Progressive News, Opinion, and Analysis
At least five Warwick Wendy’s workers protested at their place of employment today as part of a nationwide effort to organize fast food workers and pay them $15 an hour. They were joined by labor leaders, city councilors from Warwick and Providence, state legislators, faith leaders and activists of all stripes.
Watch the video of the action:
Maria Cimini is one of my favorite politicians in the state of Rhode Island. Far too few state representatives understand the plight of working people like she does. When conservatives attack economic growth and the 99%, she is there on the floor of the House making passionate and moving speeches defending those who are too often left voiceless.
There are far too many reasons to support Representative Cimini for me to list, but here are the two that lie closest to my heart: Her signature initiative, paring back the tax cuts for the rich, is perhaps the most important budgetary goal, not just of the Rhode Island progressive movement, but of the Democratic Party nationally. And in the last legislative session, she was one of only 20 state representatives to vote against the brutal cuts to Medicaid that threw 6,500 Rhode Islanders off the popular single-payer program.
So please join me in supporting Maria at her fundraiser tonight, which will be held at the Elmhurst Pub (670 Smith St., Providence, RI), starting at 5:30.
Contributions can be made online here: http://www.mariacimini.com/en/donate.html
The possible sale of the Providence Journal is a perfect opportunity to examine what has often seemed to me to be about the lowest-hanging economic development fruit — that we continue to ignore.
Back in the misty dawn of time, also known as the 1980s, when Mario Cuomo was Governor of New York and liberals weren’t afraid to support good policy just because it was a good idea, the Empire State Development Corporation established an office of employee buyouts. They realized that it’s hundreds of times easier to keep a business going than to start a new one, and that sometimes the best buyers for a company are the people who already know how it works. The idea was to provide low-cost financing to groups of employees who wanted to keep a business going when the owners wanted to sell or retire.
The office existed for a few years, did good work retaining lots of small businesses, and then George Pataki was elected governor. That Republican had run against exactly the kind of economic intervention implied by the employee buyout program, and so the program was jeopardized. For a while, the office continued its existence by going underground. ESD directors renamed it the Office of Business Succession and had it offer more general succession planning, where employee buyouts were only one among the options. But the financing piece was difficult to implement under the new regime, and without that, it became little more than a referral service to business consultants. The program exists today as only a fond memory among elder ESD staff.
Employee-owned companies are an old idea, but a good one. The worker co-ops of Mondragon, in Basque Spain, were founded in the 1940s, and have been the centerpiece of a vigorous industrial economy ever since. Similar organizations existed over a hundred years before, in England and Scotland. These days, they are an important part of an industrial renaissance in parts of the midwest, where the idea appears to have caught on. Ohio State now runs a coop development center to provide technical assistance to establishing such businesses, and the University of Wisconsin has a Center for Cooperatives that does the same, plus research into the topic.
Years ago, I worked for a little while at just such a company. The Worcester Company, of Centerdale, was among Rhode Island’s last textile companies. When the owner wanted to retire in the 1970s, rather than sell his factory to someone who would move production to North Carolina, he financed an employee buyout. About 400 people worked there, and every morning would file in to work through a door marked “Owners Entrance.” They had monthly business meetings where dozens of people would meet to hash out strategies and opportunities. They made mostly high-end woolens, and by exploiting a high-cost niche at the top of the market, were holding their own, paying all their employees decent wages and even turning a small profit.
Unfortunately, though the company made money, it was not enough to service the high-cost debt that was all they could find. With no help available within the state (or from the state), the company sold a 25% stake to British investors in exchange for a line of credit. After a few years, those investors saw higher returns available elsewhere and demanded to sell their share. The state stood by, offering nothing at all, while a profitable company, with 400 employees, was forced into liquidation, and now the rotting hulk of its factory sits at the heart of Centerdale.
We’ve lost a lot of manufacturing, but at least some other businesses have grown up. Every one of those existing businesses would be easier to keep than to replace, and lots of them are owned by people who are at least thinking of selling or retiring, if they are not actively doing so right now. Statistics are hard to come by, but it’s relatively clear that less than a third of privately-owned businesses continue into a second generation, and many fewer than that pass into a third.
Paying some attention to these businesses would be easy and inexpensive. Creating a central marketplace for business owners who want to sell out would take very little effort, and reliably save a lot more jobs than investing in any startup could. In his short-lived run for Secretary of State, Ed Pacheco spoke about how that office—already in at least annual contact with all the corporations in the state—could readily assume such a role.
The business for sale that’s in the news right now is the Providence Journal. Back when it was a family-owned affair, it might have been an excellent candidate for such an employee buyout. These days, after more than a decade of bumbling management and, well, rapine, by its Dallas owners, it’s not quite so clear. (Especially since such a transaction usually requires an accommodating seller willing to wait while the pieces are assembled.) The paper’s value 15 years ago was in its staff and its circulation, and both of those have been decimated by management.
Even so, at a small fraction of the size they used to be, the Journal has several times as many reporters as any other news organization in the state. The paper dominates the local news scene, still setting the agenda for the other media in the state. Many tens of thousands of people see it every day. There is important value there, and it seems conceivable that some non-profit form of ownership — maybe even a co-op — would be a useful way to preserve the paper, and its role in shining bright light on matters others try to keep hidden.
It’s doubtful that it would be a good idea for the state government itself to get involved in preserving a newspaper that needs to retain its independence in order to be a trusted voice. But our community does clearly have an interest in an informed public, and finding a way forward to keep the Journal ownership local and responsible should be at the top of the agenda for everyone concerned about the future of our state.
