Rhode Island Gubernatorial candidate Charles Fogarty is appearing today with Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, who is a leading advocate for seizing property by eminent domain in order to further economic development. Governor Vilsack believes that government needs broad powers to take property away from private owners in order to “create new jobs and strengthen their communities”.
In June, Governor Vilsack vetoed an eminent domain reform bill passed by the Iowa legislature in response to the Supreme Court�s Kelo v. New London ruling. The Governor believed that the bill’s mild restriction on the use of eminent domain in cases involving “blighted areas” to cases where 75% or more of a condemned area had been deemed blighted was too strong. (Before the law was passed, there was no restriction on how much non-blighted property could be swept up when blighted areas were targeted for seizure). The Iowa legislature overrode the veto, 90-8 in the House and 41-8 in the Senate.
Given the opportunity, Governor Vilsack almost certainly would have vetoed Lieutenant Governor Fogarty’s initial eminent domain reform proposal for Rhode Island, which prohibited using eminent domain to take “significantly residential” property.
However, Lieutenant Governor Fogarty’s strong version of eminent domain reform never reached the full Rhode Island Senate. During the committee process, the protection for residential property was removed, leaving a “reform” that still allows the government to force residents out of their homes if the government determines that new owners will pay more in taxes. Lieutenant Governor Fogarty, at least on his official web site, didn’t make any official statement regarding the differences in his bill as proposed versus as passed. Senator James Sheehan, the primary Senate sponsor of the bill, did tout passage of the watered down bill as a success.
This sequence of events, first claiming to be an advocate for eminent domain reform, but then allowing the legislature to gut his bill, and then making a major campaign appearance with a staunch opponent of eminent domain reform sums up the concerns voters have about Lieutenant Governor Fogarty. Whatever he may personally believe about an issue, he just doesn’t seem to be someone able to take a meaningful stand against the special interests and the groupthink within the Democratic Party.
Anchor Rising: What, in your opinion, is the purpose of the Lt. Governor? How well do you believe the current Lt. Governor has fulfilled this role?
Kerry King: The Lieutenant Governor’s Office is what you make out of it. Constitutionally, the lieutenant governor has advisory role responsibilities related to health care, small business development, and emergency management. Nothing in the state’s constitution limits the lieutenant governor to just those three roles, however.
I believe a lieutenant governor should and must get involved in all major issues and policies that touch the lives of Rhode Islanders in important ways.
Take public corruption, for example. It runs rampant in our state. People are tired of it. What do our representatives in the General Assembly do? They pass new financial disclosure laws that apply to everyone but themselves. That’s unacceptable, it’s time to get tough on corruption, and that’s why I as a candidate for lieutenant governor have proposed Rhode Island adopt the toughest anti-corruption laws in the nation, including punishing violators with mandatory prison sentences, forfeiture of pensions, and seizure of personal assets to repay ill-gotten gains. My comprehensive 20-point plan closes the door on corruption, scandal for personal gain.
Given my experience as a business leader, as lieutenant governor, I also intend to get much more involved in creating the best possible climate for business and job growth. To accomplish that, the lieutenant governor also most get involved in quality education and giving graduates the skills sought by business these days. Our children deserve good jobs, and they shouldn’t be forced to cross state lines to find them.
What I’m saying is that a truly effective lieutenant governor must be willing to take on all the important issues facing our state. (To learn more about my candidacy visit www.Vote4King.com.)
As for Lieutenant Governor Fogarty, he’s a well-intentioned fellow who has tried his best. Whether his best is good enough others can decide. As a Republican, I’m more conservative when it comes to state spending, for example, and wish Mr. Fogarty were, too. Yet, on the other hand, Mr. Fogarty along with the governor and others did a good job in fixing glaring emergency management shortcomings ignored by Centracchio when he headed the Office of Emergency Management. We now have a good hurricane preparedness plan and emergency management control center.
AR: What separates you from your primary opponent?
KK: Our qualifications to do the job. Rhode Island needs a competent leader with business and financial experience to fix the many problems facing us. Reggie just doesn’t fit the bill.
