The ProJo reports:
The state Ethics Commission ruled yesterday that it is more likely than not that Senate President Joseph A. Montalbano intentionally violated the state ethics code by failing to report tens of thousands of dollars in income from West Warwick for legal work associated with the Narragansett’s failed casino proposal.
The commission decided behind closed doors that probable cause exists to pursue eight charges of “knowing and willful” ethics violations against Montalbano, D-North Providence, who easily won reelection to the state Senate’s top post three weeks ago.
And in addition to filing incomplete financial statements, the commission found it likely that Montalbano intentionally participated in Senate votes for which there was a clear conflict.
Montalbano “knew or should have known that his participation and vote… while also providing legal services to the town concerning property which abutted the proposed casino site, could implicate certain conflict of interest provisions contained in the code of ethics,” according to an investigative report released yesterday by commission prosecutors…
Aside from one of the charges, Montalbano doesn’t deny the basic facts in the prosecution’s case. Through his lawyer, he acknowledges collecting more than $86,000 in income from West Warwick since 2003 for legal work that included clearing the titles on two parcels of land near the proposed Harrah’s-Narragansett Indian casino. Voters rejected the casino plan in the Nov. 7 election.
Robert P. Arruda, the former head of Operation Clean Government, which brought the complaint, said after the hearing that there was clear evidence of a “substantial conflict of interest” as Montalbano “shepherded through” a bill that would allow voters to weigh in on the casino proposal.
Ho hum. Just another day in RI.
[Open full post]To me, the most important portion of the President’s SOTU last night was in his detailed description of what the nation has gone through since 9/11. It is a legitimate point that much of what he said last night could have and should have been said a year or three before now. And maybe it’s too late to convince anyone, but, nonetheless, he did make a very clear case for why we must win in Iraq. We can’t put our heads in the sand and wish it all away, folks. We either win in Iraq or we lose and deal with the consequences. (Read on for what is–to my mind–the most important section of the speech).
[Open full post]I was going to write a high-snark-factor post about how nothing memorable has ever occurred in a State of the Union Address. However, I came across this Whitehouse webpage (the building, not the Senator; this is going to be really annoying for the next six years) which lists some impressive State of the Union moments…
- 1823: James Monroe’s “Monroe Doctrine” speech.
- 1862: Abraham Lincoln’s connects the Civil War to the emancipation of slaves.
- 1941: Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech.
Still, I don’t think the country would lose too much if the State of the Union, especially in its modern laundry-list form, was delivered like it was between the years 1801 and 1912…
The third President, Thomas Jefferson, objected to appearing in person – saying it was too much like an imperial or king’s speech, and for the next 100 years presidents sent a written message to Congress that was then read out for them.It worked for Presidents Monroe and Lincoln, right?
Consider this post to be an open-thread on tonight’s State of the Union. Insightful comments, witty comments, and even comments that spin like a vinyl 78-rpm recording of “Happy Days are Here Again” are all welcome, but crude or personally insulting posts will be deleted as soon as I see them.
The comments are open now!
UPDATE:
Here’s an incisive preview from Byron York of National Review…
…the official said the speech is about as long as previous SOTU’s, as measured in words, but it should go more quickly because nobody expects there will be as much applause as in past years.[Open full post]
In a Projo letter to the editor published last Saturday, James Rowley commended Rhode Island state trooper Thomas Chabot…
On July 11, 2006, Trooper Thomas Chabot of the Rhode Island State Police, charged with the enforcement of the laws of the state and this country, stopped a van on Route 95 for a motor-vehicle violation and through the questioning of the operator of the van found that 14 illegal Guatemalan immigrants were in the van.There is a movement afoot in the US to make actions like those of Trooper Chabot illegal by prohibiting anyone but a Federal agent from inquiring about an individual’s immigration status. Mr. Rowley points out a very obvious flaw in this policy that hasn’t received enough attention, not-entirely rhetorically asking…
Trooper Chabot took them to the federal immigration authorities in Providence and turned them over.
Did any of [the illegal immigrants] have criminal records in their own country that might have prevented their legal immigration?Think about this for a moment. If an American citizen is stopped by police for a traffic violation, determining if that person is wanted for a crime in another state is considered fair game. But if it is a foreign citizen that is stopped, advocates of no-questions-about–immigration-status laws want to deny local authorities the ability to reliably determine if they are dealing with someone who has a criminal record or someone who is a fugitive in their home country.
