07/11/12 – Board of Elections
Justin writes live from a Rhode Island Board of Elections meeting.
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06/12/12 – The Whole Mad Jumble of the Last Day
Justin writes live from the final day of the legislative session.
What’s the Complaint, with ALEC?
In some circles, local ties to ALEC have been hot news this week, but Justin isn’t sure that the complaint against the group is really what it’s being articulated
Legacy Media Woes Point to Larger Political Dynamics
Reason’s Matt Welch measures cutting-edge media against legacy media worries about the death of their industry, and reviewing the local playing field, Justin gives an example of how public policy can give them a cudgel (even inadvertently).
03/10/12 – RISC Winter Meeting
Justin writes live from the RISC Winter Meeting at the Radisson Hotel.
Ethics in an Everybody-Knows-Everbody State
As a Ted Nesi article illustrates, the matter of legislator ethics is not a simple one. Perhaps disclosure, not investigation, is the answer.
RI Senate Economic Summit, Quonset “O”
Justin writes live and off-the-cuff from the RI Senate’s Economic Summit, “Expanding Jobs through Port Resources.”
Washington, Wall Street, and Populism
After reading Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison, by Peter Schweizer — a book that he calls “the most offensive and disturbing thing I’ve read since sampling the oeuvre of the Marquis de Sade” — Kevin Williamson illustrates how dangerous the concept of Big can become.
Stenhouse: Biden’s “Junk Fee” Rule is Pure Junk; another Mindless Assault on Corporate America
Statement by Mike Stenhouse, CEO for the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity in response to the Biden administration’s March 5 rule to impose a credit card “late fee” regulation that will harm consumers: “In struggling to come up with some issue that might appeal to voters during his State Of The Union address Thursday […]
DAILY SIGNAL: Consumers’ Research Head Breaks Down Dangers of ESG Policies in Investing
Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, has a message for everyday Americans. “Here’s the only definition of ESG you really need to remember,” Hild says, talking about environmental, social, and governance standards. “ESG is when the financial services industry uses their market power to push through environmental and social policy that they could not […]
Ocean State Current to Conduct PRESIDENTIAL TOWN HALL FORUM
The Ocean State Current will host a “town hall” style forum with U.S. Presidential candidate, Steve Laffey, this Friday, March 17, at 12:30 PM at the Chapel Grille restaurant in Cranston, Rhode Island. . Laffey, the former two-term mayor (2003-2007) of the city of Cranston, Rhode Island and 2006 Republican primary candidate for the U.S. […]
Ocean State Current to Conduct PRESIDENTIAL TOWN HALL FORUM
The Ocean State Current will host a “town hall” style forum with U.S. Presidential candidate, Steve Laffey, this Friday, March 17, at 12:30 PM at the Chapel Grille restaurant in Cranston, Rhode Island. . Laffey, the former two-term mayor (2003-2007) of the city of Cranston, Rhode Island and 2006 Republican primary candidate for the U.S. […]
DAILY SIGNAL: New Founding Builds a Commercial and Cultural Network to Fight Wokeness
Woke corporations are increasingly embracing the left’s political agenda and taking aim at the values we as conservatives cherish. So what can we do about it? Matt Peterson is cofounder of New Founding, president of New Founding Media, and host of “The Matthew Peterson Show.” He’s fighting back against woke corporations and joins “The Daily […]
DAILY SIGNAL: Freespoke Offers Users a Search-Engine Alternative to Google
Did you know that an estimated 90% of internet search queries are performed by Google? That is an astonishing statistic when you think about one company’s market dominance and ability to shape public opinion through search results. It’s also highly problematic if you follow Google’s pattern of anti-conservative bias and manipulation of its search algorithm. […]
The Lockdown, Not the Disease, is Overwhelming Hospitals. End It.
The COVID-19 shutdown is financially decimating hospitals. End it now.
The Familiar Names When Money’s on the Table
The lottery company seeking a 20-year, no-bid contract from the state of Rhode Island has acknowledged its failure to report $776,000 in lobbying expenditures over the course of three months, according to Katherine Gregg in the Providence Journal. Some of the names involved are very interesting — which may explain some of the reluctance to report them:
In an updated lobbyist-disclosure report filed Wednesday in response to Journal inquiries, IGT disclosed a total of $776,000 in payments to its media strategist and spokesman Bill Fischer’s company, True North Communications; the Providence public relations and media placement company (NAIL), where Gov. Gina Raimondo’s former communications director, Mike Raia, now works; Signature Printing; Big Tony’s Pizza. The total includes $15,000 a month in both August and September to the only named news outlet in IGT’s report, GoLocal 24 LLC.