Thursday Dec 5, 2013
North Kingstown, RI – Good morning, Ocean State. This is Bob Plain, editor and publisher of the RI Future blog podcasting to you from The Hideaway on the banks of the Mattatuxet River behind the Shady Lea Mill in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.
It’s Wednesday, December 5th … and all across the country today fast food employees will be walking off the job. Here in Rhode Island, Warwick Wendy’s employees who protested outside their workplace in November plan to walk out of work at noon, organizers tell me. RI Future will be there capturing video of the action….
The emerging nation-wide movement of fast food workers is seeking $15 an hour … an average 67 percent in pay, according to the New York Times.
The Providence Journal is for sale! And according to publisher Howard Sutton that news “…opens a new chapter in the history of our news organization.” Indeed, all of Rhode Island.
In a post on this blog last night, Sam Howard suggested the people of Rhode Island should buy the ProJo. This is actually really really doable. The paper is expected the fetch somewhere between 10 and 50 million … or, 25 million less than we gave a baseball player to make a video game. I’m not suggesting the state buy the paper, but rather that numbers aren’t an unheard of investment in these parts. I bet both Linc Chafee and Ken Block gave serious consideration to making a play for our paper of record last night …. much more on this idea to come…
More positive economic development news: the Newport Jazz Festival is adding a third day to feature less-well-known musicians. The Rhode Island Foundation is helping to fund the Friday performances and Executive Director Neil Steinberg, said, “we’re leveraging a treasure.” ….Same could be said of big old grant from the Foundation to buy the ProJo…
In a victory over NIMBYism, Rhode Island approved a transmission line from the Block Island wind farm to meet the mainland near Scarborough Beach. Some neighbors and tea party-types were fighting against the transmission line….
And according to a new poll, 46 percent of respondents said the plastic bag ban in Barrington encouraged them to use reusable bags, 56 percent said they support the new rule and half of respondents said they support a state-wide ban … meanwhile 28 percent said they shop less in Barrington because of the lack of plastic bags …. I would love to interview the Barrington resident who is driving to Warren or Portsmouth for groceries because they need their plastic bags!
A Westerly zoning board member resigned over the COPAR quarry fiasco yesterday saying lawyers for both sides have caused unnecessary delays. According to the Westerly Sun, he said, “Neither I, nor the other members of the Zoning Board, are the reason that this appeal has repeatedly been continued and not heard. It has apparently been determined by attorneys on both sides of the appeal that there has been a mutual benefit to the continuances.”
A pod of pilot whales has become stuck in the shallow flats of the Everglades in south Florida … several have died, and so-far the surviving some-odd 40 whales are still swimming, but they won’t leave the shallow water and scientists don’t understand why not…
NPR had a story on payday loans this morning and Morning Edition host David Greene called the interest rates “ridiculously high” …Ridiculously, that was adverb NPR, not RI Future, used, a news organization that is often ridiculously unbiased.
And the New York Times reports that the five major oil companies are prepared to build a carbon tax into their cost of doing business … this is noteworthy because Republicans have long claimed that industry would refuse to do so … so in this case, and maybe others, free enterprise is more amenable to paying for its consequences than the political party who defends them would have America believe … go figure…
At 4pm on December 21, 2012, Kara Russo and Chris Young led a group of about twenty-five people into the Rhode Island State House and erected a small nativity scene at the base of the “Holiday Tree” not too far from the large Hanukah menorah. According to reports the group sang Christmas songs, engaged in prayer, and erected a seasonal holiday display that was to last until January 6, but was apparently taken down just after Christmas along with all the rest of the Christmas decorations on display.
The Youngs were advised in their efforts by the Thomas More Society, whose president, Thomas Brejcha, said, “So long as these Christmas religious displays and ceremonies are privately sponsored, funded, and held in traditional public forums, they are constitutionally protected.”
Recently I became aware that the erection of a nativity scene at Rhode Island’s State House was the second in an organized, national effort to put up such displays in or near every state capitol in the country. According to the website, “for the past five years, a very special Nativity Scene has gone up in a prominent spot in the Rotunda of the State Capitol Building in Springfield, Illinois,” based on the Federal Court decision Grutzmacher v The Chicago Building Commission.
Rhode island joined the party in 2012 with their own Nativity Scene at their state capitol. Mississippi also has a Nativity Scene which makes it the third capitol to feature the real meaning as to why we celebrate Christmas. All of these are the result of a small but determined group of people who wanted to honor the Holy Family enough to get involved, and get the job done.”
In Rhode Island, Governor Chafee gave up trying to call the large evergreen in the Rhode Island State House rotunda a “Holiday Tree” and decided to officially refer to it as a “Christmas Tree.” I wrote at the time that the Humanists of Rhode Island were disappointed with the governor’s decision, but the group would instead focus on our seasonal blood drive, and of course we are continuing that important work and urge everyone to join us, whether you identify with our secular values or not.
However, in light of the fact that there seems to be a national effort under way to invade every state capital with permanent displays of religious imagery, (as can be seen in this recent piece about Florida’s capital) the Humanists of Rhode Island have no choice but to respond in kind.
Today we have sent an email to those in charge of public displays at the State House declaring our intent to prominently display a secular humanist seasonal banner in the main rotunda of the state house, celebrating secular values and separation of church and state. You can see the art for the banner at the top of this post.
As we await a timely reply from the powers-that-be in the State House, people should know that this was not a decision our group came to easily, as we would much rather focus on our community service efforts, but we are a group that firmly believes, as John F. Kennedy once declared, “in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.” This is why our banner honors the founder of our state, Roger Williams, and attempts to claim the season as a celebration of his wildly progressive and radical ideas.
