“We live in a world where capitalism rules and competition.” So said West Warwick’s Timothy Williamson during yesterday’s House casino hearing. Of course, he was only talking about the small, local, mom-and-pop restaurants and entertainment establishments that would have to duke it out with a casino. Because, you see, Rep. Williamson’s love for the free-market and “competition” doesn’t extend to fielding competitive bids for a casino. Nope.
Instead, we should just take the unprecedented step of locking in one company (Harrah’s) by amending the state constitution such that they and only they can operate a casino in Rhode Island. Put another way, if passed, the amendment would make it unconstitutional for anyone else to operate a casino! Is that really what the constitution is for? Are we going to start writing special priveleges into the state constitution for mega-corporations?
North Kingstown Senator James Sheehan describes the utter folly of this course of action:
…this “Harrah’s Amendment” would violate centuries of constitutional principle by granting to a distinct class of people, and to a major corporation, an exclusive right above and beyond those enjoyed by average citizens. A constitution is intended to serve the best interest of all the people equally.
…the Harrah’s Amendment also would create a monopoly for Harrah’s on privately owned casinos. This means that the only license to own a private casino would automatically belong to Harrah’s rather than be subject to a competitive-bidding process that could net the state additional millions of dollars in revenues. And, once these terms are etched into the state constitution, and the world’s largest casino puts down roots in Rhode Island, it is doubtful that anyone, given Harrah’s resources and powerful lobbying ability, could alter this sweetheart deal.
Worse yet, if Harrah’s can run roughshod over our state constitution today, what will it do with this (arbitrary) power tomorrow? I submit that this is a recipe for corruption on a scale beyond that our small state has ever seen.
Article I, Section 2 of the Rhode Island Constitution states that “All free governments are instituted for the protection, safety, and happiness of the people. All laws, therefore, should be made for the good of the whole.”
Amending our state’s constitution to primarily benefit a private corporation is an affront to this high principle and hence the people of Rhode Island.
Hopefully enough voters realize this in November.
[Open full post]As I mentioned earlier, Beacon Board members George Nee and Henry Boeniger are trying to prevent Governor Carcieri from removing them from the board. As luck would have it for Nee and Boeniger, their appeal is being heard by pro-labor (according to Dan Yorke, though Andrew would characterize him as a bit more radical) Judge Stephen Fortunato. The ruling should come down soon. Stay tuned.
MORE: Dan Yorke was there and thinks that Judge Fortunato is going to rule in favor of Nee and Boeniger because the Governor’s lawyers “got boxed” by that of Nee and Boeniger and because of some statements made by the Judge.
Yorke quoted Fortunato, who said “we cannot ignore as judges what we know to be true as men” and that he point was clear that this case has a legal and political dimension. In short, it was is a legal mess.
According to Yorke, Judge Fortunato–who Yorke also said admitted he didn’t know much about the case (!)–seems inclined to support the idea of a hearing for Nee and Boeniger to better explain why they were being removed. However, he doesn’t think that the Governor can give them a fair hearing because he seems to believe that the Governor is already predisposed against Nee and Boeniger.
The Governor’s lawyers said that no such predisposition existed, but according to Yorke they missed their chance with that line of defense because they should have asserted that the Governor has the statutory rights as the Executive to remove them for cause: no hearing was necessary.
VERDICT: According to WPRO (here’s a link to the ProJo report), Judge Fortunato issued a 30 minute decision granting a temporary restraining order until a hearing was held in his court next Friday. He said the Governor was acting as the investigator, prosecuter and “judge” all rolled into one and that the Governor couldn’t be impartial. He suggested the go to arbitration. The hearing next week will be to determine whether to issue a permanent injuction.
Dan Yorke offered that Judge Fortunato is either way over his head on this one or acting too ideologically. Yorke also said that Fortunato’s characterization of the Governor’s action indicates that the Judge just didn’t get the conclusions of Beacon’s own internal audit. I would add that he doesn’t appear to understand the proper function of the executive in government. (This isn’t the first time I’ve taken issue with Judge Fortunato, incidentally). Yorke later pointed out that instead of relying on a Constitutional reading of the role of the Executive and the Beacon by-laws, the Judge basically fell back on his ideology.