He offers Rhode Island his military skills. I offer economic development and job creation skills. When you ask voters which skills are most needed by Rhode Island right now, Reggie comes up short.
By his own admission, his strongest suit is name recognition. Name recognition has nothing to do whatsoever with your ability to get the job done, however. Voters can figure that out.
I’m not being mean. Time and time again, I’ve said Reggie is a decent and likeable person. But the fact of the matter is Reggie is just not qualified to be lieutenant governor.
He favors a better economy and better jobs. Yet, he has no economic development skills at all; I do. He also favors good affordable health care. Here again, he has no business experience in such matters. Finally, he touts his experience in emergency management. But under his leadership, Rhode Island’s Emergency Management Agency was not well run at all.
Rhode Island has immense problems. Public corruption must come to an end in our state, for example. But my opponent offers no solutions on this important issue, whereas I do in my 20-point plan to pass the nation’s toughest anti-public corruption laws.
The single greatest issue facing Rhode Island, of course, is over taxation. Our income and property taxes are among the nation’s highest. And the tax climate for business is very bad, hindering our ability to grow jobs that pay good wages. Here again, Rhode Islanders must ask themselves which candidate has the better background and skills to solve our tax problems. Reggie’s military experience is not the sort of experience that solves tax problems.
Reggie and I are very different candidates, with very different skills and abilities.
Anchor Rising recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Dan Harrop — Republican candidate for mayor of Providence — about his candidacy and matters of political philosophy arising from his unique personal standing.
Anchor Rising: On your Web site, you list several problems that you intend to remedy as mayor. Is there a specific image or realization that made you decide to run?
Dan Harrop: It’s become clear to me over the last year that our current mayor is a pretty good politician, but not so good an administrator. He has consistently failed to deliver. In the last election he promised to settle the contract with firemen within thirty days of taking office. So far, nothing. He continues to take credit for the accomplishments of the state government: the GTECH deal and Masonic Temple renovation were brokered by the governor’s Office, not city hall. Four years into his term, he is still developing an education plan, and every one of our middle schools has failed; every single middle school principal is being replaced. He has failed to even address the $610 million deficit in our city’s pension fund, or the $250 million needed in deferred maintenance in our schools (yet somehow, the good politician he is, he got the Journal to headline $4 million put into school repair just before the election, and to talk about a partial pension reform plan, which seems to have no backing with the city unions or city council). He has consistently fought with the city council — witness the ten Democrat primary elections. He has raised taxes nearly 15% in three years but, with his fellow Democrats, put off a further tax raise (which the city auditor estimates will be 11% next year) until next year, so they can tell constituents the taxes were not raised this year. He has created a Providence “after schools” activities program with a five million dollar five-year grant from private foundations, which serves only a few hundred kids and provides some nice patronage jobs for the administrators. And let’s not even get into Gordon Fox on the licensing board…
In contrast, I have proposed moving to a K–8 educational system, lifting the cap on charter schools, working with surrounding communities to develop regional schools (which is NOT regionalizing the school systems, but nevertheless regionalizing magnet schools for art, music, math and science, etc.), and working with state and local cities to regionalize transportation, teacher training, etc., all of which will save money (but reduce political patronage in the city, I understand). I have proposed stepping up the sale of unneeded city properties (do we really need to own half of Scituate, since recent advances in water purification don’t require as large watershed); this would include sale, rather than rehabilitation, of some existing school buildings, and using the funds received to build smaller community-based schools. I do not argue with national standards for the number of firemen and rescue personnel we need in the city. I believe this mayor has burned his bridges with other state and local politicians (witness his walking out on the governor and his getting opposition candidates to run for city council elections) and the city has to have a change.
So the difference: I have concrete proposals — a good starting point for discussion, compromise, and collaboration. Four years into his term, the mayor is still “planning.”
AR: How do you intend to break the “Rhode apathy” that perpetuates our state’s cycle of inadvisably elected officials?
