In typical fashion, Providence Journal reporter Katherine Gregg returns more than once to the question of how a proposal to reduce Rhode Island’s income tax would compensate for the “loss” in state revenue.  Paragraph four from the article:

[Republican Senate Minority Leader Jessica de la Cruz (North Smithfield, Burrillville, Glocester)] has not yet responded to questions about which government services she would favor cutting, if necessary, to make up for an anticipated $231 million in foregone state revenue by the end of the five-year run.

This isn’t hard.  The state budget is nearing about $15 billion.  The cited $231 million for modest tax relief, is less than 2% of that amount.  The governor’s proposed increase of the budget is 3.6%.  In fairness, spending from the General Fund was “only” about $6 billion, and the governor is “only” proposing to increase it by 2.5%, but de la Cruz’s proposal is to phase in the income tax reduction over five years.

In other words, if the state just relaxed its increases slightly each year, the income tax could be reduced.  Rhode Island could have a little more incentive for people to work here and to create jobs here.

The fact that it should be easy, however, shows that de la Cruz and the bill’s supporters in the Chamber of Commerce should have done the work to find something in the governor’s budget to offer as an examples.  Reducing state revenue is always a long shot, so such proposals shouldn’t miss the opportunity to put a spotlight on out-of-control spending.  Indeed, when the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity proposed reducing the sales tax in 2014, our associated report was titled “Spotlight on Spending.”

That’s where the focus has to be so the question isn’t “how will you pay for that,” but “why do we need that money in the first place.”

Maybe it’s a small thing — a minor oversight because his mind was elsewhere — but something has nagged at me about the opening item of Ted Nesi’s weekly roundup on February 28:

If there’s one thing I think we can all agree on right now, it’s this: Rhode Island has had a brutal winter. More snow has fallen in Greater Providence than in Anchorage, Alaska, capped off by a storm that topped the Blizzard of ’78 for all-time accumulation. It’s been unusually cold, too, with average temperatures below 30 for the last two months. But the weather isn’t the only reason this winter has felt so brutal. Rhode Islanders have been shaken by not one but two horrific public shootings, first at Brown and then at Lynch Arena — very different in their particulars, but each one all-consuming in the moment and traumatic for a state consistently ranked among the safest in the country.

Nesi goes on to show that he’s thinking more in terms of political malaise, and on that score, I’m inclined to say I’m actually feeling somewhat upbeat and optimistic.  But the thing that really jumped out at me in the above quotation is something that’s missing.

Between the two shootings Nesi mentions, on January 18, four children (literally children) beat a man to death with their feet and fists in Providence.  How would that not make the cut for inclusion on the “violence” list for a local journalist describing how bleak the winter has been?

It’s a strange omission worthy of contemplation.  Was that example so horrific Nesi doesn’t even want to think about it, or is the problem that it raises uncomfortable political topics rather than the easy crowd-pleaser of gun control?

Making the most emotionally appealing case you can for your preferred policy is just part of politics, but we in the public have to bear the responsibility of thinking the claims through.  Here’s Democrat Speaker of the House Joseph Shekarchi making an argument for his latest package of housing-development legislation:

While Rhode Island is “relatively affordable” for people moving here from other states, “Our own residents are too often priced out of the neighborhoods they grew up in,” he said.

For my own context, I’m not reactive in either direction on this issue.  I was a builder, and I’m also an advocate for letting people do what they want with their own property.  Of course, there’s a line at which what you do with your property affects the value and enjoyability of mine, and I believe people should have right to self-governance at the local level so they can draw that line differently.  In short, I view housing as a layered issue, and trite appeals to emotion tend to benefit corrupt interests when it comes to layered issues.

A basic reality we can expect is that young adults may very well be “priced out” of their childhood neighborhoods.  They’re just starting out!  It isn’t possible or desirable for every neighborhood to accommodate the entire human lifecycle.