FINAL UPDATE: This morning’s ProJo has more, especially with regard to Judge Fortunato’s thinking:
Among the issues raised at the hearing was the legal rights of Beacon’s board members considering the company’s unique status as a nonprofit mutual created by the legislature.
“The question is, what is the status of this company?” Fortunato said.
It appears, he said, that Beacon is “in a class by itself.”
“The governor, by statute and by the [company] bylaws, is involved in ultimate control of this company,” Fortunato said, “at least in his power to remove board members, at least for cause.”
Four of Beacon’s seven board members are gubernatorial appointments.
Fortunato said, however, that Governor Carcieri’s general charges that the board either engaged in misconduct or was negligent are not specific enough to justify removing Nee and Boeniger from the board.
“I’m not saying whether there has or has not been some dereliction of duty at Beacon,” Fortunato said, “but it must be determined by an impartial fact-finder, and the governor does not fit into that category.”
Our system “doesn’t allow someone to function as investigator, prosecutor and judge,” he continued, “and that’s what the governor has done here.”
Hodgkin, the governor’s executive counsel, said, “that assumes that an evidentiary hearing is required.” Hodgkin argued that the board members are not state employees and therefore are not entitled to an evidentiary hearing.
“The plaintiffs have no contractual rights with their position,” added Carlotti, the governor’s co-counsel.
Fortunato, however, asserted the two men’s right to a hearing with an impartial hearing officer, saying that even if the bylaws grant the governor the authority to remove board members, “he cannot do so arbitrarily or capriciously for any reason. He must do so for cause.”
Again, I would think that the results of the internal audit would be “cause” enough.
More proof that Beacon Mutual is a proxy for everything wrong in this state.
These are the findings of Retired General Barry McCaffrey with respect to America’s immediate objectives in Iraq. General McCaffrey toured Iraq between April 13 and April 20.
1. There has been substantial progress in building an effective Iraqi army, though problems with a lack of equipment and a lack of professionalism still need to be overcome…
The Iraqi Army is real, growing, and willing to fight. They now have lead action of a huge and rapidly expanding area and population. The battalion level formations are in many cases excellent – most are adequate. However, they are very badly equipped…[and] the corruption and lack of capability of the ministries will require several years of patient coaching and officer education in values as well as the required competencies.2. Progress towards building an Iraqi police force, which McCaffrey believes should be the top US priority, has been more elusive and needs better support…
The crux of the war hangs on our ability to create urban and rural local police with the ability to survive on the streets of this incredibly dangerous and lethal environment…3. General McCaffrey is a hair’s breadth towards the optimistic side with regards to the prospect of forming a permanent, unified, democratic Iraqi government…
The police are heavily infiltrated by both the [anti-Iraq forces] and the Shia militia. They are widely distrusted by the Sunni population. They are incapable of confronting local armed groups. They inherited a culture of inaction, passivity, human rights abuses, and deep corruption.
This will be a ten year project requiring patience, significant resources, and an international public face. This is a very, very tough challenge which is a prerequisite to the Iraqis winning the counter-insurgency struggle they will face in the coming decade. We absolutely can do this. But this police program is now inadequately resourced.
The incompetence and corruption of the interim Iraqi Administration has been significant. There is total lack of trust among the families, the tribes, and the sectarian factions created by the 35 years of despotism and isolation of the criminal Saddam regime. This is a traumatized society with a malignant political culture….4. “The foreign jihadist fighters have been defeated as a strategic and operational threat to the creation of an Iraqi government”….
However, in my view, the Iraqis are likely to successfully create a governing entity. The intelligence picture strongly portrays a population that wants a federal Iraq, wants a national Army, rejects the AIF as a political future for the nation, and is optimistic that their life can be better in the coming years….
