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The flaw(s) in opposition to a basic income


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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY1OKSObkH0

Our friends at Ocean State Current-Anchor recently published a piece against the concept of a guaranteed minimum or guaranteed basic income. Justin Katz argues that a GMI would interfere with price discovery, which is an important mechanism in free markets. He is wrong.

Whoo hoo!

Okay, first, let’s celebrate. The fact that Katz is addressing this is a sign that substantial success has been made in promoting the concept of a guaranteed minimum income among liberals and conservatives. He even acknowledges that ‘[e]ven on the political right, some folks are willing to entertain the idea as a reimagining of the welfare state. . .”.

First they ignore us, then they laugh at us, then they fight us. . . We’re somewhere around step 2 1/2, because we’re not getting laughed at, but the argument being made against us is not emanating from an immediate bill to make this happen.

The Right and the Basic Income

Who does Katz mean when he says that some on the right are willing to entertain a guaranteed minimum income?

He might be referring back to a recent (fairly epic) conversation I had with Ken Block, Katz, C. Andrew Morse, and several other people about RI H7515. I won’t rehearse the ins and outs of that, but the gestalt of it was me pointing out that many land use, tax, and transportation disincentives to business are more significant than the labor movement in chasing away small business in Rhode Island.

C. Andrew Morse, though in concert with the others (and against me) on just about everything else, did say that he thought it was plausible to imagine a future where benefits like SNAP or Section 8 could be swapped out for a general income to all people in the country.

On a grander level, though, the right has always been the biggest proponent of a guaranteed minimum income (with substantial left support). The kingpin of economic conservatism, Milton Friedman, was a huge supporter:

Don’t worry. Though Friedman is not usually the sort of person many of us would claim common ground with, guaranteed minimum income programs are an important part of most social democracies, and even (in a weaker form) exists in the U.S. through the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). In fact, the GMI is arguably more important than the minimum wage in creating lowered inequality in a market economy, because in places like Denmark it allows what’s called “labor flexibility” while also providing an effective bargaining shove in the favor of working class organizing.

Building from Lincoln Logs

The argument that Katz is making about price discovery is not false. Katz says:

What ought to happen [in economic hardship] is that prices adjust to reflect the new economic reality. If your entire industry is displaced, many people won’t be able to afford the latest gadgets, so the industry that makes those gadgets will have to find a way to lower their prices.  Every industry will have to lower its prices to reflect the reduction in demand at current prices.  That sounds terrifying, but remember that the premise is that technology is displacing people and making everything less expensive to produce.

This is true.

To take an example: in the housing crisis, it was bad for a person who owned a house for their housing price to dip, and a lot of effort has been made to re-inflate the housing bubble so that prices would return to an upward trend. But obviously having housing prices dip would be good for someone who might want to buy a house but previously couldn’t. It’s more complex than that, of course, but mainly that’s because we have a string of regulatory and tax externalities that get in the way of very poor people taking advantage of that price change. For instance, we zone away affordable housing types, we make it illegal for certain people or certain numbers of people to share housing, we have a tax system that rewards interest payments that primarily are accessed through loans by wealthy people, and so on. But the point, overall, is still true. If you live in Providence as a poor person you are much more likely to be able to find affordable housing than if you live in a housing market like San Francisco where the prices have gone sky-high.

Where Katz goes wrong is in building an economy out of Lincoln Logs. He imagines a very small scale village, perhaps, where giving the village’s poor is a huge input into the economy, and has an outsized effect on prices. It’s true that poor people getting a basic income will have a slight stabilizing effect on prices, but the effect on the poor people’s poverty is going to be a lot bigger to them than to the community. It’s like rolling a bowling ball down a ramp and having it bounce off a super-ball. The laws of physics say that each is affected equally in opposite directions, but the mass and elasticity of the super-ball mean that it is the actor that is affected most dramatically.

The problem here is that Katz ignores orders of magnitude. We have a huge economy, and currently in that economy the top 0.1% of the U.S. owns more than the bottom 150 million people the bottom 90% (287 million= 318.9 million x 0.9, see reference from Politifact). Making sure that an even smaller slice of that 150 million 287 million has a basic amount of money to not go homeless or hungry is insignificant compared to the size of the economy.

Other Flaws– Forgetting Costs

This’ll be a basic rehearsal for many people on the left, but the right should remember that just removing one cost does not always mean solving a problem. In fact, this shouldn’t be a controversial thing to impress upon a conservative who is thoughtful, because conservatives are the group that most seeks the concept of a business-like “cost-benefit analysis”. A liberal might be inclined to say that certain things just are good no matter what, but conservatives are supposed to be the people who say, “Wait, what are the other factors?”

Here are some other factors I can think of:

Violence: When people are in absolute desperation, they are more likely to turn to violence. We can assume that we’re going to take a tough stance on these folks, but that means building prisons and paying for more police. Since we already have the largest prison population in the world– bigger than China’s, both per capita, and absolutely– we’re not really in a place to dillydally on this issue. Welfare reform sucked for lots of reasons, but the oddest one of all was perhaps that it ultimately has cost us more money than welfare did to get rid of welfare and put people in prisons.

Educational gaps: In the long-run, the market corrects many things, but as Keynes said, “In the long run we’re all dead.” If a child has a short-term shortage of nutrition, even if a very effective private charity eventually fixes that problem, the gap in the meantime is likely to cause longterm harm to their educational achievement.

Health: Whether we have a fully private health system, or a fully public one, or a weird mishmash of public and private like what we have here in the U.S., the costs to mental and physical health are great when people are in tough times.

Bureaucracy: As Friedman points out, we’re not starting from scratch. We have numerous bureaucracies that handle many overlapping and competing forms of aid. Martin Luther King made a similar point, if from a very different perspective, during his Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign. The biggest single advantage of the guaranteed minimum income over other programs is that it deals with aid more efficiently. Conservatives should stop acting as though some magical world without aid of any kind is going to come about, and instead start thinking of how existing aid programs can be made to benefit the most people for the least amount of money.

Markets are Good, Extremes are Bad

The Schumpeterian “creative destruction” of the market which is part of the very laissez faire Austrian school of economics says that bad things happening in an economy can produce great progress in the long run. While we’re not terribly open to this idea on the left, we should be. For one, it’s merely a reflection of the Marxist belief in the same thing, and was in fact developed in response to the idea of Marxism.

More to the point, creative destruction is all around us. When a business fails, someone is able to buy up the resources from that business at pennies on the dollar and repurpose them. It’s like the succession of a forest: a fire happens, thousands of trees are lost, but the conditions that allow small plants to grow up and mature are created, and soon a new forest is born. But this metaphor fails when it’s taken to the micro-level. We don’t think of people as like trees. We think of people as people. We value them (because, after all, we’re biased) as individuals. In the long run, the creative destruction happens. The welfare system exists to make sure the change happens without harming individual people.

