In China, the Communist Party has implemented and is continually expanding a social credit system that seeks to use economic opportunities and restrictions to reward behavior the party likes and punish those who do things it doesn’t. The system affects where people can live, how easily they can access credit, the speed of their Internet service, and more.
Active legislation in Rhode Island and Connecticut shows sympathy for this totalitarian impulse is strong among New England Democrats. In Rhode Island, S2552 would mandate COVID-19 vaccination with stiff penalties:
Violating the proposed vaccine mandate would come with a price. Violators would face “a civil penalty of $50 and shall owe twice the amount of personal income taxes.”
Employers would be responsible for enforcement, requiring workers to provide proof or face a $5,000 fine for each unvaccinated worker.
Note that the $50 penalty would be charged monthly. The top 6 bill sponsors, all Democrats, are Senators Sam Bell (Providence), Tiara Mack (Providence), Jonathan Acosta (Central Falls and Pawtucket), Kendra Anderson (Warwick and Cranston), James Seveney (Bristol, Portsmouth, and Tiverton), and Cynthia Mendes (East Providence and Pawtucket).
Meanwhile, Democrat state representative John Larson in Connecticut has introduced legislation to fine people $20 for failing to vote. One struggles to understand why anybody would think it a good idea to force people to cast a vote against their will on candidates and policies with which they are unfamiliar, but there it is.
And we can expect this impulse to continue to grow. Modern Democrats increasingly believe it is government’s job to conduct the lives of the people, reducing us from citizens to children who must be told what to do and punished when we don’t do it.
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To begin with, let’s focus on the word that caught Republicans’ eye and drew out the label, “woke”:
Last month, Sen. Steve Daines (R-Montana) sat down on his office couch and recorded a video explaining that he’d be voting against a $1.5-trillion government spending bill that included $13.5 billion in aid for Ukraine.
“There are 4,000 earmarks in this bill, totaling over $8 billion,” Daines said, gesturing at the tall stack of papers in front of him, then began to name examples. First on the list: $1.6 million for “equitable growth of shellfish aquaculture in Rhode Island.”
Reading Antonia Noori Farzan’s Providence Journal article, two possibilities appear to exist. Either advocates for the earmark are dishonestly downplaying the wokeness of the provision now that it’s drawn attention or they tacked on the word “equitable” to dishonestly give the impression that it’s more woke than it is. If the former, the move deserves objections; if the latter, it invites equal and opposite exploitation of the word choice.
Political semantics are a sideshow, however. The meat of the proposal is what should draw objections.
First, the bulk of the money will go to Roger Williams University (RWU), which is a private organization. This is precisely the problem with earmarks. They empower legislators like Democrat Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse to hand out cash to friends, associates, and people whose affection would be politically beneficial. Beyond the easy and unaccountable access to taxpayer dollars, this practice contributes to our political problems as part of the systemic corruption allowing incumbents to buy votes.
Second, part of RWU’s goal is “to research what kinds of barriers exist for people trying to start aquaculture businesses in Rhode Island, and if changes to state laws and policies are needed,” including the hiring of a lawyer and other staff. The primary “barrier” that Farzan notes is “opposition from neighboring property owners” who object to new commercial uses of public waterways, such as oyster farms.
Maybe the aquaculturalists are in the right or maybe the residents are, but this “equitable” earmark appears to be an effort to leverage the unlimited largesse of the federal government to give a politically favored industry additional leverage over individual citizens. The abuse of language, in short, is tied to an abuse of power.
If the federal government wishes to wade into this murky water, it should do so deliberately and with equal access provided to both sides. Government should absolutely not be funding one side of such public policy debates.
Featured image by John Angel on Unsplash.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- De La Cruz steps out
- Matos kicks off
- Superman talks about takeoff
- Foulkes builds a war chest
- Ruggerio goes after progressives
- The AG gives partial hope to McKee
Featured image by Lucas Sankey on Unsplash.
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Something about creating an acronym out of technical jargon for life experiences gives it a dangerously dehumanizing feel. I have in mind this pair of tweets from Democrat state representative Marcia Ranglin:
What are Adverse Childhood Experiences?
CDC indicates that ACEs can have Traumatic experiences in childhood and the teenage years may put children at risk for violence, chronic health problems, mental illness, and substance abuse in adulthood.Some adverse childhood experiences are Gun Violence, Structural Poverty, Structural Racism, Neglect, Hunger, Divorce of Parents, suicide of family member or friend, homelessness and COVID-19.
Even those who buy into the general concept might object to the ideological insinuation of including “structural” social issues on a list with acute traumatic experiences like suicide. But whether or not we keep the list intact, the therapeutic impulse that Ranglin echoes has pitfalls that its advocates apparently don’t see.
The definition of “ACE” appears so broad that it simply means “difficulties,” and if we set as a goal to eliminate those — rather than develop strategies to help people deal with them after they’ve happened — we’re on a path to erase our humanity. Arguably, this impulse is behind the most bedeviling problems we’re facing in our times, and we should doubt the wisdom of progressives’ faith that the discord is merely the discomfort of metamorphosis to a utopian future.
Overcoming difficulties is intrinsic to who we are and our sense of meaning. We’ll look for them if life doesn’t bring them to us. To be sure, we’re objectively better off finding our challenges at a higher level than avoidance of starvation and other fundamental threats to our existence, but if we empower ourselves to wipe out “ACEs,” we’ll soon be wiping out great swaths of meaningful human experience, and probably not a few humans, too.
Featured image by Gabriel on Unsplash.
