Especially without being in that state, it’d be difficult to guess the political dynamics of a probable proposal in the Connecticut legislature:
On Election Day, voters in 11 states approved constitutional bans on gay marriage. But when the Connecticut legislature meets in January, the state may buck the national trend.
Democrats hold strong majorities in both houses of the legislature. The party’s leaders favor some sort of civil unions which would grant same-sex couples many of the same rights as married heterosexual couples.
Rep. Robert Godfrey, D-Danbury, and other lawmakers say it is almost inevitable that a gay union measure will become law in the 2005 session of General Assembly. …
… The judicial branch is not forcing the hand of Connecticut’s legislature.
At least not yet.
However, earlier this year, seven same-sex couples filed suit to force Connecticut to legalize gay marriage. Some preliminary hearings have been held on the case, which is pending in New Haven Superior Court. The case is expected to take at least two years to decide; most observers expect it to end up before the state Supreme Court.
From now until one side or the other wins at the national level (or both sides admit stalemate, which isn’t likely), every governing body in the country is going to face a variety of concerns: the separate powers of the branches, events in other states, struggles at the federal level, and (oh yeah) constituents’ wishes. Gay rights activists are going to continue with their through-the-courtroom strategy. The mainstream media everywhere, but particularly in the Northeast, is going to accelerate its advocacy. Supporters of traditional marriage will continue to argue that the issue is going to change the Constitution one way or another.
Various states will respond to the forces in different ways, and the federal debate will be shaped accordingly. We can only wait and see what happens, but I’d guess we’ll be seeing it happen in Rhode Island relatively soon.
PROEM:
Since this is my first post on same-sex marriage on this blog, it is probably relevant to note that I’ve already written extensively on the topic.
Barbara Gordon of Pawtucket is “distressed” at various efforts to write into the law explicitly what, until recently, everybody thought to be there by definition:
I believe it is immoral to discriminate against any minority group solely because they differ from the norm and make some of us uncomfortable. I believe it is un-American to deny civil rights to certain citizens not because of any crime, but just because of who they are and whom they love. I cherish the U.S. Constitution and am concerned when those who would have their religious beliefs dictate the laws that affect us all seek to undermine the constitutional separation of church and state. …
Whom another person wishes to love, comfort, and honor threatens none of us; codifying discrimination in anti-gay marriage laws or amendments harms us all.
If the law — as it already exists — is clarified, you see, then those who wish to change it will find it more difficult to convince a judge to declare that marriage is something other than what the language means it is. I’ve come to think that this is less a conscious stratagem than a flaw in reasoning.
Mrs. Gordon might be edified to learn that I agree that civil rights oughtn’t be denied “just because” of whom somebody loves, and that I’m also wary of people who rely entirely on irrational beliefs to dictate laws. I suspect she’ll be a bit less enthusiastic about my suggestion that her irrational beliefs are a case in point.
I’ve given Rhode Island’s marriage laws a pretty thorough look, and I see not a word about “love.” In fact, the words that Gordon uses to describe marriage are conspicuously religious-sounding, and while civil officiants may use them as boilerplate, they aren’t required to do so by law. This isn’t just a cute debater’s point, because it underlies the two critical concepts in her argument: “civil rights” and “discrimination.”
At Gordon’s urging, I found and read Charles Bakst’s November 11 column on the topic. Therein, Providence Mayor David Cicilline takes the same approach as Mrs. Gordon (and most other supporters of same-sex marriage). Petitio principii, he embeds his conclusions in his assumptions:
You cannot on the one hand say ‘I respect people’ and ‘I agree with tolerance’ and at the same time argue for discriminating against the same group of people. And, frankly, gays and lesbians aren’t asking to be ‘tolerated.’ We’re asking to be valued and we’re asking for the same rights and responsibilities that everyone else has. You ‘tolerate’ an annoying noise in a car.
But is the equivalence of same-sex marriage and opposite-sex marriage a civil right? Is refusing to recognize same-sex marriages invidious discrimination? It is only so if, as the innovation’s proponents contend, society’s interest in recognizing marriages in the first place has nothing to do with the spouses’ being of opposite sex. For “discrimination” to deserve the revulsion that the word too often sparks even in its most neutral sense, two groups must be similarly situated. It is not invidious discrimination, for example, for a carpenter to be denied a tax break intended for teaching supplies. That unjust discrimination is so often assumed in the opening salvos of the same-sex marriage discussion ought to be cause for concern.
