Class Warfare – Page 29

December 19, 2013

Public Utilities Commission could leave people out in the cold

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Ebenezer Scrooge wouldn’t let utility companies turn off the heat on poor people who are behind on their bills less than a week before Christmas, but the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission might.

It meets Friday at 9 am to consider weakening the protections that prevent utility companies from shutting off service to people who are behind on their bills.

“Some of the proposed changes include weakening protection for the disabled and seniors, narrowing income eligibility levels, removing protection for the unemployed, and shortening protection in the winter time,” said activist Camilo Viveiros. “They are proposing gutting the rules by cutting 55 pages of crucial rules down to 8 pages of diluted protections. Every year 20-30,000 Rhode Island households experience the loss of utility service due to termination, numbers that are already too high and would increase if the proposed rule changes are accepted.”

The George Wiley Center is circulating a petition in hopes of convincing the three-member state public utilities board to not allow utility companies to turn off poor people’s heat and electricity when they are struggling to pay their bills.

You can sign it here.

The three members of the Public Utilities Commission are: former US Attorney Meg Curran, former assistant attorney general Paul Roberti, who worked in that office for 17 years and Herb DeSimone, an attorney who has represented Providence and Jamestown. All three commissioners are attorneys. Here’s more on each of them.

Here’s the full release from the George Wiley Center:

Please sign the change.org petition and attend the RI Public Utilities Commission (RI PUC) open meeting this Friday (Dec.20^th) at 9am, 89 Jefferson Blvd, Warwick, RI. The Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission (RI PUC) is a body of 3 appointed commissioners that makes decisions regarding statewide utility issues.

The RI PUC has put on their agenda for Friday a vote on changes to their rules regarding utility termination. These dramatic changes propose weakening the rules that have offered people important protections from having their heat and electricity shut off. Some of the proposed changes include weakening protection for the disabled and seniors, narrowing income eligibility levels, removing protection for the unemployed, and shortening protection in the winter time. They are proposing gutting the rules by cutting 55 pages of crucial rules down to 8 pages of diluted protections. Every year 20-30,000 Rhode Island households experience the loss of utility service due to termination, numbers that are already too high and would increase if the proposed rule changes are accepted.

We need to speak out today to demand that the RI PUC not vote on any rule changes until they have held hearings across the state and in the evening so working families may attend. So far they have only held one hearing at their Warwick location during the working hours of the day and none of the rules have been translated into any language other than English. This is the first time in over a decade that they are attempting to make substantial changes to these rules. Last time, they held hearings in other parts of the state, and this time we request more hearings to assure a democratic process where people who are most affected can participate. Voting to accept the proposed rules would put thousands of seniors, disabled people, people with serious medical conditions, immigrants, children and low-income families at increased risk of being shut-off.

Take a minute today to sign this petition to the RI PUC demanding that they postpone their vote on these harmful rule changes and that they hold accessible hearings across the state. Contact us at georgewileycenterri@gmail.com if your organization is willing to submit an organizational letter that highlights the impact of their proposed rule changes on the people you work with (here is a link to a comparison between the current rules and their proposed rule changes).

Please attend the RI PUC open meeting this Friday, December 20^th, at 9am. It is important that we have a strong presence to pressure the PUC from passing these rule changes. Your attendance will make a difference!

Thank you for signing the petition, for spreading the word and for coming on Friday. Your actions this week are important in the lives of struggling Rhode Islanders for years to come!

December 17, 2013December 18, 2013

Possible vs. probable

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In my last post, I talked about Clarence Thomas and his truly remarkable rise to a position that his father could never, ever have achieved. Indeed, even a slightly older Mr. Thomas would probably not been able to attain such a truly lofty height.

This all sort of gets to the idea of social mobility. If someone were born into conditions like those into which Mr. Thomas was born, how likely is it for that person to improve his level of economic security? Or, how likely is it for someone born into the upper echelons, such as Mr. Thomas’ children (does he have any?) to fall out of the exalted perch onto which she was born?

America has long perpetuated the ideal that everyone can improve their status. This is still true. It is still possible. But how likely is it? Or, how probable is it? And here, I use ‘probable’ in the technical sense of “Probability and Statistics”, the name of a book on my shelf. “Possible” and “Probable” are two very different words, with enormously different implications. The right wing continues to flog the notion of possibility. Sure, it’s possible. It’s possible that I can throw a ball through a solid wall, too. Or that all the air molecules in a room will suddenly rush into one corner and leave the rest of the room airless. But are these events likely to happen? No. According to the technical definition, that means, that they have an extremely low probability of occurring. Could a high school basketball team beat the Celtics? I suppose it’s possible. But the probability of this occurring is darn close to zero. It may not be exactly zero, but it’s probably (!) close enough to be considered zero in any real-world scenario.

Let’s set this up. Suppose you have been put into a situation in which you must choose one of two balls. One is yellow; the other is green. If you choose the correct ball, you will be given $100 million. If you choose the wrong one, you will have to spend the rest of your days working at a minimum wage job. Of course, you don’t know which ball gives the desired outcome, so you have to guess. And hope. And, as any fool knows, you have a 50/50 chance of getting it right. And an equal chance of getting it wrong. In other words, it’s a coin flip.

But let’s say we change the scenario, and introduce a blue ball. But even given the extra ball, there is still only one ‘correct’ choice. One ball will get you the $100M; either of the other two will get you consigned to the minimum wage. What has happened to your chance of success? It has been diminished. It has gone from 1 in 2, to 1 in 3. That is, rather than a 50% likelihood of success, you have a 33% chance.

