Other members of the Pawtucket delegation fire back: "Mr. Coughlin paints an erroneous picture regarding the proposed new Ballpark at Slater Mill and in doing so, does a grave disservice to his city, his constituents and the people of Rhode Island" https://t.co/u2aB8GETbp
— Ian Donnis (@IanDon) February 14, 2018
.@JoeShekarchi "has it right. In the carnivorous realm of the State House, those who believe the government is not their concern can expect to be served up rare" https://t.co/yQiQxgcfNw
— Ian Donnis (@IanDon) February 14, 2018
Just when you thought all was lost in Rhode Island? Advertisement on LinkedIn for a much needed Chief Public Affairs Officer (DLT). Thank goodness @GovRaimondo will finally get some much-needed public affairs staff!
— LoughlinRI1 (@LoughlinRI1) February 13, 2018
A few weeks ago, Rhode Islanders were reacting to the rapid-fire news of two Providence Journal reporters’ transition to jobs in government offices on which they’d recently written stories. Shortly thereafter, the announcement came that former Republican state Senator John Pagliarini had taken a job as the Senate parliamentarian, and Rhode Island Public Radio reporter Ian Donnis asked state GOP Chairman Brandon Bell whether this was a matter of concern as well. I never saw Bell’s response, but mine was: of course.
An item in today’s Providence Journal Political Scene fleshes out why I’d say that:
Until recently, [Pagliarini] had kept the door open to a potential GOP run for a range of political offices from mayor to lieutenant governor. Now? “I have no aspirations to run for political office as of today,″ he told Political Scene about a week ago. He has also resigned as the state GOP’s general counsel.
And there you go. As with the reporters, the problem isn’t so much the appearance that the government is buying out the potent soldiers of the opposition, but that the prospect of a $54,259 part-time gig makes clear who has the career prospects on offer for anybody who might consider the possibility of raising the sorts of objections that might offend the powerful.
"He called the R.I. Department of Human Services for answers. He said he waited on hold for hours a day for two… https://t.co/nFfef4KOpq
— OSTPA (@OSTPA1) February 10, 2018
Observers of national politics and government should ask themselves at what point corruption in pursuit of thwarting Trump transcends the unsavoriness of Trump, himself.
Taxes, entitlements, and innovation.
Roger Simon asks a good question with a PJMedia piece titled, “Why Did the Democrats Lie So Baldly about the Memo“?
It seems this particular lie was a last line of defense — for now — against a coming potential Armageddon for their party. This memo, bad as it is, is apparently only the first of many, a small percentage of what is to come. And the Democrats know it.
Fear is operative. Maybe panic. An entire weltanschauung is under threat — jobs, friends, self-image, who knows what. If this goes on much longer and much more comes out, some Democrats -—not apparatchik Schiff, needless to say, but others — might have to face reality and say something. A few journalists (not at CNN, but maybe someplace else) might have to report the truth. It happened with Watergate. Republicans turned against Nixon. But, of course, they’re “the stupid party.”
Obviously, we don’t know where all this is going, but I have to say I’ve found the anti-Trump response a little too predictably incredulous. Nobody is immune to bias, naturally, but it seems to me that behaving as if there is nothing disturbing in this memo proves an unwillingness to see something that contradicts one’s beliefs or one’s political imperative.
And, by the way, the other side in this equivalence is not that there is proof of illegal collusion on the part of the Trump campaign, but that the Trump campaign was full of political amateurs whose skewed standards for assessing value in others made them vulnerable to unsavory characters and prone to mistakes. In short, they were outsiders who weren’t schooled in the distinctions of boundaries in government and every other area of life.
The hysterics and see-no-evil attitude dismissing this memo suggest that those opposing President Trump understand all too well those distinctions. First, they attempted to violate them and hide it. Now, they are panicked about how obvious it is.
Suspicion of that very sense of entitlement is what created such distrust that the people went so far as to elect Donald Trump as president. Increasingly, the two ways out appear to be to clean the corruption up or for the corruptocrats to regain power and amplify their abuse of power.
The first is better, even if it means tolerating a boorish executive.
Noble attempt, I think. Or is it, alternatively, to be interpreted as: send us your tired, poor, huddled masses? Is Rhode Island now to become the Statue of Dependency? I thought we were the "fun sized" state.
— Mike Stenhouse (@MSten37) February 1, 2018
It became a joke among those of us on the political right that every failure of the economy to surge during the Obama years happened “unexpectedly,” at least in the eyes of the mainstream media. Now we have President Trump, and economic growth has improved, and here come headlines like, “Is the global economic expansion party over?,” which the Providence Journal gives to a Washington Post article by Heather Long.
Long lists a number of areas about which people should be justifiably concerned, but one can’t help but feel that the Post was disappointed that Trump wasn’t sufficiently rebuked by the global elite at Davos and is searching for something critical to say.
All that said, it’s hard to argue with this:
No one knows exactly what the next crisis will be. The best defense is to make the necessary tweaks to government programs and spending now, top business leaders and experts say. This is especially true for the United States as it goes up against China in the battle for global supremacy.
Of course, what the big-government types mean by that is to cut short the policies that are leading to expansion (decreased regulation, lower taxes, and generally more emphasis on the private sector than government) in favor of more reliance on government spending and power. And of course, they hope that people won’t understand that this is the fault of government intervention and mismanagement, not neglect:
“You must have good infrastructure. Our infrastructure has fallen from first or second in the world to the teens. And our education has gone from No. 1 or 2 in the world to 27th or 28th,” [Blackstone chief executive Steve] Schwarzman said.
