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718 search results for: rule of law

91

Putting the “Failed” in “Liberal Coup”

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Being suspicious that others are ever using rhetoric to manipulate, my warning lights go off when I see talk of coups and the like.  After all, if the battle is that stark, then your allies have some claim to have you compromise your principles.

It’s difficult to disagree with John Hinderaker, however, when he writes:

What we are seeing here is a coup: a coup by the New Class; by the Democratic Party; by far leftists embedded in the bureaucracy and the federal judiciary. Our duly elected president has issued an order that is plainly within his constitutional powers, and leftists have conspired to abuse legal processes to block it. They are doing so in order to serve the interests of the Democratic Party and the far-left movement. This is the most fundamental challenge to democracy in our lifetimes.

For the moment, I still conclude that our goal, on the right, should be to ensure that the rule of law is followed to the greatest degree possible, by which I mean that we follow it, rather than escalating the lawlessness of the Left.  That conclusion derives from my sense that the American people know what’s going on and a large majority don’t like it.  The progressives are over-playing their hand, in other words, and the only way they win is if conservatives don’t convey a palpable difference.

In short, I’d edit Hinderaker’s headline that “A Liberal Coup Is in Progress” to make it “A Failed Liberal Coup Is in Progress.”  The requirement, however, is that we stand up — stand up against the coup and for our principles.

92

The Effect of Socialist-Friendly Policies

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Mary Anastasia O’Grady’s Wall Street Journal column is eye opening:

… many Guatemalans I spoke with here last week are not dreading an anti-immigrant, protectionist Donald Trump in the White House. They’re focused on the exit of Barack Obama, whose foreign policy they saw as politicized in favor of left-wing causes and environmental extremism that harm Guatemalan development. …

The complaints extend beyond a difference of opinion about the role of the state. During the Obama years Uncle Sam repeatedly backed those who flouted the rule of law in the name of “social justice.”

Let me summarize what one might infer the Obama administration’s policy accomplished based on what O’Grady is saying.  Yes, I’m insinuating a more cohesive plan than there may have been, but it’s telling whether intentional or not:

  • One: Back corrupt groups that share Obama’s general ideology.
  • Two: Drive people out of those countries and toward America.
  • Three: Open the borders with selective border enforcement and promised benefits.
  • Four: Change the electorate of the United States (they think) in favor of the former president’s party.

If that were, in any degree, the plan, one can’t help but wonder whether it assumes too much to think people driven from their homes by leftist governments wouldn’t carry that lesson with them. It seems like there ought to be opportunity for conservatives, here, if we can figure out how to communicate on the level of core values with communities that have this sort of experience in their background.

93

Saying “No” and then Changing the Times

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Mark Glennon’s thoughts on how the state of Illinois will fall apart — is falling apart — in a long, gradual process will resonate with Rhode Islanders capable of seeing what’s going on.  In this paragraph, Glennon raises an historical cliché that I’ll likely start quoting every time somebody expresses bewilderment at Rhode Islanders’ political behavior:

The Illinois General Assembly majority, the Chicago City Council and Mayor Emanuel are the obvious villains, but as for the ultimate culprits — voters who elect them — consider what Alexander the Great supposedly said about why Asians in his day were easily made slaves: “Because they never learned to say ‘no.’” Just saying ‘no’ to the incompetence, graft, lies and rank stupidity of their own government would end it all. But Illinoisans, especially Chicagoans, won’t say it, content to march blithely into indentured servitude.

Perhaps the core feature of the system that our forefathers gave us is that we really can avoid servitude by saying “no.”  We are allowed to change things.  We are allowed to insist that all of the reasons insiders tell us we can only say “yes” are false and that believing as we do does not make us bad people.  Saying “no” is only the first step, of course, but we are permitted to change things, and even change them back to something that we’ve lost, like true representative democracy and the rule of law.  The past is fertile ground from which to draw seeds for the future, not a wasteland of toxic superstition.

As for the “how,” I’m more and more convinced that hoping for some catalyst or hero is folly.  Rather, I believe Saint Augustine had it right in his Sermon 311:

You say, the times are troublesome, the times are burdensome, the times are miserable.  Live rightly and you will change the times.

The times have never hurt anyone.  Those who are hurt are human beings; those by whom they are hurt are also human beings.  So, change human beings and the times will be changed.

94

Let’s Go with Term Limits All Around

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U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Ron DeSantis (Republicans from Texas and Florida, respectively) have published an op-ed in the Washington Post that deserves a “hear, hear”:

 On Election Day, the American people made a resounding call to “drain the swamp” that is modern Washington. Yet on Capitol Hill, we seem mired in the same cycle of complacency: The game hasn’t changed, and the players remain the same. Thankfully, there’s a solution available that, while stymied by the permanent political class, enjoys broad public support: congressional term limits.

During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump called for enacting term limits, and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has endorsed the idea. As soon as the 115th Congress convenes, both of us will move to restore accountability among the entrenched Washington establishment by introducing a constitutional amendment to limit the number of terms that a member of Congress can serve to three in the House and two in the Senate.

As a nation, we deserve a political class that changes with some regularity to remain reasonably representative.  Relatedly and more importantly, though, we need to eliminate the strong incentive to build into the law policies that favor incumbents, both by giving them an edge with voters and by giving others reason to want to give them money and other support to maintain the predictability of their long-term rule.

In a variety of contexts, Instapundit has repeatedly posted this tweet from Rob Province perfectly capturing the schadenfreudic aspect of the election of Donald Trump:

Screen-Shot-2016-11-10-at-6.35.32-PM-600x508

Whether we’re talking about the Obama administration’s weaponizing of the federal government or the Senate Democrats’ undermining of the filibuster for the appointment of nominees, it’s critical for the rule of law that the people currently controlling government behave as if any expansion of power they give themselves may soon be given over to people who do not agree with them.

