Saturday, May 10, 2008
It's not surprising that the latest state revenue estimates have come in lower than previously expected, but this hardly makes it easier to contend with the situation. Here's the heart of Steve Peoples's report today:
Until yesterday, Governor Carcieri had officially anticipated a budget deficit of $384 million for the fiscal year that begins in July. He had already submitted a plan to close the massive gap, which accounts for 11 percent of state spending.
A group of budget analysts, however, determined yesterday that weak tax collections — led by declining sales-tax revenues — caused the state’s financial hole to grow by between $50 million and $55 million. ....
The election-year debate over the midyear spending plan raged for much of the last month. But it might pale in comparison to the debate over how to close a budget hole nearly three times larger for the coming fiscal year. That question will consume Smith Hill for the next seven weeks.
Friday, May 09, 2008
From the Obama campaign:
Providence, RI – The Obama campaign announced today that Attorney General Patrick Lynch and U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy will launch the Rhode Island Vote for Change voter registration drive on Saturday, May 10th in Providence. Vote for Change is a 50-state voter registration and mobilization drive aimed at getting millions more Americans registered to vote and involved in the democratic process ahead of the November election.
Go to http://my.barackobama.com/voteforchange to find out more about the 101 Vote for Change kickoff events that will be held nationwide on May 10th.
WHO: U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy
Attorney General Patrick Lynch
WHAT: Vote for Change Kickoff Event
WHERE: Former Obama for America Office
235 Westminster St
Providence, RI
WHEN: Saturday, May 10, 2008
10AM
We're at a point where Governor Carcieri, legislative leaders, and A.T. Wall, director of the state Department of Corrections, basically agree on the need to expand treatment options for non-violent criminal offenders. Doing so is smart policy and more cost-effective than keeping such criminals warehoused at the ACI. Yet making progress on this front remains difficult, as Te-Ping Chen writes in this week's Phoenix:
It was after midnight, and Dawn Jacques lay sleepless in her cell at the Adult Correctional Institutions, shuddering. Bathed in sweat, she stared at the ceiling for hours until it blurred. When the occasional wave of nausea ran through her, she lurched toward the toilet, vomiting.
It could have been the first time she was incarcerated or the tenth. Jacques, a 31-year-old from Cranston, has been addicted to heroin and in and out of jail for 10 years, and the long nights of withdrawal were the same every time.
“It felt like I was going to die,” Jacques says. Jail made her feel “miserable,” she says, “like [she] had no choice but to keep using.” And upon leaving prison, that’s exactly what she would do: return to the streets and start shooting up again.
Across the state, Jacques’s story is a familiar one. America’s drug war has devolved into a domestic quagmire, costing $500 billion without discernible success. Yet while a wealth of studies indicate that treating addicts is more cost-effective than incarcerating them, access to treatment remains limited in many states, including Rhode Island. In fact, according to data from the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Rhode Island has the second-highest rate of addicts that need treatment but don’t receive it.
Not surprisingly, the state prison system is feeling the crush. Since 1976, the ACI’s population has exploded by 457 percent, with what Department of Corrections Director A.T. Wall calls an “ever-increasing number of offenders with substance abuse problems being swept [in]” — and with similar cost increases for the state. Today, 70 percent of ACI inmates report substance abuse problems (mostly heroin, alcohol, and cocaine). And without treatment, the majority of these offenders who are released will end up imprisoned again.
Matt has the details on one, and possibly another, challenge to Cranston Mayor Michael T. Napolitano:
On Tuesday, May 13th at 5:30pm, Republican Allan Fung will once again throw his hat in the ring for Mayor of Cranston. The event will take place at the Auburn Post 20, 7 Legion Way in Cranston. Fung is a former Councilman under the Laffey regime and current attorney for MetLife Auto & Home.
Term-limited Democratic City Council vice-chair Paula McFarland is also eyeing the Mayor's seat in 2010 after a possible School Committee stint before that:
McFarland, who is hosting a fundraiser next week, said she hopes to reshape a school district budget she characterized as often maligned as confusing and bloated.
“I really feel strongly that someone needs to take the bull by the horns,” said McFarland, a Democrat.
But if she wins a seat on the school board, McFarland said, she may not be there for long. An occasionally sharp critic of Mayor Michael T. Napolitano, she said she is already considering a run for the city’s top office in 2010. In an interview yesterday, she said she doesn’t believe in “the philosophy” espoused by the mayor, also a Democrat. McFarland suggested the mayor was not being “honest and straightforward” when he proposed an election-year budget that avoids a tax increase but dips into the city’s reserves to the tune of $2.7 million.
[The brigade in action, just not last night]
Jagged contrasts in sharp proximity are part of what can make cities interesting and vibrant, and Providence -- relatively small though it may be -- was a case in point last night.
