A very interesting article from Tamara Sacharczyk, of WJAR, puts a spotlight on an aspect of the people’s interaction with government that doesn’t get enough attention: lawsuits:
Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent defending state agencies in Rhode Island in recent years, and the NBC 10 I-Team uncovered taxpayers are oftentimes picking up the legal fees.
When a state agency is sued, you’d probably assume the attorney general is defending them for free, but we went through dozens of legal cases, non-tort suits, and appeals from 2016 to fall 2021 and learned that’s not always the case.
In fact, the NBC 10 I-Team found $11 million in tax money has been spent on state legal fees in that time frame.
Government officials don’t really face much downside from spending money on lawyers (and stand to reap a cut back around as political donations). The money doesn’t come out of their pockets, and it’s easy to sell as necessary — even to turn into a weapon with which to hit the people who are bringing the complaints.
It’s win-win. The government steps all over people’s rights. Those people go to court to defend their rights. The government agents spend the people’s money on lawyers and then blame those whose rights it violated in the first place.
Under the worst town solicitor Tiverton has ever had, Michael Marcello, this has become a central operating principle of municipal government. Because he treats them like corporate clients, meaning his job is not to interpret the law accurately so they might better represent the public’s interests, but to help the individuals who hired him do whatever they want, municipal officials turn to him for thin legal cover to completely ignoring what everybody knows to be the local law under our town charter. This leaves residents with no option but to go to court, for which he charges copious amounts of money, thus setting up those officials to malign their political opposition for costing taxpayers so much money.
Meanwhile, it isn’t free for those residents to bring the suits.
In the case of Sacharczyk’s article, I think we’re more likely to see government officials malign, for example, the truckers suing over Raimondo’s tolls than anybody in government face consequences for racking up the invoices with legally questionable policies. To some of us, it seems obvious that, if government officials need intricate legal arguments to determine whether they have the power to do something, they probably shouldn’t do it.
Unfortunately, the political philosophy that has infected our state and local governments is that government should be activist and always pushing its actions farther.
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — being a strategic attack disrupting a general atmosphere of peaceful exhaustion among European countries — has a cautionary component for analysts. While one can reasonably suggest that this or that factor is playing a role, strong assertions about the motivations and plans of the people involved are best avoided. That’s true especially in this case, when the leadup to invasion wasn’t characterized by an inexorable buildup of hostilities, but an atmosphere more like high-stakes international diplomacy.
In this context, a question from Andrew Morse is well considered. Noting a report from the Meet the Press Twitter account that “Russia is ready for talks with Ukraine, Putin tells Xi,” Andrew asks:
The vassal assures his lord that he has not taken on more than he can handle?
Maybe, maybe not. But drawing analysis back to the point of considering Russia’s relationship with China places on the table a world of extremely complex possibilities. We rightly hear repeated reminders about what a monster Vladimir Putin is, but we don’t adequately account for the possibilities to those of high ambition and low regard for human life.
Slicing off bits of Ukraine may not be Putin’s primary objective. Ukraine might not be central. Russia might not be the primary mover. We don’t know.
However this conflict resolves (hopefully over days rather than weeks or months), the dictators of Russia, China, and elsewhere have gained invaluable information… about Ukraine, about Europe, about the United States, about Joe Biden, about (the encouraging) protest movement within Russia itself, about the strength and loyalty of Russian troops.
This isn’t to say that Putin is some sort of master strategist. Even if he’s a thug playing games, whose plans will come to nothing, he’s been at the top of Russia’s thugocracy for a long time, so one has to credit him with some degree of strategic thinking. Recall Iraq’s long-time dictator, Saddam Hussein, who misled the world into thinking he was better armed than he was. That turned out disastrously for him, but it also prevented us from responding to reality.
The relevance of this point is its effect on our own strategic thinking. Overconfidence about what we understand about what our opposition is doing can lead to concrete moves that respond to decoys and feints while, in any case, providing the opposition information and exposing weaknesses.
While we should, of course, be asking ourselves what we should do if this, that, or the other thing happens, the core question should be what we should in a world in which we can’t possibly know what is going to happen or what our enemies are planning. This approach is implicitly behind the conservative approach to government. Maintain a strong military and the understanding that we’ll use it when necessary. Illustrate the indomitable spirit and competence of our broader society constantly. Project confidence and faith in our own culture.
Basically, build up everything that which American progressives have been doggedly breaking down. Indeed, the current level of success of their efforts may be among the most valuable information our enemies are collecting.
Featured image by Herrald of Landsberg on WikiArt.
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Imagine a young Christian Rhode Islander running for office with a team of Republican candidates of the Make America Great Again mold taking to Twitter to say:
The LGBTQs are coming for the Christian community. Who will look out for our best interests, if not ourselves?