DH: Personal example. No one person can change that attitude. Every politician of every stripe needs to emphasize that politics and elections is one of the ways we move ahead in this democracy. I have been, and will continued to be, involved in various community organizations throughout my adult life. I will continue to emphasize to those organizations and people involved the need for more people to pick a candidate, any candidate, and get behind them with hard work and money.
AR: Not to push you into the third rail of RI Republican politics, but: Chafee or Laffee?
DH: Chafee, although this has nothing to do with the mayor’s race.
AR: I’ve long thought that the next major political divide, once modern liberalism burns out or fades away, will be between libertarians and social conservatives. You appear to stand on that line. As Libertarian candidate for the General Assembly in 2002, you explained, “I cannot ascribe to the moralizing of the Republican Party.” Yet, you are very active in religious circles, including with the Knights of Columbus, on whose local page a significant requirement for membership is stated as living “up to the Commandments of God and the precepts of the [Catholic] Church.” How do you reconcile these two aspects of your beliefs?
DH: While, again, I don’t believe this has anything to do with the mayor’s race, I know your readers like a good debate, so here it is:
This is a great question, and debated hotly within my Catholic Church now. While this has really nothing to do with the mayor’s race, since topics like abortion, stem cells, and the like just do not reach the mayor’s desk, my beliefs on these topics are well known because of my past races (my opponents in the 2002 and 2004 General Assembly races made much of them), and yes, my active membership in both the K of C and the Ancient Order of Hibernians, as well as other Catholic religious groups.
There is a difference between being active, and moralizing, as a private citizen and doing so as a public official. Bishops of all faiths, for example, should moralize: that is their job. While this fact really rankles some in the pro-life crowd, in fact the Catholic Church has never actively campaigned that its position on abortion (that it is morally wrong in all circumstances including rape and incest) be turned into law. Even the bishops realize that this position would have zero chance of passing into law. The bishops have yet to take any action against Catholic politicians who support liberal abortion laws. The bishops strongly encourage Catholic politicians to support pro-life legislation, although none of this legislation really completely supports the Catholic position on abortion. I’ve actually been very vocal within Catholic circles that the Church should give up its tax credits and become much more active politically if it really wants to achieve its aims (see my answer to Question 2). That’s not likely to happen, but it’s a very libertarian idea. Public officials have a responsibility to lead by example: I believe the governor (and others) do this quite well, and I would follow the same path.
AR: As mayor, how would you address the social problems — such as drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, and single-parent households — that face any large city?
DH: There are in city (state, nation) multiple sources of power and influence, not just city hall. This means not just the churches (a huge force) but community centers, as an example here in Providence. Take the DaVinci Community Center on Charles Street, or any of the other community centers in the city, and the fine work they do. I believe the current administration in the city has failed to properly utilize these grass-roots level (street level, I suppose) centers to address these problems. I’m not afraid of having city hall work with other organizations and groups: if they can get the job done, great. Providence has tended to think of itself in isolation, with power coming from City Hall, a legacy of the Cianci years, but carried over into the Cicilline administration. Increasing the ability of these groups to intervene, through city support, moral and financial and structural, can go a long way to helping these problems.
There are a few gaps that need to be filled in Mark Arsenault‘s Republican Senate debate follow-up article appearing in today’s Projo. The article contrasts the positions of Senator Lincoln Chafee and Mayor Steve Laffey on the issues of taxes and spending.
1. Though Arsenault’s description of the PAYGO rule supported by Senator Chafee regarding deficits is correct in a technical sense,
Chafee is a believer in “pay as you go,” a philosophy from the 1990s that requires spending cuts or a new source of revenue to balance each tax cut or new spending program.…Arsenault doesn’t discuss PAYGO’s ultimate ramification. The key word in Arsenault’s description is “new”. The authors of PAYGO were certain to exempt the growth of “old” spending — spending on already existing entitlement programs that increases according to pre-determined formulas — from any limitation. Here’s how the exception appears in the text of the legislation…
(1) IN GENERAL — It shall not be in order in the Senate to consider any direct spending or revenue legislation that would increase the on-budget deficit or cause an on-budget deficit for any 1 of the 3 applicable time periods as measured in paragraphs (5) and (6)…Since Congress’ concurrent resolution on the budget is that the only place where spending on existing entitlements needs an annual approval, exempting the budget resolution from the PAYGO rule exempts entitlement growth from the PAYGO rule. And, as Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution explains, entitlement programs are where our country’s biggest spending problems are…
(4) EXCLUSION.–For purposes of this subsection, the terms “direct-spending legislation” and “revenue legislation” do not include —
(A) any concurrent resolution on the budget
In efforts to restore fiscal balance, it’s important to focus on entitlements for a number of reasons:Ultimately, the entitlements-exempt PAYGO rule favored by the Democrats and Senator Chafee becomes a way of forcing automatic tax-increases on the public. Here’s Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation explaining how…
- Entitlements are where the big dollars are.
