And so every July 14 the tribal offices, the health center and the daycare at the Narragansett Indian Reservation are all closed. But the public is welcome to the site of the now-infamous Smoke Shop Raid.

They asked me not to shoot video of the ceremony itself (so you’ll have to go next year to see what that’s all about!) but here’s my best attempt to tell the Narragansett’s side of this story:

Don Carcieri’s epic economic fail of investing in 38 Studios may have a silver lining for the local conservative movement he once led. And both Republican candidates for governor are for it, while the Democrats are opposed.

The Providence Journal points out that gubernatorial candidates are split along party lines when it comes to repaying the 38 Studios bond.

Allan Fung said the warnings from Wall Street about fiscal repercussions are overstated and Ken Block, who never met a opportunity to issue a press release he didn’t exploit, railed against “the threats coming from Wall Street insiders of dire consequences for the state if they fail to make good on the 38 Studios bond,” according to the ProJo. Leading Democratic candidates were equally united that the bond should be repaid and Sam Howard wrote about why the bond payment should be made in a post yesterday.

Rhode Island owes $12.5 million on the bond we floated to loan Curt Schilling $75 million to move his unproven and ultimately unsuccessful video game company here from Massachusetts – an economic growth strategy birthed by Don Carcieri, the last politically powerful Republican in Rhode Island. The gamble failed in spectacular fashion when 38 Studios went bankrupt in 2012. Because we took a moral obligation bond rather than a general obligation bond, there is no legal responsibility to pay the bond, though not paying would likely make future borrowing more expensive.

That may be a bad outcome for Rhode Island, but that’s not necessarily a bad outcome for the Grand Old Party in Rhode Island. Best known for espousing 40 years of Democratic failure and seeking to shrink the size of government, damage to the state’s credit rating as a result of not paying the 38 Studios bond would serve both these conservative political objectives. It would also make it more expensive to repair aging infrastructure, which would give the construction industry a nice boost. These are policies pushed by local Democratic candidates that Republicans generally don’t care for.

Rhode Island is the only state in the nation with a law that stipulates bond holders will be paid prior to other obligations when it comes to municipal financing. The general assembly passed that law at the expressed interest of protecting city’s and the state’s credit ratings. Maybe the General Assembly should consider legislation that would prevent Republicans from damaging our credit rating too?

When I was younger and more naive, I wrote a post on these humble pages blaming Don Carcieri for our state’s sudden turn to right-wing politics, austerity, and high unemployment.  I called it “The Carcieri Effect.”  I got quite a bit of flack for writing that.  As critics pointed out, the governor does not have a whole lot of power in Rhode Island, and the real power lies with the General Assembly, especially the House of Representatives.  To a great extent, my critics argued, it was the Democrats in the state legislature who pushed those policies.

They were right, and I was wrong.

What originally led me to think Carcieri was responsible was that 2003, the year he took office, was the year when we turned the corner and began to fall behind.  That really is true.  But something else happened in 2003, something far more important.

Bill Murphy became House Speaker.

A conservative Democrat from West Warwick, Murphy was the man who proposed the tax cuts for the rich and got them passed.  Carcieri may have played a role, but he was not the main factor.

As Steven Stycos wrote in the Phoenix at the time:

Murphy’s election, combined with the victory of Republican Governor Donald Carcieri and the 2000 ascension of state Senator William Irons (D-East Providence) to Senate majority leader (and soon to the newly created position of Senate president) gives Rhode Island its most conservative state leadership in more than a decade.

It was not the Carcieri Effect.  It was the Murphy Effect.

I don’t often have opportunity to agree with Don Carcieri, but I certainly do when it comes to East Greenwich. We both grew up here and share a deep love for our hometown and its working waterfront. A great profile in the Providence Journal shows that in many ways, that working waterfront is still the same.

But it is also disappearing, going the way of the neighborhood grocery and hardware stores into extinction.

While we still boast the second largest concentration of bullrakers in Rhode Island, next to only nearby Apponaug, all across the Ocean State commercial fishing is going away.

There are only about 2,000 licensed quahoggers left in Rhode Island. Only 93 are younger than 40. And for every two people that have retired since 2005, only one new shellfisherman has taken up the profession.

Bob Ballou, who oversees marine affairs and commercial fishing for DEM, recently told a group  at the URI Bay Campus studying shellfish management in the state that the number of licenses is unrelated to the resource supply. You can check out his entire presentation here.

Bullrakers agree that there are plenty of quahogs in the Bay. But the price, they say, is being continually driven down by lower-quality, farm-raised clams from the southeastern states. It turns out, a lot of people outside the Ocean State enjoy shellfish too. But they don’t necessarily pay a premium for the wild harvested ones we are famous for and know taste a million times better. Even some renegade Rhode Island restauranteurs have been known to sneak in some the cheaper farm-raised ones into their entrees.