Run for office. Support local Christian candidates. Fight back.
Now suppose that candidate worked in the admissions office of a public university. Do you think, perhaps, local progressives would make relentless noise and that at least a few of the major media outlets in the Ocean State would pick up the story? I do. Whether that young Christian would lose his job or be forced to withdraw from the race, or at least offer a public apology, would be a matter of chance having to do with other stories in the news cycle, the fortitude of his immediate employers, and so on. But nobody would be surprised if very powerful people publicly questioned whether the young man could serve all prospective students fairly or represent his university to them.
To be absolutely clear, I don’t think Zakary Pereira should face any personal or professional consequences for his similar Tweet, but I do think the matter worthy of some consideration.
Of course, Pereira isn’t a Christian Republican. He’s a gay progressive Democrat running for state representative with the RI Political Cooperative. And his college admissions job isn’t with a public university, but with Salve Regina, which I’d thought (though I may be mistaken) to be a Catholic institution.
His tweet was in furtherance of far-left, queer Senator Tiara Mack, who had insisted that people in Rhode Island should take positions on culture war issues in Florida because, “not too long from now someone will bring these dangerous pieces of legislation to our state (the ideas are already here).” So, Pereira’s comment was, indeed, a blanket statement about “the Republicans,” not a reference to some specific group relevant to his political race.
For the moment, let’s partition to the side the question of whether it actually is “dangerous” for legislators to require high scrutiny when a school district decides to lie to a child’s parents about his or her experience in school. The immediate question is whether it should matter that, say, a Republican Catholic applicant to Salve Regina from Florida might feel insecure when interacting with Mr. Pereira.
Again, to be clear, the question isn’t a call for Pereira to face consequences. I raise the matter in the hopes that maybe those who read this will consider the effects of common attitudes in political discourse. Those who register as Republicans are people, too, as are parents who worry about establishing in law the principle that government schools can lie to parents about their children’s emotional development if the parents’ religious beliefs differ from the established religion of the government.
The fact that Pereira would rattle off this tweet given both his political aspirations and his employment suggests progressive and even mainstream Democrats lack empathy with people who disagree with them. If anything is dangerous in this complicated stew, that is.
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One suspects Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is only the first bomb to crash upon our sense of normalcy. The United States made a colossal error allowing Joe Biden to occupy the White House, and as he’s bumbled his way through the first year of a Presidential term, those whom American power has kept in check have been observing, calculating, and preparing. Twelve months of our worsening condition has been painful, but within the bounds of normal. With Americans’ political hands tied for the better part of another year, and one arm still disabled for an additional two, those evil forces will begin to act.
Don’t let Democrats’ newly warmongering talk about the evil of Vladimir Putin, while true, deceive you into thinking he’s unique in the world. The choice that America made in its foolish complacency was so terrible that it may cost us a century of geopolitical progress, or more. People talk about a “great reset,” but neither those who want it nor those who fear it have applied the concept in practical terms. What is a reset? It’s not simply a new direction. A reset means returning to a prior condition to start again. Well, rewind history to the time before the prior condition that global elites lament and where do you land?
Here’s a more relevant question: What should we do?
Give yourself a little time to get over the initial shock of the changing world. Then: don’t complain; don’t feel overwhelmed; do start changing what you can change.
You can be sure of one thing. The activists, partisans, and die-hards who’ve actively brought this moment about won’t change. They’re deluded and self-focused. No matter what happens, they’ll see it as a development to exploit, if possible, or to manage, if necessary, in their march toward their own goals. They wanted a reset, so they must have expected something like this. Turmoil is in their plan.
Where hope can be found is with those whom the activists have fooled or confused. It will be tempting to try to make these folks see what a mistake they made and acknowledge how bad the activists, partisans, and die-hards are. That may work for some, but it’s not an ideal approach. People don’t like to admit error, so if you insist that they do, even if only to themselves, you make the process of changing their minds and correcting their direction more difficult. Moreover, their choice isn’t truly between angry, warring factions, and we should avoid making it seem as if that’s the case.
Hope can also be found among those who have not been fooled, but who have been largely idle, and here we find not only a great wellspring of power and energy, but also the silver lining of facing such a massive and pervasive challenge. Almost any increase in effort applied to almost any aspect of the problem can make a difference.
Our country didn’t put Biden in the White House out of nowhere. That step is representative of long years of decay. Years of work by Democrats and their allies in every institution from government to media to schools, and beyond, made this situation possible. Therefore, while immediate action is necessary, it will neither reclaim nor destroy all of that socio-political infrastructure.
When it comes to immediate action, each of us can only do so much (assuming there aren’t any powerhouses in my audience I don’t know about). So, focus where you can make a difference.
