What is a 501c(4), how do they affect local politics?
Speaking on the Senate floor yesterday, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is helping to raise a long overdue conversation in American politics, and it’s closely related to the IRS scandal. The role 501c(4) groups play in politics. Read his speech here, or watch it below (John McDaid of Hard Deadlines has a great piece on it here): [...]
Why master lever abolition should fail, for now
About a month ago, Common Cause RI Executive Director John Marion wrote a great piece here on RI Future explaining exactly why the single party option (aka the “master lever” or SPO) on Rhode Island’s voting ballots is a bad idea, citing a 2006 study by researchers at the Universities of Maryland and Rochester that [...]
End the era of Citizens United in Rhode Island
Tonight, I will deliver this testimony to the House Judiciary Committee: . . . corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members [...]
Why Ken Block Wants To Kill The Master Lever
Ken Block seems to be on a mission to distract Rhode Island from issues that actually matter to our economy. This week it’s the master lever again. Last week it was temporary disability insurance. The week before that it was food stamp fraud. What these issues all have in common, besides being among Block’s favorite [...]
New Treasurer Staffer Looks Like A Campaign Operative
A Smith Hill pol is using the people’s hard-earned money to hire an under-qualified, overpaid staffer. While this might read like the beginning of every single column Ed Achorn writes about the State House, he probably won’t be waxing eloquent on this one. He only spouts off when a union-centric Democrat commits such a transgression. [...]
Why I Am Running
The first question that most folks ask me when I tell them that I’m running for mayor of Woonsocket is, “Are you crazy or just a glutton for punishment?” Well, watching the degradation of our once thriving city certainly drives me nuts, but I don’t think I’m a masochist, so, I guess that that’s a [...]
Dave Fisher To Run for Woonsocket Mayor
Dave Fisher, campaign manager for congressional candidate Abel Collins and former editor at ecoRI.org, announced on a new blog today that he plans to run for mayor of Woonsocket. The site is called Dave Fisher for Mayor of Woonsocket. “I really believe we can stop the downward slide of the city of Woonsocket by providing [...]
Anchor Rising: Empty Land Being Disenfranchised
Rural areas were over-privileged and now they’re not, so now they’re disenfranchised. This seems to be the gist of Marc Comtois’ Anchor Rising post lamenting the rise of the one-person/one-vote system that helped end centuries of disenfranchisement of urban, nonwhite, poor voters. Marc even has a handy map of the counties of the United States [...]
Quiet Conservatives by Banning Master Lever
Moderate Party chairman and possible gubernatorial candidate Ken Block is out with a new website, masterlever.org, which petitions the Governor and the General Assembly to eliminate the ability to vote solely based on party line (a.k.a., the “master lever”). As a case study for why it should be banned, Mr. Block offers up the 9000+ [...]
Democratic Party Chair Pacheco’s Very Good Letter
The first time I ever voted in a general election, I was down in North Carolina. A few weeks before Election Day, I had lined up a friend to drive me to the polls (Greensboro, NC is a very car-centric city, and no friend to the public transportation user), but health reasons prevented me from [...]
Rhode Island Republicans Want To Lose Elections
After the shellacking on November 6th, political voices across the ideological spectrum called on the Republican Party of Rhode Island to adapt or die. Words like “moderate,” “women,” and “Latinos” were thrown around, often with reckless disregard for their meanings. Appeal to these voters, so the story goes, and the Republicans will regain competitiveness. Now, [...]
Study: Young People of Color Have Political Power
In the days since the election, there has been a renewed attention on our country’s changing demographics, given the overwhelming Obama/Democratic successes among voters of color. The increased margin of support for Democrats among Latino voters was significant enough to cause some GOP leaders to choke on their pretzels, and now it appears that a [...]
Voters Reject Libertarian Lie of Self-Made Millionaire
The 2012 elections have been seen by many as a bold refutation on the part of voters to extreme religious conservatism: marriage equality made big strides in four states, women’s rights took a small step forward as the Senate is now comprised of 20% women and reproductive rights were supported as voters saw fit to [...]
Don’t Rule Moderates Out
In a year where there were only four candidates across the state marked as belonging to the Moderate Party on the ballot (most people never saw them and the fifth and sole successful Moderate Party candidate ran in a nonpartisan race), 9249 voters used the so-called “master lever” to vote for the Moderate Party. With [...]
What’s Your Vote Worth? Depends on the Candidate
Now that the election is behind us, let’s take a look at the combined expenditures in Rhode Island’s Congressional races. We all know that a lot of money gets spent on federal elections — according to the Federal Election Commission, the total expenditures for Rhode Island’s Congressional races this year was a whopping $9,760,162 — [...]
When Progressives Fight, Progressives Win
In 2008 progressives across America were basking in the warm glow of the nation’s first black president. A breeze of Democratic victories had blown through Congress and the long, dark night of the Bush era had given way to the rising sun of the Democratic super-majority. A Democratic executive branch and a bicameral legislative branch [...]
Rhode Island Republican Party On Life-Support
On Election Day 2012, there were 786 candidates for all offices across Rhode Island, from U.S. Senator to Town Sergeant. According to a list provided by the Secretary of State’s office, the make-up was such: 301 Democrats 209 Republicans 116 Independents 4 Moderates 1 Libertarian (Independent) 1 Vigilant Fox (Independent) 154 candidates for nonpartisan offices [...]
Speaking to the Speaker
Winners in political races have it easy. They thank everyone and move forward. The Silver Medalists analyze what went wrong and fade into the shadows. Is it possible to write a post-election column as the loser and not sound self-serving, shrill or sour? I’m going to do my best. From the beginning, this race was about [...]
Reports of Cicilline Death Were Greatly Exaggerated
For nearly his entire first term in Congress, pollsters and pundits have questioned David Cicilline’s chances at re-election. Obscenely low approval ratings (below 20%) in February 2012 had many across Rhode Island and the country sounding the Democrat’s death knell. Along with my union, I supported his re-election — but I have to admit that secretly I held more [...]
Huge Night for Rhode Island Progressives
Brendan Doherty, Mark Binder and even, to some extent, Mitt Romney, all made Rhode Island progressives nervous throughout the 2012 campaign season. But once the campaign was over and the votes were counted, it turned out to be a great election day to be a local liberal. Easily the biggest victory was Congressman David Cicilline [...]
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