A guaranteed minimum income is a good way to balance the forces of creative destruction without sacrificing what’s most important to us: people. Conservatives should adjust to that.

~~~~

Update: Justin Katz wrote a response to mine this morning, drawing heavily on the physics metaphor. I think he still misses the point, and in some ways he digs himself into a less reasonable position than he initially took.

Elasticity

Much of his post really draws on the elasticity aspect of the physics metaphor. Quoting from the most recent piece:

First, though, I’ll point out a technicality.  My post was explicitly not about using a UBI as a welfare mechanism for a small population of very poor people, but rather about using it as a way to reconfigure our economy when technology makes large numbers of human jobs superfluous.  In that case, Kennedy’s argument about size and elasticity does not apply.

Well, yes, Katz’s article was about how the GMI could be used to protect the Big Other of the tech industry, but that is exactly the reason the elasticity argument does apply. Let’s review what Katz said in his first piece:

As David Rotman writes in the MIT Technology Review, some folks are seeing a UBI as a way to address the social change when technology ensures that fewer and fewer people actually have to do anything resembling work:

[Quote block within Katz’s piece] “… among many tech elites and their boosters, the idea of a basic income seems to have morphed from an antipoverty strategy into a radical new way of seeing work and leisure. In this view, the economy is becoming increasingly dominated by machines and software. That leaves many without jobs and, notably, society with no need for their labor. So why not simply pay these people for sitting around? Somehow, in the thinking of many in Silicon Valley, this has become a good thing.”

It’s not surprising that tech oligarchs and other comfortable groups of people would favor the idea, because the healthier, more-natural economic path forward would put some risk on them, rather than just on the poor folks losing their jobs.  If you’re out of work and the government gives you money (from somewhere), then you can go on buying devices and software, keeping Silicon Valley humming. (My emphasis)

Whatever Rothman or Katz might say, my point is the GMI has never been offered as a way to prop up specific industries. Its biggest advantage is the fact that it gives tremendous choice to individuals who use it, not that it acts as some kind of constraint on choice through corporate welfare or state-owned-industries. The disappearance of particular jobs due to industrial change may in fact be the reason a given population has no work, or has lousy work, at any given time, but the mechanism of addressing that problem– giving them money– does not in any way protect an industry. Recipients can “go on buying devices” but they can also buy other things if they wish. There’s no implicit guarantee for the industries.

So Katz says elasticity is good.

But Katz moves the goal posts from the beginning of his rebuttal to the end, because he states that:

Right now, we’ve got a pretty stiff approach to welfare, delivered mainly in specific products and services, and it’s processed through a slow bureaucracy.  In addition to the simple wastefulness of doing anything through government, this creates complications and has an effect on the economy (decreasing the incentive to work, for example), but we have to consider pluses and minuses in our specific context.  Cash, on the other hand, is a very elastic medium, and using it for welfare would rocket the economic and individual problems much higher.

Money is fungible, of course, so if we all pay for somebody’s food, that person can spend his or her other money on things of which we do not approve, but at least he or she gets the food.  If we simply hand out cash, then the person can skip the food and go right to paying for… say… hard drugs.  Being compassionate, what does our society do then?  Finally cut the people off, and declare their destitution beyond our responsibility? (My emphasis)

So Katz says elasticity is bad.

Today,  Katz’s blog trumpets a vote to make using SNAP benefits for drugs or gambling illegal. So while Katz’s reply to me does acknowledge an outside chance of fraudulent SNAP use (“Of course, giving people things they don’t want above other things, but that have value, we probably increase the tendency toward fraud (to convert the food into cash”), he argues that the benefit of the SNAP program is that it mostly guards against that result (“If we fund just food, the person still has to come up with money for things he or she wants.  That could mean incentive to work.”). Yet if SNAP’s advantage is that it prevents the elastic use of its benefits for things like drugs, why does Katz’s blog highlight an effort to make that use illegal at the state level? It is already illegal to use SNAP for this purpose at the federal level. The answer is that the 66-1 vote to make welfare fraud doubly illegal is more about casting doubt on the morality of poor people than about addressing a real problem.

So Katz may be a hobgoblin, but consistency is not part of his mind.

Nonetheless, drug abuse is a real thing, and it is not at all hard to imagine that some people do manage to use their food stamps for purposes other than food. Milton Friedman had answers to the idea of drug use directly. He felt that government did its best work in providing basic and mostly undifferentiated services to the general public, while very complex social issues were best handled at the ground level by private individuals. I think this is a solution that is commensurate with social democratic thought, but at its very roots it is a conservative idea. So in Friedman’s world, all people would have some basic money to do with what they might, and private charities could educate them to the risks of drug use, provide needle exchanges to prevent disease amongst those who still choose drug use, and provide varied approaches to treatment for those getting out of drug abuse. The housing needs of individuals suffering from this problem would be privately met– untrammeled by exclusionary zoning. This is a vision where the vast majority of the complex work of fixing a complex issue is done by the private sector. This is the vision offered by the left. The right, on the other hand, has worked to make basic benefits hard to get, but has also tied the hands of private individuals who might want to help with drug abuse. Needle-exchanges, drug decriminalization, and other programs that might let the private sector shine have generally been anathema to the right (I couldn’t find anything immediately demonstrable of this on Katz’s blog, and it’s not fair to paint all conservative thought with one brush, but to illustrate my point, here’s an example from Kentucky. Some Republicans in New Hampshire had a better approach this year, though their party was split).

Mass

I feel the Earth move under my feet. . .

Katz does not address relative masses, but I think mass is actually the more important factor. And, in fact, I actually think my first metaphor was too modest. The difference between an individual getting modest help and the size of the economy is less like a basketball-to-golf-ball comparison than it is to an Earth-to-basketball comparison. The economy of the country is huge, and the amount of help needed to provide sustenance is tiny. It’s impacts are felt heavily on the individual and weakly on the economy not just because the individual is more elastic (can make more individuated choices) but also because the mass difference is so great.

Think about it: you move the Earth. Everyday. When you jump off the ground, you push on the Earth and the Earth pushes back. Equally. It’s an astounding thought when you first think of it, but it’s a law of physics (Newton’s Second). But though the law states as an ironclad rule that the effects are equal in terms of their physical force, the three feet you may be able to jump are much greater than the tiny, many-zeroed, decimals-of-a-micrometer that your motion affects the trajectory of the Earth– though it technically does affect its trajectory.

Astounding. The world around us is amazing. Let’s make sure everyone can enjoy that wonder.

~~~~

If you like what you see, you can donate to my PayPal at james.p.kennedy@gmail.com.

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Block and Fung: mutual disrespect


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fung block
Click here for the full debate.

Republican gubernatorial candidates Allan Fung and Ken Block both support Common Core, cutting taxes, shrinking government, federal – not local – immigration reform and a women’s right to an abortion.

And despite admitting they would support the other in the general election during Tuesday night’s WPRI/Providence Journal debate, the thing they seem to agree on the most is the belief that their opponent would be a bad governor of Rhode Island.

Fung called Block a “political opportunist” and “not a real Republican.” He said he “has a difficult time reading municipal budgets” about an accounting error Block admitted to. “How can we trust him” with the state budget, he asked.

Block, on the other hand, said Fung is too familiar with local government. “If you’re happy with Rhode Island the way it is, vote for my opponent, or one of the other Democrats,” he said during his closing remarks.

At different points during the debate, they each paraphrased Ronald Reagan’s famous “there you go again” quip to Jimmy Carter. They each blamed the other for the negative tone of the campaign.

“This campaign has been full of venom, vile and half truths,” Block said. “We didn’t start the negativity. You have to respond at some point, anyone who watches politics knows it.”

Fung responded, “I think the viewers of Rhode Island see where much of the negativity and half truths have been coming from in tonight’s debate.”

They even both agreed they didn’t know yet whether they support Education Commissioner Deborah Gist’s recent decision to delay implementing a high stakes test graduation requirement. (Don’t forget, she was appointed by Republican Gov. Don Carcieri)

One rare instance of policy disagreement came on unemployment insurance.

Block says unemployment insurance in Rhode Island covers more seasonal employees than in other states. “We must fix it,” Block said. “There’s no more Republican ideal than having those who heavily use the system pay their fair share.”

But Fung counters that Block is effectively advocating for raising taxes on seasonal businesses such as those in tourism, agriculture and construction. “That is going to crush the seasonal industry,” he said. “I would not support tax raises to those seasonal industries.”

Both, however, agree that the economic burden is best dealt with at the employee level.