- They are growing rapidly.
- Given the unsustainable deficits that this growth implies, there are only three possible options: restructure entitlements, eliminate most of the rest of government, or raise taxes to unprecedented levels.
While PAYGO allows current entitlement programs to grow on autopilot, it would likely lead to the expiration of the current tax cuts. Merely retaining the tax relief that Americans now enjoy would, under PAYGO, require 60 votes in the Senate and a waiver in the House. To avoid this supermajority requirement, lawmakers seeking to prevent tax increases would have to either: A) raise other taxes; or B) reduce mandatory spending by a larger amount than has ever been enacted. Option A is still a net tax increase (raising one tax to avoid raising another), and Option B is probably politically unrealistic.Senator Chafee tries to define his position on taxes and spending, which presumably includes PAYGO, as that of a traditional conservative Republican…
Chafee says that, while opposing the big tax cuts, he also voted against major spending items, such as the Medicare prescription drug benefit, which he says is too expensive. “I’m a very traditional conservative Republican on taxes and spending,” he said.But it is difficult to accept this statement as meaningful when the Senator supports a program that seeks to turn the Federal Government into an entitlement machine paid for through automatic yearly tax-increases.
2. Arsenault devotes only a single to line Mayor Laffey’s proposal for tax simplification…
He also proposes rewriting and simplifying the tax code,…presenting tax-simplification as if it were an add-on to the the Mayor’s fiscal proposals, when it is actually a starting point. Mayor Laffey argues that simplifiying the tax code will reduce the power of lobbyists and the associated corruption they can bring. He is far from alone in arguing this (Mickey Kaus provided one of the best explanations I can remember seeing, but I can’t locate the exact quote). The essential argument is that the influence of K-Street lobbyists in Washington is rooted in their knowledge of and their ability to manipulate an arcane tax code; simplify the tax-code, and corporate and industrial-sector lobbyists will become no more or less influential than Sierra Club-type lobbyists.
Unfortunately, since Arsenault relegates tax-simplification to a sidebar, we never learn Senator Chafee’s position on tax simplification, nor any arguments for or against the idea. Do politicians unwilling to pursue tax-simplification take that position because they believe that tax-simplification does not matter, because they believe a complex tax-code is an inherently good thing, or because they are simply unwilling to challenge the existing network of lobbyists on this issue? [Open full post]
For no particular reason, except a recrudescent weakness in the face of my urge to procrastinate this stormy evening, I checked in on the news that’s fit to print online from the Newport Daily News. Meandering into the columnists’ area, I received these words of anecdotal wisdom from staff writer Jim Gillis:
All along, Mel’s denied any anti-Semitism in his work. But a few belts of hard liquor are a strong truth serum. Some Mel buddy on the tube said something along the lines of, “Hey, he was drunk. He didn’t mean what he was saying.”
Actually, when people are hammered, they say what they really think. More than a few times, drunken locals have left me voice-mail messages suggesting that kids molested by priests probably deserved it or enticed the good father.
Some were so drunk they left their names.
“Actually,” huh? Actually, what people really think is more often revealed between the lines of well-polished prose. Gillis’s lone example of drunken honesty (besides the Catholic Gibson) bespeaks a storyline that unrelated examples might have scuttled, even as they strengthened his point. Surely a local opinion fixture such as he has received drunken voicemail from non-papists.
