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The message is becoming clearer that the only hope is for more respect and humility from an elite that has proven incapable of taking the warning. So, here we go.
Here’s an interesting conversation between somebody who manages public parks via a private-sector contract and a park ranger (via Instapundit):
Ranger: I think it’s wrong that you make a profit on public lands
Me: So you work for free?
Ranger: Huh?
Me: If you think it’s wrong to make money on public lands, I assume you must volunteer, else you too would be making money on public lands
Ranger: No, of course I get paid.
Me: Well, I know what I make for profit in your District, and I have a good guess what your salary probably is, and I can assure you that you make at least twice as much as me on these public lands.
Ranger: But that is totally different.
I’ve periodically written about this general faith among government employees and their big-government sympathizers that “public service” is more akin to a higher calling for which one is compensated because it is just such an honorable thing to do. To some degree, the sentiment is part of the mythology that enables labor unions and progressives to turn their supporters into a sort of cult.
Government union members must implicitly believe that they are sacrificing something, or else they would have to admit that their unions’ activities are wholly inappropriate, bordering on extortion and theft. This may not have been the case, at one point, but we’re well beyond its being undeniable. Similarly, progressives must implicitly believe that their motives are pure and non-ideological, or else they have no basis for asserting their vision of “progress” as objective or for offering their judgment as a better guide for the centralized plans that form their political philosophy.
In narrow cases, as in the conversation above, the dispute will likely be worked out over time, as private contracting becomes a larger and larger part of government activity (for better and worse). When it comes to the progressive movement toward an ever-broader scope of centralized government activity, on the other hand, there may be no cure but to crash and rebuild.
If you follow Rhode Island news at all, you’ve heard that State Police Colonel Steven O’Donnell has opted to retire from his job leading the agency. For the purposes of this post, let’s stipulate that the state government should be sorry to see him go after 30 years as the type of employee — “public servant,” as big-government types like to phrase it — whom we should want in key positions. Still, this caught my eye, particularly in light of the fact that O’Donnell is 56 years old and says he’s “currently seeking opportunities in the private and/or public sector” (emphasis added):
Twenty-three of O’Donnell’s three decades in law enforcement have been with state police. His pension will be $101,391 annually, said Frank Karpinski, administrator of the state retirement system.
Currently, O’Donnell makes around $150,000 per year, and if he lives to be 86, he’ll take in over $3 million in pension payments, even if he never receives a cost of living adjustment (COLA), while also spending some significant portion of that time working jobs that presumably will pay commensurately with his experience.
Being unable to find information on O’Donnell’s pension through my usually pretty comprehensive sources, I began asking questions of the Employee Retirement System of Rhode Island (ERSRI). Here are some things that I’ve learned:
That final point means that his potential 30 years of pension payments can in essence be added to his 30 years of public-sector salaries as something akin to a delayed annual bonus. In Rhode Island, the question is never far from the surface: Who are the masters, and who are the servants?
Michael G. Riley, a prominent board member of the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity and a well-known figure in the state’s civic and public-policy circles, died Nov. 20, 2025, with his family at his side. He was 69. Riley’s tenure on the board capped a lifetime defined by intellectual rigor, contrarian spirit, and an unwavering commitment to liberty. Colleagues at the Center remembered him as a forceful thinker whose integrity and curiosity shaped debates and strengthened the organization’s mission.
J. William Middendorf II, a former U.S. Secretary of the Navy, ambassador, composer, and one of Rhode Island’s most distinguished public figures, died Oct. 24, 2025, in Fall River. He was 101.
The Left’s latest pretend narrative is that Elon Musk is improperly influencing President-elect Trump when it comes to shaping government and the policies of the incoming administration … and that Musk, an unelected tyrant, is essentially ruling as the President. For anyone who understands basic American history, this reaction is pure petulance. Since our nation’s […]
The Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity has joined nonprofit organizations nationwide in opposing a proposed Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rule that could threaten local volunteer fire companies. The new “Emergency Response Standard” aims to replace the existing “Fire Brigades Standard” (29 CFR 1910.156), potentially imposing significant financial and operational burdens on volunteer fire departments.