For the next iteration, we’re back to two colors, red and green. The red ball gets you the $100M; the green results in the minimum wage job. But you have to pick either of the two balls out of a basket in absolute darkness, so you can’t see which ball is which. We’re back to 50/50. But let’s start adding green balls. If we add two more green balls, for a total of three green, one red, your chance of success has been cut in half. It’s now 1 in 4, or a 25% chance of success. Starting to look grim, isn’t it? Now let’s bring the total of green balls up to ten. This is a 1 in 11 chance, and suddenly your chances of success drop below 10%.

This is what tax cuts, cutbacks in social spending, cuts in education have been doing: they have been adding green balls into the system. At least, they’ve been adding green balls into the basket from which those on the lower end of the scale have to choose. At the same time, these policy choices—tax cuts, cuts in social spending, cuts to education—have been adding red balls into the basket from which those born into the upper echelon get to choose. In other words, we’ve been increasing the odds against success for those in the bottom half, while increasing them for those at the top. Put another way, we’ve been rigging the game in favor of those at the top. How would you feel about entering the game with the odds of success sitting at 11 to 1 against you? Would you want to take a chance on winning the $100M if there were a 9o% chance of being consigned to the ranks of minimum wage workers? Kinda stinks, doesn’t it?

This is what I meant in my previous post about my good fortune. I got to pick from a basket that was probably 75% red (good) balls. Yes, I could have failed, made a lot of bad choices, and ended up dropping. But the game was rigged in my favor from the start. Yes, I had to work for what I got, but that does not change the fact that I had an enormous head start over a lot of people.

And that, I think, is the clearest difference between a liberal and a conservative. A liberal recognizes—or never forgets—where she or he started. A liberal is aware that there were, there are always extenuating circumstances. Had Clarence Thomas worked twice as hard, but lived in the wrong place or time, all his effort may have been in vain. A conservative, from what I see, becomes convinced that they made it solely on their own merits. They fail to contextualize their success. They remember the work they put in to getting where they are, and nothing else. Yes, this is not the whole story of the differences between the two, but I think that it may be the single key difference. Clarence Thomas, or Rush Limbaugh, or—the golden example—George W Bush are all convinced that they did it on their own. No one helped them. They don’t think that the stable family environment, or the genes or temperament that put the grit into their belly to succeed was an advantage that, perhaps, other people don’t have. They don’t see that being in a semi-decent school with semi-decent parents who instill values gives them a big leg up on a lot of other people. They forget that they happened to be born at a good time, or a good place.

So conservatives don’t see why other people might need help. Perhaps growing up they did not have the advantage of government assistance (but they did; they just fail to recognize this, or to acknowledge this), so why should other people get this help? So we continue with the aforementioned policy choices—tax cuts, cuts in social spending, cuts to education— and what we’re doing is increasing the number of people who have to choose from the basket of mostly green (bad) balls. Each cut to Head Start, or SNAP, or job training, or education, we’re both adding to the number of green balls and increasing the number of people choosing from this basket. In other words, we’re stacking the deck against them. Such behavior would get you shot in a lot of gambling establishments. Ask Wild Bill Hickok.

If you don’t believe me, here’s some evidence.

http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Economic_Mobility/PEW_Upward%20EM%2014.pdf

Take a look at the chart on page 10 of the report at the link. For someone born into the bottom income quintile, there is more than a 33% chance that they will end up there. For someone born into the top quintile, the odds are over 37% in favor of them remaining. But it’s worse than that. There is a cumulative probability of 60 percent that someone born in the bottom quintile will stay in one of the bottom two quintiles. That is, they will never be above what the lowest 40% of the country makes. That is, they only have a 40% chance of making it to middle class.

BUT: for each percentage point you move up in the scale, your chances of remaining in the top levels goes up. That is, someone born in the 95^th percentile, their chances of staying there are about 75%.

As for where the most people make it, or remain stuck where they are, check out the second link.

http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/

What you find is that the places with single-digit movement from the bottom to the top are largely in the South. You know, the area of the country where low taxes, low union density and small-but-business-friendly government is attracting lots of Good Jobs. Just gobs and oodles of them! Charlotte, North Carolina is a great example of how this works. Remember, MetLife was planning to move several hundred jobs from RI, and a thousand (or more) from the Northeast to Charlotte, that land of opportunity. See! Charlotte attracts Good Jobs! But, per the second link, of the top 50 metropolitan areas in the US, Charlotte is #49 in inter-generational upward mobility. There, only 4% of those born in the bottom quintile can be reasonably expected to reach the top quintile. And note, that means the 81^st percentile. Admission to this is a salary of about $78k per year. We’re not talking about top-flight surgeons, or anything such. We’re talking a solid job, something around what a teacher with ten years experience makes here. So the chance of someone being born into the bottom quintile of ending up with a job with a teacher’s salary is less than 5%, or 1 chance in 20. How would you like to pick from that basket?

As for the idea of talent, well, it ain’t what it used to be. An average student born into a family in the top quintile is several times more likely to graduate college than a bright student born into the bottom three quintiles. What this means is that the uninspired student from wealth is picking from a basket with lots of red (good) balls in it. And even if someone from the bottom 40% does beat the odds and finish college, that’s not the guarantee of success it once was. Average wages for college grads have been falling over the past 10 years, so I don’t want any nonsense about how all people have to do is pull themselves up by their bootstraps and work their way through college, blah, blah, blah.

Is this the kind of country we want? Where most people are pretty much destined to fail?

December 6, 2013December 6, 2013

Photo essay: Fight for $15 at Warwick Wendy’s

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About 50 people, including at least 5 workers, protested outside a Warwick Wendy’s as part of a national day of action. You can watch video of the action here, or check out my pictures below.

December 5, 2013March 14, 2014

Video: Warwick Wendy’s workers protest at their jobs

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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:

December 1, 2013December 1, 2013

Last one in shut the door

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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.

