not deserve our respect or to be re-elected.

As the debate rages here in Rhode Island, it is worthwhile to note the aggressive practices of the Service Employees International Union, which is pushing this unionization effort:

Union membership has declined steadily for decades, but...[t]he Service Employees International Union, for one, is trying to reverse the trend by waging an aggressive war against business.

...SEIU now seems to depend more on corporate intimidation rather than recruiting.

When Advocate Health Care refused to give SEIU access to its 24,000 employees, two busloads of protesters from SEIU-affiliated activist group demonstrated at the suburban Chicago home of Advocate's executive director in the summer of 2003. The demonstration wasn't about pay or labor conditions, but unrelated allegations of price gouging and predatory collection practices...

"SEIU began what Advocate and other health care observers are describing as an aggressive corporate campaign to malign the 10-hospital system's reputation until it cried uncle and gave unfettered access to employees, their home phone numbers and addresses," Health Leaders reported.

Commenting on SEIU's motives...labor attorney K. Bruce Stickler suggested that by organizing Advocate's employees, the union would gain annual dues of more than $10 million...

In its campaign to unionize the security firm Wackenhut, SEIU used a...report by the National Research Council calling for a security assessment of nuclear power plants to attack Wackenhut's reputation by releasing an alarming report, "Homeland Insecurity: How the Wackenhut Corporation is Compromising America's Nuclear Security."...

SEIU even attacked Wackenhut indirectly through one of its federal contracting partners, Alutiiq Security & Technology, a native Alaskan-owned corporation...

...but SEIU doesn't mind the victims it leaves in its wake, including the indigenous people of Alaska, who benefit from dividends, cultural programs, and scholarship funds that depend on profits from businesses like Alutiiq's.

The biggest prize for SEIU is Wal-Mart's 1.4 million employees. SEIU President Andrew Stern leads a nonprofit organization called Five Stones, whose self-described mission is to raise awareness about the "Wal-Marting" of the economy.

Teaming with other left-wing activist groups, Five Stones launched a campaign called Wal-Mart Watch to force the company to capitulate to the unions, which, by the way, are routinely rejected by company employees whenever organizing is voted on.

The SEIU even attacked the Congressional Black Caucus for its working relationship with Wal-Mart, the largest employer of African-Americans...SEIU supports an aggressive expansion of the AFL-CIO's "capital strategies" program to harness union financial power to become Wall Street's largest voting bloc. But while the AFLCIO's goal is only directed at "worker friendly economic and business development," SEIU's Mr. Stern wants to focus the program on increasing shop organization. "Look at [real estate investment trusts] and find a way [to bring pension fund pressure] to organize markets, construction sites, office buildings, and hotels," Stern said.

SEIU seems bent on unionizing workers whether they want or need it, and, apparently, will say and do almost anything to make that happen, regardless of who gets hurt.

These actions are entirely consistent with the information contained in this Business Week article on SEIU's president, Andrew Stern:

...Stern's message: Labor remains in a death spiral, and its house needs a top-to-bottom overhaul if it's ever going to revive. The AFL-CIO, he charged, has become an antiquated structure that "divides workers' strength." When the SEIU's own policies and traditions hindered its expansion, Stern reminded his audience, he swept them aside. Barring drastic action, he told his delegates, the 1.6-million-member SEIU should break away and start a new federation. Change "is so long overdue that we either transform the AFL-CIO -- or build something stronger," he proclaimed.

In the clubby world of organized labor, these harsh public words were an open declaration of war -- one that has been roiling the nation's labor leaders ever since...Stern and four fellow union leaders...formed the New Unity Partnership (NUP) in 2003 to showcase what they want to do.

Now NUP, led by Stern, is accelerating its campaign, hoping to shake up the entire 16 million-member labor movement. The goal: to get unions growing again in an economy in which their membership has fallen to just 13% of the workforce. Stern, who leads by far the largest and fastest-growing U.S. union, is aiming high, planning to force the federation to confront its malaise with constitutional changes when the AFL-CIO meets next July for its quadrennial convention. He and fellow NUPsters haven't worked out the details, but they have been hashing out the broad themes for a year. The central idea is to slash the AFL-CIO's 60 unions to 15 or 20 powerful mega-unions -- and get those to focus on building what they call membership density, or share of the labor market, in specific industries, thereby giving unions more clout to lift wages.

Capturing the leadership is also in the plan...Some labor leaders say they see Stern as power-hungry and arrogant...

Nothing less than a deep sense of desperation about the fate of organized labor drives Stern & Co. The forces of globalization that began pounding labor's manufacturing strongholds in the late 1970s have intensified in recent years as offshore production has exploded. Membership has slid steadily in service industries, too. In everything from retailing to health care to office work, deregulation, heightened competition, and cheap immigrant labor have forced employers into a ceaseless struggle to keep down costs, including wages and benefits...

Most employers...see unions as more suited to an industrial age, with often-rigid work rules and little to offer in a high-tech, knowledge-based economy. Certainly, unions' ability to protect pay and benefits has diminished drastically, as seen in the huge pension losses for unionized workers in steel and airlines...

Still, Stern's drive to kick-start labor comes from watching the SEIU and a few other unions succeed in becoming relevant to workers despite all the obstacles...

Stern has been...laying the groundwork for a parallel, CIO-style federation should the campaign to transform the AFL-CIO fail to take hold...He's building separate political muscle, shelling out an astonishing $65 million to elect John Kerry and make the political atmosphere more receptive to a labor comeback. Stern helped found the Democratic Party's most successful 527 political committee, America Coming Together, which is headed by former AFL-CIO Political Director Steve Rosenthal (a close personal friend with whom he has shared a New Jersey beach house for 25 years).

The SEIU also set up a political network aimed at nonunion Americans called PurpleOcean.org, modeled after a similar effort the AFL-CIO launched last year. Stern told his convention: "We know that even if we build strength in our industries, no one union, including SEIU, can succeed as an isolated island of strength in a nonunion sea. As the largest union, it is our job to help rebuild U.S. labor's strength."

An ambitious, impatient man with the lean frame of a regular runner, Stern has turned the SEIU into a whirlwind of activity that he thinks others could emulate -- if they're willing to change how they operate...At the SEIU's 2000 convention, he persuaded delegates to set a specific recruitment spending target for all locals: 20% of their budgets, totaling $80 million. And he got them to come up with $50 million more for an organizing fund.

Meanwhile, Stern funneled half of the international union's $100 million annual spending into membership growth. Overall, the SEIU and its locals devote some $180 million a year to expansion, says SEIU Executive Vice-President Tom Woodruff. That's nearly twice the AFL-CIO's entire annual budget.

It has worked -- which is one reason even labor leaders Stern rubs the wrong way still pay him heed. While most unions are shedding members, the SEIU will hit 1.8 million by the end of the year, with only about 100,000 of the growth coming from mergers with smaller unions, says Woodruff. No other union comes close to matching such a record...

To Stern and his NUP colleagues, the lesson is elementary: Unions can't lift workers into the middle class unless they control a significant chunk of the labor market, either geographically or by industry. Hence their focus on membership density. It's not enough, they say, to simply increase their absolute numbers. Unions must think strategically, targeting whole areas and industries and coordinating their efforts against market forces that drive companies to undercut each other...

Clearly, in an economy dominated by corporate giants, Stern and his NUP colleagues argue, unions must gain scale, too...

...Stern, by contrast, has an intense, driven personality that propelled him into leadership roles at an early age. The son of middle-class parents in suburban West Orange, N.J., he got an Ivy League education at the University of Pennsylvania, where he gravitated toward the student movement. He joined the SEIU at 21 as a state social worker and soon became head of the local. By 29, he had vaulted onto the international union's Executive Board, the youngest person to have made it there.

His zeal for left-leaning social causes dovetailed with the traditions of the SEIU. As a young SEIU official in the early 1980s, Stern joined other activists in the union to force through controversial resolutions opposing U.S. military intervention in Latin America. More recently he threw his union's weight behind Howard Dean's Presidential campaign, switching to the more mainstream Kerry only after Dean flamed out. He also has cultivated close relations with a wide range of social leaders. (His wife, Jane Perkins, from whom he is getting a divorce, headed the environmental network Friends of the Earth in the 1990s.)...

...Stern's outspokenness has riled a number of union presidents who perceive him as self-serving. Critics argue -- with some validity -- that much of his recruitment success has come among easy-to-organize public-sector workers in home health aid and child care -- not among the tough-as-nails private-sector employers that unions must prevail against to grow again...

Think about the magnitude of the challenge we face in Rhode Island: A largely passive citizenry facing a compliant state legislature who march to the beat of a tough, power-driven union who doesn't care what happens to the Rhode Island economy - as long as they get theirs. They are steadily kllling off any potential for economic growth in this state.

There are consequences to the union's actions, as I wrote in a 2004 ProJo editorial:

Even so, this debate is about...about freedom and opportunity for all -- and family budgets in the future. The greatness of our country is that people can live the American dream through the power of education and hard work.

High taxation and mediocre public education create a disincentive for new-business formation in Rhode Island. That means fewer new jobs, and less of a chance for working people to realize the American dream. It also means people have an economic incentive to leave the state -- and the ones who can afford to do so will continue to leave.

Unfortunately, the ones who cannot afford to leave are the people who can least afford the crushing blow of high taxation and mediocre education. The status quo dooms these families to an ongoing decline in their standard of living. That is unjust.

The unions have political power on their side today. They will, no doubt, win some short-term battles. But, like all those clinging to untenable economic models, they are on the wrong side of history and will lose the war over time. The only question is how much economic pain they will inflict on the state's residents along the way.

We are at a crossroads in Rhode Island. If we tackle issues now, a turnaround with only some pain is possible. If we delay, we will doom multiple generations of working families and retirees to further tax hell and a reduction in their standard of living. That is wrong.

This public debate is about breaking the chains of bondage and giving all citizens the freedom to live the American dream here in Rhode Island. What greater legacy can we leave for our children than a fair shot at the American dream here in their state?

This posting continues a periodic series on Rhode Island politics and taxation, building on eighteen previous postings:

I - Guiding Principles for Sound Public Policy
II - The Outrageous Tax Burden in Rhode Island
III - 2004: The Year in Review
IV - The NEA's Disinformation Campaign
V - Governor Carcieri's State of the State Address
VI - "Citizens for Representative Government's" Deceitful Manipulation of the Constitutional Convention Vote
VII - The Extreme Tax Burden in the City of Providence
VIII - Rhode Island Gets a C+ on its Report Card
IX - How Speaker Murphy's Changing of the Rules of the House Reduces Your Freedom
X - East Greenwich Teachers' Salary and Benefits Data
XI - What Was Rep. Fox Doing in Portsmouth?
XII - Why Do RI Citizens Passively Consent to Governmental Control by Powerful Interests?
XIII - RI House Leaders Show No Respect for Rule of Law by Undermining Separations of Powers, Part I
XIV - More Bad Faith Behavior by the NEA
XV - RI House Leaders Show No Respect for Rule of Law by Undermining Separations of Powers, Part II
XVI - Tom Coyne - RI Schools: Big Bucks Have Not Brought Good Results
XVII - RI Public Pension Problems
XVIII - Union Doublespeak, Again

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Here is a Washington Times article about the SEIU and union politics entitled 5 unions plan new group to fuel labor.

Here is John Hazen White, Jr.'s letter to the editor entitled Nail in R.I.'s Coffin.

Here is an editorial from Stan Israel, vice president of District 1199 of the SEIU.

Here is Ed Achorn's editorial entitled A Bright, Clear Line in R.I., which includes these words:

...But the special interests can defeat the common good only when the majority lets them. The union leaders are counting on the majority to be ill-informed, apathetic, distracted by family life or summer fun, or too busy working to pay attention. If every citizen reading this took the time to call his or her legislator to protest this latest assault, most members of the General Assembly would tremble at pursuing this destructive and ill-considered path...

The State House passed a bill on June 15.

The State Senate passed a bill on June 16.

Here is another letter to the editor.

Two state legislators in favor of the bill comment here.

Tom Coyne also offers some excellent thoughts in his June 17 OnTheRadar posting on a subject which has not been discussed publicly:

...As we have noted, our fundamental problem with the home daycare workers bill has nothing to do with unions. We have worked with private sector unions, and have no problem with them for one simple reason. As Bradford Soap showed, in the private sector, unions and management operate in a naturally self-regulating system. If the union asks for too much, the company goes out of business, or outsources jobs offshore. Just as important, in the private sector, management is prevented by antitrust law from colluding -- taking common negotiating positions versus unions, agreeing to charge consumers a certain price, or to limit the amount they pay their suppliers. Antitrust law ensures competition between private sector firms, which leads to the lowest price for consumers, and the best deals possible for labor and suppliers. Now consider this: at the heart of the home daycare workers legislation just passed by the General Assembly is an exemption from federal antitrust law. Under the so-called "state action" doctrine, state governments are allowed to exempt certain private sector companies from federal antitrust law to achieve a more important public policy goal. As we have noted below, the Federal Trade Commission has been aggressively investigating what it perceives as widespread abuses of the "state action" doctrine, which it believes has too often been used to confer preferential economic benefits on politically-connected private sector firms. So, let us be clear about the implications of the home daycare workers legislation. Because they are exempt from antitrust law, these independent contractors will be allowed to legally collude, in determining (1) the rates they charge the State of Rhode Island to provide their services; (2) the wages and benefits they pay to their workers; and (3) the prices they pay to their suppliers. It does not take great foresight to understand that collusion will lead to higher prices paid by the State of Rhode Island, and hence to either higher taxes or cutbacks in spending in other areas (e.g., social safety net spending, investment in roads and bridges, public sector employee benefits, or aid to education)...

This ProJo editorial notes:

It is now on the record. Forty-one Rhode Island state representatives are so beholden to the public-employee-union chieftains that they are advancing a truly bizarre scheme: forcing the state to negotiate with home-based self-employed babysitters.

We advise citizens to clip and save the "How they voted" box on Page A-15 of yesterday's Journal -- and consult it before going into the booth in the election of November 2006. Also, watch for how the members of the Senate vote on this legislation.

And please tell your legislators what you think of their vote on this issue. (To find out who your legislators are, go to this Web site.)

The "yes" votes in the "How they voted" box represent lawmakers willing to further boost the cost of government -- and, of course, stick it to the taxpayers -- so that they may line the pockets of special interests. It's all about making a deal: The lawmakers get campaign contributions and support, and the public-employee unions get a new gusher of dues and ready-made campaign workers.

The only people who will suffer are the majority of Rhode Islanders -- who, if this bill is enacted, will pay even higher taxes. Meanwhile, protection of children in child care will be undermined.

It makes no sense to require the state to negotiate with self-employed babysitters (some of whom, far from being the "poor women" described in public-union literature, make well over $70,000 a year from the state). They cannot be state employees, because the state does not hire and fire them; it only licenses and regulates them. No other state negotiates pay and benefits with independent child-care providers.

Such an "innovative" change would, of course, open the gates to other workers who deal with the state to also grab a bigger piece of the taxpayers' money.

The child-care providers would inevitably use their clout on Smith Hill to erode the state's authority to regulate day care -- that is, to protect babies and children. The focus would shift from child protection to the job and contract interests of the newest interest group...

...Governor Carcieri's promised veto...remains a close call. Which is why you should contact your legislators now -- and remember them next year at election time.

Governor Carcieri has vetoed the bill. The article notes his comments:

Calling it "the worst piece of legislation" he's seen, Governor Carcieri today vetoed a bill that would give home-based child-care workers the right to bargain with state agencies.

Caricieri, who had been expected to veto the bill, also described it as "a full-scale assault on Rhode Island taxpayers and families by powerful labor unions."

Here is the Hall of Shame, showing who voted for the bill. We will never forget: These people deserve to be defeated in 2006.

Here is an excellent letter from David Cote. All of us should consider the implications for working families in his letter and be quite concerned.

Canadian Supreme Court: "Access to a Waiting List is NOT Access to Health Care"

A Wall Street Journal editorial notes a landmark legal decision occurred last week in Canada:

...[T]he Supreme Court of Canada...issued an opinion last Thursday saying, in effect, that Canada's vaunted public health-care system produces intolerable inequality.

Call it the hip that changed health-care history. When George Zeliotis of Quebec was told in 1997 that he would have to wait a year for a replacement for his painful, arthritic hip, he did what every Canadian who's been put on a waiting list does: He got mad. He got even madder when he learned it was against the law to pay for a replacement privately. But instead of heading south to a hospital in Boston or Cleveland, as many Canadians already do, he teamed up to file a lawsuit with Jacques Chaoulli, a Montreal doctor...

The court's decision strikes down a Quebec law banning private medical insurance and is bound to upend similar laws in other provinces. Canada is the only nation other than Cuba and North Korea that bans private health insurance...

"Access to a waiting list is not access to health care," wrote Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin for the 4-3 Court last week. Canadians wait an average of 17.9 weeks for surgery and other therapeutic treatments, according the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute. The waits would be even longer if Canadians didn't have access to the U.S. as a medical-care safety valve. Or, in the case of fortunate elites such as Prime Minister Paul Martin, if they didn't have access to a small private market in some non-core medical services. Mr. Martin's use of a private clinic for his annual checkup set off a political firestorm last year.

The ruling stops short of declaring the national health-care system unconstitutional; only three of the seven judges wanted to go all the way.
But it does say in effect: Deliver better care or permit the development of a private system. "The prohibition on obtaining private health insurance might be constitutional in circumstances where health-care services are reasonable as to both quality and timeliness," the ruling reads, but it "is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services."...

The Canadian ruling ought to be an eye-opener for the U.S., where "single-payer," government-run health care is still a holy grail on the political left and even for some in business (such as the automakers)...

The larger lesson here is that health care isn't immune from the laws of economics. Politicians can't wave a wand and provide equal coverage for all merely by declaring medical care to be a "right," in the word that is currently popular on the American left.

There are only two ways to allocate any good or service: through prices, as is done in a market economy, or lines dictated by government, as in Canada's system. The socialist claim is that a single-payer system is more equal than one based on prices, but last week's court decision reveals that as an illusion. Or, to put it another way, Canadian health care is equal only in its shared scarcity.

...If the Canadian ruling can open American eyes to the limitations of government-run health care, Mr. Zeliotis's hip just might end up saving the U.S. system too...

Another Wall Street Journal news article (available for a fee) notes:

A ruling by Canada's top court is expected to open the door to broader private health-care services in the country, which often grapples with providing citizens with timely access to publicly funded health care.

Canada's Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the province of Quebec's prohibition on private insurance for services covered by the public system violates the province's bill of rights. Many policy experts believe the ruling will eventually spawn legal challenges to legislation in other provinces. It isn't clear, however, that such challenges would have the same success.

Some health-care professionals hailed the court's ruling as a recognition that Canadians should have the right to pay for privately insured medical services as a way to alleviate backlogs in the public system. "The Supreme Court is sending a warning shot to governments" in Canada that there is "no valid reason for stopping private health care" if the public system fails to provide timely access, said Normand Laberge, chief executive of the Canadian Association of Radiologists…

In practice, the demand for private services is likely to revolve around nonurgent care, Ms. Maioni said. In countries such as the U.K., which have a parallel private market, most of the urgent and expensive life-threatening cases still go back to the public system, she said.

Questions remain about how the ruling's effects will play out. The Quebec government indicated it will ask the Supreme Court to stay the ruling, possibly for six months to two years, so the province can make adjustments, which could involve altering the law or moving to reduce waiting times for public services.

And while the court ruled that Quebec's law violated the provincial bill of rights, the justices split 3-3 over whether it violated the federal charter of rights; and most provinces don't have their own bill of rights. What's more, since the case was heard, two justices have been added who are viewed as having relatively strong social democratic leanings, which could swing any future rulings against challenges to the public health systems.

More on the distortions caused by government meddling in the healthcare marketplace can be found in this previous posting.

Either you deal with economic reality or it will deal with you - on its own terms. That was something Hillary Clinton was too ignorant to grasp when she led an effort in the early 1990's to socialize medicine here in the USA. It is something others on the left still haven't learned.

Government cannot wave a wand and make the fundamental laws of economics go away. That is why socialism doesn't work. It is why socialized medicine will never work.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Mark Steyn adds his comments:

...On the other hand, to spot the drawbacks in your medical treatment, you first have to be getting some. And that's the design flaw in the Canadian system. As the chief justice, Beverley McLachlin, put it, "Access to a waiting list is not access to health care" — and in Canada you wait for everything. North of the 49th parallel, we accept that if you get something mildly semi-serious it drags on while you wait to be seen, wait to be diagnosed, wait to be treated. Meanwhile, you're working under par, and I doubt any economic impact accrued thereby is factored into those global health-care-as-a-proportion-of-GDP tables. The default mode of any government system is to "control health-care costs" by providing less health care. Once it becomes natural to wait six months for an MRI, it's not difficult to persuade you that it's natural to wait ten months, or fifteen. Acceptance of the initial concept of "waiting" is what matters...

Two recent letters to the editor of the Wall Street Journal (available for a fee) share their thoughts. The first letter includes these points:

...read Lives at Risk: Single-Payer National Health Insurance Around the World by John C. Goodman, Gerald L. Musgrave and Devon M. Herrick. The authors examine 20 such systems and conclude that rationing by waiting is pervasive, governments overspend for the healthy and deny care for specialist and life-saving medical technologies to the sick, and leave health-care choices to bureaucrats rather than patients. Single-payer systems, in other words, often deny choice and access to the sick.

