New Search

If you are not happy with the results below please do another search

288 search results for: rhode island foundation

31

Avoiding Detroit in Rhode Island

/by

Detroit’s condition has lessons that Rhode Islanders really should consider.  The whole of Kevin Williamson’s recent essay on the topic is worth a read (it’s not that long), but this paragraph contains a few key points:

Like wicked old Samuel Ratchett on the Orient Express, Detroit had a dozen murderers. And an important one — important in that there is in it a lesson for us today — was a defective relationship between capital and politics. Just as short-sightedness leaves Arab oil emirates poorly prepared to weather declines in oil prices, civic and corporate myopia left Detroit dependent upon a handful of firms whose production undergirded the entire economic ecosystem of Detroit. A combination of factors deformed the economic foundations of Detroit, from governmental protectionism (which made managements thick and lazy) to union rapacity (which diverted potential investment capital into inflated pay and benefits, creating a lot of multimillionaire union bosses) to our national unwillingness to deal with the fact that Germany and Japan — smoking ruins at the end of World War II — would eventually rejoin the modern industrial economy. Rather than finding its way to its best uses through Schumpeterian creative destruction, capital was locked up in poorly performing enterprises such as Chrysler (executive hipster Lee Iacocca was into bailouts before bailouts were cool) and in malinvestments such as unsustainable pension funds.

Think of all the money that goes to well-paid union organizers who lobby the government and sit on various boards, directing resources to favored industries (including family members).  Think of the disproportion between government pay and private-sector pay and the huge pension liability.  Think of the demand that government pick industries rather than back off and let the people of Rhode Island find the hidden opportunities for themselves and their state.

Watching Ken Block debate various people on Twitter over legislation that would force every business in Rhode Island to follow an arduous scheduling plan and limit their ability to reward the most dedicated employees, I spotted one supporter of the legislation suggesting that a business that couldn’t accommodate such a law wasn’t a very good business.  In other words, this person is perfectly fine with limiting Rhode Island’s economy just to those businesses that are able to thrive in the nation’s worst business climate.  Smaller businesses (some of which would grow into hyper-innovative bigger businesses) and those that are trying to accomplish things at the edge of what’s easy need not apply.

The insider attitude that protects established players while tripping up new ones is economic lunacy.  We’ve been doing things very wrong for a very long time, and it won’t end well.

32

RIC Foundation Chairman Avoids the Real Issue

/by

I’ve been saying that Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo’s abuse of power, like Democrat President Barack Obama’s, relies on a level of audacity. To the extent this newer generation of politicians acknowledges that concerns about their behavior exist, the response is essentially, “Of course we can do this.” As illustration, consider an op-ed by William Hurt, the Chairman of the Board of the Rhode Island College Foundation, which hired Raimondo’s Chief Information Officer to a high-paying job that isn’t technically part of government at all.

From the text, published a couple of weeks ago in the Providence Journal:

It is important for Rhode Islanders to know that the board’s decision was based, fundamentally, on the following points:

-The proposal to create the Office of Innovation at RIC was brought to the foundation’s Board of Directors with the support and endorsement of senior officers of Rhode Island College, including the president and the college advancement staff.

-This new office will enrich the academic and career development experiences for students and provide new research opportunities for both students and faculty through hands-on experiences and other resources that no other college in Rhode Island currently has.

-While the foundation has identified sufficient unrestricted, undesignated and discretionary funds to provide the seed money to get the office started, the foundation expects and the new chief innovation officer is charged with securing funding sufficient to restore the foundation’s initial investment fully, as well as to create a self-sustaining office going forward.

-A considerable amount of due diligence was done to ensure that the new Office of Innovation fell within the parameters of the foundation’s mission and 501(c)3 nonprofit status.

That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t address the basic question of this employee’s role within state government. That’s where the problem arises, and Hurt doesn’t bother to address it. The problem isn’t that the RIC Foundation has hired somebody to develop programs within the college, but that the job is actually to “partner with a multitude of stakeholders,” as Hurt puts it, on behalf of the state, all while trying to raise money for his own office at RIC. The conflicts of interest are so clear, here, the avoidance of ethics rules so obvious, that the only way it can possibly slip through is by the pure force of will and political power of the government insiders who are going along with it.