It is true that it is a very small number of serious criminals that will be encountered in this way, but police are always operating under the assumption that they need to be vigilant against a few violent individuals who have a potential to do great harm to law-abiding citizens through extreme acts. Unfortunately, open-borders ideologues want to make it just a bit easier for that tiny criminal minority to wreak their havoc. [Open full post]
In a blog-post mostly about health care reform that includes some brief commentary on what President Bush will propose during tonight’s State of the Union address, Time magazine columnist Joe Klein drops this major bomb…
[President Bush’s] plan opens the door for a real negotiation on changing the current tax code in a more progressive way, which is to say: all benefits received from employers should be included in salary totals.Of course, a common benefit provided by employers not presently counted towards an individual’s taxable salary total is contributions made to a 401(k) retirement account. Has Joe Klein just telegraphed that eliminating the tax-free status of 401(k)’s has become part of the left’s agenda to make the tax code more “progressive”? If not, then what else of significance could he be talking about? [Open full post]
Such letters aren’t usually (or now, to be honest with you) worthy of comment, but for some reason, this evening, I can’t resist. To quote John Leistritz of Pawtucket:
President Bush’s so-called new strategy for the war in Iraq is actually more of the same — only it commits more U.S. troops to a region being devoured by a civil war. …
I wholeheartedly support the efforts of Democratic leaders to move towards bringing troops home, and giving responsibility to the Iraqi people for their future.
And to translate:
[Open full post]I wholeheartedly support the efforts of Democratic leaders to once again diminish the global and domestic importance of the American military, allowing the Iraqi people to slip into a massively bloody civil war with certain repercussions for Western security. Now where did I pack those bell-bottoms?
In a post from last week, Justin offered up this piece of (literally) homespun wisdom…
During a telephone conversation with my Jersey Boy father last night, he said (paraphrasing), “Rhode Island is essentially a playground for the rich, and the rich don’t need a middle class.” The point being, I suppose, that circumstances in this state will have to go beyond intolerable — beyond the point at which any rational citizenry would insist on change — before change will even be conceivable.David Brussat offered an interesting counterpoint in his Projo column from last Thursday…
The frightening thing is that the few native Rhode Islanders with whom I was able to share the commentary today replied, “Sounds about right.”
RUMOR HAS IT that Arnold Schwarzenegger has bought two Westin condos for his daughters starting at Brown next fall.It’s anecdotal at this point, but the fact that Da Governator is interested in buying a Westin condo is a reliable sign that some of Providence’s new high-profile housing units exist within the realm of the “rich”. If we accept that, then Brussat’s column is an argument that making cities into livable places requires upper and middle classes that work together…
The Westin expansion, the Masonic Temple hotel and the Waterplace condos cruise toward completion, promising almost 300 new apartments and almost 500 new hotel rooms downtown….Could the difference in outlooks towards class dynamics be as simple as the difference between urban and seaside life (I don’t think most people would think of Providence as part of “the playground for the rich” aspect of Rhode Island), or is a more complex explanation needed? [Open full post]
The year-round residents…set the tone of a place at night — and it’s the environment after dark that makes or breaks the vitality of a downtown. For all the good publicity reaped by Providence’s downtown “renaissance” over the past decade, its streets during the evening hours are still dead on most nights — albeit not as dead as in 1997.
Indeed, many nice new shops have opened and more are coming soon. But too many of these places close too early to help enliven downtown. Their window displays may be attractive, but a shop that closes at 6 or 7 not only adds little to the life of the street when needed most, but thwarts some another entrepreneur who might put the space to better use.
Using this site’s readers as a surrogate for conservatives, commenter “Klaus” put forth this question about the meaning of conservatism…
My understanding is that the denizens of this site generally advocate low taxes, little or no gov’t regulation of industry/commerce, and are opposed to any sense of redistribution of wealth.The answer is that the statement is not accurate. Most conservatives would agree that low taxes and a government that does not involve itself in redistributing wealth are ideal, but there will always be areas where some regulation is necessary. The difference between a centrist conservative and a centrist liberal is that the conservative wants to give markets the benefit of the doubt wherever possible, while the liberal says that some things are “too important” to be left to markets, e.g. educating children, even if there is no evidence that strict government regulation of individual behavior, e.g. a geographic monopoly school system, does any good. To use another example, can you point to one mainstream conservative (or even one non-kooky libertarian) who advocates dismantling the SEC or repealing child labor laws?