Well, this will get me some clicks, and feel free to point this out the next time I suggest someone isn’t doing much Hard-Hitting Journalism™. But I really couldn’t let this slip by.
You won’t see this in the MSM (well, except for TIME), but Rhode Island is . According to a study. By America’s first online condom store. Based on sales by state. So that can bring us to any of the following conclusions:
Okay, now a lot of you are probably thinking “wait, wasn’t there some babble about recently?” And yeah, okay, there was. And the conclusion to draw is that we need this, Rhode Island. This is a top-ranking, which many of us can be proud of.
Why, I have to wonder what the economic impact of this will be. It’s not something I expect the prudes over at the Tax Foundation to be concerned with, given their fascination with irrelevant stats like tax rates. We could actually be “moving the needle” here. Probably by holding our impressive tumescence down on the scale.
Rhode Island: It’s All in Our Backyard. ;)
Wait…
(h/t Jezebel)
With the news that The Providence Journal is up for sale, there’s a lot of people trying to suss out who will be the new owner, with famous rich people being thrown out as names.
One name I suggested was the people of Rhode Island. Maybe a “Make The Journal Your Own” campaign or something. The problem is, of course, that you still need some rich civic-minded millionaires. If the sticker price for The Journal is say, $30 million, then you need 30,000 people to average a payment of $1000. It’s not impossible, but it’s not likely.
This type of arrangement, where a group of people get together and buy a corporation is more typical of sports. In America, the most prominent example is the Green Bay Packers, who have been a nonprofit corporation since 1922 and have 5,014545 shares of stock owned by 364,114 stockholders, according to the team’s website. Their history of being owned by their supporters is a bit different, it took benevolent local businessmen to ensure that that would happen.
I certainly feel like news media is a more important investment than a football team, especially in Rhode Island. The value would be that the entirety of The Journal would be beholden to Rhode Islanders; instead of to some single entity, whether a faraway private corporation or an extremely rich owner and their family. They’d have a board of directors picked by the shareholders, and the corporation could even have a rule that no single person could own a controlling majority of the stocks.
Could you make money? That’s ultimately the question, and the argument might be that the concern for these new citizen-owners wouldn’t necessarily be a return on investment in financial terms, but rather in news terms. There’s no mistaking that The Journal has been gutted over the years; the physical paper’s shrunk as fewer and fewer journalists are working for it.
This isn’t a solution for news media though. One of the more interesting things said by the authors of Dollarocracy at a talk I attended earlier this year was that for too long we’ve thought of news media as a business because advertising has been investing in it. But as they went on to say, this wasn’t because advertising loves news, it’s because the eyeballs were there. In the modern era, where you can go to Google or Facebook and purchase a demographic (16- to 32-year-olds who love skateboarding-dogs), why bother making your demographic New York Times readers or Providence Journal readers?
The authors had an idea for a citizen voucher to fund news, based off of an idea that came out of the Center for Economic and Policy Work for a “Artistic Freedom Voucher” which was aimed at working around America’s restrictive copyright laws. This puts news outside of the profit-making scheme and into the publicly-financed realm. That might be an interesting policy decision for Rhode Island, but in the here and now, I don’t think it’s likely.
If The Journal was also printing money along with newspapers, I don’t think A. H. Belo would be selling it right now.
Elizabeth Warren recently made news when she endorsed the effort to expand Social Security. Organized by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, this campaign has been one of the top priorities for progressives in Washington. That is why it matters that both of Rhode Island’s Congressmen, David Cicilline and Jim Langevin, have signed onto this effort.
Conservative voices in both parties have proposed cutting Social Security by switching to a less generous inflation metric, chained CPI. Chained CPI would severely underestimate the cost inflation seniors face. The bill Warren endorsed, the Strengthening Social Security Act, proposes to switch to CPI-E, a special consumer price index calculated specifically for the elderly. By adopting to this more accurate metric, this proposal would expand the program and help tens of millions of seniors make ends meet.
The rationale behind this bill is as simple as it is bold. Instead of just defending against the right wing’s assault on Franklin Roosevelt’s signature achievement, progressives are going on the offense. We are not just saying, “Don’t cut Social Security.” We are saying, “Expand it!” Instead of playing defense all the time, we are finally fighting back.
Senators Whitehouse and Reed are both firm defenders of Social Security, and they have both come out strongly against the proposed cuts. They have yet to officially cosponsor the effort to expand the program, but neither have many Senators who have publicly supported the bill, including progressive champions Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI).
Congressman Cicilline has been a national leader in the fight to preserve the dignity of a secure retirement for America’s seniors. He signed the Grayson-Takano letter pledging to vote against any cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. He introduced a resolution against the proposed chained CPI cuts to Social Security. Jim Langevin was an original cosponsor of Cicilline’s resolution, and together our Congressmen worked very hard to gather more cosponsors. Most House Democrats have now signed on. That is a fairly monumental achievement, and it should be celebrated more in Rhode Island. It is because of the efforts of our Congressmen that we can definitively say that most Democrats in the House of Representatives oppose this dangerous attempt to chip away at seniors’ last and best lifeline. Indeed, it is largely for his leadership on Social Security that we will be honoring Congressman Cicilline at our upcoming Progressive Hero event Friday, December 6. Tickets can be purchased here.
Wednesday Dec 4, 2013
North Kingstown, RI – Good morning, Ocean State. This is Bob Plain, editor and publisher of the RI Future blog podcasting to you from The Hideaway on the banks of the Mattatuxet River behind the Shady Lea Mill in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.
