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290 search results for: rhode island foundation

61

Katz’s Kitchen Sink: #WeKnowBetterRI

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As part of its 100-year anniversary self-promotion, the Rhode Island Foundation has been spreading around a video by Nail Communications that is slap-in-the-face offensive.  It begins by putting swear words in the mouths of children reading statements from (quote) actual Rhode Islanders; it tells Rhode Islanders to (quote) stop complaining and if they don’t have anything nice to say, well, be quiet.

Let’s be blunt, here.  Given Rhode Island’s parade of corrupt officials and its stagnant economy, we would be shirking our responsibility as citizens if we didn’t complain.  Now, if Nail Communications were to make another video about the view of Rhode Island’s insiders, it might go something like this.

[Advisory: In keeping with the original Nail Communications/RI Foundation video, the following contains bleeped swears.]

62

Imagine a World in Which Everybody Agrees with Me

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This parody video of a TED talk has pushed its way to the front of my mind several times since I first saw it a few weeks ago:

The crescendo is the most profound part, when the faux “thought leader” closes thus:

How ’bout we end with a question, a very big question:  What if everybody in this room decided to come together and agree with what I’m saying? Look at a picture of the planet again.  That is a world I want to live in.

You might recognize the “very big question” as precisely the tone that has infected our ruling classes and aggravated so many of the rest of us.  It’s the tone of the Rhode Island Foundation and its Nail Communications video.  And it’s the tone of these comments from Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo responding to recent shootings, particularly of policemen in Dallas.  These three paragraphs came to me (for some reason) as the first item on Rhode Island Education Commissioner Ken Wagner’s “Memo to Friends of Education” newsletter today:

It is time to say enough. Enough violence. Enough hate. Enough tragedies. It is a time for healing, time for peacefulness, time for unity.

Let’s commit to being a community that rejects violence and poverty, and embraces diversity and civility. I believe we can be bolder. I believe that our families, neighborhoods, state and country can do better, and I believe we can move forward together.

Today our emotions are raw. We are all filled with a mix of shock, anger, frustration. If anything good can come of these horrific killings, let’s replace these emotions with respect, unity and action to bring about a more just, equal and peaceful Rhode Island.

We absolutely should embrace diversity and civility, but the myopia that leads progressives to adopt the “come together and agree with me” tone may arise from their core belief that we can’t really be diverse.  “Diversity and civility” is just rhetoric as empty as the presentation in the parody video.  They don’t believe, for example, that some private business in some far away state should be permitted to conduct its business in a way with which they disagree — whether the wages that it pays, the materials that it uses, or the projects that it’ll accept.

They’re religious zealots who believe they have uncovered the truth of the universe (although it might change with their fashions) and think we all ought to be cordial while they force us to live as they prefer.  Their civility is that of the persecutor who calls you ma’am or sir while closing the door of the dungeon behind you.

63

If Non-Freedom Economic Development Doesn’t Work… Try, Try Again

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Those who find Rhode Island’s governance maddeningly self serving, obtuse, and inept might have difficulty getting past the opening portion of this Sunday column by Providence Journal Assistant Managing Editor John Kostrzewa:

The difficulty of matching unemployed workers with available jobs, a problem called “closing the skills gap,” has bedeviled Rhode Island governors for decades.

Despite spending millions of dollars, the state still has tens of thousands of out-of-work or underemployed people and thousands of employers who complain they can’t find the help they need.

Now, Governor Raimondo is trying again.

She and Scott Jensen, her hand-picked Department of Labor and Training director, have started a new effort, called Real Jobs Rhode Island, that puts the design of skills-training programs in the hands of business managers who know what they need, not state bureaucrats. They already have handed out $5 million in grants to 26 teams of private companies, nonprofits, educational institutions and industrial associations.

In other words, to the list of now-discarded pretenses that used to allow us to pretend that we lived under a representative democracy, we can add the idea that government can take economic development on as one of its core responsibilities without undermining our free marketplace of rights and opportunities. No longer is the State of Rhode Island pretending that it’s confiscating our money in order to improve our neighbors’ capabilities. No, having failed to educate the public and having restricted our ability to make the economy work, the state is now simply confiscating our money to let businesses shape the population to their own needs.

