Perhaps you’ve seen video of Joe Biden shouting about how important it is for his government to seize authority over who counts votes in America:
Biden, appearing to admit defeat on ending the filibuster & nationalizing elections, randomly starts shouting: States’ voter reform laws are “about who gets to count the votes! Count the vote! Count the vote!” pic.twitter.com/66LpGL1ckQ
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 13, 2022
This is certainly a “saying the quiet part out loud” moment, with masks coming off. According to Biden, refusing to change the way in which elections are done in the United States is “election subversion.”
Remember when suggesting that something might be strange about the way votes were being counted was, itself, considered a subversion so offensive as to render one an insurrectionist?
Yeah… there are no standards. What Democrats and progressive want or need is always right, even if it would be the highest evil for their opposition to do exactly the same thing.
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For seven weeks, East Providence sent warnings instead of tickets to drivers who went more than 11 miles per hour over the speed limit in school zones. The system issued 69,528 such warnings, in fact, which works out to about 1,420 per day.
The cameras have only been snagging drivers for actual $50 tickets for a few days, so behavior may change, but the daily average for the first three was around 1,450. With this limited comparison, it looks like the warnings had zero effect.
If these numbers keep up, East Providence will collect around $131 million over the five-year contract with provider Sensys Gatso U.S.A., which would receive about $19.3 million. That’s on the high end, of course. People will change their behavior, and the cameras won’t ticket while schools aren’t in session. According to Sarah Guernelli’s article, Sensys expects to be paid about $4 million during those five years, which implies total ticket revenue of about $26.4 million.
Either way, that’s a lot of money for a municipality to pull out of its people, and the fact that the tickets aren’t reported to the Division of Motor Vehicles unless they’re unpaid gives the impression that the system is, in fact, more about the revenue than the enforcement of necessary speed limits.
As this technology proliferates, we should probably keep an eye on an important question: Is this new, lucrative policy a response to actual incidents? If 1,400-something people are driving at least 11 miles per hour over the speed limit every day without incident, maybe that limit is unreasonably low. Maybe not… just a thought.
On this issue as on every other issue, a wise citizenry will continually ask to be reminded of the reason for a law. There will always be more that could be done to make some people a little safer or more comfortable and to more stringently enforce the law, but when those laws are passed, the estimated ability of the government to enforce them is implicit. The implied consent of the public was to a system with a low risk of tickets for low-speed violations.
That is, it’s effectively a change in the law when the government adds technology to change a low risk to 100% risk, and officials should have to justify the new terms.
Featured image (not an East Providence camera) by Denny Muller on Unsplash.
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What caused the relationship to deteriorate rapidly was a McKee media mouthpiece [Dan Yorke] who bragged that the Governor shared with him a plan to remove Scott if elected in the fall. Scott angrily confronted McKee who denied the conversation [Yorke] but the damage was done.
John thinks it was a “blunder” that McKee didn’t replace Alexander-Scott during the summertime after he took office. The only thing that gives me pause before agreeing is McKee’s track record when bringing in his own people. Replacing Alexander-Scott would only have provided benefit if her replacement was reasonably competent and non-corrupt, which is by no means assured.
One takeaway for Rhode Islanders, however, has to do with the office of lieutenant governor. If the only official duty of that position is to be ready to become governor on short notice, perhaps we should expect lieutenant governors to spend their time closely following the governor’s activities and developing a plan to replace him or her.
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In order to improve them, we have to understand how our institutions work, but we’re not very good at assessing them anymore.
Maybe the problem is the mix of self-esteem culture with identity politics and progressive domination of our cultural institutions. Saturated in that social brew, our governing class has become something like a giant nonprofit organization on a permanent retreat for morale building.
If you’re on the trip, you must be good and well-intentioned. The activities are fabricated, so it doesn’t really matter whether anybody does them well. And the only people outside the Circle of Affirmation are those who refused to participate in the retreat and occasionally send messages that give the impression they think the organization is supposed to have some purpose beyond building its own morale.