It’s Wednesday, December 4th … and National Public Radio’s Story Corps will be in Rhode Island today and tomorrow to interview homeless people to be aired on Morning Edition all across the nation. According to the Coalition for the Homeless, “The stories will be used for educational purposes to show Rhode Islanders the vast variety of experiences of homelessness and to break the stereotypes of
who is homeless in our state.”
Renaissance Hotel workers will stage yet another protest in front of the downtown Providence hotel today at 5pm. In a press release, organizers say, “In the tradition of this community’s support for working people, City hotel workers ask the friends of labor in Rhode Island to show they reject the Renaissance management’s tactics, by boycotting the Hotel.”
Yesterday, Providence Mayor Angel Taveras stayed in Florida to campaign rather than returning to Rhode Island to participate in the The URI Honors Colloquium on great public schools. Unless he reaped a big take in donations last night, this was yet another campaign misstep by Taveras … as the candidate for governor will be seeking the endorsement of the professors union there later this week.
My former philosophy professor and podcaster herself Cheryl Foster told the ProJo: “I personally would say we were profoundly disappointed not to have the chance to discuss the mayor’s award-winning proposal with him at the Colloquium, since we think that proposal was brilliant and connected well with our own values of bringing beauty and expression to the lives of all, including children at risk.”
Taveras was going to talk about a grant the Capital City received to help teach poor kids new words.
Correction: URI and PC play Thursday night.
If you want to know why the Koch brother-funded Center for Freedom and Prosperity is pushing for an elimination of the state sales tax, it’s probably not about how much economic activity it might generate but rather by the number of public sector jobs it will eliminate. Paul Dion, of the state Budget Office, said about 6,000 state workers would be eliminated.
A judge in Detroit ruled that pension benefits aren’t exempt from bankruptcy proceedings …. the New York Times’ Mary Williams Walsh reports that his ruling could affect other bankruptcy proceedings, she mentioned a few California cities but none in Rhode Island. In other pension news, Illinois also moved forward with pension cuts. In all these cases, the mitigating factor will be whether or not the delayed pay is a contractual right or a legislative gift. It’s also worth noting that unlike Detroit, Rhode Island is not going broke. We just wanted to save some money and didn’t feel like asking our richest residents to pony up.
And speaking of the state’s ongoing war against public sector employees, Ted Nesi suggests legacy costs, not high taxes, can be blamed for Rhode Island’s struggling economy…
But here’s theory not rooted in austerity: we used to have a ton of factory jobs in Rhode Island. Now we don’t. No matter what way we shrink the cost of operating a government, our private sector workforce won’t grow until we find a way to put the working class back to work.
Today in 1914, Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata meets with outlaw Pancho Villa … Zapata famously said, “It is better to die on my feet than live on your knees.”
In 1964, the Beatles released their fourth album, “The Beatles For Sale”
And today in 1970, Cesar Chavez was arrested for his role in the Salad Bowl Strike.
And speaking of standing up for better working conditions, fast food workers are meeting at the Warwick Fire Fighters Hall tomorrow at noon as part of a national day of action calling for better working conditions for fast food and other minimum wage workers.
And in their honor, our song of the day is a spoken work poem by Providence native, AS220 crony and warrior for social justice Jared Paul called “Class Warpath.” It’s the first track on his new live album recorded right here in Rhode Island.
Steve Ahlquist laid out the case against a Rhode Island Constitutional Convention recently. Early last month, Gary Sasse also suggested that a Convention was unnecessary if the General Assembly acted to create constitutional change itself (Sasse also made the case that constitutional amendments originating in the Assembly during the ’90s were more effective than those originating in the 1986 Convention).
Ahlquist’s arguments boil down to a few major points:
In terms of the first point, I should start out by adding I’ve heard the delegates will also be able to set their own rules, so how accountable they’ll be is entirely up to them. I personally find that a far more convincing argument than Ahlquist’s argument that the delegates are unaccountable because they’ll only serve for the duration of the Convention. The accountability of a legislator to their constituents isn’t solely found in the ballot box, it’s also in the willingness of constituents to exercise their right to lobby their legislator.
That transitions us nicely to the second point, that large monied interests are capable of influencing this election. That’s true, but no more than they are capable of influencing the election of the RI House of Representatives. Which is essentially what the Convention is; it’s a 75-member group elected from House districts. The difference is that the Convention is tasked solely with the creation of constitutional amendments that don’t need to pass the checks of a Senate or Governor. While such a group might be more appealing to dark and big money, it’s not a guarantee of getting their agenda passed. Indeed, such groups have had success in the General Assembly before, hiring former Speaker William Murphy as their lobbyist seems particularly effective.
More worrisome is where do you get 75 Rhode Islanders (probably more since not all will be uncontested) to be delegates? And that brings us to the third point. What progressives seem to fear is a repeat of 1986, when the Convention produced a cleverly-worded amendment to restrict abortion. Thanks to those who defeated it. One thing to say is that Rhode Island in 2013 is not Rhode Island in 1986. The state has moved considerably left in the last 27 years. Now that’s no guarantee, after all, as we moved left, we’ve also gone right with our economics. We also should rightly fear that the Convention would attempt to undo marriage equality. But these are fears that we should harbor if there’s a bad leadership change in the House as well.
All of the charges Ahlquist levels against the Convention are true of the General Assembly. And the Assembly is highly problematic in its relationship to regular Rhode Islanders right now, as I tried to demonstrate in my series on alternate election systems. I want to make this point when it comes to delegates: in Rhode Island the right-wing doesn’t win unless the left-wing stays home. The most important problem with the Convention is that delegates are elected in 2015; an off-off-year. Odd-numbered years result in low turnout with more conservative-minded voters.