All of us encounter twists and turns every day—whether in our personal lives or at work. Steve McKee’s new book “Turns: Where Business Is Won and Lost” offers a guide for which turns to take to live a better life. McKee, co-founder of the McKee Wallwork marketing agency in New Mexico and author of several […]
Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin. How strong is that? It’s so strong that it only takes 2 milligrams—the equivalent of four grains of salt—to kill you, according to a former federal drug enforcement agent. Put another way, he says, 1 gram of fentanyl could potentially kill 500 people. “We got to make sure […]
With the start of a new year, Dr. Ben Carson says he is concerned that America’s schools have lost their vision. Americans have lost “vision of what education is there for,” says Carson, the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development and renowned neurosurgeon. “Education is there to teach you how to function successfully in […]
The Biden administration “intentionally unsecured” the southern border because “they see a perceived political benefit from open borders,” according to Mark Morgan, former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Morgan, now a visiting fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, says President Joe Biden has what he needs to secure […]
EDITOR’s NOTE: Members and Candidates from the Parents United RI group in RI have been frequent guess on The Current’s popular In The Dugout with Mike Stenhouse video podcast. The editorial directly below was in response to a December 17 editorial further below that appeared in the Westerly Sun. *** To the Editor: After […]
Classical education is a trusted model of learning. Virtual reality is a new technology still being fully developed. Despite the view of some that the two could be in conflict with each other, Erika Donalds disagrees. “Classical education … is content-based, and [virtual reality] is the perfect way to deliver that content,”says Donalds, president and […]
Dr. Stephen Skoly expresses Surprise at RI Foundation’s Public Service honor of the ex RIDOH Director despite multiple mis-steps and dishonesty by her and Governor McKee Recently, attorneys for Dr. Stephen Skoly (from the Washington, D.C. based New Civil Liberties Alliance and locally) filed an amendment to his existing lawsuit against Governor Daniel McKee and […]
What was lacking above all during the COVID-19 pandemic was accurate, complete information about the disease. Too many of our public officials, amplified too often by an unquestioning media, spoke only of the deaths, hospitalizations and case count of the disease, giving the strong impression that COVID-19 had a fatality rate worse than the Bubonic […]
Given restrictions on gatherings, RI Women for Freedom & Prosperity have moved our forum “how women can lead the way in restoring moral order and economic prosperity” onto Zoom this Saturday:
First, an inspiring speech about why women should become engaged in the political process, from Jennifer Braceras, director of the Law Center for the nationally renowned Independent Women’s Forum. Jennifer, a lawyer and former Commissioner of the US Commission on Civil Rights and Trustee for the Univ. of Massachusetts, is a political columnist.
Next, with advocacy training by the nationally renowned Grassroots Leadership Academy, this motivational and instructional leadership forum will introduce women to some of the tools necessary become involved in public policy or politics, with vital tips on how to effectively advocate for reform.
This portion of our women’s leadership forum will be led by by LeeAnn Kapanick, former field operative for Americans for Prosperity, who has spearheaded numerous grassroots and political efforts in Pennsylvania and nationally. LeeAnn, a fourth-generation farmer who regularly rides American Quarter Horses, is a graduate of Penn State University and is an alumna of the Anne B. Anstine Excellence in Public Service Series.
Is it time for you to get involved… to save our state? If we are ever going to change the policies that are driving away families and crippling businesses, the sad truth, my friend, is that we are going to have to change the players.
Rhode Island’s political class is so beholden to so many special interest groups and agendas, that they are paralyzed when it comes to considering common-sense, pro-growth policy reforms.
It is not difficult to understand that if our front-line public servants have incentive to not actually be on the front lines, then the overall quality of those public services will suffer.
A new report from our Center, released this week – Paid for Not Working, Collective Bargaining Taxpayer Ripoff #2 : Providence Teacher Leaves of Absence – highlights the many forms of collectively-bargained “leave time” allowed for teachers.
The problem of getting rid of “terrible teachers” points to a problem with the incentives of government when it is used to accomplish anything that isn’t straightforward and critical.
One of the most objectionable schemes of government union collective bargaining process, which excessively drives up the cost of government for taxpayers, in ways or at levels that do not exist in the private sector, is being paid for not working.
The Providence Journal editorial board points to one of those deep details of state government that does more damage than the average voter probably realizes. The subject is the State Labor Relations Board (SLRB):
It is supposed to include three members representing labor, three representing management, and one representing the “public.” What could be fairer?
Except the politicians’ appointments heavily tilt the board toward labor.
Board Chairman Walter Lanni, appointed by Gov. Lincoln Almond in 2000, is supposedly in the management camp. But he served for more than two decades on the executive board of the Cranston firefighters union, securing extraordinarily generous contracts for union members.
Another “management” appointee is lawyer Alberto Aponte Cardona, who has represented public employees and is the brother of Democratic Providence City Council member Luis Aponte.