This denial and limited access also exists in market-driven systems, as Drs. Relman and Angell rightfully point out, but at least sick patients in market-driven systems can explore options outside of rigid federal bureaucracies, as many Canadians do by coming to their neighbor to the south for care. The Canadian court decision debunks the myths that government systems offer equal access to care, that they offer a higher quality of care to all, and that a paternalistic government can take care of all of the people all of the time.

The second letter adds these thoughts:

...how good intentions can justify any form of totalitarianism. Preventing citizens from purchasing as much health care as they want and can afford under the pretext that it "wastes" resources needed to fund "free" health care presupposes that the state is the rightful owner of all wealth...

Judiciary Under On the Seige

One can just about picture the commercial that RI Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams would release to correspond with his recent presentation to the RI Bar Association, "Killing Justice: The Judiciary Under Siege." It would begin in black and white, with dark footage and creepy music:

"Political pressure and agenda-driven criticism also fray the fabric of judicial independence ... the current trend is especially worrisome because the sentiments are being voiced not just by a powerless fringe but by those in positions of power."

The sun breaks through the clouds, bringing a shift to color and to cheerful music:

"Here in Rhode Island, we are lucky enough to have a General Assembly which understands, respects and supports judicial independence and our separation of powers."*

But a darkly ambiguous chord plays and shadows appear:

"Judicial independence faces yet another threat. This once comes quietly and from the rear flank. Simply put -- nationally and locally -- judicial salaries do not reflect the respect due the office. Judicial independence is endangered."

Luckily, as some readers may recall, and as Projo writer Edward Fitzpatrick reminds us (and as would likely be left out of the commercial):

Last year, the General Assembly approved a budget article that prevented the governor from changing the judiciary's budget and gave Williams control over judicial salaries. This year, Williams proposed $1.57 million in pay raises for judges, magistrates and nonunion employees in the courts. Their salaries would increase by between 4 percent and 38 percent next year, and he's also seeking raises for 2007.

Mr. Williams admits that he does somehow manage to put food on the table with the $146,098 that the inadequately respectful tax payers give him (plus benefits, including a $7,305 longevity bonus). Surely, however, with proper promotion — perhaps meaning with prudent silence — the people of Rhode Island will agree that appropriate respect for judges is more important than their own ability to make ends meet while remaining in the state.

---

* Ostensibly, Williams isn't referring, here, to the General Assembly's interest in having a "separate power" through which to filter nepotistic hiring so as to diminish the impression of impropriety.

Middle School: The Education System's Black Hole

One offshoot of returning to school is that it has brought me into contact with several teachers from Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Nearly all of them agree that it is in middle school that a child's educational future, and by extension post-educational future, is largely determined. If parents and teachers don't reach them then, very few will change direction in high school. The ProJo's on the Woonsocket middle school, though it may be the most drastic example that can be offered, is nevertheless a depressing case in point. And remember: the problems detailed aren't just Woonsocket's problems, they're all of Rhode Island's. The school receives $12.4 million a year to operate, and a good portion of that comes from state tax dollars. Further, and this is just a guess on my part, if the average teachers' salary's are any indication--$64,700 for elementary teachers; $61,680 for middle-school teachers; and $63,240 secondary-school teachers--it would seem that the least experienced teachers are cutting their teeth in the middle schools and then moving on when they can. Again, I can't say that for sure, this is just based on a conclusion drawn from the aforementioned average salaries. [HINT: I'm looking for some input!] Julia Steiny concurs with this assessment, and offers her own solution.

I believe that middle school is the turnkey in our education system, because the kids require a special kind of attention from us. We seem to have trouble designing schools that face, honor and help early adolescents in the midst of their huge, distracting, important and completely natural transitions. They literally can't learn unless certain conditions have been met, like giving them the feeling they've been heard if something's preying on their minds. If you can wholeheartedly wrap your arms around what's wrong with education at the middle, the rest will follow more easily, more organically.

So the first thing to understand about middle school is that the very word "middle" is a problem. "Middle" implies a central section of a continuum that takes place in a consistent transition from point A to point B. More appropriate might be to call them radical transformation schools, chrysalis schools, or when-your-world-goes-upside-down schools. I would call them Life Design Institutes, because that's what the kids want to know at that point -- who are they and what do they have to do to mold their lives into a viable form.

Right about sixth grade -- for most kids, but by no means all -- those pals you've been hanging out with are suddenly your friends, that omnipotently powerful, intriguing social entity with one judgmental mentality expressed by certain individuals. Suddenly, because of friends, or lack of them, the highs are higher and the lows lower. Whatever social rules once applied, apply no longer.

Indeed, it seems like everyone but you knows a secret language of expectations and protocols. Being left out was never fun, but now it's a misery. And to be included means you might find yourself doing something you know is wrong. Moods are wild. New, unnamed feelings blast through your mind, and the next thing you know, 10 minutes have passed and you haven't been paying attention. To fit in with your peer group's magnetic, compelling attraction -- be it by dress, behavior, interests -- you find yourself wriggling out of your parents' grasp -- especially Mom's -- frustrated and sometimes very angry in the process.

All of this is developmentally appropriate.

Middle-schoolers are people in transition. They occupy a foxhole of confusion. Traditional culture had rituals to focus community attention on people in transition -- rites of passage, attention to the newly widowed, gifts to the family encumbered with a baby. Our culture backs away from people in transition on the pretext of "giving them space" while things get worked out. So using standard, lecture-format teaching in middle schools is like saying to someone who just had twins or won the lottery: look, we understanding you're having all these moods and feelings, but you really need to do them on your own time and not here. Here we have something more important to do. Here we are learning about Egypt.

Middle schoolers are all about me. If you can figure out how to make the story of ancient Egypt inform their concerns, go for it. Early adolescents are huge information sponges, aching to learn how to put some order to their chaos. They will be eternally grateful for whatever light you can shed on their issues. I believe that 90 percent of existing curricula can be tweaked to speak directly to them. The Magna Carta will never work just as a bit of important history, but as a story about individual rights and what such rights mean to me, even that dry document will keep their attention.

As one ninth-grade dropout said: "I left school because I just couldn't park my game that long." We need to acknowledge their "game" by giving them the tools to be successful in their own terms, as well as in ours.

At this time in their lives, kids pull away from their parents' grasp. Parents need to keep hanging on no matter what the resistence, but this is when the greater community needs to step up to the plate. Alternative, extra-familial adults can catch the kids before they are swallowed up in the toxic world of peers informed mainly by the mass media. Kids may not say thank you, but they deeply appreciate adult mentors. In surveys they tell us they crave adult help.

Starting in the sixth grade, in my imaginary Life Design Institutes, teachers would say: At the end of the day, it is up to you to make your own life work. But adults are here to help. As your teachers, we'll work to equip you with a toolbox of skills, information and strategies, so you know how to go about accomplishing your own goals and how to solve whatever problems inevitably come your way. One day you're going to confront a problem and reach in and find that you have an algebra tool, an ancient history story, a scientific understanding that shows you the way to solve the issue. Rigor and discipline are essential, and we are going to hold you responsible for meeting high standards. Because only when you are successful, are we successful.

Steiny promises to continue her series on middle schools throughout the summer. Whether you agree with all or none of her recommendations or not, she has started a worthy dialogue.

Falling from Thoughts of Heaven

After the twelfth of the twenty-four episodes of Lost's first season, religious viewers thought they'd taken another step toward inclusion in mainstream culture, as represented by television and film. (Or at least one religious viewer did.) Lost treated religion seriously — acknowledging it as part of the society in which we live. Without a tone of sneering irony, as is expected in one direction, and without the feel of saccharine sincerity, as is expected in the other, two characters prayed to the "Heavenly Father" right at the end of a hit show that isn't definingly faith-based.

Well, by the two-hour season finale, it seemed as if Lost's creators had banned the word "God" except as an expression of emphasis. I can't help but wonder, as I have in my latest column for TheFactIs.org, whether "Religion's Gone Missing on 'Lost.'"

Milton Friedman on School Choice

Milton Friedman has written a new editorial entitled "Free to Choose: After 50 years, education vouchers are beginning to catch on"

Little did I know when I published an article in 1955 on "The Role of Government in Education" that it would lead to my becoming an activist for a major reform in the organization of schooling...The original article was not a reaction to a perceived deficiency in schooling. The quality of schooling in the United States then was far better than it is now, and both my wife and I were satisfied with the public schools we had attended. My interest was in the philosophy of a free society. Education was the area that I happened to write on early. I then went on to consider other areas as well. The end result was "Capitalism and Freedom," published seven years later with the education article as one chapter.

With respect to education, I pointed out that government was playing three major roles: (1) legislating compulsory schooling, (2) financing schooling, (3) administering schools. I concluded that there was some justification for compulsory schooling and the financing of schooling, but "the actual administration of educational institutions by the government, the 'nationalization,' as it were, of the bulk of the 'education industry' is much more difficult to justify on [free market] or, so far as I can see, on any other grounds." Yet finance and administration "could readily be separated. Governments could require a minimum of schooling financed by giving the parents vouchers redeemable for a given sum per child per year to be spent on purely educational services. . . . Denationalizing schooling," I went on, "would widen the range of choice available to parents. . . . If present public expenditure were made available to parents regardless of where they send their children, a wide variety of schools would spring up to meet the demand. . . . Here, as in other fields, competitive enterprise is likely to be far more efficient in meeting consumer demand than either nationalized enterprises or enterprises run to serve other purposes."...

What really led to increased interest in vouchers was the deterioration of schooling, dating in particular from 1965 when the National Education Association converted itself from a professional association to a trade union. Concern about the quality of education led to the establishment of the National Commission of Excellence in Education, whose final report, "A Nation at Risk," was published in 1983. It used the following quote from Paul Copperman to dramatize its own conclusion:

"Each generation of Americans has outstripped its parents in education, in literacy, and in economic attainment. For the first time in the history of our country, the educational skills of one generation will not surpass, will not equal, will not even approach, those of their parents."

"A Nation at Risk" stimulated much soul-searching and a whole series of major attempts to reform the government educational system. These reforms, however extensive or bold, have, it is widely agreed, had negligible effect on the quality of the public school system. Though spending per pupil has more than doubled since 1970 after allowing for inflation, students continue to rank low in international comparisons; dropout rates are high; scores on SATs and the like have fallen and remain flat. Simple literacy, let alone functional literacy, in the United States is almost surely lower at the beginning of the 21st century than it was a century earlier. And all this is despite a major increase in real spending per student since "A Nation at Risk" was published.

One result has been experimentation with such alternatives as vouchers, tax credits, and charter schools. Government voucher programs are in effect in a few places (Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, the District of Columbia); private voucher programs are widespread; tax credits for educational expenses have been adopted in at least three states and tax credit vouchers (tax credits for gifts to scholarship-granting organizations) in three states. In addition, a major legal obstacle to the adoption of vouchers was removed when the Supreme Court affirmed the legality of the Cleveland voucher in 2002. However, all of these programs are limited; taken together they cover only a small fraction of all children in the country.

Throughout this long period, we have been repeatedly frustrated by the gulf between the clear and present need, the burning desire of parents to have more control over the schooling of their children, on the one hand, and the adamant and effective opposition of trade union leaders and educational administrators to any change that would in any way reduce their control of the educational system...

...In each case [of voter initiatives on school choice], about six months before the election, the voucher opponents launched a well-financed and thoroughly unscrupulous campaign against the initiative. Television ads blared that vouchers would break the budget, whereas in fact they would reduce spending since the proposed voucher was to be only a fraction of what government was spending per student. Teachers were induced to send home with their students misleading propaganda against the initiative. Dirty tricks of every variety were financed from a very deep purse. The result was to convert the initial majority into a landslide defeat...Opposition like this explains why progress has been so slow in such a good cause.

The good news is that, despite these setbacks, public interest in and support for vouchers and tax credits continues to grow. Legislative proposals to channel government funds directly to students rather than to schools are under consideration in something like 20 states. Sooner or later there will be a breakthrough; we shall get a universal voucher plan in one or more states. When we do, a competitive private educational market serving parents who are free to choose the school they believe best for each child will demonstrate how it can revolutionize schooling.

Why all the attention to public education issues here in Rhode Island? Why all the attention to union contract negotiations? There is one simple reason and it was articulated above by Paul Copperman in 1983: "For the first time in the history of our country, the educational skills of one generation will not surpass, will not equal, will not even approach, those of their parents." That is a damning indictment of the status quo and those who support it.

Therefore, this debate is about ensuring all children have a fair shot at realizing the American Dream. They will only get that fair shot if we provide them with access to a quality education - where the definition of quality means they are able to compete successfully on a global basis.

The evidence is in and the status quo has failed our children with long-term adverse consequences for the competitive strength of our entire country. Serious change must occur beginning immediately. We have a moral obligation to engage in the battle for change; nothing less will suffice.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON EDUCATIONAL ISSUES:

EAST GREENWICH NEA TEACHERS' UNION CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS
In a nutshell, here is what I think the negotiating position of the East Greenwich School Committee should be on some of the key financial terms of the contract.

Other postings include:
More Background Information on the East Greenwich NEA Labor Dispute
The NEA's Disinformation Campaign
East Greenwich Salary & Benefits Data
More Bad Faith Behavior by the NEA
The Debate About Retroactive Pay
Would You Hurt Our Children Just To Win Better Contract Terms?
The Question Remains Open & Unanswered: Are We/They Doing Right By Our Children?
Will The East Greenwich Teachers' Union Stop Their Attempts to Legally Extort Residents?
You Have To Read This Posting To Believe It! The Delusional World of the NEA Teachers' Union
So What Else is New? Teachers' Union Continues Non-Productive Behaviors in East Greenwich Labor Talks
"Bargaining Rights are Civil Rights"

OTHER RHODE ISLAND PUBLIC EDUCATION/UNION ISSUES
In addition to financial issues, management rights are the other big teachers' union contract issue. "Work-to-rule" or "contract compliance" only can become an issue because of how management rights are defined in union contracts. The best reading on this subject is the recent report by The Education Partnership. It is must reading.

Other editorials and postings include:
ProJo editorial: Derailing the R.I. gravy train
ProJo editorial: RI public unions work to reduce your family's quality of life
ProJo editorial: Breaking the taxpayer: How R.I. teachers get 12% pay hikes
Selfish Focus of Teachers Unions: Everything But What Is Good For Our Kids
Tom Coyne - RI Schools: Big Bucks Have Not Brought Good Results
The NEA: There They Go, Again!
A Response: Why Teachers' Unions (Not Teachers!) Are Bad For Education
"A Girl From The Projects" Gets an Opportunity to Live the American Dream
Doing Right By Our Children in Public Education Requires Thinking Outside The Box
Debating Rhode Island Public Education Issues
The Cocoon in which Entitled State Employees Live
Are Teachers Fairly Compensated?

BROADER PUBLIC EDUCATION ISSUES
The Deep Performance Problems with American Public Education
Freedom, Hard Work & Quality Education: Making The American Dream Possible For ALL Americans
Parents or Government/Unions: Who Should Control Our Children's Educational Decisions?

Are Teachers Fairly Compensated?

Tom Coyne of RI Policy Analysis offers this ProJo editorial on whether teachers are fairly compensated:

A growing number of Rhode Island communities are experiencing acrimonious contract negotiations with their teachers' unions. At the heart of these discussions lies the question of whether teachers are adequately compensated for their work and the results they produce. To answer it, we must examine the relative attractiveness of the three main parts of a teacher's compensation package: pay, health insurance, and pension benefits.

Because teachers reach the top step of their pay scale relatively quickly, we obtained the average salary for experienced Rhode Island teachers from the state's Department of Labor and Training. For elementary teachers, it is $64,700; for middle-school teachers, $61,680; and for secondary-school teachers, $63,240.

To make these salaries comparable to those earned by other professionals, we must adjust for the fact that teachers' contracts are for roughly 187 days' work a year, versus about 250 days a year for people in the private sector. Dividing teachers' pay by the factor 187/250 yields figures that are effectively comparable to those in the private sector: $86,497 for an elementary-school teacher, $82,460 for a middle-school teacher, and $84,545 for a secondary-school teacher.

Teachers often say that their pay should be compared to that of private-sector jobs requiring a master's degree. According to the Labor and Training Department, these include the jobs of statisticians, $57,360; clinical, counseling, and school psychologists, $72,100; urban and regional planners, $65,400; social scientists, $58,000; substance-abuse and behavior-disorder counselors, $32,680; clergy, $64,360; librarians, $58,840; and audiologists, $54,660. And let's round out the list with some other professions: lawyers, $96,580; accountants and auditors, $56,700; and personal financial advisers, $63,660.

So far, an experienced teacher's pay doesn't look too bad. But this actually understates the deal they have.

Let's start with the cost of health insurance. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, state- and local-government employees across the country pay an average of 25 percent of their employer's total cost for a family Preferred Provider Organization health-insurance plan. In Rhode Island, teachers' unions (and state employees) have strenuously resisted proposals that they pay 10 percent or less.

Now let's move on to pensions...

A private-sector worker pays 6.2 percent of annual income (up to $90,000) into Social Security, or, if self-employed, 12.4 percent. The maximum Social Security benefit is now $23,268 per year, and a private-sector worker is not eligible for it until age 65 1/2 (a limit that rises each year). In contrast, a teacher is eligible for 80 percent of final salary after 35 years of service -- at age 58, if he or she started teaching right out of college at age 23. Eighty percent of $64,700 is $51,760 a year in retirement income, or $28,492 more than a private-sector worker receives from Social Security.

Moreover, the teacher's income increases by 3 percent each year, regardless of the actual level of inflation.

Now let's look at what our private-sector worker would have to do to match this deal...

To match the retired teacher's income and health-insurance package, our private-sector retiree would have to have accumulated savings of $800,117 by age 58.

What does it take to do this?...

To achieve $800,117 by age 58, our private-sector worker would have to save $10,820 (in real inflation-adjusted dollars) per year. Note that this is unrealistically low, because the actual annual returns do not equal their long-term average. This volatility means that a higher level of saving is needed.

Finally, let's make the unrealistic but simplifying assumption that our private-sector worker earns $64,700 over this whole period. To match the retired teacher's deal, our private-sector worker would have to save 16.72 percent of each year's compensation.

But let's assume that his or her employer matches the worker's 401(k) contribution, so the required saving level would be only 8.36 percent of each year's pay. Added to the 6.2 percent paid to Social Security, this yields a total saving rate of at least 14.56 percent -- about 5 percent higher than the 9.5-percent rate paid by teachers.

In sum, when you consider pay, health insurance, and pension benefits, public-school teachers in Rhode Island have a very sweet deal compared with most private-sector taxpayers.

Here is an editorial response by Robert Walsh, Jr., Executive Director of the NEA in Rhode Island.

Here is a perspective from Thomas Wigand, a Rhode Island resident.

Here is Tom Coyne's response to Bob Walsh.

Here is Michael Mancuso's letter to the editor response to Bob Walsh.

More Background Information on the East Greenwich NEA Labor Dispute

For the purpose of historical completeness and to show you the uphill battle the new East Greenwich School Committee faced from the beginning last Fall when they took office, this November 2004 press release by the School Committee - which is not available on the web - is offered for the public record:

Date: November 19, 2004

To: East Greenwich Residents

From: East Greenwich School Committee Members

Vince Bradley
Sue Cienki
William (Skip) Day
Merrill Friedemann
Steve Gregson, Vice Chairman & Acting Chairman
Al Ross

Subject: Unprincipled Actions by Defeated, Renegade School Committee Members & NEA Union

We are writing you in a state of shock to inform you of the appalling, unethical actions taken this week by certain renegade, outgoing members of the East Greenwich School Committee and the National Education Association (NEA) union representatives. They have compounded their misdeeds by subsequently issuing public statements which are blatant misrepresentations.

For the record and as elected officials acting on behalf of all residents, we feel compelled to publicize the facts:

We represent 6 of the 7 East Greenwich School Committee members. Three of us (Mr. Bradley, Mr. Gregson, Dr. Ross) have served since 2002 and three of us were elected to new terms on November 2 (Ms. Cienki, Mr. Day, Ms. Friedemann).

Two former members of the School Committee (Sue Duff, Chuck Sauer) were defeated in the September 14 Republican primary election. One former member of the School Committee (Jayne Donegan) was defeated in the November 2 election.

Paul Martin was the only re-elected incumbent and his vote total on November 2 was the lowest of any newly elected Committee members.

The results of the November 2 election were certified by town officials on November 10. Ms. Friedemann took her oath of office on November 10. Ms. Cienki took her oath of office on November 15. Mr. Day will take his oath of office on November 22, upon completing his service on another Town committee.

Peter Clarkin, the East Greenwich Town Solicitor, is quoted in today’s Providence Journal as saying there is no problem with the 3 newly elected officials taking office any time after the certification as the Town Charter does not specify when their terms begin. He has verbally reaffirmed this opinion today to Mr. Gregson and Ms. Friedemann. Mr. Clarkin also told Mr. Gregson and Ms. Friedemann that he has reiterated the same opinion to Ms. Donegan today.

Ms. Cienki met with Mr. Martin and Ms. Donegan on November 13 at Main Street Coffee. During this meeting, Ms. Donegan informed Ms. Cienki that she attended her first union negotiating session immediately prior to the November 2 election. Ms. Donegan claimed she had not participated previously because she did not want the teachers to take it out on her children.

