One can hardly doubt that Jessica David means all the best with such sentiments as this:
I attempted to explore the specifics with her, but I didn’t get very far. Basically, she believes all variety of sectors ought to take money from all variety of sources to work toward population-wide goals that they and their funders set, and that somehow this should all be accountable to the public. The ways this could go wrong are so manifold one hopes a moment’s scrutiny by a reasonably aware person would spot the danger.
One gets the feeling we’ve gone around the circle and are now articulating in nice-sounding ways precisely the worldview our system of government was designed to circumvent.
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Perhaps the most-challenging thing about good-government reforms is that, for the most part, we’re seeking to develop and implement them on the basis of a shallow political and organizational philosophy. Consider legislation that would change Rhode Island’s Access to Public Records Act (APRA). Some of the adjustments make sense, but I’m not so sure about this one:
The bill would reverse the longstanding exception for elected officials, whose communications — like emails — have not been subject to public scrutiny, in contrast with other public officials.
The proposal would continue to exempt elected officials’ correspondence with their constituents, but would make public other communications related to their official capacities.
I definitely see the appeal of having access to elected officials’ email. At the end of the day, how they came to their positions isn’t as important as whether voters agree with them, but knowing who was advocating for or against policies can provide a shortcut for analyzing the results.
Nonetheless, making such communications public documents could easily dissuade people from sending them. Saying that people with nothing to hide shouldn’t care ignores the many reasons people might prefer some expectation of discretion (intimidation, privacy, and more).
Anyway, people will care, whether they should or not. That means those with direct access to politicians will benefit. An email address is much easier to secure, for instance, than cell phone numbers or fundraising-event availability, and it can be less intimidating to send messages that way than in person or on the phone.
Regulating communication, in other words, will lead to less of it, which means worse, not better, representation.
The distinction from bureaucrats and other government employees is important. In those cases, they’re supposed to be executing the public processes put in place by representatives. Their decision-making should therefore be held to a higher standard of transparency.
Featured image by Joshua Cotton on Unsplash.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- Kathy Gregg notes a big question for the RI Foundation re: Cicilline
- Shekarchi’s housing legislation
- A Providence teacher caught up in handsy accusations
- Drag show theatrics in Bristol
- Theatrical protests outside the Gamm Theatre
- Nicole Solas gets the persona non grata treatment in RI media
Featured image by Kyle Head on Unsplash.
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If mainstream media analysts and college professors weren’t overwhelmingly true believers of the Left, they could find fertile ground for analysis and lessons in the interaction of media, labor unions, and parents when it comes to Rhode Island schools. Case study 1 comes in the form of an article by Alexa Gagosz of the Boston Globe, promoting a virtual event of the University of Rhode Island’s Media Education Lab:
In one example of a lack of media literacy, [Pam Steager, director of public engagement at the Media Education Lab,] said she has heard from teachers who are afraid to bring copies of The New York Times into their classrooms for fear of how parents might react.
The paragraph moves on from this third-hand rumor to other examples of “misinformation” groups… like white nationalists. Yes, the proffered equivalence is between parents who speak up with concerns that public schools are being used for indoctrination and conspiracy theorists and Nazis.
Now turn to Steph Machado, for WPRI:
A group of parents are threatening to take legal action over the impending closure of a Providence elementary school in Washington Park, arguing the state’s education commissioner did not have the unilateral authority to close the school.
Conspicuously, the article does not name any actual parents, much less quote them or paraphrase a stated concern. Machado does, however, mention their attorney, Elizabeth Wiens. One need spend no more than a few seconds on the Internet to learn that attorney Weins is a labor lawyer specializing in representation of unions. In fact, she’s a member of the AFL-CIO Lawyers’ Coordinating Committee. This appears to be a lawsuit on behalf of the teachers union with (potentially recruited) parents to provide the legal on-ramp.
With that in mind, I can’t help but recall the school committee meetings I’ve attended around the state at which union members created such an atmosphere of tension and threat that the Biden Administration would surely have air-dropped the FBI were they not union members, but parents attempting to protect their children from an ideological cult. Journalists were often in attendance at those meetings, but somehow the shocking air of aggression never seemed conveyed in the resulting stories.
Put my own ideological slant aside, if you can. The important, objective lesson, here, is how the media, labor unions, and progressive advocacy groups like the Media Education Lab work together to create a reality that aligns with the facts only to the extent the facts are convenient to their preferred narrative.
Featured image by Caleb Woods on Unsplash.
