At least if Council 94 was going to hire a blogger to do opposition research on its behalf, it should have shopped local! This is not at all any kind of slight on Ted Siedle, but I don’t believe there’s anything he can uncover about our pension investments that Tom Sgouros can’t do at least as well.

Sgouros, in addition to being the policy/financial wizard, is also a progressive Democrat who decided not to run for treasurer after labor threw its support behind Gina Raimondo. He also just wrapped up a very similar kind of forensic investigation into how the state uses the NECAP tests. I think he’s well qualified for this kind of employment.

Shop locally, Council 94, and offer the job of blogger-for-hire to Tom Sgouros too!

I’ll update this Storify as warranted.

This time he suggests that the amount retirees’ cost of living adjustment was slashed might be just enough to afford the new fees being paid to the venture capitalists and hedge fund managers with whom Raimondo gambled the state’s pension fund.

The so-called “reforms” of the state pension in the Rhode Island Retirement Security Act of 2011, which include slashing the COLA, I’m told are projected to save $2.9 billion over 20 years. Suspension of the COLA is estimated to represent $2.3 billion of that savings.

I can tell you where that COLA savings is going—into the already-stuffed pockets of Wall Street’s most highly-compensated gamblers—almost dollar-for-dollar. By my estimate, $2.1 billion in fees (out of the $2.3 billion in COLA savings) will be paid by the pension to hedge, private equity and venture capital tycoons. That’s some “reform.” No wonder Wall Street is so eager to support this shameless public pension money grab.

Here are his other posts on Raimondo’s pension work:

• 22 Tough Questions For Rhode Island’s Pension ‘Reform’ Treasurer
• Rhode Island’s Scary State Treasurer
• Rhode Island Public Pension ‘Reform’ Looks More Like Wall Street Feeding Frenzy

Conventional wisdom, I explained to Ted in an email, is why I devote so many posts to critiquing the mainstream media (here in RI, one newspaper and one or two radio and TV stations each) and the marketplace of ideas (the rest of the collection of communicators who, from Twitter to TV, broadcast our thoughts): for good, bad or indifferent this relatively-random though not-all-that-eclectic chattering class is largely responsible for what the rest of the residents know about Rhode Island. We foment and solidify conventional wisdom.

Think about it: most Rhode Islanders don’t actually know the first thing about life on Smith Hill or local politics beyond the headlines, tweets and soundbites that the chattering class feeds them – some of whom themselves are getting their information second hand! I almost wrote a piece a few weeks back about how, of course, the media is responsible for Chafee’s approval rating – whatever it happens to be – the real question is whether he deserves the approval rating he has.

Conventional wisdom is also what makes Forbes blogger Ted Siedle’s posts on Raimondomania so politically consequential for Rhode Island. He wrote his first post in response to an Institutional Investor article that said she “defies conventional pension wisdom.”

But prior to the Siedle posts conventional wisdom in Rhode Island held that Gina Raimondo was a benevolent reformer who had enriched Rhode Island at the expense of the unions (which, by the way, the chattering class, as an organism, tries real hard to paint as Public Enemy #1). Sure, Mike Downey and I had publicly called her a Wall Street Democrat, but we’re part of what the chattering class by and large sees as the dastardly special interest known as labor. And, for what it’s worth, me and Mike are pretty easily dismissed by said chattering class…

…A Forbes.com columnist known as the Sam Spade of Money Management, not so much though.

The Siedle posts pointed out the indisputable fact that the manner in which Raimondo has invested the state’s pension fund will be a huge boon for the hedge fund managers and venture capitalists who get the work while many experts including Warren Buffett believe it is a bad bet for Rhode Island. That hadn’t been reported yet.

I believe the Siedle posts shifted the conventional wisdom on Gina Raimondo. Whereas it once held that she had taken from labor and given to the taxpayer, it now also holds that she then subsequently gambled that windfall with her Wall Street cronies who are the only guaranteed winners in ever-unfolding drama that conventional wisdom dubbed “pension reform” until Forbes.com called it “a money grab.”

Here are two that I’ve been asking on this blog for some time now.

One is that she is employing a very high-risk strategy that will definitely benefit Wall Street hedge fund managers and venture capitalists and might also be good for Rhode Island – though he and other experts are skeptical. Siedle told Buddy Cianci earlier this week that Warren Buffett has a “very public” $1 million bet that the S&P Index will outperform these more costly and riskier investments – in other words, Warren Buffett thinks Raimondo is wrong. Siedle says the state is paying more to money managers for the right to take this risk.

This is an issue with special resonance for progressives, as most of us strongly feel a giant problem with Rhode Island’s economy and American capitalism in general is that Wall Street comes first and everyone else gets in line according to how well they serve Wall Street’s interest.

The other issue, which has been raised locally, is that some members of Engage RI may have a financial stake in pension reform. See question 18 of his 22 Tough Questions For Rhode Island’s Pension ‘Reform’ Treasurer:

Do any of the contributors to Engage Rhode Island have any financial relationship, direct or indirect, with any of the investment managers of the pension? For example, do any contributors to Engage Rhode Island have assets managed by, or an ownership interest in, any of the pension’s managers or any fund managed by these managers?

These are both uber-important questions that all Rhode Islanders should want answered.

Raimondo doesn’t want these questions answered. Please re-read this post I wrote on December 13. In it, I point out that one the very same day in the Providence Journal, Raimondo tells Mike Stanton that she feels it’s okay for Engage RI members to be anonymous and Kathy Gregg quotes her as saying, “it is more important than ever that [a] treasurer bend over backwards to be transparent and open with our investors.”

So I made a public records request to Raimondo’s office on Jan. 8 asking for all of Raimondo’s communications with Engage RI members. I got a letter from Mark Dingley 15 days later, the treasurer’s legal counsel, informing me they wouldn’t even consider my request, unless I give them $435 first. Here’s what he wrote to me:

I would estimate that Search and retrieval will require thirty (30) hours at Fifteen Dollars ($15.00) per hour with the first hour free. See Rl. Gen. Laws  38-2-463), Accordingly, kindly provide pre-payment of Four Hundred Thirty-five Dolîars ($435.00).

Please be advised that payment does not guarantee that the records you have requested constitute  public records (in Whole 0r iu part, i.e., redacted), but only authorizes this Office to conduct its Search and retrieval to determine if responsive records exist, and if so, Whether said records are public records. Should actual Search, retrievàl, and copying fees exceed pre-payment, this office will advise you to seek your authorization before continuing. Should your pre-payment exceed actual Search, retrieval, and  copying, you will, of course, be reimbursed.

Given the voluminous nature of your public records request, the time for this office to respond is extended an additional twenty (20) business days as set forth in Rl. Gen. Laws  38-2-3(e). Notwithstanding this extension, the time period for this office to respond to your request is also tolled as ofthe date of this letter pending pre-payment and authorization.

Sadly for me, RI Future doesn’t yet enjoy such access to capital. But if you want to help us get to the bottom of this, please make a donation here. If I’m able to raise the $435, I’ll send Raimondo a check and we can begin the process of getting some answers.