April 17, 2014 – RI Future

April 17, 2014April 18, 2014

Progressive gut check

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Rhode Island’s progressive movement is today in shambles, ripped apart by the stunning resurgence of the conservative faction of the so-called Democratic Party. It is now at the point that alleged Democrats feel perfectly comfortable reading directly from the RI GOP 2014 agenda and letting those comments be reported in the press.

And why shouldn’t they? It has become clear that nobody (that matters) is going to challenge them in public. I have done everything I can think of to get some influential progressive to call out this egregious betrayal, this shocking example of outright treason. The result so far?

[SFX: Crickets]

The unspeakable must be spoken

For the 22 years I have been politically active in Rhode Island, I have watched the progressive movement struggle to move forward in difficult conditions. In case you missed it, the road to the top of the mountain goes up quite steeply until you get to the very, very top.

The single greatest challenge from a public relations viewpoint has been the persistent fallacy that Rhode Island is already a “liberal state.” This decades-long fraud has been made possible by a state Democratic party dominated by conservatives and a progressive opposition that refuses to call it like it is. All of these fraudulent Democrats would become Republicans if Rhode Island could elect enough actual Democrats to run them out.

We’re not going to do it until we say, loudly and repeatedly, “These people are not Democrats; they are Republicans. You can tell by the fact that they say and do all the things that Republicans say and do.”

The “we” that needs to say these things is not a radical intellectual leftist, writing on a liberal blog. It is members of the Progressive Caucus speaking to reporters when they reach out because…how does this person qualify as a Democrat?

Twenty years ago, the idea that a reporter would question the liberal bona fides of a Rhode Island Democrat would have been a laugh line. But read the very first sentence of this excellent piece by Ted Nesi. To my knowledge, Ted is the first reporter to come around to what has been obvious to me since forever. These Democrats are not really Democrats.

When Mattiello spewed this Getting to 25 vomit last week, I reached out to Ted. “How can this go unchallenged? Why doesn’t someone call state party officials or progressives to get pushback?”

His response sickened me. He referred to his previous reports and expressed surprise that progressives didn’t seem to care. Certainly, writers on this blog have written about this repeatedly, so one can only assume that Ted is implying that more newsworthy sources have refused to address this issue.

This is the problem, people, not the solution.

Don’t bring a pickup truck to a tank fight

It is long past time for the progressive movement in Rhode Island—and I mean YOU, elected officials—to make it unequivocally clear that the state Democratic Party must be routed. Not reformed, routed.

It is absolutely true what the RI GOP says. The RI Democratic Party has ruined this state. What makes this hard on everybody is the lack of clarity on the simple, obvious, but counter-intuitive fact that the Democrats that ruined this state are actually Republicans.

Until we have the collective strength to make this argument in every press outlet in the state, it is unreasonable to expect any result other than the one we now have.

April 17, 2014

Landscaping course offers former inmates a way forward after jail

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Mike Brito was brainstorming with Joyce Penfield one day about how he could help Penfield’s organization, The Blessing Way, when he realized he could only offer what he knew how to do.

“All I know is how to put stone in the ground and I guess that was enough,” said Brito Saturday at the graduation of students from Blessing Way’s second landscaping course.

The course is meant to give men and women who’ve spent time in prison or are recovering substance abusers practical skills to help them find work.

For many who’ve been incarcerated, stigma of a prison sentence is hard to overcome. Employers are often reluctant to hire men and women with criminal records, setting up a potential return to prison when work proves elusive and a return to criminal behavior inevitable. Indeed, in 2009, 3,387 offenders left prison in Rhode Island, but within three years nearly half (48 percent) were back in prison with a new sentence.

Helping those newly released from prison to find their footing back in the world has been the mission of the nonprofit Blessing Way since it was established back in 2004. At the time, Joyce Penfield, an Episcopal priest, was working as a chaplain at the R.I. Dept. of Correction. The Blessing Way was her response to that revolving prison door as well as death by overdose among the formerly imprisoned.