A union negotiating session was held at Town Hall on November 16 from 4 p.m. until 10 p.m. Attendees included:

East Greenwich School Committee members: Vince Bradley, Sue Cienki, Skip Day, Merrill Friedemann, and Steve Gregson.

East Greenwich School District attorney: Richard Ackerman.

Mediator: Gerry Cobleigh.

School District official: Mary Ann Crawford.

Ms. Donegan showed up approximately one hour after the start of the November 16 session. During her time at the meeting, Ms. Donegan made the following comments:

In response to one of us saying it was important not to deceive the taxpayers by hiding back end cash givebacks in exchange for a health insurance co-payment, Ms. Donegan told other Committee members that they did not work for the taxpayers and to f*** the taxpayers. She also added that the Committee had no fiduciary responsibility to the town.

When Ms. Cienki told Ms. Donegan about receiving a large number of calls each day from residents asking her to be fiscally responsible in the contract negotiations, Ms. Donegan told her to call them back and tell them to get a second mortgage/equity line of credit or they can sell their home and move the f*** out of town.

Ms. Donegan demanded that Mr. Gregson and Mr. Bradley vote in favor of her proposal being presented to the union. Mr. Gregson and Mr. Bradley both said no.

Ms. Donegan used further inappropriate language when she said she was going to inform the union that certain of us were not intent on putting together a reasonable offer. Our attorney, Mr. Ackerman, asked her not to say such a thing.

After making these inflammatory comments and receiving no support from any other Committee members, Ms.Donegan asked for the right to present her proposal to the union on her own. Mr. Ackerman further advised her not to do so.

Ms. Donegan then stormed out of the meeting announcing she was the smartest person in the room and the rest of us were a bunch of stupid, f****** Republicans.

During the November 16 meeting, Mr. Cobleigh discussed the three major issues of salary, health insurance co-payments and insurance buyback fees with the Committee and offered suggestions about what terms could lead to a settlement after the Committee rejected the latest union offer. A good portion of this conversation occurred after Ms. Donegan left and the Committee members outlined the terms of a counter-proposal to make to the union.

Still during the November 16 meeting, the mediator presented the Committee’s new proposal to the union representatives, Mr. Roger Ferland and Ms. Jane Argentieri, and the three of them discussed it for about 90 minutes. The union representatives then said they wanted to talk it over with their membership.

At the end of the meeting, the mediator told us that we had made more progress that day than had been made in the previous year.

Subsequently, two former members of the School Committee, Ms. Donegan and Mr. Sauer, chose to meet unilaterally this week with both union representatives, Mr. Ferland and Ms. Argentieri, and negotiated a separate "contract." We find this behavior to be deplorable and dishonorable.

It is important to note that all of them took this action without informing any of the six of us (including Mr. Gregson, who is currently Acting Chairman of the Committee) of either the existence of such a meeting or what terms were being proposed.

It is also crucial to note that they conducted these discussions without the presence of either the School Committee lawyer or the mediator.

Ms. Donegan’s and Mr. Sauer’s decision to completely exclude the three of us who have been on the School Committee for 2 years – and who have participated in more negotiating sessions in the last year than she has – nullifies her claim in today’s Providence Journal that the rationale for this unilateral action was the need to avoid the steep learning curve of new Committee members.

Mr. Sauer and Ms. Donegan offered terms without knowing anything about what terms had been developed by the Committee on November 16 with the help of the mediator and presented to the union after Ms. Donegan stormed out of the meeting. The terms offered by Mr. Sauer and Ms. Donegan are unfavorable to the taxpayers when compared to the terms offered to the union on November 16.

These former members of the School Committee have currently scheduled a meeting for next Tuesday, November 23 at 9 a.m. during which time they plan to vote to accept the new "contract." We have been told they claim to have four votes, which can only mean former Committee members Ms. Duff, Mr. Sauer, Ms. Donegan, and current Committee member Mr. Martin are going to vote to approve this renegade "contract."

Given the opinion of the Town Solicitor, we are convinced this proposed meeting and vote have no legal standing.

We are equally offended by the bad faith shown by the union negotiators to hold such a negotiating session with former members and without the presence of our counsel or the mediator, particularly when they knew what had happened on November 16. We are offended that they also chose an attempt to divide-and-conquer instead of dealing directly with us. We are further troubled by their threat, as quoted in today’s Providence Journal, to call a strike vote if we do not cave into approving this illicit "contract." We consider this yet another attempt to exploit our children instead of making a good faith effort to close a contract that meets the needs of all concerned parties.

The six of us stand united in our outrage at this reprehensible bad faith action by former members of the School Committee and the union representatives. We are issuing this statement to inform East Greenwich residents whom we were elected to serve.

We strongly encourage residents to contact their new Town Council members, former School Committee members (Ms. Donegan, Mr. Sauer, Ms. Duff), Mr. Martin, the union representatives, and the media in order to convey their revulsion at these rogue actions which violate mediation principles, good faith and common decency.

In the end, the Town Solicitor ruled that Mr. Sauer and Ms. Donegan were not officially members of the School Committee at the time they engaged in unauthorized discussions with the NEA. As a result, there was never a vote to approve the renegade so-called contract on November 23. But the NEA's decision to engage in improper discussions with the renegade members did contribute to a negative tone for subsequent negotiations with the new School Committee members.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

In a nutshell, here is what I think the negotiating position of the East Greenwich School Committee should be on some of the key financial terms of the contract.

In addition to financial issues, management rights are the other big teachers' union contract issue. "Work-to-rule" or "contract compliance" only can become an issue because of how management rights are defined in union contracts. The best reading on this subject is the recent report by The Education Partnership. It is must reading.

East Greenwich NEA teachers' union contract negotiations
The NEA's Disinformation Campaign
East Greenwich Salary & Benefits Data
More Bad Faith Behavior by the NEA
The Debate About Retroactive Pay
Would You Hurt Our Children Just To Win Better Contract Terms?
The Question Remains Open & Unanswered: Are We/They Doing Right By Our Children?
Will The East Greenwich Teachers' Union Stop Their Attempts to Legally Extort Residents?
You Have To Read This Posting To Believe It! The Delusional World of the NEA Teachers' Union
So What Else is New? Teachers' Union Continues Non-Productive Behaviors in East Greenwich Labor Talks
"Bargaining Rights are Civil Rights"

Other Rhode Island public education/union issues
ProJo editorial: Derailing the R.I. gravy train
ProJo editorial: RI public unions work to reduce your family's quality of life
ProJo editorial: Breaking the taxpayer: How R.I. teachers get 12% pay hikes
Selfish Focus of Teachers Unions: Everything But What Is Good For Our Kids
Tom Coyne - RI Schools: Big Bucks Have Not Brought Good Results
The NEA: There They Go, Again!
A Response: Why Teachers' Unions (Not Teachers!) Are Bad For Education
"A Girl From The Projects" Gets an Opportunity to Live the American Dream
Doing Right By Our Children in Public Education Requires Thinking Outside The Box
Debating Rhode Island Public Education Issues
The Cocoon in which Entitled State Employees Live

Broader public education issues
The Deep Performance Problems with American Public Education
Freedom, Hard Work & Quality Education: Making The American Dream Possible For ALL Americans
Parents or Government/Unions: Who Should Control Our Children's Educational Decisions?

Outrageous Employee Compensation Liabilities Continue to Haunt General Motors; Will American Taxpayers End Up Paying the Bill?

Greg Wallace at What Attitude Problem? highlights this week's news on General Motors, building on the news previously highlighted here on this blogsite.

First, a Washington Post article states:

General Motors Corp., the world's biggest automaker, has offered buyout and early retirement packages to some of its nonunion, salaried workforce in North America as the company grapples with cutting costs.

The offers were sent in the first quarter in hopes of speeding the normal amount of attrition the company usually has...

GM is under pressure from investors to close plants and renegotiate union contracts. Its bonds fell last week to the lowest levels against government debt since at least 2001 after the company forecast its biggest quarterly loss in 13 years. The Detroit company is the third-biggest issuer of corporate debt...

With U.S. sales this year headed for the lowest market share in 80 years, GM is finding it tougher to cover rising health care costs for its 1.1 million employees, retirees and dependents and pay for increased costs for steel and other materials...

Then Ankle Biting Pundits weighs in with some strong observations:

...A substantial part of G.M.'s problem - but hardly the only issue - is that it is supporting about two and a half retirees for every worker. With health care costs more than $5 billion a year - and about $1,400 on a vehicle produced in the United States - many G.M. workers are expecting that long-cherished benefits could be pared back...

A posting on the blogsite notes that non-union General Motors' retirees are paying an increasingly large portion of their medical costs but union contracts do not yet require union retirees to make similar contributions. The author of the posting also notes that GM's problem is quite similar to the looming problem with Social Security - fewer people working to support more and more retirees.

In a different posting, Ankle Biting Pundits makes these additional comments:

...I hope the United Auto Workers union are happy. Thanks to their insane demands for lifetime health care for retirees, not wanting to contribute to rising health care costs, and an outdated, underfunded pension system, 25,000 of their members are going to heading to the unemployment line...

We take no joy in seeing anyone lose their job, that's not the reason we're mentioning this. Rather, we point out that what ails GM is a microcosm for what troubles America. The GM pension system is going bankrupt because an ever smaller number of workers are supporting a ever larger number of non-producers. Sound familiar (think Social Security)? The union could have cared less that health care and other costs were skyrocketing - they wanted to continue the free ride and refused to see how this stance could only lead to disaster for everyone...

It is not hard to imagine that the next step at some point in the near future is GM declaring bankruptcy and dumping its underfunded pension plan on the PBGC. It's really the only thing they can do to survive. The shame is that all those people who are going to have their pensions cut and their health care costs skyrocket can thank their labor unions for their plight (Granted, GM management was pretty stupid to go along with their ridiculous demands). And guess who's going to have to pay for that? Yup, us the taxpayers. Way to go UAW. Both your union members and we the taxpayers thank you.

For further examples of egregious union contract terms, read some of the comments posted to this most recent link.

A story in The Wall Street Journal states:

GM's North American operations, which posted a loss of $1.3 billion for the first quarter, already have been eliminating about 8,000 jobs a year through a combination of attrition and early-retirement programs since 2002...Those cost cuts haven't been enough to offset GM's sliding U.S. market share and declining revenue per vehicle.

...Mr. Wagoner said the newly announced cuts would be "an acceleration" of normal attrition...

GM's total North American work force was 181,000 as of Dec. 31. Of those, 111,000 are hourly workers in the U.S.

GM is the last of Detroit's Big Three...to announce a restructuring program within the past five years, a period during which market share for the three big, unionized U.S. auto makers has plunged from 68% in 2000 to just over 57% as of the end of May.

Reaction from the United Auto Workers, the large union that represents most GM manufacturing workers in North America, came late yesterday in a statement from its vice president and top GM negotiator, Richard Shoemaker. He said the union "is not convinced that GM can simply shrink its way out of its current problems. What's needed is an intense focus on rebuilding GM's U.S. market share, and the way to get there is by offering the right product mix of vehicles with world-class design and quality.

"It's one thing to present in a speech specific targets for job reductions and closing plants by the end of 2008," Mr. Shoemaker said, but in reality "various factors" will determine the actual outcome, including talks on a new labor agreement scheduled to take effect in 2007...

Morgan Stanley analyst Stephen Girsky said in a comment that Mr. Wagoner's plans represent "a small step in the right direction" but added, "The targeted employment reduction appears to be roughly in line with recent attrition and does not appear to be acceleration."...

Since then, he has sketched out a four-legged strategy for restoring profitability, that starts with boosting capital spending this year and next to speed the launches of several new models, including replacements for GM's aging lineup of large SUVs. Part two of the plan is a sweeping overhaul of U.S. marketing strategy. On legs three and four -- cost-cutting and reducing GM's burdensome health-care bill -- Mr. Wagoner has offered few details and appears to be avoiding drastic, short-term cuts. Much of his success will depend on the acquiescence of the UAW and suppliers that already are straining to meet GM's cost-cutting demands...

...cuts would save GM about $2.5 billion a year. That works out to savings of about $530 on average for every U.S. vehicle, using GM's 2004 sales. That is about only a third of the $1,500 higher cost per vehicle that GM suffers against foreign rivals because of its high worker costs, including health care for retirees.

A GM spokeswoman said yesterday that job cuts are only one part of GM's cost-reduction plan. The company also expects to save money in areas such as purchasing, productivity improvements and health care, she said.

On the key issue of GM's high health-care costs for workers and pensioners, Mr. Wagoner said GM management hasn't reached an agreement in talks with the UAW about ways to reduce GM's $5.6-billion-a-year U.S. health-care bill. "To be honest, I'm not 100% certain that we will," he said...

On the production front, Mr. Wagoner said GM needs "to get to 100% capacity utilization, or better" in North America, compared with about 85% in 2004. By the end of this year, based on plant closings already announced, GM will reduce its North American assembly capacity to five million vehicles from six million in 2002, Mr. Wagoner said.

"We expect to close additional assembly and component plants over the next few years, and to reduce our manufacturing employment levels in the U.S. by 25,000 or more in the 2005-2008 period," Mr. Wagoner said. He didn't identify specific plants that could be closed.

Mr. Wagoner faces a major challenge in GM's contract with the UAW. The current agreement, which expires in 2007, technically prohibits plant shutdowns, and guarantees UAW workers full pay and benefits if their plants are shuttered for a lengthy period...

...could refuse to renew those income and job protections in 2007, but the UAW has fought successfully to maintain them in each contract cycle since GM agreed to the provisions in 1990...

In his speech to shareholders, Mr. Wagoner said GM ultimately plans to "look at capacity utilization on a global basis." In other words, GM hopes to follow Japanese rivals such as Honda Motor Co. that can move production of various models rapidly from plant to plant based on sales patterns, or tool one plant to ship vehicles to any market, based on demand...

From a distance, the GM changes sound incremental and not of a size to reinvent the company's micro-economic business model. That does not bode well for the company. After all these years of struggling, you would think that management and the UAW would get the point that re-arranging the chairs on the GM Titanic will not fix the fundamental, structural problems. These people need to get real - and do it quickly.

As I have said in a previous posting: If you don't deal with economic reality, then it will deal with you - on its own terms. That does not bode well for the well-being and competitive strength of the American economy. Unless we significantly tackle the weaknesses embedded in the status quo, we are going to pay a hefty price. To be more precise, we are setting up the American economy for a fall which could deprive our children and grandchildren of the opportunity to live the American Dream. That is morally reprehensible.

When will people wake up and really pay attention?

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Bankrupt pensions, related issues with private and public sector unions, and the misguided incentives that exist in public sector taxation have been discussed previously on Anchor Rising:

Misguided Incentives Drive Public Sector Taxation
If You Won't Deal With Economic Reality, Then It Will Deal With You
Underfunding Pensions, Public and Private, can Hurt Taxpayers
Bankrupt Public Pensions: A Time Bomb That Will Explode
Why Truly Free Markets & Timely, Transparent Information Are Needed to Protect the Freedom of American Citizens
RI Public Pension Problems
The Cocoon in which Entitled State Employees Live
The Union's Solution for the Future: Get More People in Unions
Bankrupt Public Pensions, Part II

Revisiting the Case for Janice Rogers Brown

The US Senate today approved the appointment of Janice Rogers Brown to the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals. That news is cause for celebration and revisiting the case for her appointment.

Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute offers these powerful thoughts on Janice Rogers Brown:

How much longer can we go on playing constitutional pretend — pretending that there's a serious connection between the Constitution and so much of what passes today for "constitutional law"?

Rarely faced head-on, the question arises on the few fortunate times when we're presented with a judicial nominee who's been so bold as to publicly doubt the connection. At the moment that's Janice Rogers Brown.

The pretend game is especially well-played by "moderates" wary of "extremists" like Brown. And no one plays it better...than the wonderfully moderate Stuart Taylor Jr., because no one tries harder than he to find common ground between the warring camps brought forth by such a nominee. Blessed are the peacemakers.

But war is sometimes inevitable, as when great principles are at stake...No moderate she, her thinking is indeed "radical," going to the root of the matter. It's the kind of thinking that awakens Washington from its dogmatic slumbers. That's why the battle today is so vicious...because the stakes are so high.

What's the Principle?

Like many a moderate, Taylor sees "grave danger" in the Republican effort to bring an end to the unprecedented judicial filibusters that, for two years, have blocked 10 of President George W. Bush's appellate court nominees. But his criticism is evenhanded, not surprisingly: "Both sides," he writes, "are hypocritical to pretend they're driven by principle, not partisanship."

True, on both sides there's enough hypocrisy to go around, and both sides are driven by partisanship — no surprise there. But that doesn't mean that principle is not also at issue. The question is, What's the principle?

For Republicans, it seems to be "that the Senate's Article I power to 'determine the rules of its proceedings' applies . . . less to confirmation proceedings than to legislative proceedings," Taylor tells us, calling the argument "embarrassingly weak." No, it rests on the history of the extraconstitutional filibuster, which until 2003 had never been used to block judicial nominees with clear majority support. By specifying the few things requiring a supermajority vote, the Constitution fairly implies majority rule for the rest, with "rules of its proceedings" meant mainly for housekeeping. Put it this way: Would constitutional alarms sound were the confirmation rule four-fifths or nine-tenths? Then why not when it's three-fifths?

For Democrats, the principle seems to be to temper majority rule when a nominee is "outside the mainstream" — that is, to filibuster nominees who fail to reflect "the core values held by most of our country's citizens," as Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) put it in a 2001 New York Times op-ed, just as he was launching Senate hearings to push for ideological litmus tests for nominees.

Never mind that judges are supposed to apply the law whether or not it's consistent with their own or the citizenry's "core values" (now that is a principle), Schumer's point is captured by Taylor when he concludes his filibuster commentary by invoking the sword of Damocles. The value of the judicial filibuster, Taylor writes, "is not that it should be used, but that it should hang over the process, and serve as a moderating influence on the president."

"Moderating" influence? Moderating toward what? What sense, if any, do terms like "moderate" and "extreme" make in this context? We hear them all the time, yet they serve mostly to end or to cloud — rather than to aid — debate about what a judge should do or what we, and the Constitution, stand for — about matters of principle. In the end, to say that a judge is "outside the mainstream" is simply to make a political appeal, to trade on the pejorative "extremist."

Unwilling to Pretend

We come, then, to that issue of principle, and to Taylor's brief against Janice Rogers Brown, currently a justice on the California Supreme Court. Her chief sin, it seems, is that she stands for something, for principle, not unlike — albeit far from in substance — "the remaining exponents of radical redistributionist and Marxist theories" that Taylor plants opposite her. What is worse, perhaps, is that she is willing to speak truth to constitutional hypocrisy — and plainly, at that. She is unwilling, that is, to play constitutional pretend.

Consider, for example, Taylor's charge that Brown is "a passionate advocate of a radical, anti-regulatory vision of judicially enforced property rights far more absolute than can be squared with the Supreme Court precedents." Quite so, save for the anti-regulatory part (she's actually anti-takings, which is not the same as anti-regulation). But is the problem with her vision or with the Court's precedents — with the "labyrinthine and compartmentalized" case law in this area, as Brown has put it?...

What would Taylor have? Less passion from Brown? A less "radical" approach — one that avoids going to the root of the matter? The virtue of someone like Brown is that she's willing and able to go to first principles to straighten out the mess the Court has here, as in so many other areas of our law. In a word, she has a vision. It's a vision of the Constitution, and of the yawning gap between it and much of our modern constitutional law.

A Vision Lost

Therein lies the problem, of course, because the "mainstream" has largely lost sight of that vision. Indeed, Taylor himself recognizes that when he frames his critique with a question that speaks volumes about modern constitutional confusions. Drawing on charges that Brown, were she on the Supreme Court, would be active in holding Congress to its enumerated powers, he asks: Where is the conservative outrage over the president's having nominated someone who believes the Court has authority to find so many of the administration's programs to be without constitutional authority?

Conservatives like Robert Bork and Scalia, after all, have made careers railing against "judicial activists." Yet here comes Brown, who believes the Court should "actively" hold the federal government to its enumerated powers while securing our rights, both enumerated and unenumerated, against every government — federal, state, and local.

Modern liberals recoil against the first of those — "the Supreme Court's recent 5-4 decisions that constrain Congressional power," as Schumer put it in that New York Times piece. Yet what else could James Madison have meant except limited government when he wrote in Federalist 45 that the powers of Congress would be "few and defined"? Modern conservatives recoil against judicial enforcement of unenumerated rights, fearing "judicial activism." Yet what is the Ninth Amendment about if not unenumerated rights? Or the 14th Amendment's privileges or immunities clause? Or the very structure of the Constitution itself? If we're going to be originalists, let's do it right.

To answer Taylor's question, then, it would seem that there are enough thoughtful people in the Bush administration to have appreciated the constitutional dilemma before the nation — the crisis of legitimacy — and the need to bring it out in the open. In a word, we have a Constitution authorizing limited government, yet Leviathan surrounds us — and Justice Brown is perceptive and secure enough to say so, as Taylor amply notes. For that she should be commended, not criticized...

To be sure, that was one year before the constitutional revolution that is primarily responsible for the constitutional dilemma we have today. Following fast upon President Franklin Roosevelt's notorious Court-packing scheme, the Court caved to political pressure in 1937 and opened the floodgates for the modern welfare state. That's when politics trumped law on a grand scale, and it's never been the same since.