33

RI Foundation Becoming Hub for Top-Down Progressive Shadow Government

/by

In the Daily Signal, Kevin Mooney, who used to write for the Ocean State Current, takes a look at the private Rhode Island Foundation’s role in advancing left-wing causes and exploiting legal loopholes to move sensitive government activities beyond the reach of voters and transparency laws:

With almost $1 billion in assets, the foundation bills itself as Rhode Island’s largest grant-maker, awarding more than $30 million a year, according to annual reports. Tax records show that the foundation concentrated its most recent donations on left-of-center organizations, with a particular emphasis on environmental causes.

These organizations include Earthjustice, EcoRI News, the Climate Action Network, the Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island, and Grow Smart Rhode Island. Each has received tens of thousands in donations from the Rhode Island Foundation, according to the most recent tax forms.

Other left-leaning recipients of the foundation’s largess include Planned Parenthood branches in Rhode Island and Massachusetts; Direct Action for Rights and Equality, an anti-capitalist “social justice” group; the Economic Progress Institute, a Rhode Island-based progressive research group; and the Rhode Island Coalition Against Gun Violence, which seeks new gun controls.

Rhode Islanders who express concern over the Rhode Island Foundation’s penchant for funding liberal causes have been particularly critical of the nonprofit’s support for environmental groups standing behind a project called RhodeMap Rhode Island.

The RI Foundation’s left-wing involvement spans just about every area of progressive social activism, and as Mooney notes, the organization has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state in the area of healthcare. (Cash is fungible, of course, so revenue is revenue.) In the past year, though, the Foundation has really taken additional steps toward helping to create and play a role in a shadow government.

As a tangential note, Stephen Hopkins Center for Civil Rights Giovanni Cicione tells Mooney that some of this growing private-sector cabal should be registering as lobbyists. I’d argue that includes the state’s new chief innovation officer Richard Culatta, whom Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo helped hire through the Rhode Island College Foundation. He’s going to be part of the governor’s cabinet of advisers, but he’s not a government employee and will be giving suggestions and promoting them not only to the governor, but to agencies and bodies throughout government. As of this morning, he was not listed on the Secretary of State’s lobbyist tracker, and it’s reasonable to expect he never will be, becoming instead just another example of how there’s no rule of law in Rhode Island.

36

The Brookings Activity Guide for the RhodeMap

/by

Among those who don’t tend to think that the state government of Rhode Island should be tasked with completely ordering the lives of the people who live within its borders, the conversation about the relationship of the recently announced Brookings Institution study and RhodeMap RI has already begun.  Some think that RhodeMap was the framework to which Brookings will add specifics.  I don’t think that’s quite right.

Consider these two disconcerting paragraphs from Ted Nesi’s WPRI article, yesterday, drawing out some details of the intentions:

“This is an opportunity that you don’t get that often, to take a shot at putting the state on a different trajectory,” [Mark Muro, director of policy for Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program] added. “It’s been a rough decade.” …

“I think in most parts of the U.S. it’s still, the government does this, the corporations do that, the universities are somewhere else,” [Bruce Katz, the nationally-known head of the Metropolitan Policy Program] said. “In the successful places around the world there’s a seamless interaction between all these different sectors, and if they’re all on the same page – then that’s when you get the bigger returns. So it’s not just the policy … it’s this foundation of collaboration.”

This study will be part of the same ideological program as RhodeMap, but they’re distinct pieces.  RhodeMap is concerned with controlling where people live and how they structure their lives.  Brookings is going to instruct the state government about what professional activities Rhode Islanders should be engaged in while they live here and how to bring the private sector into alignment with the central plan.  (Whether they’ll go into detail about what laws to pass to force compliance, or just make friendly-sounding suggestions about how to create incentives to benefit special interests that are aligned with the program or are willing to adjust, we’ll have to wait and see.)

Consider this carefully, Rhode Island.  Even in a small state of about one million people, you can’t have “seamless interaction.”  Our entire government system is (or was) set up so that we can interact in a way to ensure the maximum freedom while allowing us to work together peacefully.  That’s the central challenge of a free society; progressives can’t just ignore it away.

