It adds up, of course, but when government is trillions of dollars in debt, a hundred million here and there seems hardly to count. That may be part of the reason that news of grants like the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Hiring Program doesn’t typically question where the money will come from. The tone is always one of opportunity and community building:
Five Rhode Island communities were awarded funding totaling $750,000.
“We are committed to providing police departments with the resources needed to help ensure community safety and build community trust,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said. “The grants we are announcing today will enable law enforcement agencies across the country to hire more than 1,000 additional officers to support vitally important community oriented policing programs.”
So, we learn that North Providence, Richmond, Scituate, and Smithfield will each receive $125,000 to hire one officer each, while Tiverton will receive $250,000 for two. We get a little bit of a sense of what initiatives will be the focus of new hires. Half of all recipients will work on “building legitimacy and trust” in their communities. One third will try to address “high rates of gun violence” or “other areas of violence.” The remainder will turn their attention either to responding to “persons in crisis” or (Warning! Warning!) “combating hate and domestic extremism.”
Conspicuously, the less PR-friendly aspects of the awards are not mentioned. The Department of Justice will pay up to 75% of the cost for new hires for three years, for a maximum total of $125,000 each. The town has to pay the rest. In Tiverton, the cost of an entry-level officer is around $75,000, for a three-year total of roughly $225,000. That means the cost of these awards to the communities will be something like $100,000 over three years, except for Tiverton, which will have to come up with $200,000 it otherwise wouldn’t have spent.
When the three years are up, the municipalities have to cover at least another year, bringing the cost of the grant closer to $200,000 per officer hired. However, the likelihood that a town would actually decide to reduce the force because the grant is over is next to zero. The real cost is therefore an additional employee (plus pension) forever.
Maybe it’s still worth doing, and maybe it’s not, but shouldn’t these details be part of the public discussion? And should the feds really be using tax dollars lent to us by future generations to manipulate current taxpayers in local governments’ hiring decisions?
Featured image by Bermix Studio on Unsplash.
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“Am I the only one who quit singing along,
Every time they play a Springsteen song.”
Hat tip Lara Logan.
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Something about the way Ted Nesi puts this question about possible hospital mergers in Rhode Island strikes me as odd:
Will Rhode Island and its residents be better off with roughly 80% of hospital services controlled by a single powerful entity?
One wonders how many of the people who fear that “an institution so large would be effectively uncontrollable” are just fine with a single powerful entity having nearly 100% control over healthcare, provided we call it a government?
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Competition is stiff for the most revealingly shocking social media commentary from public figures in Rhode Island and its surrounding environs. Travis Andersen captured a bunch for the Boston Globe, including this frontrunner from U.S. Democrat Congressman David Cicilline:
Bringing a gun to a peaceful protest and chasing people down is not self defense. This acquittal is a stain on our justice system.
This is a plain lie, and the congressman must know it, meaning it’s simple, disgusting demagoguery meant to stoke resentment and division, which is likely to lead to violence.
Also in the running has to be this straight-up racism from Democrat state senator Tiara Mack:
My standards for white people was always high AND it just got higher. If you aren’t actively confronting how you uphold white supremacist systems I don’t have time for you.
Of particular importance, here, is how revealing the statement is not only of Mack (from whom such racism is to be expected), but of Rhode Island’s entire political and media establishment. Nobody in the mainstream will challenge her on this… or even politely ask if it might not be exactly appropriate for an elected official to be so obviously racist. They’re either scared, in agreement, or too interested in maintaining political hegemony.
The most-shocking tweet, however, is probably the one shown in the featured image of this post. It’s from the non-profit organization Rhode Island Kids Count:
When we talk about structural racism & white privilege— here’s an example below.
How often have *assumptions* about Black boys and Black men resulted in death?—and yet, #KyleRittenhouse was not guilty on all charges.
This is what white supremacy looks like. This is not justice.
The “example” is a graphic created by the progressive propaganda organization Path to Progress drawing a direct comparison between the heart-breaking shooting of Tamir Rice, seven years ago, and Kyle Rittenhouse. The two cases have almost nothing in common, except that they involved boys and shootings, and putting them side-by-side serves no purpose but to stir people up and push them toward action, which the past decade proves often turns violent.
Plenty of more-relevant comparisons could be made. In April, a Maryland police officer shot 16-year-old Peyton Ham, a white boy, who was carrying the same sort of gun Tamir Rice had. The CNN story at that link leads to similar stories involving whites, blacks, Hispanics, boys, girls. Children. According to a 2016 Washington Post report, during two years, 86 people were “shot while carrying fake guns” in America. Most were male. More than half were white. Four were under 18. It’s horrible, but in a country of over 300 million people, it happens.
What’s particularly shocking about the RI Kids Count tweet, though, isn’t the comparison. It’s that an organization like RI Kids Count would consider this appropriate use of its official Twitter account. It’s a respected organization whose mission is to provide reliable information about children in the Ocean State to help citizens and officials make better decisions on their behalf… at least that was its mission as recently as April:
The mission of Rhode Island KIDS COUNT is to improve the health, safety, education, economic well-being, and development of Rhode Island’s children.
