This is Greenwich Bay and Greenwich Cove, to its right, from the bell tower atop East Greenwich Town Hall. Click on the picture to see a larger version. (Photo by Bob Plain)
People constantly tell me how unpopular it is to agree with our governor. Well, I couldn’t agree more and I couldn’t care less!
He may not always offer me a good quote, but Rhode Island has done pretty well under his tenure given the circumstances he inherited. I’ll take that. He seems almost allergic to political calculations, but he almost always makes decisions based on reason and a sense of morality. I’ll take that too.
I’m not necessarily prone to like any politicians – even the ones I find myself philosophically aligned with – but I like Linc.
This morning he impressed me with the way he answered a question about why the Ocean State always fares so poorly when pro-business entities rank states on their business friendliness.
“I take issue with that,” Chafee told Liz Burke of WPRO. “…Rhode Island is the best place to do business. When you factor everything in, the quality of life we have here … you just here it from so many people, this is where they want to live this is where they want to raise their families.”
It’s true! If it’s quality of life that matters to you, Rhode Island is the place to be.
It’s as beautiful here as anywhere, and pound for pound we have easily the most gorgeous coastline in the country, next to only Hawaii. And our cuisine – with all our top notch restaurants and nearby local farms – can’t be matched by any other state. And it’s not just the fancy restaurants that are great in the Ocean State … I’ll bet 95% of the Rhode Islanders reading this are within a football field of better pizza than anywhere in the entire midwest*!
Here in reality, few people locate their businesses based entirely on the cost of doing it, and just as few do so based entirely on the lifestyle it provides. Most, of course, do so based on a mix of both. When you look at both – or, in other words, the full picture – Rhode Island is actually a really good place to locate your business.
Rhode Island’s got an inferiority complex when it comes to its ability to compete – which, of course, becomes our biggest obstacle to competing. Think how infrequently we read good things about Rhode Island from the Providence Journal editorial page – probably the most common place for a prospective business owner to glean the lay of the land from. This isn’t because it’s all bad here, it’s because we have a very conservative editorial board covering a pretty liberal state.
I think a lot of the reasons we’ve got an inferiority complex about our state’s ability to compete is we are still using the metrics set by Don Carcieri and Al Verrecchia. We’d do better to gauge it on the metrics of Linc Chafee and Allan Tear.
*excludes Chicago-style pizza
Lots of people would like Lincoln Chafee to succeed, myself included. But these are times that force leaders to stretch.
That, I haven’t seen.
When the governor ceded power to Gina on the pension issues, (GINA,GIVE BACK THAT DIRTY ENRON MONEY,) it spoke volumes about his leadership.
Rhode Island is, indeed, beautiful. He should know; he and his economic class own a good chunk of it. So, where is the intensity of his messaging?
Also, he seems to be waiting by the phone for someone from the Obama administration to tell him his next move.
He could change many perceptions just by articulating and advancing his own. After all, he put himself in the public forum to govern.
Linc Chafee IS governing! I feel continuing the semi-negative vibes here will only make it more likely the next Governor will be far less progressive.
Chafee has indeed taken on the underfunded pension issue even though it jeopardized his base support, started to fix the underfinanced transportation system (avoiing new borrowing) and has sent a “resource team” to RIPTA to keep the system going (so far without any service cuts), taken heat for advocating some aditional taxes which may be needed but few politician would dare to do so. He has addressed problems in the DMV, has appointed some excellent Directors (e.g. DEM), started to reverse the steady decline in support for public higher ed, while taking on the zealots wth regard to immigrant rights, marriage equality, reproductive freedom (think of setting up the health care exchange) and church/state separation. I may disagree on some issues (defunding Channel 36, helping RIDOT’s finances but not RIPTA’s, being too quick to honor the so-called “moral obligation” to pay back 38 Studios bondholders, seeking to abolish the Bureau of Audits…) but on the whole his election as an Independent Governor makes me proud of Rhode Island.
So Raimondo, who didn’t even have a vote on pension reform, gets atttacked daily in this blog as some right-wing lunatic, but Chaffee, who actually signed the Pension reform into law, gets a love letter. Interesting dynamic.
one things is very certain, Gina divided the progressive community. Gee, who benefits the most from that?
So Raimonda is really a right wing manchurian candidate, programned by a texas billionaire through a $2,000 campaign donation, and sent on a amission to split the progressive vote.
I believe we have jumped the shark.