It’s telling that state Representative Gregg Amore (D, East Providence) announced his campaign for Secretary of State at East Providence High School. Per his official General Assembly biography, Amore graduated from that school, returned for a career as a history teacher there, and remains its athletic director.
He’s pretty much the classic Rhode Island candidate, right down to his degree from Providence College and stints coaching sports there, at the Naval Academy Prep School, and at La Salle University. Indeed, he’s been involved in a variety of youth and athletic activities over the years and (of course) in the Democrat city committee from his hometown.
I disagree with Amore’s politics, but that’s all admirable. This does not look like political involvement in the community as a means of setting one up to enjoy a six-figure state office and government pension, but simply a guy building his life around his community.
Still, we have to remember that the Rhode Island system has worked out very well for him, so he’s certain to serve it as Secretary of State, from the teachers union to the Democrat machine. He may not even see it as political payback so much as “giving back” to a community that’s given him so much.
The problem is that this particular office is a terrible platform from which to do such giving back. It should be an essentially clerical job — scrupulously even-handed, even to those who want to reform the Rhode Island system from top to bottom.
Amore may even be better at playing that role than an ideological up-climber like the current Secretary of State, Nellie Gorbea, but nothing from his biography suggests he’ll stand on principle when his friends and allies come asking him to take the next steps toward fully cementing their tight grip on the electoral process.
[Open full post]
The bottom line is that the news media supports progressive Democrats, so its practitioners are not anxious to press their candidates when they decline to answer questions in the service of crafting the news stories. That’s why it’s entirely natural for Rhode Island General Treasurer to hold a press conference announcing his expected run for governor and then walk away having provided reporters with his canned material.
Magaziner is a consummate Democrat insider, and his time as treasurer has been characterized by the constant PR focus. In that way, he’s very much the Raimondo-style candidate of this race, although with lighter credentials and less proven competence.
[Open full post]
In an all-too-familiar sequence of events, progressives made social media noise to shame a politician with whom they disagreed — in this case, Providence City Councilman Nicholas Narducci, who helped the city clean up a homeless encampment under a Rt. 146 overpass — and the news media jumped right in to tow their line, framing it as something that had to be “defended.” Neither WPRI nor the Providence Journal, for example, bothered to talk to any neighbors or investigate the effect the encampment might be having on the neighborhood.
Far-left, anti-cop Councilwoman Kat Kerwin took to Twitter to calling the move “heartless” and to ask, “Who is being hurt by people being there?” That’s a good question for mainstream journalists. Wonder why they didn’t try to answer it.
This performance is meant to keep the progressive stone rolling downhill. It works something like this:
- Progressive policies reduce opportunity, increase dependence on government, and stretch tax dollars thin.
- This creates holds for people to fall into (especially those with few supports and other problems).
- When things get really bad for those folks, they take to the street, eventually congregating in encampments, which degrades the perception of the area and makes it a less comfortable place in which to live and do business.
- Authorities do their jobs and enforce housing regulations.
- Progressives push to end policing of the encampments.
- This makes the economy and neighborhood even worse, creating more holes for more people.
- Authorities continue to do their jobs and enforce standards for public behavior, particularly related to safety.
- Progressives go after the idea of policing.
- Things get worse.
For an area that’s trending progressive, the only question is where people can muster the fortitude to stop it, and frankly, this sort of homeless encampment is a stark and important threshold. You can’t have people living in such place in such a way. You just can’t.
To be sure, simply clearing them out when they pop up only pauses and moves the problem elsewhere, without helping the people who’ve fallen into those progressive holes, and the action is therefore insufficient, but it’s fundamental backstop. What’s needed is to start pushing that stone back up the hill Of course, progressives will shriek even louder as the society solves the problems of the people progressives are professing to care about, but it’s the only way.