I don’t intend this as insult or mockery; I’m only trying to describe what I see. This morning, the above description is suggested by two pieces in the Rhode Island section of the Boston Globe.
The first is Brian Amaral’s latest on-the-scene profile of the growing disaster that is Rhode Island’s hospital system: “How COVID-19 and staffing issues took Rhode Island Hospital ‘from bad to terrible’.” With each such article, the understanding dawns just a little bit more that “the unvaccinated” can’t be made to take all of the blame and one can’t whistle past the acknowledgement of an emergency medicine physician in print — to a reporter from a major regional newspaper — that he “sleep[s] perfectly easily after watching people die in horrible ways” because they weren’t vaccinated.
In this article, faintly, we start to see the topic edge toward the giant unasked question about why “the state’s health care system was ill prepared to handle a viral shock.” The term “red tape” enters the conversation, but still with the feel of a natural phenomenon. Eventually, journalists will have to ask who has the tape dispenser.
With that impression in mind, let’s pivot to Dan McGowan’s hagiographic farewell to outgoing Department of Health Director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott — “the conscience of Rhode Island.” I don’t mean to single Dan out; he’s just the first to write a column expressing an attitude that is everywhere on Rhode Island social media.
McGowan reminds readers that Alexander-Scott “was here way before the masks and the shots, the shutdowns and the reopenings,” but rather than mention the systemic problems with health care in the Ocean State, Dan chides Rhode Islanders that “it’s about time that we thank her for the leadership she has shown.”
How can our system ever hold anybody accountable when our watchdogs don’t seem to believe that any officials are actually responsible for the institutions they presume to regulate? Look at the suffering described in Amaral’s article! Shouldn’t that be at least a footnote while commenting on the “conscience” of the state?
The reader is left to wonder: Who, in the eyes of Rhode Island’s ruling class, is actually responsible for managing the massive government they support? When there are no Republicans to cast as villains, the answer seems to be “nobody.” The sun-bedazzled picnic tables are filled with great people doing their best against the impersonal tides of fate while awaiting the next fun trust-building exercise.
Featured image by David Todd McCarty on Unsplash.
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Kevin Roche doesn’t mince words, and readers who generally agree with the point of view expressed hereabouts will enjoy his essay. but this paragraph is a good springboard for something I’ve found pretty obvious, lately:
Nothing is going to stop the butt-kicking coming in November, but it will be magnitudes worse if we aren’t out of the epidemic by then, so I predict that sometime in the spring, the Presidementia will declare victory and do everything possible to end all restrictions and return to “normal”, if we even remember what that was. He and his party have to get the CV-19 millstone off their necks. Too late for the generation of children whose mental health and life goal attainment we have so substantially damaged. And just like that, the epidemic will be over and will recede into the background, no matter what new variants arise.
Here’s what happened.
Did you ever play a game (like Sudoku) that takes a lot of logical set-up, and then at some point, all the next moves fall into place in a cascade? Well, that’s what the Democrats thought they were looking forward to when they installed #LetsGoBrandon in the White House.
They expected the vaccines and nature to take COVID off the board early in their occupation of the White House, leading to a predictable economic explosion. They interpreted moves toward peace in the Middle East (which were actually resulting from Trump’s strong backing of Israel and policies making the U.S. an energy exporter) as a sign that things were settled in the region.
The list goes on. They thought the cowed response of Americans to the destruction of our cities in the BLM/Antifa fire-burst meant the critical race theory arson could extend to our children’s minds in public schools. And they thought the media-generated shock over January 6 meant Americans were ready for an ideological crackdown.
They were wrong, and it’s been blowing up in their faces. They can’t govern, and they have no practical ideas. They gave so much leash to their radicals that they can’t move back toward the center. So, all they have is doubling down on tyranny and attempting to rig elections, which Americans already see through like a recently cleaned window.
Democrats of good will can either accept the deserved shellacking as a healthy response or switch parties.
Featured image by Brett Jordan on Unsplash.
