If you are not happy with the results below please do another search
Legislation targeting individuals who advocate on local ballot questions would infringe on constitutional rights and could expose the flaw in all campaign finance law.
The House floor debate on 7147 betrays the reality that legislators pass laws having no idea what they actually do or what their consequences might be.
The RI House will vote today on legislation that will show which legislators actually understand their constituents’ rights and are willing to defend them.
Originally published February 15 on Reason.com by Emma Camp as Bad Schools Aren’t Always Underfunded “More money can help schools succeed, but not if they fritter those extra resources in unproductive ways,” says one researcher. (Illustration: Lex Villena) A viral TikTok video of Carmel High School outside Indianapolis, Indiana, has sparked a revealing conversation about school funding […]
On Friday, the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity hosted one of our signature events— our fourth annual Shotguns & Cigars fundraiser was a huge success. The day features outdoor fun, camaraderie, cigars, bourbon and wine, and a juicy steak all at Addieville East Farm. Teams of four enjoyed practicing our shotgun skills with sporting clays. We, once again, proved that our Second Amendment rights can be used responsibly.
Here are some images from this incredible day. Please e-mail Info@RIFreedom.org to inquire about joining us next year.
Brian Gallogly is right to lament on Twitter the politicization of the Community College of Rhode Island under Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo:
CCRI President Hughes setting a new precedent by standing in front of a campaign banner & essentially endorsing Gov. Raimondo for reelection. Prior Rhode Island college presidents stayed neutral so they could work well with whoever won.
However, the fault is not all hers. Gallogly’s response is to a tweet from Raimondo announcing her “second term universal job training and education plan.” The governor includes a video of her announcement and speech (bookended with words from CCRI President Meghan Hughes) at CCRI.
The problem is the ambiguity between an official policy announcement and a campaign event. Under this governor, there is no space between the two. Governing is campaigning, and campaigning is governance. At some point, that practice transitions from simply poor taste to corruption, and a governor becomes something more like a potentate.
When you buy more from the grocery store than the grocery store buys from you, you have a trade deficit with the grocery store.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) March 7, 2018
Portsmouth good government activist John Vit released these drone photos of new @RIDOTNews facility in Portsmouth (notice proximity to wetlands) violating RIDEM Rules by not protecting salt piles. @TedNesi @kathyprojo pic.twitter.com/pcHUcHdPmr
— John Pagliarini, Jr. (@SenJPag) November 21, 2017
Here’s a telling little tidbit that slipped through the strainer of Tiverton politics, from a not-online Newport Daily News article by Marcia Pobzeznik on January 30.
Town Council Member John Edwards the Fifth (son of Democrat State Representative John Edwards the Fourth) appears quietly to have planned a beach bonfire for Christmas trees, which left his fellow council members feeling like “the Town Council was the last to know,” per councilor Denise DeMedeiros. They finally found out when they were called to a special meeting to decide whether to cancel the event because of gusty winds.
Here’s the telling part that makes the anecdote of statewide interest:
Firefighters and a fire engine would have been required at the beach, deMedeiros said, along with a police detail for crowd control. She asked Edwards if he had considered the costs.
A legislative grant would take care of the costs of the firefighters and the police detail, said Edwards, son of Rep. John “Jay” Edwards, D-Tiverton.
There is no such grant on the House’s list, although it’s dated only through October 1. The Senate’s list is more up to date and has some grants for Tiverton, but whether or not they’re associated isn’t possible to tell.
Think of the process, here, especially involving the son of the legislator who successfully pushed legislation to make it more difficult for individuals to participate in local politics, creating hurdles for them to jump in the name of “transparency.” A Town Council member almost pulled off a public event involving town property and the use of town employees without the knowledge of at least some of his fellow councilors, and the whole thing was supposedly going to be funded through a General Assembly handout that, likewise, nobody else had any idea about.
Obviously, given the lack of transparency, there’s no way to know whether this is relevant, but as I’ve written before, the state Ethics Commission would find no problem with a member of the General Assembly pushing to use state taxpayer money to fund a politically helpful event secretly orchestrated by his son because everybody involved is acting in official government capacity.
File this under “researchers rediscover the obvious”:
There are chemical differences in how male and female brains regulate aggression in response to stress, Georgia State University scientists suggest. …
In a study of hamsters, the research team found serotonin promotes and AVP inhibits aggression and dominance in females. The reverse effect was found in males, with AVP promoting and serotonin inhibiting aggression and dominance. The serotonin reuptake inhibitor fluoxetine, one of the most prescribed drugs for psychiatric disorders, was also found to increase aggression in females while inhibiting it in males.
Inasmuch as I lack specific expertise on these hormones’ effect on the body, take this as an amateur summary for the purpose of illustration, but if I’m understanding the implications correctly, when a chemical transmitting information throughout the body increases, women become more aggressive and men become less aggressive, and when a chemical pushing blood throughout the body (preparing it for action), men become more aggressive and women become less aggressive.
To take the amateur generalization a bit further, when new information is flying, a man will step back and take it in then, when the brain and body send the muscles the signal that it’s time to act, the man will be less open to instruction and feel more urge to give it. Women, presumably, would generally react in the opposite way.