Of course, the businesses aren’t alone in this. Kostrzewa also cites some progressives studies in support of the idea that the state should shift even more of its emphasis toward catering to the immigrant population that it has been luring here in order to justify its many social service programs:

“We need more resources focused on helping adults learn English so they can gain skills they need to support their children’s education and so they can get better jobs,” said Mario Bueno, executive director of Progreso Latino, in the report.

The referenced report is by the Economic Progress Institute, which Kostrzewa strangely characterizes as simply a “nonpartisan research and policy organization based in Providence.” He could have added that the institute is housed with a sweetheart rental agreement at the public Rhode Island College, after having been birthed (if I’m not mistaken) with funding from the private nonprofit Rhode Island College Foundation, which is currently under scrutiny for helping Governor Gina Raimondo hire a cabinet member outside the reach of the state’s transparency and ethics laws. The institute has also received funding from the state government and, as Kevin Mooney reports, is among the left-wing organizations supported by the Rhode Island Foundation.

Incidentally, Progreso Latino is also on the Rhode Island Foundation’s list of grant recipients, but its funding comes mainly from state and local government, having received over $600,000 from the state last year and almost $900,000 from the federal government.

64

Hearing Beyond the Brookings Rhetoric

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The language of Brookings Institution scholar Bruce Katz (no relation), whom Gov. Gina Raimondo and the Rhode Island Foundation have invited into the state to offer consultation on economic development, might seem so close to some on the political right that casual news consumers would get the impression of substantial common ground.

In a short YouTube video, Katz says modern America needs a “pragmatic, collaborative federalism,” and federalism — the idea that power should be dispersed across the nation at the lowest level of authority possible — is a cornerstone of conservative philosophy. Katz sounds like a free-marketer when he exclaims, “Let’s free up the states and cities and metros!” They “should be empowered to innovate.” The federal government will back off to give them “room.”

But for those willing to listen, Katz points to the critical distinction that makes all the difference. Under his vision, “the federal government would lead on what matters,” by “providing incentives” that would guide the “transition to a different kind of American economy.” He doesn’t mean an economy in which we all pursue our dreams, but rather one in which experts in Washington have figured out what our dreams should be.

Continue reading in the Providence Journal.

65

Brookings Backers Backed Raimondo, Too

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As a quick follow-up to my post on Ted Nesi’s look at the meager details available on the forthcoming Brookings Institution plan to turn Rhode Island toward the radically new direction of socialism,* I checked out the campaign donations of the folks providing funding for the study, whom Nesi lists in this paragraph:

The $1.3 million is coming from a small group of backers: the Rhode Island Foundation; another local nonprofit that has yet to be publicly identified; The Fascitelli Foundation, a nonprofit endowed by the wealthy real-estate executive Michael D. Fascitelli, a Rhode Island native; Mark Gallogly, a Rhode Island native and hedge fund executive, and his wife, Lise Strickler; Stephen Mugford, an executive with Capitol One Financial Corp. in Boston, and his wife, Kristin; and Thomas R. Wall, another private equity executive, and his wife.

Including Rhode Island Foundation President Neil Steinberg’s $1,000 gift to her last year, the five listed families have given Governor Gina Raimondo $8,249 in political donations, $6,000 of it in 2014.  Fascitelli leads the way, with three $1,000 contributions, with Thomas Wall and Stephen and Kristin Mugford in for $2,000.  Mark Gallogly’s $249 in 2010 is the only non-$1,000 amount.  Although they all seem to have Rhode Island ties (mostly in Westerly), Steinberg is the only one with a Rhode Island address on his donation.

Raimondo’s policies and, we can assume, the plan that Brookings will lay out, are what we get when very wealthy people decide they need to step in and do society better than society does.  That their political philosophy is the core of the problem, in Rhode Island, whether it’s done poorly or with all of the study and structure that can be bought with the money of the 1%, doesn’t matter.  Their policies serve their interests and their egos, and at the end of the day, they won’t do the suffering if they fail; in fact, they’ll probably profit.