Progressives like me and conservatives like Carcieri – who don’t often have opportunity to agree – ought to be able to work together to preserve the working waterfronts of Rhode Island by helping to grow and celebrate this important part of our heritage AND our economy.

The next meeting of the Shellfish Management Plan is Tuesday, 5:30 at the Bay Campus.

The so-often-called education reform movement – what progressives know as education deform, or corporate reform – has always been primarily supported by the upper crust and the fiscally conservative. Economists call it a market-based approach to public education reform; of course chambers of commerce, right wing think tanks and tax-hating, small-government conservatives support it.

It is not hyperbole to suggest that that Gist is implementing the kind of reform ALEC would like to see here. In fact, she has some loose connections to ALEC. She is, after all, one of Don Carcieri’s toxic gifts to Rhode Island’s public sector.

But there’s another voice – or, more accurately, voices – that are making themselves heard here in the Ocean State.

According to pollster Joe Fleming, 85 percent of teachers think Gist should be replaced. Getting 9 of ten people to agree on just about anything is noteworthy, when it’s who should be their boss it is damning. I’ve likened Gist to former Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine: she might know the game real well, but she just can’t seem to get this group of players to perform for her.

What’s even more significant is that the education community isn’t simply voicing its concerns anonymously or through its unions. They are also quite literally standing up in public and speaking out against their employer. This is amazingly courageous, I think.

As long as we are keeping score, it’s well worth noting that it’s not simply educators versus business leaders when it comes to how (not if) we reform education in the Ocean State. The ACLU – a staunch supporter of the Constitution, not union members or working class people (see Steve Ahquist’s story on Citizen United from yesterday) – has grave civil liberty concerns about her testing policies. The Autism Project, the Wiley Center, the Disability Law Center and the NAACP, among many others, all have issues too.

Linda Borg had a pretty telling passage in her very well-written story stripped across the top of today’s Providence Journal:

By almost every indication, it would seem that Gist has profoundly alienated her constituents: teachers, students and parents.

But Gist has apparently not lost the support of the people crucial to her re-appointment: Governor Chafee and the chairwoman of the new Board of Education.

We shall see soon enough.

Yesterday I thought it would be hard to put together a group of people who have been worse for Rhode Island than John DePetro, Don Carcieri and Bernie Healey. But Anthony Gemma proved me wildly off base by showing up as well.

If you missed my live-tweeting of conservative Catholic night at the Odeum Theater on Main Street, East Greenwich last night, don’t worry. You didn’t miss much.

The most exciting moments included DePetro probing Father Healey about whether or not people chew gum in church, Feroce scrolling through his smart phone to read aloud from his email or Carcieri talking about 38 Studios. Oh, that’s right, DePetro didn’t ask Carcieri about 38 Studios; instead they talked about how idyllic life was back in the days when Thanks Don was growing up.

I’m pretty sure Charlie Rose’s job is safe.

It was really more of a fundraiser for the struggling local theater than actual entertainment. Many, if not most, of the attendees were dyed-in-the-wool conservatives and more than a few were friends and/or relatives of the headliners. DePetro made more references to the local restaurant that sponsored the evening than he did to leadership, which was supposed to be the focus of the event.  Local celebrity appearances were limited to former state Senator Frank Maher and Anthony Gemma.

Here’s a Storify of most of my tweets from last night and many of the responses I got.

Then he added as he walked away, “I’ll see you in court.”

I’m assuming he means for the sexual harassment suit our former colleague Dee DeQuattro has filed against him, but who knows. Experience tells me the truth is usually the opposite of what John DePetro says it is, so perhaps I won’t see him in court. Though I do know he appeared before the state Human Rights Commission for the allegation recently. So on the other hand, maybe I will see him in court.

Either way, I plan to see him tonight night when he hosts a panel discussion with former governor Don Carcieri, Catholic priest and State House lobbyist Bernard Healey and former GOP state senator and Alix and Ani CEO John Feroci at the Odeum Theater, also on Main Street in East Greenwich.

This is a pretty tight-knit group. The evening is being sponsored by Besos, a new local restaurant. The owners are very good friends with both Feroce and the Carcieri family (in fact, they bought the former governor’s downtown mcmansion from him). All of participants belong to the local Catholic church, where Healey is the priest.

Coincidentally, these conservative Catholics were booked by a liberal Jew. Frank Prosnitz, former ProJo and Providence Business News editor, has been leading the local effort to revitalize the Odeum for years. He’s managed to get the doors open, but with renovation bills now due he’s turned to this conservative cabal to help bring in some revenue. It will certainly be interesting to see what kind of crowd this group attracts.

I don’t know Feroce too well, though I did meet him years ago when I was in college and he was in the state senate. Bernie Healey is best known for lobbying State House leaders against marriage equality. Carcieri used his two terms as governor to advocate against immigrants, equality, poor people and the public sector. Few Republicans have been willing to defend him since he left office and his infamously failed scheme to give his friend Curt Schilling public money to make a video game has rendered him one of the least popular local politicians in recent memory. DePetro is widely regarded as the most mean-spirited and dishonest person in Rhode Island politics and/or media.