November 27, 2013November 27, 2013

Pope Francis is a progressive

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“Inequality is the root of social ills.” – Pope Francis

On March 13, the day he was first elected CEO of the Catholic Church by its Board of Directors, I posed this question to twitter: “Is Pope Francis a progressive?”

Yesterday the Pope provided pretty conclusive evidence that I was right.

Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.

Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “disposable” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.

54. In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase; and in the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.

In his exhortation, Pope Francis makes direct references to income inequality and how it erodes the social fabric.

When a society – whether local, national or global – is willing to leave a part of itself on the fringes, no political programmes or resources spent on law enforcement or surveillance systems can indefinitely guarantee tranquility. This is not the case simply because inequality provokes a violent reaction from those excluded from the system, but because the socioeconomic system is unjust at its root.

In chapter 4 of his address, he adds:

As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems. Inequality is the root of social ills.

He writes about the concept of “dignified sustenance for all people.”

We are not simply talking about ensuring nourishment or a “dignified sustenance” for all people, but also their “general temporal welfare and prosperity”. This means education, access to health care, and above all employment, for it is through free, creative, participatory and mutually supportive labour that human beings express and enhance the dignity of their lives.

At times, he seems to speak about issues that matter m0st to Rhode Island progressives, like income tax structure and minimum wage:

It must be reiterated that “the more fortunate should renounce some of their rights so as to place their goods more generously at the service of others”

And:

A just wage enables them to have adequate access to all the other goods which are destined for our common use.

These are the principles the Catholic Church in Rhode Island should spend its time and resources advocating for too. This blog again calls on RI Bishop Thomas Tobin to follow the Pope’s lead in abandoning the politics of discrimination in favor of the politics of lifting people up.

November 24, 2013November 24, 2013

Henry Giroux on consumerizing students, class war and ‘Zombie Politics’

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Who is Henry Giroux?

He’s a native Rhode Islander who was a public school teacher in Barrington and is now one of the nation’s leading progressive thinkers on education and other social issues.

In a wide-ranging interview with Bill Moyers, Giroux, whom Moyers describes as “the son of working class parents in Rhode Island” articulates well what I think it means to be a “progressive” – a term yearning to be defined as RI moves into election mode.

“A citizen is a political and moral agent who in fact has a shared sense of hope and responsibility for others and not just himself or herself,” he tells Moyers. “You not only have to have personal freedoms and political freedoms, the right to vote and the freedom the speak, you have to have social freedom … you have to the freedom from want, the freedom from poverty.”

The two leading lefties talk about charter schools, pension politics, hedge funds and consumerismizing students, citizens and prisoners. Through a contact at Brown University, he talks of working with a group of radical working class high school students who convinced him that “every working class urban school in the country should put it’s resources as much as possible into a debate team.”

So if you want to know why the left lacks trust in the charter schools and high stakes tests, or thinks one-sided pension cuts coupled with big, new investments in Wall Street are bad mojo for society … or the bigger, meta-issue of how corporate-controlled capitalism is killing our sense of community, please watch this:

November 17, 2013November 17, 2013

George Vecchione needs to meet Jo-Ann Gesterling

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Jo-Ann Gesterling, a fast food worker, and George Vecchione, a former CEO, have both recently garnered some attention for their respective salaries.

In 2011, Vecchione made $7.88 million as the chief executive of Lifespan, a WPRI investigation revealed recently. Meanwhile, Gesterling helped organize a protest at the Wendy’s in Warwick where she works in hopes of calling the media’s attention to her hourly wage of $8.20 an hour. In other words, Vecchione made almost twice as much in one day (~$30,300) as Gesterling will make all year (~$17,000).

	hourly	weekly	monthly	annually
George Vecchione	$3,788.45	$151,538	$656,667	$7,880,000
Jo-Ann Gesterling	$8.20	$328	$1,421	$17,056

But perhaps it is unfair to compare a free enterprise fast food economy with that of a non-profit, regulated for consumer health. So instead let’s use Wendy’s internal pay grades. At $16.5 million in 2011, CEO Roland Smith made more than twice running Wendy’s as Vecchione made leading Lifespan. Here’s how his salary compares to Gesterling’s:

	hourly	weekly	monthly	annually
Roland Smith	$7,932.68	$317,307	$1,375,000	$16,500,000
Jo-Ann Gesterling	$8.20	$328	$1,421	$17,056

November 16, 2013March 14, 2014

Wingmen: Is RI subsidizing corporate fast food profits?

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Capitalism is great. Except when it’s not.

Even my new-found frenemy Justin Katz seems to agree. “There is a role for government in ensuring that people do not slip through the cracks to that level where they are dying in the streets,” the Koch bros soldier told Bill Rappleye on this week’s edition of NBC10 Wingmen about the minimum wage.

When the minimum wage, about $16,000 a year in Rhode Island, falls below the actual cost of survival, at least $20,000, the public sector makes up the difference. This is how the fast food/big box industry works, or doesn’t, depending on your perspective. Multinational corporations that own fast food chain restaurants make huge profits that are largely subsidized by taxpayers.

“Walmart, which grossed $318 billion in the U.S. last year, provides its workers with technical advice about how to apply for this public assistance. For responsible businesses to subsidize the low wages of their larger competitors is a complete perversion of capitalism.” – Ralph Nader, Wall Street Journal, April 15, 2013.

In Rhode Island, this issue is just about to heat up. Five Wendy’s workers in Warwick joined labor and working class activists in storming their place of employment and demanding better working conditions. The effort was the first front of the Fight For 15, a nationwide movement of fast food workers, aided by the SEIU, who are demanding $15 an hour. More local and national protests are being planned in this drive to organize fast food workers. And several activists groups are planning to protest Walmart on Buy Nothing Day as part of the War on Thanksgiving.