At Prov, WPRO morning talker John DePetro was holding court, celebrating a recent professional accolade as RI talker of the year. Those making the packed scene included Steve Laffey, Joe Trillo, Bob Watson, Nick Gorham, Lou Pulner, Donna Perry of the RI GOP (who is John's sister), Deputy Police Chief Paul Kennedy, John Ghiorse, Charlie Hall, Frank Carpano, radio moguls Joe Lembo and Paul Giammarco, and others.
Down the street at Nick-a-Nee's, it was time for Segal Fest '08, a slightly more free-wheeling event, what with the superlative What Cheer? Brigade playing in the outdoor patio/parking lot, and a cast of thousands, including Councilors Luis Aponte, Terry Hassett, Seth Yurdin; Representatives Moura, Watson, Gorham, Gallison and Sullivan (among others); unionists, enviros, hipsters, liberal activists (Sara Mersha, Ari Savitzsky); bloggers and newsies (Ariel Werner, Beth Comery, Peter Wells, Scott MacKay, yours truly), and many more.
A good time for all, times two.
A prominent RI liberal tipped me off to this piece by the conservative Washington Post columnist, which pokes at Hillary Clinton not just for not wanting to face the music, but for being a Yankee fan.
Hillary Clinton, 60, Illinois native and Arkansas lawyer, became, retroactively, a lifelong Yankee fan at age 52 when, shopping for a U.S. Senate seat, she adopted New York state as home sweet home. She may think, or at least would argue, that when she was 12 her Yankees really won the 1960 World Series, by standards of "fairness," because they trounced the Pirates in runs scored, 55-27, over seven games, so there.
Unfortunately, baseball's rules -- pesky nuisances, rules -- say it matters how runs are distributed during a World Series. The Pirates won four games, which is the point of the exercise, by a total margin of seven runs, while the Yankees were winning three by a total of 35 runs. You can look it up.
After Tuesday's split decisions in Indiana and North Carolina, Clinton, the Yankee Clipperette, can, and hence eventually will, creatively argue that she is really ahead of Barack Obama, or at any rate she is sort of tied, mathematically or morally or something, in popular votes, or delegates, or some combination of the two, as determined by Fermat's Last Theorem, or something, in states whose names begin with vowels, or maybe consonants, or perhaps some mixture of the two as determined by listening to a recording of the Beach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda" played backward, or whatever other formula is most helpful to her, and counting the votes she received in Michigan, where hers was the only contending name on the ballot (her chief rivals, quaintly obeying their party's rules, boycotted the state, which had violated the party's rules for scheduling primaries), and counting the votes she received in Florida, which, like Michigan, was a scofflaw and where no one campaigned, and dividing Obama's delegate advantage in caucus states by pi multiplied by the square root of Yankee Stadium's Zip code. ....
Gen. Douglas MacArthur said that every military defeat can be explained by two words: "too late." Too late in anticipating danger, too late in preparing for it, too late in taking action. Clinton's political defeat can be similarly explained -- too late in recognizing that the electorate does not acknowledge her entitlement to the presidency, too late in understanding that she had a serious challenger, too late in anticipating that she would not dispatch Barack Obama by Super Tuesday (Feb. 5), too late in planning for the special challenges of caucus states, too late in channeling her inner shot-and-a-beer hard hat.
Most of all, she was too late in understanding how much the Democratic Party's mania for "fairness," as mandated by liberals like her, has, by forbidding winner-take-all primaries, made it nearly impossible for her to overcome Obama's early lead in delegates. If Democrats, who genuflect at the altar of "diversity," allowed more of it in their delegate selection process, things might look very different. If even, say, Texas, California and Ohio were permitted to have winner-take-all primaries (as 48 states have winner-take-all allocation of their electoral votes), Clinton would have been more than 400 delegates ahead of Obama before Tuesday and today would be at her ancestral home in New York planning to return some of its furniture to the White House next January.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
I've been otherwise occupied most of today. Lugo still sucks. I might get a post of two later, but if not, see you tomorrow.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Coming your way, at the State House:
From MERI:
On Wednesday, May 7, the Rhode Island Assembly's House Judiciary Committee will hear testimony on several bills addressing marriage equality rights for all Rhode Island couples, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Supporters of marriage equality, including several members of MERI, are expected to testify.
WHAT: Marriage equality legislation, pro and con:
Bills under consideration that MERI supports include:
• Compassion for All Families Act – Sponsored by Rep. John McCauley of Providence, H. 7711 would give domestic partners the spousal benefits of family medical leave, nursing home visitation and funeral planning.
• Equal Divorce Act – Sponsored by Rep. Gordon Fox of Providence, H. 7939 would allow same-sex couples who married outside of Rhode Island to divorce in Rhode Island.
• Equal Marriage Act – Sponsored by Rep. Arthur Handy of Cranston, H. 7839 would allow all Rhode Island couples the equal freedom to marry.