The wrap-around services offered by Blessing Way include a place to live, counseling, life-skills training, non-denominational spiritual guidance and job assistance. It’s that last piece that’s gotten more concrete thanks to the landscaping course.

Interested participants need to apply and be accepted. They meet for 20 hours over the course of several weeks and must pass quizzes and a final test in order to graduate. They also are expected to work on a project designed to give them practical experience and they get an opportunity to network with landscape professionals.

Brito is the owner of Brito Landscaping in East Greenwich. At first glance, he seems an unlikely champion of the lowliest of our citizenry. But Brito is all about second chances. As a recovering alcoholic, he’s well aware of both human frailty and the need for people to offer helping hands.

So, he teaches the course and has even taken on one of this year’s graduates to work for him for the season.

Among those who spoke at the graduation ceremony were Providence Mayor Angel Tavares, who urged the men to be active in civic life, including registering to vote, and City Council President Michael Solomon.

Four of the graduates have gotten jobs. The others are looking and could use help. If you have any leads, contact The Blessing Way at (401)709-3697 or blessingwayinfo@yahoo.com.

April 17, 2014April 17, 2014

Rhode Island needs to lead the East with new pot policy

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Penalties against drug use should not be more damaging to an individual than use of the drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use.

– Jimmy Carter, Aug. 2, 1977

Marijuana laws in Rhode Island are in drastic need of reform. For more than 30 years, the federal government has impeded the development of all aspects of the cannabis industry, not only denying basic human rights regarding consumption, but also prohibiting medical research and disallowing industrial hemp use from competing in the market. But after an August 2013 Justice Department memorandum, states have the green light to enforce drug policy of their choice. This is a momentous step for both personal freedoms and common sense. Not only does the war on pot hurt individuals, it also takes out needed tax revenue that Rhode Island coffers can ill afford to lose.

Even our president recognizes the flaws in U.S. drug policy. Cannabis use has been scientifically proven to be less dangerous than the legal drugs in our society, such as alcohol, tobacco and prescription painkillers. President Obama has recently advocated the continued decriminalization of marijuana use by state legislatures, saying, “I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoke … I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.”

I agree with our president on the issue of decriminalization, but you just cannot try to compare alcohol abuse to cannabis “abuse.” (I use quotations because I smoke liberally all day, every day, and I have yet to develop the mental and moral inadequacies that accompany the stigma of a stoner. But I digress.) How many deaths does cannabis cause a year? None, in its entire history of use, thus making it less toxic than penicillin or ibuprofen. (Ibuprofen is part of a class of drugs called NSAID’s, these drugs accounts for an estimated 7,600 deaths and 76,000 hospitalizations).

Marijuana also has a plethora of widely accepted medical benefits ranging from assisting veterans with chronic post traumatic stress disorder (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, 2013) to anti-seizure properties (according to Ben Whalley of the University of Reading in Britain) to anti-carcinogenic properties (as documented by Complutense University, in Spain, in 2009).

Unfortunately, rather than let individuals grow a natural herb to remedy their malady, deadly painkillers such as Oxycodone and Hydromorphone are prescribed daily. We know these drugs cause crippling addiction and withdrawal. We also know that long-term use is extremely harmful.

You might not be persuaded by the universal right to consume what you wish. Fine. You might not be persuaded by its decades of widely supported medical benefits. Odd, but still fine. One thing every American must bow to is the almighty dollar.

Recently, the state of Colorado fully legalized the sale of cannabis for personal use. The sales exceeded $5 million in the first week alone. Rhode Island taxes $3.50 on every pack of cigarettes, approximately one-third of total cost. At a similar tax rate, the state of Colorado could have brought in $1.7 million.

In January, Colorado took in $2 million in marijuana tax revenue. Why deny Rhode Island this huge economic bonus? Especially when Gov. Lincoln Chafee said he was open to discussion, even tossing in the pun “pot for pot holes.”

