Fellow Cranstonian Kiersten Marek of Kmareka offers some poignant commentary on Mayor Michael Napolitano’s proposal to raise taxes in Cranston by 5.25% while giving the school department a 0% increase…
This act has marked you, Mayor Napolitano. In my mind, it has marked you as someone who deliberately does unreasonable things in order to provoke a reaction. You can protest until the cows come home about how much you care about education, but it just doesn’t ring true when your budget does not allocate one single dollar in increases for the actual acts of educating children in our city. You have effectively alienated your core constituency.Ms. Marek helps identify the common ground shared by many liberal and conservative citizens — we can agree that raising taxes while not improving essential services is a bad idea.
But of course, pols sometimes have interests that are different from the interests of citizens of any ideological stripe.
I have less faith than Ms. Marek does that the Mayor’s budget proposal isn’t a cynical ploy to force the school committee to sue the city for more money, allowing the Mayor to disavow responsibility for any associated tax increase or other financial consequences. Beyond that, the only other thing I have to immediately add to Ms. Marek’s prose is a bit of haiku…
The budget disgrace
of Mike Napolitano.
A case for recall.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Commenters “Perry Ellis” and “Oz” let us know that the Cranston City Charter does make all elected city officials subject to recall (section 2.08). The basic rules are…
- 20% of registered voters must sign a petition to force a recall election.
- Removing an official requires a 2/3 majority of votes cast in the recall election.
The connection between the fall of Don Imus and the restoration of the fairness doctrine hits the mainstream media today, courtesy of the San Jose Mercury News. Remember, the following excerpt is from a news story, not an op-ed…
Radio has gone unbridled since the relaxing of the fairness doctrine in 1987, which required stations to present fair and balanced political viewpoints.Translation: The government should limit the expression of certain viewpoints, in order to promote civility.
Since then, [Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology at Manhattan’s Columbia University] said, radio networks have been governed by “the capacity to collect eardrums without any regard for veracity let alone civility.”
Some points to ponder…
- What would Brad Kava, the reporter who wrote the excerpt at the top, think of a news story that stated — as an unchallenged fact — that American newspapers have become increasingly “unbridled” over the course of their history because the government has not required them to print fair and balanced viewpoints?
- How exactly is the connection between regulating broadcast content and promoting civility supposed to work? For example, more Al Franken on the radio might help meet restored fairness doctrine requirements, but it wouldn’t promote civility, because a) Franken is not a bastion of civil conversation and b) no one would be listening anyway. So where’s the connection?
- What would be the reaction if George W. Bush or Dick Cheney argued that the content of electronic media had to be more strongly government regulated in order to promote “civility”? Should the reaction be any less when other public figures call for increased content regulation of the media?
- Step 1: Restore the fairness doctrine.
- Step 2: Tell a station like WPRO that it can no longer run 13 hours of John DePetro, Rush Limbaugh, Dan Yorke, and Michael Savage (no offense intended to Jerry Doyle, but I don’t listen his show enough to comment on his content) as its weekday lineup, because there aren’t enough hours in the day left to provide the legally mandated balance…
- Step 3: …but also tell WPRO that it can help satisfy its fairness doctrine requirements by dropping one of its existing programs and broadcasting Al Sharpton’s show instead!
In case you’re wondering where the Imus debacle is leading to, Sheldon Drobny of the Huffington Post gives us a hint…
Imus is another example of the degradation of talk radio that has been going on since Rush Limbaugh started this in 1980. Rush was another failed DJ that got lucky in 1980 when talk radio and the AM signal were in deep trouble. So they experimented with a show that had no boundaries as to the kind of racism and hate mongering that could be disseminated in talk radio.You see, we need stronger government mandates on the content of talk radio (which Reverend Al Sharpton openly called for on the Today show this morning) so that the government is in a better position to clamp down on improper speech before it occurs.
This was followed by the other right wing haters with a mix of the “shock jocks” like Howard Stern and Imus. The fairness doctrine was killed by the Reagan Administration, which was followed by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 signed by President Clinton. That is the short history of why hate and racist talk radio is the rule rather than the exception.