Raia, remember, was a Raimondo staffer who left her administration-campaign network earlier this year in order to take the small step into a private company that has been working with her office. Now we find that company involved in the giant financial transaction for which Raia’s former boss has been inappropriately advocating. Add this to the connection with former IGT Chairman Donald Sweitzer, who has been working with Raimondo in the Democratic Governor’s Association.
Whatever the specifics of the deal, Rhode Islanders can’t have confidence that the governor is acting entirely without self-interest. It should go out to bid in a conspicuously transparent process.
A Culture of Pay to Play
Yesterday, I suggested that IGT’s $150,000 donation to the Democratic Governor’s Association (DGA) looks kind of quid-pro-quo-ish, given that the organization’s chairwoman is Gina Raimondo, who was at the time preparing a long-term, no-bid contract for the country in her role as Rhode Island’s governor. WPRI’s Eli Sherman now reports that this instance was actually part of a much more pervasive culture of pay to play:
IGT and Twin River Worldwide Holdings – the state’s leading gambling companies – contributed $150,000 and $100,000 to the DGA through the first half of the year, respectively. The national organization announced Wednesday it raised a record-breaking $19 million during the same period. …
… IRS records show IGT on average has contributed $159,285 each year since 2013, including $175,000 last year and $160,000 in 2017.
For Twin River, the $100,000 it contributed this year marks the first time in at least the last five years the company has given money to the DGA, according to a company spokesperson.
This inevitable mixture of politics and profit is important to keep in mind whenever government gets involved in a line of business, as it is with gambling. The development of a pay-to-play environment becomes absolutely critical to remember when allowing a state to do as Rhode Island has been doing — involving itself deeply in economic development. The more central government is in the economy, the more campaign donations increase in importance and the less relevant business viability or the health of the economy becomes.
It’s Wednesday; Do You Know Where Your Governor Is?
Rhode Islanders wondering where their governor is need only turn the news media… in California:
Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo is set to hold fundraisers for her re-election campaign Wednesday in Hancock Park and Studio City.
The first fundraiser will be a noon lunch at the Hancock Park home of Cynthia Telles, the director of the Spanish Speaking Psychosocial Clinic at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is set to attend as a “special guest,” according to an invitation obtained by City News Service. …
The second fundraiser will be from 5:30-7 p.m. at the Studio City home of Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali.
Tickets for both fundraisers are $1,000, the maximum individual contribution allowed under Rhode Island law…
Telles is a big-time Democrat insider and enthusiastic board member of for- and non-profit organizations, like GM. Naftali seems to be most notable as a fundraiser for Democrats, including, recently, Maxine Waters, who is currently under fire for encouraging mob action against Trump administration officials.
Unions’ Manipulation and the Possibility of Revolution
As Rhode Islanders contemplate the significance of the AFL-CIO’s apparently getting its way and killing a public referendum on public financing of the proposed PawSox stadium, and as we consider the possibility of pouring hundreds of millions of dollars of debt into building and fixing schools that local governments failed to maintain, and as House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello collects around $90,000 at a single fundraising event, Megan McArdle’s musings on government unions and might-as-well-be-government unions are worth a read:
… as the Times notes, both the cost of labor and the amount of labor that’s used contribute a great deal to those bloated bottom lines. Why does Paris, with its feisty unions, manage to use fewer workers than New York City, and get jobs done for a fraction of the cost?
Because New York unions are politically connected, and for various reasons, the American government is particularly vulnerable to capture by these sorts of interests, especially as regional partisanship hardens. New York City is a one-party town in a very blue state; while New Yorkers may occasionally vote for a Republican mayor or a Republican governor, the down-ticket offices are filled in the Democratic primary. Those politicians have no interest in angering a large segment of their base that has a lot of cash for campaign contributions, and is well organized to turn out and influence elections. And the finance industry throws off such a vast river of cash that they can get away with bloated construction budgets. So no one has any incentive to crack down on wages or featherbedding.
Unionization and the sheer size of government have combined to create a political system that is in large part dominated by people voting to give themselves other people’s money.