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Ken Block is a Barrington version of Don Carcieri


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block carcieri
Ken Block, at last night’s WPRI/Providence Journal debate. Top right, Don Carcieri.

“Only an outsider can fix what’s broken here,” said Barrington businessman Ken Block during last night’s first Republican debate for governor.

His opponent, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, may want to paint Block as a opportunistic flip-flopper, but to me he sounded a lot like the last affluent private sector executive from the suburbs to preach the “outsider” gospel.

And we all know how that turned out.

Don Carcieri was a private sector superstar before turning to politics. He was elected governor twice, in 2002 and 2006, but he’s now widely regarded as the worst chief executive of the state in recent memory. He wasted huge amounts of time opposing economic growth, like a deep water port at Quonset and a casino, both of which came to fruition, albeit late, after he was gone. His economic coupe de grace, of course, was his very publicly courtship of Curt Schilling and 38 Studios. He also ordered state troopers to raid a Narragansett Indian tobacco store when the tribe claimed a tax exemption. Whatever folly one associates with Carcieri, it’s fair to say he’s a third rail for Republicans, a whipping post for Democrats and an embarrassment for everyone else.

And before being elected to office, his political resume looked a lot like Ken Block’s.

Carcieri is from East Greenwich while Block is from Barrington. Carcieri ran a business called Cookson while Block runs one called Sympatico. Both built effective bully pulpits through favorable treatment from right-wing media like WPRO and the Providence Journal editorial page.

They have similar policy prescriptions, too. Both believe very strongly that welfare inefficiencies substantially hinder economic progress. And both suggest shrinking government is a growth strategy. Both believe private sector experience translates into public sector effectiveness, even though the Ocean State has seen scant evidence of such ever since Democrat Bruce Sundlun left office.

The problem for Block is that Carcieri, Rhode Island’s most recent GOP governor, has more-recently exemplified how terribly wrong the CEO-governor model can go. Carcieri’s Big Audit mentality may have succeeded in shrinking the size of government, but that has harmed the overall economy and exacerbated unemployment. What then will be the unintended consequences of Ken Block’s goal of eliminating $1 billion in government programs. A business person can eliminate expenses, but a governor can only redistribute them.

Governments, wrote House GOP leader Brian Newberry in the Valley Breeze last week, “are, in the end, not a business.” His submission was about 38 Studios, the most famous failure of the Carcieri Administration.

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Chafee blasts Block and Fung ‘unfit to be governor’


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chafee_bryantGovernor Linc Chafee has long been the staunchest critic of the 38 Studios loan. He’s also one of the biggest critic of not repaying it.

Today he blasted Republican gubernatorial candidates Ken Block and Allan Fung for suggesting the state shouldn’t make payment on the moral obligation bond to service the 38 Studios loan debt.

Here’s the governor’s statement in its entirety:

The candidates who can’t understand these two obvious truths are unfit to be Governor. The consequences of default would place Rhode Island as one of the lowest state bond ratings in the nation, and the industry would reduce Rhode Island to ‘junk bond’ status. We have been told in no uncertain terms that the reaction to not paying our debt obligations will be severe and have an adverse impact on Rhode Island. In addition, failure to honor our obligations could have harmful effects on the pending lawsuit.

The push by Allan Fung and Ken Block to default is disheartening. We hear from them populist rhetoric that lacks any empirical research or credible support. Common sense dictates that you pay your debts however distasteful.

From the beginning, I have been the most vocal and strongest opponent of the 38 Studios deal. In the summer of 2010, I was denied access to a Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation (now called Commerce RI) meeting where I hoped to speak and state the case on behalf of Rhode Islanders on why this was a bad investment.

Earlier today, I wrote that the Republican candidates for governor have political motivation to not make the payment. Yesterday, Sam Howard wrote that it should be repaid regardless of how bitter the pill.

The state owes $12.5 million on the moral obligation bond to pay for the 38 Studios loan. Because it is a moral obligation bond there are no legal ramifications to default, though there are likely to be fiscal implications. The General Assembly could not include the money in its budget. So, in effect, the state legislature gets to decide the fate of the state’s credit rating during its annual budget process this year.

Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed supports making payment on the bond and House Speaker Nick Mattiello has not yet committed.

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Why conservatives play fast and loose with RI’s credit


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Don Carcieri
Don Carcieri

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?

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The candidates weigh in on women’s issues


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womens fund forumSix months before the general election, the six candidates for governor came together for the first time last week. And they did so to answer questions about gender equality. The Women’s Fund of Rhode Island hosted a forum Thursday to query the candidates on “so-called women’s issues,” as Gina Raimondo, the only female candidate, labelled them in her opening remarks.

Steve Ahlquist filmed the entire event and broke it down question-by-question, starting with each candidate’s opening remarks:

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Question 1: What can you do to address unequal pay in our state?

Ken Block said there is “no place for wage discrimination” and that there are already laws in place to deal with it. Clay Pell called it a question of fundamental justice and of economic growth and “I think we have to do a lot more than just enforce the laws that are on the books.” Allan Fung said there are more barriers in the public sector than the private sector to equal pay in pay equity and promotions. Todd Giroux spoke about more generic economic reforms that don’t speak directly to equal pay.

Several of the Democrats said raising the minimum wage will have positive impacts on pay equity.

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Question 2: Do you support policies, like family leave, that benefit working women?

The Republican candidates tacked to different directions on this question. Fung said, “I absolutely do support a lot of those policies that [provide] flexibility for people into the workforce.” Block said he allows for family leave at his business, but then railed against the temporary disability insurance program in Rhode Island, calling it among the most expensive in the nation.

The Democrats were more united. “I absolutely think we need to a better job pr providing more flexible work places,” said Raimondo. Taveras agreed and Pell went furthest saying overall Rhode Island has been moving in the wrong direction when it comes to making women more equal in the workplace. He cited state childcare assistance being been cut by 80 percent since 2007 as evidence.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Question 3: What will you do as governor to proactively affect gender inequality?

Pell committed to appointing an equal mix of men and women to boards and commissions while Block said he would “strive” to have an equal mix in his administration. Raimondo, said there are no laws in Rhode Island to protect pregnant women in the workplace, said she’s the only candidate to have been pregnant in the workplace. Taveras said he knows it from a father’s perspective.

Todd Giroux said he has used the family leave act to take care of his father. He said as the “openly-gay candidate in the race, I am all about equality.”  Raimondo . Taveras said he understands some of the challenges from a father’s perspective. As governor he said he will consider “what is best for the working families.”

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Question 4: Reproductive justice. Will you veto bill that limits a women’s right to make their own health care decisions?

Pell, Raimondo and Taveras were clear on this question: each began their statements by saying yes, they would. Fung said he supports a women’s right to choose.

Block said, “The question of abortion is settled federal law. The Supreme Court has weighed in and I have no interest in challenging or changing that law here in the state.” Giroux, too, said he does not wish to weigh in on this issue as governor, but said he is opposed to abortion. He said a college girlfriend had an abortion without telling him. “In America today, you have a right to choose and your baby has a right to life.”

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Question 5: How will you ensure women can get out of poverty?

Pell called this the critical question of the election.  Raimondo said, “It’s time that we take a different approach to the way we deliver social services and we focus more on results. We re spending money but it often isn’t effective. My approach would be break down the silos, fund what works.” Taveras said he has a three-pronged approach: raising the minimum wage, ensuring affordable childcare and investing in “cradle to career” education.

Block, also talked about education, saying he is “dedicated to education reform.” He and Fung both said fostering private sector growth will help raise people out of poverty.

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Question 6: What are you plans to ensure recent college grads can find good jobs?

Instead of answering the question, Taveras and Block really get to the heart of the political difference between conservatives and progressives in Rhode Island.