Moreover, a neighborhood can change by different means.  Just because a house is within the same geographic area as a childhood home doesn’t mean it’s the same “neighborhood.”  Put up a dozen skyscraper apartments in a quiet suburban neighborhood, and all its adult children will be able to afford to live there, but it won’t be the neighborhood they grew up in any more than any other neighborhood with high-rise apartments.

In fact, by forcing neighborhoods to adjust to his nostalgia, Speaker Shekarchi is ensuring that nobody can live in the neighborhood that residents grew up in; it won’t exist anymore.  Personally, I’m a fan of change when it adjusts to reality in a framework of individual rights, but I wouldn’t insist that everybody in the state conform to my preferences.

P.S. — I don’t want to miss the opportunity to chuckle, here, that I’m the “conservative” in the local contexts because I want to conserve your right to change your community!

Boston Globe columnist Dan McGowan picked a fight with Democrat Congressman Seth Magaziner because the congressman could have been a decisive vote passing legislation McGowan liked but skipped the opportunity:

As willing as I’d be to pile on Magaziner, I’ve paused on this one because I haven’t reviewed the referenced legislation (which had to do with preventing airline crashes), and there may, indeed, have been reasons not to support it.  Of course, that doesn’t excuse Magaziner for failing to be present and taking a stand one way or another.  Instead, he made videos of himself helping neighbors dig out of the blizzard in the district in which he lives, not the one he pretends to represent in Congress.

The interesting part, however, is McGowan’s success making Magaziner’s failure a story and thereby making it a problem for the Democrat.  That’s interesting because it’s so rare.

Imagine if Rhode Island journalists habitually called out our elected officials and held them accountable for their actions, their decisions, and their rhetoric.  They don’t do that because they’re generally in agreement with the Democrats who run the state, and it’s more important to the journalists to keep the party in power than to generate news about its effectiveness.

Rather, they should make us seethe with anger at what government officials did to our children in response to COVID.  The first line of RI News Today‘s summary of RIPEC’s report on the state absenteeism program captured the general tone:

Attendance Matters RI appears to have helped drive a sharp improvement in student attendance, reducing chronic absenteeism from its post-pandemic peak and producing one of the largest declines nationwide.

Yes, chronic absenteeism has gone down, and yes, the drop was one of the steepest in the country, but Rhode Island still hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels and Rhode Island slipped well below the national average in 2021-22.  This doesn’t look like successful government action to me.  It looks like failure.

As proven by the urge to cheat students out of education because we had heavier snow than expected, Rhode Island does not prioritize education.  Children pick up on such statements of value, and if we don’t care about cutting the school year, why should they care about showing up?

If that’s how Rhode Islanders feel about education, I guess it is what it is, but we should at least muster some scorn for politicians and government satellites that try to make their failure sound like success.

Here’s one lesson:

In ways large and small, progressive policies undermine and hobble our society, all while their believers think they’re helping people and saving the world.  It’s a tragedy that avoids calamity only to the extent genuine progress outpaces progressives.

Arguments over the percentage splits of appointments to judgeships has the feeling of an unserious aristocracy burdening our progress with small-minded debates.  So, of course Providence Journal reporter Katie Mulvaney will amplify them:

The former dean of Roger Williams University School of Law is raising concerns about Gov. Dan McKee’s picks for Superior and District courts leaning heavily male, although the openings were created by the retirements of female judges.

In Michael Yelnosky’s view, McKee is disproportionately naming men to lifetime seats on the bench.

“It’s a troubling pattern to see the court go in that direction when the profession is increasingly female,” Yelnosky said.

According to the American Bar Association, women became a majority of law firm associates in 2023 and represent more than 56% of law school students.

How is the percentage of students relevant to the percentage of people being appointed as judges?  That datapoint tells us nothing, but it does insert a reminder of how these trends go and what we can definitely predict from the likes of Mulvaney and Yelnosky.