If the state’s new House speaker, Nicholas Mattiello, is as dedicated to creating a more stable and productive economy as he says he is, there should be no question about whether to regulate America’s next big cash crop. Rather, we should focus on how to do it.

The benefits do not end with direct taxation. Being the first state on the East Coast to allow industrial hemp, along with medical and recreational sales, would result in a massive regional advantage in cannabis production and processing. We could have Netherlands-style coffee houses, cannabis culture gift shops and a wonderful export product for neighbor states.

On top of the reduction in administrative strain, regulation would reduce law-enforcement costs by decreasing time and funds spent pursuing, housing and feeding non-violent marijuana offenders. The birth of a new industry would create a plethora of jobs, ranging from chemical engineering to retail. This new industry would also need raw goods, shipping and other complementary industries and therefore help the entire Rhode Island economy get out of its slump.

A well-crafted bill concerning cannabis regulation, with ample room for oversight and adjustment, is the key to reviving our struggling economy.

Corey Agin, an East Providence High School graduate, is executive director of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws. He is studying political science at the Community College of Rhode Island.

April 17, 2014April 17, 2014

Pro-convention reasons against a constitutional convention: Balance of power

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The March 29 conference on the convention was perhaps the whitest crowd I’ve ever been in in my life. And I’m not exaggerating there. That to me is demonstrative of what’s going on in the debate about the convention.

Let’s stop and remind ourselves that constitutions do not change how power is distributed in a state. They merely change the rules by which that power is fought for. Since the Bloodless Revolution, the state’s power has been mostly distributed to an alliance of white middle-class men (both blue and white collar) in the Democratic Party.

But one of things that makes the Bloodless Revolution important is that it removed the last power structures supporting the old elite; the middle- and upper-class WASP males of the Republican Party that had previously dominated Rhode Island politics since its founding. In its heyday, that alliance was vicious in its hold on power, and seriously corrupt, winning us the “for sale, and cheap” moniker its successors are fond of repeating. Today, it often sounds anti-democratic in its approach to the regular Rhode Island voter.

Both alliances have been extremely privileged by their long grasps on power in the state. And much of the Pro-convention rhetoric isn’t about empowering the traditionally marginalized. Thus, one of the conference panel’s seven white men can ignore the very real evidence to the contrary and claim that there isn’t much appetite to restrict civil liberties in Rhode Island.

No, much of the Pro-convention rhetoric seems to be about increasing the power of the old elite, even if it’s not explicitly advocated (and you’d be foolish too explicitly advocate for that). Ethics control has the potential to root out ethical misconduct that will reflect poorly on established political power. A line-item veto will increase the power of the Governor’s office, one of the few veto points in RI that the Republicans have had any chance at controlling.

This is what I suspect will ultimately doom the chances of the convention. In a battle for political power between two over-privileged groups, the average Rhode Islander is the loser. By outright dismissing the needs and fears of the sub-dominant groups in Rhode Island (women, immigrants, non-whites, the poor) the Pro-convention side appears tone-deaf and out-of-touch.

I worry that even those who believe in good faith in a convention are ignoring the power dynamics that are inherent in any political system. We put great stock in the Constitutional Convention that brought forth the US Constitution, but we forget that its drafters would be abhorred at the extension of the vote we see today. Elbridge Gerry (whom the “gerrymander” is named after) warned that “The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy.” Edmund Randolph supported him by saying “…that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.”

In our dealing with own constitutional convention we need to shun such thoughts. If the same people who wonder aloud whether Rhode Islanders who don’t reach some arbitrary level of “intelligence” ought to be able to vote then turn around and call for a convention it is clearly not because they have found some faith in the voters of this state. If the same people who call voters idiots for electing incumbents over and over again are supportive of a constitutional convention it is not because they suddenly believe in the ability of the people to select their own representatives. It is because they sense an opportunity. And their opportunity will come at the expense of the people.