You may have heard about our recent letter to General Treasurer Gina Raimondo requesting that she return an award from The Manhattan Institute, an extremist right wing group that promotes offensive, ignorant and hurtful positions towards the LGBTQI community, women, minorities, and our environment.
Marriage Equality Rhode Island was among a group of organizations that respectfully asked Treasurer Raimondo to return the award and condemn the hateful positions promoted by the Manhattan Institute. Instead of returning the award, she defended her association with the New York think tank by saying: “Accepting an award from any organization is never an across-the-board endorsement of its leanings.” But that just misses our point.
Organizations like the Manhattan Institute use awards programs for many purposes, including raising money and validating their positions on a range issues to a broader, mainstream audience. A cursory review of the Manhattan Institute’s website will, in fact, lead one to a number of articles and position papers that advance an anti-gay agenda and misogynistic agenda.
As LGBTQ people we know the power in who you will or won’t stand next to you. We know that standing for equality and fairness means refusing to stand next to ignorance and hatred. Raimondo’s close association with this organization could be interpreted by many as implicit acceptance of all their positions, not just those related to public pensions. We have advised the treasurer that those who aspire to political leadership are judged by the company they keep. Principles are worth far more than political accolades.
“[S]he defended her association with the New York think tank by saying: “Accepting an award from any organization is never an across-the-board endorsement of its leanings.” But that just misses our point.
No, she got it exactly. She rightfully doesn’t want to offend those who support her for pension reform and fiscal responsibility by returning an award over unrelated, controversial political issues. Her explanation is perfectly reasonable, you just don’t like it because it doesn’t advance your own single-issue agenda (which I happen to agree with, by and large). Also, accepting an award is not an “association” with an organization, unless you are torturing the word “association” to its breaking point.
I followed your link to a supposed example of the “misogynist” agenda of the group. What it was in actuality was a technical analysis of the often repeated “75%” female pay gap statistic. Apparently, anyone who even wants to question the veracity of that number is a “misogynist” in your view. That kind of outrageous exaggeration is a good example of your own agenda and the lengths to which you will go to advance it. Maybe RIFuture should return this article for redaction of its borderline-libelous accusations.
really sad to see such a swift fall from grace for the treasurer.
Libelous? Really? Who is over-exaggerating now?
The link to the “anti-gay” agenda was certainly on the mark, questioning even the idea that an LGBTQ office at a university would be necessary or even helpful. I’m going to quote here a particularly offensive couple of lines:
“Students in today’s university regularly act out little psychodramas of oppression before an appreciative audience of deans and provosts. The essence of those psychodramas is to force the university to recognize a student’s narrowly defined “identity” through ever more elaborate bureaucratic mechanisms.”
Just the language is offensive, even if you don’t hold a stake in the argument being made on either side. And as for the “misogynistic” agenda part, all you need do is look at the second paragraph to see that the author isn’t just talking about the 75 cent pay-gap:
“Indeed, the 75-cent meme depends on a panoply of apple-to-orange comparisons that support a variety of feminist policy initiatives, from the Paycheck Fairness Act to universal child care, while telling us next to nothing about the well-being of women.”
All these horrible feminist policy initiatives like wanting to get paid the same amount for the same job with the same level of experience, or wanting access to child care facilities for working single parents… terrible stuff. Just the title of the article is single-sided and wouldn’t ever be applied to men in any context I can think of: “Women prefer the mommy track”. Sorry, sounds awfully “misogynistic” to me.
I also fail to see the connection between Ms. Raimondo returning a right-wing neo-libertarian organization’s award and her ability to enact pension reform in Rhode Island. Returning the award would be a non-story for anyone in Rhode Island who doesn’t care about the policies proscribed by The Manhattan Institute. So who is she going to offend by returning the award? The pro-corporate banking community?
While I was at Brown, I didn’t seek the endorsement of the LGBTA organization as I ran for Vice President of the student council. Count me among those who support the current definition of marriage. My opponent called me out on it. I didn’t seek their endorsement not because I was going to be deaf to their concerns but because I thought they wouldn’t be really interested in supporting me.
That was a mistake.
Your link to misogynistic is pretty paltry despite Jake’s protest. only the most left wing of left wingers would call it misogynistic. Most others might simply disagree with the conclusions drawn by the authors. There’s a large gulf in between.