When they skip over that challenge, what they’re really assuming is that they will be able to pick people in non-government sectors — in business, in academia, and in cultural institutions — who will stand in as if they speak for their whole sector and who will agree to follow the plan.  You may be able to live your life your own way, but it will become progressively more difficult to the extent that you want to do something of which the pointy heads at Brookings and the control fanatics who invited them in disapprove… or even that they don’t quite understand.

If what you want to do conflicts with the powerful people, well then, you’ll have to be banned.

37

The Silver Lining on Rhode Island’s Foam

/by

I have to break into my Friday evening pre-reveling (“reveling” being something I’ve recently discovered to be illegal in Tiverton, if it disturbs somebody else) to note that this is one list on which I’m happy to find Rhode Island in the bottom 10 of states:

Tax treatment of beer varies widely across the U.S., ranging from a low of $0.02 per gallon in Wyoming to a high of $1.29 per gallon in Tennessee. Check out today’s map below to see where your state lies on the beer tax spectrum.

Although, the half-drunk libertarian in me (whom I’ve suspected to be half drunk even when I’m completely sober) can’t help but bristle at this:

The Beer Institute points out that “taxes are the single most expensive ingredient in beer, costing more than labor and raw materials combined.” They cite an economic analysis that found “if all the taxes levied on the production, distribution, and retailing of beer are added up, they amount to more than 40% of the retail price.”

I’ll put that on my list of injustices to battle, but noting that the list is long, so anybody inclined to rush forward is encouraged to do so.

38

Property Tax Reform Lessons from Small Town Rhode Island

/by

At a public hearing to discuss the two budget options that would be on the ballot for local voters in the smallish town of Tiverton, Rhode Island, the town administrator shook his fist at me.  “Every single account you cut needs to have the money in it,” hesaid.

I’d submitted an “elector petition” budget for the town government that would hold the total tax levy at a 0.9 percent increase, versus the 2.9 percent increase proposed by the government.  The 0.9 percent budget, which voters ultimately chose with a 60:40 margin, meant a drop of the highest tax rate in the area, across two states, and savings for property owners of $39 per $100,000 of value on their home (about $100 on average).  The previous year, my proposed 0.0 percent budget had won a smaller amount of savings.

In recent years, Tiverton has led the two nearest Rhode Island counties in foreclosures.  The town’s total tax burden had doubled in about a decade.  In that context, what struck me about administrator Matthew Wojcik’s speech — apart from the Republican’s Obamaesque threat to “get in [my] face”–was the insistence that local government could not possibly make cuts, paired with the assumption that residents of the town always can.

Property taxes are a problem in Rhode Island.  According to the Competitiveness Report Card put out by the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity, based on data from the Tax Foundation, Rhode Island has the seventh-worst property tax burden in the country.  In 2006, the state’s General Assembly passed a law phasing down a cap on each city and town’s property tax revenue increase, to 4 percent by 2013.

Continue to read on WatchDog.org.

39

Talking About Rhode Island’s 1%

/by

The interesting part of PolitiFact RI’s review of an income-inequality statement by labor heavyweight George Nee isn’t that the reporters gave him a Mostly False (or couldn’t bring themselves to give him a full-on False), but the line that it draws for the 1% in Rhode Island (emphasis added):

Nee also directed us to a Jan. 26, 2015, report and data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute, another Washington, D.C.-based liberal economic think tank. It compared each state’s highest earners — the top 1 percent — with everyone else.

The institute reports in Table 2 that in 2012, the average income of Rhode Island’s top 1 percent was $966,071 . That’s less than the $1.3 million U.S. average. …

(That report, by the way, concludes that your income needs to be at least $314,647 in Rhode Island to be in the top 1 percent.)

One wonders what sort of people make up this group of roughly 10,000 Rhode Islanders.  Investment types, successful business owners, lawyers, doctors, and so on, probably.  According to the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s RIOpenGov payroll application, it also includes the University of Rhode Island’s basketball coach and university president.  One surprising member of the 1%, apparently, is Neil Steinberg, the President of the Rhode Island Foundation.