[Open full post]
The details of the U.S. drone strike on a humanitarian worker in Afghanistan are horrific:
The U.S. acknowledged reports of civilian casualties and said they may have been caused by secondary explosions. The family said when the 37-year-old Zemerai, alone in his car, pulled up to the house, he honked his horn. His 11-year-old son ran out, and Zemerai let the boy get in and drive the car into the driveway. The other kids ran out to watch, and the missile incinerated the car, killing seven children and an adult son and nephew of Zemerai.
Is it too much to expect somebody to have eyes on the target when causing massive explosions in residential areas — somebody to get on the radio and say, “Do not fire. We have children present”?
Watching the excuse-making from Democrat Twitter last night, it seemed to me that the sequence of events has to be made part of this discussion. The Biden administration created a dangerous situation with its botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. When there was an inevitable terrorist attack, administration officials felt they had to save face by striking back.
The order was probably something like, “Find me somebody to attack,” and it’s not inconceivable that the Taliban provided the intel on the target.
Yet, the palace-guard media is still on duty. Check out this disgustingly convoluted first paragraph from an AP article that WPRI gives the toned-down headline, “A deadly mistake: Pentagon says drone strike kills 10 civilians“:
American Troops are out of Afghanistan, and it was made known by Pentagon officials that the last airstrike of the war in the country was a mistake.
That’s how the mainstream press opens a story about an American drone strike on the innocent children of a humanitarian worker? The story doesn’t even give the heart-rending details. There’s only one circumstance in which reporters will do that: When they’re trying to protect an incompetent president from their political party for ideological reasons.
Featured image by AFP on The Borneo Post.
[Open full post]
Let’s be blunt about it: the January 6 protesters being treated so poorly are political prisoners. In the United States. Reverse the parties, and we’d be hearing nonstop mainstream media proclamations about how Biden is “literally Hitler.” The government is actually arguing that stay-at-home-parents are more of a terrorist threat!
[Open full post]
When Ray Rickman mentioned his support for progressive wealth redistribution during his State of the State conversation with Mike Stenhouse, Sten didn’t want to redirect the conversation into that debate, only mentioning (because he couldn’t not say anything, of course) that the big question is who the angels are to decide when enough is enough. If we want to redirect the conversation into that debate, though, there’s a related but more fundamental objection.
As a thoroughgoing Catholic, I agree with Rickman’s premise that “at some point, you have enough,” as well as the imperative that we have a responsibility to help others. As a free-marketer, however, the problem with the the progressive (or socialist) solution is that the moral imperative is imposed on the person. Worse, it’s imposed in a way that creates a moral hazard for the redistributionists.
To win the day, Rickman need only convince enough other people — who don’t have as much as the rich people and stand to gain by taking what they have — that the wealthier person has enough. Personal experience with having had too little should convince us that “enough” is a sliding scale. Usually, “enough” means “a little more than I have.”
If your task is to convince folks to humble somebody else, your political path is easy. The better, longer-lasting, and more all-around-healthy solution is to convince that person, the wealthy one, that he or she has enough. And that is done culturally and religiously.
The topic brings to mind a Catholic podcast I heard recently in which the participants (conservatively minded, as they were) acknowledged that Steve Jobs did great things through his profit-centered work, but insisted that there was something distinctively right about Mother Theresa’s approach to doing good. Materialists would insist she was taking a profit in some other coin, so to speak, and if we put things in economic terms, I agree with them. Price is simply a statement of value, so in principle, one could go so far as to put a monetary value on the feeling of doing something spiritually rewarding.
But economic terms are not the core of existence. Conscience is. We must form consciences. If Steve Jobs sincerely thought he was doing the most good for the world that he could by investing in his company (rather than the most good that he could do for his bank account), then that’s what he should have done, versus, say, dabbling in charity and social programs. Maybe he wouldn’t have been any good at that. Maybe he would have done actual harm. (Think Bill Gates.) Similarly, if he felt that he needed his wealth, then like the expensive beauty one often finds in churches, maybe he did.
If the person doing intense, world-improving work honestly concludes that he or she needs that luxury vacation home in order to maintain balance and sanity, I’m not really in a position to tell him or her it’s too much. I’d argue that he or she would be even more fulfilled learning to take pleasure from less, but that’s ultimately speculation on my part, to be proven by how I live.