Boston University's Gary Lawson put the upshot well in the 1994 Harvard Law Review: "The post-New Deal administrative state is unconstitutional, and its validation by the legal system amounts to nothing less than a bloodless constitutional revolution." But take it from someone who was there, Rexford Tugwell, one of the principal architects of the New Deal: "To the extent that these [New Deal policies] developed, they were tortured interpretations of a document intended to prevent them."

The New Dealers knew exactly what they were doing to the Constitution. Janice Rogers Brown understands that, too. We're fortunate to have so radical a nominee before us.

What kind of person is Janice Rogers Brown? This Power Line posting contains these powerful words by Brown, providing an insight into her own character:

In her March 6 eulogy of the late Presiding Justice Robert K. Puglia of the California Third Appellate District Court of Appeal, Justice Brown said:

Justice Puglia deserves a place in the pantheon of great American judges. He completely understood the role and relished it. He exhibited the classical judicial virtues: impartiality, prudence, practical wisdom, persuasiveness, and candor. He demonstrated complete mastery of his craft. He had a keen awareness of the ebb and flow of history, and of the need for consistent jurisprudence, and, above all, self-restraint. It may sound odd to describe a judge as both passionate and restrained, but it is precisely this apparent paradox — passionate devotion to the rule of law and humility in the judicial role — that allows freedom to prevail in a democratic republic.

Justice Brown added:

He taught us that character counts and integrity is personal. He never allowed cruelty or deception or hypocrisy to go unchallenged. He did the right thing even when he would have benefited from doing the expedient thing. Freedom is not free he would often remind us, but, in Justice Puglia's view, it was worth the price--however dear.

His life experience and his understanding of history produced in him a certain toughness -- the power of facing the difficult and unpleasant without flinching; discipline and intellectual rigor; physical courage; and, even more importantly, the courage to be different. Never one to follow the herd of independent minds, his was a unique voice...

Carl Sandburg described Lincoln as "both steel and velvet...hard as rock and soft as the drifting fog. Reading these words caused a shock of recognition, for I had been seeing exactly this sort of paradox and contradiction in the life of Justice Puglia.

Seeing these parallels, I have come to understand that this flexibility is neither paradox nor accommodation. It is just the opposite--a sense of sure-footedness and balance that is often the defining trait of people of great character and impeccable integrity. It is precisely this quality which makes the honest public intellectual, a man like Bob Puglia, so extraordinary.

In his first message to Congress in 1862, Lincoln warned that we might "nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth." Lincoln, of course, was referring to the Union. Justice Puglia felt that same sense of fierce commitment to the rule of law. The preservation of the rule of law and of the equality of all people under that rule was, in his view, the core principle of liberty and the only reason America might qualify for such a grand epithet.

As tears flowed among the 1,500 mourners in attendance, Justice Brown concluded:

My favorite movie scene is in "To Kill a Mockingbird." It is the scene where Atticus Finch has argued brilliantly and raised much more than a reasonable doubt, virtually proving the innocence of the accused, but the jury still returns a guilty verdict. Most of the spectators file noisily into the street, gossiping and celebrating. Upstairs, relegated to the balcony, another audience has watched the proceedings and remains seated. As Atticus Finch gathers his papers and walks slowly from the courtroom, they rise silently in unison. The Black minister, Reverend Sykes, taps Scout on the shoulder and says: "Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'." To me, this silent homage to a good and courageous man, who respects and believes in the rule of law--and is willing to defend it even at great personal cost--is the most moving moment in the whole film.

Justice Puglia was just such a man. And he was not a fictional character. Most of us have risen to our feet many times to mark his passage because he was a judge. Court protocol required us to show respect for the robe and what it represented. But Justice Puglia was the kind of man who earned and could command our respect by virtue of his life and character. In a way, the robe was superfluous.

We have had the great good fortune to know this extraordinary man. We can remember what he taught us. We need not be fearless to have courage. We can be tough and tender. We can do the right thing--and face the bad that cannot be avoided unflinchingly. We can laugh. And we must sing--even when people frown at us and advise us to keep our day jobs. We can care for the people around us. We can be generous. We can make our way, against the tide, without rancor or bitterness. And when we are tired and overburdened and feel we are not brave enough to go on, we will hear his voice in our ear. Hear him say in that quiet and steely tone: "Yes, you can. You can." And we will know that we are being true to his legacy. The legacy of one who loved liberty. We will know that we are standing up...because Justice Puglia is passin'.

Such thoughtful elegance, which caused Power Line to state: "Paying tribute to her beloved mentor, Justice Brown herself reflects the intellect, heart, experience, and eloquence she observed in him."

Against this display of her deep thought, how do her opponents attack her?

Wendy Long writes:

Senators Harry Reid, Pat Leahy, and Ken Salazar have in the last hour been lying on the Senate floor about Justice Janice Rogers Brown.

Example: Senator Reid just repeated the left-wing lie that Justice Brown longs for a reassertion of the long-overruled Lochner v. New York decision. Lochner held that the "liberty" protected by the 14th Amendment prevented states from enacting labor laws to protect workers. In fact, Justice Brown criticized a FOOTNOTE in Justice Holmes's dissent in Lochner in which Holmes asserted the Founders of our country did not embrace any particular economic theory. Justice Brown pointed out that the Founders and the Constitution embraced a Lockean view that private property must be protected. As the daughter of a sharecropper, that truth is particularly poignant.

With respect to Lochner itself, Justice Brown was asked in her Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing whether she agreed with the holding. She said, "No."

Mychal Massie writes:

...Schumer announced he was worried about the "hard, hard right" of the Republican Party, people whose goal is to "turn the clock back to the 1930s or the 1890s."

Schumer's comments are telling because today - exactly as in the 1890s - liberal anti-black Democrats still publicly humiliate upstanding black citizens. Just ask judicial nominee Janice Rogers-Brown. But I digress.

Worrisome to Schumer is the fact that in the 1890s blacks were Republicans. And Schumer can under no circumstances abide that happening today. Note the following:

The inhuman outrages perpetrated upon African Americans in the South were largely committed through the Democrats' Klu Klux Klan. It is indisputable historical fact that the Klu Klux Klan was started by the Democrats.

In fact, during congressional hearings on the subject, one prominent Democrat testified that the Klu Klux Klan "belongs to ... our party - the Democrat Party."

And the first grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan was prominent Democrat Nathan Bedford Forest ... According to African American U.S. Representative John Roy Lynch, "More colored than white men are thus persecuted simply because they constitute in larger numbers the opposition to the Democratic Party."

U.S. Representative Richard Cain of South Carolina, a bishop in the AME denomination, agreed, declaring: "The bad blood of the South comes because the Negroes are Republicans. If they would only cease to be Republicans and vote the straight-out Democratic ticket there would be no trouble. Then the bad blood would sink entirely out of sight." ["Democrats and Republicans: In Their Own Words," 1896 Republican platform, page 14]

Ever wonder why Schumer and his fellow Democrats never once speak ill of Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond or Al Sharpton, but eviscerate nominee Janice Rogers-Brown and Justice Clarence Thomas? Schumer's fears are based upon the realization that the more blacks and women who ascend to positions of power as Republicans, the sooner the return to that period of time when these voted overwhelmingly Republican.

In 1896, the Republican platform stated:

We proclaim our unqualified condemnation of the uncivilized and preposterous practice well known as lynching, and the killing of human beings suspected or charged with crime without process of law. ["Democrats and Republicans: In Their Own Words," page 15]

It is of note that the Democrat platform contained no such language.

Even stronger affirmation of racial equality and the civil rights of blacks were specifically acknowledged in the Republican platforms of 1932 and 1936. Consistent to their origins, the Democrat platforms of the same years contained no mention racial equality or civil rights.

Schumer's fears of returning to the 1930s are simple to explain:

In the 1932 election Republican President Herbert Hoover received more than three-fourths of the black vote over his Democratic challenger Franklin D. Roosevelt. ["Democrats and Republicans: In Their Own Words," page 19]

Schumer's motivations are transparent. Democrat obstruction in the Senate is because they are only interested in an America they control - and their only hope for such control is through the votes of blacks. This is why Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., called nominee Janice Rogers-Brown a Neanderthal. This is why liberal Democrats laughed and encouraged the vicious ad hominem attacks on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Their racism is transparent. They were against the late uber liberal Thurgood Marshall's appointment to the high court. They filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They opposed the appointment of Clarence Thomas to the high court. They opposed Dr. Rice, Rod Paige, Miguel Estrada, Janice Rogers-Brown and Alberto Gonzales, and, less we forget, Democrats killed every single anti-lynching bill introduced in Congress.

To be certain Schumer is able to offer up flaccid excuses for their actions, especially when it comes to opposing both liberal and conservative high court nominees who happen to be black. I can appreciate Chuckie's fear of the past, but in the present in which we reside - besides racism and abortion - just what do these people stand for?

An excellent Liberty Files posting, led to the discovery of the previous article. The posting offers a blunt assessment of 'just what do these people stand for:' "Aside of abusing the power of the judiciary in order to foist an unpopular atheist-socialist agenda on Americans, nothing else really comes to mind."

Janice Rogers Brown stands for rediscovering the first principles of Constitutional jurisprudence. Our nation is fortunate to have her on the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

This posting adds to these other postings about the judicial filibuster debate on this site, including:

The Filibuster...Continued

The Injustice of Smearing A Fellow American For Political Gain

The Senate Judicial Filibuster: Power Politics & Religious Bigotry

Mac Owen's open letter to Senator Chaffee

Senator Mitch McConnell on the Judicial Filibuster

The Foolish Fourteen: An editorial by the former Dean of BU's Law School

A Power Line overview of the filibuster debate

6:02 PM

Islamic Jihadists Here in America, Preparing to Kill

Read this posting for a very detailed and informative writeup on the Islamic jihadists arrested in Lodi, California. Lots of links to follow in the posting.

The posting begins:

As put by Rusty at Jawa Report, "Four men have been arrested in Lodi California, two on suspicion of aiding al Qaeda and two on immigration violation charges. One of the most worrisome aspects of this story is that the two arrested on immigration charges were in the process of starting a religious school. Guess which religion?"

So while we sleep, sleeper cells aren't yawning. From hospital-based terror plots to school lunches, an office building, an airport, or a shopping center, it's all fodder for jihadis. And for a flavor of Islamists agenda for America, you need go no further than the Islamist's favorite group, CAIR, whose board member, Imam Siraj Wahaj calls for replacing the American government with a caliphate, and warns that America will crumble unless it "accepts the Islamic agenda." Are you listening yet? You may be but our politicians and the liberal MSM aren't...

The posting also includes a link to this key conclusion written at the end of this Captain's Quarters posting:

This also shows the fallacy of the "they hate us because they don't know us" crowd. The Hayats and the other fanatics in Lodi had the freedom to practice their religion and earn a decent living in California -- certainly they made a higher standard of living there than they could have expected in Pakistan or Afghanistan, especially before the Taliban were ejected by American military action. They don't hate us because they misunderstand us. They hate us because all they know is hate, and outreach and kind words don't make a damned bit of difference to fanatics.

It's time we understood the difference between moderates and fanatics, and the difference between youthful indiscretions and outright treason. A free society can handle moderates and survive youthful indiscretions, but it cannot abide fanatics who commit treason. We need to make that abundantly clear in the manner which we handle the latter.

Now go read all the various links to get better informed.

Then read this LA Times report and see how these arrests may only be the tip of the iceberg.

Organizing and Reforming State Labor

Governor Carcieri and the union leaders of Council 94 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees have accepted the compromise suggested by by conciliator Margaret L. Hogan last month. In short

Council 94 members would get 4-percent raises this year and next, and 3-percent raises for the two years after that. In turn, they would begin paying 2.5 percent of their base pay toward their health-care premiums, plus half a percent of salary add-ons such as overtime or longevity pay.

A couple union leaders voted against the proposal

Stephen Robertson, president of Council 94's Local 2448, was one of the two union leaders who voted against the deal.

Robertson, who represents nearly 500 Department of Administration employees, said he believed workers were being asked to pay too much toward their health care. He also said it was "inherently unfair" to take a share of things such as overtime pay, and called the raises "anemic."

One wonders whether that is just spin or not. The bottom line is this: the Governor succeeded in getting the the union to acknowledge the concept of health care premium co-sharing. Yes, the net effect of the compromise is still an overall increase in wages and benefits to the employees (4% raise - 2.5% co-share= 1.5% net increase, roughly speaking), but, at least at first glance, the Governor has won the conceptual battle. Hopefully this will become the norm throughout the state. In the meantime, the Governor has to gird himself for a coming battle over the unionization of day care providers.

The House Labor Committee voted yesterday, with little debate, to approve a bill that would allow home-based child-care providers to unionize and require the state to negotiate with them over the terms of their work.

The proposal does not limit what could be negotiated. But it does declare that the providers, generally women, are not "employees of the state for any purpose" and also bars them from striking.

According to this press release regarding the "Family Child Care Providers Business Opportunity Act, the Act:

would allow certified and non-certified child-care providers who participate in the Starting RIght Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) to collectively bargain with the state over the terms and conditions imposed upon them through state regulations. CCAP is a state program that provides subsidies to working families for child-care.

The legislation, which is supported by the child-care providers, is a compromise that would give them some bargaining power over the many regulations affecting their industry, without classifying them as state employees. The legislation is the results of months of conversations between the caregivers, legislators and the New England Health Care Employees Union District 1199, which has been providing support for the workers’ efforts.

It appears to be a real compromise in that it allows union membership to grow, but keeps them from being state workers. Now, whether or not the workers actually have to unionize to achieve their goals is another matter entirely, but the fact is that they have seized upon just that as the best way to organize and legitimize their collective power. With a heavy Democrat, pro-union legislature, was there ever any doubt that they would eventually get the support they requested? At least we can be thankful they won't be government employees!

UPDATE

Gov. Carcieri has changed his mind. In previous statements he seemed to allow that the child care workers had every right to unionize, but they shouldn't be considered state employees. With the latter no longer looming, he's focusing on the overt union power grab that is going on.

Governor Carcieri yesterday reiterated his plans to veto legislation that would allow home-based child-care providers to unionize calling it a "full-scale assault on Rhode Island taxpayers by the unions."

"It's not about what is best for the taxpayers or for the kids," the Republican governor said in a statement. "It's really about the power of labor unions in the State House. The union behind this legislation cares about one thing: increasing membership and dues."

That's probably true. The Governor will try to veto the bill, but it will eventually be pass into law with so much legislative support. Just another example of who holds the power in the state. It's not the legislature, its the unions. Keep that in mind when the General Assembly offers its version of pension reform. Don't expect too much.

Howard Dean: Damaging the Political Discourse in America

Howard Dean has, once again, damaged the quality of political discourse in America:

Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, unapologetic in the face of recent criticism that he has been too tough on his political opposition, said in San Francisco this week that Republicans are "a pretty monolithic party. They all behave the same. They all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party."

"The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people," Dean said Monday, responding to a question about diversity during a forum with minority leaders and journalists. "We're more welcoming to different folks, because that's the type of people we are. But that's not enough. We do have to deliver on things: jobs and housing and business opportunities."

The comments are another example of why the former Vermont governor, who remains popular with the party's grassroots, has been a lightning rod for criticism since being elected to head the Democratic National Committee last February. His comments last week that Republicans "never made an honest living in their lives," which he later clarified to say Republican "leaders," were disavowed by leading Democrats including Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson...

But Dean's style and rhetoric have sparked increasing criticism from inside the Democratic Party in recent weeks -- and gleeful Republicans say they couldn't be happier.

"Where do I sign up on a committee to keep Howard Dean?" crowed GOP operative Jon Fleischmann, publisher of the FlashReport, a daily roundup of California political news and commentary. "He's the best thing to happen to the GOP in ages."

"I'm thrilled he's the DNC chair," says Tom Del Becarro, chairman of the Contra Costa County Republican Party. "Howard Dean is scaring away the middle. People don't like angry people. They like hopeful people.''

But Simi Valley Councilman Glenn Becerra, a staffer with former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and a Bush appointee to the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars, said Tuesday he was far from amused by Dean's suggestion that Republicans constitute "a white Christian party," and called the Democratic Party chairman "an embarrassment."

"I'm living proof that the (GOP) isn't what Howard Dean is trying to describe,'' Becerra said during a telephone interview. "It's a sad day when Democrats don't have any ideas to put forward, and they have to resort to race politics. President Bush didn't get 40 percent of the Hispanic vote (in 2004) because we're a monolithic, white Christian party."

Dean, speaking in a roundtable discussion Monday, downplayed the controversy over his rhetoric.

"This is one of those flaps that comes up once in awhile when I get tough," Dean said. "We have to be rough on the Republicans. Republicans don't represent ordinary Americans and they don't have any understanding of what it is to go out and try and make ends meet."...

"What I said was the Republican leadership didn't seem to care much about working people," he said. "That's essentially the gist of the quote."

Still, the words brought sharp rebukes from fellow Democrats such as Biden, who Sunday said Dean "doesn't speak for me ... and I don't think he speaks for the majority of Democrats."

Other Democrats, including Richardson, said such comments hurt Dean's effort to increase Democratic registration, contributions and votes in red states dominated by Republicans...

But Dean's performance -- and his problems -- have become a concern to deep pocketed donors in California, particularly Silicon Valley, which is the No. 3 ATM for political fund-raising in the country, behind New York and Los Angeles, said Wade Randlett, a key party fund-raiser in the high tech center.

"He's got himself in trouble with social commentary, and that's not what the DNC chair does," Randlett said.

"For small donors, hearing 'George Bush is bad' is enough," Randlett said. "What I'm hearing very clearly from big donors is: tell me how we'll win."

Randlett said Dean has been criticized for not quickly improving the pace of fund-raising for the party with a recent Business Week story suggesting that he has been far outpaced by Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman.

According to the story, the DNC has raised less than half of the $42.6 million raised by the RNC in the first four months of the year...

But Republicans note Mehlman wrapped up this third trip as chairman to California last week, and trumpeted an aggressive schedule in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Jose and Sacramento that included hitting Hispanic small business events in Santa Ana, addressing African American voters and women's groups.

"(Ken's) an operative, a tactician," said Fleischman, of FlashReport. "Dean is a politician."...

Garry South, a leading Democratic strategist, said of Dean, "the only thing we can hope is that he understands the difference from being a shadow president to being the head of the party when we're out of office."

His job is to "get the Democratic Party ready for the next election," South said. But "if he views himself as the public face of the Democratic Party, then we have a problem."...

Some things never change. This story offers additional information on other Dean comments as well as a perspective on this demagogue.

Think about what he has said about his political opponents:

They all behave the same.

They all look the same.

It's pretty much a white Christian party.

The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people.

Republicans never made an honest living in their lives.

Republicans don't represent ordinary Americans and they don't have any understanding of what it is to go out and try and make ends meet.

Republican leadership didn't seem to care much about working people.

Republicans [are] "evil," "corrupt" and "brain-dead" "liars."

Republicans "are not nice people."

[Speaking to the Congressional Black Caucus,] The Republican Party "couldn't get this many people of color in a single room" unless "they had the hotel staff in here."

If you belong to the GOP...then you "are all about suppressing votes: two voting machines if you live in a black district, ten voting machines if you live in a white district."

If you are a Republican...you offer a "dark, difficult and dishonest vision…for America."

Forget the gleeful comments that Howard Dean is good news for the Republicans, because he is scaring away voters in the middle. We must be focused on matters greater than short-term political gain.

As an American, I find Howard Dean's words offensive and the epitomy of intolerance. It is one thing to have a hard-hitting political debate; it is another thing to engage in extreme name-calling, devoid of substance.

Howard Dean is degrading the quality of the civil discourse in our country. Shame on him and those that excuse his unprincipled behavior.

Once again, Peggy Noonan says it so well:

...The comportment of Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean is actually not worthy of America. Their statements suggest they are in no way equal to the country they seek to lead. And something tells me that sooner or later America is going to tell them. But in a generous, mature and fair-minded way.

In the meantime, while some Democratic leaders are distancing themselves from Dean's comments, others blame the "right wing"

The No. 2 Democrat in the Senate yesterday blamed "the right wing" and elements of the press "in service to it" for repeating Howard Dean's remarks about Republicans and inflating them out of proportion. "I think we all understand what's happening with you all," said Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, in remarks echoing Hillary Rodham Clinton's blaming a "vast right-wing conspiracy" for her husband's legal-ethical woes.

"The right wing has got the agenda moving. Fox [News Channel] and everybody's got the agenda. It's all about Howard Dean. You've bought into it," Mr. Durbin said.

"You can't let up on it. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

Now, think about what kind of world view is held by people who blame others rather than accept any form of personal responsibility for the repeated actions of their party's national chairman. Then, given that world view, think about what kind of legislation they are likely to propose in the Congress.

Will Science Get Us OUT of a Moral Dilemma?

This would certainly be good news:

In recent months, a number of researchers have begun to assemble intriguing evidence that it is possible to generate embryonic stem cells without having to create or destroy new human embryos.

The research is still young and largely unpublished, and in some cases it is limited to animal cells. Scientists doing the work also emphasize their desire to have continued access to human embryos for now. It is largely by analyzing how nature makes stem cells, deep inside days-old embryos, that these researchers are learning how to make the cells themselves.

Yet the gathering consensus among biologists is that embryonic stem cells are made, not born -- and that embryos are not an essential ingredient. That means that today's heated debates over embryo rights could fade in the aftermath of technical advances allowing scientists to convert ordinary cells into embryonic stem cells.

