Progressive News, Opinion, and Analysis
Does the success of the ballot measures mean Rhode Islanders don’t believe in austerity? Can libertarians and progressives work together to make Rhode Island the first east coast state to legalize marijuana? Will the new crop of Democrats be much different from the old bosses?
NBC10’s Bill Rappleye and the GOP’s Rob Paquin and I discuss here:
Congressman David Cicilline and his Republican challenger Cormick Lynch win the prize for the most spirited debate of the 2014 election cycle.
Twice did NBC 10 News Conference host Bill Rappleye ask Congressman David Cicilline and Republican challenger Cormick Lynch not to touch each other during the shouting match, as well as one phrase (“BS”) perhaps not suitable for children (it airs at 11:30 Sunday morning).
And, oh yeah, one unicorn reference.
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“People are sick to death of the Democrat and Republican BS.” said Lynch. Which is certainly true, but this was his response to Cicilline talking about raising the minimum wage, bringing manufacturing jobs back to Rhode Island and the United States, rebuilding roads and bridges and lowering the cost of higher education.
When asked, pretty directly, why he is opposed to raising the minimum wage, Lynch began, “It’s not the liberals aren’t intelligent….” but eventually got around to indicating Rhode Island should model its economy after North Dakota rather than raise the minimum wage. He stressed working with the state leaders to lower the corporate tax. “We need to attract businesses here.”
Cicilline: “Raising the minimum wage is going to help lead to job growth because what happens, Bill, is that when people have more money in their pocket who are minimum wage earners they spend that money.”
Lynch: “Congressman what color was the unicorn you rode in on? And what planet did it take you here from. There’s no customers coming into anyone’s business in Rhode Island. That’s why we are in the state we are in.”
All that, just in the first segment. Here’s the second:
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I think it’s fair to label Lynch a hawk. “I think it’s not politically correct to say, stop trying to democratize countries and kill the enemy. These guys gotta go. I wouldn’t rule boots on the ground out. If you need someone to board a flight and go over there, I’d be more than happy to go over there myself.”
Based on the way he debates, ISIS should be afraid.
Rob Paquin and I discuss here:
First Secretary of State hopefuls Democrat Nellie Gorbea and Republican John Carlevale, who this time is running as a Republican, debated on NBC 10 News Conference.
Then Rob Paquin, self described “second in command of the super minority party” in Rhode Island fills in for Justin Katz on Wingmen and we talk about the issues that contrast the two candidates: voter ID and a constitutional convention.
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You can watch Gorbea and Carlevale debate here:News, Weather and Classifieds for Southern New England
There are no fewer than four candidates from four political parties running fot lt. governor: Democrat Dan McKee, Republican Catherine Taylor, Moderate William Gilbert and unaffiliated Libertarian Tony Jones. There is no liberal in this race.
On NBC 10 News Conference with Bill Rappleye, the four debated, among other things, whether charter schools or vouchers are a better way to fix education. Two of the candidates want to eliminate the office altogether. And none mentioned anything that would make the progressive left pleased.
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McKee is the best known, but it’s mayoral academies he’s known for. Mayoral academies are a kind of charter school created by local executive branches (mayors or town administrators). This could win him some conservative support, but it also will cost him a good deal of votes from the liberal left. Taylor, on the other hand, worked in Linc Chafee’s administration. This may endear her to some progressives, but probably not to her party base.
My read: there’s no good option for liberals in this race and Taylor has the clearest path to victory. And if Taylor wins and Democrat Gina Raimondo becomes the next governor, it would be pretty great if Rhode Island has two females from different political parties in the state’s two highest offices.
Justin Katz and I discuss here:
Three-way races seem to dominate gubernatorial elections in Rhode Island.
Current Governor Linc Chafee won a three-way race in 2010 with just 36 percent of the vote – almost twice as many people voted against him as for him. In the Democratic primary this year, Gina Raimondo won 42 percent of the vote while 58 percent of voters opted for someone else. In this year’s general election, Republicans fear Bob Healey will peal votes away from Allan Fung, making it even harder for him to compete against Raimondo.
So on NBC10 Wingmen this week, Justin Katz, Bill Rappleye and I debated the merits of instant run-off voting – an electoral system in which voters can prioritize their choices in a field of more than two candidates. Watch our conversation about IRV and then lean even more about it here.
Would an income tax on people who work in Providence help the local economy by replacing a regressive tax with a progressive one? Justin Katz and I debate the merits and drawbacks to the idea on this week’s episode of NBC 10 Wingmen.