It is likely that the Iraqis will pull together enough political muscle to get through the coming 30 day crisis to produce a cabinet to submit to the Parliament – as well as the four month deadline to consider constitutional amendments. The resulting government is likely to be weak and barely functional. It may stagger along and fail in 18 months. But it is very likely to prevent the self-destruction of Iraq. Our brilliant and effective U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad will be the essential ingredient to keeping Iraq together. If the U.S. loses his leadership in the coming year, this thing could implode.
The foreign fighters remain a serious tactical menace. However, they are a minor threat to the heavily armed and wary U.S. forces. They cannot successfully stop the Iraqi police and army recruitment. Their brutal attacks on the civil population are creating support for the emerging government.5. American policy towards detainees in Iraq now errs towards the side of caution…
Thanks to strong CENTCOM leadership and supervision at every level, our detainee policy has dramatically corrected the problems of the first year of the War on Terrorism. Detainee practices and policy in detention centers in both Iraq and Afghanistan that I have visited are firm, professional, humane, and well supervised. However, we may be in danger of over-correcting….Many of the AIF detainees routinely accuse U.S. soldiers of abuse under the silliest factual situations knowing it will trigger an automatic investigation.[Open full post]
Retired General Barry McCaffrey, now an Adjunct Professor of International Affairs at the United States Military Academy, has toured Iraq several times since 2003. General McCaffrey was an early critic of the administration’s war plan and is not known to be a member of the “Donald Rumsfeld Fan Club”. According to the Belmont Club blog…
General McCaffrey took his most recent tour of Iraq between April 13 and 20 of this year. Slate Magazine has printed the memorandum where he describes his findings. Anyone interested in American policy towards Iraq going forward should read the whole thing; General McCaffrey doesn’t waste a sentence in his writing. His key findings with respect to America’s level of effort in Iraq are as follows…
- MSNBC described McCaffrey as skeptic on the war as early as 2003.
- The New Republic called General McCaffrey Secretary Rumsfeld’s “most outspoken critic” in 2004
1. Neither American servicemen and servicewomen nor America’s armed forces as a whole in Iraq are broken. Here is the entirety of General McCaffrey’s first finding…
The morale, fighting effectiveness, and confidence of U.S. combat forces continue to be simply awe-inspiring. In every sensing session and interaction – I probed for weakness and found courage, belief in the mission, enormous confidence in their sergeants and company grade officers, an understanding of the larger mission, a commitment to creating an effective Iraqi Army and Police, unabashed patriotism, and a sense of humor. All of these soldiers, NCOs and young officers were volunteers for combat. Many were on their second combat tour – several were on the third or fourth combat tour. Many had re-enlisted to stay with their unit on its return to a second Iraq deployment. Many planned to re-enlist regardless of how long the war went on.2. Unfortunately, the rest of the government is not living up to the standard set by the armed forces (and, as McCaffrey later mentions, the CIA)…
Their comments to me were guileless, positive, and candidly expressed love for their fellow soldiers. They routinely encounter sniper fire, mortar and rocket attacks, and constantly face IED’s on movement. Their buddies have been killed and wounded. Several in these sessions had also been wounded. These are the toughest soldiers we have ever fielded. It was a real joy and an honor to see them first-hand.
The U.S. Inter-Agency Support for our strategy in Iraq is grossly inadequate. A handful of brilliant, courageous, and dedicated Foreign Service Officers have held together a large, constantly changing, marginally qualified, inadequately experienced U.S. mission. The U.S. influence on the Iraqi national and regional government has been extremely weak. U.S. consultants of the [Iraqi Reconstruction Management Office] do not live and work with their Iraqi counterparts, are frequently absent on leave or home consultations, are often in-country for short tours of 90 days to six months, and are frequently gapped with no transfer of institutional knowledge….The U.S. Departments actually fight over who will pay the $11.00 per day per diem on food. This bureaucratic nonsense is taking place in the context of a war costing the American people $7 billion a month – and a battalion of soldiers and Marines killed or wounded a month.3. Beyond inter-agency cooperation, the element most needed for facilitating success in Iraq is increased resources for reconstruction…
The State Department actually cannot direct assignment of their officers to serve in Iraq. State frequently cannot staff essential assignments such as the new [Provincial Reconstruction Teams] which have the potential to produce such huge impact in Iraq. The bottom line is that only the CIA and the U.S. Armed Forces are at war. This situation cries out for remedy.