It’s a topic for another post, but the flip side is the good advice we might give to people who have very little: that they should see that they already have enough to be happy and fulfilled. As a Christian, I’d encourage people to consider that at any point they have enough.
For now, let’s conclude by noting that we should be hesitant to tell people that they have enough but eager to convince them that they do.
Featured image by Ishan at See From the Sky on Unsplash.
[Open full post]
It’s encouraging to see that some families in Rhode Island have had enough and are willing to take to court to defend their civil rights, as Kim Kalunian reports on WPRI:
Sixteen parents and grandparents have filed a lawsuit against Gov. Dan McKee over his statewide school mask mandate.
The complaint, filed in Providence Superior Court on Thursday, lists the names and stories of parents and grandparents who live in Glocester, Smithfield, North Smithfield and Warwick. Some parents said they’ve chosen to home-school their kids rather than send them to school in masks, which they believe negatively impact their children’s physical and mental well-being.
Recent years, however, have given me reason to fear that the legal system (including administrative complaints, the attorney general, and the judiciary) are not much of a protection in Rhode Island. Too often, they simply apply a legalesed gloss to the elite opinions that created the conflict in the executive or legislative branches in the first place. Once the court has done that, it has essentially laid to rest our rights by taking out the ambiguity. Ambiguity at least gives some room for political leverage. Once a court sides with the tyrant, open season has begun.
Separately, two notes of caution arise from the article. First, consider this part:
“I will not send my child to an establishment being run like a prison,” Aimee Sayers wrote, claiming there have been no pediatric COVID deaths in Rhode Island.
The R.I. Department of Health has confirmed to 12 News there have been what they classify as three pediatric COVID-related deaths since the pandemic started locally in 2020. In each of those cases, COVID-19 was not the primary cause of death, health officials said.
The claim of “no pediatric COVID deaths” comes from Andrew Bostom, and is overstated. That’s a shame, because it gives the media an opportunity to muddy the waters with a “correction.” Kalunian went even farther on Twitter, claiming “Another [parent] made the erroneous claim that there have been no pediatric COVID-related deaths in RI (there have been a small number, per @RIHEALTH).” All of this is unnecessary from the advocates’ point of view. If their claim had been that “almost no” children have died or “no confirmed deaths from COVID-19,” or something similar, any attempt at correction would instead be corroboration.
Second, take a look at the image WPRI has associated with this story for news feeds and social media posts.
This image directly (I’d say maliciously) undercuts the parents in the story. If you share the story because you support the parents’ lawsuit, the first thing people will see is children engaged in pro-mask advocacy. It seems unlikely this was an accidental choice.
This is like putting a “back the blue” flag on a story about Black parents’ suing a police department for injury to their son.
Featured image by Jan Kopriva on Unsplash.
[Open full post]
Something about Andrew Bostom’s analysis of COVID-19 statistics keeps drawing me in, and my conclusion continues to be the same. Although he’s making reasonable points, and although his basic suggestions about policy remain correct, he repeatedly presents numbers as something they’re not in a way that overstates his case.
Here’s the latest tweet that drew me in:
What he’s saying is that the odds of catching COVID-19 again if you’ve already had it are 0.1443 (roughly one-seventh) the odds of catching COVID-19 if you’ve been fully vaccinated. You can flip that to say that somebody who’s vaccinated is seven times more likely to catch the virus than somebody who’s already had it.
Here’s the problem: There is overlap between those groups. He assumes 500,000 people have had COVID (many of them having never been tested) and 700,000 have been vaccinated, but many people have both had it and been vaccinated. If there are very few people who have been infected but who have not be vaccinated, then that alone could explain why very few such people tested positive over the summer.
Bostom makes no attempt whatsoever to estimate that number. Consequently, his odds calculation isn’t all that helpful, and even if we wanted to know these overlapping odds, once he assumes many more people have had the virus than show up as “cases,” he has to adjust his numerators, too, to go along with his changed assumption, and he doesn’t. A bunch of the people he’s reporting as first-time cases would actually be repeated cases.
