“Lukewarm” support for the FMA is just fine, Mr. President. See my piece today on NRO for details.
[Open full post]A previous posting highlighted how the coarsening of our public debate in America has resulted from the use of extreme language that only seeks to intimidate, not to persuade.
Subsequently, there was the usual talk after the election about how the conservative winners should “moderate” their views, a code word suggesting that capitulating on key principles to liberals who lost the election was the only proper course of action. What a bunch of silly nonsense!
Politics, like business, is a competitive, contact sport. No one in their right mind believes that businesses become successful by not seeking a competitive advantage. Nor does anyone in their right mind believe that businesses become successful by appealing only to the most narrow customer base. Finally, no sensible person believes that corporate monopolies have any incentive to maintain the highest level of excellence that is a natural result of living in a competitive world.
Why should the competition for the best political principles and public policy initiatives be any different?
The losers in the 2004 election did not articulate a viable, competitive alternative vision for where America should go in the future. The best thing that could happen to our country right now would be for them to stop calling people names and start thinking outside the box. After doing that, they should come back into the public debate with innovative thinking that offers a truly competitive alternative to the winners of 2004.
Two current examples drive home what happens when there is a lack of competition in the political arena: Rhode Island politics and the spending habits of the U.S. Congress. The Rhode Island legislature is 85% Democrat, which means the minority party cannot, by itself, stop legislation. That means the majority party has no need to build a majority coalition outside its own ranks and no need to build a broader consensus. The citizens of Rhode Island are worse off because the lopsided majority means there is no competition for the best policy ideas and no way to stop officials from acting against the best interests of the citizens whom they were elected to serve. There would be the same problem if the state legislature was 85% controlled by Republicans; the pork-laden excessive spending by the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress reinforces that conclusion.
To sum it all up, I offer you a quote from William Voegeli, who wrote:
The inevitable post-election blather about unity fails to make the crucial distinction. A healthy democracy does not require blurring political differences. But it must find a way to express those differences forcefully without anathematizing people who hold different views.
ADDENDUM:
Michael Barone wrote an interesting commentary on March 14, 2005 in which he suggests that the Democrats are out of gas. If true, there is a vacuum waiting to be filled by some new, creative leaders.
A 230-word piece in the Providence Journal nicely captures the good that disputatious writers like Edward Achorn and (to a much lesser extent… for now) us here at Anchor Rising can do:
[RI House Speaker William] Murphy had said he would seek an advisory opinion from the state Supreme Court, but said today that he has changed his mind.
“While I still believe there are merits to the legal questions involved in this issue, I have reached this decision to expedite the implementation of separation of powers and to honor the will of the people,” he said.
Sen. Michael Lenihan, who plans to introduce legislation implementing the changes involved in separation of powers, said Murphy’s decision was a surprise, but should help move the process along.
We, the people of Rhode Island, have a long, long way to go, but at least we’ve earned this glimmer of an indication that things can change — that things are changing already.
[Open full post]I received the December 2004 issue of The Proposition, a publication of the Claremont Institute. As a graduate of Harvey Mudd College, one of the Claremont Colleges, who also satisfied the requirements for a political science major at Claremont McKenna College, I found one of the quotes in the issue to be an interesting perspective on a world that simply adores putting labels on most everything:
The idea that government should be limited in its powers and that we should be a moral, self-governing people was commonsense wisdom for America’s Founders, and it remains so for Americans who love freedom and constitutional government. The problem today is that many people simply don’t understand these principles. From liberal intellectual elites, to most of the media, to those government “experts” who exert increasing control over our lives, the most influential people and institutions are trying to turn America into something other than the free country it has always been.
In conservative politics these days there is much talk of “Neo-Conservatives” and “Paleo-Conservatives” and “Libertarians.” Because of our 25 years of hard work…there is talk now of what it means to be a “Claremont Conservative.” When asked what this means, we explain that a Claremont Conservative is someone who believes in the principles of the Declaration of Independence – that all men are created equal, and that government exists to defend our natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A Claremont Conservative agrees with Alexander Hamilton that citizens are capable of governing themselves through “reflection and choice,” and that we do not need bureaucratic experts telling us how to raise our children or run our businesses. A Claremont Conservative thinks the opinions of American citizens are as important, if not more, than the opinions of bureaucrats.
You can see the various projects of the Claremont Institute at their website and discover several of my personal favorites: “A User’s Guide to the Declaration of Independence” website, the “Rediscovering George Washington” website, and the “Vindicating the Founders” website.
America would benefit greatly if all citizens developed a deeper understanding of the principles on which the founding of our great nation was built. Happy reading!
ADDENDUM:
There is a wonderful posting at Power Line about the Claremont Institute and the Claremont Review of Books. I also heartily endorse Marc’s comments about the latter publication; it is a must read for anyone serious about politics.
Thanks to the weekly Political Scene column in the Providence Journal, we have learned that more legislative kin are being employed in our judiciary.
A relative choice
Another member of the family of longtime state Sen. John F. McBurney has landed a job in the state courts.
