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Arthur Christopher Schaper wonders whether Lincoln Chafee’s run for president might be a benefit in disguise to the candidate’s home state.
If it would help to Rhode Island’s problem in order to cure it, perhaps “mercantilism” would fit, only rather than competing with other nations, the government-corporate alliance is a competition against workers and small businesses.
Matthew Bruenig offers a helpful illustration of how progressives mix ideology and equations in ways that dehumanize people for their benefit and search for power.
A discussion of the correct understanding of economics within Catholic teaching may hinge on the origin of our right to private property.
Fr. Roger Landry speaks of at the 2015 Portsmouth Institute conference about being missionaries by bringing joy and meaning to everything.
First Things editor R.R. Reno puts Pope Francis’s style of rhetoric and diplomacy in the context of the history of the Roman Catholic Church.
At the 2015 Portsmouth Institute Conference, Fr. Dwight Longenecker gives context to Pope Francis’s statement about proselytism and gives a more full explanation of true evangelization.
Fear about increasingly frequent points of terrorism across the United States is made worse by the sense that people in power and in the news media will neither protect us from it nor allow us to protect ourselves.
I’m in the minority among my ideological peers, on this, but my thinking on charter schools has changed quite a bit in recent years.
Many conservatives, I believe, see them as a sly way to insert wedges into public education’s cracks in order to bring about wider-scale reform of the system. If we create this alternate system of schools, literally entered with the luck of the draw, that is free of the restrictions that (for some reason) we continue to tolerate in district schools, then parents will demand that district schools be made free of the restrictions, too.
To advance this stratagem, we’ve been willing to overlook basic descriptive facts about charters that would normally concern us a great deal. In order to work around the damage that the democratic nature of our government has wrought in education (thanks, largely, to the self-interested activism of teacher unions), we’re creating institutions over which the public has less control. On the one hand, charter advocates insist that they are “public schools of choice,” so they should fall within the range of inside-government benefits, but on the other hand, they are demanding that the people paying the bills should not have immediate, democratic control over them.
In any other context, conservatives would recoil against that just as surely as they ought to recoil against crony capitalist deals giving connected insiders taxpayer cash for their private business dealings. Principle should not be something to be weighed against practicality. Rather, we should hold to our principles because they produce the outcome that we desire; it is in determining our goals that we should weigh morality and practicality.
My concern, in treading off our principled path, is that we’re more likely to get lost than to return to our firm ground. Instead of breaking the rigid grip of special interests on public schools, charters will kill off private schools — at least all of them that are accessible to anybody who’s less than rich. Then special interests will successfully tighten the vice, making government education a true monopoly rather than the near-monopoly that it currently is.
1. H5790: From the official description: “This act would provide parents of K-12 students in Rhode Island with an opportunity to enroll their child in an educational program of their choosing, either via open enrollment in a traditional public school in their own district or any other public school district, or by receiving a scholarship, with designated public monies to follow the student to a participating private school or private curriculum program selected by the parent”. Scholarships can be up to $6000 and are income adjusted. (H Finance; Wed, May 27)
2A. H5795: Permanent moratorium on establishing or expanding charter schools in Rhode Island. (H Finance; Wed, May 27)
2B. H5794: From the official description: “This act would remove a city or town’s financial obligation to contribute to their resident students who enroll in charter schools, William M. Davies, Jr. Career and Technical High School or the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center”. (H Finance; Wed, May 27)
2C. H5834: Change in the formula for capital aid for charter public school building construction, in particular, capping aid at the same percentage of the municipality where the school is located, even if the average based on all sending communities would result in a higher amount. (H Finance; Wed, May 27)
3. S0194: A minimum wage bill is scheduled to get a vote today. The bill officially in committee raises it to $10.10 per hour starting in 2016, though Jennifer Bogdan of the Projo is reporting a deal has been agreed to by leadership for $9.60 per hour. (S Labor; Wed, May 27)
4. H5083: Relief for municipalities from unfunded mandates, i.e. “If during any fiscal year the state reimbursement to cities and towns and school districts is insufficient to cover the costs of state mandates as reported by the department of revenue, the affected cities, towns and school districts may cease implementation of the state mandates at their discretion up to 50% of the value of the reimbursement shortfall, provided that: (1) Existing personnel contracts are honored in their entirety or renegotiated to the 1 satisfaction of both parties; and (2) Implementation of state mandates is restored upon the full restoration of state reimbursements”. (H Finance; Wed, May 27)
1. H6174 “The division of motor vehicles is authorized to issue driving privilege licenses and driving privilege permits to any applicant who meets the licensure requirements of this chapter but is unable to establish legal presence in the United States”. The bill then lists an extensive set of documents, two of which must be provided to establish eligibility for a “driving privilege license”. (H Judiciary; Tue, May 26) Issue 1: If “undocumented immigrants” are expected to have documents before they get their driving privilege license, then add said license as an additional document to the documents they already have, does it seem honest at any time to refer to a status of “undocumented”? Issue 2: The archaic, one-off legal concept that being able to drive is a privilege and not a right — indeed, that there is any broad class of human activities that fall into a category of government-granted “privileges” — should be should be resisted and ultimately rejected whenever it appears.
