The featured image of this post compares the original cover of Mountain Music by the band Alabama with the censored version now used for music streaming services. I should specify that I’m not alleging the band and the companies that manage its music were forced to make the change by a government agency, but censorship it is, nonetheless.
In January, I argued that Americans on the political left are wrong to insist that nobody be allowed to see the Confederate Flag as a symbol representing Southern cultural heritage disconnected from the Civil War. The meaning of symbols can change, and we should not assume the absolute worst intent in somebody who makes use of a symbol to which we respond negatively. The Mountain Music modification drives the point home and illustrates the depth of our loss when we discard historical perspective.
Here are some of the lyrics from “Changes Comin’ On,” a song on the Mountain Music album:
Ford unveiled the Mustang
Things looked good in Detroit for the people there
And I could feel the changes comin’ on
From Atlanta, Doctor King told the world he had a dream
People followed him
And daddy said my hair was getting longI could feel the changes comin on
People started singing different songs
Searchin’ for the place where they belong
I could feel the changes comin’ on
No doubt, young progressives will find an excuse to scoff, but that this song was on an album adorned by the Confederate Flag points to something important. You erase a whole lot of people — good people — when you hide their complexity.
To my eye, the juxtaposition of “Changes Comin’ On” with the Confederate Flag is a powerful indicator that the forces of tolerance, pluralism, and respect had won so thoroughly that the separatists couldn’t even claim their own symbol. Their progeny had changed their beliefs, and the United States had absorbed their flag as regional marker.
As always, with pluralism, and as used to be characteristic of the United States, that absorption came with an invitation to evolve and be honored. By the 1980s, we were able to raise up the good and American values that had gone so wrong in the Civil War, as distinct from the racism and dehumanization that had always been at odds with our founding principles. We were moving on to a better future.
We impoverish ourselves when we draw a big red X through the possibility of such changes, and the past decade or two have shown the division and danger of such impoverishment.
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This flaw of inexperience among the young (and progressives) has become far too pervasive in our society and is particularly notable in Rhode Island. People seem to think that the current state of affairs has been established and will continue indefinitely, so we can shape it like clay to the future we want to see. Investors will continue to build businesses… producers will continue to produce… minority parties will continue to fight the good fight to keep representative democracy honest. And so on. That’s not how reality works, though.
The above was my reaction to this tweet from left-wing Democrat state representative David Morales:
It might be nice to hire a chief executive with intimate and specific experience with the product, but past experience as a customer is not typically an overwhelming advantage and certainly not one that can’t be compensated once in the role (not least because customer experiences differ). Morales’s underlying assumption is that there is a pool of indistinguishably high-quality candidates for the role, so adding a mandate won’t have any negative effects.
The more likely outcome, from which Rhode Island increasingly suffers, is that the pool of candidates will be so uniformly unqualified that additional requirements won’t make things notably worse. The first step to fixing this problem is a more mature understanding of how reality actually functions.
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On the list of people for whom the exposure of social media has been a source of disappointing exposure, novelist Stephen King has got to be near the top. Like his books or not (and, honestly, given the content, I regret the influence that he had on my younger life), authors are generally placed in the “intellectual” category, and one would expect more insight than tweets like this:
I’m on the pro-life side of this issue, but I also wish we could have honest discussions about public policy. The anachronism of this state law isn’t evidence that the federal government has to set policy for every state in the country, which was essentially the state of affairs while the horrible Roe v. Wade ruling was in effect. Rather, it should be a reminder that we have an entire system built around the principle that people can change the laws under which they’re governed over time.
It’s telling that advocates for the permissibility of killing of children are so much more focused on deriving political benefit from old laws than changing them where they can be changed. Apparently, what they really want is a world in which a rich old writer from Maine can tell the people of Arizona what sort of laws they live under.
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The short answer is that we shouldn’t, but Bill Bartholomew’s attempt is worth a double-take and some thought about what he’s missing:
at nearly 68k, Scott Avedisian’s termination payment is almost as much as the contract that the most exciting player in college basketball, Caitlin Clark, signed after being selected first overall in the WNBA draft last night
The tweet is a fine example of a particularly progressive means of argumentation. Bartholomew presents two news items that have nothing in common other than the fact that they both involve people being paid money related to jobs. The context and phrasing make clear that he thinks the comparison shows self-evident injustice. The disgraced white Republican male (presumably getting no credit for being gay, in this context) collects a parting check from a state agency, while “the most exciting player in college basketball” languishes with low pay, as the latest example women making less money as professional athletes.
Thus, the argument, such as it is, derives from little more than a projection of a virtue signal. And because the self-evident nature of the injustice substitutes for explanation, the complaint is an invitation for any sort of policy suggestion that progressives can assert will make a difference. Predictably, explanation of the mechanisms that make any policy likely to work will be passed over in favor of assertions that progressive policies can’t help but resolve progressive problems.
