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31

Surprise: Teachers’ Unions Are Just Political Activist Groups

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I’ve written several times in the past that employee representation services are simply the fund raising mechanism for teachers’ unions’ real reason for being: progressive political activism.  Here’s Paul Bedard in the Washington Examiner:

Promoting a “National Day of Action” on Thursday, the NEA said, “On Thursday, January 19, the day before Donald Trump assumes the presidency, thousands of students, parents, educators and community members from across the nation will hold rallies in front of school buildings to inclusively stand up for all students.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean they don’t need to represent their members enough to ensure that they stay members (with wide rivers of funding) at the expense of those whom progressives claim to support.  David Harsanyi in The Federalist:

… teachers unions are the only organizations in America that openly support segregated schools. In districts across the country — even ones in cities with some form of limited movement for kids — poor parents, most typically black or Hispanic, are forced to enroll their kids in underperforming schools when there are good ones nearby, sometimes just blocks away.

The National Education Association spent $23 million last cycle alone working to elect politicians to keep low-income Americans right where they are. Public service unions use tax dollars to fund politicians who then turn around and vote for more funding. The worse the schools perform, the more money they demand. In the real world we call this racketeering.

It’s a travesty that teachers give these organizations a prominent, lucrative place in our government.

32

New York State Cuts 2017 Renewable Energy Target by 94%

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The big dirty little secret about renewable energy is that it is very expensive. Pointing to the “extraordinarily poor value” of return BY THE EPA’S OWN STANDARD in carbon footprint reduction, the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity earlier this year called on the State of Rhode Island to significantly roll back renewable energy mandates.

Fast forward to last week. The Empire Center for Public Policy’s Kenneth Girardin alertly spotted that the State of New York has done almost exactly that for 2017.

The state Public Service Commission has quietly reduced the amount of renewable energy that utilities will have to purchase next year by 94 percent, according to PSC documents.

Kudos to New York for quietly modifying their mandate to conform with reality, even if it’s just for one year. For the sake of their already over-burdened ratepayers who have no obligation to fund pointless, feel-good, very expensive energy sources, Rhode Island and all other states need to follow suit, and not just for one year.

35

Start the Clock on UHIP Consequences

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As Ted Nesi reports, the state’s Unified Health Infrastructure Project (UHIP) goes live, today.  Much of the focus has been the cost overruns to get the new software system active — nearing a half-billion dollars if the state gets approval from the federal government for some final additions.  But Rhode Islanders should be disconcerted by the vagueness of the talk:

But in an interview last week, EOHHS Deputy Secretary Jennifer Wood was adamant that the next year of UHIP spending will come nowhere near $124 million. She described the amount as an opening bid in months of discussions with federal and state officials over how many additional tools should be added to the system. …

“This is an all-in, integrated system,” [Deputy Secretary of Administration Wayne] Hannon said. “It includes basically one-stop shopping for anybody who could be eligible for these services in the state of Rhode Island. I believe it’s the first … fully integrated system [in the country].”

That’s Rhode Island: first in the nation for cutting-edge government, even though our experience had been that it mainly cuts into the private sector, families’ independence, and our quality of life.  What we should be asking is what kind of “tools” we’re talking about, here, especially since that cost is nearly what the state initially estimated for the entire project.

The bureaucrats are touting an expected reduction of improper payments, as the state is better able to determine actual eligibility, but the effect is likely to be opposite.  There’s a reason they call it “one-stop shopping.”  The idea is to ensure that nobody misses any benefits for which they’re eligible, even if they don’t know they need them.  It’s part of the “company state” push by governments in blue states to make public services the central industry bolstering an area that has lost its ability to compete in the global market, for whatever reason.

Of course, being on the cutting edge of the next step in government domination means Rhode Islanders will have the privilege of providing data for other states in the future.  So, we’ll have to wait and see whether the welfare roles decrease or increase, just as Medicaid enrollment shot up with the implementation of the health benefits exchange (HealthSource RI).  Naturally, the disclaimer is that the state government will have a variety of methods (and a whole lot of incentive) to obscure the reason for any budget-busting increases.