To declare so haughtily that traditional marriage laws violate the rights of homosexuals, one must believe that there are no differences between men and women that are relevant to marriage. If marriage is not centrally about gender, then it is not centrally about the most obvious thing that men and women can only do together: create children. And if marriage is not about procreation, then there’s no reason it has to be about sex. And if it isn’t about sex, then intimate love — as opposed to other forms of mutual interest or affection — needn’t be definitive. Marriage, in other words, becomes a partnership in the most bland, contractual sense of that word.
That outcome has proven all but inconceivable to many who support same-sex marriage (at least those whom we trust about their intentions). They take for granted that the emotional culture of marriage is written in firm ground that they imagine at the core of our social being. As they, themselves, prove that ground is not as firm as it might seem. Even if it were, however, we would still have to keep in mind that the law does not require married couples to act married, or even to proclaim that they are. Any stigma associated with same-sex marriages of convenience would have no readily visible identification on which to accrue and would therefore quickly slip away.
I can only muse that those who are most willing to force radical changes on our culture are also the most naive about the ways in which the culture can change. And I can only be distressed that too many seem to believe that same-sex marriage would represent no change at all.
Reason 1: Why Pardoning Taricani is the Right Thing.
Reason 2: Why the Right Thing is Consistent with the President’s Agenda.
Institutionally, American democracy has forgotten something — all three branches of government are charged with defending the rights of the individual. Somewhere that idea was lost, replaced by the idea that the court system alone was charged with protecting individual liberty, and the other branches of government, and the general population, were expected to obey judges’ orders without question (unless another judge overturned an order.)
That flaw, of course, is that the people who make up the judiciary branch are just as human and fallible as the people who make up the other branches. They can make mistakes and overstep their authority — for what they think are the right reasons — just like the other branches can. And that is why there are checks built into the system that limit the power of judges.
In the Jim Taricani Case, President Bush has an opportunity to step forward and remind the nation of the fact that the court system is not more equal than others when it comes to protecting individual freedom; the executive is as responsible for protecting rights as are the courts. The President has the authority — and the duty — to reverse actions of the judicial branch that would improperly deny an individual’s freedom.
I attended a meeting last night at my local elementary school in which data was presented detailing where the school stood with regards to standardized testing for school accountability as mandated by the State and Federal governments. While I may find the specific numbers for my children’s school more germane, I realize that there is more general interest in the statewide numbers. These have yet to be publicized, so I guess you could call this a bit of a scoop. (For a more comprehensive breakdown, please go to the Ocean State Blogger where some of the analysis below has been repeated).
Under the No Child Left Behind Act, all students must meet the achievement standards by 2014. The test results I have are only for 4th graders statewide and cover Math and English Language Arts (ELA). There is an established standard that all students are supposed to meet. The levels of achievement are measured against that standard for each student and then the percentage of students meeting that standard are calculated. In total, 89% achieved the overall standard for READING, 81% achieved the overall standard for WRITING, and 56% achieved the overall standard for MATH. (There are further gradations of achievement, and, again, if you’re interested, go to my OSB site).
A closer look at the internals reveal specific problem areas. Obviously, progress needs to be made in Math, particularly in the areas of Problem Solving and Concepts.
Overall, the ELA numbers are better, but it seems as if there is a deficiency in the area of Writing Conventions and Reading Analysis. The latter is not surprising, giving the suspicion we all have regarding the short attention spans of today’s video-centric kids. The deficit in Writing Conventions is also not entirely surprising, as teaching and learning the mechanics of writing (remember diagramming sentences?) is generally not classified as “fun.” Besides, I suspect that, as we are just coming off of a decade in which it was OK for 2+2 to = 5, strict adherence to punctuation and sentence structure have been subordinated to teaching a child how to better express their thoughts and feelings in writing. Content over structure, if you will. The recognition that writing conventions are important will hopefully remind that it’s not just the content but also the structure of what was written that earns serious consideration of one’s work. (This never changes, content is nothing in the world of scholarly publication if you can’t get the format correct).
Overall, it seems as if progress is being made, and that the education establishment is taking this seriously. However, they can’t do it alone and it is up to us as parents to make sure that our kids are putting the effort into their schoolwork and that we encourage them along the way. Remember, the responsibility for educating our children is not only held by our children’s teachers. The lessons learned behind the school walls are forgotten unless they are reaffirmed at home. The teachers need our help, our encouragement and our support. It may sound hokey, but the school my kids attend have a little acronym that encapsulates what parents, teachers, kids, and the community need to do. They need to be a T.E.A.M. (Together Everyone Achieves More).