"That would really get around all the moral and ethical concerns," said James F. Battey, chief of the stem cell task force at the National Institutes of Health. The techniques under study qualify for federal grant support because embryos are not harmed, he noted. And eventually the work could boost the number of stem cell colonies, or lines, available for study by taxpayer-supported researchers.

Rhode Island Politics & Taxation, Part XVIII: Union Doublespeak, Again

Marc did an earlier posting highlighting comments by the NEA's Bob Walsh on the Dan Yorke radio show last week.

One of the most insightful and knowledgeable observers of RI politics, Tom Coyne of RI Policy Analysis, has provided further information for us about that Dan Yorke show in a June 5 posting, which is recreated here:

If you ever needed a perfect example of the old saying, "give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves", Dan Yorke gave it to Rhode Island last week, beginning with his interview with Guy Dufault, followed by WPRO’s broadcast of Union RI’s "Rally for Respect", and ending up with his interview with the NEA’s Bob Walsh.

Let’s start with some self-serving Dufault quotes, and our responses. "Rhode Island teachers pay 9.5% towards their pensions – that’s one of the highest contribution rates in the country." Yes, for one of its most generous pension deals. No surprise there. And that doesn't begin to tell the real story.

"People are quick to criticize teachers because they don’t think that what they do is important work." No, it's because Rhode Island spends more on education than most other states in the country, but still gets much lower scores on the NAEP tests.

"We’re fighting for working families." Let’s define "working families" as those making less than 200% of the Federal Poverty Limit. This is currently $47,125 for a family of four. There is no doubt that the Democratic Party has been fighting for them. 200% of the FPL is the cutoff point for Rite Care eligibility. A family of four earning up to $47,125 currently pays $92 a month to insure two children under Rite Care. Moreover, new legislation has been proposed (S. 321) that would reduce this to just $46 per month, or $552 per year.

A similar situation exists with respect to our state subsidized daycare program. We are currently the only state in the nation that offers, as an entitlement, the right to state subsidized childcare for families who earn up to 225 percent of the federal poverty limit, or $42,412 for a family of four. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Roberts (a declared candidate for Lieutenant Governor) has proposed (in S. 539) to raise that eligibility cap to 250 percent of the FPL, or $47,125 for a family of four.

Moreover, the Democratic Party’s "fight" on behalf of "working families" goes well beyond these two programs. We also have on of the nation’s highest income thresholds before a family has to start paying state income tax, and we are also one of the few states to offer an Earned Income Tax Credit at the state level (in addition to the Federal EITC). And let’s not forget that people stay on welfare (TANF/FIP) longer in Rhode Island than in any other state in the nation, and that we exempt a far higher percentage of TANF/FIP recipients from the federal five year limit than any other state.

Of course, this raises an obvious and interesting question: Just how many Rhode Island families make less than 200% of the Federal Poverty Limit? According to the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University, the answer is 39,232. That is 29% of all family households in Rhode Island – hardly a majority (the comparable percentages for Massachusetts and Connecticut are, respectively, 25% and 23%). Moreover, according to the U.S. Census, there are 411,579 households in Rhode Island, both family and non-family. 39,232 is about 9.5% of the total. It is, for example, dwarfed by the 104,365 households that contain at least one person age 65 and older – you know, the people being forced out of their homes by Rhode Island’s crushing tax burden. Funny how Guy Dufault forgets to mention these inconvenient facts.

And let’s not forget how Rhode Island treats families who are just above the magic 200% of the FPL cut-off. Consider a family of four that makes $48,854 -- the median annual household income in Rhode Island in 2003. Not being eligible for Rite Care, they might have to pay almost $9,000 per year to buy a family policy from Blue Cross. But that’s nothing compared to what they might have to pay for (unsubsidized) childcare. In her recent testimony to the state House of Representatives, Kate Brewster, the executive director of the Poverty Institute, noted that a family earning this level of income would pay $4,812 per year for subsidized care for two children. However, a family earning the state median household income of $48,854 would pay $14,580 per year. So much for "fighting for working families." I think many Rhode Island families would choose another verb besides "fighting" to describe what the public sector unions, the Poverty Institute, the One Rhode Island Coalition, and the Democratic Party are doing to them…

But let’s not say Mr. Dufault lacks a sense of humor. With a straight face, he actually told Dan Yorke that "we [Union RI] are working to improve the environment so people will want to come here and build there companies here in Rhode Island." Right. Those of us who own small companies here are just overwhelmed by the attractiveness of a state where we bear the nation’s fifth highest tax burden (and its absolute worst one if you are retired or affluent), and in exchange receive some of its worst performance in public education, the condition of our roads and bridges, and the effectiveness of its social safety net…

Let’s move on to the unions’ "We Demand Respect" rally (also described in this Projo story). I think Dan Yorke set the perfect tone for the day with his opening observation that "you earn respect, you don’t demand it." What followed on Wednesday was an incredibly powerful argument for re-electing Governor Carcieri.

Here are some of my favorite quotes: "We’re going to demand that we get treated with respect and dignity." -- George Nee.

"Tell that guy in the center office who calls himself a governor, ‘we don’t want you to take our money.’" – Frank Montanaro. Of course not. The public sector unions want him to take more of the taxpayers money...

The Tax Payer Relief Act proposed by a bipartisan group of Republican and Democratic State Reps calls for a 20% health insurance premium co-share by public sector employees and management’s right to use subcontracting and to layoff employees. Tom Poppa, a Woonsocket firefighter, led the crowd in an "It Stinks!" cheer.

Speaking of crowd cheers, the first time this technique was used, it was a good rhetorical device. By the tenth time, it had become a tired comedy routine, reminding one of a group of people in late middle age trying to recapture the glory days of Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations.

Moving right along, there was a history teacher from Pilgrim High in Warwick who predictably criticized the alleged "lack of adequate state aid to education" without mentioning where the additional funds should come from – higher taxes or cuts in other spending (like the $1.2 billion in General Revenue funds we spend on our social welfare programs). I began by wondering why they used this teacher to make these points, instead of Democratic Senator Jim Sheehan, who is also a member of the Warwick Teachers Union. I also wondered why they weren’t talking about the Warwick Teachers Union’s demand for free health insurance for life for family members. I ended up thinking that the teacher’s chant of "We get no respect!" sounded like a terrible Rodney Dangerfield impression…

And the teacher's call for voters to "send them [who?] a message next November that they better respect us!" was priceless. After listening to the speeches at this rally, I’ll bet quite a few voters had a message they’d like to send to the public sector unions and their alter ego, the Rhode Island Democratic Party.

Then Larry Purtill, the head of the NEA, got up and once again asked, "why won’t the Governor increase state aid to education?" And, just as predictably, failed to suggest where the money should come from. No chapter in the next Profiles in Courage book for Larry…

And then we come to Amy Mullen, a teacher from Tiverton, and head of her local union. I just loved her call to raise taxes on you-know-who, based on the justification that "the wealthy won’t leave Rhode Island, because they can’t take the beauty of Narragansett Bay with them!" Apparently, the fact that they already have left (as evidenced by Rhode Island’s far lower share of affluent taxpayers than neighboring states, as well as the fundraising woes of many Rhode Island charities) hasn’t made much of an impression on Ms. Mullen…

On the other hand, the speaker from the American Council of State, Local and Municipal Employees who shouted that "today, the line in the sand has been drawn" undoubtedly, if inadvertently, probably summed up most Rhode Islanders’ impression of the rally…

Finally, what can you say about the firefighters union’s attempted intimidation of Dan Yorke, who was broadcasting live from the rally, while surrounded by firefighters (you know, the guys – and in RI it is mostly guys, and white ones at that – who like to portray themselves as heroes) banging loudly on drums and swinging mallets an inch from his head. If ever we needed an image of the ever present threat of thuggery that lies underneath the unions’ rhetoric, they provided it on Wednesday…

Now let’s move on to NEA Executive Director Bob Walsh’s surprise appearance on Dan Yorke’s show after months of apparently refusing invitations. While we appreciate the teachers unions’ new-found desire to engage in public debate, we can only respect them for it if they don’t lie about key facts.

Here’s an example of what we mean. Dan Yorke asked Bob Walsh about the fact that the ratio of the average Rhode Island teacher’s salary to the average private sector worker’s salary is the highest in the nation. Walsh replied that this was due to the "fact" that Rhode Island’s average education level was the lowest in the nation. This made Rhode Island workers "uncompetitive" with workers from other states, causing our average private worker’s salary to be lower than those in other states. Let’s look at the real facts. First, how do average education attainment levels in Rhode Island compare to those in other states? In terms of the percentage of Rhode Islanders with a BA degree or more, we rank 19th in the nation. The comparable rankings for Massachusetts and Connecticut are, respectively, #1 (the best) and #6. At the other end of the spectrum, in terms of the percentage of residents who have not graduated from high school (with 50th being worst), Rhode Island ranks 44th, Massachusetts ranks 27th, and Connecticut ranks 13th. Finally, in terms of average private sector earnings, Rhode Island ranks 24th in the nation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (#1 being best). In sum, the facts do not support Mr. Walsh’s argument; rather, they disprove it.

Mr. Walsh then claimed that Rhode Island had to offer its very generous package of salary, health insurance and pension benefits to teachers in order to effectively compete with Massachusetts (where, I note, teachers pay a higher share of their health insurance costs) for qualified candidates. He conveniently avoided mentioning this recent report from the Progressive Policy Institute, which found that three quarters of the fall in the quality of teachers over the past 30 years or so has been caused by salary compression due to union contracts. We have a better idea for Mr. Walsh: let's institute merit pay with real teeth in it, as well as alternative certification (e.g., to facilitate mid-career moves into teaching) and see how well we compete with Massachusetts for high quality teachers...

Moving right along, Bob Walsh once again rolled out the sob story about Rhode Island teachers contributing 9.5% of their pay to their defined benefit pension plan, and not being eligible for Social Security. As we have extensively explained here, like Sherlock Holmes’ dog that didn’t bark, it’s what Mr. Walsh doesn’t say on this subject that tells the real story.

On the subject of pensions, we got a real kick out of Bob Walsh’s clarion call for "a fully transportable pension system for all employees." Uh, Bob, we’ve had one for quite a few years – it’s called a 401k or 403b plan.

This was followed by an awkward turn to the phones, which featured a member of the IBEW saying that Frank Montanaro and George Nee had done a very bad job of leading the union movement in Rhode Island, and should be replaced. Frankly, I have a lot of empathy with this caller. You have to admit, that the specter of Marcia Reback's iron-fisted demand for "free heath care for life for family members" was a bit off key at a time when Ford and General Motors were downgraded to junk debt status because of this type of obligation, and when United Airlines was forced into bankruptcy by them. In our view, it is just more evidnece of the fact that public sector unions and private sector unions have little or nothing in common...

After this call, Dan began to take off the gloves, and asked Walsh about the Education Partnership’s report and its calls for merit pay. After repeating his "declaration of war on the Ed Partnership" (and, one presumes, on the businesses and taxpayers who support its recommendations), Walsh noted that he is "philosophically opposed to merit pay." But, just to hedge his bets, he also tried to claim that teachers already receive merit pay, in the form of higher compensation when they receive a master’s degree, or obtain national board certification. Yorke then slammed him with a great line: "That’s not merit pay, that’s resume pay." Anybody who works in the private sector could instantly see the absurdity in Walsh’s argument: "Hey, boss, I know that our performance is way below most of our competitors, but, you see, I got a masters and went to some great training programs, so, like, I think I deserve a merit bonus this year." Yeah, right.

This forced Walsh back to his next defensive argument, that "Lot’s of folks coming at [the merit pay issue] have a business perspective, and can’t understand it because they don’t have a teacher’s perspective on it." I suppose this would also mean that if crime is up, don't complain to the police, or if fire deaths are up, don't complain to them, etc. Here's the simple truth: all organizations, from bacteria to multinational corporations to schools systems and all stops in between, can be evaluated on three criteria: (1) effectiveness: does the organization achieve its goals? And are those goals, in comparison to the goals set by competitors, sufficient to ensure its survival? (2) Efficiency: how many resources are used to produce one unit of effectiveness, however you measure it? And (3) Adaptability: to what extent does an organization maintain or improve its effectiveness and efficiency as conditions change in its environment? Basically, Walsh is full of it when he says, in effect, "you can't take part in this discussion if you're not a teacher."

Walsh then rolled out the howler of the day: "teachers don’t want merit pay." Yorke basically said, "B.S.". I continue to wonder why Walsh isn't loudly pitching this argument to faculty members at Brown or PC or URI – or even at the otherwise egalitarian RIC School of Social Work. Think about how well Walsh’s argument that people who teach should be paid just on the basis of seniority would go down with faculty members on those campuses! I still marvel that Bob Walsh and the NEA believe that North Kingstown’s Kathy Mellor – the United States national teacher of the year in 2004 – should be paid the same amount as her system’s worst teacher, if both have the same amount of seniority...

If you want to learn more about RI public policy issues, spending time exploring the information available on Tom and Susan's website will be a very worthwhile investment of your time.

This posting continues a periodic series on Rhode Island politics and taxation, building on seventeen previous postings:

I - Guiding Principles for Sound Public Policy
II - The Outrageous Tax Burden in Rhode Island
III - 2004: The Year in Review
IV - The NEA's Disinformation Campaign
V - Governor Carcieri's State of the State Address
VI - "Citizens for Representative Government's" Deceitful Manipulation of the Constitutional Convention Vote
VII - The Extreme Tax Burden in the City of Providence
VIII - Rhode Island Gets a C+ on its Report Card
IX - How Speaker Murphy's Changing of the Rules of the House Reduces Your Freedom
X - East Greenwich Teachers' Salary and Benefits Data
XI - What Was Rep. Fox Doing in Portsmouth?
XII - Why Do RI Citizens Passively Consent to Governmental Control by Powerful Interests?
XIII - RI House Leaders Show No Respect for Rule of Law by Undermining Separations of Powers, Part I
XIV - More Bad Faith Behavior by the NEA
XV - RI House Leaders Show No Respect for Rule of Law by Undermining Separations of Powers, Part II
XVI - Tom Coyne - RI Schools: Big Bucks Have Not Brought Good Results
XVII - RI Public Pension Problems

Bankrupt Public Pensions, Part II

A June 5 posting on RI Policy Analysis links to a new Business Week article on the financially insolvent public pensions.

...the cost of retirement has continued its steady climb. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, major public pension plans paid out $78.5 billion in the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2000. By the comparable period in 2004, that had grown to $117.8 billion, a 50% climb in five years. Beyond hiking taxes and cutting costs, governments have few ways to meet this bill...

...there's little relief in sight. Excluding federal workers, more than 14 million public servants and 6 million retirees are owed $2.37 trillion by more than 2,000 different states, cities, and agencies, according to recent studies. In 2003 alone, states and municipalities poured some $46.2 billion into these plans, according to the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, a 19% jump from the year before. Excluding federally funded programs, pensions went from 2.15% of all state and local spending in 2002 to approximately 2.44% in 2003. But the largest state and city funds were still short $278 billion in 2003 -- approximately 20% of state and municipal revenue excluding federal funds...

As much as states are throwing into pensions, they may owe even more. Despite a 2004 stock market rise that should narrow some of the gap, pension experts at Barclays Global Investors (BCS ) say that if public plans calculated their obligations using the more conservative math that private funds do, they would not be $278 billion under, but more than $700 billion in the red. "It's just ruining the financial picture for states and municipalities," says Matthew H. Scanlan, managing director of Barclays, one of the largest managers of pension-fund investments. "You're looking at a taxpayer bailout of this pension crisis at some point."

There's more bad news. One major category of cost isn't disclosed at all: how much retiree health care has been promised to public retirees. No one can estimate how much these promises will add up to, but they're sure to be in the tens of billions, and only some states seem to have put aside reserves for them, according to bond analysts. That's chilling, given how quickly medical costs are rising. After a pitched battle, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB), the independent accounting standards-setter for state and local governments, has finally begun to require states to disclose these liabilities. Numerous unions and state government representatives objected to the change, says GASB member Cynthia B. Green, "not because [unions and states] didn't think these were important, but because they thought once the governments did their studies and found what the price tag was, they would be concerned or, if not concerned, staggered." The requirement will be phased in beginning in late 2006.

If these costs aren't brought under control, rising taxes could prove unavoidable -- and a competitive problem for the states in the worst shape as well as for the country...companies -- and even citizens -- could end up moving to states in better fiscal shape. "You could see it turning into an economic desert in certain states," he warns. Combined with the national retirement issues surrounding Social Security, these plans contribute to a depressing outlook for U.S. competitiveness overall...

One reason for the drop [in pension funding levels] was unavoidable: The impact of the bear market of 2000-2002 on the value of these fund investments was severe. The other reason was just foolishness: a lathering on of billions of dollars worth of new promises to workers in flush days. It was a familiar mistake: Public-pension provisions are determined by elected officials, and civil servants vote. Legislators have a long history of making such expensive upgrades to already generous plans.

Some of these giveaways are truly spectacular. In 1998 the city of Houston instituted a deferred-retirement option plan, or DROP, that would allow workers to in effect take their retirement when they became eligible for it but continue to work at their salary. The retirement income was put in a side account where it earned an attractive rate of return, and the employee could later have his pension adjusted upward to a higher level. The DROP, along with other pension improvements, drove the city's pension plan down from 91%-funded in 2000 to just 60% two years later. Houston had gone from contributing 9.5% of payroll toward pensions to more than 32%. Joseph Esuchanko, a Michigan actuary brought in to study the problem, discovered that things would only get worse. According to his calculations, it was possible for employees to become millionaires thanks to the system...

...even bare-bones guaranteed retirements are increasingly rare in the rest of the economy. According to the Census Bureau, 90% of state and local workers have a defined-benefit pension with a guaranteed payout. But only 24% of people employed in the private sector have such plans. (Most public-sector employees contribute along with employers to their pensions, unlike private-sector workers.) And more of the companies that once offered these benefits -- places like Motorola, IBM, and Delta Air Lines -- are dropping them for new workers in favor of 401(k)s. Health-care coverage for retirees, a costly perk that companies have been shedding at lightning speed, also remains common in the public realm.

It has long been accepted as truth that government workers get good benefits and job security in lieu of high salaries, but over the years the gap between public and private employee paychecks seems to have narrowed. It's hard to come by perfect comparisons, since government numbers for the private sector include lower-wage industries like retailing, which pull down the averages, but overall, public-sector workers look to be getting a pretty good deal. In 2004 average salary for a public worker was $49,275 compared with $34,461 for everyone else, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).

Even white-collar workers are better off in the public sphere. According to the U.S. Labor Dept., state and local government managers and professional staff earned $42.87 an hour last year, while their private-sector counterparts earned $41.52. One big reason: government workers get $2.62 an hour in retirement benefits; everyone else gets $1.63.

States pay more for public retirees too. According to the EBRI, the average public-plan retiree got $16,188 a year in 2003, far more than the $7,200 their private company counterparts could expect. One reason for that big split is that some public retirees do not get Social Security. But that too is changing. Since 1983 most public workers have been part of that system too, so in the future the disparity could well widen. All in all, EBRI concludes, state and local government wage and salary costs are 40% higher than the private sector's; its employee benefit costs are 60% higher...

This tendency to dole out goodies in fat times is the core moral hazard of public-pension plans. Politicians like to reward voters when they can, and public workers vote..."That was the mirage of cost-free benefits," says S&P's Young. "Nobody pays, nobody gets hurt."...

But states have also voluntarily heightened their own exposure to this risk. Rosalind M. Hewsenian, managing director of Wilshire Associates, says the biggest cause of the sharp drop in funding levels at public plans over the past few years was a drop in employer funding and a reliance instead on investment gains to make up the difference...

Elected officials are hesitant to ask the rest of their voters to pay for these promises through higher taxes. One primary reason: Outside of government workers, very few employees have these kinds of deals anymore. "Our people at 55 years of age can get 75% to 80% of their salary [as pension], and it's a pretty nice salary," says Illinois State Representative Robert S. Molaro, a member of a commission convened by the governor to make recommendations for fixing the pension system. "It will be hard for us to go to the taxpayers and ask them to pay for our pensions with benefits you in the private sector couldn't even dream of."

Given this divide, it's reasonable to wonder why there hasn't been more debate about these plans already. They've been protected from scrutiny for a number of reasons. The public-pension systems lack the regulatory system governing corporate pension plans. Corporations have to disclose timely, detailed information about their pensions to investors and the SEC. Rating agencies focus on them, too. In combination, these groups can pressure companies to be more conservative in their fund management. Devereaux A. Clifford, managing director of pension consultants Greenwich Associates, says it was pressure from these watchdogs that forced corporations to lower unrealistic investment return assumptions, from 8.9% in 2002 to 8.3% in 2004.

The public world has far less scrutiny. Nor do these plans have an equivalent to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the government-sponsored insurer of corporate plans. They have to conform to the funding requirements or accounting demands of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the federal law passed in 1974 to monitor private pensions. And public fund reporting lags corporate reporting by at least six months. Important factors like the performance and cost of bonds issued to cover pension obligations are even harder to suss out.

That's bad news. Understanding the depth of these retiree problems seems especially important for state and local governments because of their limited financial options. Unlike the federal government, which can always print money, and private companies, which might sell more widgets and make more profits to fund their pensions, and whose pensions are guaranteed by a government-backed insurer, local government basically has only one way of meeting those promises: your taxes. Public-pension experts note that these obligations must be paid. Public-sector retirement benefits are generally guaranteed by state constitution...