CENTCOM and the U.S. Mission are running out of the most significant leverage we have in Iraq – economic reconstruction dollars. Having spent $18 billion – we now have $1.6 billion of new funding left in the pipeline. Iraq cannot sustain the requisite economic recovery without serious U.S. support. The Allies are not going to help. They will not fulfill their pledges. Most of their pledges are loans not grants.4. “There is a rapidly growing animosity in our deployed military forces toward the U.S. media”…
It would be misguided policy to fail to achieve our political objective after a $400 billion war because we refused to sustain the requirement to build a viable economic state. Unemployment is a bigger enemy then the AIF. It is my view that we will fail to achieve our political-military objectives in the coming 24 months if we do not continue economic support on the order of $5-10 billion per year. This is far, far less than the cost of fighting these people.
We need to bridge this gap. Armies do not fight wars – countries fight wars. We need to continue talking to the American people through the press. They will be objective in reporting facts if we facilitate their information gathering mission…[Open full post]
To lessen the lack of clarity in the immigration debate about what it means to be an American citizen, let’s go back to the first principles of the American Founding. The Claremont Institute has developed a web-based overview of the Declaration of Independence which includes these sub-sections:
A Guide to the Declaration of Independence
Issues at the time of the Founding
Hot topics
The Declaration of Independence
Founder’s library
You know how the pro-immigration folks often claim that illegals “do the work that Americans won’t do”? Well, I propose that we pick a day during which everybody who supports tougher immigration controls actually goes to work. I suspect participation would be in the millions.
[Open full post]I don’t have time to research the ins and outs of Rhode Island’s laws dealing with the quality of public education, but it seems to me that the following addition to the section on “intervention and support for failing schools,” introduced in the Senate (PDF) by Senators Ruggerio, Badeau, Ciccone, Lanzi, and Tassoni, would arguably forbid changes in an area that is especially likely to contribute to schools’ problems:
Nothing in this section shall be construed to alter or otherwise affect the rights, remedies, and procedures afforded school or school district employees under federal, state or local laws (including applicable regulations or court orders) or under the terms of collective bargaining agreements, memoranda of understanding, or other agreements between such employees and their employers.
So if union contracts are strangling a school’s budget and limiting the administration’s ability to handle teachers in such a way as to ensure dedicated and effective performance, that reality must be off the table should the board of regents find it necessary to take the school over?
[Open full post]The clarity of many public policy debates gets derailed when the sloppy and imprecise use of words reduces such debates to cliches instead of a substantive discussion of issues. Recent developments in the immigration debate are merely the latest example. The result has been a focus on the wrong issues. More importantly, by having no connection to the principles underlying the American Founding, the public discourse on immigration has not led to a deeper understanding of what it truly means to be an American citizen.
As an example, our friends on the Left at Rhode Island’s Future show an interesting, albeit flawed, understanding of both the real issues underlying the immigration debate and its connection to our American heritage in their posting entitled America Doesn’t Work without Immigrants:
Today, the police estimated that 15,000-20,000 Rhode Islanders marched to the RI State House for the human rights of the 12-15 million undocumented immigrants who live and work in the shadows and only seek a legal pathway to citizenship. Just as millions of Americans marched for the civil rights of African-Americans while others in America expressed their disgust at giving civil rights to ‘inferior’ African-Americans, the struggle for dignity and justice continues to ensure the great promise of freedom enshrined in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
CORE ISSUE #1: WHO IS BEHIND MANY RALLIES & DOES THEIR POLITICAL AGENDA ADVANCE THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM?
Is the immigration debate really about “only seeking a legal pathway to citizenship” by people who love America and, thus, long to be officially a part of her? Information in previous postings by Andrew (here, here) and Marc would certainly suggest not.