Taveras said Rhode Island needs a climate that tells young people this is a place to be, this is a place to start a business and to live. But Block countered, “We won’t get the new jobs we need if it makes much more sense for businesses to set up in Massachusetts than it does in Rhode Island. It’s a brutal fact.”

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Question 7: Sexual assault on campus

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Question 8: How will you make expansion of women-owned businesses a reality?

Fung and Block spoke of focusing on the larger economy. Block said, “we need to increase the ease with which individuals can start businesses in this state, whether they are male or whether they are female.”

Raimondo said access to capital programs for women and minorities matter. “It’s time we face the reality that women have been left behind in the business world and address it.” Taveras said he wants to work with the Center for Women and Enterprise and the SBA to “open the doors and create opportunities.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________

…And their closing remarks:

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What the master lever and voter ID have in common


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Paper ballot with straight party option selected.
Paper ballot with straight party option selected.

All across America, Democrats – and quite frankly courts, too – are waking up to the oppressive reality voter ID laws represent for too many minorities, the poor  and the elderly. Judges in Arkansas, Wisconsin and other states have almost systematically ruled against voter ID provisions and well-respected Washington Post political scribe Chris Cilliza recently blessed the issue with this post.

The president of the United States even weighed in last month. “I am against requiring an ID that millions of Americans don’t have,” he said. “That shouldn’t suddenly prevent you from exercising your right to vote.”

Not Rhode Island, though. We the only blue state (along with Hawaii) with such a law, and we seem more content with it than some pretty red states. The Senate had its hearing (you can watch all sorts of good government groups and equal rights activists testify against it here) but the voter ID law seems pretty safe here in spite of the widespread liberal and legal opposition.

That’s not to say there isn’t the political will for state legislators to address election law this session.

The anti-master lever bill passed the House last night 70 to 0. This puts amazing pressure on the Senate to do likewise – note the activist role the Providence Journal is taking by urging readers to call legislators.

The master lever, or straight party voting, doesn’t serve democracy well and should go. Ken Block in particular deserves great praise for leading the charge against it. I’d say it’s solid evidence he can effectively use a bully pulpit to affect political change, and that’s what he says he wants to do as governor.

To that end, I kinda find myself wishing voter ID laws hurt Ken Block supporters, too. Then he may have taken me up on my offer to tackle both voting rights issues. Because just as we should ensure the ballot is as straightforward as possible, we should also ensure that everyone has access to a ballot.

Rhode Island wasn’t mentioned in the Washington Post’s list of 13 states “to watch” on voting rights despite the big push here to end straight party voting. Maybe we could gain some positive national attention on a good government issue if we did away with both the master lever AND voter ID this year?

PS – I suggested this last year too.

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Ken Block didn’t vote until 2000


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Ken Block

Ken BlockKen Block, the Barrington millionaire who recently switched from the Moderate Party to the Republican Party to run for governor, didn’t registered to vote until October of 1999, according to state and Barrington Board of Elections.

He was eligible to vote on Nov. 8 of that year – one day after the nation-changing, SCOTUS-decided election between Al Gore and George Bush. Both offices said he has had a consistent record of voting in general elections since 2000.

But, according to Block’s campaign website, that means he lived in Rhode Island for at least 8 years without registering to vote. His website says he moved to Barrington is 1992 and indicates he has lived in state since 1991. (I don’t know where Block lived prior to that, or if he voted and/or was registered to vote there)

Last week, GoLocalProv reported on what it called an “investigation” into Clay Pell’s voting record (For the record, if you call the Board of Elections, they will give you this information). Since then it has done two additional posts on Clay Pell with no evidence it has investigated other candidates as well.  Ken Block is a occasional GoLocal “mindsetter” and the right-leaning site highlights his news releases often.

If Block wishes to comment, I will update this post.

 

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Raising the minimum wage creates partisan divide


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housing minimum wage graphicLast week in his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama called on both Chambers of Congress to either work with him to move the country forward or forcing him to use his presidential powers to enact  policy. 

He rattled off dozens of policy initiatives for Congress to consider this session, including immigration, emergency unemployment, manufacturing, trade, environment, education, closing Guantanamo Bay, closing tax loop holes, job training, family policies, and retirement savings. But the President also called for an increase in the nation’s minimum wage to provide America’s worker’s a living wage.

The president used his speech as a very visible bully pulpit to call on states to not wait for Congressional action to give people a living wage.

Although creating jobs will be one of the top campaign issues that must be addressed by the state’s gubernatorial candidates (Clay Pell was not available for comment by press time), look for the minimum wage issue to pop up for political discussion with the Democratic and Republican views being like two sides of a coin. 

When he announced his bid for governor, Mayor Taveras he told his supporters that increasing the minimum wage is a step in building an economy that supports higher paying jobs, puts people back to work and gives Rhode Island families the opportunity for a better life. There was a time when his mother worked at the minimum wage to support three children so he knows firsthand how much raising it can help a family, he stated. He is also pushing for statewide universal pre-kindergarten.

Tarveras quoted from a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute that indicated that increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would increase the wages of 65,000 Rhode Island workers and indirectly benefit an additional 26,000 more, totaling nearly 20 percent of the work force.  He cited another study that found that moving to a higher wage would boost the national economy by as much as $22.1 billion, creating as many as 85,000 new jobs.”

“I’m a Democrat who believes in raising the minimum wage and indexing it with regular cost of living adjustments,” noted Treasurer Gina Raimondo, in her announcement to run for Governor at Hope Artiste Village in Pawtucket.

According to Eric Hyers, Gina Raimondo’s Campaign Manager, “Gina strongly believes that we need to increase the minimum wage and she was pleased to see President Obama call for increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour during the State of the Union this week.  No one who works full time should live in poverty.  As the President said, it is time to give America a raise.”

“But let’s not wait for a dysfunctional Congress to act; we can take action right here in Rhode Island,” Hyers said.

“Gina is calling for us to take action on this now and raise the minimum wage to $10.10 by 2015 and then index it to the cost of living so that politicians can’t play games with people’s lives. Two-thirds of minimum wage earners are women so a raise would immediately help women across Rhode Island and their families, adds Hyer, noting that people are really struggling and there is an urgency to help out working families.

Meanwhile, “Clay [Pell] is in favor of increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour and does not see a reason to delay this matter until 2018 or 2015. He would be in favor of the General Assembly passing legislation this year. Too many Rhode Islanders are working in jobs at wages that are simply insufficient and no individual who works a full time job should have to raise their family in poverty. There’s an economic development aspect to this as well, by raising the minimum wage we’re putting more purchasing power out there, which will help spur the economy,” said Bill Fischer, Pell’s spokesperson.

General Contractor Todd Giroux, a Bristol resident who seeks the Democratic nomination for Governor, sees the national conversation of increasing the minimum wage as shifting towards that of providing America’s workers with living wage.  According to Giroux, President Obama’s call for a national minimum wage increase for federal contractors increases the “momentum for main street people to call upon elected leaders to represent their needs in jobs and wage security.”

Beginning May 2014, Giroux proposes the $ 8.00 minimum wage to be called a provisional starting wage for new hires for the first two weeks of employment.  This hourly rate would increase to $ 9.11 after their second week. On January 2015, the provisional starting wage would be $ 8.75 for the first two weeks of employment, increasing to $10 per hour after their second week.  Full-time, part-time and seasonal workers would be eligible for this salary increase.

Giroux believes the only way to effect a livable wage is to lower a person’s tax burden and increase the state’s mandated minimum wage. ” The Public Utilities Commissions’ thirty percent increase in the cost of utilities, combined with rising fuel, housing expenses and food work against any [political] argument on increasing the minimum wage,“ Giroux says.