The more likely answer is the most painful: Taxes will keep going up and benefits will be cut for future public employees. Both are unpopular. The debate is just starting to be heard.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Bankrupt public pensions, related issues with public sector unions, and the misguided incentives that exist in public sector taxation have been discussed previously on Anchor Rising:

Misguided Incentives Drive Public Sector Taxation
If You Won't Deal With Economic Reality, Then It Will Deal With You
Underfunding Pensions, Public and Private, can Hurt Taxpayers
Bankrupt Public Pensions: A Time Bomb That Will Explode
Why Truly Free Markets & Timely, Transparent Information Are Needed to Protect the Freedom of American Citizens
RI Public Pension Problems
The Cocoon in which Entitled State Employees Live
The Union's Solution for the Future: Get More People in Unions

Remembering President Ronald Reagan

June 5 marks the one-year anniversary of President Ronald Reagan's death.

This posting provides links to many special moments in the President's life and brings back many fond memories of a great man. Follow all the links, they are a treat.

Here is an article from the Washington Times.

Bringing Added Clarity to the Judicial Filibuster Debate

Power Line offers a valuable posting on the judicial filibuster debate.

The posting adds to other informative postings about the judicial filibuster debate on this site, including:

The Filibuster...Continued

The Injustice of Smearing A Fellow American For Political Gain

The Senate Judicial Filibuster: Power Politics & Religious Bigotry

Mac Owen's open letter to Senator Chaffee

Senator Mitch McConnell on the Judicial Filibuster

The Foolish Fourteen: An editorial by the former Dean of BU's Law School

It is important to get the real story out because our opponents are actively trying to rewrite history and, thereby, distort the reality of today's debate.

The NEA's Bob Walsh on the Dan Yorke Show

Here is a very rough, running summary of the two hour discussion between WPRO's Dan Yorke and the NEA's Bob Walsh. Again, it's pretty rough and, though I doubt I'll get to it any time soon, I'll clean it up if I have time. Remember, I'm not a stenographer].

First, they talked about Yorke's experience during the union rally at the State House earlier in the week and then they bantered about the contention that talk radio misrepresents the teachers' union and its members. In general, a bit of inside baseball.

Yorke then clarified that his real concerns are pension and insurance co-pay [really premium sharing] reform. (He said he didn't get caught up in the 180 day work year and other, to him, ancilliary issues). To Yorke, the world has changed and teachers have to adjust their financial expectations, too. Why can't we [teachers and the public] just move forward on these acute issues?

Walsh tackled premium sharing. He went through the history (since 1992) of negotiating health insurance plans and gave an example of contract negotiations in S. Kingstown: 2 contracts ago, the NEA accepted less raises for no premium sharing; for the last contract, under the spectre of an election, the NEA said "OK," it all works out the same [they did premium sharing and got higher raises, I assume]. As far as salaries, puts much in comparing Mass. and Ct. to RI.

Yorke: but CT has higher payrolls and business taxes, etc.

Walsh: apples and oranges [what? can you compare salaries and benefits of RI, CT, MA in an attempt to set your own and not take into account the financial structure that supports that?]

Yorke played clip of union member (Amy Mullin) saying "everyone of us performs at a high level" and says its B.S., no profession can claim that.

Yorke complained about being invited to rally and then being intimidated.

Back to economies of scale. 10% higher in CT, but economics of private sector is comensurate. (IE, it's relative).

Walsh: A big gap between teachers salary and private sector. Its a demographic thing, having to do with older population that were first employed in manufacturing that has since left the state. They aren't competitive with a comparable worker in CT and MA.

Yorke: Same jobs do pay more in CT and MA because of Cost of living.

They continued on this vein for a while.

Gets to union contract negotiation consolidation. Yorke likes idea of autonomy, but every community is starting to realize a template for health care and pension needs to be set. If not, it'll all come apart.

Walsh: switches to pensions. 1/2 of teachers are excluded from Soc. Sec. for various reasons. So 6.2% of the wages for teachers not paying into SS are saved by communities and, actually, teachers also get means tested. In short, pensions are 9.5% of salary.

Yorke: Governor trying to shade it down and the kicking and screaming is amazing. What's the problem?

Walsh: We're not opposed?

Yorke: What are your proposals?

Walsh: Let me give some history. 2 issues, Government, banking crisis contributed to unfunded liability, past sins, etc.

Yorke: Then why is Carcieri being hung?

W: Proposed increase in contributions and change in COLA. Against both.

Y: But it's conceptual. The concept of pension has gone by the wayside, especially for public employees. It was fine when most people kicked off at 65-70, but now people are retiring with 80% and living 20+ years on it. We're asking for reasonability.

W: Gov's reps weren't allowed to deal piece by piece but wholistically.
Kind of devolved into real insider politics junk.

W: RE: people living longer. There should be a fully transportable pension system.

Y: Not practical

W: Pension system fully funded should be relatively self-sustaining.

Y: But it's not, we have to fix it.

W: If your going to say to somebody you have to work longer, how can you say to them they have to pay the same or more? How can you tell the new college grad that they have to pay for the person already retired in florida

Y:Bottom line, pension/hc are political because people in working sector (non-union) who were insulted by the "working rhode island" rally. BTW, 401k is a portable pension, but you make the choices. And mine hasn't budged other than what I put into it. In other words, 401k is no guarantee and people take umbrage over dispute over a COLA adjustment.

W: Tries to take it to a macro level and criticizes Bush. Would trade off individualism for safety. Essentially says there needs to be countrywide reform ensuring all people have some sort of retirement safety net (presumably other than SS).

Open for phone calls:

Union caller criticizing the failure of the RI AFL-CIO leadership for not keeping labor strong in state.

Yorke: We have an old guard leadership in this state. Your the first to show up. Shouldn't they try better and harder? That's why they have a hard time selling their message.

W: Different philosophies

Y: The problem with the rally is that different groups with different issues, needs, etc. clouds the issue.

W: I disagree, we want teachers to know about the building trades, etc. Went into example of student informed by teacher that they can get a good job as an electrician

Y: Went into another why-is-the-union-anti-talk-radio-rant.

another call:
Military retire after 20 years, the point is that others retire young and get pension.

Yorke: Your point?

Her point was trying to equate teachers with military. Yorke had none of that, said the military is a higher plane and the caller wouldn't concede the point.

Another call: A friend of Walsh, did research showing that a teacher puts far less than he gets back, especially if he lives for a long time after retirement [of course this is at least partially a factor of compound interest]. Walsh got off onto numbers talk and kept coming back to past sins. Caller brings up Health care and how there is no competitive bidding in the process.

A republican union member: tired of liberal NEA teaching practices and disparity in benefits.

Walsh : Prem. Shar is popular for political reasons.

Caller: its not political its taxes, 80% of my towns property taxes go to education and 80% of that goes to salaries and benefits.

Walsh:package has to be competitive.

Caller: Has to be equitable with what can be payed by the community.

Yorke : What's wrong with merit pay?

Walsh:Philosophically opposed, but it essentially exists (MA gets more, certificates get more, etc).

Y: But when you come to the table and say you're philosophically opposed, it stifles negotiation. We have to agree that there are good and bad teachers who should be rewarded appropriately.

W: Argues against outside business-type people who come in and offer their own plans for merit pay and don't want to listen to when told that won't work, here's why.

Y: The idea that all teachers perform at same level is specious as well as the idea that teachers won't like merit pay.

W: There's a difference between merit pay and performance pay. The performance issue is difference. There is a mechanism for removing poor teachers.

Y: It's not an easy one.

W: I don't apologize for that. We represent, management removes.

Y: Cites Education Partnership Report (and alludes that there is a lot of vitriol in the email coming in). Freedom for Union officers to do union work during school time?

W: It's in the contract. Also slams the Ed. Partnership (funded by private companies) for their goings on. Said they (the NEA) originally worked with them, until the report. Said it meant "war." They got one of their employees to be paid through the East Greenwich School Dept. so she could stay in pension system. [He's trying to damn the messenger using a few bad examples]. He is trying to portray them as not real "partners."

Y: Come on, you guys are challenging anyone who tries to change the system.
Some loose banter

Y: It gets back to management rights. Too much is given up at the bargaining table. They are almost vacant. Everything that goes on is negotiated in the contract.

W: That's how its done.

Y:That's the problem.

Caller: Brings up that pension payouts are based on past 3 years, which skews the average over thirty years.

W: Again, but it gets back to fully funding.

Another call: A teacher who supports merit pay. Says union stands in way of he, an English teacher, getting paid more than a Home Ec. or Phys. Ed. teacher. Don't you think we work more?

Walsh: Sometimes I hear from Science and Math teachers that they could get more in private sector. I say that our people work hard in a different way and I'm not going to denigrate one over the other.

Yorke: This is exactly the thing! People work equally hard and get paid different salary all the time! Who's kidding who! C'mon.

Walsh: Talks of how he was inspired by certain teachers. Some people inspired by science teachers and some by phys.ed.

Yorke: OK, nice bit of rhetoric. In reality, you can't p*** anyone off.

Caller: How come your teachers couldn't listen to a cost saving health care proposal in East Greenwich?

Walsh: I wasn't there. The School Committee set up United Health Care and didn't tell Teachers Union. I hope it all gets settled next week.

Yorke: Why don't we do this again in a forum? I'll do the Donahue thing with Teachers and community.

Walsh: Sure, why not.

Yorke: Admit that you have a challenge. A lot of teachers want the status quo.

Walsh: A lot of people do. Thanks for having me.

"Bargaining Rights are Civil Rights"

I just received several telephone calls from some East Greenwich residents who were at one of the local schools, Hanaford Elementary School, today and saw that a number of teachers had placards on their cars that read:

"Bargaining Rights are Civil Rights"

Stop for a minute and ask yourself: What does that comment mean?

The placards make no sense because the teachers already have bargaining rights.

The placards make no sense in the bigger picture either. Martin Luther King, Jr. led one of the great moral causes of our lifetime, fighting so blacks could be free from lynching, other forms of murder, cross burnings, and water hoses as well as have the ability to vote and use the same parts of restaurants, buses, and bathrooms as other Americans. In other words, King led the fight to ensure blacks were no longer denied the freedoms that all Americans were entitled to as citizens of this country. These placards are an insult to all those freedom fighters, some of whom lost their lives in that struggle for freedom.

So what is the point of these silly placards? I would suggest that what they are doing is protesting that there is resistance in the community to caving into their unions' demands. Resistance such as saying "no more" to a continuing zero co-payment on health insurance premiums. The placards are really just a sign of how frustrated the union and teachers are because they are not getting their way. Isn't that too bad.

Here is some additional perspective that shows how stupid the placards are:

The East Greenwich teachers are well paid among all teachers in the 36 school districts of Rhode Island, with the job step 10 salary being the 7th highest and job step 5 being the 9th highest. All in a state that already has the 7th highest paid teachers among the 50 states. Some civil rights problem!

Furthermore, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average Rhode Island teacher's salary is 1.6 times higher than the average private sector employee's salary in Rhode Island - the highest multiple in all 50 states. Not bad for a 180-day work year, which no one in the private sector enjoys. Some civil rights problem!

The East Greenwich teachers - in 9 of the 10 job steps - have received 9-12% annual salary increases for each of the last 5 years, unlike the residents of East Greenwich who pay their salaries and benefits. Some civil rights problem!

The East Greenwich teachers have a zero co-payment on their health insurance premiums, unlike the residents of East Greenwich who pay their salaries and benefits. Some civil rights problem!

The East Greenwich teachers receive a $6,800 annual cash bonus when they don't use the health insurance policy of the school district, unlike the residents of East Greenwich who pay their salaries and benefits. Some civil rights problem!

All Rhode Island teachers can retire as early as age 50 and immediately begin receiving a lifetime pension equal to 60% of their final salary, unlike the residents of East Greenwich who pay their salaries and benefits. Some civil rights problem!

Who, if anyone, has a claim to experiencing a violation of their civil rights? It is, of course, the residents of East Greenwich. More specifically:

How about the civil rights of the nearly 13,000 residents of East Greenwich, a majority of whom want to be liberated from the grip of a teachers' union that believes it is their right to legally extort the residents' hard earned monies via outrageous financial terms of the next teachers' union contract? How about the civil rights of these residents who see their standard of living decrease every time the union contract terms make their taxes increase faster than their incomes?

How about the civil rights of over 2,000 children in the East Greenwich school system who are suffering at the hands of these teachers due to ridiculous "work-to-rule" terms which only exist because of the horrific lack of management rights given to the school leadership, another legacy of teachers' union contracts?

There is one simple take-away message to those placard-waving teachers from all of the residents of East Greenwich: Take your silly, stupid placards home and join the real world where the rest of us live, the people who pay for your salaries and benefits. It is all we ask.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

In a nutshell, here is what I think the negotiating position of the East Greenwich School Committee should be on some of the key financial terms of the contract.

In addition to financial issues, management rights are the other big teachers' union contract issue. "Work-to-rule" or "contract compliance" only can become an issue because of how management rights are defined in union contracts. The best reading on this subject is the recent report by The Education Partnership. It is must reading.

East Greenwich NEA teachers' union contract negotiations
More Background Information on the East Greenwich NEA Labor Dispute
The NEA's Disinformation Campaign
East Greenwich Salary & Benefits Data
More Bad Faith Behavior by the NEA
The Debate About Retroactive Pay
Would You Hurt Our Children Just To Win Better Contract Terms?
The Question Remains Open & Unanswered: Are We/They Doing Right By Our Children?
Will The East Greenwich Teachers' Union Stop Their Attempts to Legally Extort Residents?
You Have To Read This Posting To Believe It! The Delusional World of the NEA Teachers' Union
So What Else is New? Teachers' Union Continues Non-Productive Behaviors in East Greenwich Labor Talks

Other Rhode Island public education/union issues
ProJo editorial: Derailing the R.I. gravy train
ProJo editorial: RI public unions work to reduce your family's quality of life
ProJo editorial: Breaking the taxpayer: How R.I. teachers get 12% pay hikes
Selfish Focus of Teachers Unions: Everything But What Is Good For Our Kids
Tom Coyne - RI Schools: Big Bucks Have Not Brought Good Results
The NEA: There They Go, Again!
A Response: Why Teachers' Unions (Not Teachers!) Are Bad For Education
"A Girl From The Projects" Gets an Opportunity to Live the American Dream
Doing Right By Our Children in Public Education Requires Thinking Outside The Box
Debating Rhode Island Public Education Issues
The Cocoon in which Entitled State Employees Live

Broader public education issues
The Deep Performance Problems with American Public Education
Freedom, Hard Work & Quality Education: Making The American Dream Possible For ALL Americans
Parents or Government/Unions: Who Should Control Our Children's Educational Decisions?

The Union's Solution for the Future: Get More People In Unions

Edward McElroy is a Rhode Island native and happens to be president of the American Federation of Teachers, the fourth largest labor union in the country (1.3-million-members). In the keynote address at the Institute for Labor Studies 25th anniversary awards dinner, he recalled the legitimate fight in the 60's and 70's to get teachers the types of benefit packages enjoyed by workers in private industry. As reported by the ProJo:

. . .public school teachers did not have the right to bargain collectively for wages and benefits; most teachers did not have family health insurance.

Teacher and other public employee unions were weak, but it was an era when a thrumming manufacturing economy in Rhode Island provided thousands of well-paid, union jobs in the private sector. . .

One of the reasons that public employees won decent health benefits, McElroy said, in the 1960s and 1970s is that most private-sector companies in those days, particularly those with unions, provided health-care benefits to their workers.

Now, McElroy said, "union members are some of the only people who have decent health-care benefits."

And he asked, rhetorically, "Do you think we'll keep them if everybody loses them?"

This last seems to be a refreshing bit of head-slapping reality, no? Could it be that a union leader, realizing that union members (and public employees who rely on tax dollars to boot) are on the good side of the wage and benefits gap, may be willing to consider closing the gap by conceding some points, such as health care premium co-pays? Nah! Instead, McElroy's solution seems to be: if more people are in unions, then more can enjoy good benefits! (Never mind whether or not the market, both public or private, good bear such outlays).

McElroy reminded his public employee brethren how much organizing help they had from private-sector unions. And he urged public-employee union members to help rebuild the labor movement in the state and nation by working on private-sector organizing campaigns. . .

Organized labor, McElroy acknowledged, is not doing well. "It is a time when union membership is dismally low."

Just 13 million Americans now belong to unions. Only 13 percent of the U.S. workforce is unionized. In the private sector, that number is just 8 percent.

By contrast, about 35 percent of the U.S. workforce was unionized in the 1950s and 1960s.

The exodus of manfacturing from the United States and changes in the economy have crippled the private-sector labor movement. Now, McElroy said, it is time to rebuild.

As the article points out, McElroy's AFT has expanded to included other public or quasi-public employees such as health-care workers and college professors. However, the AFT is looking to extend its reach.

"We are looking at organizing heretofore unorganized workers," said McElroy in an interview before his speech last night. "There are lot of professional workers out there; the finance industry is largely unorganized, the insurance industry is largely unorganized."

In particular, McElroy said, unions must do more to reach young workers. "Unions do have to go out and organize young workers and connect with young workers in a way we haven't done before," said McElroy. "I wouldn't depend on any political party to organize anybody."

The last bit is a laugher, after all

last night's dinner of the Cranston-based Institute for Labor Studies drew its usual crowd of more than 500, made up of union leaders, the state's Democratic political elite and a scattering of business executives.

Sen. Jack Reed and U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy addressed the attendees. Democratic legislative leaders were sprinkled throughout the tables, and the two contenders for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination, Sheldon Whitehouse, the former attorney general, and Secretary of State Matthew Brown, pressed the flesh.

Yes, it certainly seems that the unions won't look to one particular political party at all, does it? But what the heck, at least they are putting forward a solution. . .

Cicilline and the Firefighters

The contract negotiations between Providence Mayor Cicilline and the Providence Firefighters Union continues to drag on. It seems that they can't even agree on what they agree upon.

Cicilline said three issues are impeding negotiations: employee contributions to health insurance, cost of living increase for pensions, and "management flexibility."

Cicilline said the firefighters must agree to pay 10 percent of their health-insurance premium just like four out of five city workers do.

Since he took office, Cicilline has negotiated five union contracts. Those unions have agreed to the 10-percent contribution. The police and fire contracts are the only major contracts that have not been resolved.

The administration has offered a 3-percent annual cost-of-living increase for firefighter retirees, but Cicilline said the union rebuffed the offer and has not made a counterproposal.

Doughty refuted the mayor, saying the union has made several concessions. The union has agreed, in philosophy, to pay 10 percent of health costs or thereabouts, Doughty said. The union has also indicated that would agree to a 3-percent compounded cost-of-living increase for retirees.

"I've told them we are willing to pay a co-share," he said. "It's going to look very similar to what the other unions [agreed to.]"

Cicilline said, "That has not been expressed to my negotiating team in any way."

Doughty said, "There is no way that he doesn't understand that this is on the table. I said it."

Simply put, someone's not telling the truth. Why do these games have to be played? Whatever happened to honest brokering? Sheesh.

The Foolish Fourteen

here is a good piece from the LA Times on why the compromise on judicial filibusters was a bad idea, and essentially unconstitutional to boot. The author was at one time the dean of BU's law school

Political Junkies Only

Patrick Ruffini, Republican pollster/blogger, has unveiled his 2008 Presidential Election Tracker.

Here's how it works. Throughout the day, the Wire goes out and scours blog and MSM feeds for news about 22 potential Presidential candidates, both Democrat and Republican. The result is a tool where you can not only read all the news about a particular candidate, but where these stories are compiled, analyzed, and tested against underlying trends. Who's the most discussed political leader on blogs right now? Who's the favorite of MSM journalists? Whose coverage is up 671% from yesterday?

The 2008 Presidential Wire enables us to know, in real time. . .

You might ask, "Why so early?" Good question. Actually, it's because a tool like this is most useful early in the process, when so little is known about many of the contenders, and we can get a glimpse into the Statehouse or the Senate office without being inundated by 24/7 cable news coverage and hundreds of versions of the same wire copy.

Junkies may proceed!

Amnesty International's "Gulag" Claim: Is It Real OR Is It Just Partisan Politics?

The Washington Times reports:

The top leadership of Amnesty International USA, which unleashed a blistering attack last week on the Bush administration's handling of war detainees, contributed the maximum $2,000 to Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign.

Federal Election Commission records show that William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty USA, contributed $2,000 to Mr. Kerry's campaign last year. Mr. Schulz also has contributed $1,000 to the 2006 campaign of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.

Also, Joe W. "Chip" Pitts III, board chairman of Amnesty International USA, gave the maximum $2,000 allowed by federal law to John Kerry for President. Mr. Pitts is a lawyer and entrepreneur who advises the American Civil Liberties Union...

Amnesty International describes itself as nonpartisan. Disclosure of the leadership's political leanings came yesterday as the Bush administration continued to lash out at the human rights group for remarks last week by Irene Khan, Amnesty's secretary-general.

Mrs. Khan compared the U.S. detention center at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where more than 500 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members are held, to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's "gulag" prison system.

At the same time, Mr. Schulz issued a statement calling Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top administration officials "architects of torture." Mr. Schulz suggested that other countries could file war-crime charges against the top officials and arrest them.

Since Sunday, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Vice President Dick Cheney; and President Bush have accused Amnesty International of irresponsible criticism.

Yesterday, it was Mr. Rumsfeld's turn.