Term limits would make that a rolling feature of our government and should be applied for all elective offices at the federal and state levels.

95

Health Care Farther Along Our Path

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This every-parent’s-nightmare story out of Venezuela brings to mind my fears when the forces of big government make a gain in the United States, as they did with ObamaCare:

Two surgical residents sterilized a used needle and injected Ashley with anesthetic. It took them half an hour to clean and drain her knee. They had become experts in the procedure over the summer, as more children come in with complications from simple injuries. The only thing unique about Ashley was how well-fed she seemed; healthy enough to fight to save.

The family celebrated a week later as Ashley was able to breathe without her oxygen mask. Her fever was running below 100 degrees (37.8 degrees Celsius). With any luck, she would soon be back to dancing on her bed to music videos.

But the next day, the fever was inexplicably worse again, 102 degrees. By the end of the week, she was quaking under her Dora the Explorer sheets, drenched in sweat, with a fever of 106 (41 Celsius).

Ashley is three years old, and her months’ long ordeal resulted from the infection of a scraped knee and would have ended very differently without the effort of parents and an extended family scouring the region for hospitals and clinics with the ability and the remaining resources to help.  A basic medical machine that costs $100 in the United States meant hours of calls and searching.  Inadequate supplies of drugs turn into new complications, like the rare heart infection with the symptoms in the above quotation.

The United States is a long way from Venezuela, in its condition… or at least we can still reasonably believe that it is… but as we make decisions, we have to look farther down the slippery hill.  The shortages threatening children like Ashley are not the result of some natural disaster or disappearance of natural resources; they result from a lack of freedom and rule of law, preventing people from figuring out ways to produce or import products and services.  They are unnatural, and for the most part they result from a too-heavy reliance on government.

Add in the damage that Americans have done to family and community structures, and we may not have to fall as far as Venezuela before we find ourselves in our own nightmare stories.

96

Marching Right Back to Crisis with the Pension Fund

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Who could have guessed that Rhode Island’s pension fund would prove not to be fixed as promised after the much-applauded pension reform pushed by Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo when she was the state treasurer?  From today’s Providence Journal:

The Rhode Island state pension fund lost $466 million over the past fiscal year, declining from $7.96 billion in assets to $7.50 billion, or 5.9 percent.

It was the second consecutive year that the fund lost money because the payout of benefits exceeded the return on investments and contributions from taxpayers and employees, according to David Ortiz, director of communications for Rhode Island Gen. Treasurer Seth Magaziner.

The market value of investments in the fund for state employees, public school teachers and some municipal employees also fell, by $26 million, or 0.27 percent, in the fiscal year ended June 30.

A point that Gregory Smith doesn’t make in his article, but that is absolutely critical, is that the pension fund is financed with an expectation of a 7.5% return on investment every year.  That means a $26 million loss, versus breaking even, is really nearly a $500 million loss versus where the investment needed to be.  The article goes on to note that other states’ pension funds made small returns, below 2%, but even that isn’t good enough.  Even that should be seen as a loss.

This is why I’ve been attempting to learn the total benefits that the state has already committed to funding, without adjustment to put it into today’s dollars — that is, without reducing it by the estimated investment return.  The state pension agency (the Employees’ Retirement System of Rhode Island, or ERSRI) and treasurer refused to give me that number, saying the actuary (a private contractor) doesn’t even do that calculation, even though it should be a very simple calculation to do.  Last week, the attorney general’s office backed the pension agency up, although the lawyer is revisiting the decision because he somehow missed a letter I’d submitted that directly refutes the agency’s reasoning and, therefore, his.

I’ve also now requested all of the numbers that the actuary does calculate, and I will simply add them together to get the total.  ERSRI, however, has refused that request, too, insisting that the only way a member of the public can get the number would be to take the raw data and essentially repeat all of the actuary’s work.  This one I may pursue all the way into the court system, because it’s a matter of basic transparency and the rule of law, because the public records statute very clearly requires release of this information.

It’s also critical to the state’s finances.  If our pension fund cannot even achieve positive returns, let alone returns anywhere near the estimated rate, the taxpayers and voters have a right to know how much money we’re talking about.  The reason elected and appointed officials wouldn’t want us to have that information is obvious.

97

On the Razor’s Edge Between Citizen and Subject

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I’m actually surprised, sometimes, how directly lessons from local politics apply even at the national level.

A few years ago, a friend of mine submitted a charter complaint, as allowed by Tiverton’s Home Rule Charter, against a school employee for disseminating political material in a school.  In contravention of the clear process for such complaints, the Town Clerk conducted an investigation, including being party to the discarding of evidence, and dismissed the complaint.

Now, I happen to like the Town Clerk, but thinking it vital that the process for complaints be clear, strictly followed, and universal in their application, I filed a complaint against her for this activity.  Ultimately, the Town Council let her off by finding that she didn’t “knowingly” violate the charter.  The ruling was ridiculous.  In general, “knowing” action means the person knows he or she took the action, not that he or she knows it was illegal, and the clerk didn’t accidentally conduct an investigation.  Making matters even clearer, section 1211(d)(2) provides for distinct additional penalties when a town employee knows his or her action is a violation.  There is simply no ambiguity, here.

But the council members liked the clerk, and most of them had a political interest in protecting the school employee and the political group whose material she promoted (Tiverton 1st).  So, they simply declared the law to be something different than what it clearly was for this one case.