Most folks think of the RI Foundation as a mainly charitable organization, but it’s also been investing in socialistic enterprises, like RhodeMap RI, and other political manipulations of the state’s economy.  It’s odd to find that effort headed by somebody with (in the Economic Policy Institute’s words) “outsized” income.

It isn’t clear from the liberal think tank’s report whether it’s measuring household income or individual income.  If it’s the former, of course, Rhode Island’s government and its satellites would account for many, many more members of the 1%.  I mean, even some retired state workers have pensions that would suffice as half of a 1% income level.

41

Rhode Island’s Ghoulish Government

/by

An article by Lynn Arditi in today’s Providence Journal, “Report: Too many teens in state care,” looks likely to be one of those dry, bureaucratic-process-related matters that many readers probably skip over.  That would be a mistake:

In her testimony, Field described a system where overloaded caseworkers who don’t have the time or resources to help families are increasingly removing teenagers from their homes and sending them to live in group homes. And group homes are paid only by the numbers of beds filled, so “you’ve got incentives for providers to keep kids to keep those beds filled,” [Tracey Field, director of the child welfare strategy group at the Casey Foundation’s Center for Systems Innovation in Baltimore] said.

To summarize in one sentence what appears to be going on:  The state government of Rhode Island is taking children away from their parents in order to maintain a government program, in part because its priorities have led the state government not to adequately fund a responsibility that it arrogated to itself.

That’s a long sentence, and the second half of it goes into the process stuff on which politicians like to focus because they can muddy the water.  It’s the first part of the sentence, though, that’s important: “The state government of Rhode Island is taking children away from their parents in order to maintain a government program.”

You don’t get much more ghoulish than that, and you don’t get a much better representation of the progressive style of governance.

43

Tax Foundation & RI-STAMP on Tax Reform Differences

/by

Tax Foundation rankings and RI-STAMP projections show that the RI House’s budget might game some rankings a little, but legislators still aren’t willing to make substantive changes to improve the lives of workaday Rhode Islanders.

44

An Actual Debate in Rhode Island; Two Sides and Everything

/by

Ever go to some event in Rhode Island that was supposed to provide a balanced discussion between people of differing views?  When I have, more often than not, it has seemed that the points I would have thought were obvious failed to be articulated.  “Balanced” tends to be a lot like the “balance” in Rhode Island’s legislature — far left to center left (maybe hard center, on a good day).

This Saturday, the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity will be presenting actual balance — meaning people who actually disagree on fundamental questions — with its first UnleashRI Debate at the University of Rhode Island:

  • STEVE MOORE (Heritage Foundation, FOX News) vs. TOM SGOUROS (RI Policy Analyst)
  • RICH BENJAMIN (Demos, MSNBC) vs. DON WATKINS (Ayn Rand Institute)

You can register here.  It’d be great for this event to be a success for multiple reasons.  The largest is simply that these big questions actually do matter, and the answers cannot simply be assumed by people who happened to win office amidst an apathetic electorate.

My favorite reason to want a big turnout is that the progressives in Rhode Island to whom we initially reached out, in order to ensure that the representation of their side actually was fair and compelling, actively worked to prevent the debate from happening.  It’d be nice if the opposite of that behavior were actually rewarded in the Ocean State.

49

Economic Freedom? Not in Rhode Island.

/by

As the governor embarks on a two-year search for “equitable” and “green” economic development, an index by the Fraser Institute suggests RI could grow its economy 15% faster just by matching the economic freedom in CT.

56

More Indications of No Change for RI Education

/by

While it is definitely not the most significant incident of the week Rhode Island, Education Commissioner Ken Wagner made a hugely symbolic gesture on Dan Yorke’s State of Mind show:

“There are coaches that believe you go into the locker room and you hold carrots until you get performance,” Yorke said to Wagner. “Then you have Bobby Knight who comes in and throws chairs and tells them the truth.

“I just want you to throw a chair once. I want people to understand that this isn’t funny, this isn’t acceptable and this isn’t true that our students don’t perform…” Yorke was then interrupted by Wagner responding to his statement.

Wagner then followed Yorke’s lead, stood up and threw his chair to the side.

“This isn’t funny, this isn’t acceptable, and it’s not true that our kids can’t do it, they can do it!” Wagner said.