I don’t think the right-wing is oblivious to this fact; otherwise I don’t believe they would be trumpeting the Convention as their Last Great Hope to finally be swept into power. The question progressives should ask themselves is whether they’re willing to do the work to ensure that the left turns out. That might mean focusing on the 2014 and 2015 sessions to pass voter-access legislation; such as introducing early voting, automatic registration, repealing or weakening the Voter ID law, and making Election Day a paid holiday. That might mean setting aside some part of 2014 for beginning to organize who their candidates for delegate will be and what they want proposed and to fight to 2016 for.
Ahlquist holds up as an example of the Assembly’s intransigence the “master lever” bill so favored by the right wing. The problems of Rhode Island government lies deeper than a single voting mechanism. It lies in the assumptions of Sasse, that meaningful constitutional change can’t come from the citizens of this state. It lies in what Ahlquist suggests as a fear: that radicals might make radical change. But this is what we need, radical change. The Convention doesn’t have the power to upend power relationships in this state, but it does get to determine how those power relationships are played out. Whether the monied get easy access to decision-makers, whether redundant systems stymie citizen voice, whether legislative games facilitate bill failure, etc.
The Convention offers the possibility to do things that the General Assembly would never dream of doing. This is what frightens many Rhode Islanders. The Convention doesn’t have to abide by established rules, it doesn’t have to play in deference to convention. At its very best, the Convention can offer revolutionary change to the people of Rhode Island, if they’re willing to take it. That’ll be a risk, and it could cost far more than it’s worth. Sometimes, you have to be Caesar, and roll the dice.
Coming soon to your winter reading list: Tom Sgouros’ second book.
His first book focused on conservative mythology about the Ocean State, and this time the RI Future contributor and well-respected progressive policy analyst sets his sites on a national level with a look into the banking industry. It’s called, ‘Checking The Banks: The Nuts and Bolts of the Banking System for the People Who Want to Fix It.”
He calls it “a primer on banking language and practices… a modest list of useful concepts, a discussion of how banks work, and how they fail, as well as some suggestions for new institutions that might help make change.”
Sgouros uses his talent for making complex subjects easier to understand
The growth of banks from small institutions to large has had profound effects on all of us, not the least because of the necessary change in strategies to manage banking risk. When a bank makes a loan, it takes a risk that the loan may not be repaid. Banking is fundamentally about managing that risk, and other risks associated with the enterprise. But there are many ways to manage a risk. One way is to get to know your borrowers, to assess their needs, perhaps even to help them repay the loan with the occasional extension or refinance. In the case of a business loan, a bank could sometimes ease risk through introducing the borrower to potential customers for his or her businesses. Another way to manage risk is simply to find someone else to assume it. One way manages risk by reducing it; the other simply foists it onto a sucker.
But he not only points out the problems the banking industry faces, he also offers solutions with chapters on regulations, starting a bank, government funding, public banks and credit unions, among other ideas.
Traditionally, starting a bank is something for rich investors to do, but there are plenty of others out there who have the capaicty to have an impact on our financial system…
The book, published by Light Publications, a Providence company owned and operated by Mark Binder, will be available commercially in the near future.
Deborah Gist declined to share her dissertation with legislative leaders, after North Kingstown Senator Jim Sheehan, a teacher, asked her to do so in a letter last month.
Gist replied to Sheehan, saying, “I hope you will read my work with interest with the embargo is lifted in June 2014.”
She also said, in fact, her dissertation did not speak to policy issues in Rhode Island, as Sheehan suggested in his letter.
You can read Gist’s letter to Sen. Sheehan here. And his Nov. 13 letter is below:
It was with great interest that I read an article appearing on the RIFuture.org website, “Public can’t read Deborah Gist’s dissertation on RI.” I am curious, first of all, about the accuracy of the article. Specifically, has your dissertation, “An Ocean State Voyage: A Leadership Case Study of Creating an Evaluation System with, and for, Teachers,” been “embargoed” until September, 2015? Second, if the report is accurate, I would be interested in knowing why this is the case.
Given the import of the ideas and concepts within your thesis on the current educational reforms in Rhode Island, I believe it would be highly beneficial for the members of the General Assembly, and specifically the members of the Senate Committee on Education and the House Committee on Health, Education and Welfare, to have access to this important work.
I believe informing the policymakers of our state about your vision for Rhode Island education is necessary and appropriate as the General Assembly moves toward another legislative session that will once again focus on the education of our populace. While you have annually presented an address to the legislature and have also testified many times at various committee hearings, I believe your thesis is another important piece of your vision that should be shared with the General Assembly.
I therefore request that you provide a copy of your thesis to the Senate and House leadership, who may then share that document with legislative members.
I eagerly await your response and thank you for your serious attention to this request.
Sincerely,
James C. Sheehan
Senator – District 36
Narragansett, North Kingstown
Governor Chafee’s recent decision to let the giant evergreen dominating the State House rotunda be officially called a “Christmas Tree” rather than a “Holiday Tree” as has been the tradition since at least the Carcieri administration, is unfortunate. Chafee has been a very good advocate of church-state separation, fighting the good fight even when there was a political cost to doing so. Now that he is leaving office, one would think Chafee has nothing to lose by sticking to his guns on the issue, but for whatever reason Chafee has conceded the argument to the DePetro’s, Costa’s and Tobin’s of Rhode Island…
However, the Humanists of Rhode Island have more important issues to concern themselves with.