Now, at the national level, despite what could accurately be described as “gross negligence”… a week after her husband met with the nation’s top law-enforcement agent in a clearly inappropriate, nearly clandestine meeting… the same day the President of the United States takes to the campaign trail with her, Hillary Clinton has dodged prosecution for sending classified information using a private email server because, in the words of FBI Director James Comey, the investigators did not find “some combination of clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information or vast quantities of information exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct or indications of disloyalty to the United States or efforts to obstruct justice.”  She didn’t know, despite having been warned against the server, so that’s that.

As in Tiverton, the reality is that the people whom we have entrusted to enforce our laws simply don’t want to do it, in this case, so we’re stuck.  And that means the only thing keeping us as citizens, rather than subjects of a ruling oligarchy, is our behavior.  If we accept this new reality, we’re serfs.  On that count, I’m with Kurt Schlichter:

They don’t realize that by rejecting the rule of law, they have set us free. We are independent. We owe them nothing – not respect, not loyalty, not obedience. But with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we will still mutually pledge those who have earned our loyalty with their adherence to the rule of law, our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

98

The Narrative of the Americas

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A narrative of American advance and decline that misses the importance of the rule of law in mediating ideological differences pushes us toward tyranny.

99

The IRS as the Government’s Leading Criminal Enterprise

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So, it turns out that the same Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that suppressed conservative Tea Party groups in order to help a progressive president win reelection is helping illegal immigrants to commit tax fraud:

Asked to explain those practices, [IRS Commissioner John] Koskinen replied, “What happens in these situations is someone is using a Social Security number to get a job, but they’re filing their tax return with their [taxpayer identification number].” What that means, he said, is that “they are undocumented aliens … . They’re paying taxes. It’s in everybody’s interest to have them pay the taxes they owe.”

As long as the information is being used only to fraudulently obtain jobs, Koskinen said, rather than to claim false tax returns, the agency has an interest in helping them. “The question is whether the Social Security number they’re using to get the job has been stolen. It’s not the normal identity theft situation,” he said.

On the immediate issue, one must wonder how much these folks are actually paying in taxes.  More likely than not, they’re having taxes withheld from their paychecks and are filing in order to secure a return.  How many, do you think, wind up getting money back as earned-income tax credit (EITC) handouts?

More important, though, is the lackadaisical handling of the law.  The message to the American people is consistent from the abetting of illegal immigrants Social Security fraud to the handling of Hillary Clinton’s apparent misuse of classified documents as secretary of state:  The law does not apply equally to everybody, and may not apply at all to politically favored groups.

Then there’s the notion that using false Social Security numbers to secure jobs is a victimless crime.  The public should be assured that time worked on a friend’s Social Security account doesn’t wind up giving that friend a boost in benefits down the road, but more to the point, people who take jobs fraudulently prevent other people from taking those jobs and drive down the wages that employers must pay in order to find employees at market rate.

So, if it’s questionable whether these illegal immigrants ultimately pay taxes and if it’s certain that they drive down wages for American workers, why would a government agency whose whole reason for being is supposed to be to serve citizens assist in perpetuating fraud rather than assist in maintaining the rule of law?  I don’t know, but I happened to be reviewing election law, yesterday, in relation to a local controversy in Tiverton, and I was reminded of Rhode Island General Law 17-1-3.1(b)(3), which states that “the address from which [a person] filed his last federal income tax return… shall be considered prima facie evidence of [his] residence for voting purposes.”

Would an IRS that concludes that it’s “in everybody’s interest” to have illegal immigrants working and paying taxes think the same about having them vote?

100

Supreme Court Appointments and Elections

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I’m still a bit stunned at the news that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died. The comment has flitted across my computer screen that this is the worst thing that could happen to the United States, right now. That’s a huge overstatement, but I might go so far as to suggest that (given my worldview) the death of no other single public figure could do more harm in the world at this precise moment.

Given the degree to which the country is divided — particularly between the general public and the political (including media) elites — everybody has already rushed to pull the tug-of-war rope tight over appointment of a successor. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (of Kentucky) has stated that the Senate will not confirm any nomination from President Barack Obama, leading Glenn Thrush of the left-wing Democrat-favoring publication Politico to tweet a “wow,” writing that McConnell is “rejecting a president’s right to nominate a SCOTUS justice.”

That’s baloney. McConnell is actually asserting the Senate’s right to offer advice and consent on a SCOTUS justice. Presidents who want the Senate to work with them on such matters should avoid being as divisive as Obama has been. They should also avoid taking so many unconstitutional actions around Congress and the rule of law. They should also avoid passing major legislation on party line votes. They should also suggest that Senate Majority Leaders of their own party should not wave away long-standing rules of their chamber as deposed Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nevada) did for judicial appointments a short while ago.

No doubt, President Obama has relished the degree to which he’s pushed the Republicans in Congress into a corner by pitting their Washington-elite sensibilities against their Washington-hating base. Here, too, he’ll be reaping the rewards if the Senate holds the Supreme Court seat open for the next president. If the Republican Senate confirms another Obama nominee — especially to replace the very conservative Scalia — the 2016 election may very well blow up, and if they confirm one between the election and the swearing in of the next president, they may very well incite a revolution.

101

RI Foundation Becoming Hub for Top-Down Progressive Shadow Government

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In the Daily Signal, Kevin Mooney, who used to write for the Ocean State Current, takes a look at the private Rhode Island Foundation’s role in advancing left-wing causes and exploiting legal loopholes to move sensitive government activities beyond the reach of voters and transparency laws:

With almost $1 billion in assets, the foundation bills itself as Rhode Island’s largest grant-maker, awarding more than $30 million a year, according to annual reports. Tax records show that the foundation concentrated its most recent donations on left-of-center organizations, with a particular emphasis on environmental causes.

These organizations include Earthjustice, EcoRI News, the Climate Action Network, the Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island, and Grow Smart Rhode Island. Each has received tens of thousands in donations from the Rhode Island Foundation, according to the most recent tax forms.