Is that a fair and accurate statement?
In general, conservatives don’t believe that high taxes are a good thing in and of themselves; they believe that taxes should be collected to pay for the few things that government needs to focus on. The liberal view, on the other hand, rests on the assumption that given infinite resources, government will do infinite good. That is a much more ideological view of the world than the more pragmatic conservative view, which holds that power over others should be decentralized wherever possible, so that no small oligarchy can really mess things up for lots and lots of people.
The question back to Klaus is does he believe that there should be any limits on the power of government?
Finally, in posing his questions, Klaus opened with…
I would like to ask one question. If you can give me a satisfactory answer, I will never darken your doorstep again. How’s that for incentive?Even though I (and other AR commenters in the original post) have answered Klaus’ question and helped set him straight, we really haven’t done it out of a desire to drive him away. Unlike progressives, conservatives do not expect a final ending to policy debates, where a cadre of enlightened expert bureaucrats will determine the perfect formula for running everyone’s lives. Conservatives expect that a dialog reflecting the rich diversity of human experience will always be necessary for determining the truth. [Open full post]
Supporters of minimum wage increases (used here as an example issue) don’t appear willing to discuss whether their policies would work, would achieve an increase in living standard for working families. Instead, they offer insults about heartlessness and declarations about what the working poor deserve. Their presumption, I guess, is that anybody so cold as to argue against giving disadvantaged families a little bit more must be offering specious arguments with the objective of funneling more money to The Rich and that, therefore, need not be acknowledged.
As it happens, I don’t disagree with the principle that our society is morally obligated to work toward a state of affairs in which anybody who’s willing to make an honest effort ought to be able to support a family. Indeed, to turn the tables, my observation is that those who would have the government dictate pay rates privilege sounding as if they want to help over actually doing some good. Consider a couple of comments to Marc’s recent post on the issue. Scott Bill Hirst:
We need as Republicans to address nutrition and housing needs.We just can’t oppose the Democrats agenda.A pro family GOP agenda must show that Republicans are indeed not the party of the rich.That the GOP has solutions for these human problems will enhance our party.
Rhody:
If the GOP is ever to overcome its stigma as party of the rich (which I don’t necessarily believe anymore), it has to show its support for working families with some concrete proposals and action, instead of just throwing in the phrase “working families” for cheap pop when it fights abortion or gay marriage.
The cynicism of that closing jab illustrates the point. Maybe those aren’t cheap pop issues; maybe they are, in fact, part of a concrete solution to the social ills that seem inevitably to repercuss among the poor and otherwise vulnerable. Commenter Ralph gets it right when he notes that Republicans’ “plan for real assistance to working families” takes “the form of more reasonable spending and lower taxes.” But it is, or ought to be, deeper than that.
The conservative solution also entails, as I’ve said, emphasis on more opportunity for education (in forms and environments that citizens feel best suit them, not that government feels best suit it) and policies that encourage and facilitate entrepreneurship. More broadly, it entails encouragement toward life choices that we know to be healthier and more conducive to a society in which everybody has a chance to thrive. And to reach those who’ve fallen beyond the reach of simple freedom and soft encouragement, conservatives suggest that government get out of the way of, and (when possible) assist, those who would conduct charitable enterprises, regardless of their degree of religious emphasis.
It’s easy to sound big-hearted. It’s also easy to score political points with people who think the world owes them something by giving them handouts instead of structure. But anybody who wants to do good in the world should have the minimal resolve and fortitude to discuss whether their plans will actually work, and whether we all need to make sacrifices — some manifesting as limits to our libertine freedoms — more fundamental than higher payroll bills for businesses.
Ramesh Ponnuru has been offering up clear-headed argumentation on the social conservative side of the stem-cell debate. Readers can follow the latest spat backwards from here, but I think this is a key paragraph:
[Open full post]President Clinton’s bioethics commission concluded that “the derivation of stem cells from embryos remaining following infertility treatments is justifiable only if no less morally problematic alternatives are available for advancing the research” (p. 53). More and more, it appears that such alternatives exist …