Watch our debate below, and read this post about what our congressional delegation is doing to boost the minimum wage. (And listen to the deafening silence from Katz when Rapp asks him if it’s public assistance that keeps people from dying on the streets!!)

News, Weather and Classifieds for Southern New England

November 14, 2013November 17, 2013

Wendy’s workers on why they want to organize

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A direct action inside a Wendy’s in Warwick today was Rhode Island’s first in the nationwide Fight For 15 effort to unionize fast food workers. But it won’t be the last, organizers said. Expect more local protests and more fast food workers to organize in the weeks and months to comes, they said.

About 30 people entered the Wendy’s on Warwick Ave, including at least five employees, and delivered a list of demands for better working conditions. When the group began chanting, management had police ask the crowd to leave, which they did.

I caught up with two of the Wendy’s employees afterwards:

November 14, 2013

How not to announce permanent austerity

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At a feast, in a white tie and tuxedo, from a golden lectern, after rising from your gilded chair.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron shows us an example of the wrong way.

Regardless of where you stand on British austerity (hint: it’s not working), you should be able to agree this was an incredibly tone-deaf visual. For more in the study of contrasts, here’s the opinion of a waitress at the dinner.

November 7, 2013November 8, 2013

Life at Lifespan: CEO makes $8 million, nurses told no raises

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Hospital employees are furious that Lifespan CEO George Vecchione made almost $8 million in 2011 the same year management asked labor to forgo already-agreed upon raises because of the struggling economy.

“At the same time hospital administrators were demanding caregivers do more with less, the executive board of Lifespan was authorizing a gluttonous golden parachute that would make even the most brazen Wall Street executive blush,” said Helene Macedo, president of the labor union that represents Lifespan employees, in a press release. “This sweetheart deal is nothing less than outrageous, and every Rhode Islander who cares about quality, affordable health care should be angry by Lifespan’s arrogance.”

Vecchoine was paid a total of $7.8 million in 2011, including a $4.4 million retirement bonus, according to a startling news report by WPRI last night. In July, WPRI reported that revenue was down by 2 percent at Lifespan, which it used to justify a 3 percent decrease in expenses.

Unionized hospital employees and other progressives quickly denounced the revelation.

“We believe that people should be fairly compensated, but this extravagance goes far beyond what any reasonable or responsible non-profit organization should afford, and further demonstrates the executive management’s misplaced priorities,” Macedo said. “It is our hope that the General Assembly will again give serious consideration to legislation that would appropriately curtail these types of lavish deals that sacrifice quality of care for strengthening the ‘one percent.’”

Meanwhile conservatives defended Vecchoine’s lavish salary structure. Justin Katz, of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, blamed government regulation and former RI GOP chairman Giovanni Cicione blamed “leftist economic policies.”

November 1, 2013November 1, 2013

Dirty tricks, broken promises and voter suppression in RI

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The Justice Department is challenging the legality of North Carolina’s and Texas’ voter ID laws on civil rights grounds, and they have good reason. These laws disproportionately disenfranchise people of color, latinos, immigrants, women, queer people, students, seniors, the disabled, and, particularly, the poor – demographics that have a harder time than many getting an accepted ID.

The nation-wide conservative push for this legislation is a politically-motivated attack on universal suffrage and a threat to American democracy. Like poll taxes and literacy tests these laws belong in history books on the Jim Crow South, certainly not in 21^st Century Rhode Island. Unfortunately, House Democratic Party leadership seems to be throwing universal suffrage under the bus for their own electoral advantage against progressive candidates, whose lower-income and minority supporters are less likely to have accepted IDs.

When Gordon Fox was running for reelection last year, he said that voter ID was the biggest complaint he heard from the constituents in his diverse East Side district. So he pledged to do something about it, promising to sponsor new legislation to “include a ‘sunset provision’ in the law.” Last session, that campaign promise went unfulfilled.

But Attorney General Eric Holder’s suit against North Carolina has brought voter ID back into the progressive crosshairs, and the grumbling on Hope Street has begun to grow louder. This year, Gordon may find that his constituents aren’t so easily outfoxed.

It’s well established: voter ID laws effectively disenfranchise many black, latino, female, queer, young, old, disabled, and poor voters who are otherwise eligible but disproportionately lack the right kind of ID. Further, the only “evidence” to justify these laws are anecdotes told by politicians, which are not supported by real evidence. That’s why the laws have been labeled “voter suppression” and likened to the disenfranchisement tactics of Segregation. And it’s no accident that these laws have been the pet project of the tea party and reactionary Republicans across the country in recent years; the disenfranchised groups all tend to vote left. Don Yelton, a Republican Party precinct captain in North Carolina, openly admitted this in a recent interview on the Daily Show. Voter suppression is a political game – and the biggest loser in this game is the ideal of popular government.

Embarrassingly, Rhode Island was the only state in which Democratic Party politicians passed this sort of voter suppression law, and it has made us into a right-wing talking point. When Fox passed this law, he even rejected a personal appeal from the chairwoman of the national Democratic Party.

Worse, against popular pressure and his very own campaign promises, earlier this year Fox actually succeeded in revising the law to make it harsher!

The Rhode Island Progressive Democrats of America (RIPDA) collected more than 1,800 signatures on a petition for the repeal of the Voter ID law. According to RIPDA’s Sam Bell, after collecting these signatures they met with one of the Speaker’s legal advisors, who arranged a meeting with Fox for January of this year. This was a “promise he refused to honor,” Bell regrets. When the repeal bill came up, RIPDA, the NAACP, the ACLU and other pro-voting groups put together a strong testimony at the hearings.