Imagine a nuclear family (husband, wife, and children) facing some science-fiction calamity. As the initial sparks fly, the husband will want to take in information while being less inclined to assert his will, while the wife will be more-immediately inclined to dominate. Asks he, “What’s going on here?”; commands she, “Let’s get out of here.” As the situation focuses on some particular threat — zombies, because they’re fun — and both switch from information transmission to action, the husband (generally larger and stronger) will tend to begin issuing the commands, while the wife will become more amenable to accepting them.
Whether this conclusion about behavior accurately reflects the ways in which men and women react to the same chemical processes is incidental; the opposite could be the case without affecting the underlying lesson. The key point is that those of different sexes will respond to stimuli in different ways. Like male chauvinists before them, feminists will insist that one or the other is objectively better, but reasonable people should understand that each is better under different circumstances. That is to say that they are complementary, and fundamental units of social organization (i.e., families) will generally do better with both.
All things considered, I’d probably have to side with Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo in concluding that the “revenge porn” legislation that she just vetoed is too broad and ought to be much more explicit in protecting free speech. That said, this line from her veto message contributes to my cynicism:
“The breadth and lack of clarity may have a chilling effect on free speech,” she wrote.
The reason I smirk at that is that other legislation that would most certainly have a chilling effect on free speech has passed both chambers of the General Assembly, and I suspect the governor won’t find it quite so objectionable. Specifically, I’m referring to H7147, which would subject any individual, or any kind of organization at all, who spends more than $100 advocating on local ballot questions to campaign regulations, including reporting requirements. (The legislation is championed by Tiverton Democrat John “Jay” Edwards and is obviously aimed at my friends in town.)
There’s no question but that adding such burdens to political activity has a “chilling effect,” and there’s no question that electoral speech ought to be the most sacrosanct when it comes to the law. Yet, under the current progressive understanding of free speech, it seems publishing naked pictures of people without telling them is a more fundamental right than expressing opinions on local issues without telling your vicious rumor-mongering opposition who your friends are.
What relationship are journalists supposed to have with politicians? For some reason, many of us grew up believing it to be a central tenet of journalism (especially post-Watergate) that their role is to challenge politicians, view them skeptically, and strive to keep them honest and humble. Of course, many (maybe most) conservatives around the United States right now think of them generally as Democrat partisans with bylines, as Instapundit Glenn Reynolds puts it, but let’s put ideology and party aside.
I’m pondering this topic because this week’s Sakonnet Times has an unattributed article about hometown Democrat Representative John “Jay” Edwards’s anti-First Amendment legislation seeking to create disincentives for people to become involved in local issues that appear on ballots for direct democracy. Of course, that’s not how the paper characterizes it. In fact, the paper is literally a reprint of a press release that Edwards put out in January, or very close to it. As one would expect from a press release, the language is extremely favorable to the legislation.
Even if we didn’t expect newspapers to be at the front lines in safeguarding our First Amendment rights, do incumbents in Rhode Island really need additional political advantages? I mean, they already tap into the statewide spreading of campaign funds, provided they go along to get along (which Edwards does enthusiastically). They already get a foot in the door for handing out access. They already secure legislative grants that allow them to get headlines for being charitable with taxpayers’ money.
Should private newspapers also be helping to spin their activities? Or should those local papers be going out of their way to help people understand what their legislators are really doing to them?
During yesterday’s discussion on the Rhode Island House floor of H7147, the bill’s primary sponsor, Democrat John “Jay” Edwards (Tiverton, Portsmouth) presented it as a matter of fairness. Those poor, put-upon elected officials have to provide some degree of transparency into their finances, while local grassroots groups that (very suspiciously) oppose many of the things those politicians want to do to their towns get away with spending money to voice their opinions on local issues without having to provide the politicians’ friends with ammunition for whisper-and-intimidation campaigns.
I’ll leave it for later to go into detail about Edwards’s dishonesty during his State House performance, yesterday. For the moment, I’ll simply note the audacity of this line of argument coming from a supporter of imprisoned former Speaker of the House Gordon Fox and move on to a national issue that gives some sense of the contempt that Americans should have when government officials chastise the People to be more transparent:
The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton reports that lobbyist, Michael J. Brady, asked in a private email for a little favor of EPA General Counsel Joe Goffman, his insider friend at EPA: “Joe, would you please send this email to Gina for me? I would have sent it to her directly with a cc to you but I don’t have a private email address for her and would prefer to not use an office email address.” (Emphasis added) Brady represents a number of green energy groups that want to support EPA’s Cross-State Pollution Rule. Goffman
The casual tone of the email exchange shows “that it is a regular practice of senior officials of this EPA to use private e-mail accounts and other ‘off-book’ techniques to craft rules with ‘green’ activists with clear financial and political interests is now clear beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Chris Horner, the man who exposed former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s “Richard Windsor” email moniker.
As I said, this is a national matter, but there can be little doubt that it’s an issue at the state level, too. For example, we’d have had no idea that George Nee — a big-time labor figure who sits on multiple government boards at the state level — used his Yahoo email account to lobby for a union-friend’s daughter to get a 38 Studios job if those emails hadn’t been part of the giant scandal of the company’s bankruptcy that lead to lawsuits and legal disclosures.
It’s increasingly clear that people in government don’t see themselves as our representatives, but as our aristocracy, with free license to seek out ways to make it impossible for us to operate without their permission.
Legislation targeting every individual who becomes active in local direct democracy for campaign finance reports should disqualify its supporters from public office.