40

When It’s Crazy to Run for Office, Only Crazies Will Run

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Dan McLaughlin gets this right, and at least in my neck of the woods, it applies at the state and local levels, as well as the federal levels:

… tabloid news coverage, yellow journalism and unscrupulous personal attacks were a standard feature of national politics in the early decades of the American Republic. But instant-publishing technology removes even minimal restraints on pernicious gossip or baseless attacks. Anyone with a social media following can start a raging online mob without the slightest bit of reflection.

That’s why people with dignity and a decent respect for their families steer clear of elective office, leaving only people like Trump and the Clintons — people incapable of shame and hermetically removed from the life of ordinary human beings. Trump and Clinton have proved that the best defense against a career-ending scandal, failure or offense is to have too many of them for anyone to count.

Another difference, beyond “instant-publishing technology,” is the huge scope of government roles.  Even at the local level, running for government gives one authority over a wide range of people’s issues, and with government labor unions, anybody who might not negotiate with kid gloves is instantly a target of organized and very hostile groups.

I imagine this dynamic on the small level grows to the big one.  Even if national politics has always been a viper pit, local politics may have been more tolerable.  So, people might have gotten a taste for true public service at the local level, thus fortifying them for moves up the ladder.  Nowadays, that pipeline is drying up.

41

Fall River’s Mayor Privatizes Trash Collection

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Simply amazing! There’s actually an elected official someplace who doesn’t believe that the main purpose of government and the provision of public services is the well-compensated employment of public (labor union) employees.

Mayor Jasiel Correia also announced that he’s privatizing the city’s trash services, which will cost some city workers their jobs.

42

Health Care Also Not the Industry on Which to Build Our Future

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Further to my post from earlier today, refer back to a Paul Edward Parker article from the Providence Journal last week. Noting that manufacturing and health care have more or less flipped places when it comes to number of jobs over the last 25 years, Parker writes:

Two factors figure prominently in the shift, according to Paul Harrington, an economist at Drexel University who has studied Rhode Island’s job market.

Manufacturing could be done other places and cheaper than in Rhode Island, while the manufacturing operations that stayed in Rhode Island switched to automation, getting more done with fewer, highly trained workers.

But health care has to be done where the patients are, and, by and large, robots haven’t taken over the jobs — at least not yet.

Health care — at least its provision and practice, as distinct from the production of its tools — is inherently a secondary industry. It serves people who are growing the economy doing other things. If those people are not present, there is nobody to whom to provide the care, and if they are not doing anything to grow wealth, there is no money to pay for their care.

This is another data point in the running theme that I drew from Lawrence, MA, and the notion that Rhode Island is becoming a “company state” — by which I meant to invoke the much maligned idea of a “company town” in which a single company provides most of the work and, insidiously, essentially owns the local government as a department to manage its employees’ lives. In part because government has destroyed economic incentives, the wealth-generating activities dry up, but those involved in government and its satellite industries (like health care and education) still want to keep their jobs, and (indeed) the demand for public services goes up as people lose work.

This turn of events produces all sorts of perverse incentives. First, perhaps, comes the urge for protectionism, to keep other local industries, other than government, going as much as possible, but undermining the ability of non-insiders to find new directions or innovation in existing industry. While hindering locals’ ability to respond to economic realities, the government also works to distort economic signals that people should consider going elsewhere, where there is work. These joint efforts create a filter that tends to push the most economically motivated residents out while drawing in those who haven’t been able to find work elsewhere. Naturally, because these people require government assistance (i.e., the services that government has decided to provide), government and its satellites don’t much mind the exchange, in the short term.

In the article, Drexel University Economist Paul Harrington sort of chokes on the concept that health care jobs are less desirable, for the local economy, than manufacturing jobs, but the reality is that they can’t be seen as an economy-sustaining industry. Indeed, to the degree that the government forces their growth, health care jobs might veryu well be a sign of impending collapse. Eventually the money dries up.