I have written in the past about my disagreement with teachers when it comes to contracts and such. I will continue to do so. However, I will give them all the support they need to educate my child to the best of their ability. We all need to be able to separate the political from the educational, at least on a personal basis. After all, it really is about the kids, not about the desire to extract every penny from the taxpayers and the reciprocal resentment derived from such demands.
[Open full post]On the radio, Dan Yorke is talking about the possibility of Condoleezza Rice’s ascension to the post of Secretary of State. Yorke speaks often and forcefully in support of women’s rights and respectful treatment of them, so I’m sure it pains him to say it, but he’s concerned that Condoleezza’s gender will represent a problem for the United States’ dealings with regimes such as those in the Middle East.
Perhaps the first typically American response — certainly mine — is to say, “tough luck.” She’s our representative, and if a backwards dictatorship or oligarchy doesn’t like it, well, then that country’s going to have a hard time drawing out the benefits that come with being a friend to the world’s only superpower. However, as John Kerry tried so hard to symbolize, sometimes we have to compromise our principles in the short term to make more profound gains in the future.
Such questions are right along the line of disagreement between fortitude and nuance that characterizes so much of the American political debate, right now. Both sides make legitimate points. In this specific instance, though, I don’t know that the gut response is as unnuanced as it seems.
Our foreign policy currently has as its focus the relatively rapid remaking of entire regions so as to preclude catastrophic terrorism. Consequently, we must force and lure regimes toward radical change. Perhaps it shows how serious we are if we take the risk of choosing a diplomat with whom those regimes will be reticent to work — forcing them, in that one respect, either to be the sorts of governments that we believe they must become or to emphasize the ways in which they are more sympathetic to our enemies than to us.
ADDENDUM:
In the comments, Marc asks whether Madeleine Albright’s name came up. I didn’t hear the entire segment of Yorke’s show, so I can’t say. It’s interesting that the circumstances between the Clinton ’90s and now are so dramatic that the comparison mightn’t come immediately to mind. (It didn’t to mine.)
Although we’re still too close to those years to judge accurately, it seems likely that some text-book producer of the future won’t be able to come up with a more accurate section title for the 1990s than “A Break from History.”
I see that Marc beat me to mentioning that Tom Coyne piece. When I first spotted Coyne’s headline, on Saturday, before I realized who the author was, I smirked; in Rhode Island, even the mantra that the “politics have got to change” has been corroded by endemic apathy.
The most proximate cause of my delay was time spent reading a long comment to my post about teachers’ salaries. In short, a recent transplant to Warwick from Minnesota has a whole lot to say about the Ocean State’s political culture, and she gives a face (so to speak) to Coyne’s suggestion that “the voting patterns of these new residents will be very different from what we see today.”
If anything, Coyne underemphasizes this factor, because he equates new residents and “private-sector commuters,” who earn their incomes in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Although perhaps commentators can be forgiven for overlooking new residents who actually work here, too, one would think that citizens with both feet in the saltwater marsh that is the Rhode Island polity would be even more vehement in their desire to drain the swamp.
The Warwick commenter mentions that she’d been a teacher-union supporter back in Minnesota, but that Rhode Island has changed her view, which brought to mind a rough calculation that I’d posted at Dust in the Light in September 2003:
The fact remains, however, that, in 2001, the average public-sector employee in Rhode Island earned 32% higher than the private sector average. Using the corrected data for the number of private sector employees per public employee (in 2000), on average, every 7.4 private-sector workers in Rhode Island pays for one person to earn more than they do. Simplifying the numbers, take the average individual income in the United States to be $25,000. The public sector average in Rhode Island would therefore be $33,000, requiring each private sector worker to pay $4,460 (by force of law) to support one public worker, leaving the private workers with $20,540.
The calculation was spurred by an Edward Achorn piece that isn’t available online any longer. Achorn, as it happens, is also a stunned Rhode Island newbie:
WHEN I MOVED to Rhode Island four years ago, I was struck instantly by its pinched and starveling economy, its oppressive taxes and poor government services. Most striking of all to me, perhaps, was the brazen sense of entitlement displayed by many public employees. They seemed to feel that they had a perfect right to drive the state into the ground, and they didn’t seem to care about the consequences to themselves or their own children — never mind to their neighbors’ children.
I ended that post skeptical of “my ability to fight, if I stay.” A little more than a year later, now a homeowner writing on this new blog, I’m somewhat more optimistic. Whether we look at all immigrants or emphasize those who work elsewhere, I increasingly suspect that each incredulous new arrival — for whom the quirks of corruption aren’t an endearing character flaw of the state — counterbalances more of the endemic apathy than numbers alone suggest.