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Congress should make a long term commitment to funding transportation, especially given that Rhode Island has the worst infrastructure and unemployment in the nation, I argued on Wingmen last week. Meanwhile, Justin Katz suggests we forgo federal money and fund transportation locally, which doesn’t seem like a serious solution to me.
With immigration in the news, Rapp, Katz and I took up the issue on NBC 10 Wingmen last week. For me, human safety and compassion should generally always trump financial concerns. “Do we want to be the kind of country that says to children, sorry stay in your war-torn country, we don’t want to raise taxes,” I asked, I thought rhetorically.
But of course, that’s the exact society Katz would like to foster. “Rhode Island can’t handle an influx of illegal immigrants at this point,” he said, noting that Rhode Island is attracting immigration here with certain progressive policies. He thinks illegal immigrants will put a burden on schools and other social services.
What would happen if a practitioner of Scientology (who doesn’t believe in vaccinations) bought a big company like, say, CVS? According to the SCOTUS Hobby Lobby decision, the new owner could refuse to cover childhood vaccinations for some 200,000 people across the country.
Given that, was the Supreme Court correct to allow an employers religious beliefs to dictate an employees health care coverage? Is Obamacare working? Does the government belong in the health care industry? Justin Katz, Bill Rappleye and I debate these questions and more this week on Wingmen.
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One question Katz seems loath to answer is whether he believes a fully-privatized health care market would provide care for poor people. I’d love to read an Anchor Rising post on how fully-privatized health care market would somehow trickle down health insurance to poor people.
Can Buddy Cianci really win an election, or will he simply garner a lot of media attention? Sam Bell, of the Rhode Island Progressive Democrats, and Andrew Morse, of Anchor Rising, tackle these questions with Bill Rappleye on NBC 10 Wingmen this week.
“Don’t underestimate the importance of the Democratic primary,” said Bell in closing. “We’re going to have a fresh face and someone who can beat Cianci.”
When it comes to reducing revenue, Justin Katz and I agree that it would be better to slash the sales tax than the estate tax exemption, in contrast to what the House Finance Committee thinks is the best course for Rhode Island.
But that’s about as close to agreeing on the proposed budget – or anything to do with government, for that matter – that we were able to reach on this week’s NBC 10 Wingmen segment.
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In the hallowed history of NBC 10 Wingmen segments, I dare say conservative blogger Justin Katz and I have never come so close to agreeing as we did when tourism was the topic. The backdrop for this conversation is, of course, Memorial Day weekend, and the post I wrote earlier in the week about the tourist economy here in the Ocean State.
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With so many students bombing the NECAP test, the state Senate moving forward with a bill that would put a moratorium on using the high stakes test as a graduation requirement and the Board of Education being chided by a court for having a discussion about all this in private, Justin Katz and I debate the matter on this week’s NBC 10 Wingmen.
Finally, Justin Katz and I get down to the brass tacks of it and hash it out over the big picture. Every week, we seem to have one fundamental difference: is the free market better suited to solving social issues than government.
Watch and see if either of us convince you to change your mind:
Justin Katz, Bill Rappleye and I talk about the Central Coventry Fire District on NBC 10 Wingmen this week…
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On aggregate, women are paid less in the workplace. Nationally, women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man makes and here in Rhode Island they earn 81 cents for every dollar a man makes. (We’re number 14!)
But what do we do about it? Carolyn Mark, president of Rhode Island NOW, offers her thoughts here and Providence state Senator Gayle Goldin gives hers here. Or you can watch me and Justin Katz take the total white guy approach to this topic and talk about it in the context of the construction industry!
That aside, I think we both make interesting points when it comes to what role the people should play in leveling the workplace playing field. Essentially, my point is we need to value caregivers as much as (if not more!) than hammer swingers.
There’s been no shortage of cursory – and even congratulatory – reporting on a new report from a right wing think tank that details how to shrink government to make way for more tax cuts. But when I debated Justin Katz, one of its authors, about its merits, it turns out there is much less substance to the report than it would appear.