But the Rhode Island’s GOP candidates, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung and businessman Ken Block, are not buying the Democratic candidate’s solution that minimum wage is the way to go.

“Democrats continue to recycle bad ideas. It’s time we consider some new ones so people have the opportunity to succeed and thrive, and not rely on government coercion to dictate wages. Increasing the minimum wage will result in higher unemployment, reduced job opportunities, reduced customer spending, and will reduce net job growth because of the effect on expanding companies,” says Mayor Fung

Mayor Fung states “At a time when we are tied for the highest unemployment in the country, we cannot put more hurdles in front of the companies we have here in Rhode Island; we need to remove them. Further, Obamacare is already hurting workers because employers are transitioning employees to part time work because they cannot afford the healthcare premiums. An increase in the minimum wage would only increase the burden on small business owners who are already working on thin margins.”

“The real issue in Rhode Island is unemployment and getting our workforce prepared with the necessary skill set for the ever changing workforce. It is quite evident that raising the minimum wage would not solve these problems,” adds Fung.

Block agrees with Fung, noting in a recent statement, “As I said the other day when it was announced that Rhode Island has the worst unemployment in the country, raising the minimum wage is a job killer.”

Block adds, “President Obama seems to believe that government can just order the economy to improve. Republicans and independents know that government has a critically important, but limited role in the growth of jobs. Government’s role is to regulate fairly and only where necessary, and to control its spending so people and businesses are not taxed to death. President Obama continues on the wrong track to fix lagging employment, just as the Democratic leaders of our General Assembly continue on the wrong track to fix Rhode Island.”

Mazze weighs in

But Edward M. Mazze, Distinguished University Professor of Business Administration, at the University of Rhode Island, puts in his two cents into the policy debate, too.

On the one hand, “Raising the minimum wage does not create jobs and can reduce the number of hours worked for existing workers and the number of jobs for part-time workers. There could also be an impact on the number of internships offered to high school and college students.  And, just as important, raising the minimum wage will also raise the price of products and services, observes Mazze.

“The minimum wage is not the entry point to middle class, it is the jobs that pay over $20 an hour and have a “career” future, says Mazze, noting that Rhode Island recently increased the minimum wage.

But, Mazze believes that the state’s minimum wage should be adjusted every number of years to keep up with inflation and other economic events.  “The best way to create living wages in Rhode Island is to prepare workers for jobs for the future, have an economic development strategy that creates jobs and attracts businesses, and have affordable housing and a fair sales, property and personal income tax program,” he notes.  

With the Rhode Island General Assembly geared up to pass legislation to make the Ocean State an easier place to do business, lawmakers should not forget their constituents who cannot pay their mortgage, utility bills, or even put food on their tables.  Until the state’s tax and regulatory system primes the economic pump to create more jobs, giving a little bit more money, say $10.10 per hour, will go a long way for tens of thousands of poor or working poor Rhode Islanders who struggle to survive.

How can Rhode Islander’s currently making a weekly paycheck of $320 (minus taxes), receiving a minimum wage, support their families?  This is not the American Dream they were brought up to believe in.

Herb Weiss, LRI’12 is a Pawtucket-based writer who covers, aging, health care, medical and business issues.  He can be reached at hweissri@aol.com.

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Ken Block, ideological stringency and the People’s Pledge


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Ken Block

I read with interest Ken Block’s rejection of the People’s Pledge on the following basis:

“I support comprehensive campaign-finance reform,” Block said. “But I won’t do it piecemeal.” And a People’s Pledge wouldn’t address the disadvantage he’d face against incumbents such as Raimondo, “who has spent three full years as treasurer raising money for this race,” he said.

Ken BlockSomething similar to “I won’t do it piecemeal” is a common refrain I hear among supporters of change or reform; most notably among left-wing opponents of the ACA (it didn’t go far enough!). I have no desire to rehash that particular battle, but suffice it to say, we have to deal in political realities, not political desires.

It’s a weird thing for a Republican candidate to oppose the People’s Pledge on the grounds of it doesn’t do enough to address the problem. Republicans of the Citizen’s United-era have been generally anti-campaign-finance reform. And if Block is keeping his previous position of “moderate,” a People’s Pledge would be in line with the model New England “moderate” Republican Scott Brown.

The argument that the Pledge is piecemeal is particularly flimsy. Citzen’s United has made the goals of the campaign-finance reform movement relatively unachievable; the striking down of McCain-Feingold’s section of unlimited corporate and union spending has made so-called “dark money” an increasing reality in all campaigns. And the People’s Pledge is proven to work at reducing that dark money spending.

Ideological stringency can be well and good. Refusing to support something over a matter of principle can be quite admirable. Opposing things as not going far enough when they would be ineffective or damaging is sensible. But this is neither of those cases. The Pledge notably advances the campaign-finance reform movement’s goals while providing proof to skeptical citizens that reform has an impact. Furthermore, while Block’s support of reform is proven and well-known, his ability to get it passed is non-existent. Democratic efforts, notably those under Rep. Chris Blazejewski, have been far more successful (unsurprisingly), though they often run into First Amendment issues and sometimes work indiscriminately when a targeted approach is called for.

One factor gone unsung in this is that the People’s Pledge has been a defining issue of the Democratic primary campaign, I think largely because the campaign-finance reform movement in the Democratic Party is far greater than that in the Republican Party (which is next to non-existent as far as I know). Block’s refusal to support it keeps him from supporting a “Democratic” issue, but also gives him space to keep up his usual attack line of the “ineffectiveness” of Democratic policies. However, it also provides the opening for Block’s primary opponent Allan Fung from having to take a stand on the Pledge one way or the other until the general election (should he beat Block, which seems likely).

As a final thought, Block’s criticism of Raimondo rings hollow. After all, what are we to believe Block was doing for the last three years, not preparing to run for governor?

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Not needed: crank economic opinions on the Minimum Wage


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DSC_8172Arguments against raising the minimum wage are tedious, immoral and wrong.

Writing about the need for a substantive raise in the minimum wage to alleviate the crushing poverty of the working poor opens the floodgates to conservative and libertarian cranks who argue, against all reason and compassion, that minimum wage laws should be abolished. Tearing quotes from their dog eared copies of Rothbard and Mises, two economists who never met a real-world constraint on their precious theories that they can’t talk themselves around in an assault of dense, senseless prose, Libertarian and free-market conservatives (as if there is a real difference) barrage the Internet with drivel.

Entering into discussions with people who advance economic models over economic reality is like jumping into choppy waters to rescue a drowning victim: If you are not extremely careful you will be dragged below the waves and drowned yourself.

After I wrote a piece on this blog taking Republican gubernatorial candidates Alan Fung and Ken Block to task for opposing an increase in minimum wage, I was hit with this objection from frequent commenter “jgardner”:

The minimum wage has never been, nor will ever be, a job creator, but will always be a job destroyer.

First, I never said raising the minimum wage would directly create jobs, but I did cautiously assert that providing the working poor with more money would have the effect of stimulating the economy, because poor people spend their money. More importantly, however, is the the second contention, stated without any proof as though delivered from God to Moses: The minimum wage is a job destroyer. From this I am to then conclude that abolishing the minimum wage would create more jobs. Perhaps. But these jobs would only be paying slave wages that keep the working poor working and poor.

As explained way back in 2009 by economics professor Bill Mitchell:

The winds of change strengthened in the recent OECD Employment Outlook entitled Boosting Jobs and Incomes, which is based on a comprehensive econometric analysis of employment outcomes across 20 OECD countries between 1983 and 2003. The sample includes those who have adopted the Jobs Study as a policy template and those who have resisted labour market deregulation. The report provides an assessment of the Jobs Study strategy to date and reveals significant shifts in the OECD position. OECD (2006) finds that:

-There is no significant correlation between unemployment and employment protection legislation;

-The level of the minimum wage has no significant direct impact on unemployment; and

-Highly centralized wage bargaining significantly reduces unemployment.