Despite my being able to sketch a grad student’s Ph.D. thesis on the link between drunkenness, truth, journalistic texts, and Ernest Hemmingway, I’m not so sure that Mr. Gillis has adequately considered the motivations of his voicemail correspondents. Were they being honest, or were they hurling ideas that they felt sure to shock their target? Or might it be more likely that they were expounding a truth at which they’d arrived once alcohol had drowned out half — arguably the higher — of the impulses by which we discover, understand, and express what we truly believe?
Since some of them left names, perhaps the journalist Gillis should seek them out and ask. But maybe he’d better knock a few back, first.
A comment from Norman to Andrew’s “Cross-Examination” post in the Laffey/Chafee series caught my eye:
… we can’t patch a quick fix on to our education problems. Chafee is right that we have to reinvest in the public schools that made America great. If we send money to private institutions we will further marginalize the poorest and most disadvantaged Americans. Steve Laffey should remember his roots and support the schools that got him out of the middle class and made him a millionaire.
The noteworthy aspect of such arguments is that they present education essentially as a two-dimensional issue: dimension one being public versus private, and (the more substantial) dimension two being money. Take a moment to actually imagine the differences between today’s public schools and the “schools that got” Mayor Laffey out of the middle class — the schools “that made America great” — and it is simply impossible to take the class-warfare rhetoric and the appeals for money seriously.
I’d be surprised, for one thing, to learn that 20th century teachers received anywhere near the employment packages that modern teachers boast. I’m not surprised, however, that mainstream discussion of the “education problem” so studiously avoids mention of the feminization, sterilization, secularization, and deramification that our education system has undergone since America became great.
(N.B. — From my admittedly limited experience as a private-school teacher, I’d suggest that Norman layer some qualifications on his insistence that funding private schools doesn’t benefit “the poorest and most disadvantaged Americans.” At least at the Catholic grade school in which I taught, both disadvantaged and poor children were often placed in classrooms that had no room for them, but in which room was made for the reason that they had nowhere else to go. Perhaps more importantly, the school is clearly understood among locals as a means of escaping the stain and sting of poverty that the often-dangerous halls of the public schools perpetuate.)
Has Sheldon Whitehouse already changed his position on the Iraq War? In his initial TV ads, he said he wanted troops out of Iraq “by the end of this year”. And as recently as June, Whitehouse told Projo columnist Charles Bakst that he supported a hard deadline on troop withdrawal from Iraq…
Whitehouse, who wants U.S. troops out by the end of 2006, says he’d have voted last week for Sen. John Kerry’s proposal to require withdrawal of all combat forces by next July, with redeployments beginning this year.Whitehouse would have voted for the Kerry amendment even though another Democratic-sponsored amendment was available (sponsored, in part, by Jack Reed) that called for the beginnings of a “phased redeployment”, but without providing a final deadline to our enemies that they could use in their planning.
Now, in his latest TV advertisement, Sheldon Whitehouse says that he supports “a responsible redeployment of our troops out of Iraq”, a position that is much more vague than the hard-deadline option he previously favored. It is legitimate to ask if the new emphasis is being driven by an actual change in position on Whitehouse’s part, or if it is simply an attempt to tell people what he thinks they want to hear, i.e. I agree with the well-respected Jack Reed, and not the incoherent John Kerry.
One last concern: In the new TV ad, Whitehouse talks about sending “a clear signal that we are really getting out” of Iraq. If he believes that “signals” are important to the conduct of foreign affairs, does he also accept the possibility that a negative signal is sent to the rest of the world when the US walks away from a potential ally? [Open full post]
From Steve Peoples of the Projo’s 7-to-7 blog…
The state Supreme Court ruled today that the governor cannot order the Secretary of State to place two nonbinding ballot questions on the November ballot, reversing part of a recent Superior Court ruling.The Projo provides a link to the text of the Supreme Court’s opinion. [Open full post]
The order upholds the General Assembly’s arguments, and effectively strips Governor Carcieri of his power to place nonbinding questions on the ballot.
