July 18, 2013 – RI Future

July 18, 2013July 18, 2013

Sheldon, Abel talk climate change at O’ Mist

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No one in Washington DC has been more vocal about the need to address climate change than Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. And here in Rhode Island, no one has been more vocal than Sierra Club director and former congressional candidate Abel Collins.

On Friday, at 2pm, these two leading climate activists will be together at the Ocean Mist in Matunuck – perhaps the most obvious example of how climate change is and will continue to alter coastal Rhode Island. The iconic Ocean State beach that is a mainstay of the Matunuck economy gets closer and closer to the water as climate change exacerbates coastal erosion.

From the Facebook event:

It’s been a hot week. Cool off on Friday and come have a FREE Climate Change Cocktail and Sign the Washington Bound Banner! Speakers include Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Kevin Finnegan O’Mist Owner, and more. For additional information call 401-578-0210

For more on climate change, Whitehouse speaks about it on the Senat floor every single week. Here’s his address from this week:

July 18, 2013July 19, 2013

Republicans hold 39th vote to undermine Obamacare

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Yesterday, House Republicans voted two more times to undercut the Affordable Care Act – their 38th and 39th efforts to gut Obamacare.

As part of the historic health care reform bill that Congress passed and President Obama signed into law in 2010, the roughly 4% of all American businesses with more than 50 employees will be required to offer health care coverage to their workers.

And earlier this month, the Obama administration announced that it would delay implementation of the employer mandate until 2015 – a move that is expected to allow those businesses affected by the law to transition properly.

But rather than work with Democrats to ensure the law is implemented in a way that benefits as many families as possible, Republicans in the House are playing politics and holding yet another round of votes to undermine health care reform – votes that have literally no chance of ever becoming law.

What’s so disturbing is that this has become the rule, rather than the exception for Washington Republicans. Ever since taking control of the House, Republican leaders have refused to work across the aisle to put people back to work and pass a real jobs bill. Instead, they keep going back to the same well – offering political red meat that satisfies their Tea Party base but doesn’t offer a plan to put middle class families back to work.

The White House criticized this latest round of efforts to relitigate the health care debate, saying that it “strongly” opposes the two bills offered by House Republicans because they “would cost millions of hard-working middle class families the security of affordable health coverage and care they deserve.”

The Affordable Care Act is already providing concrete benefits for residents of Rhode Island’s First Congressional District, according to a staff report prepared this month by Democrats on the House Committees on Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and Education and the Workforce. According to this report, 146,000 residents of the First Congressional District now have health insurance that covers preventive services without co-pays, coinsurance, or deductible; 27,000 children with pre-existing conditions are no longer denied health care coverage; 4,600 young adults can stay on their parents’ health care plans; and 7,300 seniors have received $8.8 million in prescription drug discounts.

We can’t afford to go back to the time when health insurance companies controlled our health care system. House Republican leaders should put away the political campaign slogans and partisan gamesmanship, and get serious about governing.

July 18, 2013July 18, 2013

The election of 2002 (Part 4 of MMP RI)

Voter percentages from 2002 (via Samuel G. Howard) — Voter percentages from 2002. DEM = Democratic Party, GOP = Republican Party, IND = Independent, LIB = Libertarian Party, GRN = Green Party. Some percentages add up above 100% due to rounding. (via Samuel G. Howard)

2002 was a momentous year for Rhode Island politics. State Representative David Cicilline announced he would challenge Buddy Cianci for Mayor of Providence. The capital city was also seeing a coalition of left-wing voters working to elect a young Green Party candidate David Segal to the city council. The major battle was between liberal standard-bearer former state Sen. Myrth York and conservative businessman Donald Carcieri.

In this atmosphere of change, so too was the General Assembly changing. Though its number of districts had been downsized, nearly a decade prior voters had approved an expansion of the Assembly; both chambers would practically grow by half.

The results of the election were stunning. Carcieri triumphed over York, who underperformed among Democrats. Cianci was eliminated before election day after being found guilty of racketeering conspiracy; after overcoming a primary election, Cicilline cruised to victory. Segal entered the Providence City Council as the minority leader, the sole member whose party wasn’t “Democrat”.

And in the General Assembly, the change was hard to interpret. Certainly, neither party “lost” seats. And yet, proportionally, the Republicans were stronger than they would have been in the old FPTP system. Instead of controlling a mere 14.67% of the seats in the House, they controlled 32% of the seats. In the Senate, the old way would’ve seen them earn 15.79% of the seats. The new method assigned them 30.26% of the seats.

However, the vast majority of Republican seats were from the party list, not from districts. Failure to contest as many seats meant that their candidates were more beholden to party, rather than to constituency. The Democrats had the opposite issue; their victory in the districts meant that they assigned fewer from the lists. The Democratic delegation would be mostly made up of incumbents, while the new Republicans would be mostly fresh-faced.

The Republicans claimed victory. Here was proof that Rhode Island’s corrupt system had prevented the full choice of the voters from being acknowledged. Democrats, for their part, grumbled, and went home with a slim supermajority of the General Assembly seats.

Implications

In reality, Democrats controlled roughly 85 percent of each chamber. Republicans were essentially shunted aside, even while winning slightly less than a third of the vote. So they controlled half of what they should have in the Assembly proportional to the votes they received.

In retrospect, it seems odd that the impetus for the General Assembly being shrunk was to create greater competition for seats. Mainly, because it failed to work; about a quarter of Senate seats were uncontested (10) as were a third of House seats (34).

RI GA apportioned according to the D'Hondt method — RI GA apportioned according to the D’Hondt method. (via Samuel G. Howard)

This is Part 4 of the MMP RI series, which posits what Rhode Island’s political landscape would look like if we had switched to a mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) system in 2002. Part 3 (an explanation of MMP and an account of the methods used to create these posts) is available here. Part 5 is a look at the Election of 2004.