This is typical of the LGBT pro-gay marriage crowd, disparrage and disrespect people who think differently than you do. On RIFuture, there have been a few, read:few, who have been different from this, but this post certainly does not encourage this at all.
I said it’s “borderline libelous,” which means that the accusations have minimal or no basis, but it kind of falls in that “it’s my opinion and you can’t really prove me wrong” zone of inference between fiction and half-truth. Suffice it to say that the “racist” and “misogynist” accusations progressives throw around on here like water balloons at a summer party are quite seriously and have real consequences to people’s reputations, so responsible authors should have some hard evidence before making them.
Raimondo’s point was that every one of her supporters is going to have some positions that are controversial or she disagrees with, but those positions aren’t relevant to the the narrow issue of pension reform, which is why she won the award – not because of some sort of bigotry on her part. If politicians returned donations or refused awards from everyone who held controversial opinions, then they would have no money and no support.
As you can see from the comments above, the Treasurer is in a lot of trouble. Two right wingers are very happy with her stand…and the likely hood of them voting for her, never mind actively going out and campaigning for her are slim. On the other hand, the liberal activists who go out and win elections for Democrats are now doubly ticked off.
Have these esoteric arguments all you want, but when it comes to the politics, the was a major blunder on a part of the Treasurer and when she was offered a life line ( which, to me, seems what she was given) she used it to hang herself with.
Oh well.
More like 99% of the Rhode Island voting population, Democrat or Republican, will never hear about this manufactured controversy or develop a strong opinion on it one way or the other. What matters to people is the economy, unemployment, and Rhode Island’s perpetual financial crisis. Rightfully or wrongfully, she is perceived as having taken responsible steps to correct those problems. She didn’t “hang herself” by not returning some inconsequential award from an organization nobody’s ever heard of. In fact, it is very likely she will be holding higher office in Rhode Island at some point.
“The Manhattan Institute, an extremist right wing group that promotes offensive, ignorant and hurtful positions.”
Why is it surprising that she would be associated with this organization? Why would you believe that Raimondo is not an extremist right wing ideologue herself? Because she is registered as a Democrat………oh please. Look at her actions, look at her background, she is a Plutocrat who is waging war on the middle class.
Why pick on Raimondo for a silly award? There are many democrats who have gone out of their way to use their office powers to object to marriage equality and MERI doesn’t seem to be attacking them. That seems to be more of a problem than Gina Raimondo. Why single out a General Treasurer who has absolutely no authority to effect marriage equality?
Is pension reform even an issue anymore? The reform was passed and it may or may not be the solution. We won’t know for years. The problem for anti-Raimondo forces is that for the first time we elected a politician that took decisive action in what was described as a crisis. She has cast herself in an image that is foreign to Rhode Islanders. You can beat her up over awards and call her all the names in the liberal handbook but you can’t take away the image she has established.
The legal challenges to the pension changes can’t start until the changes go into effect on July 1. On July 2, expect to see massive numbers of retirees file legal challenges to the change in their benefits.
“…….the first time we elected a politician that took decisive action”
WHAT WORLD DO YOU LIVE IN? We have been electing politicians who take decisive actions against the American middle class for more than 30 years.
“……..She has cast herself in an image that is foreign to Rhode Islanders.”
SAY WHAT? She has cast herself as a shill for Wall Street, exactly the same mold as The Don Carcieri, hardly a foreigner.
“The legal challenges to the pension changes can’t start until the changes go into effect on July 1. On July 2, expect to see massive numbers of retirees file legal challenges to the change in their benefits.”
Agreed but it will take years to sort that out. By that time, she may already be governor or senator. Who really knows? For clarification purposes, I don’t know that this was the correct course of action or not. I can only read what’s written and both sides have spent an enormous amount on their spin. If we’re talking about images, who presents a better one, Gina Raimondo or public sector unions?
“Agreed but it will take years to sort that out.”
Here’s the issue… if it takes years for all these individual cases to get sorted out, and the cases are found to be in violation of the law (which I think they will be), there will be a pretty huge sum of money that the state will be required to come up with to pay penalties, interest, and legal fees for all this. And we’re not preparing for the eventuality (dare I say, certainty?).