One of the most interesting aspects of the Washington Post op/ed about Gina Raimondo is not that another fiscal conservative has lauded the pension-cutting treasurer for taking benefits away from retirees, it’s that Raimondo invoked progressive politics in her defense of balancing Rhode Island’s pension problems squarely on the backs of public sector retirees.
“That was my mantra the whole time: Progressives care about public services,” she is quoted as saying in the piece.
I certainly don’t recall that being Raimondo’s mantra the whole time. I recall her mantra being that she had to investigate the actuarial numbers closely before determining a policy proscription, and that she wanted to do what was fair.
Part of the progressive community’s mistrust of Raimondo stems from her penchant for tailoring her message to different constituencies. Last year, I witnessed first hand her tell a chamber of commerce crowd in the morning that Rhode Islanders needed them to lobby legislators to cut pensions because Rhode Island had the most unfunded system in the country. Later in the day, she told a union crowd at a Portuguese American Club that fairness was her top concern, and she still didn’t know what the reforms would look like.
To that end, I have been requesting an interview since the early spring about how Raimondo’s pension efforts fit with her assertion that she is a progressive and still haven’t heard back one way or another.
We’d like to hear more about Raimondo’s mantra about what progressives care about, and hope she agrees to talk to this organization about that topic.
I also found it interesting that Ted Nesi, who never misses an opportunity to talk up the treasurer, described the author of the piece as being “relentlessly centrist.”
This isn’t quite Fred Hiatt’s reputation. In 2009, Harper’s ran a story about Hyatt’s attempts to “push the WaPo editorial page to the Neocon right.” And in 2010, Media Matters (which, like this website, has a decidedly progressive bent) posted an article titled, “The myth of the ‘liberal’ Washington Post opinion pages.”
Here’s how that piece described Hiatt:
Finally, we come to Fred Hiatt, the so-called “traditional liberal in all matters domestic.” He’s the kind of “traditional liberal” who thinks health care reform is too expensive — all while disregarding liberal reform proposals that would reduce the cost. The kind who distorted Barack Obama’s comments while praising John McCain’s strongly held “principles” on issues on which McCain had shifted and displayed inconsistency. The kind who allows Will to mislead readers about climate change, over and over again. And Hiatt, of course, opposed a special prosecutor examination of Bush terror practices. (Argue, if you like, that applying the rule of law to government officials is not a domestic matter — but I don’t buy it.)
A few of the guest op-eds published by Hiatt are worthy of mention. Last summer, the Post published an op-ed in which Martin Feldstein falsely claimed that Barack Obama supported “a British-style ‘single payer’ system in which the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are salaried.” When the inaccuracy of Feldstein’s claim was pointed out by, among others, Jon Chait and Paul Krugman, Hiatt refused to run a correction. Instead, he has rewarded Feldstein by publishing two more of his op-eds attacking “Obamacare,” Feldstein’s opposition to which may have something to do with his service on the board of directors of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.
Hiatt published two op-eds by Sarah Palin last year, one of which repeated several already-debunked claims about climate change. The Post dragged its feet in running a response to Palin, doing so only after running a Palin letter to the editor.
Last October, Hiatt handed insurance company lobbyist Karen Ignagni op-ed space to tout a deeply-flawed “study” her organization commissioned — a study the Post’s news pages had already debunked. In August, Hiatt ran an op-ed defending the “death panels” lie. Last spring, Hiatt published an op-ed by Charles Murray, darling of the “white nationalist” VDARE crowd. And just this month, the Post actually commissioned a column baselessly asserting that liberals are more condescending than conservatives.
It seems the real reason The Washington Times has never been able to make any money may be that its hard-right editorial stance is redundant in a city that already has Fred Hiatt’s Washington Post.
Raimondo, Engage RI and others choose to “protect” public services by whacking the reitrements of working people instead of ending corporate tax breaks or asking the welathy elite to pay their fair share. there’s not a damn thing progressive about that.
Gina’s constituency is not far from that of Rick Santorum, and neither are her politics, but for the fact that she may be more wired into Wall Street and more cynically savvy.
She’ll use her personality and will to distort ideas for a largely uninformed, frightened, and generally bigoted crowd (who want to be led around by their noses, anyway, as long their ethnic wagons are tightly circled and the jobs and bond opportunities go to them,) and she’ll shy away from anyone who might be able to expose her clearly self-interested economic positioning. All altruistically done in the name of “markets.”
Let’s face it. We’ve seen this phenomenon before– in the ‘thirties.
Gina won’t talk to RIFuture because she has too much to lose here with subjective criticisms by RI residents so she keeps it objective….she sticks to the Wash Post where they don’t know the intricacies of RI politics. Distance means ignorance. Her agenda requires that for her to get ahead in polls and in popularity, she must not get involved with ”dirty politicking.” Look at the criticisms she got when she cosponsored a fundraiser for Cicilline….This is what RAimondo wants to avoid….so she sticks to the Wash Post…a paper that is broad and does not deal with localized issues….
Gina promotes race to the bottom politics. She is in it to advance the interests of the wealthy financiers. That is all.
In the end of the day, she and her supporters will tout two things to stake her claim to progressivism. They are namely that taking from the middle class is good for the poor and the very fact of her womanhood.
But the first claim is patently false when one looks to see that she never once argued for a repeal of Carcieri’s flat tax, or an increase in the capital gains rate, or any other mechanism by which budgets may be balanced with the help of the wealthy rather than solely at the expense of middle class public servants. The only class in her mind that has to sacrifice is the middle class. We have seen this thinking before. And when she worked for Mitt Romney at Village Ventures, a Bain Capital subsidiary, she had plenty of time to learn about her personal superiority to the unwashed middle class.
The second claim is perhaps unfair in any normal setting, but it was widely utilized in her first campaign for treasurer, and so I bring it up. Lest anyone fool you into considering voting for her because another woman would hold general office, keep in mind that she is no Liz Roberts and that Sarah Palin could claim the same virtue. But as McCain found out, it was not the fact of her womanhood alone that made Hillary Clinton popular, but rather the strength of her accomplishments, intelligence and character.
In the end of the day, Gina can always go make millions more on Wall Street. So why is she here? Because she has her eyes set on the national stage. And they bankroll her. Because they need a farm team to ensure a loyal lapdog on the top for the next bailout or deregulation scheme they want to play. And she’ll be right there cheering it on, and telling you that it will somehow help poor people. They said the same thing before. And yet we keep making the same mistakes. Gina Raimondo is about as progressive as King George III, which is fine if you’re royalty, but not so good for the rest of us.