Having to finally concede that there is no real world evidence for his contention and instead a wealth of evidence against his position (though in truth no concession was made, the issue was simply sidestepped), “jgardner” pulled out his trump card:

If the minimum wage could lift people out of poverty with no adverse effects for anyone, why not raise the minimum wage to $25/hr?

One might as well ask why, if one beer relaxes you, why not drink twenty-five beers. The answer is because doing that will kill you. When answering such objections, no matter how nicely you try to put things, you feel like you are talking to a petulant child: “A little of something can be good for you, but a lot of something can hurt you. That’s why you can’t eat all your Halloween candy in one night.”

Here’s a nice way to say it, from the Social Democracy blog:

There is another objection that has been going the rounds (mostly on libertarian blogs): if we make the minimum wage $9, then why not $900? That objection is, quite frankly, brainless.

The minimum wage is a floor concept: the floor is roughly the poverty line (or slightly above it). That is where you set it, and not well above it.

Not even Post Keynesians deny that excessive wage increases can feed into cost push inflation – wages being a big factor in input costs. But a rise from, say, $7.25 to $9 is quite small. In the real world, whole swathes of the market have corporations and businesses that actively set prices and control them by price administration. They leave prices unchanged for significant periods of time, even when mild to moderate demand changes happen, or even when mild price increases affect their factor input costs.

I’ve been hard on “jgardner” because he was brave enough to put his opinions out there, and I would like to believe he’s a decent person. But like so many otherwise decent people who believe terrible things because of their religion, “jgardner” seems similarly trapped by his economic beliefs. Ultimately, shouldn’t all this back and forth economic theorizing should be secondary to other, more pertinent concerns? People right now are working full time at two or more jobs and being forced to subsist below the poverty line. This situation is plainly immoral and monstrous.

Moral arguments for raising the minimum wage include lifting people and families out of poverty, paying people an honest salary for an honest days work, moving away from the economic paradigm that suggests unemployment is voluntary and that workers are “shirkers” and reducing in some small way the vast economic inequality that threatens to destabilize our democracy.

A decent society, made up of decent people, does not let unemployed people starve, it does not plunge families into homelessness and it does not encourage businesses to pay slave wages for hard work.

Economic theories that do not fit in with observations made in the real world need to be modified or discarded. Science is not a process of inventing a set of ideal rules that support pre-existing prejudices. It is a process of suggesting possible rules, and then testing them against reality through experimentation and observation. In this way Libertarian economists such as Mises and Rothbard catastrophically fail as scientists. I should add here that as bad as Libertarian economic theory is, even mainstream economics needs a scientific wake-up call. (See: “Economics needs a scientific revolution” by physicist Jean-Philippe Brouchard.)

Inviting Libertarian economic views into serious economic and political policy discussions is as useless and counterproductive as inviting the views of Trofim Lysenko into a modern genetics conference or inviting Erich von Däniken to give a talk at an ancient history seminar.

The damage done to human wellbeing by corrupt economic theory far surpasses the damage down to our society by the teaching of creationism in schools, anti-vaccination conspiracy claptrap, the anti-birth control advocacy of the Catholic Church and Islamic terrorism combined. It is time to grow up, abandon the religion of economic idealism, and start living in the real world of testable economic hypotheses and scientific economic rigor with the intention to abolish poverty once and for all.

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Republicans are wrong about minimum wage and economists know it


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DSC_8263In response to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Angel Taveras supporting a minimum wage increase in Rhode Island from its current $8 to a kingly $10.10, both Republican candidates, according to the ProJo, have opposed the idea. Ken Block is quoted as saying, “We have seen repeatedly… that Democrat-driven mandates, like increasing the minimum wage, raise the cost of doing business and ultimately lead to fewer jobs,” while Cranston Mayor Allan Fung declared, “Raising the minimum wage isn’t a solution. It’s a symptom of a larger problem.”

Are Block and Fung right when they say raising the minimum wage will have an adverse effect on Rhode Island’s already struggling economy? The short answer is no, and the truth is that economists have known this since at least 1994 when David Card and Alan Krueger published Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Card and Krueger did an analysis in 1992 when New Jersey raised its minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.05. Contrary to what Ken Block seems to believe, the study found “no indication that the rise in the minimum wage reduced employment.”

As to Fung’s position that raising the minimum wage isn’t a solution, one needs to ask, “A solution to what?” If we are looking for a solution to the problem of how to keep workers poor and minimum wage employers rich, then Fung is right. However, if we are looking for a way to potentially lift hundreds of thousands of low paid workers out of poverty, then raising the minimum wage is a solution worth pursuing. A report from ROCUnited shows how this is possible.

Both Block and Fung, it seems, are content with the status quo, in which large corporations and other other businesses underpay their employees. This puts the burden of public assistance for these underpaid workers squarely on the taxpayers. Raising the minimum wage, however, does not put any additional burdens on the taxpayer, and in fact, by getting people off public assistance, tax burdens will be lowered.

To those who think that raising the minimum wage will just benefit a bunch of teenage kids working for date money or people too lazy to find real jobs, this chart, from the AFL-CIO and put together with info from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, should dispel that idea.

fMCwyRZ

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RIF Radio: Mayor Fung’s accident, ProJo on pot, Paiva Weed on poverty, McCarthy marches for campaign finance reform


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Monday Jan 13, 2013
North Kingstown, RI – Good morning, Ocean State. This is Bob Plain, editor and publisher of the RI Future blog podcasting to you from The Hideaway on the banks of the Mattatuxet River behind the Shady Lea Mill in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.

waterfall 1_12_14It’s Monday, January 13 … and while last week we wondered if Rhode Island was the only state in the nation to have a governor who surfs, this week we’ll be wondering if we’re the only state to have a gubernatorial hopeful responsible for a traffic fatality.

The Providence Journal reports this morning that in 1989, a 19-year-old Allan Fung, now mayor of Cranston who is running for governor, was arrested for the death of a man after a car accident he caused on Interstate 95. The charges were later dropped. Fung was coming home from college for the weekend and he allegedly lost consciousness, or maybe he fell asleep at the wheel, crossed three lanes of traffic and hit and killed a man who was changing a tire in the breakdown lane.

Wow … what a life-changing event for Mayor Fung. A lot of folks wouldn’t have the courage to enter public service after such an experience. I applaud him for telling this story, and more so for being able to move on from it.

That said, Sam Howard penned an important piece about both Republican candidates for governor late last week … both Fung and Barrington millionaire Ken Block agreed to boycott John DePetro and/or WPRO, but quickly abandoned their commitment as soon as the hateful shock jock’s month in exile was over.

On NBC 10 News Conference this weekend, we debated the merits of legalizing marijuana. Justin Katz, the ostensibly small government libertarian-leaning conservative, said he’s afraid it will lead to a government monopoly over drugs and prostitution. Ironically enough his opposition to marijuana smacks of paranoia.

I can’t believe I actually have opportunity to say this, but the ProJo editorial page has a more nuanced and reasonable reason for opposing legalization this morning. They write the legalization could increase use among kids. Experts don’t necessarily agree.

In December, East Greenwich school drug counselor Bob Houghtaling joined Jared Moffat and Rebecca McGoldrick of Regulate RI here in the RI Future newsroom to talk about just this topic. Houghtaling thinks it will be easier to teach kids how to make healthy choices about pot if we take a less punative approach.

In other news about potentially progressive legislation this year from the State House … Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed said last week that her chamber will focus on addressing poverty this session as a means to fixing Rhode Island’s ailing economy.