The symbolism isn’t that Wagner’s going to shake things up, but that he does, in fact, think it’s funny.  Imagine, for comparison, that Rhode Island’s murder rate were among the worst in the country and Yorke offered a similar statement to the attorney general.  How would we react if he took the Wagner make-a-joke-out-of-it approach?

Along the same vein, the Rhode Island Foundation has made news this week by announcing its new initiative to bring together another discussion about education, so that unelected insiders have another forum through which to tell Rhode Islanders how a long-term plan could maybe improve results for students a generation from now:

Aside from [RI Foundation President Neil] Steinberg, other members of the committee include: Kathy Bendheim (Impact for Education); Elizabeth Burke Bryant (Rhode Island Kids Count); Victor Capellan (superintendent of Central Falls schools); Jeremy Chiappetta (Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy); Barbara Cottam (R.I. Board of Education); Tom DiPaolo (Rhode Island School Superintendents’ Association); David Driscoll (former Massachusetts commissioner of education); Tim Duffy (Rhode Island Association of School Committees); Frank Flynn (Rhode Island Federation of Teacher and Healthcare Professionals); Tom Giordano (Partnership for Rhode Island); Christopher Graham (Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce); Julie Horowitz (Feinstein School of Education and Human Development); Dolph Johnson (Hasbro); Susanna Loeb (Annenberg Institute for School Reform); Elizabeth Lynn (van Beuren Charitable Foundation); Keith Oliveira (R.I. League of Charter Schools); Pegah Rahmanian (Youth in Action); Don Rebello (Rhode Island Association of School Principals); Anthony Rolle (URI); Ken Wagner (R.I. education commissioner); and Robert Walsh (National Education Association Rhode Island).

Honestly, is there anybody on that list that doesn’t already have a seat at the table — whose views are not already represented in public debate about public policy in education?  No.  In typical Rhode Island fashion, this is a group of the same old special-interest representatives who (we should assume) are coming together to ensure that whatever reforms the state may try will not disrupt their sinecures too harshly.

In other words, it’s more wasted time and money. Rhode Islanders should brush this off as a distraction and mimic Wagner’s joke in all seriousness.  Aren’t we tired of accepting failure, deceit, and mockery?

57

If They’re Together, Who’s Left Out?

/by

It probably means I’m one of those people who refuses to engage in constructive dialogue, but I’m skeptical of these Rhode Island Foundation events:

What do you get when you mix a bunch of Rhode Islanders who disagree about public issues with 47 gallons of marinara sauce?

“You find common ground and ways to civilly disagree and debate,” Neil D. Steinberg, the president and chief executive of the Rhode Island Foundation, said Thursday afternoon ahead of the foundation’s annual meeting. A significant portion of his remarks prepared for the meeting discussed the foundation’s recent Together RI initiative, in which nearly 1,300 people attended 20 dinners around the state from late March to early May.

There are two possibilities, here, that may depend entirely on the viewer’s perspective:  Did these events mingle people who disagree or darken the lines around what a certain segment of insiders thinks is acceptable?  It’s their forum; they set the tone; they choose the venue; they control the debate.  Most importantly, they decide what beliefs and behaviors count as “civil,” and they write the summary report after the fact.

This is the same organization, don’t forget, that promoted a slick and offensive video tarring Rhode Islanders as uncouth complainers who should just be quiet until the kids who mouth the RI Foundation’s preferred line have grown up and taken over.

58

The Governor’s Inappropriate Blurring of Roles with DACA Initiative

/by

A larger percentage than I’d like of recent posts, in this space, have to do with the actions of Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo, but the hits just keep on coming, as they say.

We can offer wry quips, as John Loughlin deftly did, about Raimondo’s initiative to pay the $495 filing fees of applicants for federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status.  Loughlin imagines the governor paying off the minimum corporate tax for small businesses in the state as an alternative.  Put aside, though, the specific policy (and questions about why the governor wants to create more incentives for illegal immigrants to locate in Rhode Island) and look at the process.

Data point 1: As Kim Kalunian reports on WPRI, the governor announced this program with at least the trappings of her official office, holding a PR event in the State Room of the State House, at a government podium.  Additionally, in a fundraising appeal (see below), Raimondo blends this initiative with various official programs of the State of Rhode Island as if they’re of the same nature.