Other left-leaning recipients of the foundation’s largess include Planned Parenthood branches in Rhode Island and Massachusetts; Direct Action for Rights and Equality, an anti-capitalist “social justice” group; the Economic Progress Institute, a Rhode Island-based progressive research group; and the Rhode Island Coalition Against Gun Violence, which seeks new gun controls.

Rhode Islanders who express concern over the Rhode Island Foundation’s penchant for funding liberal causes have been particularly critical of the nonprofit’s support for environmental groups standing behind a project called RhodeMap Rhode Island.

The RI Foundation’s left-wing involvement spans just about every area of progressive social activism, and as Mooney notes, the organization has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state in the area of healthcare. (Cash is fungible, of course, so revenue is revenue.) In the past year, though, the Foundation has really taken additional steps toward helping to create and play a role in a shadow government.

As a tangential note, Stephen Hopkins Center for Civil Rights Giovanni Cicione tells Mooney that some of this growing private-sector cabal should be registering as lobbyists. I’d argue that includes the state’s new chief innovation officer Richard Culatta, whom Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo helped hire through the Rhode Island College Foundation. He’s going to be part of the governor’s cabinet of advisers, but he’s not a government employee and will be giving suggestions and promoting them not only to the governor, but to agencies and bodies throughout government. As of this morning, he was not listed on the Secretary of State’s lobbyist tracker, and it’s reasonable to expect he never will be, becoming instead just another example of how there’s no rule of law in Rhode Island.

104

Letting Them Take Away Our Government and Our Civil Rights

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Via Instapundit comes an excellent illustration of the degree to which we’re simply allowing our right to self governance evaporate away in favor of the radical ideology of an elite administrative class:

Even [Deputy Education Assistant Secretary Amy McIntosh], despite her dodging and weaving, concedes that Catherine E. Lhamon, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights and head of the DoE Office of Civil Rights has gone off the reservation.  She has no lawful authority to mandate colleges and universities adhere to her political whims, as reflected in her “guidance,” upon pain of losing federal funds.*

When asked (see 1:37 in the video) who gave Lhamon the authority to impose her personal will upon the nation’s colleges and universities, she responded, “with gratitude, you did when I was confirmed.”

The United States of America did not confer upon a person named Lhamon the authority to recreate Title IX in her image, to impose threat of the loss of public monies upon failure to adhere to her vision, to force a fundamental and systemic change that created a wholly new authority to rid the nation’s higher educational system of anything that might adversely affect the feelings of “marginalized” students, ascertain and punish students who are alleged to have engaged in conduct that caused such unpleasantness.

Our government is no longer following the rules that ensure that ours is a representative democracy, and the tendency simply to implement the preferred policy of whichever party can claim the White House will only expand, and rapidly.  We desperately need to begin populating elective offices with people who will insist on the rules of government… and then we need to cycle in new officials on a regular basis.

This ratcheting constraint on our civil rights has been happening for a long time, but the Obama presidency has left the rule of law a wasteland.  If we don’t change things now — right down to convincing the news and entertainment media to take the side of the people over government interests (or to drive them out of business) — it’s going to come to oppression and violence sooner than later.

105

Keep It Up, Coventry!

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Hey, in Rhode Island, lovers of freedom and the rule of law have to take what victories they can, and I’d count this as one:

State officials effectively threw up their hands Friday in trying to prop up the Central Coventry Fire District, saying they wanted to pull the plug on their bankruptcy reorganization plan after uncooperative town officials threatened to sue the plan’s chief architect and the district’s board proved to be perpetual obstructionists.

“It isn’t in Rhode Island taxpayers’ best interest to continue spending thousands of dollars on a plan that will not be successful because it lacks the support from the leadership of the town and from the CCFD board,” said David Sullivan, acting director of the state Department of Revenue.

Of course, that’s from the Providence Journal, so it has to be rephrased in a way that isn’t heavily slanted toward government officials.  You have to look into the direct quotes of the “obstructionists” to understand what’s really happening.  Here’s the Town Council’s lawyer, Nicholas Gorham:

“It was clear the people wanted profound change, and with all due respect to Judge Pfeifer, his plan did not do that. Consideration of private services, more volunteers; those are the things that have been repeated over and over again. And there is really no evidence they were even ever considered.”

So to revisit the first paragraph, above, the receiver came in not with the intention of figuring out how to satisfy the voters and taxpayers who have a right to determine how their fire district will run while balancing safety concerns and employee rights, but with the view that the status quo should be preserved as much as possible.  Calling the people who’ll have to live with any arrangement long after the receiver (i.e., state-appointed dictator) has collected his paycheck and gone home “obstructionist” for insisting that any deal must meet their interests is a pretty aggressive attack.

That said, if “obstructionist” is what the establishment and its newspaper want to call free citizens asserting their rights, then we need more obstructionists across the state and in state government.

106

Commerce RI as Raimondo PAC

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How is this even remotely appropriate, from the news page of the Web site for the state’s quasi-public economic development agency, Commerce RI?

Raimondo Poised to Fix Rhode Island

In just eight months as the first female governor of Rhode Island, Governor Gina M. Raimondo passed an economic development and jobs focused budget through the General Assembly in record time, giving the state an unprecedented toolkit to reboot the economy.

Contrary to what Rhode Island insiders may believe, it is not the role of government agencies to promote the particular politicians who happen to be in charge at the time.  It would be questionable enough for elected officials to use their own government offices to promote their activities in a nakedly political way, but when other offices do so, it’s way out of bounds.

For one thing, it implies that interaction with that agency is related to approval of the politician’s agenda.  Suppose a business is considering a move to Rhode Island and initiates contact with Commerce RI.  The executives might justifiably get the impression that fealty to the governor is a must, if they expect help from the quasi-public (let alone fully government agencies).

