During my appearance, in the last hour, on the Dan Yorke Show (podcast here), the conversation kept coming back to the organizations that hover in the orbit of government, like RI Hospitality Association, with its peculiar position opposing a tax cut that would directly benefit all of its members.  When the show ended, it occurred to me that this is a point that probably can’t be emphasized enough:  Our political system is broken, in Rhode Island, and there are more ways to repair it than just through elections.

A society doesn’t get to Rhode Island’s level of hopeless rigidity (where Hope is just a village in Scituate) without all of the mechanisms to which people would turn for a repair being broken, as well.

Before I was on, Dan was talking about the Gallup poll finding that 42% of Rhode Islanders would leave the state if they could.  Gallup published related polls finding that 70% of Rhode Islanders are negative about the state’s tax system (5th worst in the nation), and only 40% have at least a fair amount of trust in state government (2nd worst in the nation).

People don’t just live like that.  They join organizations to change things; they become, in effect, special interests at the table.  Like RI Hospitality.

The problem that is increasingly clear to me is that those organizations get to the point that they rely more directly on the status quo in government than on actually improving things for their members.  The association, chamber, or whatever simply becomes the government’s liaison to a particular “community,” and away to neutralize any unrest that arises.

I’d argue that’s why people are leaving.  Nothing seems to work.

But the problem is also an opportunity.  Long before new candidates could be groomed and put into office, the heads of these organizations could be made to go to lunch with their inside-government pals and give them the bad news that: “I’m not going to be able to play the game anymore, unless…”  And that “unless” could be as dramatic as the membership’s dissatisfaction.