Data point 2: The governor’s statement notes that “the Rhode Island Foundation is coordinating contributions and making grants to community agencies that have stepped up to do this work.”

Data point 3: A fundraising appeal for the initiative that the Providence Journal’s Kathy Gregg tweeted out was sent courtesy of the PAC, Friends of Gina Raimondo.

This blurring of public and private sector is absolutely inappropriate, but it’s a regular practice of Raimondo’s.  Recall, for example, the overlapping interests of Wexford Science and Technology (of I-195 Redevelopment fame), Raimondo, the RI Foundation, and the Brookings Institute.  Or consider her “hiring” of a chief innovation officer for her cabinet one step removed from government by being housed in the RI College Foundation.

It would be one thing if the governor were merely expressing support for some private-sector initiative, but instead, she’s acting through a shadow government serving unknowable interests and a far too obvious ideology.

59

Kudos to Rickman

/by

In all of the grandstanding and political jockeying over events in Charlottesville, local activist and philanthropist Ray Rickman stands out for his notably mature and reasoned position.  To Steph Machado of WPRI:

“I suggested to him that he give Robert E. Lee, the statue, to the people organizing the rally,” Rickman said in an interview with Eyewitness News. “That, or put it in a museum where people can see it.”

Many of us on the right are constitutionally wary of any intention to scrub a country of its past, as by destroying such statues, but Rickman is right that moving them can transform them from being “honorific.”  (That makes the museum option much preferable to the “give it to them” option.)  Discussing the reason there are such statues in places of honor can create a rich discussion that would include not only the horrors of slavery and the Civil War, but also the intention of reconciliation that followed.

And to Kate Bramson of the Providence Journal:

Considering the needs of the community, Rickman emphasized numerous traditionally black organizations that are struggling financially. Helping fund the NAACP, the John Hope Settlement House and a fund at the Rhode Island Foundation that grants small amounts to Latino organizations would go a long way toward helping move the community forward, he said[, in contrast to candlelight vigils].

Another Rickman idea, instead of a vigil: “I’d rather have a potluck dinner where everybody donates $5 to help bury the woman who was killed in Charlottesville.”

One could debate the specific causes for which Rickman advocates, but his impulse is exactly right.  Rather than indulge in ideologically pleasant symbolism that can actually discourage action and further divisions, resolve to do something good for actual people in need.

Over the weekend, a phrase that popped up multiple times among those who were criticizing President Trump’s initial remarks on the events was “this isn’t hard.”  Indeed it isn’t.  The question, though, is what we want to accomplish.

60

The Partnership Model of Oligarchy

/by

One wonders: If it weren’t for the heavy government-centric packaging and cover of the left-wing Brookings Institution, wouldn’t so-called progressives be highly skeptical of efforts like the Partnership for Rhode Island?

This is about CEOs addressing large societal issues and figuring out how money and expertise might advance certain efforts, said [Neil] Steinberg, president and CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation, one of the nation’s oldest and largest community foundations.

For a refresher, refer back to my piece on the “Wexford-Brookings Franchise.”  This is about business magnates working with government insiders and non-profit profiteers to shape our society more to their liking.  (We can trust that they like being wealthy and elite, by the way.)

We’re watching every socio-political lesson from history and fiction take shape before our eyes, and so many people are caught up in low-level political squalls and identity politics that we’re strolling right along with it.

The RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity has been placing more emphasis on the need for “civic society” institutions — that is, moving authority and decision making away from government and toward other institutions by which we interact, like business, churches, non-profits, and so on — but we mean something substantially different.  In our vision, people work together to solve their problems, forming organizations as necessary.

In the Wexford-Brookings-RI Foundation model, the people who already hold all the cards in our society essentially interweave government throughout our institutions to use them as leverage in their centralized goals.  That’s not freedom; it’s subjugation, however friendly a face they manage to put on it at first.

FIND GREAT CONTENT

Search through articles, research, and policy papers. Search by keyword, tag, author, date range, and category.

YOUR CART
  • No products in the cart.
Subtotal:
$0.00
0