However experienced and dedicated to public service they might be, these hardly seem like rock-ribbed defenders of the interests of management and business. There are plenty of other business people, surely, available to serve.
To my experience, among those who negotiate contracts in Rhode Island, it’s well understood that the SLRB is a dead end for managers seeking protection of their rights — basically an added step (and expense) before getting into an actual court. (And the courts are only fair in comparison.)
Of course, the SLRB is only one gear in the machine tilting things toward organized labor. Last week, Democrat state Representative John “Jay” Edwards told the Tiverton Town Council that the way to get legislation passed is to ask the local unions to put in bills. (I’ll have a post on that in the near future.)
All of this raises a concern that it’s impossible to have truly good faith negotiations in the Ocean State. When legislators use bills to put a thumb on the scale for labor unions during specific negotiations and the SLRB can’t be trusted to keep labor relations fair, there can be no doubt who holds sway.
A related problem is that simply grousing about the inequity in local publications is going to have absolutely no effect. We need a concerted effort to disrupt the political fortunes of those who resist change toward a more fair arrangement, and few are willing to make themselves that clear of a target.
Our education conundrum: We’ve layered too much mere stuff in the system and created too many incentives for people to advocate against reform.
Although some Internet sifting didn’t reveal their state-by-state list, leaving Rhode Island’s standing as an unknown, Rob Arnott and Lisa Meulbroek’s warning in the Wall Street Journal is worth consideration:
Most cities, counties and states have committed taxpayers to significant future unfunded spending. This mostly takes the form of pension and postretirement health-care obligations for public employees, a burden that averages $75,000 per household but exceeds $100,000 per household in some states. Many states protect public pensions in their constitutions, meaning they cannot be renegotiated. Future pension obligations simply must be paid, either through higher taxes or cuts to public services.
As I’ve noted repeatedly, government investment boards get away with unrealistic investment assumptions because their financial advisors and actuaries accept that the ability to increase taxes allows for higher risk, and Arnott and Meulbroek note that this power ultimately flows to one tax in particular:
State taxes are collected on four economic activities: consumption (sales tax), labor and investment (income tax) and real-estate ownership (property tax). The affluent can escape sales and income taxes by moving to a new state—but real estate stays behind. Property values must ultimately support the obligations that politicians have promised, even if those obligations aren’t properly funded, because real estate is the only source of state and local revenue that can’t pick up and move elsewhere. Whether or not unfunded obligations are paid with property taxes, it’s the property that backs the obligations in the end.
Thus, the authors say, the pension debt is like another mortgage on our homes. (For Millennials with big education debt, it’s arguably a third mortgage.)
In some states, perhaps the resolution will weigh more in the direction of justice — hitting the honey pots of the politicians and labor unions that inflated this suffocating balloon. In states like Rhode Island, though, we’d best come to grips with the reality that, more and more, we’re working for the benefit of the government, not the other way around. What we owe on our government bill already far exceeds the value we derive, and that’s only going to get worse.
Maybe it’s a trap that has just organically formed due to human nature or maybe it’s a deliberate scheme, but ever-increasing campaign finance regulations are effectively an incumbent protection program. Consider the next notch on the ratchet, as proposed by state representative Deborah Ruggiero and state senator Louis DiPalma:
The state’s campaign finance laws need to be tightened so officeholders and candidates cannot repeatedly amend their finance reports that list all expenses and contributions in a given period, according to Rep. Deborah Ruggiero, D-Jamestown. …
“Mandating submission of a paper bank statement is a good first step, it allows the Board of Elections to easily identify discrepancies, but we should go further and require banks to send electronic statements directly to the [Board of Elections], as is done in Massachusetts,” Ruggiero said in the statement. “Most-needed though are stiffer penalties for repeated amendments to campaign finance reports and not filing on time.”
Having spent many hours working with the Board of Elections Campaign Finance Unit, I can report that situations easily arise that aren’t absolutely clear in the law and can lead to very time-consuming revisions of reports going back months simply to adjust for a $1 discrepancy. And having worked with local candidates for office, I can also report that even just the prospect of having to fill out these forms is a significant disincentive to run. If the rules are made even more strict more people will simply decide that it isn’t worth the effort or risk.
The question that arises is whether it’s more important for our democracy to be able to trace every penny that is donated or spent by state and local campaigns or to avoid having more than one-third of incumbents in the General Assembly winning their campaigns simply by getting their names on the ballot, because they have no opposition. From my point of view, that isn’t even a close competition.