We’re holding a Blood Drive.
For the entire month of December anyone can go to any Rhode Island Blood Center location or Blood Drive van and use the code 3481 to give blood in solidarity with the Humanists of Rhode Island and the secular values our state was founded upon.
Giving blood isn’t a showy display of religious belief, and chances are no one will notice or thank you for it, but I promise that doing so will save more lives than displaying large religious icons in the State House rotunda ever could.
Tuesday Dec 3, 2013
North Kingstown, RI – Good morning, Ocean State. This is Bob Plain, editor and publisher of the RI Future blog podcasting to you from The Hideaway on the banks of the Mattatuxet River behind the Shady Lea Mill in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.
It’s Tuesday, December 3rd, the day Detroit will, or won’t, officially file for bankruptcy protection … and, in local news, Brett Smiley is formally announcing he’s running for mayor of the Capital City today. Check out the About page on his website and you’ll see there is little doubt he sees himself as the progressive in the crowded field for mayor…
Brett will be joining Mark Gray and I for our first roundtable podcast on Thursday afternoon … if you’d like to join us, or have a question for Brett, reach out on twitter and/or Facebook….
And speaking of being mayor and running for office, current Providence Mayor Angel Taveras is scheduled to join the URI Honors Colloquium tonight on great public schools tonight … more on this developing story later this morning. The URI Honors Colloquium has already hosted such education experts as Diane Ravitch and Henry Giroux, and us progressives are sure looking forward to hearing what Mayor Taveras adds to this ongoing debate….
UPDATE: According to the Honors Colloquium, Taveras’ appearance has been canceled for tonight. “the Mayor expresses his sincere apologies for not being able to attend,” said his communications director, David Ortiz. “He had a scheduling conflict.”
Pension detective Ted Siedle is petitioning the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate pension fund investments overseen by General Treasurer Gina Raimondo. Siedle says that some investment agreements essentially allow hedge fund managers to “steal from the state” by hiding information from the public that they are expressively allowed to share with other investors.
Raimondo’s office responded by calling the accusation a political attack. Yes, it is true, the retirees whose savings Raimondo slashed definitely have a political interest in her not becoming governor … the more pointed question she should respond to: do some state investment agreements allow managers to share information with other investors while shielding it from the citizens of Rhode Island. Because all of Rhode Island may not want the person who negotiated that deal to be our next governor…
Seidle told the Providence Journal: “What I have done for Rhode Island is to draw attention to the other side of the balance sheet, the other side of the income statement, which is how much has been paid to Wall Street.”
Steve Ahlquist offers a good government reason why Rhode Island should NOT have a Constitutional Convention in 2015. In an RI Future post published this morning, he says “Con-Con” delegates are elected for the singular purpose of amending the state Constitution, and thus aren’t accountable to any future voters.
“This is the wrong way to effect change,” writes Ahlquist. “Right now, the General Assembly can be held accountable by voters: If you don’t like the way they are behaving, you can remove them from office by voting for their opponents in the next election. The Con-Con delegates, on the other hand, have no such accountability. Delegates, unconcerned with being re-elected, can suffer no penalty for failing voters. Delegate candidates could conceivably run as moderates and then work to effect radical changes once elected.”
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse held a summit on health care yesterday and said Rhode Island is proving to be a stellar example to the rest of the nation in how to deliver better and more efficient benefits to people in the 21st Century. Similarly, a new report says the Ocean State is poised to be a national leader in solar power … in other words, Little Rhody shines when it comes to health care and renewable energy sectors of the economy … that’s called being well-situated for the future. Go Rhody!
A 38-year-old truck driver was ordered to pay the Koch bros company $180,000 because he participated in an organized hack on the right-wingers site … Koch Industries is located in Wichita, Kansas and so was his trial. The website was down for 15 minutes and the company said it lost $5,000 as a result…
On this day in 1886, textile workers in Fall River fought for and won … a 10-hour work day.
And in 1910 … the International Workers of the World, also known as the Wobblies, organized their first loggers union … speaking of organized labor in the timber industry, if you’ve never read Ken Kesey’s classic “Sometimes A Great Notion,” it’s a fantastic parable on team work and the dangers of thinking you’re above it. This is one of my favorite and most disturbing movie scenes of all-time:
Publisher Andres Shifflin has died … he founded The New Press after being fired from a Random House-owned company for not making enough money. He published the leftists works of Noam Chomsky and Studs Terkeland said his firing was essentially corporate censorship.
And one-hit wonder reggae singer Junior Mervin died yesterday … he wrote “Police and Thieves,” about senseless street violence … it became a hit for punk band The Clash, and turns out it’s just as relevant the 21st century United States as it was to 20th century Jaimaca and London.
It’s not on the radar of the average Rhode Islander yet but in 2014, as voters decide upon a new governor, we will also be deciding on whether or not to hold a Constitutional Convention. Every ten years voters get to decide whether or not to hold the Con-Con, and the last two times the measure was placed on the ballot (1994 and 2004) it failed. This time many groups on the right and the left of the political spectrum are gearing up to push hard on this issue.
The push seems to be born out of frustration with the way the General Assembly works (or doesn’t). One recent example of the General Assembly being out of touch with the wishes of Rhode Island voters is the legislative body’s recent inaction on eliminating the master lever. At State House hearings no one testified in favor of keeping the master lever and public support for removal was robust, yet the General Assembly failed to act. A case can be made that some members of the General Assembly should be held accountable for this failure.