"No force in the world has done more to liberate people that they have never met than the men and women of the United States military," Mr. Rumsfeld said at the Pentagon press conference. "That's why the recent allegation that the U.S. military is running a gulag at Guantanamo Bay is so reprehensible. Most would define a gulag as where the Soviet Union kept millions in forced labor concentration camps. ... To compare the United States and Guantanamo Bay to such atrocities cannot be excused."

Amnesty International has hit the White House for refusing to treat suspected al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists as prisoners of war subject to the Geneva Conventions; for abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq; and for a list of largely unsubstantiated complaints from detainees at Guantanamo.

Mr. Rumsfeld said "at least a dozen" of the 200 detainees released from Guantanamo "have already been caught back on the battlefield, involved in efforts to kidnap and kill Americans."

Mr. Schulz posted a statement yesterday on Amnesty's website that said, in part, "Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush administration ignored or dismissed Amnesty International's reports on the abuse of detainees for years, and senior officials continue to ignore the very real plight of men detained without charge or trial."...

For some of us, the logic is reasonably straightforward: We are in a global war against a terrorist group that has directly attacked our country and vowed to destroy America. The people conducting that war against us do not belong to one identifiable country and do not wear standard uniforms as in past wars. In the meantime, we have liberated two countries from tyranny.

With that as the fact pattern, all Amnesty International can do is say the USA is running a gulag, as if America is the reincarnation of Stalin's Soviet Union. Now who has a fact and reality problem?

While you are at it, go onto their website and do a search for their public comments about the misdeeds of Al Qaeda. Don't worry, it won't take you long because there is not a lot to read.

Here are some good postings from Austin Bay and JunkYardBlog. The former notes:

Amnesty International is paying a hard price for its PR cheap shot, and it should. Amnesty’s current leadership inhabits a self-referential echo chamber, and over the next few months will find that there is such a thing as bad publicity, particularly when an organization relies on "moral principles and human rights" An organization with genuine moral principles and genuine respect for human rights must be able to distinguish between scattered crime and focused genocide, between criminal actions at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo (on the one hand) and 9/11, the Taliban, Bali, Saddam, suicide bombers (etc) on the other. Koran flushing? Does anyone remember the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddas of Bamiyan? Does Amnesty? Amnesty has cheapened the language of suffering, and for an organization espousing Amnesty’s principles, this is a grievous error.

Then consider this article and ask yourself who is showing moral leadership in this war on terror:

Critics of the attack on Fallujah last November often invoked the damning (and mythical) utterance from Vietnam: "We had to destroy the village to save it." Never mind that the alternative to the massive assault on the city backed by artillery, tanks, and aircraft would either be a huge loss of American lives or simply allowing the al Qaeda cut-throat Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to keep it as the terrorist headquarters. Forget that the city was already crumbling from the neglect of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Today Fallujah is on the mend and then some, a symbol of renewal and American-Iraqi cooperation.

Although the area is still "red" — meaning hostile — as is all of the predominantly Sunni Anbar province, the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force is extending power lines and laying water and sewage pipes at a steady pace. Rubble and explosives — some left over from the fighting and some freshly laid by the insurgents — is being removed. Schoolhouses and hospitals are being fixed and erected. As a bonus, military-age males (known by the abbreviation "MAM") are receiving good wages to build things instead of blowing up people.

As I traveled through the slowly repopulating city — about half of the original 250,000 are believed to have returned — I saw awesome scenes of destruction. But I also saw thriving markets, stores selling candy and ice cream, and scores of children delighted to see Americans. I did more waving than the beauty queen in the 4th of July parade and the kids squealed with delight when I took their picture...

...the 5th [Civil Affairs Group]is in charge of rebuilding the city in conjunction with the Army Corps of Engineers. He shows the value of drawing on a rich pool of reservists in that prior to be being called up he worked for General Electric, installing new power plants throughout the U.S.

Restoring and expanding access to electricity is top priority here, more so than access to running water because Iraqis pump water up from the mains to tanks on their roof. No electricity, no working pumps...

The goals are ambitious but they’re being met. All of Fallujah is scheduled to have electricity by January 2006. The Marines have the responsibility for bringing power to the pole, while the Iraqis take it from the pole into homes and shops.

Progress on bringing drinkable water into homes is even faster. "When we got here, we repaired every potable water system," says Williams. "Every section of the city that had pipelines before has them now."...

There are already enough schools and hospitals to serve the entire community, but they’re overcrowded and far from ideal. Everything fixable has or is being repaired and new modern facilities are going up...

"We’re certainly not trying to turn this into the equivalent of an American city," says Williams. "But it will be first class for an Iraqi one and that’s going to win the hearts and minds of the people." From the smiles, the thumbs up, the waves, and the cries of "Hello!" in Arabic I got from the children in even the worst parts of the city, I’d say they’re being won.

Helping out average Iraqi citizens: That sounds like Stalin, too, doesn't it?

So, is it real or is it just partisan politics? Looks like the answer is - WWJKS: What would John Kerry say? That tells all of us a lot, doesn't it?

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

A news report states:

The American head of Amnesty International admits his group did not pick the best analogy when it compared detainee conditions at Guantanamo Bay (search) to the Soviet-era "gulag" forced-labor system.

"There are only about 70,000 in U.S. detention facilities, and to the best of our knowledge, they are not in forced labor, they are not being denied food. But there are some analogies between the gulags and our detention facilities," William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in an interview with FOX News...

Bush said "every single complaint" regarding those detained is investigated.

"It seemed like to me they [Amnesty International] based some of their decisions on the word of — and the allegations — by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble — that means not tell the truth," the president added. "And so it was an absurd report. It just is."

While U.S. officials admit there have been sporadic cases of questionable treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, they say it's not at all widespread or of the magnitude Amnesty International claims. To refute that, Amnesty International on Thursday said officials should just open the doors of the detention center to humanitarian workers so they can see for themselves.

During a press briefing this week, Rumsfeld noted that most would define a "gulag" as where the Soviet Union kept millions of forced labor concentration camps "or where Saddam Hussein mutilated and murdered untold numbers because they held views unacceptable to his regime."

"To compare the United States and Guantanamo Bay (search) to such atrocities cannot be excused," he said. "Free societies depend on oversight and they welcome informed criticism, particularly on human rights issues. But those who make such outlandish charges lose any claim to objectivity or seriousness."...

A former Soviet prisoner who is a well-known human rights activist says comparing Gitmo to a Soviet gulag is off base.

"In Guantanamo Bay, there was a very serious violation of human rights and it's very important to deal with this and to correct it," said Natan Sharansky (search), a former Soviet dissident and political prisoner who was a prominent member of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's cabinet until May 2. "But the comparison of Amnesty International is very typical, unfortunately, for this organization, which has no moral clarity."

Sharansky argued that Amnesty International compromises its work by refusing to differentiate "between democracies where there are sometimes serious violations of human rights and dictatorships where no human rights exist at all."

"This comparison between gulag and Soviet Union and United States of America, erases all these differences," he said. "It makes moral equivalence between these two very different worlds and that's unfortunately very a typical, systematical, mistake of Amnesty International."...

...the group's international report has multiple pages criticizing Israel and milder critique of the Palestinian Authority. Meanwhile, the report devotes a similar amount of space to the slaughter in Sudan as it does poor treatment by police officers in Switzerland...

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION II:

This report notes:

Despite highly publicized charges of U.S. mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, the head of the Amnesty International USA said on Sunday the group doesn't "know for sure" that the military is running a "gulag."

Executive Director William Schulz said Amnesty...also had no information about whether Secretary Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved severe torture methods such as beatings and starvation...

Schulz said, "We don't know for sure what all is happening at Guantanamo and our whole point is that the United States ought to allow independent human rights organizations to investigate."

He also said he had "absolutely no idea" whether the International Red Cross had been given access to all prisoners and said the group feared others were being held at secret facilities or locations...

Schulz noted that it was Amnesty's headquarters in London that issued the annual report on global human rights, which said Guantanamo Bay "has become the gulag of our times."

Asked about the comparison, Schulz said, "Clearly this is not an exact or a literal analogy."...

"... But there are some similarities. The United States is maintaining an archipelago of prisons around the world, many of them secret prisons into which people are being literally disappeared ... And in some cases, at least, we know that they are being mistreated, abused, tortured and even killed."

"And whether the Americans like it or not, it does reflect how the more than 2 million Amnesty members in a hundred countries around the world and indeed the vast majority of those countries feel about the United States' detention policy," he added.

The Washington Times carried a related article.

Anne Bayefsky writes the following:

Amnesty International’s deliberate use of the word “gulag” to describe U.S. actions at Guantanamo should not have been a surprise...It is only the latest in a multi-year slide by the organization away from universal human-rights standards toward a politicized and anti-American agenda.

The change became abundantly clear at the U.N. World Conference Against Racism that took place in August and early September 2001. The final declaration of the forum of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) said Zionism, or the self-determination of the Jewish people, equals racism and went downhill from there. On the final day prior to the adoption of this declaration, international NGOs, including Amnesty, deliberated about their position as one caucus. As a representative of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists I was about to enter our meeting place along with the president of Amnesty, Irene Khan, when the chief representative of Human Rights Watch, Reed Brody, turned to me in the presence of the others and told me I was not welcome and had to go. Said Brody, to the objection of no one (although I had worked professionally with many of them for years), I represented Jews and therefore could not be trusted to be objective.

At Durban, Amnesty led the international NGO assault on universal standards. According to Khan, what mattered were “the voices of the victims.” In her words, “The victims of racism and related intolerance have described their own realities of racism and related intolerance as they experience it…This Declaration and Programme of Action is an inclusive text which enables our various perspectives to be presented at the World Conference.”

However, despite the rhetoric of “inclusiveness,” the Amnesty International chief sat on her hands when a motion to delete the voices of Jewish victims of racism was put to the vote and adopted. Every Jewish NGO from around the world walked out. Amnesty and company stayed.

Durban ended three days before 9/11...International human-rights organizations, with Amnesty at the helm, have cast the war on terror on one side and protection of human rights on the other. The preferred phraseology in U.N. lingo is “the protection of human rights while countering terrorism.” Mere lip service is paid to the rights violated by terrorism: There are no detailed global reports emanating from Amnesty International on the abominations of terrorists. Searching Amnesty’s website for “terrorism” elicits 25 reports — all on violations by those combating terrorism...

Amnesty is, however, correct in one important respect. For far too long Americans have ceded the language of international human rights to just about everyone else on the planet. The failure to make the case for key elements of American foreign policy in human-rights terms has left the field wide open to the haters of America and of democracy, allowing them to appropriate and subvert the political currency of human rights...

Amnesty International has a documented political bias that makes them deny the reality of the War on Terror and to push a political agenda that favors the enemies of the United States. And they expect us to take them seriously?

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION III:

The Wall Street Journal states:

It's good to see that Amnesty International has had to backtrack from its comparison of Guantanamo Bay to the Soviet "gulag." Less than two weeks after making that analogy, Amnesty's U.S. boss issued what amounted to a full retraction on "Fox News Sunday" this weekend.

"Clearly, this is not an exact or a literal analogy," said William Schulz. "In size and in duration, there are not similarities between U.S. detention facilities and the gulag. . . . People are not being starved in those facilities. They're not being subjected to forced labor." Thanks for clearing that up.

And what about Mr. Schulz's description of Donald Rumsfeld and others as "apparent high-level architects of torture" who ought to be arrested and prosecuted? He was asked by host Chris Wallace, "Do you have any evidence whatsoever that he ever approved beating of prisoners, ever approved starving of prisoners, the kinds of things we normally think of as torture?" Mr. Schulz's response: "It would be fascinating to find out. I have no idea . . ."

In other words, Mr. Rumsfeld and the other U.S. officials Mr. Schulz maligned could probably now win a libel suit in many jurisdictions, were they inclined to press the issue...

But before leaving this episode, we'd like to remind readers of the case of Ahmed Hikmat Shakir. On November 19, 2001, Amnesty issued one of its "URGENT ACTION" reports on his behalf: "Amnesty International is concerned for the safety of Iraqi citizen Ahmad Hikmat Shakir, who is being held by the Jordanian General Intelligence Department. . . . He is held incommunicado detention and is at risk of torture or ill-treatment." Pressure from Amnesty and Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked; Mr. Shakir was released and hasn't been seen since.

Mr. Shakir is believed to be an al Qaeda operative who abetted the USS Cole bombing and 9/11 plots, among others. Along with 9/11 hijackers Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al Hazmi, he was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He was working there as an airport "greeter"--a job obtained for him by the Iraqi embassy. When he was arrested in Qatar not long after 9/11, he had telephone numbers for the safe houses of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. He was inexplicably released by the Qataris and promptly arrested again in Jordan as he attempted to return to Iraq.

There remains a dispute about whether this is the same Ahmed Hikmat Shakir that records discovered after the Iraq war list as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Saddam Fedayeen--the 9/11 Commission believes these are two different people--and whether Mr. Shakir thus represents an Iraqi government connection to 9/11. But there is no doubt that the Hussein regime, whatever its reasons, was eager to have the al Qaeda Shakir return to Iraq. It was aided and abetted to this end by Amnesty International.

We don't recount this story to suggest Amnesty was actively in league with Saddam. But it shows that, even after 9/11, Amnesty still didn't think terrorism was a big deal. In its eagerness to suggest that every detainee with a Muslim name is some kind of political prisoner, and by extension to smear America and its allies, Amnesty has given the concept of "aid and comfort" to the enemy an all-too-literal meaning.

Power Line adds some additional perspective:

Liberals of good will were stunned when Amnesty International compared U.S. detention of terrorists with the Soviet gulag. The Washington Post's editors found it "sad" that "a solid, trustworthy institution [had] los[t] its bearings and join[ed] in the partisan fracas that nowadays passes for political discourse." Bush administration critic Michael O'Hanlon echoed this sentiment. Showing less good will, but some discernment, E.J. Dionne found Amnesty International's gulag metaphor "outrageous," and wondered why the group would employ rhetoric that made it "so easy" for Bush to blow off its conclusions.

Now we have the answer -- it was a publicity stunt. As the Washington Times notes, Amnesty International's Executive Director William Schulz basically admitted as much on "Fox News Sunday." Unable to defend his gulag analogy, Schulz instead observed that if his group hadn't asserted that analogy, he wouldn't "be on this station, on this program today." To which Chris Wallace responded, "So you're saying if you make irresponsible charges, that's good for your cause?"

At one level it is. Dana Milbank...chortled that Schulz, in effect, is laughing his way to the bank, with traffic on Amnesty International's web site up sixfold, donations quintupled and new memberships doubled...

Not that long ago, Amnesty International represented the gold standard on the issue of human rights abuses. It has now forfeited that position apparently in order to get on television, obtain a temporary spike in contributions, and (of course) scratch the anti-Bush itch of its leaders, including Kerry campaign contributor Schulz.

The left's march through our institutions continues. The NAACP, the ACLU, the New York Times, and academia come to mind. But the perennial problem is this -- once captured, these institutions lose most of their value as outposts for the cause.

Power Line then brings it all home with this posting:

Have you been to the news page on the Amnesty International website? There's a huge banner there (like an ad banner) saying "USA Betraying Human Rights." Looking back...I can find no other time when the news page has carried a banner like that. I guess this situation warranted extra attention in that it is the most egregious and unconscionable deprivation of human rights going on in the world today. No, wait...what about North Korea, Belarus, Zimbabwe, China, Burma, etc., etc., etc. Where are the banners for them?...Basically it's saying "Let's just throw nuance and context right out the window and make a crude polemical statement"...By an organization that prides itself on specifics and close analysis of facts on the ground...

There was a time when Amnesty could legitimately claim to be a nonpartisan organization whose reports were carefully researched and reliable. Those days, unfortunately, are gone, and the organization no longer has any credibility.

So what do you think now?

Is Amnesty International fair and even-handed? Of course not. They should be identified for what they are, cranks who will boldly go to any length to to advance their crass political agenda. They are now on the wrong side of history.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION IV:

James Robbins adds these thoughts to the public debate:

Amnesty International secretary general Irene Khan’s description of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo as “the Gulag of our time” has come under heavy fire, both for its fallaciousness, and the implicit trivializing of the Soviet Gulag system in which tens of millions were imprisoned and uncountable numbers died...

What struck me the most was the use of the phrase “of our time,” as though the moral sense of humanity should be as offended as in the high days of Stalinism...That were it not for Guantanamo, our times would be gulag-free. But there is a more suitable candidate for the sobriquet, namely the Kwan-li-co, the system of concentration camps in North Korea, a lineal descendent of the Gulag. After all, North Korea is a bona fide Soviet state, run by the son of the man who Stalin put in power. Current dictator Kim Jong Il was reportedly born in the training camp in Siberia where his father Kim Il Sung was being groomed for power by the NKVD. In size, scope, reason for being, and manner of doing business, the North Korean camps are indistinguishable from their Soviet kin, with the exception that in the North Korean system they do not bother with even pro forma trials.

Unfortunately there is not as much widely known about the Kwan-li-co. Amnesty’s 2005 country report on North Korea does not go into the camp system, though it does highlight some of the other human rights abuses visited on North Korean citizens — denial of free expression, starvation, torture, extrajudicial executions, and trafficking in women...

An estimated 200,000 people are being held in the Kwan-li-co and related systems, in conditions of unspeakable brutality. Accounts of life (such as it is) in the camps remind one of Solzhenitsyn’s narratives, or Primo Levi’s, or other firsthand confirmation of the cruelty and viciousness of the total state in dealing with those it has rendered helpless. How many ways can a person be tortured? How many ways can someone be killed? Is no offense against totalitarian order too small to be overlooked? Are there no limits to the depravity of man? Read some of these accounts and compare. To the average North Korean prisoner, Guantanamo, with its wholesome food, hygienic sanitation, medical care, regular religious services, fresh clothes, forgiving climate, trained personnel, and periodic Red Cross visits would be an astonishing land of plenty. The same goes for the average North Korean citizen.

Captain's Quarter weighs in with more outlandish AI comments:

Here's the link to AI-USA's statement with this call for capturing US officials while traveling abroad:

If the US government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior US officials involved in the torture scandal. And if those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them. The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998...

Amnesty International’s list of those who may be considered high-level torture architects includes Donald Rumsfeld, who approved a December 2002 memorandum that permitted such unlawful interrogation techniques as stress positions, prolonged isolation, stripping, and the use of dogs at Guantanamo Bay; William Haynes, the Defense Department General Counsel who wrote that memo, and Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, who is cited in the memo as concurring with its recommendations.

Our list includes Major General Geoffrey Miller, Commander of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, whose subordinates used some of the approved torture techniques and who was sent to Iraq where he recommended that prison guards "soften up" detainees for interrogations; former CIA Director George Tenet, whose agency kept so-called "ghost detainees" off registration logs and hidden during visits by the Red Cross and whose operatives reportedly used such techniques as water-boarding, feigning suffocation, stress positions, and incommunicado detention.

And it includes Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who called the Geneva Conventions "quaint" and "obsolete" in a January 2002 memo and who requested the memos that fueled the atrocities at Abu Ghraib; Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, former Commander of US Forces in Iraq, and Sanchez’ deputy, Major General Walter Wojdakowsi, who failed to ensure proper staff oversight of detention and interrogation operations at Abu Ghraib, according to the military’s Fay-Jones report, and Captain Carolyn Wood, who oversaw interrogation operations at Bagram Air Base and who permitted the use of dogs, stress positions and sensory deprivation.

But it doesn't include Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong-Il, Fidel Castro, Bashar Assad, etc etc etc.

Captain's Quarter continues in the same posting:

That's quite a stringent call coming from AI -- a demand that foreign governments ignore diplomatic immunity and seize traveling officials from the United States, in order to put them on trial in a kangaroo court. I wonder, did Schulz make the same demand about Fidel Castro, Kim Jong-Il, the Iranian mullahs, or any of the other dictators around the world that really do practice torture on their own populations, or worse. Apparently not; Amnesty only unleashes its venom on freely elected leaders, a rather cowardly act masquerading as telling truth to power.

These revelations absolutely destroy any credibility for AI as a nonpartisan, independent organization dedicated to human rights. It has sold itself out as yet another tiresome, radical Leftist screaming machine with double standards so ridiculous that their very scope amounts to self-satire.

Power Line points out what AG Gonzales really said and, therefore, how the AI comments about him are wrong:

In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, scrip (i.e., advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms, and scientific instruments.

Another section of the Captain's Quarter posting includes these words:

...It seems to me that this rhetoric is much more offensive than the "gulag" analogy, and it represents a Rubicon of sorts for Amnesty International and its supporters. I think those who fund AI and align themselves politically with Schulz and its other leaders should be pressed to answer whether they support Schulz' call for the kidnapping of American officials traveling abroad. It's a simple question and demands a straightforward answer. Those who refuse to disavow themselves of their association or support of Amnesty International on this basis will reveal themselves as radicals who will sacrifice American interests for momentary global approbation.

We elect our leaders, and we hold them accountable. Moreover, when we send our leaders abroad to interact with leaders of other countries, we expect those countries to extend normal diplomatic status, or to warn in advance when that status will not be extended. Violating that status by imprisoning our leaders and diplomats is an act of war against the United States. Those joining in Amnesty International's call for other nations to commit an act of war against us should be held politically accountable for their position.

