Here’s a paraphrased run-down (though I’ve probably provided exact wording in a few cases) of Dan Yorke’s interview with new RI GOP chair Gio Cicione. (Hopefully, Yorke will put the audio up on his site).
Cicione stated that the RI GOP needs to spread the word out about their ideals and they have to do it in a different way than the President will do it or than a politician in the Western or Southern states might do it.
Yorke re-stated his contention that the RI GOP needs to have a full-time chair and a paid staff and that they can’t simply be content to run things like the Democrats. Cicione responded that he has proposed having an Executive Director–to professionalize that office–and agrees the RI GOP can’t mimic the Democrats.
Cicione said the RI GOP has given up on unions and minorities and they need to address that.
Yorke said Carcieri is out of gas other than a solid fiscal mind and good character. He’s not throwing the gauntlet down. The RI GOP needs a fighter.
Yorke pointed out that the budget has gone up every year under Carcieri. Cicione attributed that to lessening revenue streams, some intentional (like car tax and income tax reductions) and some not (like few corporate taxes). To this, Yorke asked if this was really part of the Governor’s plan: to create a budget deficit so that the state would have to deal with cutting programs. Cicione didn’t bite on that theory. However, on the subject of decreasing corporate taxes–alluding to the tax breaks given as business incentives–Cicione said he’s opposed to extensive corporate welfare (in addition to excessive individual welfare).
Cicione talked about grass-roots and integrating town and city committee’s into the fund raising process more. At this point, Yorke offered 2 points of advice concerning what he thought should be some goals for the RI GOP
First was to start a movement to eliminate partisanship in municipal elections (from Mayor on down) and he noted that partisan ideology has no impact on municipal politics–all of the complaints are the same, and rarely are they ideologically derived. Additionally, this would remove the incentive for a guy running for dog-catcher to be a Democrat because it gives him a leg-up in a one-party state. It would also take power–and resources–away from city and town committees.
Yorke’s second suggestion was to stop allowing unaffiliated voters the ability to vote in party primaries. Yorke also sketched a financial plan and suggested that Cicione go to the National party to ask for money for party-building in addition to raising enough money in RI to set up a real party infrastructure.
Cicione responded that they needed institutional consistency and agreed that you can’t short-change the local party workers. If you do, they’ll leave you for someone else. However, Cicione is not as worried about not being a full-time GOP Chair so long as the team is big enough to share the burden. He also noted that being a full-time party operator takes you away from daily interactions with regular people.
Cicione wants to pass good laws. About 50 of the 3000 bills submitted every year are valid. He plans on putting up a “100 bad bills” campaign next year to highlight all of the time wasted by our legislature on bad or meaningless legislation.
Yorke asked if he’s going to be an organizational guy or a bomb-thrower. Cicione said both (earlier he whacked Sen. Montalbano for patronage). Cicione explained that the RI GOP needed to be better organized, but they also can’t let the sheer volume of political hi-jinx overwhelm them to the point that they let it pass by without comment. According to Cicione, the RI GOP needs to hit ’em every time.
H 5237, promoted by the ACLU and the Rhode Island Civil Rights Roundtable and sponsored by Reps. Almeida, Diaz, Ajello, Handy, and Slater, will create the “Immigration Status Protection Act” and change the “Racial Profiling Prevention Act” of 2004. It is a true gem of self-contradiction. But I’ll get to that.
First, though, as the ProJo reports (Amanda Milkovits), the hearing on this bill revealed that the police feel as if they’ve been double-crossed and aren’t going to simply grin and bear it.
For years, local police chiefs and civil-rights activists have worked together on efforts to combat racial profiling. But in January, civil-rights leaders decided on their own to pursue legislation.
Among its key points, the bill would ban “pretext” traffic stops, forbid the police from searching juveniles without consent and ban the police from asking people about their immigration status except in extremely limited circumstances. The bill also would prevent the police from asking for passengers’ identification during routine traffic stops.
The Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association says many of the bill’s measures would severely handicap police officers from properly doing their jobs. After weeks of trying to negotiate a compromise, the association has given up, calling the bill “a deal-breaker.”
The chiefs also say the bill flies in the face of federal law and rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, and upsets the delicate balance between civil rights and public safety.
…McCartney, the Warwick police chief, said the chiefs association was blind-sided by the bill and ACLU report. After the bill was submitted, the Civil Rights Roundtable invited the police chiefs to negotiate. The chiefs declared an impasse after two months. “I told them at the third session, ‘You’ve put us in the position of being the bad guys and naysayers, but you people changed the playing field,’ ” McCartney said.
So, as if the contentiousness surrounding the profiling issue wasn’t enough, the sponsors of the bill decided to also throw in some guidelines severely restricting the ability of police to identify and detain illegal immigrants. Or did they. I don’t really know. You read this section of the bill and try to figure it out:
[Open full post]Former Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. (D) spoke at Brown last night. The ProJo (Scott McKay) reports:
Democrats from New England and other deep blue regions of the country must understand that their party cannot succeed in the South and West without acknowledging that many voters consider the party too far left on social and economic issues, said Harold Ford Jr., the former Tennessee congressman who is president of the Democratic Leadership Council, the coalition of centrist Democrats.
Ford, who lost a closely contested Senate race last year and is considered one of the leaders of a young generation of Democrats, told a Brown University audience yesterday that “there really is a perception that Democrats don’t understand mainstream values in the country.”
“Democrats have got to overcome this perception” to be more competitive in the South, the West and border states, Ford said.
…Yesterday, Ford talked about the need for students to get involved in politics and public policy and explained stances that would make it difficult for him to win a Democratic primary in New England, but resonate with more conservative Southerners.
Ford said he is opposed to gay marriage, gun control and supports school vouchers and charter schools alternatives to failing public schools.
“I love vouchers,” said Ford. “I like guns, I think people ought to be able to hunt.”
As is often the case with political figures whose roots are in the South or the black community, Ford spoke easily of his Christian faith, recounting how church attendance was required in his youth and describing Jesus Christ as his savior.
Ford also opposed the Bush Administration on the Iraq War and is in favor of splitting Iraq into separate Kurd, Sunni and Shia autonomous regions. Yet, mostly because of his views on social issues, he’s considered a DINO (Democrat in Name Only) because he’s simply not liberal enough for the majority of his party.
That being said, even if he is regarded by local progressives as a DINO, I wonder if he would win if he ran in Rhode Island? Given the alternatives this past election season, I certainly would have voted him over either of our two Senate candidates in ’06!
Imagine the sort of rhetorical twists and turns that would have been displayed had it been a Ford v. Chafee election. Would it have been a case of any (D) is better than any (R)–or vice versa? Or would ideology–stripped of its traditional partisan alignments–have come front and center? It certainly would have been interesting. Maybe someday.
Over at RI Future, Matt Jerzyk equates improving education in Rhode Island to increasing the amount spent on education in Rhode Island…
In an article about how a Rhode Island tech company was just bought by Microsoft, it is asserted that we need greater school spending not tax cuts to grow and attract business. After all, the creative economy needs those who can, in fact, think…Actually, nothing in the Projo article cited by Mr. Jerzyk implies that greater school spending is the answer to improving Rhode Island’s poor educational performance. By now, only the economic determinists who dominate the contemporary progressive movement equate increased spending to education improvement, despite ample evidence that they shouldn’t.