For another thing, this sort of behavior gives incumbents access to a multi-billion dollar organization’s exception for unregistered and unregulated in-kind contributions for their political races, to the point of electioneering.

I’ve already been tracing the way in which the rule of law is falling apart in Rhode Island and the country, creating arbitrary rules based on who has power rather than who has rights.  If government agencies are becoming unabashed promoters of elected officials (and attackers of their political opponents), we’re crossing into a new type of government altogether.

107

Under the Thumb of the Regulatory State

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Today’s posts seem to have a theme, so far, so we might as well keep it going with Jeff Carter’s suggestion that “America Is Close to Losing Its Freedom” (via Instapundit):

We are in danger of losing our republic.  America is on the brink of becoming something else, a regulatory state.

Regulatory states don’t pay attention to the rule of laws.  The law bends, dances, jumps and moves whatever way the regulator wants it to move.  This is not an isolated instance.  It’s happening in almost every vertical business silo.

Yesterday I was talking with a medical startup.  They told me that doctors were sick of the consolidation that has been happening and accelerating in the medical industry.  Doctors are being treated as commodities. I responded that this is repeating itself in every American industry.

So, if you choose to stay in a state that seems more focused on inside deals that taxpayers can’t afford and decide to attempt to make the grueling transition from dependence to self-sufficiency in the modern welfare state, you’re likely to face a cliff of regulations that make it more difficult to get rolling, that act as a defensive wall for those who are already established, and that give government a long arm into all of your affairs.

This is the progressive central planning utopia.  Even if you’re able to shake your welfare-state shackles, the planners want you dependent on a big business for your livelihood.  That way, they can work and negotiate with the poohbahs of big business, with all of our livelihoods as the chips.

108

Making Pension Controversy a Surreal Non-Issue

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Reading Michael Riley’s latest article on the financial condition of pension funds at the state level and in Providence, one gets the sense of two realities.  Riley’s an investment professional and knows this game, so when he writes things like this, people should listen:

Unless the Providence pension Plan receives $62 million in cash or investments from the City by June 30, 2015 the city will once again default on a current liability loan. …

The countdown for Providence Bankruptcy and default is on and its 14 days. Raimondo and Magaziner have also been oblivious to the struggles of cities and towns, preferring instead to campaign for green spaces and a green infrastructure bank etc.  Meanwhile, the state’s pension performance for fiscal year 2015 is horrible and will certainly push Rhode Island and its funding ratio farther down into critical Status. …

I estimate that with just 2 weeks left in Fiscal Year 2015 the State Pension Fund has earned just over 3% compared to their own projection of 7.5%. That is a shortfall of approximately $360 million dollars.

One would think this sort of assessment from a credible expert would be slipped into the news cycle somewhere, but it’s not.  Why is that?

Part of the problem, I think, is that changing models for the news business have broadened the responsibilities of journalists.  This is complicated subject matter, and the same reporters who would take it on are also covering a wide variety of complicated subjects.  Obviously, there’s a massive state budget in the works, and then there are flashier, edgier topics that the state’s politicians keep tossing into the mix, like truck tolls, for example.

Another part of the problem is that there’s so much fluff and flop in government budgets that it’s relatively easy for officials to cover things up.  With a magician spell over the complexity, money can just appear, and policies can just change with some ostensibly disconnected rationale.  Lo’ the state slips $62 million somewhere into its aid to Providence, and the same amount materializes in the pension fund, or the projected discount rate or some other assumption changes that makes the problem vanish.

That’s if anybody acknowledges that there’s a problem.  There’s no rule of law anymore, it seems, and government is not a very good watchdog over itself.  According to Riley, Providence has gotten away with this for years; if those who must enforce the rules do not do so, then no rules appear to have been broken, and when the repercussions play out over years, politicians needn’t be caught.

So why should journalists spend all the time to dig into these topics, only to be given the runaround by government sources (whose good will they need for other stories) and made to look like alarmists when the consequences outlast the public’s attention span?

109

The IRS, Media, Democrat Nexus

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Eliana Johnson phrases her recent National Review Online article as if it nudges the controversy over the IRS’s Tea Party targeting in another direction, but I think it fills out the picture in exactly the way that most Tea Party types would expect.  Consider:

The targeting of tea-party groups traces back to February of 2010 when a low-level employee in the IRS’s Cincinnati office flagged a single file for his superior. In an e-mail written on February 25, 2010, Jack Koester, a revenue agent, told his boss, John Shafer, that “recent media attention” made the application at hand a “high-profile” case. In doing so, he was following the Internal Revenue Manual’s directive to agency personnel to elevate to senior managers cases that fall into several categories, including those “that are newsworthy, or that have the potential to become newsworthy.”

In a comprehensive analysis, Step #1 wasn’t the low-level employee’s flagging of the application.  Rather, it was the news media’s handling the Tea Party movement as a suspicious, controversial development.

Next, the flagged file worked its way up the ladder until it got to the political operatives at the top of the IRS.  In D.C., the issue took another step:

Once in Washington, the applications landed with a group of attorneys known in the IRS as tax-law specialists. The Internal Revenue Manual directs tax-law specialists to create what is known as a “sensitive-case report” if, among other possible criteria, the application “is likely to attract media or Congressional attention.”

Such judgement is subjective, of course, but one suspects that any individual Tea Party group’s application would have fallen well short of national media or Congressional attention.  Attention to a movement is quite different than, say, attention that might be paid to a specific charity created by a political family that has the potential to be used for laundering political donations.