43

District 11 and Government Of, By, and For the Employees

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A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that the Democrat candidate for the District 11 seat in Rhode Island’s state senate, Jim Seveney, would be following the path of his father, Gardner, who (from what I can easily tell) held the position in the 1980s.  In fact, the legislature dedicated a state garage in Portsmouth to Gardner Seveney in 1986, and if I’m not mistaken, the town’s outdoor sports complex on Glen Farm is named after him, as well.

This gives some sense of the dynastic element of Seveney’s campaign, but a campaign letter he sent out last week begins to fill in the blanks of why he might find it worth continuing the legacy.  His wife of 39 years is a public school teacher in Portsmouth, where Seveney has served on both the school committee and the town council.  With his wife no doubt nearing retirement and with teacher pensions likely to prove a continuing challenge for the state, Seveney has good reason to transfer his influence from the town level to the state level, beyond the $14,000 paycheck.

A quick online search illustrates how this motivation overlaps with the idea of dynasties.  Seveney’s mother worked in the school system, too, and his recently deceased uncle retired as a state employee in the late-’80s.

The candidate’s letter also states that, when he returned to Portsmouth in the late ’90s, he “decided to run for public office to try to give something back to the community that had given me and my family so much.”  No doubt, Seveney’s sentiment is sincere, but that doesn’t mean Rhode Islanders should continue accepting such expressions of gratitude from people with a special interest in the offices for which they’re running.

When it comes down to decisions critical to the health of the state, how much will Seveney’s personal investment affect his votes as a senator?  According to RIOpenGov, in 2014, the average retired teacher received a pension payment of just under $44,000, part of more than $430,000 that the average retired teacher had already received in payments after contributing an average of $78,000 over his or her career.  The average estimated lifetime pension benefit for currently retired teachers is estimated at over $1.1 million.

Even with the most altruistic of intentions, that’s a lot of incentive to see “public service” as rewarding in a more direct way than good feelings and public honors.

44

Providence Fire: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

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The front page of today’s Providence Journal paints quite a picture of the Providence fire department, mainly through the anecdotes of two firefighters well-known to folks who engage in public debate in Rhode Island, Tom Kenney and John Sauro.  The first is a ubiquitous advocate for firefighter union causes (and deals), and the latter is the “disabled” retiree filmed working out at the gym.

The interesting part of the Kenney article, by Mark Reynolds, is that the city is investigating his work history, related to suggestions he’s made online that would seem to advise other firefighters to abuse their time-off benefits in order to goose overtime:

Steven Paré said Monday that the total time Kenney spent off-duty due to claimed on-the-job injuries adds up to nearly 7 years of the captain’s 35 years as a Providence firefighter. …

Kenney, who has been off-duty since April 2 due to an on-the-job knee injury, initially said he wrote much of the material in [a] 2007 blog post cited by Paré. …

Kenney, who was on a cruise in the eastern Caribbean, was unavailable for a follow-up interview Monday.

This is the stuff of parody.  A guy whose career is being reviewed because he’s had enough injured-on-duty time off have to attend college and get an advanced degree (or two) full time, if it had been all at once is, in fact, can’t answer a reporter’s questions because, being on IOD time, now, he’s also on a Caribbean vacation.  Looking at the Projo’s picture of Kenney, it isn’t ad hominem to wonder whether fire departments should have some sort of fitness requirement; perhaps that would limit the number of injuries.

Meanwhile, the part of Gregory Smith’s story about Sauro that catches the eye is this (emphasis added):

Mayor Jorge O. Elorza, the third mayor in a row to grapple with Sauro in the courts, has denounced the former firefighter as an abuser of the pension system.

Think of the incentives, here.  Without the bright light of an investigative report, why would municipal officials bother trying to prevent abuse of disability pensions?  The price tag for fighting it grows so quickly, even without including the aggravation and labor unrest that goes with the issue, that the incentive is to simply let things go.  If it weren’t for Kenney’s decade-long look-at-me campaign and Sauro’s intensive workouts flashing onto the WPRI broadcast, Rhode Islanders wouldn’t know what they’ve been up to.