The senator’s nephew, Gregory M. McBurney, was given the $28,147 job that his son, John F. McBurney IV , had held, as an administrative aide in the jury commissioner’s office, until his promotion in November to a higher-paying spot — which had been held, until her promotion, by the daughter of former Senators Paul and Sandra Hanaway.
Got it?
Court spokeswoman Dyana Koelsch said Gregory McBurney, 23, was deemed the “most qualified” of 37 applicants by jury commissioner Eugene McMahon , because he had a bachelor’s degree in justice studies from Roger Williams University, and “was in the top 5 percent of his class, [the] National Honor Society and on the dean’s list. He also is highly experienced with computers and Windows applications.”
But Koelsch made a point of distancing Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank J. Williams from this and other recent court hires with close Senate connections.
In an e-mail to Political Scene, she wrote: “Please note that hires in lower courts DO NOT fall under the operational control of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, but statutorily are the sole function of the administration of the individual court.
Senator McBurney could not be reached for comment.
Gregory McBurney, who was identified by Koelsch as a nephew of the longtime Pawtucket senator, began his new job last week.
Doesn’t it seem that Ms. Koelsch has had to do a lot of explaining recently? Just last month questions concerning a similar spate of judicial jobs being filled by the relatives of former or current State Senators, including Senate Majority Leader Montalbano’s son, also prompted an explanation from Koelsch and others. Perhaps if the state courts, at all levels, simply stopped hiring the relatives of State Senators, regardless of their qualifications, such explanations would not be required. Given the reported pool of applicants for these jobs, 25 for a data entry position filled by Montalbano’s son and 37 for the position filled by McBurney, I think it safe to say that these sons of senators probably didn’t hold qualifications so unique that not hiring them would have been some sort of employment injustice. Unfair? Perhaps. But chalk it up as the price of being the kid of someone who is “serving” the citizens of Rhode Island.
Now, I must emphasize that highlighting these hirings is neither intended to besmirch the name of any involved nor to indict without evidence. However, I can accuse those involved of not heeding the explicit words of our State Constitution and thus contributing to the perception that Rhode Island is a corrupt state. The Rhode Island Constitution, Article 3, Section 7, states:
Ethical conduct. — The people of the state of Rhode Island believe that public officials and employees must adhere to the highest standards of ethical conduct, respect the public trust and the rights of all persons, be open, accountable and responsive, avoid the appearance of impropriety and not use their position for private gain or advantage. Such persons shall hold their positions during good behavior. [emphasis mine]
It was George Washington who believed that men followed their own interests above all else, that it was “interest, the only bonding cement,” that dictated men’s actions. Rightly or wrongly, it is in a Rhode Islanders nature to cast a cynical eye at politicians and their actions. Thus, we must ask, in whose interest is it to have relatives of legislators hired by the state judiciary?
[Open full post]Matthew Jerzyk of Providence has a particularly restrictive view of the appropriate content of public monuments:
We have hundreds of places in our city for monuments of the Ten Commandments; they are called churches. Our public spaces, however, should be reserved to memorialize our common faith in government. For example, if any city official wants to use my tax dollars to erect monuments, I would suggest that he or she start with a monument to the U.S. Constitution.
Our common faith in government? God forbid!
[Open full post]Today the nation honors the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and I think it proper to post some excerpts from King’s “I Have A Dream” speech. (It can be read in its entirety here). It is an inspirational piece in which King called upon our nation’s heritage, both political and religious, to justify racial progress and equality. Beyond the issue of racial equality, he also spoke to the higher ideals of a nation, ideals to which all Americans should aspire. Today, some forty years later we have made progress in the realm of racial equality. I only hope that Americans, black, white, brown or yellow, continue to revere the same heritage called on by Dr. King. He believed that the ideals of our nation are that which make it great. He was right.
Excerpts from Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech – Aug. 28, 1963
“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon of hope to millions of slaves, who had been seared in the flames of whithering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of
their captivity. But one hundered years later, the colored America is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the colored American is still sadly crippled by the manacle of segregation and the chains of discrimination.
One hundred years later, the colored American lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the colored American is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land So we have come here today to
dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we have come to our Nation’s Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our great republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every Anerican was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed to the inalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its colored people a bad check, a check that has come back marked “insufficient funds.”
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice. . .
I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day out in the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character. . .
With . . . faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphomy of brotherhood.
With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father’s died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvacious slopes of California.
But not only that, let freedom, ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi and every mountainside.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of
the old spiritual, ‘Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.'”
————————————-
Prepared by Gerald Murphy (The Cleveland Free-Net – aa300)
Distributed by the Cybercasting Services Division of the
National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN).
William Harris of Barrington proves that I’m not alone in seeing a bit of nitpicking in the ethics charges against Governor Carcieri:
A more cynical analysis might conclude that it is an example of a state body hounding the governor to accomplish partisan objectives.