That’s when the politics came into it:

Disgraced IRS official Lois Lerner didn’t become involved with the tea-party cases until May 13, 2010, when she received the sensitive-case report created by tax-law specialists in Washington. Then, in early 2011, Lerner ordered that the cases go through a “multi-tiered review” process, called the tea-party cases “very dangerous,” and reiterated, “Cincy should probably NOT have these cases.”

It may not be the case that the Obama Administration had the idea, one day, to disrupt the development of the Tea Party movement with the IRS.  But when a biased news media had made backlash against President Obama’s policies a matter of national controversy, and when a Democrat-heavy bureaucracy had interpreted some individual manifestations of that backlash as “sensitive cases,” the idea arrived on the administration’s doorstep with ribbons and bows.

The partisan Democrats at the top of the chain (perhaps including the President) could have declined the opportunity in the name of freedom and the rule of law, but they didn’t.

110

Legitimacy and the Trust Deficit

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Scott Rasmussen notes that the American people are losing trust in government for all sorts of (justified) reasons, which erodes the public sense that the government has any real legitimacy as a representative organization:

Until people can trust government, the government cannot enjoy the necessary consent of the governed. That’s true whether the distrust comes from a black teenager in Baltimore or a Tea Party leader in Texas.

For government in America to regain its legitimacy, government officials must change their behavior. People may gain power by winning an election, getting a badge or landing a job with the IRS, but legitimate authority is something that has to be earned every day.

This observation, at the national level, is evidence of my theory that the ills that plague Rhode Island, and similarly governed places, will eventually spread like an infectious disease if they are not cured at their source.  Rhode Islanders have long had a sense that they are locked out of government, that the rule of law does not exist (at least not in a fair, even way), and that things will never change.

There’s a reason people will be surprised if the public doesn’t help fund a second minor-league baseball stadium in the heart of Providence, on land that was promised to be a source of tax revenue and economic development.  This level of distrust is what happens when it’s clear that special interests will manipulate laws, as with the Central Coventry Fire District, in order to ensure that they never lose.

Although not to that level, yet, the “government versus the people” dynamic goes on in every city and town in Rhode Island, every year.  When voters approved, by nearly a two-to-one margin, an alternative budget that I proposed last year in Tiverton, holding the tax levy to a 0.0% increase, elected officials didn’t embark on a year of soul searching to figure out (or even ask) what people want.  They spent the year using their public meetings to attack me as if I somehow fooled the community, and they (apparently) worked in back rooms to come up with threats that might help them turn out the vote.  (This is nothing new.)  Now, we’ve got Town Administrator Matt Wojcik using a public forum (in front of other town employees over whom he has managerial authority) to snarl at me as if I’m a reckless deceiver simply for giving the people an alternative.

I think that’s what Rasmussen means about earning legitimacy every day.  In Rhode Island, and increasingly at the national level, the emphasis is on finding ways to give the people something the insiders say they need, but that they may not want and would not accept if they could actually make representative democracy representative.

111

Progressive Faith in Caesar’s Divine Ratchet

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Ross Douthat (who, by the way, will be in Rhode Island for this year’s revived Portsmouth Institute conference) catches something in the attitude of Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer:

Unless, of course, you just define “worked” to mean “changed public policy without the opposition being able to stop us,” in which case we’re just dealing with Caesarism justified by consequentialism, and Pfeiffer’s argument is the boasting of a successful machiavel, unmoored both from constitutional norms and his boss’s own once-professed ideals. Which seems like the more accurate reading of the account he’s giving Chait: It’s less a story of how this president forged a political strategy better suited to our polarized times than it is a story of how Obama realized that a second-term president in an era of gridlock doesn’t need to be politically successful to put his stamp on major policy arenas … he just needs to let go of any principled concerns about what a president can and cannot do.

… expediency is all: A given move is a success if the opposition fails to find a way to block it, the hemmers and hawers are proven wrong if the president isn’t impeached, and the state of your party doesn’t really matter because an unbound presidency is all that progressivism really needs.

Two observations, here.  First, Caesarism wasn’t just an attitude toward the enactment of policies.  It was also a variation of dynastic succession, with the current ruler literally adopting people to put them in line for ascension to the role.  One reason the state of your party might not matter is if the regime has reason to believe that its party can’t lose the newly powerful executive office.  (This puts rumors that Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett cued up the Hillary Clinton email scandal in an interesting context, although the White House has denied it.)

The second observation tempers the conspiracy theorizing somewhat.  Progressives’ worldview is built on many articles of pure faith, but among the chief ones is belief in the ratchet of progress.  They believe that each step of their transformation of society locks in.  To them, a policy like ObamaCare or the FCC’s takeover of the Internet or the absorption of millions of illegal immigrants can never be undone, so straining to get policy to that next tooth on the gear is worthwhile, because the aftermath isn’t reversal, but rest.

One of the great deficiencies of progressive thought, though, is precisely its failure to comprehend the importance of maintaining the culture and mores — Douthat’s “principled concerns.”  Putting too much pressure on the ratchet can cause it to break, leaving the society vulnerable to invasion or simple collapse.  And lunging to reach that next step means that the activists don’t have the institutional strength to hold power and prevent their sacrifice of the rule of law from becoming a pretext for a dictatorship that even they wouldn’t like.

112

Blue Politicians or Men in Blue, the Conservative’s Conundrum

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Ben Domenech takes up the conservative’s difficulty in choosing sides in the battle of Mayor Bill de Blasio versus the New York Police Department in “The NYPD’s Revolt Is a Direct Threat to Democracy.”  The problem , and the conundrum, is that neither side of the fight is not a direct threat to democracy.