Expect proponents of the fairness doctrine to try to use the Imus debacle to advance their agenda of getting the government to limit the broadcast expression of certain viewpoints, i.e. if people don’t want to tune in to Air America or Dave Barber on their own, then government should subsidize them, at the expense of other broadcasters, until people do. [Open full post]
Contra Ian Donnis, you can make this stuff up:
Mohler began by summarizing some recent research into sexual orientation, and advising his Christian readership that they should brace for the possibility that a biological basis for homosexuality may be proven.
Mohler wrote that such proof would not alter the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality, but said the discovery would be ”of great pastoral significance, allowing for a greater understanding of why certain persons struggle with these particular sexual temptations.”
He also referred to a recent article in the pop-culture magazine Radar, which explored the possibility that sexual orientation could be detected in unborn babies and raised the question of whether parents _ even liberals who support gay rights _ might be open to trying future prenatal techniques that would reverse homosexuality.
Indeed, anybody who took the initiative to find out what conservative Christians actually believe, argue, and proclaim wouldn’t have to make anything up; it would be more accurate to say that they could predict it as a matter of straightforward analysis. As Rev. Joseph Fessio, provost of Ave Maria University and editor of Ignatius Press, explains:
”Same-sex activity is considered disordered,” Fessio said. ”If there are ways of detecting diseases or disorders of children in the womb, and a way of treating them that respected the dignity of the child and mother, it would be a wonderful advancement of science.”
For those with disorders of a different sort, I’ll put it simply: we right-wing fanatics simply believe that unborn children are in fact human beings, worthy, at the very least, of a right not to be killed. It is not the womb that is inviolable, but the individual, and to the extent that a treatment is legitimate for those outside of the womb, it is equally so within it. I’m not saying that some magnificently speculative procedure to treat a condition that may or may not originate in the womb is legitimate, let alone desirable, but if one is not surprised that an Evangelical would support medical treatment for homosexuality, then it betrays ignorance to level accusations of hypocrisy in this case.
Unfortunately, another thing that needn’t be made up because it is so predictable is the utter inanity of liberal reactions, of which Mary Ann Sorrentino’s is a fine example. In keeping with the apparent bigotry by which all conservative Christians are merely mind-melded drones — or “hordes of so-called Christians,” if you prefer — Sorrentino evinces the above mentioned ignorance:
Mohler belongs to the same faction that has opposed pre-birth medical tampering in the past. Gender selection, in vitro fertilizations, even some pre-birth surgical procedures have all been deemed wrongful interference in divine territory. Now that these people see a way to diddle with the sexuality of the unborn, however, many of them are all over that possibility.
For the most part, the only “medical tampering” that raises substantial opposition from this so-called faction is that which involves death as its objective. That, indeed, is the primary objection to in vitro fertilization: that it requires the creation of embryos who will not be brought to term. Similarly, gender selection has largely been an issue — a real one, actually in practice, as opposed to the speculative brave-new-world version — because the “selection” takes the form of culling. As for “some pre-birth surgical procedures,” I’m not sure what Sorrentino is talking about, much less who specifically objected to them, but her vagueness is typical.
Then, as if adhering closely to the guidelines of some rhetorical propaganda instruction manual, Sorrentino follows ignorance with laughable plying of emotional strings — describing a Hollywood movie that features a gay-therapy version of Clockwork Orange treatment and wondering darkly, “Is this the kind of thing that ‘people of God’ really support?” (I love the quotation marks around “people of God,” as if she cannot even bring herself to countenance the sincerity of believers, even as she attempts to manipulate their good will.) This stratagem could only be followed with a faith-based elevation of homosexuality’s existential essentialness beyond even genetics:
If Mohler is allowed to have his way, and society begins to tamper with the sexual preferences of about-to-be citizens still floating in the womb, the probable result will be a generation of would-be heterosexuals who eventually revert to their preferences for same-gender lovers.
Well, I suppose that, in an argument that brushes past two layers of speculative outcomes and transforms a villain’s out-loud thinking into an assertion of “a way,” it isn’t out of place to declare the probability that all will be for naught. Similarly, it is not out of place for the author of such manifestly empty-headed rhetoric to read the minds of people with differing opinions and know — just know — that they are all about hate.