You’re probably familiar with the statistics that show if all it took to produce education results was high levels of education spending, then Rhode Island would already be a top 10 state in education quality, but for the benefit of those who haven’t reviewed the data in a while, let’s go through it one more time. According to the American Legislative Exchange Council’s most recent survey of state education inputs and outputs (slow-opening PDF file), based on data from 2003-2004, Rhode Island ranks 35th in academic achievement. The next worst New England state is Maine at 18th. Is the problem lack of spending? Well, according to the ALEC report, Rhode Island was 9th in educational expenditures per-pupil, 9th in the average salary of instructional staff, and 9th in student/teacher ratio in the period studied. So if spending is the answer, why isn’t Rhode Island already 9th in educational achievement? What would infusing new money into the existing educational structure do that the old money hasn’t?
Clearly, Rhode Island’s top-down educational bureaucracies don’t have a clue as how to spend education money in a way that produces a quality education.
But if Mr. Jerzyk and others of like mind really do believe total spending is the primary issue, they should be willing to consider a compromise. The state of Utah recently increased education spending by about $10 million dollars per year as part of their new statewide public voucher program. (AR on the subject here; Projo op-ed on the subject here). Would Rhode Island’s progressives be willing to support implementation of a similar program here, if it would help them direct more money to education? Or do Progressives believe that maintaining strict bureaucratic control of public resources, rather than improving education results or even increasing education funding, should be the top priority of education policy? [Open full post]
Last week, in regards to Patrick Kennedy’s revelation that he had been addicted to OxyContin, I asked, “Wonder which doctor he had? Or was there more than one? Could he have been doctor shopping?”
Well, WPRO’s Colleen Lima attempted to ferret out of Rep. Kennedy the who, where and how he got enough OxyContin to sustain his addiction. Here’s a paraphrase of that conversation (as heard on WPRO’s Dan Yorke Show):
Colleen Lima asked, “where were you getting the OxyContin?” and Kennedy replied that, “With respect to the substances, it really doesn’t matter what substance it is, the fact remains as an addict you can replace any given substance with any other given substance. It’s not material to the disease…There’s a prurient interest in the type of drug…and that’s part of the stigmatizing of the disease…”
Lima tried to put her question in context as to why it was important to know where he was getting it, pointing out that “There have been national investigations into doctor shopping” (ie; Rush Limbaugh–hey, didn’t I mention that before?) and “somebody helped you, somebody enabled you” with this. To this line of questioning, Kennedy replied, “I’m not going to go into it.”
OK, but maybe somebody should…and I suspect they will.
I had heard last week that the recently-raided M. Bianco plant in New Bedford had opened it’s doors to applicants and that they were mobbed. As Mark Krikorian reminds, this is just another example that undercuts the claim that illegal immigrants do the jobs Americans won’t do.
After the Swift meatpacking raids in Greeley. Colo., Americans lined up out the door of the hiring office seeking the newly freed-up positions. Then, after the Crider chicken plant in Stillmore, Ga., was cleared of its illegal aliens, “For the first time in years, local officials say, Crider aggressively sought workers from the area’s state-funded employment office.” And now, after the raid on a New Bedford, Mass., military contractor (that has caused such hyperventilation from the party apparat in the people’s republic), guess what? Yup. Americans in that high-unemployment city are actually getting hired.
He links to this video, from New England Cable News (wish Cox gave us the option…). Watching the video, it becomes clear that–at least anecdotally–the people taking those newly-available jobs are members of the poor and working class minority community. (One gentleman even goes so far as to say–to paraphrase–that it doesn’t matter if it’s at the minimum wage, it’s a job). These are exactly the people most hurt by illegal immigrants working at sub-standard wages. We all have to start somewhere, and by enabling illegal immigrants, those who claim to be advocates for the unemployed are actually doing them a disservice.