And in New Hampshire this week, the talk is about campaign finance reform. Harvard professor and Rootstriker Lawrence Lessig organized, with Demand Progress and Rhode Island’s own David Segal, a two week march through the Granite State to get residents to demand presidential candidates take a stand against money dominating politics.

Friend of RI Future Mike McCarthy is there for the entire two weeks and we hope he’ll be checking in with us on occassion. In the meantime, here’s my interview with McCarthy from Friday … he stopped by the Hideaway to borrow my sleeping bag for his trip. Listen to our conversation about his adventure here.

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Thank you Ken Block!


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Ken Block

Ken BlockI don’t agree with Ken Block on very much.  But I am here to thank him–for running for governor as a Republican.  What has always bothered me about Block is that he used his “Moderate Party” label to portray his Republican views as somehow moderate.

But then he became the leader of the conservative group RI Taxpayers, which takes more unabashedly right-wing positions like denying rights to immigrants denied documents.  And now he has come out as a Republican.

The biggest problem Rhode Island liberals have always had is that Republicans scramble ordinary politics by running for the General Assembly as Democrats.  As Ann Clanton famously put it when she was Executive Director if the Rhode Island Republican Party, “We have a lot of Democrats who we know are Republican but run as a Democrat–basically so they can win.”

Block could have walked this well-tread path, a path that so many talented Rhode Island conservatives have taken.  It is the path that gave us a House Speaker and Senate President who have each taken thousands of dollars from the NRA, passed a voter ID law, and slashed taxes for the rich more aggressively than nearly any other state.

But Block has chosen a different route.  He has chosen to be honest with the voters about his political beliefs.  I really respect him for it. I wish more conservatives would follow his lead.

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Block eliminates own relevance, Moderate Party in one fell swoop


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Ken Block

Ken BlockBreak out the dirges, Ken Block put the nails in his own political coffin with the announcement he would become a Republican and run in that party’s primary for governor.

Block has been saying for months that he would only seek the office of governor if he saw a clear path to victory. That path for victory did not lie in the political party he’d spent the last half-decade building and advocating for. This does two things. First, for everyone who ever accused Block of being a Republican in sheep’s clothing, it confirms that their suspicions were reality. Second, it makes it appear that Block is less dedicated to his causes and more dedicated to himself. Switching affiliations from Moderate to Republican doesn’t further the causes Block has championed. It only furthers his own career.

Republicans should no doubt be both happy and annoyed about this latest shapeshifter in Rhode Island’s political landscape. They should be happy because it removes Block as their personal gadfly; GOP partisans have long suggested Block’s candidacy is what prevented a Gov. John Robitaille from being inaugurated in 2011. Now, come September 2014, Block will either be their standard-bearer or defeated. The smart money is on the latter.

But therein lies the problem. Until now, it seemed as though Cranston Mayor Allan Fung was going to have a easy waltz to the nomination, leaving him free to beat up on the Democratic candidates. Now he has a contested nomination. Resources that otherwise could’ve gone toward tamping down the Democratic nominee’s inherent advantage are now going to have to go to fending off Block’s challenge.

For the Moderate Party, this appears to be its death knell. It never existed much outside the persona of Ken Block. This is exactly what I wrote about in March of last year; that the Moderate Party has an issue of a lack of identity. Block has been very successful at garnering media attention. But that attention has never translated into much support for the Moderate Party. It’s not even clear if there are other Moderates beyond Block. It seems likely the Moderate Party will end its existence as a second most successful third party in modern Rhode Island politics; right behind the Cool Moose Party.

Whether Block will become the new Robert Healey is anyone’s guess.

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Both party primaries for governor come into focus


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Gina Raimondo, Linc Chafee and Allan Fung at the unveiling of the Truth in Numbers report.
Gina Raimondo, Linc Chafee and Allan Fung at the unveiling of the “Truth in Numbers” report.

The calendar may still say 2013, but the 2014 election year kicked into high gear this weekend. Providence Mayor Angel Taveras said he will announce his candidacy today at 10 am at Meeting Street School in Providence; General Treasurer Gina Raimondo told WPRI Newsmakers if she does run for governor, she will do so as a Democrat; and “moderate” Ken Block finally admitted he’s really a Republican.

Progressives have reason to celebrate all three announcements.

Angel Taveras is the most obvious, as many local liberals are hoping he becomes the first Democrat elected governor since Bruce Sundlun was 18 years ago. He’s won praise for winning concessions from a wide swath of special interests and more recently he’s been panned for not cow-towing to neighborhood interests (and astroturfing Republicans) who want their public sector pool re-opened. More than anything, I think, progressives hope Angel can usher in a new era of working across the aisle without giving in to influential and often discreet out-of-town corporate forces.

To that end, with Raimondo almost certainly commanding the most out-of-state super PAC support in 2014, the left will be lucky if it has to face those influential and often-discreet corporate forces in a primary rather than the general election. Perhaps. At least there will be something refreshing about seeing the Citizens United approach to campaigning square off with real grassroots, boots-on-the-ground organizers.

Raimondo probably has the best shot of winning a general election, but because she has a wider appeal among all Rhode Island voters than she does among Democrats. But since she will need party support if she ever wants to run for national office, she’ll remain a Democrat.

While Raimondo’s career aspirations keep her in one mainstream political party, Ken Block’s has him joining the other. Now, instead of siphoning off votes from Republican Allan Fung in a general election, he’ll compete against him for the nomination. That, too, will likely be a bruising primary – if for no other reason than both Fung and Block are hot-headed and argumentative politicians. I think Fung will prove victorious and the more moderate of the two. More importantly, a contested GOP primary will be an interesting look at the right wing in Rhode Island.

Then there is Clay Pell, the grandson of former Senator Claiborne Pell who is flirting with the idea of making his foray into politics by injecting himself into an already divisive Democratic field. His family fortune and connections make him an instant contender, and he sent shivers down the spine of some Taveras supporters when he showed up at an NEARI event last week. While political operatives might not like the prospect of a three-way primary, political philosophers can ask for a lot worse than to get to see a Latino from South Providence take on a Wall Street Democrat and a registered member of the 1 percent.

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People’s Pledge: Let’s give it a try

KerryWeldIn 1996 incumbent John Kerry and Governor William Weld were headed toward an epic showdown for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. Closely matched as candidates, they knew spending in their upcoming race could break records. In a novel twist the candidates themselves sat down and negotiated an agreement to limit the total amount that could be spent by the campaigns (including from their personal fortunes), their respective parties, and outside groups. They also agreed to a series of televised debates throughout the state. Although the spending caps broke down in the final days, the race was a watershed moment for campaign finance.

Fast-forward to 2012 and incumbent Senator Scott Brown reached out to challenger Elizabeth Warren (read the actual correspondence) and challenged her to enter a People’s Pledge. Modeled after the Weld-Kerry agreement it included limits on outside spending (it’s notable that no one is talking about limiting total expenditures any more—Citizens United changed the political landscape and dialogue). After significant back and forth, both candidates signed on and even sent notice to third party groups and TV stations that might run their ads, warning them to stay out of the race.

Common Cause Massachusetts reported that the 2012 People’s Pledge did a great job at minimizing outside money in the Brown-Warren race when compared to similar races that year. We know that outside spending is overwhelmingly negative, can come from undisclosed sources, and can be raised in unlimited amounts. In 2013 when the Gomez-Markey race did not have a pledge outside spending from right and left came flooding back in.

So here we are in neighboring Rhode Island looking at the prospect of a very expensive Democratic primary, followed by a very short, but quite-possibly expensive, general election for governor in 2014. Typically races for governor aren’t fought on the national issues that draws outside groups into Senate races but that may be different this time.