In spite of this overwhelming support for a full repeal of the draconian law, Fox offered what initially seemed to be a compromise bill far to the right of the sunset he had pledged to introduce: the law would be frozen in its 2012 form, and the even more onerous requirements scheduled to come on line in 2014 would be dropped. As Bell recounts, “although we [the pro-repeal groups] were severely disappointed, we felt it was best to support this holding action.”

This, it turned out, was a tragic mistake. In a cowardly political maneuver, House leadership decided to keep the amended version of the bill secret until the minute before it would be voted on, leaving the members of the Judiciary Committee and the public no time to read the actual text. And with good reason: the revised bill included a provision that sharply tightened voting restrictions. With the revisions, not only would fewer forms of ID be accepted than in 2012—fewer forms of ID would be accepted than under the original law’s much tighter 2014 limits! Such a draconian bill would never have passed if the democratic process had been respected, so Fox and his friends resorted to trickery.

In a display of brazen dishonesty, leadership portrayed the amended bill as just a “freeze” of the current law. This story seemed plausible. Several committee members were visibly furious about how weak this leadership-described “freeze” compromise was. “This sucks!” exclaimed Representative Joe Almeida. But the leadership neglected to inform the Judiciary Committee about the part that clearly “sucked” much more: the provision they’d snuck in to dramatically increase voting restrictions. Thanks to the leadership’s deception, even strong opponents of voter ID on the Judiciary Committee ended up inadvertently voting for this assault on our basic democratic rights.

What makes the voter suppression law so valuable to Gordon Fox that he’s willing to lie to defend it?

In most states, Republican politicians support voter ID measures in order to disenfranchise their Democratic opponents’ voting base. The same partisan politics clearly aren’t at work here in deep-Blue Rhode Island, but perhaps a similar motive is behind the law nonetheless.

Consider this: in the upcoming Democratic Party primary campaign for governor, the conservative party establishment is expected to get behind state Treasurer Gina Raimondo, whose voting base will be heavily rich and white – demographics likely to have driver’s licenses. Raimondo’s chief opponent may be Providence Mayor Angel Taveras. With many of his black, latino and low-income supporters turned away at the polls, Taveras would be skating on a broken ankle. A strict voter ID law is a serious advantage for Raimondo and other establishment Democratic Party candidates, and a serious disadvantage to progressive, insurgent challengers. The upcoming gubernatorial race is just one example of the benefits of voter suppression for conservative incumbents; these candidates will have a much easier time getting re-elected if they disenfranchise large blocs of their progressive challengers’ voting base. Fox and his friends – at the expense of universal suffrage – are playing a Republican political game in a Blue State: they are refusing to play fair.

But the Speaker can’t outfox his constituents this time. If Gordon Fox wants to serve the interests of his racially diverse, progressive constituents, he needs to fulfill his campaign promise of sponsoring a sunset to this odious law. And to prove that he and the Party leadership aren’t playing a vicious game of disenfranchisement for political advantage, the sunset will need to be a fast one: the law must be fully and permanently repealed before the next election cycle.

If the Speaker has a change of heart and pledges to support the repeal of the voter ID law at the beginning of the upcoming session, the progressive will gladly work with him to restore voting rights in the Ocean State. But if he hesitates, he’ll find himself up against a coalition much larger, much more militant, and much more pissed off than last time.

Voter ID is the greatest threat to the right to vote in this state in over a hundred years. Rhode Islanders historically haven’t taken very kindly to being taxed without being represented. Gordon Fox would do well to remember that.

October 18, 2013

Comic explores the flawed humanity of Ayn Rand

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Few figures of the 20th Century are as polarizing as Ayn Rand, whose philosophy Objectivism, was outlined in her two most famous novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Objectivists are Libertarians on steroids, seemingly devoid of human compassion, yet many Christians and Catholics embrace Rand’s moral absolutism, despite her elevation of selfishness to virtue.

Now graphic novelist Darryl Cunningham has released, for free, an extraordinary webcomic biography of Rand, which examines her philosophies through the lens of her biography. Cunningham sees Rand as a woman drowning in contradictions. Describing her ideal as “the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute” she went on to surround her self with a cult like following of slavish devotees.

It would have been easy for Cunningham to simply skewer and lambast Rand and reduce her to a parody of John Galt or Howard Roark, the heroes of her novels, but Cunningham is more subtle than that. He uses a scalpel rather than an axe to dissect Rand’s life and philosophies, rendering a portrait of Rand that will anger her devotees but humanize her somewhat in the eyes of her critics.

Check out some sample art and panels below and read the full 68 page comic here.

October 15, 2013October 15, 2013

Movie Review: ‘Inequality for All’ this Friday!

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The people who most need to see and understand director Jacob Kornbluth‘s newest movie Inequality for All, (for instance everyone involved with the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity,) will at best ignore it, and at worst launch into incomprehensibly obtuse “critiques” based on small, inconsequential details. This is a shame, because not only does the film’s star and presenter, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, outline the history and scope of the escalating crisis of economic inequality, he also opens some possible avenues towards a solution, and even offers up the possibility of optimism.

At 85 minutes the film is snappy and filmed with bright video crispness and perfect sound. Pleasing animations illustrate the statistical analysis, and should be familiar to anyone who has seen Reich cover these ideas on YouTube. What this seamless presentation style does is lower all barriers between the audience and Reich, allowing us to concentrate on the man and his ideas.