“Now that the time has come for the Secretary [of State] to perform his statutorily prescribed duties, the governor no longer has the authority to compel the secretary to honor that previously issued order,” writes the court in its seven-page decision.
Because the section of Rhode Island general election ballots containing referenda is supposed to be sent to the printer today, two ballot related court cases are expected to be decided today. The first case, argued in Federal court, centers on whether the no-bid, favor-one-company provision of this year’s version of a Rhode Island casino amendment violates the Federal Constitution. Jim Baron summarizes the central legal issue in today’s Pawtucket Times…
As John Killoy, lawyer for the tribe, explained, if the tribe is considered a racial or ethnic group, the proposed amendment would be subject to the “strict scrutiny” standard of its constitutionality, a very high bar to clear. If the tribe is deemed a political entity, then the matter will be decided on a “rational basis” standard – did the state have a rational basis for framing the proposed amendment as it did?If the tribe is ruled to be a political entity, and not a racial or ethnic group, I hope the court tells people where they can go to make their application to join.
The other case, argued before the state Supreme Court, concerns the issue of the Governor’s power to place non-binding questions on the statewide ballot. The legislature tried to strip that power away from the Governor this session. Governor Carcieri sued to prevent the law from being applied retroactively, i.e. from being applied to questions that had been submitted before the legislature acted. In a decision that surprised everyone, Superior Court Judge Stephen Fortunato ruled that the Governor of Rhode Island has an inherent power to place non-binding questions on the statewide ballot, even in the absence of any specific authorizing legislation. Here’s the counter-argument from the General Assembly’s lawyer, as quoted by Elizabeth Gudrais in the Projo?
“Rhode Island operates by representative democracy, not participatory democracy,” John A. “Terry” MacFadyen wrote in the House and Senate brief.In other words, if the government doesn’t give its express permission for something and lay down a procedure, then that something is forbidden! I don’t think Mr. MacFadyen gets the principle of limited government. Or maybe his clients just pay him to eviscerate it. Leave it to a lawyer for the General Assembly to make Judge Fortunato’s unusually expansive view of inherent powers seem reasonable by comparison. [Open full post]
MacFadyen quoted James Madison, saying that when Rhode Island residents approved the state Constitution they chose a republican form of government “premised upon the fact that the people cannot speak in mass, and the right to choose a representative is every citizens’ portion of sovereign power.”
The Connecticut Senate primary between Democratic incumbent Joseph Lieberman and challenger Ned Lamont will be held tomorrow. Mr. Lamont is running as an anti-war candidate. At the heart of anti-war ideology is a belief that attacks against America from radical Islamic groups and governments have become an unchangeable feature of the international system. Anti-war politicians ask the American people to be “adult” and accept that enemies possessing both the means and the intention to attack the United States will always exist, so the American people must accept casualties arising from terrorism — even mass casualties — as a permanent facet of modern life.
I would direct you to the subsection of Mr. Lamont’s campaign website where he discusses these concepts, but I can’t because the War on Terror is not important enough to Mr. Lamont to warrant its own section on the site. In Mr. Lamont’s opinion, apparently, there is no War on Terror to discuss. He is thus anti-war in a literal sense — he rejects the idea that attacks on the American mainland, by themselves, constitute acts of war. He doesn’t look on potential foreign attackers as enemies to be defeated before they do grave harm, but as problems to be managed after an attack. (He does have a section on the War in Iraq, but I’m assuming he accepts standard Democratic boilerplate about there being “no connection” between the War on Terror and the war in Iraq).
Ultimately then, Mr. Lamont endorses a program of 1) dismissing the War on Terror as not central to American foreign policy, 2) maximum cut-and-run from Iraq and 3) appeasement of violent elements in the Middle East (see Martin Peretz in today’s OpinionJournal for more details on this subject). Mr. Lamont’s position — that the War that started on September 11 is over and the only things left to do now are walk away from Iraq, wait for future attacks on the US to occur, and then respond if we first get permission — is increasingly becoming the position of the Democrat establishment. But if Mr. Lamont believes that his views on this subject reflect those of the American people, then why doesn’t he give a position on the war on his campaign site?