Some are suggesting that the Con-Con will be a place to address this failure. Elected convention delegates could decide to put the decision on eliminating the master lever directly to the voters. The goal of eliminating the master lever might be accomplished but what about the goal of holding the General Assembly accountable? The General Assembly might start to feel even more able to punt on certain issues, because the Con-Con is not the process by which legislators are held accountable
If a Con-Con is approved in the 2014 election, then Rhode Island voters will have a chance to go back to the polls in 2015 and elect delegates to represent their views. Being a delegate is a one-time position that will begin and end with the convention. The delegates will consider and advance several changes to the Rhode Island State Constitution which will then be voted on by the public in 2016.
This is the wrong way to effect change. Right now, the General Assembly can be held accountable by voters: If you don’t like the way they are behaving, you can remove them from office by voting for their opponents in the next election. The Con-Con delegates, on the other hand, have no such accountability. Delegates, unconcerned with being re-elected, can suffer no penalty for failing voters. Delegate candidates could conceivably run as moderates and then work to effect radical changes once elected.
The most powerful penalty we can assign our elected officials, being tossed out of office by voters in a fair election, does not apply to Con-Con delegates. The job of a Con-Con delegate is to alter, perhaps fundamentally, the Constitution. Under Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision that effectively ruled that dollars are the equivalent of speech, an unlimited amount of money could flood Rhode Island from out-of-state special interest groups. Think ALEC on steroids. Con-Con delegates will be barraged by special interests supplied with bottomless wealth, perhaps seriously damaging the process.
If it is worth millions to rewrite our laws, how much is rewriting the Constitution going to be worth?
Civil rights could be severely impacted by a Con-Con. There is nothing to stop the delegates from putting measures on the ballot that might reverse the recent, hard-won marriage equality law, for instance. Polarizing issues are especially vulnerable: guns, reproductive justice, immigration, environmental and economic issues are all primed to be hijacked by special interests. Even if voters ultimately vote against the worst ideas the Con-Con advances, it will come at the staggering costs advertising for such elections has reached in recent years. Rhode Island will become a political battleground on a plethora of issues, and citizens will be barraged by advertising and advocates run ragged fighting for and against the proposed changes to the Constitution.
Our state legislature is based on the ideals of representational democracy. Our General Assembly, despite its many problems is the way in which we as citizens engage with important policy issues. The Con-Con is an attempt to perform an end run around the process, and like any high risk play, the end result may be amazing, but it will most likely end in a disaster of wasted money and effort.
In an attempt to avoid the annual holiday season skirmish over what to call the dead tree in the State House veranda, Governor Lincoln Chafee said in a statement today he’s willing to acquiesce and call it a Christmas tree.
Here’s his statement:
In 2011, my first year celebrating December in the State House I gave a simple six word instruction to the planners of the annual tree lighting: “Do what they did last year.”
Despite the myriad of pressing issues facing Rhode Island and the nation, this presumably happy event became a focal point for too much anger. Strangely lost in the brouhaha was any intellectual discussion of the liberties pioneered here in Rhode Island 350 years ago in our Charter. Because I do not think how we address the State House tree affects our “lively experiment,” this year’s invitation calls the tree a Christmas tree.
Secretary of State Mollis has offered to light the tree, and I have accepted his gracious offer. The tree lighting will be on Thursday (December 5, 2013) at 5:30 p.m. in the State House rotunda. Once again, our many thanks to all those who have worked hard to make our State House festive.
Good move, Governor! Had it come down to it, we would have again had your back … but we are more than happy to leave well enough alone and focus on more important issues … like taking the consumerism out of Christmas!
Monday Dec 2, 2013
North Kingstown, RI – Good morning, Ocean State. This is Bob Plain, editor and publisher of the RI Future blog podcasting to you from The Hideaway on the banks of the Mattatuxet River behind the Shady Lea Mill in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.
It’s Monday, December 2nd … the first work day of the least productive month of the year. But don’t worry, economy … while fewer people are producing goods and services more people are consuming them. December also almost always has the highest consumer spending of the year.
And speaking of the economy…
Politifact uses some political oxygen to debunk a pretty archane untruth about the minimum wage debate … put forth into the marketplace of ideas by a Facebook meme. It was something about how many times Congress increased its own salary in relation to how many times the minimum wage was raised … nothing too germane to either the economics or the morality of minimum wage politics, but it is an interesting reminder of where information comes from these days … the answer: everywhere and anywhere.
Here are some additional minimum wage claims that Gene Emery should fact check: only a third of minimum wage workers are teenagers, and three quarters of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, support raising the minimum wage. And here’s a really fun fact: had it kept pace with the earnings increases of the one percent in America, the minimum wage would be about $50,000 a year. Instead, it hasn’t even kept pace with inflation, and hasn’t been enough to escape poverty since 1982 – that’s more than 30 years of enforcing slave wages from one of the richest people in human history. More on this phenomenon from Oswald Krell on RI Future.
Dan Schiff, the CEO of the Rhode Island Foodbank, told WPRI Newsmakers this weekend that the $20 million cut to SNAP benefits for Rhode Islanders will not only hurt the poor, but it will also hurt the grocers, super markets and other small businesses where poor people spend their food stamps. One in five Rhode Islanders use food stamps, and he dispelled the conservative dog whistle that waste and fraud is an issue.
Tom Sgouros has a great post on the accounting scare tactics that come in to play when the media calculates future government expenses. In this case, Tom’s talking about the next evil Republicans and conservative Dems will be railing against: other post employment benefit costs, known Draconianly as OPEBs.