According to the organization’s own most-recent factbook, it’s still the case that 71% of Rhode Island’s children are white (with some portion of that number are Hispanic). Yet, at some point since April, RI Kids Count changed its mission statement as follows:
The mission of Rhode Island KIDS COUNT is to improve the health, safety, education, economic well-being, and development of Rhode Island’s children with a commitment to equity and the elimination of unacceptable disparities by race, ethnicity, disability, zip code, immigration status, neighborhood, and income.
Rhode Island KIDS COUNT engages in information-based advocacy to achieve equitable public policies and programs for the improvement of children’s lives.
Apparently, the “anti-racism” wave means organizations can no longer simply advocate for children as children. Missions have to be changed to advance the radical cause of equity, even if that means spreading dishonest propaganda to stoke division, which can be relied upon to harm children most, particularly disadvantaged children of all races.
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As winter nears here in the Northeast, it sure is nice to know that part of the just-passed-the-House “Build Back Better” plan is a tax increase on natural gas. As Eric Boehm of Reason reports:
Buried inside the “Build Back Better” plan that cleared the House of Representatives on Friday morning is a new tax on natural gas production that will likely translate into higher heating bills for American households.
The new tax is aimed at curbing methane emissions and will apply fees to companies that produce, process, transmit or store oil and natural gas starting in 2023. The specific fees will depend on where the natural gas is produced and will vary depending on how much methane is released into the atmosphere during the process. Overall, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the new “methane fee” will generate about $8 billion over the next 10 years.
The natural gas industry says that money will end up coming directly out of consumers’ wallets.
This must have been the brainchild of some west coast environmentalist who doesn’t have to worry about cold winters. Or not.
The proposed methane fee is based on legislation introduced earlier this year by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D–R.I.). In a statement when the bill was introduced, Whitehouse said the new fees would slow climate change and improve air quality.
And make his own constituents pay more.
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In the course of my inquiries about the Equity Institute’s activities in the Portsmouth school system, I received this statement from Superintendent Thomas Kenworthy:
The Portsmouth School Department contracted with the Equity Institute last spring to conduct a third-party analysis that we can use to inform our work around equity. We have a Strategic Plan goal connected to ensuring equitable opportunities for all students and were at the point last year where we felt we needed this type of third-party review to inform our work. The report we receive will be reviewed and we as a district will determine what steps we take from there. There are very few organizations that could do this analysis and meet all of the guidelines we would insist on around transparency and a vetted methodology. The Equity Institute came highly recommended by several local districts that had worked with them. We have a signed agreement, reviewed and approved by our school department attorney, that safeguards student privacy and ensures that all state and federal guidelines applicable to conducting student surveys will be followed. Student survey questions were reviewed over the course of three community forum sessions. The Equity Institute took that community feedback into account before finalizing the questions being used for our Portsmouth analysis. Parents have been given the opportunity to both request to preview student survey questions and opt their child out of taking the survey.
I had asked whether (1) he thought it appropriate that the public could not review the surveys, whether (2) the aggressive secrecy of the Equity Institute concerned him, and whether (3) he thought bringing up notions of “gender non-conformance” with children as young as eight is appropriate. His answer, shown above, is essentially, “We want this as a school department and followed all the appropriate processes.”
Kenworthy’s response provides an important reminder for those of us who find this Balkanizing, racist trend in elementary and secondary schools disturbing. They really do think they’re doing important work and that we only object because of our unsavory biases. We will get no concessions, and they aren’t going to stop.
If you want it to stop, you are going to have to remove them from office, from the bottom to the top. That won’t be easy, and many families would be better off putting their money where their beliefs are and exiting the system.
The Portsmouth school system is down 192 students since the 2018-2019 school year. That’s 8%. Since its enrollment peak within the window of the state’s online data, during the 2003-2004 school year, enrollment is down 27% — more than one-quarter of all students, gone.
The district’s budget has not gone down, however. The earliest audit available on the town’s website is for the 2007-2008 school year, when the total school unrestricted expenditures totaled $33,451,958 (pg. 54). The most recent available audit is for 2019-2020, and it reports that numbers as $39,580,635. This 18% increase in spending combines with the decrease in enrollment over the same period for an increase in per-student spending of 44%! Would anybody claim this has corresponded with an increase in student results?
These are not the public schools in which we were educated. They’re not even the public schools they were five or 10 years ago. For the sake of our communities, we have to save them, but families should look to their own children first.
Featured image by Vahid Moeini Jazani on Unsplash.
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In keeping with my earlier post about being open to contextual details that may change how we ought to feel about events, note a bit of information from former New York Times reporter Nellie Bowles (about halfway down this page), concerning an article she wrote about the devastation to small businesses in Kenosha, which the paper’s editors deliberately held until after the election:
Eventually the election passed. Biden was in the White House. And my Kenosha story ran. Whatever the reason for holding the piece, covering the suffering after the riots was not a priority. The reality that brought Kyle Rittenhouse into the streets was one we reporters were meant to ignore. The old man who tried to put out a blaze at a Kenosha store had his jaw broken. The top editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer had to resign in June 2020 amid staff outcry for publishing a piece with the headline, “Buildings Matter, Too.”