The interesting question is: What are the odds of catching COVID-19 multiple times if you haven’t been vaccinated versus the odds of catching it for a first time if you have. That’s the comparison of natural immunity with vaccine immunity. This is where my inability to resist analysis comes in.
Let’s start with the cases for July and August that Bostom provides. Because we need some basis to estimate how many Rhode Islanders have had the virus without showing up in the numbers as “cases,” let’s go with a model from Columbia University that NPR reported in February as showing that five times more people had been infected than had been counted. This would mean 772,765 Rhode Islanders had already had the disease by the end of July. Luckily, we can stick with the reported number of vaccinations.
For our numerator of people who’ve been infected again, we therefore multiply the “repeat, non-vaccinated infections” by five, because many people counted as first-time cases should really be repeats, and we get 1,160. For the denominator, we multiply the total known cases by five and subtract the number of people we think were vaccinated even though they already had the disease. We’ll assume that prior infection had no effect on whether or not a person was vaccinated (which isn’t as unlikely as it sounds if we’re assuming most people who’ve had it didn’t know, or at least weren’t tested). So, we take the percentage of the population we estimate to have been infected and apply it to the number of vaccinations. That gives us 301,257 people who have had the virus, have not been vaccinated, and did not catch the virus again in July or August.
Now for those who’ve been vaccinated but never had the virus. In this case, we start with the number of people reported as vaccinated and infected for the first time and then subtract out all the extra people we think are actually repeat cases. This gives us a numerator of 2,768. For a denominator, we take the ratio of our estimated people who’ve never been infected versus the total population and apply it to the number of vaccinations, getting 170,310 Rhode Islanders who have been vaccinated and have never been infected.
If we plug these numbers into the online calculator that Bostom used, we get 0.2369, which means that your odds catching COVID-19 more than once if you haven’t been vaccinated are about 1/4 your odds if you’ve been vaccinated but never infected. That’s more in keeping with the numbers one sees here and there in public reports than Bostom’s 1/7.
Since we’ve come this far, we might as well answer the next important question: If you’ve already had COVID-19, how much do you improve your odds of avoiding getting it again if you get vaccinated? In this case, our 5x-cases estimate gives us a numerator of 565 people who’ve been infected again even though they were vaccinated and a denominator of 469,783 Rhode Islanders who have both natural and vaccine immunity and did not catch the virus in July or August. The calculator spits out 0.3123, which means if you’ve had COVID-19, your odds of catching it again if you’ve been vaccinated are about 1/3 your odds if you haven’t been vaccinated.
That’s a big improvement, but as I keep saying, your odds are good in any event. As far as the rest of us should be concerned, government forcing you to be vaccinated if you’ve already had COVID-19 is nuts.
Another interesting observation, looking at the numbers in this way, is how few people have neither type of immunity: just a little over 100,000. If that’s even close to correct, it’s simply foolish to exert government power to force vaccination and mask wearing. It’s also a mystery why public health officials are not, instead, pressing for immunity tests. It’s as if they’re choosing to reduce our knowledge of the virus in Rhode Island for some reason other than public health.
Featured image by Vladimir Fedotov on Unsplash.
[Open full post]
Michael Morse tells a cute story about how he used his one phone call from prison to explain to his future wife why he had missed their date. Before going on read how he tells it and come back. Here’s the summary with the key details for this post.
Morse was racially profiled as some other white guy and asked for ID. That turned out to have consequences, because he had missed a court summons for driving with an expired license.
I can testify from experience that these sorts of things happen to young men who are still trying to figure out how to balance respect for the rules with the challenges they present. So, you take a risk, and sometimes that leads to the next step in enforcement.
Now change his race, and way people would tell the story changes. The way the participants engage in the incident changes, too. Maybe indignation even turns into confrontation and tragedy. Then political drama increases the likelihood of conflict in other cases.
[Open full post]