[Open full post]Ian Donnis rather wryle points out that “one of the country’s top evangelicals, Kentucky-based Albert Mohler, has suggested that pre-natal treatment to change homosexuality in the womb would be biblically justified.” Donnis also directs us to a recent piece by Mary Ann Sorrentino on the same topic. Writes Sorrentino:
The same gang that for decades has warred against any invasion of the womb in which a developing fetus (which they call an “unborn child)” resides now hopes to put a fetus on a sure road to heterosexuality.
As interesting as the concept of a gay fetus may seem, the image of hordes of so-called Christians fretting about the sexual orientation of the not-yet-born boggles the mind. Yet the Reverend R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Louisville’s Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, claims that in utero gays can find salvation through hormonal interventions that might make them straight from the moment when the obstetrician whacks their newly born bottom.
Mohler belongs to the same faction that has opposed pre-birth medical tampering in the past. Gender selection, in vitro fertilizations, even some pre-birth surgical procedures have all been deemed wrongful interference in divine territory. Now that these people see a way to diddle with the sexuality of the unborn, however, many of them are all over that possibility.
Indeed, it’s apparently the hypocrisy of it all that is bothering people:
”What bothers me is the hypocrisy,” [Jennifer Chrisler of Family Pride, a group that supports gay and lesbian families] said. ”In one breath, they say the sanctity of an unborn life is unconditional, and in the next breath, it’s OK to perform medical treatments on them because of their own moral convictions, not because there’s anything wrong with the child.”
Rev. Mohler is clearly making a distinction between pre-natal hormonal treatment and genetic manipulation (maybe it’s too fine a point, I don’t know). And Chrisler seems to be willingly conflating the meaning of “sanctity of life” to serve her own rhetorical purpose. There can be little doubt that Mohler is being consistent in his stance against abortion, as he also said “he would strongly oppose any move to encourage abortion or genetic manipulation of fetuses on grounds of sexual orientation.”
This is part of a deeper debate, as outlined in this article:
Conservatives opposed to both abortion and homosexuality will have to ask themselves whether the public shame of having a gay child outweighs the private sin of terminating a pregnancy….Pro-choice activists won’t be spared, either. Will liberal moms who love their hairdressers be as tolerant when faced with the prospect of raising a little stylist of their own? And exactly how pro-choice will liberal abortion-rights activists be when thousands of potential parents are choosing to filter homosexuality right out of the gene pool?
I think Rev. Mohler’s stated belief is representative of a majority of Evangelicals (I’m not one, by the way) and thus answers the first question: having any child–gay or not–is preferable to aborting one. On the other hand, Sorrentino has consistently framed the abortion issue as a matter of “choice.” So, if she doesn’t want to be, you know, “hypocritical,” does that mean that we can assume she also endorses a woman’s right to choose to abort a fetus because it may be gay?
And that takes me to an even wider discussion. A couple years ago, I came across this touching piece by Patricia Bauer, the mother of a child with Down Syndrome. The parallel to the above discussion is obvious:
Margaret is a person and a member of our family. She has my husband’s eyes, my hair and my mother-in-law’s sense of humor. We love and admire her because of who she is — feisty and zesty and full of life — not in spite of it. She enriches our lives. If we might not have chosen to welcome her into our family, given the choice, then that is a statement more about our ignorance than about her inherent worth.
What I don’t understand is how we as a society can tacitly write off a whole group of people as having no value. I’d like to think that it’s time to put that particular piece of baggage on the table and talk about it, but I’m not optimistic. People want what they want: a perfect baby, a perfect life. To which I say: Good luck. Or maybe, dream on.
And here’s one more piece of un-discussable baggage: This question is a small but nonetheless significant part of what’s driving the abortion discussion in this country. I have to think that there are many pro-choicers who, while paying obeisance to the rights of people with disabilities, want at the same time to preserve their right to ensure that no one with disabilities will be born into their own families {here’s an example–ed.}. The abortion debate is not just about a woman’s right to choose whether to have a baby; it’s also about a woman’s right to choose which baby she wants to have.
As far as I can tell, Sorrentino is perfectly fine with that.
Sorrentino has done admirable work in the gay community, but has she ever wondered if those whom she’s helped through the tragedy of AIDS would have been better off if their mothers had aborted them instead?
That’s a pretty tough theoretical, I know.