The Cocoon in which Entitled State Employees Live

There was a government worker union rally held yesterday in Providence, but this wasn't your father's or grandfathers mill worker union rally, folks. This rally was for members of public service employee unions: state employees, teachers, firemen, police, etc., supported by taxes and rather ungrateful for it. Here are just a couple things that were said:

At times, the rally got downright nasty. Scott Malloy, a professor at the University of Rhode Island, said he was sick of "the rich" pushing unions around "in order to bring down the taxes of the wealthy." He called the governor "that shifty bum."

Stan Israel, vice president of District 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, called Carcieri a "liar and a cheat."

But for the most part, the unions told stories about the work they do.

Pat Mancini, a registered nurse at the Rhode Island Veterans Home, said: "I am proud to stand up and say I am a public employee."

"I am tired of hearing this myth about the virtue of the private sector," she added, naming a string of troubled companies. "We do the work the private sector can't do or won't do."

Apparently, Prof. Malloy's definition of "the rich" extends to many of us firmly ensconced in the middle class. Of course, it wouldn't have served his class-warfare rhetoric to admit that non-public employee "working" Rhode Islanders are the ones getting fed up with the self-righteous proclamations of those whose salaries are paid through taxes.

As for Mancini's comments, the reason the private sector can't or won't do those jobs is because they haven't been allowed (charter schools, for instance, have been severely restricted and demonized by the same unions) or because it would require that they hire union members and thus wouldn't be cost effective enough for a private company to make a go. Both err if they think that they can gain the high ground by belittling those who ultimately pay their wages: the taxpayer, both individual and corporate. (Before I go on, I will say that I have much more tolerance for the demands of policmen and firemen than I do for the average public union employee, like crossing guards or the average hack. The former put their lives on the line and deserve generous benefits for the risks they take. The latter don't perform a service that requires any unique skill-set.)

You see, only the state can "afford" to pay public union employees the benefits and wages they now enjoy. Of course, public service union members seem to forget that it's not the government's money that they are getting. It's the taxpayers'. And the taxpayers are beginning to compare their flatlined 401k and their Health care plan that requires, on average, a 23% co-pay with such things as the relatively early retirement and comensurate good benefits, guaranteed raises and no health care co-pay enjoyed by public employees. Then, as if the disparity wasn't enough, they are confronted with the complaints of the government union members; the whining that by being asked to make a health care co-pay or to modify their retirement scheme they are being "disrespected"; calling the reform-minded governor a "liar and cheat"; their sense of entitlement and their over-inflated sense of importance.

Taxpayers support the governor, the treasurer, reform-minded legislators and school committees that have asked for sensible solutions to alleviate the high tax burden already carried by many. For this, we are accused of being disrespectful towards government union workers and are confronted with demands that would result in the tax burden going up.

Well, I've had it. I feel like I'm being disrespected by the unions who think I'm wealthy enough to continue to support a salary and benefit structure much more generous than the one I enjoy. They obviously don't value my well-being and that of my family enough. Every tax dollar they extract from "government" is, in reality, extracted from the pockets of taxpayers, including me. That's less money for me to put food on the table, clothing on the backs of my kids and to pay medical co-pays when they are sick or need medicine. It means less time that I can spend with them as I work longer to pay for the car that just broke down or to fix the pipes or to make sure the heating bill gets paid. It means that I won't be retiring at 58 or 60 because I won't have been able to put enough into my 401k, which is inherently "riskier" than a pension fund, because instead of putting in 12-15% of my salary a week I only put in 6% (all un-matched) because I have bills to pay. The money and benefits the unions thumb their noses at and claim are disrespectful don't come from the government. They come from me, the average Joe taxpayer, who would jump at the chance to get such a deal. Instead, I get insulted. I am sick of my future being lessened or sacrificed so that those of ungracious government union employees can be better. I'm sick of being taken for granted.

So What Else is New? Teachers' Union Continues Non-Productive Behaviors in East Greenwich Labor Talks

A ProJo article updates everyone on the East Greenwich teachers' union talks:

...Negotiations began more than a year ago on a contract to replace the one that expired Aug. 31. A major point of contention appears to be the committee's demand that the teachers share in the cost of their health insurance.

By all accounts, the last negotiating session -- which was held on Thursday evening and did not include a mediator -- went poorly.

According to School Committee member Steven Gregson, who heads the board's three-member bargaining team, the team walked out at about 9:30 p.m. -- the talks began at 6 -- after union negotiators spent an hour and a half in a separate room mulling the committee's latest proposal.

"It was obviously a situation where it appears the teachers were just trying to drag it out," Gregson said yesterday. He also said that the union on Thursday declined to arrange a date for negotiations to continue.

Leidecker, who was at Thursday's session, said the union team was "in the midst of fashioning a counter proposal" when the School Committee members left.

"You shouldn't be picking up and walking out," he said.

Leidecker said that it is up to Kogan to set a new date for negotiations to resume.

Meanwhile, the School Committee yesterday issued a statement criticizing NEARI represenative Jane Argentieri for telling a local newspaper that half of East Greenwich's residents have annual incomes of $500,000 or more.

"This is clearly wrong ... East Greenwich has a diverse population or, more appropriately, not everyone is rich," the committee said.

"The issue of any resident's income should not be determinative of or act as a guideline to a teacher's salary," it said.

Leidecker, who is filling in for Argentieri while she is away from the office, declined yesterday to comment on the School Committee's statement.

Once again, the East Greenwich School Committee is putting proposals on the table and the NEA teachers' union stalls. Think about it: The School Committee's negotiating proposals have been presented numerous times in the past to the NEA. The proposals have been aired publicly in the community. There are simply no surprises coming from the School Committee.

However, with all of that public information, what is clear yet again is that the NEA did not come to the session prepared to make a serious proposal to the Committee. Which means that they want the School Committee to negotiate against themselves. Nice try, but the East Greenwich School Committee called the NEA's bluff by leaving the session after waiting 90 minutes for the first semblance of a response. Good for them.

Now consider these facts and ask yourself if the union has any incentive to propose reasonable contract terms:

1. The second half of the roughly $6,800 annual cash payment for not using healthcare insurance will be paid on June 10. Such semi-annual payments will continue to be made in the total amount of 50% of the annual premium cost - which goes up each year - as long as there is no settled contract.

2. The teachers have just finished a school year in which they paid a zero co-payment on their health insurance premium. They will continue to have a zero co-payment as long as there is no settled contract.

3. Teachers in job steps 1-9 each moved up a job step last Fall, receiving 7-9% salary increases. Teachers in job steps 1-9 next Fall will also move up a job step and receive additional 7-9% salary increases.

Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that the union will sit back, continue to collect sweet salary and benefit offerings under the old contract while hoping they can generate enough pressure in town via "work-to-rule" to force the School Committee to cave into their further demands - which amount to nothing less than the legalized extortion of East Greenwich taxpayers. Awarding additional salary to them via retroactive pay increases would be icing on their cake.

It has become clear as well that these union negotiations are nothing less than one big racket, structurally set up to encourage financial gain by the unions and not for the benefit of our children or excellence in education. That is why it is so important for the School Committee to proactively change the balance of power in the contract negotiations, with actions such as those suggested here.

By the way, after what she said publicly about the residents of East Greenwich, you have to wonder if Jane Argentieri will ever be seen again in East Greenwich contract negotiation talks. It is hard to build the political momentum necessary to shake down a community when your negotiating representative publicly insults the residents.

A majority of residents in East Greenwich have figured out what the NEA is up to and have sent a very clear signal in response: The NEA shares none of the residents' commitment to our children and our town - so take a hike and play your destructive games somewhere else.

The residents of our town appreciate how the School Committee is standing firm for fiscally responsible outcomes and doing right by our children. They also appreciate how the Town Council is supporting the School Committee's efforts.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Here is the press release issued by the School Committee after the negotiating session mentioned above:

At the request of the East Greenwich Teacher’s Union and their NEA representative, Jane Argentieri, the East Greenwich School Committee agreed to continue negotiations sessions to allow the East Greenwich Teacher’s Union and the NEA to respond to the East Greenwich School Committee’s last proposal. The session was continued to last Thursday, May 26, at which time the East Greenwich School Committee hoped the Union’s response to their generous offer would bring the contract dispute to a close. In fact, the East Greenwich Teacher’s Union President, Roger Ferland, reported in several newspapers that he believed the East Greenwich School Committee’s last offer to be close to resolving the contract dispute. The East Greenwich School Committee made an offer which responded to the concerns of the Union with respect to the lowest step teachers while also giving due consideration to all teachers within the East Greenwich system.

The East Greenwich School Committee’s optimism for resolution waned after reading Ms. Argentieri’s comment made in a recent newspaper article. These comments provided the school committee with unique insight into the the mind set of the East Greenwich Teacher’s Union’s chief negotiator. Mainly, these comments, both as to the East Greenwich residents’ median income and the parents’ ability to provide private tutors for their children, sets the tone for the course of the negotiations.

Simply stated, Ms. Argentieri claimed that fifty percent of East Greenwich residents have an income of $500,000 or more. This is clearly wrong. The issue of any resident’s income should not be determinative of or act as a guideline to a teacher’s salary. Additionally, when parents provide tutors for their children, it is at most times with sacrifice to another household need. Caring parents who provide for their children should not be the subject of negotiation. With this mind set, it is now apparent why the negotiations have been protracted.

East Greenwich has a diverse population or, more appropriately, not everyone is rich. East Greenwich residents are hard working and dedicated to education regardless of whether they have children in the public schools. Those elderly residents and retirees of today were the backbone of support for our public schools of yesterday. These residents should not be forced out of their homes by escalating property taxes.

Teachers are professional employees. They are paid a salary, not an hourly wage, to fulfill their duties as professional educators. Their professional workday does not end when student class time is over. Many of their professional duties are not strictly defined in the contract and many obligations must be met outside class time.

Reduction in state revenue, increased operational expenses (water, heat, electricity and Fire Code compliance), automatic step movement in the salary schedule, double digit percentage rate hikes for health benefits and rising health insurance premiums leads to budget tightening. Since roughly 81% of the district's budget is spent on employee compensation, it is impossible to achieve significant fiscal responsibility without impacting employee compensation in some manner.

Reduction in buy backs and a co-share of health care premiums are some of the most equitable ways to spread cost cutting across the greatest number of employees while avoiding deeper program cuts affecting the students. The school committee is committed to providing the highest quality of education for all of its students. We will continue to negotiate with the union in an attempt to resolve this contract dispute.

We thank the residents of East Greenwich for their overwhelming support of
our initiatives and attempts at controlling the cost of education while not affecting the quality of education for our students.

Once again, the School Committee is waiting for a mediator to be appointed by the Department of Labor at the NEA's request. This was a foregone conclusion, since at all times the NEA Teacher’s Union indicated they would not settle this contract without a mediator. This step is another attempt to take the focus off the issues facing school districts across the State of Rhode Island. The East Greenwich School Committee has offered, on many occasions, a responsible contract and will continue to negotiate along these same lines.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION II:

In a nutshell, here is what I think the negotiating position of the East Greenwich School Committee should be on some of the key financial terms of the contract.

In addition to financial issues, management rights are the other big teachers' union contract issue. "Work-to-rule" or "contract compliance" only can become an issue because of how management rights are defined in union contracts. The best reading on this subject is the recent report by The Education Partnership. It is must reading.

East Greenwich NEA teachers' union contract negotiations
More Background Information on the East Greenwich NEA Labor Dispute
The NEA's Disinformation Campaign
East Greenwich Salary & Benefits Data
More Bad Faith Behavior by the NEA
The Debate About Retroactive Pay
Would You Hurt Our Children Just To Win Better Contract Terms?
The Question Remains Open & Unanswered: Are We/They Doing Right By Our Children?
Will The East Greenwich Teachers' Union Stop Their Attempts to Legally Extort Residents?
You Have To Read This Posting To Believe It! The Delusional World of the NEA Teachers' Union

Other Rhode Island public education/union issues
ProJo editorial: Derailing the R.I. gravy train
ProJo editorial: RI public unions work to reduce your family's quality of life
ProJo editorial: Breaking the taxpayer: How R.I. teachers get 12% pay hikes
Selfish Focus of Teachers Unions: Everything But What Is Good For Our Kids
Tom Coyne - RI Schools: Big Bucks Have Not Brought Good Results
The NEA: There They Go, Again!
A Response: Why Teachers' Unions (Not Teachers!) Are Bad For Education
"A Girl From The Projects" Gets an Opportunity to Live the American Dream
Doing Right By Our Children in Public Education Requires Thinking Outside The Box
Debating Rhode Island Public Education Issues

Broader public education issues
The Deep Performance Problems with American Public Education
Freedom, Hard Work & Quality Education: Making The American Dream Possible For ALL Americans
Parents or Government/Unions: Who Should Control Our Children's Educational Decisions?

David Frum & Peggy Noonan on Liberalism, Deep Throat & the Significance of Watergate

I never liked Richard Nixon. As a student at the time, I listened to both the Senate and House hearings on Watergate. With what I heard in those hearings, I concluded he was a crook when he was President and my opinion of him has not changed with the passage of time. Over the years, I have also come to realize how his policies diminished freedom at home by ensuring the ongoing growth in the size and regulatory scope of the federal government.

With all of that in mind, though, it is hard not to react with a range of emotions, including some ambivalence, to the revelation of that W. Mark Felt, the former #2 at the FBI, was Deep Throat. The commentaries below highlight some of the reasons for that ambivalence.

David Frum has this to say about the significance of Watergate with the disclosure of Felt as Deep Throat:

...There should be no evasion here: Richard Nixon committed serious crimes as president, including violation of the campaign-finance laws and obstruction of justice. Under his bad example and following his perverse incentives, a whole generation of senior Republican officials marched into lawlessness.

That said, as it must be said, some additional perspective is in order as the big media descends into yet another spasm of Watergate delight ....

1) There were very few if any crimes committed under Richard Nixon that FDR, Truman, JFK, and LBJ did not also commit, from snooping on political opponents' IRS records (something that Nixon was prevented from doing but that FDR regularly did), to violating campaign laws (an LBJ speciality). Standards seem to have been a little higher under Eisenhower, but that may be a gap in the historical record. I argued in my history of the 1970s, How We Got Here that Nixon's misconduct has to be seen as an exaggerated form of the misconduct of his predecessors, and not as some unique deviation of his own.

2) One reason that Watergate memories so galvanize the press is that liberal journalists can now understand that Watergate represented the very zenith of their cultural influence. For one shining, shimmering moment, they decided who were cultural heroes and who were villains.

They could transmute a bitter old segregationist like Sam Ervin into a defender of the Constitution for standing against Nixon --and utterly destroy an innocent like former Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans for standing too close to him. There was no Fox News, no Rush Limbaugh, and barely even a Wall Street Journal editorial page as Robert Bartley would build it and we now know it.

Deep Throat is a perfect example of this. There is something disturbing is there not about a law-enforcement official becoming convinced of the guilt of his target, and leaking information against him to the media?

Didn't Clinton defenders rave against Ken Starr and his team for allegedly doing so? Isn't that the justification, to the extent that there is any justification, for Senate Democrats' unreasoning rancor against Bush judicial pick Brett Kavanaugh, a former Starr counsel?

And yet when the #2 of the FBI admits that he does so against Richard Nixon, it becomes time to pull out the block of marble and the chisels.

American liberals have lost this cultural power for good, but the memory of it remains sweet.

3) Finally, today might be a good day to recall that the techniques of cover-up used by Nixon were borrowed later by Bill Clinton. True, Nixon was covering up a grave political offense, and Clinton was covering up a tawdry affair. The Nixon administration was a somber and sometimes sinister tragedy; the Clinton administration an absurd farce. And yet in a purely formal sense, the parallels between the two scandal-tainted governments are striking, a point I made back in 1998 with this little jape, printed in The Weekly Standard and being posted today in the archive at David Frum's website.

The following articles add further context to Frum's commentary:

The Washington Post carried this story, including these words:

...after the death of Hoover, an epochal moment for the FBI, which had never been led by anyone else. Felt wanted the job, he later wrote. He also wanted his beloved bureau to maintain its independence. And so his motivations were complex when Woodward called a month later seeking clues to the strange case of a burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex. Again, the young reporter had a metro angle on a national story, because the five alleged burglars were arraigned before a local judge.

Wounded that he was passed over for the top job, furious at Nixon's choice of an outsider, Assistant Attorney General L. Patrick Gray III, as acting FBI director, and determined that the White House not be allowed to steer and stall the bureau's Watergate investigation, Mark Felt slipped into the role that would forever alter his life...

Here is what some former federal prosecutors had to say:

W. Mark Felt violated FBI and Justice Department policies by sharing with reporters information about the Watergate scandal, but it's not clear whether he broke any laws, several former federal prosecutors said...

The former prosecutors said that if they were to look into Felt's conversations with The Washington Post's Bob Woodward they would examine whether he violated federal rules that keep grand jury matters secret, whether he disclosed other confidential material that was part of the Watergate investigation or broke privacy rules by revealing the names of people who had yet to be charged with a crime.

"The administrative penalties for some of these things could be severe, including dismissal," said Joseph di Genova, who served as U.S. attorney in Washington during the Reagan administration.

John Barrett, a law professor at St. John's University in New York, said that among the many ironies in the Deep Throat story is that Felt, as the official who ran the FBI on a day-to-day basis, almost certainly had to deal with the sort of employee misconduct that he apparently engaged in.

Determining whether Felt broke any laws would require analyzing each piece of information he either provided or corroborated, said E. Lawrence Barcella Jr., who was a young prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office in Washington at the time of the Watergate break-in...

One unanswered question raised both by Barrett, a prosecutor in the Iran-Contra investigation, and di Genova is why Felt chose to work with a reporter instead of taking his concerns about White House interference with the FBI to Congress.

"If the head of the FBI and the Justice Department criminal division are both pipelines to the White House, perhaps you go across the branches of government to Congress, if you're a responsible government official," Barrett said...

Here are some additional comments:

..."I view him as a troubled man. I don't think it's heroic to act as a spy on your president when you're in high office. I could fully understand if he resigned ... or if he went to the prosecutor. That would be heroic," Kissinger said.

G. Gordon Liddy, the Nixon associate who led the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel and office complex, told FOX News on Wednesday..."What you are ethically bound to do is go to a grand jury and seek an indictment and not go to a single news source," said Liddy, who was convicted and served nearly five years in prison for his role in the scandal.

Alexander Haig, Nixon's former chief of staff who had been fingered by Nixon White House counsel John W. Dean III as Deep Throat, also said he doesn't view Felt in a favorable way. "I don't think I would categorize him as a hero in any way," he said.

"I live by a code that if you work for a president, you stay loyal to that president and if you can't for whatever reasons, then you have the obligation to resign and take whatever steps necessary in your power," he said...

Ben Bradlee, the Post's top editor during the Watergate scandal, said in an interview with his old paper that he wouldn't recognize Felt if he had seen him, but he knew all along that "Deep Throat" was a high-ranking FBI official and learned his name within a couple of weeks after Nixon's resignation.

"The No. 2 guy at the FBI, that was a pretty good source," Bradlee told The Washington Post. "I knew the paper was on the right track." The "quality of the source" and the soundness of his guidance made him sure of that, he said.

Bradlee told FOX News on Wednesday that the Watergate story "was such excitement — the fact is, it was the Post's great story."

Haig said he figured Deep Throat was a high-level FBI official but warned the public not to overestimate the source's importance in history.

"I think we're always tempted when these things happen to overblow the importance of Deep Throat in the overall outcome of Watergate. It's very important to remember it was the tapes that finally turned the country against the president and that was the real death blow to Richard Nixon, but it was politics that brought us there," Haig told FOX News on Wednesday...

Four more articles are here, here, here, and here.

to conclude, Peggy Noonan again offers her penetrating thoughts:

…Was Mr. Felt a hero? No one wants to be hard on an ailing 91-year-old man. Mr. Felt no doubt operated in some perceived jeopardy and judged himself brave. He had every right to disapprove of and wish to stop what he saw as new moves to politicize the FBI. But a hero would have come forward, resigned his position, declared his reasons, and exposed himself to public scrutiny. He would have taken the blows and the kudos. (Knowing both Nixon and the media, there would have been plenty of both.) Heroes pay the price. Mr. Felt simply leaked information gained from his position in government to damage those who were doing what he didn't want done. Then he retired with a government pension. This does not appear to have been heroism, and he appears to have known it…

Even if Mr. Felt had mixed motives, even if he did not choose the most courageous path in attempting to spread what he thought was the truth, his actions might be judged by their fruits. The Washington Post said yesterday that Mr. Felt's information allowed them to continue their probe. That probe brought down a president. Ben Stein is angry but not incorrect: What Mr. Felt helped produce was a weakened president who was a serious president at a serious time. Nixon's ruin led to a cascade of catastrophic events--the crude and humiliating abandonment of Vietnam and the Vietnamese, the rise of a monster named Pol Pot, and millions--millions--killed in his genocide. America lost confidence; the Soviet Union gained brazenness. What a terrible time. Is it terrible when an American president lies and surrounds himself by dirty tricksters? Yes, it is. How about the butchering of children in the South China Sea. Is that worse? Yes. Infinitely, unforgettably and forever…

Maybe the big lesson on Felt and Watergate is as simple as the law of unintended consequences. You do something and things happen and you don't mean them to, and if you could take it back you would, but it's too late. The repercussions have already repercussed. Mark Felt cannot have intended to encourage such epic destruction. He must have thought he was doing the right thing, protecting his agency and maybe getting some forgivable glee out of making Nixon look bad. But oh the implications. Literally: the horror…