Some are upset about the fact that Chafee and Raimondo won their election to Governor by receiving fewer than 50% of the votes cast. Is this a problem? Does it need to be fixed? I say no.
Mike Stenhouse responds to Lincoln Chafee’s opinion essay promoting the RhodeMap RI plan.
Sometimes a beer just fits a dark New England evening, with heavy music on the speakers and a heavy meal on the plate.
A Midwestern judge’s ruling on same-sex marriage raises questions about the relationship of parents to their children and the government to everybody.
It’s possible to enjoy a sweetly flavored beer and still be masculine, whether in the autumn or the winter.
Gina Raimondo could stand with the people of Rhode Island on the 38 Studios matter and, with her venture capitalist background, could be an especially forceful advocate for the principle that the laws apply to everyone, from big bondholders to regular citizens. Instead, she has chosen to stand with big finance against the people of Rhode Island, taking the cavalier attitude towards representative democracy and the rule of law that has become the hallmark of Rhode Island’s political establishment.
Am I surprised that at least one outside political group isn’t following Rhode Island’s campaign finance laws? Not at all. Based on our recent history, why should they?
The Providence Journal said they want change. I think they missed a great opportunity to advocate for change in at least one of their endorsements.
A dubbel ale by Ommegang offers enjoyable flavor with mild buzz and a tie-in to the world of fantasy novels.
With Rhode Island leading the nation in government-school teacher pay, it isn’t surprising that the union would court gun-rights advocates to kill a constitutional convention.
How #GamerGate points to the great metaphysical war of the universe.
The Providence Journal’s war against Buddy Cianci feels similar to the battles that the paper regularly conducts against people on the wrong side of its institutional bias.
Campaign finance filings may provide a clue showing that different candidates (often from different parties) operate in ways that might reflect where they’ve been and what they’ll do.
Congressman David Cicilline’s primary challenger asks voters to consider Republican Cormick Lynch in the general election as a step toward term limits.
Another example of Rhode Island government as a political jobs program has arisen in the East Greenwich school department, and it raises deeper questions than does the Woonsocket mayor’s summer street cleaning crew.
Dawson Hodgson, candidate for Rhode Island attorney general, is attempting to enforce ethics through the only system that might still work in the Ocean State — politics.
The cartoon version of The Lorax takes Seussian propaganda to the next level, most objectionably by vilifying poor and working class people who become upwardly mobile through enterprise.
Gina Raimondo’s pro-abortion radicalism and District Court Judge Ronald Lagueux’s ruling making partial-birth abortion legal suggest a disconnect between the general public and the ruling elite.
An article about writers’ Curse of Knowledge lays out a challenge of which we ought to be aware, especially those of us who write and read about politics and social matters.
Providence Mayoral candidate Jorge Elorza’s “One Providence” rhetoric strikes a disturbing note against his anti-Cianci rhetoric.
A view of “representative democracy” that casts representation as a mild form of dictatorship will destroy a society, whether we’re talking about Obama or an environmental protest in Somerset.
MoMo gubernatorial candidate Robert Healey’s campaign-as-performance-art casts a knowing tone. The problem is, he’s wrong, and to the benefit of the wrong people.
Data from Tiverton Fact Check shows the high school principal and his teacher wife making two-and-a-half times the town’s median household income, which is a lot of incentive to attack people who complain that a few more hundred dollars in taxes actually has to come from somewhere.
Wrapping up some threads from my Matt Allen appearance concerning Bob Healey’s surprise run for governor.
Governor Lincoln Chafee: “September 11 was a tragedy on every scale imaginable, and it is my hope that on its anniversary we are all able to engage in silent remembrance of those who were lost.”
The Democratic gubernatorial primary is where there is substantial agreement that the scope of democratic and representative decision-making needs to be narrowed (ironic, isn’t it?), so that special interests will encounter less interference with their ability to extract resources from the people. All three candidates with a chance of winning tomorrow seem comfortable with a government that gives more governing power to private interest groups at the expense elected public bodies, and even the people themselves.
The candidates are willing to ignore prohibitions on burdening the taxpayers with debt without their direct consent, and to ignore direct language that places retiree benefits outside of the collective bargaining process, because special interests do not approve of these laws. This kind of “leadership” is moving our system in a direction where certain privileged special interests are assumed to sit above the government, with a right to exercise powers that are above the law, that the government of the people never consented to, and cannot change.
Lamenting a loss of decency points toward (perhaps) the fundamental error that modern society has made over the last century or more.