I suspect that Sorrentino was so delighted to hold up the mirror of hypocrisy in front of Rev. Mohler’s face that she failed to look into it herself. Dealing with these deeper issues–instead of taking the easy, facile “hypocrisy” angle–is a much more difficult task. After she’s seen the strength and grace of humanity amidst the tragedy of AIDS, I wonder how she can support giving carte blanche to those who may one day seek to preempt what they’d deem an imperfect life. Does she have personal reservations about unfettered abortion rights or does she subscribe to a universal, abortion-on-demand ideal–regardless of circumstance–because it’s an individual choice?
In the end, I’m left with the impression that it’s the right-wing, Evangelical zealot who is more likely to protect the right to life of an unborn gay child than a liberal, pro-abortion radical.
Get your head around that.
There are probably more than a couple reasons why this is just not a good idea:
Require health-insurance policies to cover infertility treatment regardless of a woman’s marital status. State law requires that insurers cover 80 percent of the cost of such treatments, with no limit on the total treatment cost. But they are currently required to offer that coverage only to married women.
Un-PC as it may be, can we agree that enabling anyone to have a child out of wedlock–for the sake of some ill-conceived notion of equality or fairness–is wrong-headed? Even setting aside the “culture war” aspects, why is it in the interest of the State to mandate such a thing?
[Open full post]Via Dave Talan’s email-based RI Republican newsletter comes this worthy appeal:
[Open full post]I’m writing on behalf of Heritage of Rhode Island. Heritage is a Warwick-based non-profit that is concluding the execution of a three-year Federal abstinence education grant. During this time, Heritage has reached across the State with the message that abstinence outside of marriage is the healthiest choice an adolescent can make. Additionally, Heritage has worked with parents, teachers and faith community and civic leaders, equipping them with the skills and resources necessary to help their children avoid risky behaviors.
Heritage is in the process of reapplying for an abstinence education grant, and is seeking letters of support. Of particular help would be letters from educators, faith community and civic leaders who would be interested in bringing Heritage’s programming into their community. Letters are needed within the next two weeks.
Heritage is the only agency in Rhode Island fulfilling this component of the President’s domestic agenda – any support you could provide would be greatly appreciated.
For more information about Heritage of Rhode Island, you can visit their website at www.HeritageRI.org, or call the office at 401.921.2993 and ask for Executive Director, Chris Plante. An updated site should be going live very soon!
Thanks for considering this request,
Jeremy Brodeur
Heritage of Rhode Island
Member, Board of Directors
JIBrodeur@hotmail.com
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted yesterday to “hold for further study” the bill introduced by Senators June Gibbs (R-Little Compton/Middletown/Newport/Tiverton) and David Bates (R-Barrington/Bristol) that would abolish straight-ticket party voting in Rhode Island general elections. The House tabled a similar bill at the end of March.
Apparently, Rhode Island Democrats are afraid that they can’t win elections amongst the voters who actually know their names!
Marc recently raised the question of conservative imperatives bearing on local versus big-brand shopping habits. It’s an interesting topic, because it lies at the intersection of various philosophical principles and general preferences.
Chief among the principles is the acknowledgment that we must work within, rather than deny, the incomprehensible forces that govern human society. In this case, that means respecting the market. If national chains can more efficiently provide goods or services in a way that society prefers or needs — more quickly, less expensively, more reliably — then the competitive odds will be stacked in their favor, and denying that reality will result in a loss somewhere in the economy and the society, not the least because smart, entrepreneurial people will be devoting their efforts in wasteful ventures.
Market forces should draw workers from occupations and locations in which it is difficult to compete toward those in which opportunities outnumber employees. People who are able to do so would greatly benefit society and themselves by creating new markets or discovering untapped demand for existing ones. And the market will require folks who are especially gifted at or tied to particular markets in which competition has increased to differentiate themselves by finding angles that the competition hasn’t exploited or cannot exploit as effectively. One obvious strategy aligns with a social preference dear to conservative hearts: encouragement of a sense of community.
Clements’ Market in Portsmouth is an example of a business that leverages its available differentiators well. Local produce compounds the “buy local” appeal. Familiar faces are behind the registers by day, and after the schoolday ends, checking out is like stepping into a pleasant 1950s cliché. A program involving register receipts can benefit local charities. The store also takes advantage of Portsmouth’s upper middle class standing with high-end offerings, including a sushi bar.