Fast-forward a few years or a decade.  Based on current trends, women will make up a disproportionate majority of law students and lawyers.  Soon after that, they’ll be a disproportionate majority of judges.  Will Mulvaney and Yelnosky get back together to warn us about the disparity?  No.  We can confidently predict they’ll do the opposite and talk about how wonderfully “diverse” our first all-female state supreme court is.

There are many, many reasons to complain about corruption and inside dealings in Rhode Island, but balkanizing people into demographic categories is an ugly immaturity to which our society should never have regressed and beyond which we should strive to move.

Providence Journal: “RI Speaker Shekarchi has hopes, fears for family in Iran as war rages”

WPRI: “Rhode Islanders with family in Iran concerned about conflict overseas”

Considering that the readership of headlines tends to be much higher than of articles, the phrasing is important.  WPRI conveys “Trump’s bad idea,” while the Providence Journal conveys positive possibilities.  This comes early in Patrick Anderson’s Projo article:

[Shekarchi’s] feelings about the three-day-old war that began with the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are equal parts fear and optimism.

You’d be crazy not to have some fears about war and about what might follow a 50-year-old totalitarian regime.  But that note of optimism is important.

Leftist media tend to be all or nothing on these matters, and it usually depends who’s in the White House and which party stands to gain from success or failure.  Right now, it’s Republican Donald Trump as President, so WPRI went with “concern.”

A couple weeks ago (which is like an election cycle, the way news cycles go, these days), the local Democrats and media were applauding Democrat Congressman Seth Magaziner as an example for all when he “paid an unannounced visit to Rhode Island’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility this week,” as journalist Phil Eil put it.  Of course, ICE Boston set the record straight that Magaziner had actually planned the visit well in advance, but let’s put that aside.

Something that went without remark, probably because few journalists or workaday Rhode Islanders know about it, was that the groups whom Eil and Magaziner are heeding for this activity are radical, indeed.  As I noted at the beginning of the month (which is like two election cycles ago), those activists call themselves “abolitionists” and want to do away with prisons entirely.  Their inside source for the treatment of immigrants at Wyatt goes by the codename, Lenin.  Like the communist despot.

But we shouldn’t expect Magaziner to have to go out on any political limbs to differentiate himself from the radicals.  That’s not how the propaganda press works.  Part of Democrat privilege is to be insulated from the crazy people with whom you associate so the normies don’t get scared off and do something crazy like vote for a Republican.

The WPRI headline actually spins the news in a favorable direction when it presents rent control as essentially a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to renters:  “New estimates: Providence rent-control plan could save renters millions, cost taxpayers millions.”

Apparently, the City Council hired left-wing activist Tom Sgouros to analyze the effects of rent control, and the city auditor offered his own analysis.  By either evaluation, the upshot is that rent control will:

• Theoretically save renters money (although it will probably ensure rent goes up every year, even when not needed, so landlords don’t get penalized for having been nice when costs go up more than the limit)
• Cost the city tax revenue as property values drop and landlords start challenging their valuations more
• Cost the city money for oversight
• Cost other homeowners money as valuations shift the tax burden to their property

Not mentioned is the likelihood that landlords will reduce maintenance activities, which will create lower-quality housing and less work for local service providers.  Also not mentioned is the likelihood that potential landlords will never bother to build, renovate, or repurpose other properties to create rental properties, reducing the available housing and driving up the costs for any non-controlled units.  (The progressives attempt to evade this by exempting new units for 15 years, but that’s essentially a minimum timeframe for large investments, and the landlords will know they’re entering a city that could change the rules out from under them at any time.)

Oh, and don’t forget the tenants who squat on their properties, even though they could afford more, because the differential between rent-controlled units and non-rent-controlled units becomes so big.

Rent control is among the most obvious of progressives’ delusions in its likelihood to cause huge problems.  The fact that they persist in chasing it shows they really don’t care if their policies will work, which means they really don’t care about people.  They care about power and about stroking their own vanity.

