October 19, 2012 – RI Future

State House Dome from North Main Street — The State House dome from North Main Street. (Photo by Bob Plain)

Say what you will about Capitol TV enjoying a $1.5 million budget to cover the part-time General Assembly; that’s a policy decision that the legislature can either grapple with, or not. But constitutionally speaking, I wonder if it shouldn’t be producing documentaries on local religious institutions?

Check out this four-part, hour-long documentary posted to YouTube called “Catholic School Day at the State House” It was created by Capitol TV and posted to the RISenate YouTube channel.

Here’s how the doc is defined on YouTube:

Capitol TV has put together a 60-minute special on the celebration of Catholic Schools Day in Rhode Island which was held at the State House on Thursday, March 10. There are several performances by Catholic school students; a variety of interviews by Capitol TV’s Dave Barber with elected officials, students, and others gathered in the rotunda of the State House for the event; and full coverage of the ceremony held that afternoon in the State Room.

Officials who participated in the State House’s celebration of Catholic Schools Day in Rhode Island include President of the Senate M. Teresa Paiva Weed (D-Dist. 13, Newport, Jamestown), House Majority Leader Nicholas A. Mattiello (D-Dist. 15, Cranston), and Representative Patricia A. Serpa (D-Dist. 27, Coventry, Warwick, West Warwick).

Host Dave Barber asks questions such as this one of the principal of local Catholic high school: “This is really an honor for me because when I first moved to state of Rhode Island I heard a lot of good things about Bishop Hendricken school and I have the principal with me today … you have to be proud of your achievements and accomplishments at Hendricken.”

This isn’t exactly the probing questioning of public service journalism, it’s more like an infomercial.

Unless it is providing equal access to other religious institutions in Rhode Island, I would guess this is a pretty clear violation of the establishment clause of the Constitution, or what most people know as the separation of church and state (SOCS). That doesn’t mean Capitol TV needs to do a doc on the Quaker and Protestant schools in the state, too. But if other religions were honored at the State House, I would think they would want to make a documentary on that too.

I couldn’t find any other documentaries on religious institutions on the RISenate YouTube channel.

Capitol TV, it should be noted, has been in the news this week for not providing equal access to Republicans. In the most Catholic state in America, one has to wonder if it hasn’t done the same when it comes to religion.

fivethirtyeight-1015-RImain-blog480 — Graphic courtesy of FiveThirtyEight.

Rhode Island, says New York Times number-crunching blog FiveThirtyEight, is the most politically elastic state, meaning that “a large swatch of its electorate are persuadable voters unaligned with either political party.”In a separate piece on political elasticity Nate Silver describes elastic states as “those which have a lot of swing voters — that is, voters who could plausibly vote for either party’s candidate.”

It’s one of the reasons, FiveThirtyEight reports, that we elect a lot of Democrats to the General Assembly and a lot of Republicans to the governor’s office. (We haven’t had a Democratic governor in almost 20 years!)

But it’s also one of the reasons why our hugely-Democratic legislature generally passes some pretty conservative legislation … Just consider our landmark pension reform law that conservatives around the country are so fond of, or our new voter ID law – we’re the only blue state in the country to have one!

Speaking of State House races … only in East Greenwich (okay, and also Barrington and Greenwich, Conn.) is an upper-middle-class, fiscally-conservative/socially-liberal, white, male professional “not your typical General Assembly candidate” because he is a doctor rather than a lawyer or a businessman! EG needs to diversify like Central Falls needs tax dollars; the difference is one deficiency is debilitating and the other is easy ignore.

The reality is, because of the aforementioned attributes, Dr. Mark Schwager couldn’t be a more demographically typical state legislator. He’s also the best candidate in a three-way race to replace Bob Watson (the outgoing fiscally-conservative/socially-liberal, white, male professional from Agrestic … er, I mean East Greenwich). Schwager’s medical experience would serve the state well on Smith Hill and, even more importantly, he possesses impeccable character – an increasingly rare quality in politicians in particular but also people in general…

…And speaking of upper-middle-class, white East Greenwich professionals with impeccable character, EG owes a huge thank you to Patch Editor Elizabeth McNamara, who covers her community as well as any other reporter in Rhode Island.

Mark Binder says Gordon Fox is for sale. A serious allegation. Now that the ProJo put it on the front page, they ought to go out and ferret out the truth. Grab that list from Binder, call and ask everyone on it what their expectation was for their donation and then let us know what they say.

“Like Lazarus, Cicilline appears to have risen from the ranks of the political dead,” Cook Political Report on the Congressman’s comeback, according to Ted Nesi.

Bob Kerr on grinding: “Come on, people, June and Ward Cleaver left the building a long time ago.”

I’m with Mike Riley on this one … Jim Langevin should have done the WPRO debate with him and Abel Collins.

And here’s another instance of me agreeing with a conservative on a fiscal matter.

Day: October 19, 2012

Capitol TV Does Doc on Catholic Schools Day

Progress Report: Elastic Rhode Island; Mark Schwager, Typical Candidate; More Binder v. Fox; Kerr on Grinding