Such a technique would be disastrous if the the man at the center of the effort were a boring, dry academic. Fortunately Reich is a powerful, commanding speaker with a dexterous command of the facts and figures needed to make his case. Reich has Fairbanks disease, which is the cause of his diminutive stature (he stands under five feet tall.) This and other biographical details are woven into the movie’s narrative for two reasons. One is to present Reich as a figure we can relate to. Far from simply being an entitled Ivy League academic and Rhodes Scholar (which he is, after all) Reich portrays himself as a man of the people. He was always that kid who was too small and bullied by his peers. He comes from blue collar roots: his father sold dresses and his mother help at the shop. He is unashamedly pro-union.

See the Rhode Island premiere of this movie Friday, 4pm, at the Avon Theater on Thayer St.

The other reason to concentrate on Reich as a person is that the story of economic inequality in America is also Reich’s story. Reich has been fighting this battle against economic disparity for over thirty years. At one point, near the end of the movie, Reich allows himself a bit of bitter reflection, wondering if his entire life has been a failure. After all, he has been ringing the bells of doom for decades, and his ideas and policy solutions have been ignored, even as the prophesied doom strikes us, over and over again.

The film detours at times off Reich and onto a collection of Americans who are living under the burden of our current economic inequality. We all know the stories. Families where both parents work full time jobs only to barely scrape by and accrue nothing in the way of concrete savings or any hope of a happy retirement. These people are taxed at more than 30% of their income, even as the very wealthy are paying taxes in the range of 11-15%. Under such a system are dreams being crushed even as the very wealthy end up with more money than they can possibly spend.

As Reich explains part way through the film, the economy right now is doing great, but the middle class and the poor are not feeling the effects. In the current economic boom, it’s a good time to be the 1%, the rest of us merely endure.

The problems our world experiences due to economic inequality are exacerbated by the effect such money has on our politics. A beleaguered and uninformed middle class can be easily manipulated into believing that the cause of all our problems is not due to a structural defect in the way we regulate our economy, but because of immigrants stealing our jobs, terrorist Muslims infiltrating our society, or as a punishment from God for allowing gay marriage and atheism.

Meanwhile the very rich use their money to buy the favor of candidates, paying lobbyists to convince legislators to pass changes to the laws that favor making the rich even richer, giving them more power with which to warp the system. This is part of what Reich calls the Vicious Cycle, and it won’t be enough to simply do away with Citizens United, we need to reduce the power of the 1% to unduly impact the political system, and this means taxing their wealth and modifying economic incentives.

There is no such thing as a free market. All markets operate by the rules we, as a society, put in place. We have the ability to modify rules when certain people, who are infinitely inventive and always looking for loopholes that lead to wealth, break or game the system. At that point it is important to close loopholes and erect barriers to such exploitation. Markets work best when they are managed and planned, just as managed and planned farms work better than wild fields for generating food.

Inequality for All is based on Reich’s 2010 bestseller Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future and won a U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Achievement in Filmmaking at the Sundance Film Festival. It premieres in Providence on Friday, October 18th at the Avon Cinema on Thayer St. RI Future, the Economic Progress Institute and other progressive organizations in the Ocean State are holding a special screening at 4pm, followed by a conversation about the film at the English Cellar Ale House, 165 Angell, just off of Thayer.

After this special performance the film will be at the Avon for at least an entire week’s worth of showtimes.

Please feel free to contact Economic Progress Institute communications director, Sarah Anzevino at sarah@economicprogressri.org or at 401-456-2751.

October 7, 2013

How the Koch brothers planned and parsed the shutdown

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It’s not hyperbole to say the Koch brothers and the tea party are systematically working together to defund the American government. According to an article in the New York Times, that’s exactly how the government shutdown happened: wealthy Republicans, well-financed Super PACS and stink tank leaders got together with tea party members and planned it out at the beginning of President Obama’s second term in office.

“I think people realized that with the imminent beginning of Obamacare, that this was a critical time to make every effort to stop something,” former Ronald Reagan staffer and friend Edwin Meese told the New York Times.

According to the very insightful Times article:

Groups like Tea Party Patriots, Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are all immersed in the fight, as is Club for Growth, a business-backed nonprofit organization. Some, like Generation Opportunity and Young Americans for Liberty, both aimed at young adults, are upstarts. Heritage Action is new, too, founded in 2010 to advance the policy prescriptions of its sister group, the Heritage Foundation.

The billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, have been deeply involved with financing the overall effort. A group linked to the Kochs, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, disbursed more than $200 million last year to nonprofit organizations involved in the fight. Included was $5 million to Generation Opportunity, which created a buzz last month with an Internet advertisement showing a menacing Uncle Sam figure popping up between a woman’s legs during a gynecological exam.

The Times even dug up a a Defunding Obamacare Toolkit that was put together for astroturfing (astroturfing is when in politics something appears to be a grassroots effort but it is really being funded and formulated by powerful political players).

It seems Justin Katz got some material from the toolkit for our appearance on 10 News Conference this weekend. I asked him if we both agreed that everyone should have insurance and he replied that everyone should have health care (3:00) but not necessarily insurance. Here that is, right on page 11 of the toolkit, right under “Suggested Responses to Congressional Offices & Members of the Press about Defunding Obamacare.”

October 1, 2013October 1, 2013

Public or private, big launches can overload servers

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Justin Katz, who is avowedly anti-government, is seemingly fighting off a case of the giddies as he reports that “HealthSourceRI, Rhode Island’s ObamaCare exchange,” is overloaded or offline.”

Katz made the somewhat bold proclamation that “in private-sector companies, people lose their jobs and life savings when they crash [servers] at the word ‘go.'” Katz makes his point by using the skydive from space (sponsored by Red Bull) in which millions watched online as an example of the private sector pulling things off without a hitch.