In a free market, somebody selling something (including his or her labor) is constrained by the possibility that the customer will simply go elsewhere or forgo the purchase. As insiders endeavor to make sure that Rhode Island taxpayers do not have the choice to forgo the purchase of a new PawSox stadium, we can see how the constraint on labor unions in modern Rhode Island is not far short of the possibility of actual revolution.
Naturally, the Politicians Use “Good Government” to Lock In Their Own Positions
This legislative session in Rhode Island is turning into a real assault on Rhode Islanders. Here comes legislation making it more difficult to challenge political incumbents… now amended to avoid any further difficulty for those incumbents:
In the version of the bill passed out of committee, the [ballot] block on candidates with overdue fines remains, but random campaign account audits were replaced by audits on candidates who have failed to file at least two finance reports with the Board of Elections, or those who owe more than $1,000 in fines.
So, they’re still going after the grassroots little guy or gal who gets tripped up in the election regulations, but they’re letting themselves off the hook completely. They have no right. As has become increasingly clear, Rhode Island isn’t really a representative democracy. It’s a kleptocracy.
Raimondo Seeks to Tighten Screws on Grassroots Opposition
So, while progressive activists make sure anybody who might disagree with them has incentive not to run for public office, progressive Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo attempts to create more dissincentive through the law:
Raimondo’s proposal would bar any candidate with an overdue campaign-finance fine of any amount from running for election. The rule would apply only to new fines; any fines under appeal or on a Board of Elections-approved payment plan would not prevent a candidate from running.
The proposal would also increase the fine for late campaign-finance reports from $25 to $100 while raising the maximum Board of Election violation from $100 to $500.
Rhode Island already as a palpable lack of people running for public office to challenge incumbents. The governor’s proposals — by design, one imagines — would make matters worse, entrenching a powerful elite even more and further reducing the democratic functioning of our state.
We’re reaching the point of crisis on this stuff, and even “good government” people who ought to know better are asking government to take our rights away.
UHIP and a Picture of Rhode Island’s Feudalism
UHIP waiting lines illustrate state government’s harvesting of human beings and prove how low the minimum wage really is in a system of government dependency (even as elites throw awards at an unpopular governor).
The Left’s Intimidation Game
As usual, the content on this Prager University video — featuring Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel — won’t be new to readers of the Ocean State Current, but it’s well done and worth the reminder:
Progressives are in the intimidation game for the long haul; indeed, Strassel points out that Southern Democrats used the tactics progressives now focus on conservatives (or any non-progressives) to suppress blacks. The strategies are:
- Harass, as with the IRS targeting Tea Party groups
- Investigate & prosecute, as with Wisconsin prosecutors raiding the homes of conservatives, or our own U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s attempts to criminalize opposing views and activities
- Blackmail, for which Strassel provides the example of threats made against corporate sponsors of ALEC
- Expose, by which progressive seek access to lists of donors and other supporters in order to apply the first three techniques
On the last count, Democrat Tiverton/Portsmouth Representative John “Jay” Edwards had a coup this latest legislative session with his legislation to harass with regulations any citizen who attempts to have a public say on any local ballot question and to open such local activists and their supporters to harassment by vicious groups like Tiverton 1st, which not only succeeded in making public office seem like a costly volunteerism, but also in driving some of its opponents clear out of the town and the state.
Due Diligence with Other People’s Money
The specific controversies of a particular corporate welfare applicant are of little significance compared with the disturbing details about the Commerce RI process revealed in a GoLocal article, today:
GoLocalProv.com has learned from multiple sources that Rhode Island Commerce Corporation board members — and Board Chair, Governor Gina Raimondo — were not fully briefed on the past track record of California developer Lance Robbins, when they were asked to vote on $3.6 million in tax credits at the Board meeting on September 26.
In fact, only two documents [] were handed out to the Board prior to the vote, according to Commerce — a GoLocalProv.com article, and what was presented as an “internal review” — which proved to be from the grant recipient, Urban Smart Growth. …
GoLocal has received confirmation that besides the initial article by GoLocal about the House race and the memo from the member of Gazdacko’s team, no independent review was conducted by Early or his team.
Early is Darin Early, the $170,000 president and COO of the quasi-governmental Commerce Corporation. The article does not list the names or salaries of his “team,” but its total cost is surely much greater. Note, too, that Early “oversaw the selection of the vendors for the failed RI tourism campaign.”