Common Cause Rhode Island would like to see all candidates for governor negotiate a People’s Pledge.  We mentioned the idea over a month ago when the first self-described Super PAC emerged.  Sam Howard wrote about the idea at length on RI Future soon after.  Quite frankly, we were waiting for the candidates to actually declare before we began to push for an agreement.

So now the cat is out of the bag.  As a non-partisan group that does not engage in electioneering it would be easy to just let the topic die.  We do not want to be seen as favoring any candidate over another.  But this is too important a topic.  Rhode Island deserves a campaign in 2014 that will focus on issues, not attacks. We deserve to know where the money that is backing the candidates is coming from. For those reasons we are asking the would-be candidates to meet and discuss this idea.

This won’t be easy.  Massachusetts has demonstrated that these agreements might take some time to work out, but that they can work.  Each candidate has strengths and weaknesses when it comes to campaign finance and the negotiations should address those.  As the Supreme Court dismantles limits on money in politics (and next it might be limits on contributions directly to candidates) we need to look to alternatives.  The People’s Pledge may be our best hope.  Let’s give it a try.

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Let the Taveras, Raimondo horse race begin!


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Gina Raimondo and Angel Taveras supporting payday loan reform. (Bob Plain 5/18/12 Click on image for larger version)
Gina Raimondo and Angel Taveras supporting payday loan reform. (Bob Plain 5/18/12 Click on image for larger version)

The Taubman Center’s recent poll is probably the ultimate kick-off of horse race coverage of the 2014 campaign for governor. In a somewhat regular occurrence for Director Marion Orr, the poll’s methodology was called out almost immediately. WPRI’s Ted Nesi has an interview with Orr explaining the methodology; here on RI Future our editor Bob Plain has a quick list comparing the actual results of elections versus Taubman’s predictions.

Polling is great for horse race coverage, and shoddy polling is politically dangerous. A year out, with the primary candidates for governor as yet undeclared, we don’t care much for talking about the issues the next governor will face; even though recent history suggests the decisions made in this next year will likely have great impacts on the next administration. Thus the polling provides a simple narrative for who has the “advantage” going into the actual race.

That narrative is something to be cautious about, especially in Rhode Island. What the media is saying is not necessarily what is happening. Sometimes, unfortunately, media outlets can fall too much in love with the narrative they’ve created. 2012 should remain a sobering moment; the narrative (based largely on polling) was that Rep. David Cicilline was in for one of the closest races of his political career. On the eve of the election, WPRI showed Cicilline with a 1-point lead over challenger Brendan Doherty. A month before, both the Taubman Center and WPRI had Cicilline with a 5- or 6-point lead. Cicilline went on to win by an unexpected 12.2% margin.

The Taubman Center’s polling also shows where the narrative is going. Included is a question comparing a 4-way race between Gina Raimondo, Angel Taveras, Allan Fung, and Ken Block. The operating theory is that Raimondo will choose to skip the Democratic primary, run as an independent and Chafee her way to victory. But here’s the thing; she’s already told NBC 10’s Jim Taricani that she won’t run for governor as an independent. Why does this narrative persist? Because people want it to.

In the meantime, there are strong questions to be asked. For instance, how does the next governor fix the state’s economy? Can they, considering the office’s major policy-making ability is as a leader in budget creation and through the bully pulpit? For the Democrats, we have to ask ourselves what the General Assembly does if the governor is no longer a useful foil to play off of? How do the candidates view the office they’re running for? There are social issues that are going to come up during the next term; will gubernatorial candidates protect the recent advances, or will they roll back progress? What are their educational policies?

David Preston has a great review of the usefulness of polling, and how to watching a political campaign without using numbers that are either unreliable or meant to manipulate.

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How significant is food stamp fraud in RI?


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SNAP-420x215WPRI wants you to believe that, “Food stamp fraud is a ‘significant problem’ in Rhode Island.”

“That,” the TV news station reports, “was the message U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha sent Thursday when he announced that nine people are facing criminal charges for allegedly defrauding the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program out of more than $3 million.”

As a point of fact, that wasn’t the message of the U.S. Attorney yesterday. The actual message was that nine people had scammed the system. Here’s how the Providence Journal began its story on the same exact event:

“A two-year federal investigation into food-stamp fraud has resulted in nine merchants involved with five convenience stores in the city being charged in connection with the theft of more than $3 million from the program designed to provide food to many of the state’s neediest residents.”

Less sensationalized, but more accurate.

Food stamp fraud is far more of a political tool of conservatives to smear social services than it is a legitimate social problem. Here in Rhode Island, a recent analysis by right-leaning gubernatorial candidate Ken Block indicated that the actual rate of fraud was less than the national average.

As , “Providence Rep. Maria Cimini, who coordinates the SNAP outreach program at URI, said the national fraud rate for the program known as food stamps is between 1 and 3 percent. Block’s report indicates the fraud rate in Rhode Island is ‘one half of 1 percent,’ she said.”

That’s far below the national average. For more on how the right wing overstates food stamp fraud, Chris Hayes of MSNBC filed this recent report.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here’s how the “food stamp fraud” fraud works:

A news organization finds an outlier abusing the system. The most popular example this summer was when FOX News interviewed this southern California surfer that uses food stamps. The FOX segment indicated that the man drives a Cadillac SUV and surfs everyday, but the San Diego Union Tribune learned that neither was true.

Then, you simply met the right wing outrage machine take over. I’d be real surprised if John DePetro doesn’t think food stamp fraud is most pressing issue in Rhode Island this morning. On the web, Ken Block, pounced on the opportunity yesterday, posting to his Facebook page, “If those who defraud spending programs get nothing more than a slap on the wrist, there is no deterrent value and the frauds will not only continue – but they will grow.” And, “This sort of vigilance is required for every spending program.”

Here’s a handy primer for dealing with those who traffic in the food stamp fraud talking point.

Fraud, of any kind, is not good. But neither is being penny wise and pound foolish. A better strategy for Rhode Island would be to identify how many people are eligible for the SNAP program but don’t utilize it.

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Voter ID, master lever reforms both failed this session


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Paper ballot with straight party option selected.
Paper ballot with straight party option selected.

There were two high-profile election reform issues that failed to pass during the legislative session that just was: one would have stopped full implementation of Rhode Island’s controversial voter ID law and the other was the elimination of the master lever.

It’s too bad because the progressive/conservative coalition that came together to bind up the budget process this year probably could have worked together all session to champion a suite of election reforms.

I suggested this idea to Ken Block way back on January 13. “Maybe we should take a big picture look at election law, and include #voterid in the conversation,” I tweeted to him after he first asked me to endorse his “abolish the lever” efforts.

At the time, Block didn’t want to bundle the two issues, tweeting back to me: “Master Lever already stands alone in bills submitted in both chambers. Don’t add confusion to a simple effort. #abolish_the_lever”

According to his op/ed piece in Sunday’s Providence Journal, he now knows that how a bill before the Rhode Island General assembly reads in January has no necessary relationship to what gets voted on in June. Or maybe he knew that then too, and just didn’t want to support voter ID reform for whatever reason…

In either case, few progressives, for whatever reason, helped Block in his crusade against the master lever either, even though there aren’t a lot of us (if any) who support straight party voting. In that same Twitter exchange Bob Walsh of the NEA said he supported doing away with it:, “Eliminate the lever! Makes down ballot D’s into real D’s, need progressive/labor support to win in November. ”

An important lesson I re-learned this legislative session is progressives and conservatives often have overlapping interests on the issues – Occupy Providence and the Stephen Hopkins Center proved this late in the session when they worked together to host a debate on repayment of the 38 Studios bond holders.

Maybe the takeaway here is that John Marion of Common Cause RI, which supports repeal of both the master lever and voter ID, has a vested interest in getting progressives and members of the Moderate Party to work together?


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