The elites are crafting a narrative to keep themselves in power.
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We’re in divided times and are being pressed to take sides and choose narratives. We’re vulnerable, because such things are very much in our nature, and it can be difficult to have a healthy skepticism of people we perceive as our friends and allies, or to give the benefit of the doubt to the Others.
Fully understanding that this is conveniently in line with my own biases, I would ask my fellow Rhode Islanders, here behind the Blue Curtain, to consider various very significant narratives that have proven false, appear to be proving false, and may surprise them by proving false in the future.
Maybe the most prominent, at the moment, has to do with Kyle Rittenhouse. Here’s Bari Weiss on that subject:
Here is what I thought was true about Kyle Rittenhouse during the last days of August 2020 based on mainstream media accounts: The 17-year-old was a racist vigilante. I thought he drove across state lines, to Kenosha, Wisc., with an illegally acquired semi-automatic rifle to a town to which he had no connection. I thought he went there because he knew there were Black Lives Matter protests and he wanted to start a fight. And I thought that by the end of the evening of August 25, 2020, he had done just that, killing two peaceful protestors and injuring a third.
It turns out that account was mostly wrong.
She goes on to explain.
Another big one is the Steele dossier, which gave the media and Democrats pretense to spend years attacking and undermining the President of the United States. Here’s Marshall Cohen, on CNN, of all places:
Trump swiftly rejected Steele’s claims and said a “group of opponents … put that crap together.” Nearly five years later, it’s clearer than ever that he wasn’t too far off about the origins of the dossier.
Two special counsel investigations, multiple congressional inquiries, civil lawsuits in the US and the United Kingdom, and an internal Justice Department review have now fully unspooled the behind-the-scenes role that some Democrats played in this saga. They paid for the research, funneled information to Steele’s sources, and then urged the FBI to investigate Trump’s connections to Russia.
If you’re still with me, maybe you’re willing to acknowledge that these are examples of misunderstanding and/or trickery. Will you consider that some other matters of similar narrative importance may yet join this growing list?
For instance, even I was a little shaken to read Julie Kelly’s article in American Greatness giving details about the hottest of hotspots at the Capitol Building on January 6:
These assaults occurred about 10 minutes before the lifeless body of Rosanne Boyland was seen lying on the ground, just outside the tunnel. Most of the violent brawls between police and protesters take place near this tunnel in response to what McBride calls “overwhelming police brutality and misconduct.”
Body-worn camera footage released by the courts and seen here show Boyland on her side not moving as her friend, Justin Winchell, begged for help. “She’s gonna die!” Winchell tries to scream while holding on to Boyland. He turns to the crowd. “I need somebody, anybody,” he pleads. “She’s dead! She’s dead!”
Kelly describes the police actions blow by blow and reports that the Boyland’s body disappeared behind police lines and was never seen again.
On January 12, I watched hours of video and argued that there wasn’t a single story of January 6. From most angles, it certainly looked more like a large crowd with a relatively small number of people causing trouble. The entrance around the tunnel that Kelly describes was the major exception. At the time, the mainstream media, like the New York Times, insisted that Boyland died “after being crushed by a mob,” and horrifying footage showed an officer being dragged down the stairs.
What if even that wasn’t the full story? Unequivocally, we can affirm that the civilians should not have assaulted the officers and should be prosecuted for doing so, but a vast field of possibilities exists between acknowledging that they were not innocents and treating the day as an organized insurgency. After all, we pay and deploy public safety personnel to be the professionals who manage the behavior of ordinary citizens in dangerous situations, so we should be open to the possibility that they bear some responsibility for failing to maintain order and perhaps even instigating a reaction.
It’s important for us to know what happened and why, and to do that, we have to be prepared to adjust our narrative.
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I’m not sure this is the way to a solution:
A bipartisan collective of House lawmakers introduced legislation on Nov. 9 that would require Big Tech providers such as Facebook and Google to allow users to opt-out of content selected by algorithms, providing additional transparency regarding content.
The measure, dubbed the Filter Bubble Transparency Act in the House (pdf), would make platforms with more than 1 million users and $50 million in annual revenue notify users of algorithm usage and allow users to determine settings.
Politicians shouldn’t be coming up with solutions and tweaking the services of private companies. Again, the emphasis of government should be on safeguarding rights, not on regulating an industry to conform with lawmakers’ sense of fairness.
Rather than require businesses to provide features — which the tech folks will find ways around faster than government can regulate them, and which will create barriers to the real solution, which is competition — government should emphasize prevention of fraud. In this case, that would probably mean allowing users to access information about how an algorithm is affecting them. Then let consumers, providers, and the courts sort it out.
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Look, nobody should be surprised that Governor Dan McKee’s administration has apparently agreed to give members of state employees’ biggest labor union $3,000 for full vaccination status. That’s how this works. If you’re in the private sector, government gives you the choice of being vaccinated or losing your job. If you’re in the public sector, you get a bonus for doing things most people were going to do anyway.
Biden and Congressional Democrats poured money into state and local governments, and so people who have every advantage in government will… take advantage.
This is just the same scam they are continually running.
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