Of course, one suspects reporter Matthew McNulty didn’t mean to do so in his article about a recent “workforce development summit.”  The panelists were:

• Matthew Weldon, director of the state Department of Labor and Training
• Karl Wadensten, CEO and president of VIBCO Inc.
• Farouk Rajab, CEO and president of the Rhode Island Hospitality Association

And here’s the key sentence I mentioned in the title of this post:

The discussion underscored a broader message from the summit: Talent availability is not just about headcount, but engagement with state programs and strategic workforce development.

That’s wrong.  Talent availability is about the underlying incentives and opportunities of the local economy.  State programs can, at best, be a minor lubricant of workforce development and recruitment, but it can’t make up for flawed incentives and missing opportunity.

This is crucial to understand, because believing that state programs and top-down “strategies” can fix, or at least compensate for, more-fundamental shortcomings has been leading Rhode Islanders to ignore the fundaments.

It might be just another fad that gives people on the hunt for news something to write about, or it might be a temporary development responding to the size and accumulated wealth of Baby Boomers, but if live-work-play communities are actually answering a market need, they merit more discussion on the public stage:

Combining housing, entertainment, retail, office space and dining – all within walking distance – these developments are communities unto themselves. One of the state’s oldest, Chapel View in Cranston, is among the most successful.

We lost a lot, as a society, when transportation and communication technologies began to draw the elite and managerial classes away from the working class in terms of space and culture.  There was value to having a mill owner, for example, living within walking distance of the people who worked for him and all were likely to utilize the same public services and go to the same churches.  Rapid travel, personal entertainment, and long-distance communication allowed us to segregate in new ways.

What change will occur when, in this choice-driven modern era, public accommodations are resegregated into something like Medieval village set off behind their own protective walls?  The concept is not unlike the many “villages” that give Rhode Island so much of its character, but again, the demographics of those villages were probably economically diverse when it took real time to travel from one to the next.

One can imagine governments’ attempting to regulate the self-selective live-work-play communities so that residents are economically diverse, although that would be quite an imposition on our rights.  And having semi-private communal spaces might be an improvement from a situation in which people tend to stay within their own homes for all their living needs.

I’m not sure, but it seems like something intellectuals and folks-about-town ought to be discussing.  Of course, there don’t appear to be many of either, these days, at least in a genuine sense.

Now that the heated responses to the shooting at the Pawtucket ice rink have passed (indeed, the news seems almost entirely to have moved on), this key point from Republican Minority Leader Michael Chippendale (R; Foster, Glocester, Coventry) is worth remembering:

The political process that leads to ineffectual legislation is clear:  Progressives gin up emotional response to tragedies and challenges in order to gain power.  They then pass legislation that feels like it would work if the law functioned as a hard rulebook for society but in effect restricts the rights of law-abiding citizens.

When progressive first took hold a century or so ago, its promise was that government would do things “scientifically.”  If that were the case, progressive legislators would have the same response as Leader Chippendale.  “We banned these guns, yet crazy people are still using them.  If that wasn’t the solution, what is?”

The fact that they’re actually more inclined to attack people who point out the regulation’s shortcomings shows they’re not really about providing solutions.  They’re about their own power.

It’s the great rope-a-dope of progressivism.  Advocates define their policies by their good intentions and insist, or at least imply, that solutions will be narrowly tailored and intelligently managed.  The trick is mainly accomplished by focusing on the most extreme circumstances they can find to support their case while ignoring or scoffing at warnings about unintended consequences and mission creep.

And then:

This is structurally inevitable.  The “progress” in “progressive” means radicals are always prepared to attack the very foundations on which they rely to claim their proposals are less radical than they are.

We recently noted problems with electric buses in Maine.  Now here comes Vermont:

When you let zealots and crazy people have undue influence over your government, you get bad decisions.  Please, let’s stop letting these people define the future of Rhode Island, too.