One could make the argument (I suppose) that these are the inevitable complexities that arise when paying people to provide a vital and dangerous public service, and one can’t immediately scoff at the idea that this is why government, not the private sector, should provide those services.  But why would anybody want to expand the amount of responsibilities that we allow government — particularly unionized government — to undertake?

45

The Demon RI’s Cult of Big Government Would Summon

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As Halloween approaches, fear not the masks and movies; fear the quiet promises whispered in press releases and incanted with mystical words like “equity,” “sustainability,” and “diversity.” The Cult of Big Government is working night in and night out to raise from the dark abyss of dangerous philosophies a demon to possess all of society and sap the human will.  Look south of Salem, to Rhode Island, where the scheme is well advanced.

In a society so comfortable that it has become discomfited by the wisdom of its ancestors, our popular myths mislead us now.  The demon will not arrive with a flash of lightning and the smell of sulfur.  It has changed the masks of racial bigotry and overt greed in which it has been spotted in the past.  Its minions have no need of the ritualistic dances of the legislature.  No virgin need be sacrificed (though virginity itself may be).  Surviving until dawn will not save the victims.

Rather, the secular clerics of the soulless cult have chosen three points in the lives of unsuspecting national villagers on which to build their citadels, disguised as places of public service, and when the triangle is fully drawn between them, all hope will be lost.

Continue reading on Watchdog.org.

47

End of the Sessioner #1: The Firefighting Bills and the Withering Away of Rhode Island Democracy

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Unfortunately, some members of the General Assembly want to reinforce the marginalization of democratic control over public services that is sadly acceptable to both union leadership and to Rhode Island’s insider and managerial elites, via a pair of bills that would deny elected municipal authorities the power to set policies concerning platoon structure and overtime policy. Instead of making decisions, civil authorities would be reduced to asking for deals when trying to exercise basic command authority in these major areas. Try to imagine a system like this working further down the chain-of-command where, for example, a captain has to make a deal with members of his platoon when he wants something significant done. It wouldn’t work very well.

In Rhode Island parlance, this is frequently labeled as an issue of “management rights”, but that is an overly business-bourgeois conceptualization of the problem, and fails to capture the true magnitude of what is at stake. The real issue is whether we are a society where basic democratic control is exercised over the government chain-of-command or we are something else and something worse.

Full post below the fold….

48

The House Finance Agenda for Wednesday, May 13, Posted with Minimum Notice

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Some important bills for a Wednesday House Finance Committee meeting were posted on Monday afternoon, i.e. with about as little notice as is legally required:

The most important of the bills concern moral obligation bonds:

  • H5443: Restrictions on the issuing of moral obligation bonds, requiring them to be put to the voters for approval, unless 1) they will be entirely funded by the Federal government, 2) they are issued after the General Assembly has adjourned, and “the governor certifies that action is necessary, because of events occurring after the general assembly has adjourned, to protect the physical integrity of an essential public facility, to ensure the continued delivery of essential public services, or to maintain the credit worthiness of the state in the financial markets” or 3) they fall under the “borrowing in anticipation of receipts” process described in Article VI section 17 of the state constitution.
  • H5566: An almost total ban on the issuing of moral obligation bonds, unless they will be entirely funded by the federal government, or fall under the “borrowing in anticipation of receipts” process described in Article VI section 17 of the state constitution. This bill also repeals the bonding and long-term debt issuing authority not requiring specific General Assembly action that has been granted to a large number of Rhode Island quasi-public agencies; that authority is formally, at least, left in place in H5443.

A few more bills are described, below the fold.