2. H5387: Government takeover of healthcare, creating a state-run insurance plan, and prohibiting providers who accept the state insurance from billing “any patient for any covered benefit” while also subjecting the providers to comprehensive price controls. (H Finance; Tue, May 26)
3A. H5104: Requires that a photo ID be presented when a person between the ages of 18 and 60 who is not blind, disabled or a victim of domestic violence uses an EBT card. (H Finance; Tue, May 26)
3B. H5347: Requires school-aged children of families receiving welfare benefits through the Rhode Island Works program to have an 80% attendance rate at school. (H Finance; Tue, May 26)
4. S0610: Allows a municipal economic development zone (where qualifying businesses are “exempt from the requirement to charge and collect fifty percent (50%) of the current sales and use tax…for a period of ten years”) to be established “in a municipally designated and state-approved ‘growth center’ in accordance with the Land-Use 2025 element of the state guide plan”. (S Finance; Tue, May 26)
5. S0348: Prohibits condominium associations from making up rules that “shall prohibit any reasonable accommodation for religious practices, including the attachment of religiously mandated objects to the front door of a condominium unit”. (S Judiciary; Tue, May 26) Recent events in Cranston, where the school committee took it upon itself to decree that people aren’t required to go to church during school hours on Good Friday, raise a question about this bill: Is the reference to “religiously mandated objects” something narrower than “religious objects”, i.e. does this bill put condominium associations in the position of being able to decide that yes that’s a religious object on your door, but you still have to take it down because we don’t think your religion requires you to put it there.
1. H5819: 1) Outlaws stop-and-frisk police procedures by extending the current requirement that motor vehicle stops be predicated on “reasonable suspicion or probable cause of criminal activity” to pedestrians, 2) requires that, whenever possible, motor vehicle stops be recorded (but not making the recordings part of the public record), and 3) mandates that the department of transportation gather data on whether “racial disparities in traffic stops exist”. (H Judiciary; Tue, May 5)
2A. S0739: 1) Requires that the local share of funding for school districts and charter schools (i.e. the non-state aid share) of be provided by the “the local district from local resources”, 2) freezes the number of students used for the state education “funding formula” calculation for public charter schools at their 2015 values and 3) requires the town/city council or school committee of every community to be served by a mayoral academy to give its approval before a charter school can increase its enrollment. (S Education; Wed, May 6) This looks to be the major anti-education-reform bill for this session, but also pay attention to some of the “smaller” ones in section 2B of the main post.