Because it uses a samurai sword to do the work of a scalpel, it makes at least a few errors as well as makes some incorrect claims that were repeated by the media. Watch here and then I explain a few examples below:
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One example we discussed on this weekend’s NBC 10 Wingmen segment was the idea that the state would save money if it eliminated a golf course at Goddard State Park. While I don’t love the idea that the state operates a golf course, the report wasn’t about public spending items we love and/or hate, it was about ways to save the “taxpayer” money. I will bet both Katz and Mike Stenhouse that eliminating the golf course at Goddard Park will actually increase the cost of operating that state park, not reduce it. (I don’t know this for certain, but neither did Katz – and he co-wrote a report saying it would save money to eliminate it.)
I happen to live near Goddard Park, so I know it well, but I suspect the report is littered with such fallacies that I don’t happen to know intimately. True story: the state used to charge admission to Goddard Park until we were reminded that the Goddard family gave it to us with the stipulation that it be open and available for free. Perhaps, by extension, it should be free for the people of Rhode Island to golf there. But it’s not free, and making it free or eliminating this source of revenue will not save the state money.
Another fallacy with this report is that it doesn’t cut social services. It does. The report itself details a $2,500 legislative grant to the Johnnycake Center, a food pantry in South Kingstown that provides nutritious meals to poor children when school isn’t in session. While legislative grants are by no means perfect, by the report’s own admission some are used to fund social services. Either the report cuts the social safety net or the Johnnycake Center isn’t part of the social safety net.
And this is just one such example of an agency or organization that works with people in poverty was singled out in the report. Another is the John Hope Settlement House. The reality is small government budget hawks have pushed some “essential” or “social service” public spending outside of the traditional budgeting process. Good, bad or indifferent it simply isn’t true to say this report doesn’t cut social services.
Other ideas in the report are simply economically foolish, like ending the full day kindergarten program or selling off the state’s nuclear reactor to a private entity.
It’s at least worth noting that such reports aren’t really about public policy. Its authors know well that many of its proposals are either politically untenable, wrong or just silly. But, in the same way this report cites Ken Block’s widely discredited report on SNAP fraud in Rhode Island, the real hope is that it will be used as a talking point in political debate. To that end, the small government activists who authored it have done their job well. But the political reporters who repeated its errors and/or gave a less than accurate account of its findings did not do theirs very well.
The Procaccianti Group, the multinational real estate holdings corporation that owns the Hilton and Renaissance hotels in Providence where workers have been protesting and organizing a labor union to demand more humane working conditions, should treat their employees better, agreed Justin Katz and I on last week’s NBC 10 Wingmen.
“In a given circumstance, perhaps they should” form a union, Katz said and said the way they have been treated is “garbage from [employers].”
Katz deserves a lot of credit for this admission. Richard MacAdams, one of the board members for the vehemently anti-union political advocacy group he works for, is also on the chief legal counsel for the Procaccianti Group. I respect Katz for speaking his truth on this issue for the same reasons I respect the fired Hilton Providence workers for speaking theirs.
But, as per every episode, we also had some disagreement. Katz would prefer the invisible hand of the free market create better working conditions for the Hilton employees.
“What I don’t like the union union debate the way it sets it up unions have power to counteract business power,” he said. “If a company isn’t valuing its workers then that’s a problem with the company and we have to create an economic environment in which they suffer for that.”
In theory, everyone agrees I suppose. But from a practical point of view, unfettered capitalism simply doesn’t have an effective way to compel a multinational holdings company to pay poor people a living wage without workers organizing and making a stink about it.
Every time Justin Katz and I tape a Wingmen segment, we find new ways to disagree. But we also find these not-inconsequential areas of agreement too.
This week we debated whether Obamacare is working (guess who suggested this topic!) and Katz articulates well where we agree on health care policy:
“What government is there to do is to say if you need help this is what these programs are set up to do,” he said. “If you need help this is a place you can go to find help.”
But he thinks the government-funded advertisements are going too far. I don’t. Especially given that conservatives like Katz are actively trying to subterfuge the program with their own ads and commercials. But leaving that aside, austerity by way of information asymmetry is a truly perverse political assertion.
Me: “I honestly think it’s unconscionable to try to keep that information from people. That’s not a cool way to save money.
Justin: “Taking people’s money to give it away to people who didn’t know they needed it is not conscionable.”
Watch the video to hear how loud Katz bangs on the table as he talks!
Rapp, Katz and I get an early start on the pension debate this week on NBC 10’s web-only Wingmen segment. I argue the pension case should go to court mostly because I think it’s horrendously unfair that Rhode Island boast about leading the nation when it comes to slashing benefits but loses the stomach for the real fight when it comes to figuring out whether it was legal to do so. (That’s not reform, that’s cuts)