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Guests: Dane Ardente, Attorney with KSP Law
Host: Richard August
Description: The R.I legislature recently passed a law limiting gun magazine capacity to 10 rounds and requires that magazines larger than 10 rounds must be relinquished to the state. A group of plaintiffs asked the Federal District Court to issue a preliminary injunction/temporary restraining order so the plaintiffs could be heard in court before the law goes into effect and causes harm to gun owners. This case has many complexities and constitutional concerns, which are discussed during this interview.
John Loughlin talks about the upcoming special congressional election with Dan McGowan and the moon with Captain Alan Bean.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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Sometimes the lack of response to statements — I mean just an ordinary, slightly skeptical response — is striking. Here’s Warren Town Manager Kate Michaud asking the U.S. Senate to protect the town from an apocalyptic future:
“The data analysis concluded that by the year 2100, three hundred and six of the area’s four hundred buildings could be lost to the rising water,” Michaud told the committee. “With three feet of sea level rise in the next 30 years, three of the town’s major roads, including the primary evacuation route, would be flooded with salt water and impassable every day at high tide.”
Projections can produce numbers; that’s what they do. It’s good practice, however, to step back and put them in more-tangible form for a plausibility gut check. 306 out of 400 buildings in an area is more than 75% (three in four). Michaud’s testimony asserts that the town “predicts” three feet of water rise in water from 2017 to 2047.
NOAA tide data from Newport puts the 100-year trend at 2.85 millimeters per year of increase. We’re currently five years of the 30 into Michaud’s prediction — 17% of the timespan supposedly bringing a three-foot water rise — and even taking this climate-change-friendly data source at face value puts the increase below that trend, at 12 millimeters. The trend to hit three feet in 2047 would have to be a huge curve upward, and if that doesn’t happen, the 100 year destruction of 75% of the Warren neighborhood seems implausible.
Again, let’s get away from the numbers. Michaud is claiming that by the time a child born today begins to reach full adulthood, when she’ll probably be into her retirement, the water will have permanently risen nearly the full difference between low tide and high tide. Does that seem plausible?
Whatever your answer, the timespan raises an important question that nobody asks: Will there be any consequences at all for Michaud (whom, not to be unfair, I’m merely presenting as a proximate example of a great many people) if this dire prediction turns out to be laughably wrong? Of course not.
Maybe that should change. How about somebody in government who imprudently terrifies the public in this way should lose her or his pension. Something.
Right now, climate alarmism has only upside, so it’s not surprising how much we see of it.
Featured image by Gustave Courbet on WikiArt.
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University of Rhode Island Economics Professor Len Lardaro reminds us of the magic by which the state makes its employment numbers look good:
To me, the apologists for the status quo are the scariest part. Saying, “Oh, don’t worry. People are just retiring,” completely misses the point.
If Rhode Islanders are retiring, shouldn’t their jobs remain for somebody else to fill? That’s the problem. RI is not generating a sustainable path for continued economic health.
If somebody wants to stay here, for whatever reason, he or she has to find a way to make money. If their jobs stop when they do, they weren’t really “Rhode Island jobs.” They were always “that-person jobs.” The state is not creating opportunity; it’s just cashing in on the people who happen to live here and whatever it was that kept them around.
I’ve been making variations of this point for nearly 25 years, now. (Sometimes, I’ve had to argue with Lardaro about it.) States must provide opportunity that draws people to them and sustains jobs distinctly from the people who currently hold them. This is especially true for a state, like Rhode Island, that has built so much fixed operating cost into its economy in the form of government.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- Cicilline opens up a Congressional seat (others race to fill)
- Cienki opens up a GOP chair seat (that others sort of consider)
- Retiring police open up jobs (that nobody qualified seems to want)
- A school committee member hasn’t yet opened up a vacancy (that her behavior probably should create)
Featured image by Neroli Wesley on Unsplash.
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For several reasons (voluntary and not-so-voluntary), I’ve been digging into Marxism a bit more over the past year. I mean both ol’ Marx himself and his followers, up to modern practitioners. One point that has come home very strongly is that the ideal that Marxists sell is actually the end toward which a system built on free markets and political liberty draws us. The difference is that Marxists want a short-term dictatorship so they can be sure the result conforms with their own prejudices.
This general observation applies to turbulent questions of race, too. Consider:
In his new book The Real Race Revolutionaries (December 2022), Ortiz, a long-time advocate for small business owners and their employees in the US, argues that the government policies that are ostensibly intended to equalize economic outcomes between the white majority and minority groups in America have actually had the opposite effect.
What our society faces is the classic difference between an approach built on assertions of intent and one built on incentives and results. Results are better.
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