One can hope (and advocate) for the continual undoing of the Obama-era policies that have done so much harm to the United States.  Here’s one:

At a White House event, Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said they were officially rolling back the “endangerment finding” that labeled greenhouse gases a threat to public health and provided a framework for the EPA to regulate emissions.

The 2009 finding, established under President Barack Obama, called climate change a danger to human health and therefore gave the EPA power to regulate greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide from cars and trucks.

Such regulations created a challenge for automakers and other industries, which dragged down the entire economy, according to Trump, administration officials and allies in Congress.

One day, if the records aren’t destroyed one way or another, historians will marvel at the damage done by the malicious Marxist con-artist we allowed to occupy the White House for eight years (and probably control it for a bonus four under the rapidly degenerating Biden).

This news is more telling about Rhode Island’s state government, education system, and population than people might want to admit:

Rhode Island Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green plans to seek an “emergency reduction of the school year” in the wake of this week’s record-setting blizzard.

Rhode Island does not prioritize education.  It’s as simple as that.  Our results show this convincingly enough, especially given our level of spending, but somehow the commissioner’s counting of the days feels even more stark.

When weather gives students and school employees unexpected time off, the answer that comes immediately to the mind of anybody who prioritizes education is that those days should be made up.  Edging into summer is the traditional method, but as the make-up days become more numerous, districts should consider Saturday classes.

Unfortunately, the teacher unions and other employee unions would dig in, either refusing to work or demanding more pay, even though they were paid for days they didn’t work.  (Always a bonus, never a refund.)

Even more unfortunately, it’s easy to imagine families’ objecting, too.  Why, they’ve got other plans!  In the summer, there are camps and vacations; on weekends, there are chores, activities, and relaxation.

We’ve all got a right to live as we like and to set our own priorities, but let’s not cry phony tears about the state of Rhode Island education — or continue to demand ever more resources — when it’s clear our priorities lie elsewhere.

I don’t want to be unduly cynical or mean, but I’m almost more aggravated by Rhode Island media when journalists make obvious observations about the Ocean State’s problems than when they ignore them.  Here’s Ted Nesi in a recent iteration of his weekly roundup column:

Does Rhode Island’s state government have a basic competence problem? Recent headlines certainly give that impression. Start with the state’s new $95 million back-end software system, which has caused everything from missed paychecks and accounting delays to W-2 forms listing state workers’ employer as “the State of Rhode Island Umbrella Company.” On Thursday, there was Patrick Anderson’s story about the projected cost of a new Zambarano hospital tripling to $300 million … And of course, there was our own scoop Wednesday night that the State Room’s brand-new $70,000 rug somehow got ordered with the wrong state seal. … As anyone who’s ever worked for the state will tell you, governing is hard. Thousands of workers across dozens of agencies are managing a byzantine array of programs, all under the scrutiny of a skeptical press corps. …

Well, our local press corps is not that skeptical.  Notice the target:  it’s broad and faceless, not particular.  Elected officials and bureaucrats are presented as grappling with “a byzantine array of programs,” but we never get the particulars of who created those programs or questions about what prevents the people we elect and the people they hire from adjusting to the requirements of their jobs.

Some governments succeed, as do many businesses of similar size.

Most especially, journalists like Nesi never bring the basic premise of progressive governance into the spotlight.  For decades, people have accepted consolidation of society under the auspices of government on the promise that it would be more effective and more efficient.  If it’s neither of those things, then maybe our “skeptical press corps” should start asking why a system that was supposed to be more modern and humane is failing despite all the advantages of technological improvements.

In broad terms, I appreciate Richard Lawrence’s description of how he makes his high school English class feel like a sacred space.  For example, he instructs classes to applaud visitors whenever they enter the room to demonstrate their welcome, and then:

This is a sacred space. I want them to feel that.

Before every class, we begin with a short reading from “This I Believe,” a collection of essays written by people from all walks of life, some famous and others not, who offer a glimpse into their values and personal beliefs.