[Open full post]Tom Coyne of RIPolicyanalysis.org wrote on Saturday that politics in Rhode Island will change, it is merely the pace and manner in which this change occurs that is in question. He offered that either the voters will decide to bring about, via the ballot box, a more equitable political system or will the state go bankrupt as a natural result of one-party rule in which there is no check on spending.
In Rhode Island, the public sector, ie: government, has taken an increasing amount of the overall dollars earned in the state. This money comes from the pockets of those who earn their’s in the private sector. (Justin’s chart in a previous post is a simple, graphical representation of this sort of thing as it relates to teachers, a narrow section of the private sector.) If the public sector becomes too large and demands too much of the private, then those who comprise the private either vote for change or leave. If the latter ocurrs, then budgetary shortfalls become endemic and bankruptcy will follow unless the state government takes steps to forestall such an occurrence.
The recent election seemed to indicate that Rhode Islanders, as of yet, have not reached a point of disenchantment with current system as they did relatively nothing to alter the balance of political power in the state. However, Coyne offers an interesting observation about political change:
Since the Nov. 2 election didn’t do much to advance this result, then change will probably have to be brought about by the accelerating replacement of long-time Rhode Island voters with new residents who commute to jobs in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Unfortunately, this change process will be more painful. Because these new residents earn their income outside Rhode Island, as they increase in number our state income-tax revenue will decline….
Change will happen because the voting patterns of these new residents will be very different from what we see today. For example, someone new to Rhode Island won’t vote Democratic simply because his cousin works for the state. Private-sector commuters want honest, efficient government, and will try to remove from office those representatives and senators whose voting records show that they want something else. For example, don’t you wonder how many of the voters who turned John Harwood out of office in the primary were relatively new to his district?
However, Coyne also warns that those coming into the state with new political attitudes may still not be able to exceed those leaving the state who have already given up, much less gain a majority over those who continue to vote for the same tax-and-spend offenders. If such is the case, then the road to change will be through bankruptcy as public sector demands increase at the expense of a shrinking public sector.
Municipal bankruptcies are triggered by the recognition that it is economically impossible to service the public sector’s liabilities: debt repayment, pension obligations, municipal salaries, etc. After some point, there are no public-sector assets left to sell, and further tax-rate increases simply force people to leave the jurisdiction — resulting in lower, not higher, tax revenue.
There are some root causes as to why the private sector in Rhode Island is shrinking. According to Coyne:
According to Bloomberg Personal Finance Magazine, Rhode Island’s taxes are already the worst in the nation for people who are retired and/or affluent.
Additionally, as was noted today by the editors of the ProJo
Two new studies suggest that Rhode Island is on the wrong track if it wants to attract new business and thus tax revenues. Politicians must start focusing on creating a vibrant economy in the Ocean State, to bring in the jobs that will help to pay for the government services citizens want.
The Washington-based Tax Foundation rated Rhode Island fifth from the bottom in creating a favorable climate for business through its tax policies….The Tax Foundation rightly argues that states should stop trying to lure businesses by making sweetheart deals with short-term tax abatements and exemptions — which has very much been Rhode Island’s approach in desperately trying to bribe businesses to remain. Rather, the foundation argues, states should create a “level playing field” for businesses, have simple and transparent tax systems, and restrain government expenditures so that tax dollars are spent more efficiently.
Another new study offers even bleaker evidence that Rhode Island is discouraging the very thing it should be promoting: small businesses. The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council ranked Rhode Island a dismal 48th in its “Small Business Survival Index” for 2004.
Ocean Staters are right to be willing to pay relatively high taxes for good services and compassionate government. But without job creation, Rhode Island cannot conceivably have enough money to do all the things citizens want to do: provide for the poor, create top-notch schools, invest in roads and bridges, and a thousand other things government does.
Given this last, then, it seems that the majority of the voters in Rhode Island suffer from a disconnect between the thickness of their own wallets and their desire to fatten those in the public sector. [Of course, one obvious point is that it is not really a a disconnect because many of the voters in this state are either directly employed by, or benefit from, the public sector]. As a result, I fear that Coyne’s Option 2, state bankruptcy, may be the most likely path to political realignment in the state.
[Open full post]In Sunday’s ProJo, M. Charles Bakst, erstwhile stakeholder of the political commentariat of Rhode Island, took Sen. Lincoln Chafee to task for his waffling on both supporting fellow Republican President Bush and staying a Republican at all.