Apparently Katz doesn’t play video games, or he would know that Rockstar Games is working on ‘GTA Online’ server issues. In what can only be described as the most successful video game of all time, with sales of over one billion dollars last month, Rockstar is today launching Grand Theft Auto Online, and encountering bugs, overloaded servers, and more. Writer Dave Their, who at the time of his writing had not been able to creat a character yet, runs some of these problems down:

Occasional “Rockstar Cloud Servers Unavailable” error message
Freezing sometimes while loading into first race in GTAO with “waiting for other players” on the screen
Intermittent “Failed to Host a GTA Online Session” error messages
Race Corona (start area, marker) occasionally not showing up for first race
Errors saying “Timed out when matchmaking for a compatible GTA Online Session to join”
Occasional “Failed to start job” errors
General issues with the Social Club site and Social Club features (slow loading, failed logins, emails not arriving, etc)

In government or private sector, things can’t always go as planned. In any kind of major systems launch, there are going to be problems. Justin Katz, in not realizing this essential fact, is displaying a lack of business savvy.

September 29, 2013September 30, 2013

Coach makes 26 times what childcare providers earn

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The income gap between those who entertain the affluent and those who provide childcare services for poor and middle class parents and their children is massive, according to the Providence Journal. By way of comparison, URI basketball coach Danny Hurley’s state subsidy is more than 26 times larger than what the average community-sponsored childcare provider earns.

Hurley earns $600,000, Politifact RI confirmed, making him the highest paid state employee. Earlier in the week, a page 1 story compared the starting salaries of teachers to the childcare providers who will most certainly earn a little bit more if and when they sign their union cards.

If you read really, really far down into that story, you’d have learned that the average pay these providers earn is $20,028.86.

According to the Providence Journal:

The state paid the licensed childcare providers $23,028.86, on average, last year, in amounts that varied from the $224 paid to a woman on Hunts Avenue in Pawtucket, to the $76,991 paid the top-earner.

It would appear that many of the people paid by the state to take care of other people’s children are, themselves, poor enough to qualify for financial assistance from the state and federal government.

The ProJo has dedicated a lot of time and energy to these childcare providers, many of whom it reports are poor. Why? The editorial page won’t run anything from advocates of the organizing efforts and the news coverage reads as if it was reported by Fox News (I would absolutely positively welcome any disinterested parties to weigh in on this).

The Providence Journal isn’t the only well-heeled local organization to take an intense interest in this unionization effort. So has the Freedom for the Prosperous, a public-sector despising local think tank that purports to care for Rhode Islanders economic well-being. By way of comparison, I would love to know how much both of these two groups have invested in their campaigns to call attention to 600 people who earn on average $20,000 getting a raise.

Whether it’s how much we pay a basketball coach, how much childcare providers earn, or why the ProJo and the Freedom for the Prosperous spend their time and money on certain topics, it’s all evidence that modern American capitalism seems to reward making more money rather than adding value to the community.

Ed note: For clarity, I think Danny Hurley is both an awesome basketball coach and well-worth $600,000 a year to Rhode Island taxpayers. I passionately believe the childcare workers who take care of poor and middle income children have among the most crucial roles in our community – they are helping out with the kids who have a high likelihood of falling through the cracks and every additional penny we invest in this function will reap huge though often invisible dividends for taxpayers AND the citizenry.

September 13, 2013September 14, 2013

This is what the good old days looked like

xmas1936 — Photograph by Russell Lee, for the Farm Security Administration.

The picture to the right is called “Christmas dinner in home of Earl Pauley near Smithfield, Iowa…” This is Christmas for a farm family in Iowa in 1936. This is the world that conservatives call the ‘good old days’.

This is the sort of country conservatives believe we should have. Again.*

This was the age before Social Security, before Medicare, before welfare, before government regulation. This is a farm family. They worked hard–so hard that you and I probably cannot begin to conceive of how hard they worked. I’ve done farmwork, but it was mechanized, and it was still damn hard. So this family worked hard. There was no unemployment insurance. These were not urban welfare queens. They had not made bad choices, unless trying to run a farm should be considered a bad choice. They were not coasting, using the safety net as a hammock, because there was no safety net.

I assume the family in the picture is living on its farm. A lot of families lost their homes in the period 1929-1936 because they couldn’t pay the mortgage. Farmers in particular lost their land because their crops died in the field–if they grew in the first place–because of a stretch of drought that lasted several years, and that led to the Dust Bowl. My grandmother lived through the Dust Bowl in Kansas. Her stories were horrific.

You need to look at this and remember that this is the world that conservative politicians want to bring back. They want to kill all the social programs that were created as a result of the Great Depression. Conservatives want people who lose their jobs, through no fault of their own, to be pushed down to the sort of life that you see in this picture. They want people without work to fall into the sort of poverty that you see here. They may not realize what would happen if we follow their policies and gut social programs and all assistance to anyone but the wealthy. They may not realize what the implications of their policies will be, but the picture gives you a graphic example of the world that conservatives want to re-create.

Oh no! they proclaim. Getting rid of all this government will release the job creators, and they will create jobs! For everyone!

Bull.

The job creators at the time of this photo were fully unleashed. They were barely regulated. They were lightly taxed. And yet the people in this picture were living the way you see. Dirt floor. Bare plank walls. Where was the magic of the market? It didn’t solve the problems then. It didn’t help the people you see here. Rather, the people you see got to the condition you see because of the lack of regulation, and the lack of government support, and the low tax burden on those at the top of the economic pyramid.

The unfettered might of the market did nothing to help the people you see here. In fact, those with money shrieked that these people had to be left on their own, to starve if necessary. Any attempt to interfere would destroy prosperity. In fact, any interference by the government was immoral. But even a casual glance at this picture will tell you that any prosperity this family had ever known had been destroyed some time ago, and all because of the magic of the market. The only thing immoral was the sanctimonious attitudes of the upper echelons who let families live like you see in the picture.