3. S0210: Exempts “any income from social security benefits” and “up to twenty-five thousand dollars of income received from public and private pensions, interest income, 401K plans and individual retirement accounts” from the state income tax. (S Finance; Tue, May 5)
4A. S0541: Authorizes the Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority to issue $65M in bonds, without voter approval, resulting in $152M in debt to paid out over 30 years, “for the purpose of providing funds to finance the renovation, renewal, repair, rehabilitation, retrofitting, upgrading and improvement of the Pell Bridge, the Jamestown Verrazzano Bridge, the Sakonnet River Bridge, Mount Hope Bridge, and other projects authorized under the Act, replacement of the components thereof, working capital, capitalized interest, a debt service reserve and the costs of issuing and insuring the Bonds”. The bonds don’t need voter approval, because the resolution says “that the Bonds will not constitute indebtedness of the State or any of its subdivisions or a debt for which the full faith and credit of the State or any of its subdivisions is pledged”. (S Finance; Tue, May 5)
5. S0433: Prohibits non-compete agreements for licensed physicians. (S Judiciary; Tue, May 5)
Debate about economic development in Tiverton can’t simply be an exercise in hyperbole and NIMBYism.
4. H5631: Allows individuals who have property confiscated as part of a civil forfeiture proceeding to “seek a court determination as to whether the forfeiture is disproportionately excessive to the gravity of the offense giving rise to the forfeiture”. (H Judiciary; Tue, Mar 31)
5A. H5610: Mandates that the Department of Public Safety begin “to implement an electronic automobile and commercial vehicle liability insurance confirmation and compliance system” that includes “an automatic license plate recognition system to electronically capture license plate images in two seconds or less and noninvasively attempt verification of the insurance and when possible, the registration status of the vehicle”. (H Finance; Wed, Apr 1)
5B. H5606: Requires that applicants for operators and chauffeur licenses have a valid social security number. (H Finance; Wed, Apr 1) It will be interesting to see how many legislators end up taking the position that requiring social security numbers for operators and chauffeur’s licenses is unreasonable, while supporting an electronic system that is supposed to watch every automobile in the state.
6. H5495: Minimum-manning for social workers at public schools, one per 400 students. (H Health, Education and Welfare; Wed, Apr 1)
7. H5961: Unambiguously establishes that holding a seat on the Cumberland Fire District board is holding public office — and that “members shall hold no other public office”. (H Judiciary; Wed, Apr 1) I understand and agree with the spirit of this bill: it’s crazy that here in Rhode Island, we pretend that there’s ambiguity about whether Fire Districts are part of the government or not. However, 1) a bill like this shouldn’t be confined to one community and 2) the authors of the bill need to carefully review the law in this area, to make sure there aren’t potential problems (legal and ethical) with burdening Cumberland Fire District Board members more than other local officials.
Progressivism is a recipe for a new aristocracy, relying on distractions about racism and abstract bogeymen in order to herd us all into boxes.
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.
The proposed Providence Streetcar (a proposal that never seems to go away) is a case study in the problematic funding, planning, and daydreaming that characterizes government projects in Rhode Island.
An example at Providence College illustrates how radical politics are stripping the humanities of both their practical and moral utility, and undermining Western civilization along the way.
1. S2898: $39M of “state investment” into the Superman building, in the form of a $19,500,000 “direct allocation to the owner” in the second year of the program, “and then payments of $9,750,000 in each of the following fiscal years”, with the condition that “following the funding of the fourth and final payment, upon a capital event resulting from the sale or refinancing of the project, any amount paid to the owner under this program above thirty percent (30%) of QREs shall be repaid to the state of Rhode Island prior to the owner realizing any return over the actual amounts invested in the project”. (S Finance; Tue, Jun 3)
2. S2950: Mandates that the RI Board of Education adopt “a competency-based/proficiency-based learning policy and a model district policy designed to increase programmatic opportunities for students to earn credits through demonstrations of competency”. (S Education; Wed, Jun 4)
3. H7939: Provides for information related to mental-health related involuntarily commitments to be added to the National Instant Criminal Background Check (NICS) database used for conducting firearms purchase background checks. The records sent to database will be from cases where there has been a demonstration of “clear and convincing evidence that the subject of the hearing is in need of care and treatment in a facility, and…continued unsupervised presence in the community would, by reason of mental disability, create a likelihood of serious harm”. (H Judiciary; Tue, Jun 3)
4. S2801: New insurance requirements for “mental health and substance use disorders”, including a requirement that they be covered “under the same terms and conditions as…provided for other illnesses and diseases” and a ban on annual or lifetime limits on their coverage. (H Corporations; Tue, Jun 3)
5. S2009: Prohibits funds from the restricted-receipt account used to pay legal costs for the state retirement system from being used to pay for litigation not directly based on a state retirement board decision. (S Finance; Tue, Jun 3)
6A. S2379: Legalizes certain uses of marijuana beginning with “actually and constructively using, obtaining, purchasing, transporting, or possessing one ounce (1 oz.) or less of marijuana, not including hashish” and “actually and constructively using, obtaining, purchasing, transporting, or possessing marijuana products, including up to five (5) grams or less of hashish, sixteen (16) ounces of marijuana-infused product in solid form and seventy-two (72) ounces of marijuana-infused product in liquid form”…
1A. On Tuesday, May 13, SJ Advisors presents their report on payment of the 38 Studios moral obligation bonds to the House Finance Committee.