Extensive coverage of the May 1 illegal immigration marches by Michelle Malkin only raises further questions about who is behind many of the rallies:
A Day to Hate the Yanquis
The Pictures You Won’t See
Borders? What Borders?
The Day to Hate Republicans
L.A.’s Reconquista Reporter
[UPDATE: Here are some more links:
Where’s the Compassion?
Reconquista 101
Calling White People “Wetbacks?”
Aztlan brown beret picture, showing a map of the Southwest USA becoming part of Mexico
Following all the links in these postings will be an eye-opener]
So do postings at Malkin’s The Immigration Blog. The April 10 posting reminds us that the freedom to assemble does not exist in other countries who receive less criticism at these rallies than America. What does that say about the protestors’ political agenda?
Lovers of the late communist guerilla Che and socialist groups like A.N.S.W.E.R. are the antithesis of freedom-loving Americans and they appear to be commandeering the illegal alien protest movement in many parts of the country. These are not people who love America and the timeless principles of her Founding.
Others who promote the same immigration political agenda need to be careful about aligning themselves with (or being manipulated by) such non-democrats.
Byron York reminds us that labor unions are intimately involved because it aligns with their own economic self-interest of growing union membership – even if the immigration policies they end up supporting run counter to both the rule of law and America’s Founding principles:
UNITE HERE, which represents about 460,000 workers in the U.S. and Canada but hopes to unionize millions of newly arrived, low-paid, unskilled immigrant workers, played a major role in organizing the Washington rally, as well as other pro-illegal-immigration events across the country…
The chief organizer and spokesman of the Washington rally was a man named Jaime Contreras, who heads the local SEIU chapter…
SEIU and UNITE HERE, along with a few others like the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, are key sources of money, talent, and organization in the nationwide campaign to legalize illegal immigrants.
The Chamber of Commerce deserves some criticism, too, for its implicit support of illegal aliens as “cheap labor” in the workforce, although their involvement has been more passive than the unions.
Determining who is behind many of the rallies and identifying their political agenda is a real issue that needs more public scrutiny.
CORE ISSUE #2: THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION CAUSE IS NOT MORALLY EQUIVALENT TO MARTIN LUTHER KING JR’S NOBLE CRUSADE
It is an insult to the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. to suggest that this week’s protests have any moral basis comparable to King’s efforts on behalf of black Americans.
Mark Krikorian elaborates on why:
The question now is whether the government of the United States will give in to the mob…
…the use of direct action to intimidate lawmakers is largely alien to American experience. The civil-rights marches, which the illegal-alien movement frequently points to as its inspiration, were explicitly patriotic and constitutional affairs. The 1963 march on Washington didn’t feature foreign flags and racist, anti-American signs; on the contrary, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech pointed to the promise of “the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence,” written by “the architects of our Republic,” and his peroration was based on the lyrics of “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.”
The illegal-alien marches, starting almost two months ago in Chicago, have more in common with the anti-war marches of the 1960s in their hostility to the American constitutional order…
It is equally absurd to use meaningless cliches and label every political cause a “civil rights issue” – a behavior that can only result from a superficial understanding of the principles underlying the American Founding as well as King’s just crusade.
CORE ISSUE #3: ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION ADVOCATES SHOW DISDAIN FOR THE RULE OF LAW & SUCH DISDAIN PUTS OUR FREEDOM AT RISK
I would strongly suggest that Heather Mac Donald’s mid-April viewpoint expressed in Postmodern “Rights” en Los Estados Unidos: “I am here,” so deal with it more accurately describes what many of us consider to be a major – but unaddressed – issue in this immigration debate: Does the rule of law, a core principle of the American Founding, still matter in America?
With last month’s mass demonstrations of illegal aliens, the United States has entered the era of postmodern rights. The protesters looked like conventional rights demonstrators, with their raised fists, chants, and banners. But unlike political protesters of the past, the illegal-alien marchers invoked no legal basis for their claims. Their argument boils down to: “We are here, therefore we have a right to the immigration status we desire.” Like the postmodern signifier, this legal claim refers to nothing outside of itself; it is, in the jargon of deconstruction, a presence based on an absence.