Ultimately, the officers’ activities as the rank and file law enforcement — turning their backs on the mayor, flying subversive messages around the city, and, now, appearing not to enforce the law to the best of their ability — are the fault of progressive governance. Like other progressives, the mayor does not know what to do when his assumptions are revealed as fantasies and members of his pro-government coalition prove that they believe more in their own interests than in the idea of government, which he (as a progressive) likely believes himself to embody.

But the problem is bigger than that. We currently have a progressive president stretching his ability to use discretion in enforcement of the law beyond all pretense of coherence in order to implement new policy that has explicitly not been enacted by the people’s representatives. (Immigration is the highest-profile example, but there are others.)  The police and their union can’t help but see that as another variation of what they’re doing, endorsed by the top government executive (and Democrat and progressive) in the country.

We aren’t a military junta, but we aren’t an aristocracy either. Why should the president not have to follow the rules, but rank and file officers (with their lives on the line) have to? Why should the mayor be able to undermine his police force, but they must put on a show of respect?  Because the president and the mayor are the political bosses? Sorry, the United States isn’t supposed to work that way.

So, yeah, there is no righteous side in this battle, but we can still conclude that the villain is progressive governance and its tendency toward merely contingent acceptance of the rules. After all, the police shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing, but then, the mayor shouldn’t be allowing them to do what they’re doing. His failure in this is not just a consequence of the demonstrated fact that he’s a weak leader, but also because the political philosophy by which he governs can’t address this situation effectively.

That means that the fix is to illustrate the point and pull back from the progressive course.

Whether meeting that end means siding with the hapless progressive who’s failing to govern the Big Apple or the officers who are setting a dangerous precedent in failing to follow the rules, I guess that’s for the individual to decide. For my part, if we’re to live in a society without the rule of law, I’m inclined to side with the police, mostly because I think they’ll be more likely to accept the re-imposition of the rule of law than the progressives when we finally get to rebuilding.

113

Gina Raimondo and Rhode Island’s Preemptive Surrender to the Threat of Collusion

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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.

114

Why Rhode Islanders Have No Hope, Judicial Branch

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I frequently state my opinion that there’s basically no rule of law in Rhode Island.  An article in today’s Providence Journal about a lawsuit concerning an “affordable housing” development illustrates why.

The basic point is that citizen groups almost never win.  Either the government agency appeals to the department under which it works, and that department rules in its favor (as with a school committee appealing to the Dept. of Education) or some quasi-judicial agency, like the Ethics Commission, waves the language of the law away, or the courts carry the water.  The foreclosure of that route to reform and civic engagement leads people who might otherwise become more politically active, perhaps even running for office, to give up totally, sometimes directing their efforts to an exit strategy from the state.

I didn’t realize (but probably could have guessed) that Maya Angelou, the poet, has precedential weight in Rhode Island courts:

In his written decision, filed Wednesday, Procaccini opened with a quote from the late Maya Angelou: “ ‘The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.’ As this Court considers the case before it, it keeps Maya Angelou’s wise words in mind.”

Whatever the law says, the ruling class of Rhode Island will find it to say whatever they feel is right.  There’s no way citizens can work to craft language that will actually do what they want it to.

That’s not the rule of law.  It’s an aristocracy.

115

When the Future Can Pay for Your Business Model

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The federal government’s deus ex machina act with HealthSource RI is as good an example as any of how government shouldn’t (but inevitably will) behave.  There was a little bit less than the preferred 100% certainty that the state would allocate money for its experiment in health broker entreneurialism during the last session of the state General Assembly, and the administration of big brother Obama swooped in with the cash to keep the Web site going for another year.

It wasn’t supposed to do so, under the written word of the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), and the state wasn’t supposed to accept it, under the written word of Governor Lincoln Chafee’s executive order creating the health benefits exchange.  But what’s the rule of law and twenty-something million dollars compared with giving government agents the opportunity to experiment with a new business model?

If the U.S. Congress and the governor have to say one thing in order to get their big-government policies implemented and then ignore the specifics when they become inconvenient, and if more imaginary money has to be pushed to the resulting agencies, that’s just the price of trying to solve all of our problems via the political system.

The combined activities of Americas local, state, and federal governments now cost more per American household than the median American household brings home in income.  The federal debt is now higher than the national GDP.  In Rhode Island, the state government is suffering the consequences of its need to fill budget gap with one-time fixes and a ratcheting squeeze on residents, who are choosing to leave.

Last week, I checked in with HealthSource RI.  After the open enrollment period ended in March, the agency had 27,961 enrolled individuals, with 21,097 having paid.  By the end of April, 25,767 had paid.  As of August 2, HealthSource counted 26,686 enrollees and 25,892 people paid up.

The federal government, in other words, gave nearly $1,000 per enrollee just for the exchange’s operating costs.  That doesn’t include the subsidies that 85-90% of the enrollees are receiving.

It takes a little bit of education and imagination to see the consequences of this behavior.  All that money comes from somewhere, and by the looks of the recent trends, it isn’t the much-vilified One Percent.  Not being able to trust that the deal that politicians make actually means what they say it means when they first say it has consequences, too.

It may be the perfect crime, though.  As the machine works its destruction, those whom it kills and those from whom it steals can’t easily see who’s to blame.

116

An Ethics Commission Contribution to Corrupt Government

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I’ve got an op-ed in the Providence Journal today about the state Ethics Commission’s dismissal of a complaint I made on a local issue.  To be more specific, the commission’s director and his staff of lawyers dismissed the complaint based on some principle that isn’t anywhere in any law, rule, or other text that I can find or that the lawyers can tell me about:

The only explanation I can see is that Mr. Willever and his team of lawyers are applying some unwritten principle that more resembles faith than reason. One could say that they believe in a doctrine of ethical infallibility for government agents who are acting ex cathedra. As long as a government official is not tainted by any wicked temptations from the private sector, everything he or she does must be ethical. …

The frightening judgment of the Ethics Commission is apparently that government officials are a class apart, a ruling elite — almost a priestly order dispensing truth to the masses in accord with the will of government.