While I support the goals of ethics reform, I believe it would be well for the Ethics Commission (and The Journal) to keep the dimensions of these alleged lapses in perspective. We are fortunate to have a governor who brings substantial integrity, intellect and energy to the task of getting things back on track in Rhode Island. This nitpicking is an unnecessary distraction.
Trying to learn about the Rhode Island political labyrinth, one continually finds whole areas in need of thorough research. People — myself included — just don’t have that kind of time. Perhaps if they persist in being unafraid to turn impressions into questions, reform can advance without each citizen’s having to become an expert on local government.
[Open full post]This story appeared almost two weeks ago, but I wanted to do a little research and give the matter some thought:
The School Committee requested clarification from the courts after Cheryl McCullough, who worked as a health teacher and guidance counselor at Tiverton High School for 27 years, applied for health insurance for Joyce Boivin, whom she married in their home state of Massachusetts nearly seven months ago.
Gay Rhode Island blogger Woneffe thinks that, if “the judge determines that the Tiverton School Committee should recognize this couple as married, it could work as an end-run around Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s insistence that no out-of-state same-sex couples can wed in Massachusetts.” Of course, in this era, any judicial precedent seems an open invitation to end-runs around any law, but I don’t see how Woneffe’s suggestion applies — specifically, from Massachusetts’ perspective.
Regarding the law to which he refers, all sides of the debate essentially agree that it only restricts couples whose marriages won’t be recognized in the state in which they live. In the case at hand, McCullough and Boivin aren’t residents of Rhode Island, but of Massachusetts, which obviously recognizes its own same-sex marriages.
Unfortunately, the length of time that I currently have to dig for laws and union agreements is insufficient to clarify a lawyerly ambiguity (which I’ve emphasized in the following), but UCLA attorney Lynette Labinger points to the pivotal point both in the judgment and the precedent that it would set:
“Nobody is disputing the validity of the marriage,” she said. “The only issue as far as we’re concerned is the agreement between the School Department and the union, which recognizes a marriage as long as it’s valid in the state it’s entered in.”
As I suggested, I wasn’t able to find the contract or the union’s specific language dealing with marriage. It may be that Labinger is laying the groundwork to expand a relatively benign clause in future cases. If the union’s agreement with the school department is that marital validity is determined according to state of residence, then a ruling in favor of this couple might not be a big deal. Discussion could and should be had over whether Rhode Islanders should extend benefits to out-of-state commuters that aren’t available to our fellow citizens, and it would surely be a concern that the allowance would, without a doubt, be cited as unfair and requiring the courts to change Rhode Island marriage law for its own citizens. Nonetheless, state of residence provides a fairly stark line.
More concerning is the possibility that Labinger did not misspeak — that “entered in” is the actual language of the contract. In that case, a ruling in favor of the couple could mean that teachers’ union negotiations essentially dictated Rhode Island law. A judge could easily find that — under the terms of the contract — school departments must recognize the same-sex marriages at least of couples who moved to Rhode Island from Massachusetts, and perhaps those who merely managed to procure a license somehow. Once that’s accomplished, it’s hard to believe that this state of affairs could long apply solely to teachers.
Of course, it may be a cynical route toward optimism to recall that a number of things apply only to teachers, in this state. For one thing, readers might find it more scandalous that the sixty-year-old McCullough retired in 1996, barely into her fifties!
Dan Yorke railed against this possibility on Wednesday:
Under pressure from law-enforcement officials who want to use the roadblocks again, Governor Carcieri is deciding whether to ask the state Supreme Court to reconsider a 1989 decision that sobriety checkpoints violate the state Constitution.
If Carcieri goes along with Attorney General Patrick Lynch, who wants him to put the question back before the court, it would open the possibility of a reversal that would allow checkpoints after a 15-year ban.
Rhode Island is one of just eleven states that currently have such bans in place. However, Yorke pointed out that we’re at least that unique in amount of corruption. And a general ability to pull over cars without any reason for suspicion whatsoever would be a power-abuser’s dream. It would also seem to create a ready source of revenue for an already corpulent governing system. Note the statistics in Tennessee:
Elder, Lynch, MADD and other proponents cite a massive, 12-month demonstration project in Tennessee in which nearly 145,000 vehicles were stopped at 882 checkpoints during 12 months in 1994 and 1995.
Only 773 drivers, less than 1 percent, were arrested on drunken-driving charges, hundreds were arrested on other charges and 7,351 were given other traffic citations.
Yes, it’s absolutely true that about 94% of people stopped pulled away with no penalty but lost time. That said, of the remaining 6%, around 91% were arrested or cited for violations that had absolutely nothing to do with the reason such stops are allowed. Those don’t sound like “police roadblocks to fight drunken driving” to me; they sound like general searches without probable cause that sometimes happen to catch drunk drivers.
Still, part of Yorke’s anger came from the apparent apathy of his audience. So, in the event that the ban looks likely to collapse, I propose a compromise: police may set up roadblocks, but they are completely forbidden from busting drivers or their passengers for any violation not having to do with alcohol. (With exceptions for those rare instances in which they come across a car with a corpse in the backseat.)