The consequences of this novel argument are not insignificant: the demise of nation-states and of the rule of law. Remember: The only basis for the illegals’ demands is: “I am here.” The “I am here” argument could be made by anyone anywhere – a Moroccan sneaking into Sweden could make the same demand for legal status. In one stroke, the border-breaking lobby has nullified the entire edifice of American immigration law and with it, sovereignty itself. None of the distinctions in that law matter, the advocates say. The conditions for legal entry? Null and void. The democratically chosen priorities for who may enter the country and who not? Give me a break! In other words, the United States has no right to decide who may come across its borders and what legal status an alien may obtain upon arrival. Those decisions remain solely the prerogative of the alien himself. The border no longer exists.
The American legal tradition has until now assumed that it takes a congressional enactment or a judicial ruling to overturn a duly enacted law. With the ubiquitous chant, “No person is illegal,” first popularized by Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney, that tradition is over. Pace Cardinal Mahoney, under existing immigration law, a person may in fact be “illegal,” if he has broken into the country without permission or has overstayed his visa. Mahoney and the hordes who have taken up the “No person is illegal” slogan beg to differ. No law has the power to confer illegal status on an alien law-breaker, they say. Therefore, the existing laws are void, simply because the illegal aliens and their supporters do not like them, not because Congress has decided to withdraw them. This alleged power to overturn laws based on sheer presence is a remarkable new constitutional development.
Efforts to analogize the illegal-alien protests to the civil-rights movement are ludicrous. Blacks were demanding that state governments end the unlawful deprivation of rights that they already possessed under the Constitution, and for which the nation had fought a traumatic civil war. The illegals are claiming rights to which by law they have no right and for which they can make no legal argument whatsoever. If their movement succeeds, it will not be possible to deny any future rights claims in any sphere of life or activity…
[UPDATE: Rick Moran makes similar points here:
…a difference that the Open Borders crew refuses to acknowledge and, in fact, obfuscates in order to tag their opponents as heartless gorgons. It is the difference between those who endure the bureaucratic rigmarole and long waiting periods to legally enter this country and those who take the sometimes perilous but nevertheless easier way by sneaking across the border in defiance of the law.
In truth, this is the club used by the pro-illegal lobby to beat enforcement advocates over the head. By successfully blurring the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants, they can portray those who support a rational immigration policy as ideological soul mates of the “Know Nothing” anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic party of the early 1850’s…
Almost 1 million people enter this country as legal immigrants every year…There are very, very few enforcement advocates who begrudge these potential citizens their rights under the law…most pro-enforcement advocates actually support increased legal immigration.
But you would never know this if the only information you received was from the pro-illegal groups. They have successfully portrayed the anti-illegal lobby as anti-immigration – both legal and illegal – as well as proponents of a draconian “round-up” of illegals that would tear families apart and turn the United States into a police state…
On the other hand, how often do you read about International ANSWER and how they have expropriated the reform movement for their own nefarious ends? Those May Day protests were largely organized by the communists in ANSWER while being opposed by more mainstream immigration groups. In fact, few pro-reform websites bothered to inform their readers of this very salient point.
We will not have meaningful immigration reform until we all agree that the United States is a sovereign country with recognizable borders that must be defended. That defense includes shutting the door on people who would break the law to come here. It is such a basic concept that it is mystifying why the pro-illegal lobby deliberately ignores it. At times, they seem almost embarrassed by the fact that the United States has a right to determine who comes here and who doesn’t as well as determining its own requirements for citizenship.
In the end, this is what “sovereignty” is all about; the belief that being born an American is a privilege beyond words and that becoming an American should also be a privilege, earned by a legal immigrant’s hard work, obedience of the law, and desire to be a part of this grand experiment in self-government.
Anything less and you cheapen the idea of citizenship for everyone.
Michelle Malkin has more in Reconquista is real.]