If you read Friedman’s Monetary History of the United States, you will see that he talks about a seemingly endless series of economic crises, starting in the 1870s and carrying through to the Great Depression. That’s a period of 50-60 years, and there were three acute recessions and at least one depression (depending on how you define the downturn that began in 1873), and the last depression was so bad we call it Great. This averages to almost one crisis every fourteen years; the ‘teens of the Twentieth Century were marked by the Great War, so it’s difficult to compare this to ordinary periods.

One crisis per generation.

This is what the magic of the market created. A downturn every 14 years on average. Just about every generation was hit by a very nasty downturn, all in a period when there was no one to help. Private charity? Private charity is only viable during a period of economic expansion; when unemployment is above 10%, there simply aren’t enough people with enough money to make private charity effective. That’s why you have a family going through an experience like the one in the picture. Because people of the time relied on private charity.

And these were crises without unemployment assistance, food stamps, housing subsidies, with no government assistance whatsoever. People caught without work for six months or a year or three years had nothing to rely on, but they still couldn’t get jobs. Talk to people who lived through the Depression, quickly, while they’re still alive. They will all tell you, there was no work to be had.

And, btw, Friedman’s thesis that the Great Depression could have been avoided has been shot full of holes by our current situation. Friedman claimed that the Fed could have solved the problem through looser monetary policy. Since 2008/9, the Fed has been doing just that, pumping huge amounts of money into the economy in any way possible. And the same conservatives who howled about FDR have been howling about Bernanke. Has the policy worked? Well, we didn’t have a depression, at least not one like our grandparents lived through, but ask a recent college grad how easy it is to find a job. Look at the unemployment rate. So Friedman was a quarter-right at best. Monetary policy alone cannot solve the economic problems we faced in the early 1930s, nor the problems that we are experiencing in the early 2010s

Nor can the magic of the market create prosperity for all, except for relatively short periods. If capitalism produced a crisis every 14 years, that means if you were fortunate enough to graduate into an economic expansion, you should expect a downturn by the time you hit 40. Then maybe you’ll benefit from the upturn by the time you hit 50. Of course, by then you will have lost five or ten of your prime wage-earning years. So how are you supposed to save for retirement?

So look really hard at this picture. Think of it the next time you hear someone claim that we need to unshackle the job creators. Think of it and remember that the Titans of Industry screwed it up in the 1920s, and the 1900s, and the 1890s, and the 1870s…that’s a lousy track record. The Titans of Industry created the world you see in the picture.

*This is an incredibly harsh statement. I do not ascribe malign motives to sincere conservatives. I am not saying conservatives are evil people who wish misery on others. However, ideas have consequences; we have a moral obligation to understand the ramifications of our policies and of what we advocate for society. In this, I believe, the conservatives fail. Perhaps this is because they do not understand history; but a point is reached where there must be willful ignorance of what they advocate. History is so very, very clear, if you realize that there was history before WWII, or even before 1970. I keep coming back to this, but it continues to be true: we tried it their way. It did not work. Most of human history has been a long, dreary experiment in laissez-faire markets. The outcomes were horrible; look at this picture.

And if free markets or government regulation or interference or high taxes didn’t cause the situation in this picture, what did? They have no real answer for that question.

So yes, I realize I am making a terribly provocative statement; but the point stands. If we follow their advice, this is where we will end up. Again.

September 6, 2013September 7, 2013

How significant is food stamp fraud in RI?

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WPRI wants you to believe that, “Food stamp fraud is a ‘significant problem’ in Rhode Island.”

“That,” the TV news station reports, “was the message U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha sent Thursday when he announced that nine people are facing criminal charges for allegedly defrauding the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program out of more than $3 million.”

As a point of fact, that wasn’t the message of the U.S. Attorney yesterday. The actual message was that nine people had scammed the system. Here’s how the Providence Journal began its story on the same exact event:

“A two-year federal investigation into food-stamp fraud has resulted in nine merchants involved with five convenience stores in the city being charged in connection with the theft of more than $3 million from the program designed to provide food to many of the state’s neediest residents.”

Less sensationalized, but more accurate.

Food stamp fraud is far more of a political tool of conservatives to smear social services than it is a legitimate social problem. Here in Rhode Island, a recent analysis by right-leaning gubernatorial candidate Ken Block indicated that the actual rate of fraud was less than the national average.

As , “Providence Rep. Maria Cimini, who coordinates the SNAP outreach program at URI, said the national fraud rate for the program known as food stamps is between 1 and 3 percent. Block’s report indicates the fraud rate in Rhode Island is ‘one half of 1 percent,’ she said.”

That’s far below the national average. For more on how the right wing overstates food stamp fraud, Chris Hayes of MSNBC filed this recent report.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here’s how the “food stamp fraud” fraud works:

A news organization finds an outlier abusing the system. The most popular example this summer was when FOX News interviewed this southern California surfer that uses food stamps. The FOX segment indicated that the man drives a Cadillac SUV and surfs everyday, but the San Diego Union Tribune learned that neither was true.

Then, you simply met the right wing outrage machine take over. I’d be real surprised if John DePetro doesn’t think food stamp fraud is most pressing issue in Rhode Island this morning. On the web, Ken Block, pounced on the opportunity yesterday, posting to his Facebook page, “If those who defraud spending programs get nothing more than a slap on the wrist, there is no deterrent value and the frauds will not only continue – but they will grow.” And, “This sort of vigilance is required for every spending program.”

Here’s a handy primer for dealing with those who traffic in the food stamp fraud talking point.

Fraud, of any kind, is not good. But neither is being penny wise and pound foolish. A better strategy for Rhode Island would be to identify how many people are eligible for the SNAP program but don’t utilize it.

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