* Yes, there’s a touch of sarcasm, here.

66

Freedom’s Thinking Machine, Versus an Ignorant Elite

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Of the various commentaries I’ve seen, Kevin Williamson wrings the most truth out of the embarrassing display of a debacle that is Davos:

Conservatives are generally inclined to make a moral case for limited government: that transfers are corrupting, that taxes should be collected only to the extent that they are essential, that regulation is a necessary evil and that as such it should be kept to a minimum. That is generally true and persuasive, but the more important argument is the problem of ignorance. Even if Congress were populated exclusively by saintly super-geniuses, there is only so much that 535 human beings can know and understand. The more that decision-making is centralized in political agencies, or even in elites outside of formal government, the more intensively those decisions will be distorted by ignorance. This is true of market-oriented institutions, too, in the sense that big businesses make big mistakes. One of the lessons of the 2007 financial crisis is that the guys who run the banks do not actually know that much about how banks work, even if they know 100 times what the banking regulators know. Free markets offer a critical, if imperfect and partial, corrective to that in the form of financial losses and business failures, which is why things like cars and computers consistently improve while schools and welfare programs don’t. Big markets with lots of competing buyers and sellers are the biggest thinking machines we have, offering the broadest epistemic horizon that our species has figured out how to achieve.

The part about “elites outside of formal government” has been edging its way into my consciousness, lately, for Rhode Island issues.  Among a few of us, it’s almost become a game to spot the Brown graduates in government and its satellites.  From a certain point of view, the audacity of Governor Gina Raimondo hasn’t been so much that she’s looked out of state to hire, but that she’s upped the number of framed Yale certificates on the walls of state offices.

The whole distorted mess of Rhode Island governance is beginning to be revealed as something cooked up (by hired help) at a casual-attire intercollegiate social among people who are about as ideologically diverse as the Amish.  Politicians and bureaucrats in state government make the pronouncements, which are explained and supported in the best of lights for the slightly-less-insider readership of the Providence Journal and other news media, with all of the gears greased with Rhode Island Foundation money.  I’m simplifying for effect, of course, but not by as much as it may seem.

The bottom line is that Rhode Island won’t escape its rut until it’s possible for people who didn’t make it to the social (and people who wouldn’t have gone, even if invited) to win policy battles every now and then.

69

Dr. Stephen Skoly Honored with Major Award

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Dr. Stephen Skoly, the oral surgeon whose medical practice was unconstitutionally shuttered by the Rhode Island Department of Health because for medical reasons he decided not to comply with the state’s healthcare worker vaccine mandate, has been named as the 2022 recipient of the Dr. A James Kershaw Award by the RI Dental Association.

70

RI Education Insiders Lack Incentive to Succeed

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Having Rhode Island so thoroughly under their command, insider special interests have little incentive to perform. No matter how central their role in some failure, they can be assured that they will gain by the supposed solution.

74

Is RI Drowning in Ivy?

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At least when it comes to economic development, Rhode Island appears to be designing itself as a playground and laboratory for Ivy Leaguers.

85

Garry Sasse: Biden and Trump’s vision of freedom on the 2024 ballot

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Sasse has agreed to conduct a long-form discussion about this column on In The Dugout with Mike Stenhouse. Over the next week or so, check back to this webpage for details. by Gary Sasse. Originally published in the Providence Journal, April 27, 2024 President Joe Biden stated the central theme of his 2024 […]

86

The ranked-choice voting fad is finally ending

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Progressive Democrats and some moderate Republicans are advocating for a major change to Rhode Island’s Constitutional election provision, which currently provides for the candidate who receives a simple plurality of all votes cast to be declared the winner state or local elections … even if that plurality does not surpass the 50% threshold. […]

87

Now California Seeks to Eliminate all US Locomotives!

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE (Mike Stenhouse): The RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity has agreed to co-sign the national coalition letter to the EPA (see below). For years, the Center has raised awareness about the folly of the Electric Vehicle mandates proposed by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which, by law, our Ocean State must adhere […]

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