Getting somebody sane (and with a stiff backbone… that will be absolutely crucial) elected to your local school committee will make a long-term difference. Contributing to the growth of alternative media structures will, too. One of the most significant, albeit indirect and subtle, actions you can take is to build a sense of community, both within your town and with people who share your mission. Reach out. Get together. Make life enjoyable and attractive. (The counter to hate is love; the counter to divisiveness is unification; and the counter alienation is welcome.)
Finally, in times that get your blood boiling, one important lesson is easy to forget: Do all that you can, but don’t do more than you can. We have to deal with crises at our doorsteps, but when a crisis passes, the biggest risk is burning out or losing momentum. Set your sights on that time in the future when the reset, itself, has been undone and the malign intentions of those who brought it about have been so thoroughly thwarted that our world is actually better off for having corrected their error.
Featured image by Theodore Gericault on WikiArt.
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Whether I’ve been failing or succeeding, all these years, I’ll leave to others to judge, but one of my core objectives has always been to foster the habit of making the sorts of connections that are too often covered over for political reasons. Let’s look at a big one.
Perhaps with the mixed motivation of appealing to the environmentalist sentiments of his party’s base, creating opportunities for those who understand the complex investment schemes around green energy mandates, and lining up more construction projects for the labor unions with which he spent his career, Senate President Dominick Ruggerio wants to accelerate Rhode Island’s rush toward self-imposed energy limitations:
Senate President Dominick Ruggerio reintroduced legislation this week in hopes of strengthening Rhode Island’s commitment to renewable energy.
The proposed bill seeks to gradually increase the amount of electricity generated from renewable sources, with the goal of hitting 100% by 2030.
Here is the connection that nobody is making, but everybody should, from Sofie Rudin of The Public’s Radio:
In the last four years, more than a thousand acres of Rhode Island forest have been cleared for solar, according to the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. That accounts for more than two thirds of forested land that was cleared for development. …
“For a relatively large amount of forest loss to occur to an industry that is essentially termed and represented as green energy and renewable energy, it really was surprising to me,” [Clark University Professor John Rogan] said.
Rhode Island forests pull about 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere each year, according to a state Department of Environmental Management report – the equivalent of taking more than 100,000 cars off the road.
The panic fostered by the environmental movement opens the door to both honest miscalculations and cynical manipulation of the political process to make or increase special interests’ fortunes.
And it doesn’t stop with deforestation. Increased energy prices correlate with increased economic hardship. Increased economic hardship correlates with less voluntary concern about the natural environment. Similarly, restrictions to our sources of energy leads to less reliability, which leads to more installation and use of gasoline-powered home power generators.
The solution of those whose advocacy produced these unwanted consequences will inevitably proceed to seek an unending series of patches on the problems, thus creating more complexity, more corruption, and more consequences. Instead, we all should pause and reevaluate our goals and the underlying challenges. Then, we can figure out how to change things for the benefit of all without coercion.
Such an approach is unlikely, however, if we don’t first admit that our government has been coopted as a tool to focus power and promote ideology for and of the Left.
Featured image by Nautilus Solar.
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Well, we have to thank Rhode Island Republicans for trying:
The Rhode Island Senate Republican Caucus is proposing the state eliminate gas tax for the remainder of the year.
“We want to direct the influx in tax revenue back to residents and provide relief from the crushing pain at the pump,” Senate Minority Whip Jessica de la Cruz said. “Our state budget is benefiting from inflation as the gas tax brings in new, unexpected revenue. Meanwhile, the people of Rhode Island are struggling to balance their budgets with no relief in sight.”
Why can’t these ideas get more traction around here?
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Not long ago, technology was beginning to allow the blind to see. Beware the need for maintenance and software support:
These three patients, and more than 350 other blind people around the world with Second Sight’s implants in their eyes, find themselves in a world in which the technology that transformed their lives is just another obsolete gadget. One technical hiccup, one broken wire, and they lose their artificial vision, possibly forever. To add injury to insult: A defunct Argus system in the eye could cause medical complications or interfere with procedures such as MRI scans, and it could be painful or expensive to remove.
On its face, this is more a market failure than a technological one. (What is preventing the market from making such miracles sustainable?) Either way, however, it does remind us not to be too readily trusting in technology (whether implants or, say, vaccines) that must be maintained in an ongoing way. It also reminds us how easily the ground can fall away beneath us. Disruptions from experiments in big government, for example, become absolutely profound when one needs the structures of society even in order to see.
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Author and former Providence Journal opinion page editor Ed Achorn has been tweeting about the Canadian government’s move on banking, and the topic is one that ought to be of much more concern to all of us. Note this tweet, from Peter Sweden, which Achorn passes along with the comment, “If true, this is terrifying”:
In Canada they froze the bank accounts of a single mother for the crime of donating $50 to the truckers BEFORE they declared the protests illegal.
