Downtown Providence from the Providence River. (Photo by Bob Plain)
The new best political narrative in Rhode Island is also the biggest battle for progressives: Congressman David Cicilline’s reelection battle against Brendan Doherty. Cicilline is among the most liberal legislators from the Northeast and Doherty would be one of the most conservative. That’s the case Democrats will be making these next 54 days, while Republicans will run more of a smear campaign. While the local mainstream media will probably care more about the character issues, we’re betting voters will care more about policy.
We don’t often find opportunity to write this sentence but here goes: there’s truth to what Donna Perry writes in GoLocalProv this morning about their being two very different factions of the Democratic Party at the State House. The blue dog Dems support tax cuts to the rich and retirement benefit cuts for the working class, marriage inequality and voter ID laws, while the progressive wing doesn’t. Which one sounds more like the traditional Democratic Party to you?
Speaking of tax cuts for the wealthy, a new study shows they don’t stimulate growth. Then again, Rhode Island is another study that depicts this trend…
One of the reasons Rhode Island has Democrats that skew to the right is we allow people who are completely out-of-touch with mainstream values like Bishop Tobin to define them.
But the Green Party will be on the Rhode Island ballot this November. This will help David Cicilline and progressives.
Providence Schools Superintendent Susan Lusi is encouraging all the city’s public schools to become charters; so far nine have taken her up on the offer.
Anti-America protests in Egypt, Libya and now Yemen, too.
Today in 1971, the Attica prison riot comes to an end after inmates held guards hostage for four days in a failed attempt to negotiate for more humane living conditions.
“while Republicans will run more of a smear campaign.”
Recalling history is considered a smear campaign?
BIshop Tobin should move back to PA – He is a jerk!
Bob,
While I am running as an Independent because I have plenty of problems with the policies of each of the major parties, the idea that with respect to economic policy, the right wing runs anything but a smear campaign simply cannot be ignored. So here goes:
There may be yet another new study that shows that cutting taxes for the wealthy does stimulate growth, but it’s not as though such analyses, reports, and real-world results have not been known for a long time now.
After their hero-president of the 1980′s raised taxes in order to plug some of the massive shortfalls created by his reckless policies (yes, he did raise taxes, and no — history is not on your side if you try to argue this point with anything besides the lies that are generated by your party), the Congressional Budget Office (“CBO”) has had plenty of occasion during the last couple of decades to report on the damage that is done when the federal government combines regressive tax structures with wildly wasteful spending. The result has been an upward redistribution of wealth that has broken the backs of an enormous swath of this country and, not coincidentally, has so swelled the coffers of the “1%” that we now live in a world where anything that matters (including government) is owned and is rigged.
While there are many aspects of policy we could discuss, there are two points here that are sure to be lost entirely upon the right-wing (mainly because they believe that any analysis that does not mesh with their propaganda is irrelevant — even where that analysis is generated by their own party).
Point #1:
From the moment that extreme right-wing economic policies went into effect about ten years ago, the underpinnings of our economy began to come undone. (I would tell them to go read the reports from the CBO and from the Trustees of the federal Medicare program, but I already know that rather than cloud their minds with anything resembling facts, they instead will figure that recounting the lies enough times will magically transform history into what they have been told it should be.)
While the right wing is fond of saying that “four years later, you cannot pin the nation’s economic woes upon the bush years.” The fact is that “yes, you can.” With an intransigent, extreme-right-wing-controlled congress, our economic policies actually have remained substantially in the bush years. And, as recently as the summer of 2012, the CBO pointed out that a continuation of such policies would, sometime between here and the year 2022, lead to “a level of federal debt that would be unsustainable from both a budgetary and an economic perspective.”
Point #2:
Because the lie-machine from the right relies on the fact that very few people actually will try to look behind their smokescreens, it is lost on a great many people that in the last thirty years, there are exactly two points in history that the CBO and/or the trustees of Medicare have had any good news regarding the prospects for the economy and for the health (both economic and physical) of this country — during the Clinton years and during the Obama years.
With help from the Affordable Care Act and the very few policy initiatives that congress has allowed Mr. Obama to implement, the fact is that even in the face of a congress that is hell-bent on destroying him because of their bigoted and medieval mentalities, Mr. Obama has managed to set this country on a track that will in fact help to revive our economy.
Given what he is dealing with, that is no small feat.
Imagine what he could do without the right wing lie-machine standing in his way.
David
Huge OOPS (missed it on the proof-read):
The second paragraph above should read as follows:
There may be yet another new study that shows that cutting taxes for the wealthy does NOT stimulate growth, but it’s not as though such analyses, reports, and real-world results have not been known for a long time now.
David
“The blue dog Dems support tax cuts to the rich and retirement benefit cuts for the working class, marriage inequality and voter ID laws, while the progressive wing doesn’t.”
I don’t understand how you can make these two groupings, as if these are the only two groups of the party.
“One of the reasons Rhode Island has Democrats that skew to the right is we allow people who are completely out-of-touch with mainstream values like Bishop Tobin to define them.”
I also don’t understand why you are so against a “big tent” democratic party? I’m personally mixed on the issue on abortion because it is a little complicated (just like most Americans – publicreligion.org/research/2011/06/committed-to-availability-conflicted-about-morality-what-the-millennial-generation-tells-us-about-the-future-of-the-abortion-debate-and-the-culture-wars/)
I think it is disingenuous that you are claiming to know what a traditional democrat is or isn’t. This blog has been increasing this definitive attitude about what a democrat is or isn’t and I really think you need to take a step back and realize that Democrats as well as progressives, are not defined at all.