49

UPDATED: Raimondo Official Contest: Boys Need Not Apply

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Parents of young Rhode Island girls may have recently become aware of a contest hosted by Governor Gina Raimondo’s office, with a Friday deadline.  As the official press release from the governor’s office explains:

Governor Gina M. Raimondo announced today the “Governor for a Day” essay contest as a way to encourage young girls to become leaders in their communities. This Women’s History Month initiative is open to girls in 5th through 8th grade throughout the state. The winning essayist will be named “Governor for a Day”, and spend a day this spring meeting and speaking with other leaders across state government.

“Every day I talk with young girls and women – from my own daughter to successful Rhode Island businesswomen – and I am reminded how important it is to expose young girls to the significance of public service,” Governor Raimondo said. “Girls should know that with hard work and dedication, the opportunities available to them here in Rhode Island are endless. This essay contest is a chance to engage us all in that conversation.”

In addition to the press release’s going out through the governor’s office, the instructions call for essays to be sent to either an official government email address or the governor’s communication office.

This is a clear violation of the Rhode Island Constitution, Article I, Section 2, which states (in part):

No otherwise qualified person shall, solely by reason of race, gender or handicap be subject to discrimination by the state, its agents or any person or entity doing business with the state.

In directing this contest explicitly toward girls, the governor is obviously discriminating based on “gender.”  Of course, it’s unlikely that any young Rhode Island men would go to the lengths of filing lawsuits, but organizations that profess to support individual rights should be ashamed if they take a pass on this one.

50

State Taxes and Economic Health

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The effect of taxes on a state’s economic health is one of those repeated questions that is never resolved.  The obvious reason (I’d propose) is that it’s one of those areas that depends hugely on specific circumstances, but the ideological intentions of those having the discussion tend to promote specific findings as broad conclusions.

The last sentence of the most recent academic contribution to the debate, by Pavel Yakovlev of the Mercatus Center, probably captures about the broadest statement that can be made:

… not all tax variables exhibit a significant correlation with the selected measures of economic activity, but when they do, the relationship is usually negative.

Yakovlev concludes his summary in a way that’s probably more comprehensible to the average person:

Not all types of tax increases can be expected to significantly harm economic outcomes, but higher taxes are generally correlated with lower standards of living.

In the phrasing of a popular meme: I don’t always affect the economy when I increase taxes, but when I do, it usually hurts.

Another important variable that Yakovlev mentions in the course of presenting his findings is the quality of public services provided.  It is assumed that in some circumstances (or at least to some people) the trade-off of higher taxes for quality government services favors the latter.  Presumably, it is less common for people to want to have high taxes in order to finance poor government services.

Throughout the study, Yakovlev looks at two competing ways of calculating the correlation of variables that can sometimes serve to support different ideological preferences.  On the government-spending side of the ledger, the results find a positive correlation between taxpayer migration and education spending, but negative correlation of migration with infrastructure spending, public health spending, and public welfare spending.

Especially on the infrastructure count, that finding might be counter-intuitive, because we tend to think of better roads and bridges as a contributor to economic health.  One plausible explanation for the results is that the amount of spending on infrastructure doesn’t translate well into results.  In other words, over a basic minimum of spending on roads and bridges, additional dollars are wasted.

Of course, an objective viewer of Rhode Island would have to conclude that this level of discussion is mostly moot in the Ocean State, as the latest competitiveness report card from the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity illustrates.

All of our taxes are high.  Most of our services are poor.  People are generally leaving; opportunity remains difficult to find.  And the hope of substantive change is limited.

51

Media Advertisements, Paid and Unpaid

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Monique’s post, this morning, about HealthSource RI’s advertising in Rhode Island media brings to mind Phil Marcelo’s Providence Journal article on Saturday, which ended with this:

Those interested in enrolling may visit HealthSource RI’s “Contact Center” at 70 Royal Little Drive in Providence or its temporary location at 250A Centerville Rd. in Warwick’s Summit Executive Park.

Both locations will offer extended hours on Sunday, March 30 (noon to 9 p.m.) and Monday, March 31(8 a.m. to10 p.m.).

Rhode Islanders may also enroll by phone at (855) 840-4774 or online at www.healthsourceri.com.