[Open full post]A reporter named Leila Fadel of McClatchy Newpapers paints a rather grim picture of the attitude of “many” Iraqis towards their new government. She quotes three people in her article, two who’d prefer that Saddam still be in power, and a third who envies “the people who die in one piece”. Based on that small sample, Ms. Fadel presents these conclusions to her readers…
As the fourth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq occurs Monday, many Iraqis, like [Iraqi poet Abbas Chaychan], are yearning for the time more than 1,400 days ago when Hussein’s statue stood in Baghdad’s Fardos Square….But wait a minute; an opinion survey of about 5,000 Iraqis conducted in February by a London-based polling firm called Opinion Research Business painted a much different picture of hearts and minds in Iraq (h/t Jonah Goldberg). Only about a quarter of 5,019 interviewees responded that they would prefer the return of Saddam Husein…
Law and order — even under a dictator who killed thousands and tortured many others — was better than this, many said. Even those who are glad to see Hussein dead expressed a longing for more orderly times.
Despite the horrendous personal security problems only 26% of the country preferred life under the previous regime of Saddam Hussein, with 49% preferring life under the current political regime of Noori al-Maliki. As one may expect, it is the Sunnis who are most likely to back the previous regime (51%) with the Shias (66%) preferring the current administration.The numbers suggest that Ms. Fadel’s interviewees aren’t speaking for a majority or even a plurality of Iraqis. It is more than fair to ask how legitimate journalism is being served when a minority, pro-dictatorial viewpoint is presented as the viewpoint of “many” Iraqis, while other attitudes more prevalent amongst the Iraqi populace are entirely ignored. [Open full post]
Who says that Republican big-business types don’t care about income inequality? From Bloomberg News, via the Boston Globe…
Inequality of incomes is the “critical area where capitalist systems are most vulnerable,” [Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan] said yesterday in Washington at a conference on maintaining the competitiveness of US capital markets convened by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. “You cannot have a system that we have unless the people who participate in it believe it is just.”And Mr. Greenspan has the solution! All we need to do to even out incomes is depress incomes at the upper end of the scale, by allowing more immigration of skilled workers into the U.S…
Allowing more skilled workers into the country would bring down the salaries of top earners in the United States, easing tensions over the mounting wage gap, Greenspan said.I don’t think Ronald Reagan, who appointed Mr. Greenspan to his original Federal Reserve term, would have gotten behind this one.
“Our skilled wages are higher than anywhere in the world,” he said. “If we open up a significant window for skilled workers, that would suppress the skilled-wage level and end the concentration of income.”
Two questions for your consideration…
- For the practically minded: If “inequality” is the concern, why not enforce existing immigration laws to tighten the labor market to increase wages at the lower end of the pay scale, rather than try to depress wages in the middle and at the top of the scale?
- And for the more theoretically minded: How is using immigration policy to control wages any less noxious than implementing direct wage controls?
A week and a half later, the ProJo concurs with us:
[Open full post]…the problems of Rhode Island are many, deep and largely unaddressed….state legislators lack both the time and the expertise to seriously consider the complexities of Iraq. Any resolution they might pass would be entirely predictable and totally ineffective: Does Rhode Island need a foreign policy? No. Rhode Island doesn’t even have an economic policy. While the legislators grandstand on things like Iraq, of course, they are not doing the hard work that lawmaking for the state requires. First things first.
Some will laugh at the pretensions of our little secretary-of-state wannabes. Others will cry out in anger, assuming that legislators who throw their hats into the foreign-policy arena are really throwing fairy dust in the eyes of their constituents, who might otherwise demand that they do the jobs they were elected for. We feel that both reactions are perfectly legitimate.
According to the Associated Press, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York thinks American energy policy should be directed to undercutting governments that don’t support American values — like the government of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela…
[Hillary Clinton] pledged to promote energy independence and drew laughs from the crowd when she described replacing ordinary light bulbs with energy-efficient models and shutting off lights to conserve power.Does the fact that Senator Clinton has openly declared that she does not support Hugo Chavez’s Bolivaran Socialism mean she should now expect to get the Joe Lieberman treatment from the netroots? [Open full post]
“I turn off a light and say, ‘Take that, Iran,’ and “Take that, Venezuela.’ We should not be sending our money to people who are not going to support our values,” she said.