CORE ISSUE #4: A TEACHING OPPORTUNITY ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN AMERICAN CITIZEN EXISTS BECAUSE THERE IS ANOTHER WAY TO LOOK AT THE IMMIGRATION ISSUE
There is another way to look at the immigration issues that is consistent with a love of liberty and a belief in self-government – both core American principles. Peter Schramm of the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs writes about this alternative view in describing his family’s immigration to the United States from Communist Hungary following the failed 1956 revolution in Born American, but in the Wrong Place:
[Open full post]…Now, with the revolution failing, came the final straw for my Dad…He came home and announced to my mother that that was it. He said he was going to leave the country…
“But where are we going?” [Peter Schramm] asked [his father].
“We are going to America,” my father said.
“Why America?” I prodded.
“Because, son. We were born Americans, but in the wrong place,” he replied.
My father said that as naturally as if I had asked him what was the color of the sky. It was so obvious to him why we should head for America. There was really no other option in his mind. What was obvious to him, unfortunately, took me nearly 20 years to learn. But then, I had to “un-learn” a lot of things along the way. How is it that this simple man who had none of the benefits or luxuries of freedom and so-called “education” understood this truth so deeply and so purely and expressed it so beautifully? It has something to do with the self-evidence, as Jefferson put it, of America’s principles. Of course, he hadn’t studied Jefferson or America’s Declaration of Independence, but he had come to know deep in his heart the meaning of tyranny. And he hungered for its opposite. The embodiment of those self-evident truths and of justice in America was an undeniable fact to souls suffering under oppression. And while a professor at Harvard might have scoffed at the idea of American justice in 1956 (or today, for that matter), my Dad would have scoffed at him. Such a person, Dad would say, had never suffered in a regime of true injustice. America represented to my Dad, as Lincoln put it, “the last, best hope of earth.”
I would like to be able to say that this made Dad a remarkable man for his time and his circumstance. For, in many ways, Dad truly is a wonder. But this is not one of them. He was not remarkable in this understanding. Everybody in Hungary, at least everybody who wasn’t a true believer in the Communists. thought that way…
Via the pastor, the same-sex marriage debate has made its way into my Roman Catholic church in Tiverton. How can a socially conservative parishioner do otherwise than respond?
[Open full post]Mayor Laffey has a new tax plan, according to the ProJo:
Laffey’s proposal would eliminate the tax on estates, interest, dividends, capital gains and Social Security benefits.
He would also lower the highest marginal tax rate — that paid by the highest wage earners — to 30 percent. The top federal marginal income tax rate was 39.6 percent when President Bush took office in 2001. Through a series of tax cuts, that top rate has now fallen to 35 percent.
. . . Taxpayers would have their income levied at either 10, 20 or 30 percent — depending on income levels — and would be given up to six types of deductions.
Each individual filer or family could claim up to $40,000 in deductions. The standard deduction per person would be $10,000. So a family of four, earning $40,000 would pay no federal income tax.
Others deductions include interest on a mortgage, retirement and education savings, health savings account contributions, charity and state and local taxes but could only be taken to a total write-off of $40,000.
Laffey’s theory is this: without a tax on dividends and interest, Americans are more likely to invest and that means growth in the economy.
Meanwhile, Senator Chafee’s people fall back on the same context-lacking charge that Mayor Laffey is a tax raiser:
The Chafee campaign attacked the proposal, saying that Laffey’s past record shows support for tax hikes.
“When Steve Laffey took over in Cranston, he said he would cut spending by $11 million, but he never got around to doing that,” Chafee campaign manager Ian Lang said in a statement. “Now he says he will cut federal spending. When Steve Laffey took over in Cranston, he said he was for tax increases, now he says he’s against them. The question is: do Rhode Islanders trust the record or the rhetoric?”
Whatever. Anyway, the Mayor’s plan seems good, though it may be short on details right now (according to the story, Mayor Laffey said, “It’s not all set in stone.”). However, his presentation seems to have been interesting:
Laffey’s 45-slide presentation was filled with quotes, images of Frankenstein, Porky Pig and a caricature of Chafee.
Th-th-th-th-th-that’s all folks!
[Open full post]