The clear and predictable lesson, here, is that when bureaucrats are handing out massive amounts of other people’s money in an environment of limited accountability (i.e., the state government of Rhode Island), due diligence is apt to consist of not much more than a quick Google search and a phone call, maybe with a conversation over lunch. Moreover, an organization called “Urban Smart Growth” is like a taste morsel to serve up on a list of grant recipients for the sorts of people whom Commerce RI functionaries are seeking to please, perhaps worth a relatively small portion of a massive program on that basis alone.
This is not the way to pull our state out of its death spiral. We need huge reforms in taxation and regulation that leave people more free to invest their own money, willing to take the risks associated with such investments, and able to devote their own energy to economic development. Otherwise, we’re just spinning wheels and wasting money while politicians and bureaucrats hope for economic winds to blow some chance improvement our way for which they can take credit.
For example, the $80 million that the state is spending on Commerce RI every year is actually 60% larger than the $50 million that the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity estimated it would wind up costing the state to reduce the sales tax to 3%. Such a reform would produce real and lasting economic development, as compared with the Raimondo, Commerce RI, Brookings, RI Foundation approach of picking winners and giving out money. Even if the latter produces some benefit, it’ll be only empty calories that leave us all less nourished in the long run.
Stop Expecting Corrupt Government to Prosecute Corruption
Not to be contrarian or anything, but really, what more of relevance did we expect to learn about the 38 Studios debacle? The whole thing is outrageous from ignominius start to Friday news dump end, but State Police Colonel Steven O’Donnell has a point when he says, “A bad deal does not always equate to an indictment.” Neither does corrupt government.
Look, 38 Studios is the brand of Rhode Island’s deepest corruption for a reason. The General Assembly and the governor slipped through a big-money program with the promise of creating jobs, and a quasi-public agency put taxpayers on the line for a private company’s failure. Partly because the politicians and bureaucrats involved have our electoral system locked up with a mix of handouts, demagoguery, insider advantages, and (some of us suspect) not a little outright cheating, there were no real consequences. Moreover, the very same system that created the opportunity for corruption and failure in the first place is now the central economic development plan of our state.
It’s no good sitting around hoping that the corrupt will slip up and break the law so that the legal system can do what voters refuse to do. We’ve seen all the way up to the White House that America’s legal system doesn’t do that anymore. (A tweet that flitted across my screen this morning suggested that “the law is no longer working to protect us from the corrupt, but to protect the corrupt from us.)
More importantly, though, much of what we consider to be corruption is legal in Rhode Island, and that’s not necessarily wrong. Expand the scope of activities that are illegal — to include bad decisions or working with people you know, for example — and you’ll find it becoming a weapon used by the corrupt against those who are not corrupt. Look to Sheldon Whitehouse and various attorneys general for evidence or consider that, while the 38 Studios process may have been entirely legal, it is now illegal for people to spend almost any money advocating on local ballot questions without registering with the government.
The obvious solution is this: Get off the sidelines. Maybe run for office. If that’s more effort than you can reasonably muster, then resolve to support those who will shake up the system, both in office and in organizations that strive to keep the pressure on politicians and government. Perhaps reevaluate how much weight to give to different political issues (corruption and good government should maybe outweigh social issues in your decision-making for a decade or so).
That’s where change has to occur. Otherwise, each investigation, indictment, and prosecution is just a bucket of water as we attempt to bail out a submarine a mile below the surface. The fact that these suggestions are nothing new doesn’t make them less true.
The Speech About Which the Governor Cares
All things considered, I’d probably have to side with Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo in concluding that the “revenge porn” legislation that she just vetoed is too broad and ought to be much more explicit in protecting free speech. That said, this line from her veto message contributes to my cynicism:
“The breadth and lack of clarity may have a chilling effect on free speech,” she wrote.
The reason I smirk at that is that other legislation that would most certainly have a chilling effect on free speech has passed both chambers of the General Assembly, and I suspect the governor won’t find it quite so objectionable. Specifically, I’m referring to H7147, which would subject any individual, or any kind of organization at all, who spends more than $100 advocating on local ballot questions to campaign regulations, including reporting requirements. (The legislation is championed by Tiverton Democrat John “Jay” Edwards and is obviously aimed at my friends in town.)