1B. S2694: “…neither the general assembly nor any governmental or quasi-governmental entity created by it shall issue any bonds, commonly called ‘moral obligation’ bonds in excess of fifty thousand dollars…” (S Finance; Tue, May 13) While the purpose of this bill makes sense, “moral obligation” bonds were themselves created to make a practice clearly prohibited (issuing bonds without voter approval) appear to be legal by renaming it. How would a law like this guarantee that a future legislature wouldn’t get around it, simply by coming up with yet another name for issuing debt without voter consent?
2. S2345: Writes into law in-state tuition at RI public colleges and universities for students, including illegal aliens (but not non-immigrant aliens) who graduated from a Rhode Island high school that they spent three years at, including illegal aliens who have applied for citizenship, provided that the Federal government has provides a pathway to citizenship as part of an amnesty law. (S Finance; Tue, May 13)
3. S2332: Establishes a floor for the Central Falls pension settlement such that, for 2016, “no retiree shall receive less than” 75.6% of their pre-bankruptcy pension amount, and raising that floor to 100% over the following 20 years. (The bankruptcy settlement initially cut a number of pensions to 55% of their original amount, though the state authorized “transition” funds to raise that to 75% for five years). Unlike the version submitted to the House, this bill does not expressly make the state responsible for the pension. (S Finance; Thu, May 15) So where will the difference between the 55% and the rising scale that starts at 75% come from? The bill doesn’t say.
4. S2074: Sets the threshold for the RI estate tax at $2M (annually adjusting it upwards for inflation) and assesses the tax only on the amount over the threshold. (S Finance; Tue, May 13)
5. S2077/S2148: Bases car-tax assessments on trade-in instead of retail value. (S Finance; Tue, May 13)
The disconnect of productivity from inflation-adjusted income ultimately points back (once again) to the meddling of government in the economy.
One policy that would serve President Obama’s objective of reducing income inequality is school choice.
Justin liveblogs from another meeting of the legislative commission to study the elimination of the sales tax.
The market-centric approach and the government-centric approach to developing an area are both ways to allow community input in development, but the latter speaks to what the locals want, rather than what a ruling class thinks they need.
Viewed from the perspective of maximizing the power of everyone involved — which is one of the traditional ways of looking at international relations — the Russian-brokered plan to end the Syrian chemical weapons crisis has advantages for everyone. That’s probably why it’s being taken so seriously, whether it can be effectively implemented or not.
A letter writer opposing school choice legislation fails to mention circumstances of his career (and young retirement) that might be relevant to his opinion.
Segments of the commentariat are proclaiming that signs point to a recovering economy, but there’s an alternative interpretation that isn’t quite so optimistic.
The national scandals facing the Obama administration arguably point to the underlying causes of Rhode Island’s economic troubles.
Hang on to your wallets! The Superman Building project has all the makings of another 38 Studios.
A short story from December 2001 is once again (or still) relevant, in the wake of the Boston Marathon terrorist bombing.