A grown-up polity, however, has to put some details on its analyses. I’m no fan of Avedisian, or the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA), for that matter, but the job he’s leaving is as the chief executive of an agency with a nine-figure budget. We can debate the public policies of the agency, but thousands of people rely on it for both economic production and day-to-day living and urgent needs. To run this organization, the chief has to navigate an uncomfortable political atmosphere in which he or she is always one bad decision away from a scorching public spotlight, and special interests are constantly pulling every lever they can find to get more out of the system.
Yeah, I know, woe is the lonely bureaucrat. The point is simply that it isn’t unreasonable for RIPTA to send the message that qualified people taking such a job don’t have to worry about being totally cut off on short notice should a moment of bad judgment (even really bad judgment) make them politically vulnerable.
On the other side of the comparison, we should note that Clark’s pay is annual and, moreover, it probably isn’t even a substantial fraction of the money she can expect to make. The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) — which does not have the profits of its men’s counterpart — is providing her a platform from which she will surely make millions of dollars endorsing products. That is how a free-market economy recognizes people for being “the most exciting player” in a sport.
In fact, if there is any unfair factor contributing to the level Clark’s pay, it’s probably the fact that the WNBA is unionized. I haven’t reviewed the terms of the union contract, but they tend to be levelling, making it more difficult for the league to recognize Clark’s unique situation. To be sure, men’s sports show that in high-variety, big-money ventures like professional sports, labor unions tend to be less able to demand rigid pay scales, but if the likes of Bartholomew are looking for villains in the identity politics war, there are plenty of alleys they can explore.
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 3.
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The Rhode Island Office of Revenue Analysis releases regular reports summarizing the state’s tax credit programs, and sometimes progressive politicians and journalists get a news story out of them. What’s disappointing is the paucity of the opposing voices. According to Katherine Gregg’s Providence Journal article the Rhode Island Business Coalition is fine with ending the program for any new participants.
For their part, the authors of the report acknowledge that the businesses that use the program tend to be among the largest, so without programs designed to make them stay, like tax credit programs, the state’s economy could suffer.
There we see the underlying problem that nobody wants to address. Rhode Island’s economic policy is terrible. We’ve taken a beautiful state in a great location and made it so difficult and risky to operate in that we have to lure businesses here. Progressives with a coherent philosophy should realize this is their ideal policy. They get to pick and choose who gets relief from what imposition and to maintain a lever for bribery and ideological pressure.
I’m all for ending tax credit programs, but we should lower taxes and regulations generally. If we make Rhode Island a beacon for economic activity, businesses will pay their full taxes to be here.
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I don’t want to read too much into a few seconds of video, but something is chilling about progressive Democrat Representative Brandon Potter’s face as Meara began to speak in favor of Republican Representative Patricia Morgan’s bill to prevent transgender-related mutilation of children:
His facial expression is not just of hatred. It’s cold, as if promising that one day he hopes not to have to sit there and be polite while people speak blasphemies.
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That means most of us have to be servants to somebody else. That’s why a political party that still pretends it’s “for the little guy” is relentlessly targeting “little guys” who work for themselves. This video from John Stossel is worth watching:
If you’re independent, you’re difficult to manage. If top-down government can pressure top-down business with the aid of top-down labor unions, things are easier (and more profitable) for the people at the top.
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For those of us who’ve been mystified by economic news, E.J. Antoni’s summary of results from the March employment report is worth a read. The key confusion is that “the headline numbers once again look good.” Yet, all the jobs are part time, with Americans replacing their full-time jobs with multiple part-time ones to make ends meet. This finding is found in both the divergence of measures that count workers and jobs and in the number of people working multiple jobs.
Meanwhile, hours per week are trending down, and the ratio of jobs that are government is growing. Too few private-sector jobs are generating economic productivity to support the government jobs. Moreover, most of the “private sector” jobs are actually in fields that are more like government satellites, like health care.
Now add the fact that labor-force participation is down, and the jobs are entirely going to people who are foreign born. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se, but at a time of massive illegal immigration, it presents a troubling picture.
Things are not going well under Biden, no matter what the propagandists insist.
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This seems kind of like an important story, but despite some weeks, I’ve seen nothing on it elsewhere:
The problem with our current media situation is that, whether Callahan’s assessment about sanctuary state policies is fair or not, we know for a certainty that we’ll only ever hear that it is not fair from the partisan media, if we hear of the situation at all. They leave us completely in the dark when it would be politically inconvenient to do otherwise.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- Mark Patinkin says what cannot be said
- An uncommitted delegate’s commitment to Hamas
- The unknown cost of the Superman Building
- The Matos signature controversy starts small
- Forgone Washington Bridge opportunities for RIGOP
- An unexplored Cranston controversy
- Avedisian departs
- A possible promotion of Morgan by the Projo
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 3 and Photoshop.
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