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Please check out my new article on the Ocean State Current when you have a minute. It’s about an attempt by WPRO’s afternoon drive time host to discredit one of the few data professionals who brings forward honest, panoramic COVID-19 data by pointing out that he does not have a Rhode Island physician’s license. Oopsie, only problem is that another Rhode Island doctor, and a pretty famous one at that, also does not have a Rhode Island physician’s license.
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Libertarian Party of R.I. (3/15/22) from John Carlevale on Vimeo.
This interview focuses on two aspects: the Libertarian Party’s philosophy and values and its chairman and candidate Billy Hunt. Topics include property rights, legalization of certain drugs, second amendment rights, diminishing and limiting government authority, right to life, freedom of speech, affordable housing, environment concerns, energy sources, and much more. One statement made by Hunt characterizes the libertarian view of government: “With enough time and money, there is nothing the government can’t make worse.” Visit lpri.us
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The Annenberg Center on the Study of Educators at Brown University took a look at employee retention in the Providence school district and concluded that there has not been an “exodus of teachers”:
Using data up and including the start of the 2021-22 school year, we show that, while retention did fall in Providence more than in neighboring districts, the decline was relatively modest. Given Providence’s high historical retention rate, even in 2021 PPSD retained teachers at rates on par with or higher than other districts across the country. The decline in retention came from a variety of causes, with both teacher exits and teacher retirements increasing. However, retention rates for early career teachers actually increased during the pandemic; greater turnover was concentrated among teachers with more than 25 years of experience.
What continues to be disappointing is the focus of the narrative on the adults employed in the system and the ideology that has infected our governing aristocracy. Even where Annenberg acknowledges that cycling out older teachers isn’t necessarily a bad thing, the stated reason is that it creates the opportunity to hire “a more diverse pool of new teachers, allowing the district to make progress in diversifying its workforce.” It’s hard to miss the failure of everybody involved — from the teachers to the bureaucrats regulating schools to the academics at Brown — to place the critical goal of education front and center.
The story of Providence schools is that a corrupt political environment dominated by unionized teachers changed the system to serve the financial desires of employees and the political machinations of progressive labor organizations as primary goals. A shockingly embarrassing report from Johns Hopkins shamed the state into taking initial steps to repair the worst of the damage, but the shock wasn’t enough to force real change from bureaucrats who also wanted to preserve the existing political situation, so the efforts at reform were doomed to fail in the face of the intransigent union.
At the same time, the government’s response to COVID did impose new challenges on a workforce that is used to muddling along, and some small percentage decided it was time to cash out. However, the compensation packages, lack of accountability, and unmatched job security remain so high (and so well proven by the pandemic) that most teachers continue to think it worthwhile to stick it out.
In short, Providence provides an unavoidable lesson for families in Rhode Island’s capital city, and in any district with a substantially similar structure, which includes all of Rhode Island: get your kids out of government schools. The education system is not set up primarily for their benefit, and our political system is not set up to respond to the actual needs of the people it is supposed to serve.
Featured image by Niamat Ullah on Unsplash.
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Sometimes when you’re busy and check in on the news, it seems nothing makes sense, so let me make sure I’ve got a complete picture, here.
Immediately upon entering office, Joe Biden took deliberate steps that were certain to drive up the cost of fuel (restricting drilling, canceling a North American fuel pipeline, etc.), and as expected, the cost of fuel skyrocketed. His administration has refused to back off even as events make perfectly clear that, apart from being good for the American people, America’s being an energy exporter makes the world a more peaceful place, saying they believe environmental harm to be such an existential problem that it is not negotiable.
With an election approaching, however, this position is becoming untenable, and to foster the appearance that they’re doing something, the Bidenites are going to relax regulation of… ethanol?
With inflation at a 40-year high, President Joe Biden journeyed to corn-rich Iowa on Tuesday to announce a modest step aimed at trimming gasoline prices by about a dime a gallon at a limited number of stations by waiving rules that restrict ethanol blending.
This is not an area of acute expertise for me, but in every area except gaining a smidgen of political cover, this looks like just about the worst solution one could contrive. First, the savings to consumers are pitifully small. Second, as the article notes, one of the reasons ethanol percentages are regulated is that it may add “to smog in high temperatures.”
But that’s not it. Third, ethanol mainly comes from corn, which is an agricultural good, so increasing demand for corn for fuel will contribute to inflation at the grocery store. Fourth, ethanol can damage car engines and is even more harmful for other engines that people often fill from the pump.
Of course, Biden is a Democrat whom the mainstream media helped install in the White House, so he doesn’t need but a smidgen of political cover to get maximal benefit.
Featured image by Gabriel Cote on Unsplash.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- McKee’s bumbles
- The Congressional candidate who counts
- Good and bad examples in Warwick
- The creepy foot guy and what RIDE should have done
Featured image by Sammy Williams on Unsplash.
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The recently released video promoting Republican Ashley Kalus’s campaign for governor provides reason to think she’s got some real opportunities and exposes some of the risks her campaign faces:
On the risk side, her references to bringing policies from specific other states is the sort of thing that rubs provincial Rhode Islanders the wrong way and can remind them that she’s new to the local political scene and is bringing in out-of-state help. Meanwhile, her reference to her work with COVID in RI obviously has a bad association in people’s memories. People just shouldn’t use images of people getting needles in their arms when they want a positive association.
On the opportunity side, it’s so obvious that Rhode Island needs to open the windows for some fresh air and common sense that this may be the year it actually works. This is particularly true on the education front, although it will take somebody who can speak the truth about things like school choice and economic reality without seeming to threaten what Rhode Islanders feel like they already have (which they grip with desperation no matter how inadequate it is).
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