The more I sift through the weeds of Rhode Island politics, the more its problems become defined for me.  Previously, I’d thought of the Ethics Commission as a toe hold (albeit a weak and tiny one) for asserting the rule of law in the Ocean State.  Sure, it had become a tool for government officials to define everything up to the absolutely unethical line as ethical, but at least there was a line.

It was a great disappointment to learn that the Ethics Commission does not appear to be what I’d hoped it was.  How dramatic an overhaul the state needs, if that’s the case!

117

What If You Move I-195 and They Don’t Come?

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Add another anecdote to the story of Rhode Island’s decline:

A handful of residential developers and engineers turned out Tuesday at the first public session with officials responsible for selling 19 acres of former highway land now available for development in the capital city. …

“I thought there’d be more people,” said Wayne Zuckerman of Sterling Properties in Livingston, N.J., who said he is familiar with Rhode Island. “I came because I wanted to see who the developers were … . Nineteen acres in the city. You would think — I would have thought — the room would have been filled.”

None of the people in the room seemed very enthusiastic about starting up projects. There are two telling details in the article. First:

[Jan A. Brodie, the I-195 commission’s executive director,] spoke of the challenges to develop the land — including building costs as high as in New York and Boston but lower personal income and revenue that developers can generate here.

Second:

Carla DeStefano, executive director of Stop Wasting Abandoned Property in Providence, questioned Brodie about the commission’s selection process after she said the panel had decided not to use a numbered ranking system of proposals. That “sounds a bit clandestine,” DeStefano said.

The reasoning, Brodie said, was to leave the commission room to consider the worthiness of each project, without deciding ahead of time how much specific criteria should count on a scoring chart.

Rhode Island has allowed the people who run its government to drive up costs and squelch opportunities through taxes, regulations, and general here’s-how-you-have-to-live-your-lifedness. It shows even in the selection process. The agency that the state set up to offload the land wants private developers to spend time putting together proposals without a clear, fair description of how they’ll be judged, because the insiders want maximum flexibility to pick what they like.

This is another manifestation of Rhode Island’s having no rule of law.

118

Of Leadership and Illegitimacy

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Maybe it’s just that the NBC 10 Wingmen segment is sitting me face to face with one on a weekly basis, but it has seemed like a certain refrain has become more common in the responses of Rhode Island progressives to conservative ideas: “The people of Rhode Island disagree with you.”

By way of evidence, they cite the makeup of the state’s legislative and executive branches, 90% and 100% Democrat, respectively. Throw in the federal delegation for another 100% blue block (not to be confused with Blu Blockers).

There are two obvious problems with this bit of non-argument. First, it confuses ideology and principle with partisanship. The majority in Rhode Island disagrees with conservatives on some things and agrees with us on others, yet somehow, that mixture doesn’t translate into a mixed-party State House. Rather, there are progressive Democrats, and there are conservative Democrats.

Second, it treats popularity as an argument. Even if every Rhode Islander disagreed with a person’s policy suggestions, that doesn’t mean that those suggestions are wrong or are not the wisest thing that the state could do, in a particular instance.

A third problem emerges with a poll that Bryant University’s Hassenfeld Institute released, this week, finding that 82% of Rhode Islanders would grade their legislators negatively for effectiveness. It should be noted, of course, that “effectiveness” doesn’t necessarily mean a difference of opinions. After all, RI progressives still manage to keep a straight face when calling the legislators “conservative.”

Still, the results suggest it’s mistaken to equate the output of the legislature, or even the elections, with the views of the population. In that respect, the poll results only reinforce what could be inferred from the low turnout for elections.

The emerging question — which is beginning to cross the threshold from private conversations to public speculation — is whether we’re living under a legitimate representative democracy. It sure does seem as if the public is tuned out and hopeless, sensing that nothing can be changed through civic processes.

That’s a dangerous place to be, if so, and reaffirming the rule of law and promise of democracy should be the very highest priority.

119

U.S. No Longer in Economically Free Top-10

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The Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama Era has dragged the United States out of the top 10 list of countries that are economically free, and that ought to be unacceptable to Americans. As Terry Miller writes:

For 20 years, the index has measured a nation’s commitment to free enterprise on a scale of 0 to 100 by evaluating 10 categories, including fiscal soundness, government size and property rights. These commitments have powerful effects: Countries achieving higher levels of economic freedom consistently and measurably outperform others in economic growth, long-term prosperity and social progress. Botswana, for example, has made gains through low tax rates and political stability.

Those losing freedom, on the other hand, risk economic stagnation, high unemployment and deteriorating social conditions. For instance, heavy-handed government intervention in Brazil’s economy continues to limit mobility and fuel a sense of injustice.

Specifically what has changed in the United States is important to consider, and for that purpose, see the interactive chart from Heritage that allows you to visualize up to three countries versus the average, overall and by category of freedom. (I found it useful to compare the United States with Canada and Mexico.)

For the cronyism file, note that the United States has not slipped much when it comes to business freedom or trade freedom. Where we’re losing ground are areas of taxes and government spending, as well as financial, monetary, and investment freedom. Most disturbing, though, might be the decline in the two freedoms in the category of “rule of law”: property rights and corruption.

Coming across this index the day that the Obama-administration FBI lets it be known that (surprise! surprise!) it doesn’t foresee criminal charges in the case of the Obama-administration IRS’s targeting of conservatives is almost too appropriate.

The index is a view from high up, but it appears that we’re losing ground in the very areas that make it possible for families to forge their own futures and to advance, bringing the economy with them.

120

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 […]

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