Rhode Island’s most famous – and, in my opinion, most beautiful -winter residents are back. Snowy white owls have been seen at Sachuest Point in Newport, Beavertail in Jamestown and a young one was found with a broken wing at Quonset Airport here in North Kingstown yesterday. You can see pictures of the injured owl on the Wildlife Rehabilitators of Rhode Island Facebook page.
Today is Day 2 of Karen Ziner’s amazing series in the Providence Journal about transgender teenager Andy Noel. It’s a story about bravery and individualism … and it’s a sign of the times, that the paper of record would dedicate so much ink to this topic, but also that it had to shut off the online comments on account of how outrageous they became … we still have a ways to go, but people like Andy Noel are helping us get there.
Now back to my favorite news story so far of the Christmas season: is the Pope a progressive? Justin Katz and I debated the issue on NBC 10 Wingmen last week and he follows that up with an explanation of how he and the head of his church can be at such economic odds, writing, “A progressive Franciscan isn’t exactly a contradiction in terms.”
Not at all. In fact, we have tons in common. Read Steve Ahlquist’s post about what it means to be a progressive that he published just days before the Pope wrote about what it means to be a Catholic and you will see how similar these two groups tend to think. Conversely, I’d argue that the Chicago School is sinful. Katz writes that he can’t make a coherent rebuttal to the Pope’s game-changer. That’s because there isn’t one.
A few weeks ago, my church had a Sunday sermon devoted to stewardship. Translated, that means how much are you going to pledge to donate to the church for the coming year? This year, the priest asked people in the congregation to stand up and explain why they gave. Now, I was a coward and did not speak in public. But I had thought of something that I thought clever, and that’s why I didn’t say it out loud: cleverness often comes across as something unpleasant.
My point was that I give to a church because I can. As a friend of mine describes it, I hit the cosmic lottery. Of all the places and times I could have been born into, I had the supreme good fortune to be born at a time, in a place, and to a family that gave me an enormous chance at being successful. In fact, the odds were stacked so far in my favor that I more or less succeeded despite my best efforts to screw it up. I have attained a level of physical comfort that 99% of the people who ever lived–royalty included–could only have dreamed about attaining.
That’s rather appropriate for a post-Thanksgiving thought. I am darn grateful for this opportunity. I’ve been on the underbelly of prosperity. I won’t say I was poor, because I wasn’t. But I was in a situation where money was in short supply, even if my basic needs were always met.
But the point. I was skimming a blog that has a strong right-wing bias. One of the entries was a review of a book about Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court Justice who also has a decidedly right-wing bias. Apparently, Thomas spent a childhood of difficult poverty, and difficult family circumstances. Yet, he overcame these to become a member of SCOTUS. That is one huge accomplishment. It’s difficult enough for a child of privilege and opportunity to attain such a height, let alone someone from a background like the one Thomas had.
Now, of course, Thomas is convinced that he made this on his own efforts. Be if far from me to disparage or belittle what Thomas has achieved. And yet…time and circumstances matter. Had Thomas been born as few as ten years earlier than he was, and certainly had he been born twenty years sooner, no amount of Herculean effort would have gotten him to where he is. He could have worked twice as hard and been lucky to get half as far.
Thomas benefited, to an enormous degree, from the era in which he was born. He reached the peak of his career when the idea of an African-American Justice was not an alien, or a laughable, concept. He became a member of SCOTUS in 1991. In 1981, I think it would be highly doubtful that he would have been nominated. This was Reagan’s first year in office; would he have nominated Thomas? Would Reagan have made Thomas his first appointment? Probably not. And too, let’s face it, the country was not ready for someone as conservative as Thomas is. Now, this last statement is a matter of my opinion, but it took a long time for the right wing to gain the control it did. We were just coming out of the 70s; hedonism was still cool and it seemed like marijuana legalization was going to happen. And if he had been at the same point in his career in 1971, there is virtually no chance that he would have been considered for such a post. Thurgood Marshall was on the Court; another African-American would have been out of the question for any Republican president, let alone someone like Nixon.
And yet, he and the right wing would have us believe that the people at the top made it solely on their own efforts. Their own effort is certainly a necessary condition, but it’s nowhere near enough. Effort has to be matched with time and circumstance. The conditions that made it possible for Thomas to reach the pinnacle that he did are the same ones derided as giving Sonia Sotomayor an unfair advantage. Thomas made it on merits; Obama was a creation of affirmative action.
Do we see the hypocrisy?
Again, I do not mean to detract from Thomas’ accomplishment. I disagree with the man about 95% of the time, and I sincerely wish he was not on the Court, but that he has overcome obstacles he has is truly impressive. I only wish he would realize that he did not do it on his own, that the time and circumstances under which he came of age had an enormously beneficial effect on his efforts. More, I wish he would stand up for those who still languish under horrific impediments to accomplishment. I wish he would not continue to boast of his achievements while standing on the heads of those who would follow him.
More, I wish the entire right-wing apparatus would stop pretending that anyone and everyone who tries can “make it”. Yes, it’s possible for every child born in this country to become president, or a CEO, or whatever. It’s possible. A lot of things are possible. But difficult circumstances are holding a lot of people back. And not just from rising to become a member of SCOTUS. But from simply rising into–or staying in–the middle class. Thomas and his right-wing cronies are standing on people’s heads, or even their necks, holding them down, destroying the sorts of opportunities that Thomas and the rest of them enjoyed. They hold Thomas out as an example of what can be, even when they’re trying to ensure that there won’t be any more like him.
I applaud Thomas for doing what he has done. I strenuously object to the way he is trying to pull up the ladder behind him.