His flirtation with bolting the party — and, more especially, his decision not to vote for George W. Bush and instead write in the name of the president’s father — has been an excruciating episode that has done the senator no good in Rhode Island or in Washington.
He has been in these matters the picture of indecision, and his dithering has been a distraction that has needlessly punctuated political conversation.
Indeed, all Senator Chafee has managed to do is to further call into question his own suitability as a responsible member of the Senate.
A spectacular low point came on the eve of the 2004 Republican National Convention. (He would make only a brief appearance on the New York scene.) Chafee said he supported Mr. Bush’s reelection but wouldn’t commit to voting for him. He looked ridiculous, and Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey, more conservative, more combative, and a possible challenger in a 2006 Senate primary, could barely contain himself, asking in an interview:
“What does that mean? Usually, the people you support you vote for. Would you vote for one you wouldn’t support? Or is he saying he supports two people?
Then Chafee, distancing himself further from the president but also wanting to stay away from Democrat John Kerry, hit upon the solution of writing in the name of the president’s father, an old family friend whose policies he like better.But, in declining to choose between candidate Bush and candidate Kerry, Chafee didn’t make a decision, he avoided a decision. Citizens look to leaders to lead. Chafee is often accused of wanting to have things both ways. This time he outdid himself.
He certainly did. In trying to be all things to all people, he seems to take few principled stances except for the few instances (environmental, War in Iraq, Tax Custs) that find him at odds with his own (ostensibly) party. This is exacerbated by the perception that he lacks critical thinking abilities and is not the best at offering well-reasoned arguments for some of his postions.
He is who he is, not the most polished operator, but a bright guy, an honest guy, moving as best he can through the political jungle. He has plenty of interests in life, and he and his wife, the former Stephanie Danforth, have a ton of money, and he is very competitive, but he doesn’t need this job, and when he’s through, or when voters decide he’s through, he’ll find something else to do.
I suspect that in 2006 Lincoln Chafee will be the former Senator from Rhode Island.
[Open full post]The President and his conservative coalition, as a matter of principle, do not like activist judges, i.e. judges who use their power to go beyond just interpreting the law. Here is uber-conservative and Bush supporter Phyllis Schlafly on the subject…
“Finally, we have a president who comes right out and targets ‘activist judges’ as the enemy of traditional values and urges us to use ‘the constitutional process’ to remedy the problem….Bush called on Americans to defend the sanctity of marriage against activist judges who force ‘their arbitrary will’ by court order ‘without regard for the will of the people and their elected representatives.'”
Alas for Ms. Schlafly, conservatives have a poor track record of limiting the power of activist judges. The above quote shows why. Almost always, conservatives pick a hot-button issue — gay marriage, flag burning, ‘under god’ in the pledge of allegiance — to advance the cause of placing limits on the power of the judiciary. By the time the debate reaches the public sphere the issue of activist judges generally gets lost in the more visceral substance of the case being decided. For better or for worse, people respond more strongly to ideas about ‘traditional values’ and ‘the sanctity of marriage’ than they do to ideas of ‘activist judges’.
Because the Taricani case is not the usual kind of case people have in mind when they hear talk of ‘activist judges’, it an ideal circumstance for a President concerned about activist judges to step in. This case does not involve a hot-button issue. If the President were to announce a pardon for Taricani, the civic debate that ensued would focus on the President’s power to limit the actions of the judiciary. And the President would be the one broadening rights and expanding freedoms that the judiciary wants to limit… [Open full post]
Rhode Island just passed a separation-of-powers referendum on the state level. But do we have it at the Federal level? Separation-of-powers means that a legislative branch of government makes the laws, a judicial branch of government interprets the laws, and an executive branch of government enforces the laws.
At the moment, Jim Taricani is being denied the protection that separation of powers is supposed to provide. What law did Taricani break? Well, it was not a law exactly, it was a “court-order” not to release information. And who is enforcing this court-order? Well, it is a “special prosecutor” appointed by the judge who issued the order. In other words, in the state of Rhode Island, an American citizen may be imprisoned by his government for violating a rule made by judge Ernest Torres, interpreted by judge Ernest Torres, and enforced by judge Ernest Torres.
This is a clear breach of the principle of separation-of-powers. Fortunately, the Federal constitution anticipated excesses of judicial authority, and provides a remedy — the Presidential pardon.
And, for a variety of reasons, President George W. Bush should be inclined to use his power of the pardon in this case…