“I believe in the goodness of society.” – Jackie Robinson

“I believe in empathy.” – Azar Nafisi

The daily readings take but a minute – but the hope is that they will be processed and reflected on. I embrace the thought that if the students see and hear what kindness others do, that they might also do the same.

As I first read the op-ed, however, I couldn’t help but notice that he withheld a definition of “sacred space” until near the end of the essay:  “a space where students feel protected and secure.”  Is that sacredness?  Maybe, although it feels simultaneously broad and unnaturally constrained coming from a teacher at Mount Saint Charles Academy, with is explicitly a Catholic institution under the auspices of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart.  Is that Heart sacred because it is a “protected and secure” space, or does it offer a “protected and secure” space because of whose heart it is?

Lawrence’s definition is overly broad because a space can feel “protected and secure” for reasons that have nothing to do with sanctity (a military bunker, for instance), and for that matter, different things can make different people feel both or either of those feelings.  It’s unnaturally constrained, however, because it’s limited, at most, to the students’ self-esteem.  That isn’t nothing, but, as a legion of Christian thinkers have pointed out over the millennia, the heart of feeling protected and secured is letting go of the self in service of He who contains all things.

If Mr. Lawrence doesn’t share that opportunity with his students, I’d say he’s depriving them of a sense of the sacred.

As our conversation in the replies suggests, Ken might have rethought this analysis because it ignores the fact candidates don’t have to report the employers of people who donate small amounts (or even their names), but it raises an important point either way:

The post is too long to quote here, so click through to read the whole thing, but the important response, to me, is that the requirement to divulge employers is disincentive to donate, and the need to keep scrupulous records is disincentive to run for office.

Ken Block and others who think like him will say people have a right to know about the candidates asking to hold elective office, and that’s fair enough, but regulating elections in this way gives powerful insiders a way to quietly inform the public we are being watched.  Worse, they’re creating organizational obstacles that create the risk of fines or worse for people who run for office and lose track of the paperwork.

This is a very common and very detrimental naivete among intellectual types who follow politics and is particularly strong among those of a progressive bent.  They imagine an ideal system and, implicitly, the ideal type of candidate.  Then they assume that such people will exist and continue to run.

That’s foolish.  Just as in business, the more the government regulates, the more good people decide it’s not worth the effort and risk to be active.  The people who thrive aren’t the most honest or the best suited to the job, but those best able to work within (and manipulate) the regulations.

Here’s Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore attempting to take a principled stance against President Trump’s attempts to provide confidence in election integrity:

Amore, an East Providence Democrat, appeared on the Rhode Island Report podcast, saying, “I think it’s tremendously irresponsible for a president of the United States to speak about nationalizing elections when it’s so clearly against what the Constitution says, but also what the Founders intended.”

And then he gets foolish:

“Because it is so decentralized, it’s impossible to manipulate,” Amore said. “It’s impossible for a singular entity — the federal government — to put their finger on the scale. We should celebrate that it’s genius.”

Maybe when the Constitution was ratified — when horses were the fastest way to travel and communications had to be hand-delivered — this was close to being true, but it’s simply dishonest to suggest that partisans can’t now coordinate in key locations across the country to manipulate election results.

What bothers me, though, is something entirely ignored by Amore and his fawning fans in the local press.  What does he say to Rhode Islanders (like me) with severe doubts about the integrity of our elections?  “Get over it and trust us”?

I’m not asking him to proclaim us correct, if he disagrees, but it would be nice if the secretary of state would respect us enough to say (and follow up on) something like this:  “It is incredibly important that all Rhode Islanders trust our election results are valid, so I’m making an extra effort to be entirely transparent, and I’m reaching out to the groups that have expressed doubts to see if anything can be done from their point of view.”

Amore will never say that, and the press will never ask him to, because the unreasonableness of us doubters is a key part of their narrative.  That posture, itself, certainly doesn’t encourage confidence that Rhode Island’s Democrats have nothing to hide.