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Look, the APA was ideologically captured decades ago, but at least they were judicious about it. They kept their profession front and center and only advanced the ideology where it didn’t seem to interfere too much. Christopher Ferguson’s explanation of his resignation from the organization is an acknowledgment that the organization has gone off the cliff and is now primarily ideological:
[Open full post]I’ve been a member of the American Psychological Association (APA) for years, and a fellow for the past six or seven years. I sat on their Council of Representatives, which theoretically sets policy for the APA, for three years. I am just ending my term as president of the APA’s Society for Media and Technology, where I have met many wonderful colleagues. Yet, at the end of 2021, I decided to resign my membership in the APA. My concern is that the APA no longer functions as an organization dedicated to science and good clinical practice. As a professional guild, perhaps it never did, but I believe it is now advancing causes that are actively harmful and I can no longer be a part of it. …
I’d argue the 2020 moment isn’t really about race or social justice, but about a defensive elite narrative projecting ostensible morality when, in reality, consolidating power. That our psychological institutions, as well as those elsewhere in academia, journalism, and business, have participated in this is a shame on our field.
I’m not sure why so many people miss this.
It is in the nature of “progressivism” to “progress,” according to the lights of the ideology. By definition, there is no destination short of perfection. Moreover, there can’t even be a pause for evaluation as “progress” is made. Wherever a new generation finds itself as a starting point, it has to push for more, and adherents take evidence that the prior step didn’t destroy the universe as evidence that their demands won’t, either (and if they do, it was probably deserved… racist universe!).
And so, you get old-school leftist NYU professor of propaganda Mark Crispin saying:
“When I look back on what we then believed in [during the ’60s], I can’t help but be shocked—repelled by what the so-called left has become today. The two lefts have nothing in common,” Crispin told The Epoch Times, “today’s left is the far-right.”
“When I was a kid, the far-right really kind of distrusted and feared the working class. They wanted them to stay away from politics, they didn’t like labor unions. Well, who are the deplorables? That’s the working class. The constant demonization of Trump’s base is essentially an attack—an elite attack–on the working class and its refusal to follow the script dictated to them by the liberal media.” …
“The fact is that, putting aside the weird attitude of the so-called left toward black people, they have no use for the working class, they have nothing for contempt for them, and that strikes me as another symptom of their being on the far-right.”
Left, right… whatever. Those labels don’t really matter in this context. It used to be that the political debate was about how to structure society and achieve tangible objectives. The ’60s radicals and their offspring made it all about who has power.
If the workers want to take power away from progressives, then the workers must be part of the problem. Deplorables, clinging to God and guns! As minorities conclude that their interests are no longer being served by the Democrat Party, which is increasingly radical, they’ll come in for the same treatment.
This is how tyranny and atrocities happen. Paint the excuses with whatever political color you want; what it comes down to is a small minority insisting that it must get its way and using any means it must to ensure that it holds on to power.
If it makes Crispin more comfortable to understand events by concluding that the left became the right, that’s fine, as long as he defines his terms and they’re not just a way to shift blame away from people who agree with him on this or that issue. I’d suggest, however, that society makes more sense if we acknowledge that the excesses that used to be ascribed to the conservative point of view were not characteristic of “the right,” but rather characteristic of a certain psychology that will latch on to whatever platform promises power at the time.
Featured image by Herrald of Landsberg on WikiArt.
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Not a lot of details have been provided, but Department of Health Director Nicole Alexander-Scott has given her two-week notice to leave her job:
Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, director of the Rhode Island Department of Health, will stay on for two weeks during the search for new leadership, McKee said. She will then act as a consultant to the department for an additional three months to ensure continuity.
Some might analyze the details for clues about what happened — McKee accepted the resignation “regretfully”! — but there’s really no way to know. Of course, the extended exit does narrow the possibilities somewhat.
Things have to have been stressful around state government recently, with everything seeming to be out of control when it comes to handling the pandemic. Consequently, you could tell a story in any direction.