Conspicuously, Schwarzman’s Blackstone has been relevant to discussions about government-directed investment in projects around Rhode Island. So, government undermines U.S. infrastructure and education by redirecting those investments to special interests, and now special interests are (we can infer) arguing that more money ought to flow into those two areas.
Let’s not be fooled again.
When did insisting that senior law enforcement officials be beyond accountability to an elected executive become synonymous with the rule of law? https://t.co/jA7HKzURp6
— Andrew Morse (@CAndrewMorse) January 31, 2018
It is unconfirmed at this point, but the rumor has been that the latest dismissal of an Federal law enforcement official (McCabe) has more to do with a long-standing Inspector General investigation than with court politics…
— Andrew Morse (@CAndrewMorse) January 31, 2018
…yet commentary from some quarters seems unable to imagine that it's possible for there to be legitimate reasons for federal bureaucrats to be replaced.
— Andrew Morse (@CAndrewMorse) January 31, 2018
Commentary shows RI economic development won't compete over the long-run because it is based on incentives, not merits. @Richard_Florida https://t.co/zs7pvsvgVa via @WSJOpinion
— gary sasse (@gssasse) January 29, 2018
There’s something sadly typical about the claims that the “resource officer” at Portsmouth High School makes regarding a former student’s strange assault on a teacher as he attempted to enter the gymnasium:
The school resource officer sprang into action and soon arrived to find a physical education teacher in hysterics, saying she had just been assaulted by a man trying to get into the gym. The teacher told [Maddie] Pirri the suspect had left and ran towards the school’s main office. …
[Marcus] Schlip, 22, denied the assault, according to Pirri, but because of multiple 911 calls from students identifying him as the perpetrator, she arrested him. A 7-inch, military-style blade was found in his backpack. …
“As soon as I entered the main office, I did observe the suspect in the main office sitting down,” Pirri recalled. “Just casually sitting.”
In summary, the dedicated on-campus police officer did pretty much nothing. A teacher stopped the assailant from entering the gym; students called 911; and the suspect walked to the main office and sat down of his own volition. The claim of Shaun Towne and Steve Nielsen’s WPRI headline — that the incident “shows why [the resource officer] position is vital” — could be fodder for an Onion article or a comic skit.
Sure, one could imagine circumstances in which her presence was critical to a relatively desirable outcome, but then again, one could imagine circumstances that were the opposite. If Schlip had panicked upon seeing a single cop coming toward the office, he could have become dangerous again or run, whereas a larger police presence — even if it arrived a few minutes later — may have prevented that outcome. Or not. We don’t know.
The point is that, in the scenario that actually occurred, we find evidence on the side of those who argued that putting a police officer in every school at great expense in response to Sandy Hook was generally a waste of resources. Other security measures along with changes in patrol routes (for example) could ensure at least the same security without the cost in pay and benefits (including pensions) and without giving kids the sense that they must live always in the presence of uniformed police.
Great to extent DCYF care, but timing seems odd given @GovRaimondo Administration is not providing appropriate care of kids currently in DCYF/State care. https://t.co/CcsXSu1JF0
— gary sasse (@gssasse) January 30, 2018
Leveraging the inefficiency of government to create incentives for good behavior is brilliant, but only highlights how backwards we’ve gotten things.
Sorry to those who think I’m being unfair, but I don’t see how this isn’t a problem for Rhode Island journalism and especially the Providence Journal:
It’s been a great ride at the @projo and a great 10 years in journalism. I’ll always be proud of the reporting I’ve done. But I’m excited for what’s ahead. Looking forward to joining @GovRaimondo‘s office soon
— Jennifer Bogdan (@JenniferBogdan) January 31, 2018
Especially coming right on the heals of Kate Bramson’s jump to Senate Policy Director under Democrat President Dominick Ruggerio, Bogdan’s move to be the new $82,699 Deputy Communications Director for Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo looks really, really bad.
I’ve had cause to point out too many times, in Tiverton, that letting your misbehaving employees gracefully retire (with all of their accumulated sick pay) sends a very strong signal to other employees that they can relax their standards. Just so, all of these big promotions into government communications offices — or government offices of any kind — send the very strong signal to other journalists that they should be sure to keep their options open as they ask those proverbial tough questions of potential future employees.
If they were smart, Rhode Island news organizations would all initiate revolving door policies. Of course, first they’d all have to admit the problem, and I’ve seen no sign of that.
But they've done such a great job with UHIP. What could possibly go wrong?
— Russ St.George (@RussStGeorge7) January 30, 2018
"It wasn't our crappy web interface after all. Huzzah!" https://t.co/EsnLuMBqtW
— Bill Harvey's Ghost (@TheGhostsGhost) January 30, 2018
12 out of Providence's 21 state legislators work for the city!! Should they be recusing themselves from votes regarding city issues like finances? h/t @projo https://t.co/4ipXlyAqJE
— Ken Block (@KenBlockRI) January 29, 2018
For my weekly call-in on John DePetro’s WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM show, this week, the topics were the high-powered dinner about chit-chat, the lunacy of “Medicare for All,” and money sloshing around to insiders in Providence.
It used to be @projo reporters stayed or went to bigger papers. Now, they go to state govt — because that's where the jobs are (#4) https://t.co/Hkwh1SiDRe cc: @DanYorkeShow
— Ian Donnis (@IanDon) January 26, 2018
If President Trump grasps intelligence briefings at a surprisingly high level, maybe its an indication that our “experts” have trained themselves not to grasp the obvious.
More News about Gina Raimondo's Rhode Island https://t.co/pP93zOYtO8
— michael riley (@ri1929shrugs) January 26, 2018