Now, I don’t think Marcelo was consciously catering to a big-money advertiser. (HealthSource had given the Providence Journal $85,050 in the five months ending March 14.) Inasmuch as the health benefits exchange is a government agency, publishing the information can arguably seen as a public service announcement for readers’ benefit.

Two points must be made, though. First, it is explicitly part of HealthSource’s mission to compete with private companies offering similar products. As I’ve noted, UnitedHealth is planning a small-business product similar to the one that HealthSource provides. How would it look if United were to buy $90,000 in advertising over a few-month period and Providence Journal reporters started weaving product placements into their stories?

Maybe journalists should start being wary of the blurring line between government and profitable interests.

Second, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity has come under attack, recently, including in the Providence Journal, based on allegations about our funding. I’ve complained that this amounts to connecting dots without any dots. We share some political philosophy with a national movement in which certain large donors play a role, and that alone is insinuated to be evidence that our work is somehow suspect.

Yet, here is a direct pair of dots, between HealthSource RI and the Providence Journal. The link in that relationship is much more specific and conspicuous than a general link between billionaire libertarians and the Center’s work on eliminating the sales tax, and yet it isn’t even disclosed in Saturday’s story.

Is that evidence that the Providence Journal “operates largely in secret,” the phrase reporter Randal Edgar’s used about the Center?

52

Rhue Reis Announces For Congress in the Second District

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Rhue Reis of North Kingstown formally announced his campaign for Rhode Island’s Second District Congressional seat yesterday afternoon. Coverage of Mr. Reis’ campaign kickoff is available from Ian Donnis of Rhode Island Public Radio…

Reis is an opponent of Obamacare and says he wants a smaller federal government. Asked where he’d make cuts, he points to social programs, as well as the federal departments of Education, Energy, and Defense. On his Web site, Reis says, “The role of government must return to what I believe the Founders envisioned it to be. That is, one that is limited by the enumerated powers of the US Constitution, which leaves substantial governing responsibilities to the states.”

…Andrew Augustus of WPRO (630AM)…

“I’m tired of seeing our representation in the House unable to use the simplest organizational tools to bring about cooperative efforts for the good of the nation,” said Reis…

“These career members of government have grown increasingly distant from the Constituents they’re supposed to represent. That’s because their survival in the cushy precincts of public service is far more dependent on what goes on inside the Washington Beltway”…

…and Tom Mooney of the Projo…

“Mr. Langevin is so ingrained in the adversarial relationship between the political parties in Washington that the really works for his caucus’ leadership, not for his constitutents. If that’s what it means to be a professional politician, why would you hire one?”

56

Coming up in Committee: Thirty-Two Sets of Bills to be Heard by the RI General Assembly, May 7 – May 9

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1. Different ways to reorganize government, with the goal of improving the business climate in Rhode Island. (H Finance; Tue, May 7) However, the best bill for actually improving the business climate here in RI may actually be…

2. H5207: Creates a “Joint Committee of the Repealer” within the legislature, to recommend laws & regulations to be repealed. (H Judiciary; Thu, May 9)

3. A series of pro-life bills concerning abortion, banning abortions as a means of sex-selection, requiring the “voluntary and informed consent” of a woman seeking an abortion, requiring that an obstetric ultrasound be performed before informed consent can be given, and the addition of some specificity to the partial-birth abortion law. (H Judiciary; Wed, May 8)

4. S0768: The title of the bill is “Drivers license for foreign nationals”. The text of the bill makes no reference to illegal or legal immigration status, though it’s hard to see why a legal immigrant to Rhode Island would want the second-class driver’s license created by this bill, if he or she is eligible for a regular one… (S Judiciary; Tue, May 7)

57

Valencia’s Brand of Equity and Sacrifice

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Rep. Larry Valencia wants to tax “the rich” at 10% in the name of equity and “shared sacrifice,” but dynamic policy modeling suggests that the sacrifice will mainly be Rhode Island’s.

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