Retroactive financial sanctions for opponents of the government.
Sounds like North Korea…
Ed’s qualifier is well placed; there’s often much more to these anecdotes than the Twitter-sized summary reveals. On the other hand, people respond to the message they receive, not a fully nuanced analysis of the facts.
This relates to another of Achorn’s recent tweets, in which he emphasizes a comment from Jordan Peterson that a source in the military advised Peterson to remove all his money from Canadian banks because “the situation is far worse then he was informed.” The more consequential point from the Peterson clip, however, may be this one:
Here’s what our prime minister did last week: He permanently destroyed 20% of the population’s faith in the entire Canadian banking system and stained the Canadian banking system’s international reputation, I would say, for decades.
Don’t forget that just a few months ago the Biden administration was seeking to give the IRS power to monitor Americans’ bank accounts on an ongoing basis. One needn’t be much of a conspiracy theorist to connect this with Trudeau’s tyrannical actions, but even if American Democrats have the purest of intentions, such policies are insane.
Western civilization has been comfortable for so long that too many people have forgotten how much of what we’ve built depends entirely on trust. Concepts like power, exploitation, and oppression are important and relevant, but they are all secondary limitations on the more-fundamental ideal of trust.
Progressives in government (a label by which I mean to include Trudeau’s government as well as Biden’s) misunderstand society and reality, and so they base their policies on the assumption that people will keep doing what they do because they have no choice. They think that wealth and productivity are things some people arbitrarily take from other people, so they miss the essential point that people are the economy.
Consequently, they think, “so what if 20% of the population disengages from the system. That means more for the rest of us.” That’s not how any of this works.
Featured image by Konstantin Evdokimov on Unsplash.
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The video that the Rhode Island 131 group posted of its attack, protest, walk-by-shouting, whatever, on Monday shows how pathetic the whole thing was.
The video does add the implied possibility that there was some shoving involved, although it may have been two-sided.
The idea that this has commanded the attention of all of Rhode Island’s governing officials for a day would be inexplicable if we hadn’t already seen similar reactions for far less (like a handful of fliers on the East Side). It’s inexplicable, that is, except as propaganda, which has exposed the real threat — namely, that governing officials are on the hunt for excuses to curtail our freedoms while distracting from their own failures.
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Convenient, isn’t it, that a small group of people making noise and waving a Nazi flag can turn an inconsequential Communist reading by an unknown socialist organization into the hot story of the day in Rhode Island, providing massive advertisement for their little left-wing library?
Attempting to make the event seem significant, the Boston Globe tacked this lead on Carlos Muñoz’s related story: “The publication of the Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels manifesto is celebrated each year by thousands around the world as ‘Red Books Day.'” Wow! Thousands around the world! What’s the population of the planet, again?
For some sense of the size of the socialists’ event (about which journalists seem suspiciously incurious), consider some of the numbers. There were “15-20 individuals… allegedly from a neo-Nazi group.” And one of the socialists tweeted that his group was “outnumbered 5:1.” That would put the number of people inside the library at three or four, so, basically a small group of friends reading to each other.
As a default, we should generally assume that incidents involving neo-Nazis in modern day Providence are hoaxes or false flags, but in this case, the numbers make the default less sure. If the protest were fake, one would expect organizers to have assigned more people to actually attend the event, rather than falsely protesting it. More likely, one small fringe group heard about the event of another small fringe group, and they joined forces for a bit of early-twentieth-century cosplay.
Where the rest of us should be concerned is with the muddying of waters as more-powerful people leverage these incidents for propaganda. Note this statement from another activist group looking to get in on the PR boon:
The Black Lives Matter RI PAC issued a statement Tuesday about the incident: “There is no greater threat to Rhode Island than nazism and white supremacy. Yesterday evening, an organized group of Neo-Nazis that have established themselves throughout Rhode Island terrorized Red Ink Community Library in Providence Ward 3.”
The idea that the Nazi threat is significant in Rhode Island is sufficiently laughable to ignore, but the claim about “white supremacy” is where the mainstream media could actually provide a service by insisting on consistency. “Anti-racist” literature is peppered with assertions that one finds “white supremacy” in all sorts of American institutions, most especially the institution of capitalism. Yet, one of this group’s other cosplay flags, as shown in the featured image of this post, via John DePetro, joins anticommunism with anticapitalism.
Perhaps one can weave a tale in which capitalism is implicit white supremacy while the rare people who actually identify as white supremacists oppose capitalism, but explanation is required, to say the least.
However, one suspects that explanation is not forthcoming. Fringe groups aren’t the only ones playing games, here, and it’s the other ones we have to keep our eye on.
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