There’s no question but that adding such burdens to political activity has a “chilling effect,” and there’s no question that electoral speech ought to be the most sacrosanct when it comes to the law. Yet, under the current progressive understanding of free speech, it seems publishing naked pictures of people without telling them is a more fundamental right than expressing opinions on local issues without telling your vicious rumor-mongering opposition who your friends are.
Article 18: Another Insider “Deepwater” Scam in the Making? (Corrected)
Despite disturbing new revelations and renewed public criticism about insider legislative grants, cronyism appears to be alive and well at the Rhode Island State House. And once again, Ocean State families and businesses would be asked to foot the bill.
In the budget that got voted out of the Finance Committee early Wednesday morning, alert observers spotted and brought to the attention of the RI Center for Freedom and Prosperity as well as the Ocean State Current on Friday an extensive revision to Article 18.
They are correct to loudly ring warning bells about it. If it stays in, state electric ratepayers are in for even higher electric rates than they currently pay.
The Impossibility of Big Government You Can Trust
The impossibility of holding government accountable illustrates a fatal flaw in the progressive approach to society.
Experts Are Great… Just Not If They’re Too Powerful
Economist Arnold Kling makes a case for decentralizing the political power of experts that reads almost as if it was written with Rhode Island in mind, particularly the Commerce Corp.:
The additional power that is being granted to experts under the Obama administration is indeed striking. The administration has appointed “czars” to bring expertise to bear outside of the traditional cabinet positions. Congress has enacted sweeping legislation in health care and finance, and Democratic leaders have equally ambitious agendas that envision placing greater trust in experts to manage energy and the environment, education and human capital, and transportation and communications infrastructure.
However, equally striking is the failure of such experts. They failed to prevent the financial crisis, they failed to stimulate the economy to create jobs, they have failed in Massachusetts to hold down the cost of health care, and sometimes they have failed to prevent terrorist attacks that instead had to be thwarted by ordinary civilians.
Of course, modern society requires experts, but Kling suggests that they have to be subject to the incentives and controls of a marketplace of competition and voluntary action:
Given the complexity of the world, it is tempting to combine expertise with power, by having government delegate power to experts. However, concentration of power makes our society more brittle, because the mistakes made by government experts propagate widely and are difficult to correct.
It is unlikely that we will be able to greatly improve the quality of government experts.
Instead, if we wish to reduce the knowledge-power discrepancy, we need to be willing to allow private-sector experts to grope toward solutions to problems, rather than place unwarranted faith in experts backed by the power of the state.
One tweak I’d make is to note that the market naturally combines expertise with power, only it will tend to be granted based on proven success and can be removed as swiftly as a failure or competition can make somebody else’s product or service a better deal. Government’s role should be to prevent experts and companies using their temporary advantage to build permanent walls against innovation and competition. Instead, regulation, corporatism, and government-business alliances have tended to be halfway steps to monopoly and protectionism.
A Strategy for Reducing the Local Budget Request
As I mentioned last week, some folks in Tiverton aren’t happy that the budget I put forward to offer local taxpayers a lower-tax option put the burden of finding the savings back on the town officials who actually have the authority to make the decisions (and the help of multiple well-paid employees whose job it is to manage the town’s finances). During the campaign, however, I did promise to help the Budget Committee, and though its members have not yet asked for that help, here are $1.7 million in reductions that they can use as a starting point.
The committee can take that list and remove or reduce almost $1 million of the items on it to meet the requirements of the people’s budget. The incessant growth of labor costs and the massive amount of debt that a relatively small minority of residents have managed to foist on us all have brought us to the point that elected officials must begin to assert their priorities, rather than assume that taxpayers will just continue to accept the bill.
The text at the link above makes a point that probably applies in most communities throughout Rhode Island and its fellow blue states:
Voters whose own priorities are displaced by the decisions of the Budget Committee and Town Council should remember an important point: The town’s budget has never gone down, in our memory, and even a 0.9% increase in taxes is an increase. If some town service or grant that you value is no longer funded come July, it was not displaced by small tax increases, but by the town government’s priority to maintain the rampant overspending of past years.
The familiar tricks have to end. There are some basics that government should provide, and there are some things for which we feel morally responsible as a community. Healthy communities manage to accomplish those things without the crushing weight of insider deals and corruption and without forcing everybody to fund a small group’s priorities because they’ve taken control of the police and taxing powers of government.