All of this comes at a cost, of course, which is why it is strange for liberals to hate Wal-Mart so fervently. Granted, that company’s executives are rich beyond belief, but people who prioritize distributed wealth ought to appreciate that the stores’ efficiency and economy of scale have given families of average and below wealth an opportunity for a higher quality of life.
Of course, a reasonable response is that the proximity of a superstore raises the cost — often to a prohibitive degree — of Clements’-like values, putting a premium on what once was ordinary. The urge to block big-box development is therefore understandable — even were it to prove largely futile in context of the larger economy — and there are legitimate and conflicting claims across class lines.
Whether particular developments are good or bad depends on group perspective. To families struggling to get by, sushi and smiles weren’t on the table to begin with, but to others, business ownership and community are critical, defining characteristics of our culture that ultimately benefit everybody. As Hayek argued in Road to Serfdom — observing that Naziism was socialism for the class that working class socialism had suppressed — attempting to manage these endless complexities involved is an act of perilous vanity.
Even just the common assumption that disproportionate wealth is nearly evil in its unfairness is fraught with crucial subtleties. It’s occurred to me, as I’ve passed the obscene wealth on display along Ocean Drive in Newport, that the alternative might resemble one of those seaside teenage paradise boardwalk cities that litter the New Jersey coast. Such areas have their place (and I was one of the teenagers who thought them paradise), but just as the wealth of upper middle class suburbanites preserves aspects of our culture, the wealth of the ultrarich is not purely to their benefit alone.
(One implication of this that the populist in me feels compelled to note is that an elite that loses its taste for the refined and hand-crafted also loses part of its argument for being tolerated. At the same time, the Christian in me must note that wealth is not all, and that some rewards come at a cost that our culture has a tendency to ignore.)
What this all comes down to for the conservative who wishes for a practical rule of thumb when forming shopping habits isn’t very conclusive, because all courses of action are acceptable given the individual’s preferences and circumstances. My own thinking on the matter is that we do well to treat those values that come at a premium — whether they are atmospheric or community-related or what have you — as exactly what they are: cost/benefit considerations. And here, traditionalist leanings point toward the wise strategy of looking to one’s own family and assessing its wants and needs as a prior concern.
In a letter to the editor in the South County Independent, Jim Haldeman, former commander of civil military operations in Fallujah, Iraq, questions the wisdom of basing American foreign policy on the premise that anything difficult to fix is not worth fixing…
[We] are a nation known for our want of instant gratification. We are the NOW generation. The majority of Iraqi citizens are beginning to live in their country as they have never lived before. They have more food, water and electricity than they have ever had in the history of their country. In November 2006, the Coalition Forces gave Fallujah back to the citizens. It’s theirs to govern, and theirs to maintain its security and safety. The new Iraqi government has also done a decent job focusing on their infrastructure and decentralizing their government.Read the whole thing. [Open full post]
Of course, there are significant problems. We used the 2005 free elections of their referendum and for their parliament as a thermometer to measure their given freedom, thinking that they would instantly respond to the first taste of freedom. Meaningless, I say! Freedom and democracy must be earned just as we have earned it here in the United States. Democracy and freedom can’t be measured based just on two days of going to a voting booth. They have not come to terms with what is needed to gain momentum and compete in this complex world. However, because their issues are so complex, many will not be corrected without the United States to be their crutch. Consistently, the Iraqi leadership with whom I worked would say to me, “We want you to leave but just not yet”.
Imagine the state of our country, and of our future generations after us, if we were to cut and run from this war. We must look at this war as our ultimate challenge to survival. The elusive posture of the maniacal Islamic radicals is to destroy our western civilization as we know it today. It is their long-term plan and their goal to see us retreat. In pursuit of this goal, they will kick us in the shins until we will eventually bleed to death. They are very patient.
Today’s citizenry may not see it, but there will be a time when, generations from now, their wrath will be felt if we do not continue to hammer home the fact that we will not quit. I applaud the president for his foresight and his vision of what could be. Let us not look at this war short term. Instead, we must accept the fact that we are in this for the long haul, whether it be in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere. We are not just trying to keep a small country afloat to serve as democratic competition in the Middle East, but we are working to ensure the safety and security of our country, and the entire free world, for that matter.