If the parting came at McKee’s insistence, it could have been either amiable or not. His sense could be that she’s failing, or it could simply be that a new face is needed to change the public perception in keeping with a new phase of the pandemic response.
If it truly was a resignation and not a “resignation” (cough, cough, “firing”), Alexander-Scott might not want to deal with the stress anymore, or maybe she has another job lining up that she’d take no matter what was going on. The question is just how wildly one wishes to speculate.
On the wilder end of speculation, one might observe that the resignation comes shortly after Alexander-Scott’s old boss, Gina Raimondo, showed that her political PR machine is still working the market, with a glowing, out-of-nowhere column by James Hohmann, claiming that “Gina Raimondo is a Democrat with a promising future.”
Very likely, that’s mere coincidence, but nonetheless, the juxtaposition shows the sort of machinations that might be behind any given announcement. In politics, people are always talking behind the scenes and trying to move their pieces into place, which is one of the reasons citizens are well advised to limit what we try to have government do.
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I haven’t seen the same thing some of my fellow conservatives have in video of the latest heated exchange between Republican Senator Rand Paul and top health bureaucrat Anthony Fauci. Paul made some good points, but he didn’t leave Fauci quivering in guilt and fear, as some would have it. Actually, it would have been better for him and for the country if he had.
Instead, with a hint of a smirk, Fauci launched his own political counterattack, claiming Paul was only going after him to help his own fundraising.
An interesting discussion could be had about the nature of politics and how politicians simultaneously generate controversy and represent the interest of constituents. (If Americans are willing to pay money to have Paul go after Fauci, that’s a pretty powerful statement that the senator is, indeed, representing them.) But that’s a secondary, meta debate.
Paul was accusing Fauci of abusing his position as a public health official to engage in efforts to discredit alternative scientific perspectives. Fauci responded to this accusation by engaging in exactly the bare-knuckle politics Paul was accusing him of. That action should go on the list of reasons Fauci ought to lose his job.
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How does a news organization publish an entire article, by WPRI’s Steph Machado, with associated television news clip, about a tug-of-war between the mayor of Providence and the city council over vaccine mandates for police and not mention crime in the city?
The deadline is Friday for all city workers to get at least one dose of the COVID vaccine or be terminated from their jobs. Up to 80 police officers out of 450 remained unvaccinated as of last week, according to Public Safety Commissioner Steven Paré. It’s unclear how many officers have opted to get vaccinated this week ahead of the deadline.
Friday’s vote to block the mass firings, if approved by a majority of councilors, would not immediately stop Elorza from enforcing the policy. Ordinances must pass the council twice, and then the mayor can either veto or sign it into law.
Sure, we get City Council President John Igliozzi predicting that the “city will be completely lawless,” but no context about how crime has been in the city recently. One looks in vain for that familiar phrase that the mayor “has come under fire” for drive-by shootings, assaults on college students, and other incidents. Of course, one reason is that the local news media has not been providing the sort of coverage that might generate a little heat on . Whether they’re protecting Jorge Elorza or progressives’ efforts to make gang life more comfortable in Rhode Island isn’t clear.
On a related note, how does a news organization publish another article, by the AP’s Lindsey Tanner, although still on WPRI, about low vaccination rates among young children and not mention evidence of side effects from the drug? The reader gets more propaganda from the American Academy of Pediatrics, with a New York pediatrician given space to call for government mandates, but mention of any evidence supporting an alternative view is completely absent. Sure, argue that the side effects of the vaccine are rare and generally mild, but then, so is harm from the virus for children. Evidence suggests myocarditis risk for males under 40 is elevated by 7.6 times after a Pfizer booster shot (3.4 times after the second shot), compared with 2.0 times for the virus. This is clearly relevant to the vaccination decision.
The fact that information like the above is completely absent contributes not only to distrust of the mainstream media, but also to distrust of public health officials and the vaccines they’re promoting. We’re not children, and attempts to treat us as such demean our status as equal citizens and lead us to conclude insiders are trying to hide something and manipulate us.
Featured image by Climate Reality Project on Unsplash.
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