Alex and Ani aside, it’d be hard to put together a trio that has done more damage to Rhode Island than Carcieri, DePetro and Healey. I wish the local theater much luck, but this seems like more evidence things aren’t going well for the Odeum.

What do former Governor Don Carcieri, Rev. Bernard Healey and John DePetro all have in common? The three biggest enemies of civil liberties in Rhode Island? Three people only popular on WPRO? Three people who progressives wish kept to themselves?

Even more precisely, these three pillars of Ocean State conservatism will be appearing together, on stage, Wednesday, May 8 at the Odeum Theater in the most infamously Republican town in Rhode Island, East Greenwich. (Ed. note: also RI Future headquarters) They’ll be joined by Alex and Ani CEO Giovanni “John” Feroce – who you may have known was a Republican state senator on Smith Hill from 1992 to 1994.

It’s part of the newly-renovated theater’s “mission of providing a variety of social, cultural and educational opportunities,” according to a press release sent by former Providence Journal and PBN editor Frank Prosnitz, who did not mention exactly which category this trio falls into.

It did say it was the first of a three part lecture series at the Odeum Theater for hometown boy John DePetro. Future guests will be unveiled by DePetro at a press conference today at 1 p.m. at the Odeum, 59 Main St.

• Introduction: The Carcieri Effect
• Part 2: Austerity’e Effects 
• Part 3: Tax Cuts for the Affluent
• Part 4: Property Tax Hikes
• Part 5: Unemployment Insurance Taxes 
• Part 6: Competitiveness
• Conclusion: Have We Learned Our Lesson?

Governor Carcieri did not have to launch a jihad against public sector employment. Nor was it necessary to hand massive tax breaks to the wealthy. Had we avoided those tax breaks, we wouldn’t have had to slash municipal aid and send property taxes through the roof. Had we not raised property taxes, we would have a stronger housing market, and had we not engaged in massive austerity, the rest of our economy would be doing better as well. If our unemployment insurance tax rate were less punitive, then fewer businesses would have gone under. None of this had to happen.

It seems that things are finally looking up for the Rhode Island economy. Unemployment is falling, despite a regional recession, and numerous other economic indicators are showing positive signs.

There remain many road blocks ahead for our economy, as we deal with the aftermath of 38 Studios, municipal budget disasters, and other legacies of the Carcieri era, so it is by no means clear that these positive trends will continue, but there is certainly more cause for optimism now than we have had for quite some time.

As Leonard Lardaro, an economist at URI, puts it, we’re “in a recovery the magnitude of which almost nobody in this state seems to fully comprehend.” But we should not take this as evidence that the economy of the Ocean State is suddenly being managed well. Rhode Island is a severely depressed economy with relatively strong fundamentals. If you don’t keep kicking it, it will recover, even if the transition is only from terrible to mediocre leadership.

Carcieri is gone, it is true. But the very conservative General Assembly was fully complicit in Carcieri’s blunders, earning them effusive praise from the Wall St. Journal. As Dan Lawlor puts it, “it is remarkable how much of his vision was enacted, sometimes excitedly, by the Democratic General Assembly and its leaders, specifically Gordon Fox and Theresa Paiva Weed.”

There is much truth to this.  Although it is hard to argue that pro-choice, pro-marriage Fox isn’t at least a moderate improvement over his predecessors, as House Majority Leader, he was a major proponent of the income tax cuts at the heart of Rhode Island’s problems.

After a bruising reelection battle, Fox made mild noises about potentially being more open to sensible tax reform, but given his past record, it is unclear whether anything will come of this.  Nominally a Democrat, Paiva Weed shares Fox’s rather extreme economic conservatism, but she does not share Fox’s more moderate social views.  Indeed, she is probably the primary obstacle to marriage equality passing in 2013.

Although Chafee is pushing for some distinctly insufficient reforms, they will probably mostly fail, and it is hard to imagine the General Assembly putting together anything remotely up to the task.

What must be done is actually quite straightforward.  We need a jobs bill and tax reform: We need to reverse Carcieri’s austerity by rehiring the teachers, firefighters, and policemen whose jobs he cut. We should also make new investments in critical areas, restoring our crumbling roads and bridges, creating bicycle infrastructure and commuter rail lines, expanding and improving URI, and building tons of medical schools to take advantage of the extreme demand for new doctors. We should begin paring back property taxes and fixing budgets by restoring aid to cities and towns and allowing them to levy local income taxes to offset property taxes.

To pay for all this, we should restore the pre-2006 income tax rates and create new brackets for the wealthy, with a top marginal rate of at least 13%. We also need to restructure the hugely regressive unemployment insurance tax as a simple and constant flat, low rate, a reform that could easily raise revenue while making the tax code much less regressive and much more business-friendly.

With the current conservatives in office, almost none of this will happen. But it is definitely worth fighting for.