We’re not going to end corruption by catching it in nickel-and-dime inspection of small-time politicians’ campaign accounts. We need to ensure that all politicians are under constant threat of losing their seats. The bigger-time the corruption, the more likely the politician will be to hire people to avoid accounting errors, even as the people who would like to challenge him or her out of a sense of public service are tripped up and fined for minor errors and lapses.
Former Providence Journal editorial page editor Robert Whitcomb raises an area of perpetual misperception in his latest GoLocalProv column:
The nearly $300,000 in compensation that Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Matt Brown drew as head of a small anti-nuclear-proliferation nonprofit called Global Zero ($2 million-a-year budget) reminds me of how much many execs of many small nonprofits expect to earn these days. It used to be that most people running nonprofits expected to be paid modestly, with as much money as possible going into an organization’s direct programs. Nonprofit executives took lower pay than they could get in private business in return for the satisfactions of public service. Indeed, we used to have “dollar-a-year men’’ – people with personal wealth who were willing to run nonprofits or some government operations basically for free.
But now many nonprofit boards – including those of schools — feel that they must pay their executives compensation similar to that of profitable businesses. And their executives aren’t embarrassed to take it. For example, consider that many small private schools pay their heads hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, along with free housing and other perks.
I remember being shocked years back when I began to learn how lucrative working for non-profits could be. (Unfortunately, not including my own!) People still have this notion that non-profits are essentially charitable enterprises that compensate their employees in large part through their sense of purpose.
A number of these clichés persist, like the college professor’s being a modestly paid entry into higher society or school teachers being lamentably paid. In those cases, the unionization of the latter half of the last century changed the reality, at least for government employees, and when it comes to non-profits those working on public policy — that is, connected indirectly to government’s activities — tend to be particularly well paid.
In case anybody missed it, I’d like to highlight the following item from this week’s Political Scene in the Providence Journal:
Gov. Gina Raimondo has a new $61,751 staffer: RISD grad Jon Gourlay. His newly created job title: “Creative Manager — Governor’s Communications Office.” His actual role: producing web videos for Governor Raimondo, who is expected to run for reelection next year.
To some extent, her spokesman, Mike Raia, has a point when he says, “The way people get their information has changed, and elected leaders need to generate creative content to break through on social media and other digital and curated platforms.” The content of the videos will be the decisive tell, though.
If Rhode Islanders get short instructional videos about interacting with government or more-catchy-than-usual public service announcements, the governor’s office will have an argument. However, if we get more self-promotional trash like this, then the “21st century constituency” stuff will have proven to be just spin.
I know which way I’d bet, especially given what appears to have been a dud of a press conference from the governor, yesterday. Is Raimondo so thoroughly without political chips that she’s got nothing but words to salvage a budget containing her single biggest emphasis of the past year? She just doesn’t seem to get how to govern or use leverage and communications to bring about real action, so why would her new employee’s videos be dedicated to that purpose?*
* Before she actually became governor, Raimondo’s success with pension reform would have seemed to suggest otherwise, based on the “Truth in Numbers” campaign. As time goes on, though, that issue is looking more like a one-hit-wonder achievement, perhaps founded more on the promise that her mild reform would make the mammoth problem of pension funding go away. The clock is ticking toward the date at which the fallacy will be proven.
The odd position of charter schools should bring us back to fundamental questions about government and our objectives.
Among the most significant surprises that this year has brought me was the news that I’ll be receiving a Lumen Gentium award from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence. As the Rhode Island Catholic newspaper reports:
The 10 categories of service in which the awards are presented include Parish Service, Community Service and Charitable Outreach, Catholic Education, Evangelization, Communications, Administration and Stewardship, Respect Life, Public Service, Distinguished Catholic Youth and Friend of the Diocese.
The Lumen Gentium awards are presented to honor those “who toil in the vineyard of the Lord,” across the diocese.
Proceeds from this year’s Lumen Gentium Awards banquet, which will be held May 17 at Twin River Event Center in Lincoln, will benefit senior priests who have served the Diocese of Providence.
The category that applies to me is “communications” — basically, defense of the faith in communications media. Honestly, I’m so much more impressed with those who defend the faith through the example of their deeds that I feel the award to be a future-focused call for me to better deserve the honor.
As it is each year, the banquet on May 17 is a fundraising event, this year to support the growing ranks of retired priests, so if you’re able and interested, I’d love to see you there.
Let’s clarify some things for Attorney General Peter Kilmartin, shall we, and then explain to him where his political career currently stands.
Even as progressive policies prevent Americans from improving their lives, they attempt to subsidize lifestyles that they find aesthetically pleasing to know that somebody lives.