Bills that MERI opposes include:
• Divorce legislation – Sponsored by Rep. Al Gemma of Warwick, H. 7081 would codify into law the Rhode Island does not recognize marriages between same-sex couples. Although the legislation would permit same-sex couples to divorce in RI, the bill would likely close the Massachusetts border to Rhode Island same-sex couples who wish to marry there and doesn't' address jurisdiction for same-sex couples married in Canada or overseas.
• A constitutional amendment – Sponsored by Rep. John Brien of Woonsocket, H. 8017 would define marriage as between a man and a woman and would nullify any recognition of marriages, civil unions or domestic partnerships for same-sex couples.
From FairVoteRI:
Youth Voter Pre-registration, H 7106, is out of committee and scheduled for a vote on the House floor this Wednesday. This is a big step towards turning early registration for 16 and 17 year olds into law. The push to get young Rhode Islanders excited about democracy is moving forward— please come to the State House on Wednesday afternoon at 4 PM, and, in the meantime, contact your state representative and ask them to support this common-sense, non-partisan reform.
From the RI Patient Advocacy Coalition:
On Thursday, May 8, 2008, at 4:00pm, the Senate will vote on S2693 in the Senate chamber at the State House. This bill would allow the Department of Health to license a non-profit organization to serve as a Compassion Center, to grow and distribute medical marijuana for registered patients. THIS WILL BE THIS BILL'S FIRST FLOOR VOTE.
Leadership Rhode Island is offering a series, starting next week on Women + Politics:
Networking Receptions with Roundtable Discussions
Focusing on Women in Politics
Thursdays, May 15th, 22nd and 29th
from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.
at Leadership Rhode Island
Four Richmond Square, Providence
A nonpartisan series for women considering running for office now or in the future, who want to work on a campaign, or who want to understand how political campaigns work.
Meet and talk with other women who share your commitment to serving your community.
Get practical knowledge and advice from individuals who are involved in the political process.
_____________________________________
REGISTRATION
Dues-paying LRI Alumni:
Each session is $15 or attend the entire series for $30
General Public:
Each session is $20 or attend the entire series for $50
Registration due one week before each session; seating is limited.
To register, contact Diane Dolphin, Director of Programs
401-273-1574 ext. 102 or ddolphin@leadershipri.org.
_____________________________________
Attend One, Two or All Three Sessions:
MAY 15 - What Women Need to Know About Running for Office
The Honorable Elizabeth H. Roberts
Lieutenant Governor of the State of Rhode Island
Representative Carol A. Mumford
Senior Deputy Minority Leader
MAY 22 - Campaign Laws, Ethics and Potential Pitfalls
Katherine D’Arezzo
Senior Staff Attorney, Rhode Island Ethics Commission
Richard Thornton
Supervision Accountant, Rhode Island Board of Elections
MAY 29 - Political Campaigns and the Media
Jennifer Lawless, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Brown University and author of
It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don't Run for Office
Lisa Pelosi, LRI '05
Director of Communications and Media Relations at
Johnson & Wales Universit and Political Analyst
Chip Unruh, press secretary for US Senator Jack Reed, got in touch after I yesterday highlighted Charlie Bakst's column on the senator. In buttressing the case that Reed will remain in the Senate in the event of a Democratic White House adminstration, Unruh pointed out the following:
In the last 27 years, over 140 people served in the cabinets of Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush, and only 1 person -- Lloyd Bentsen of Texas -- left their elected U.S. Senate seat to take a cabinet post.
After they lost their re-election bids, John Ashcroft and Spencer Abraham joined George W. Bush's cabinet, but they both had already been voted out of office by the people of their respective states and were not going to serve another term in the Senate.
There are currently three U.S. Senators who formerly held a cabinet post (Mel Martinez of Florida, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee) and then went on to be elected to the U.S. Senate.
Unruh was also kind enough to share rough excerpts of Reed's remarks, to an AP reporter, following yesterday's primaries in North Carolina and Indiana:
The great factor I think is: who is best positioned to win in November?
This is not about selecting a nominee, it is about electing a President.
And there are several encouraging things, but one encouraging thing is this huge popular turnout in these elections, which I think is a manifestation of a sincere desire for change.
And both candidates are close enough on the fundamental issues that I think it reflects the fact that there is a strong Democratic wave building.
I want to make sure we’ve got the candidate who can most effectively tap into that undercurrent of change.
They have been very good to reach out, but I have made it clear that my decision will not be based on frequency of phone calls.
The decision I am going to make, again, the key point is: who is the best candidate and how can we bring the party together quickly? Because one of the challenges that we face is not just selecting a nominee, but also ensuring that we hopefully go in to Denver unified and come out even stronger. And I think that is something we have to consciously work on.
I think there may be some pressure building, but there is something else that is out there and that is we still have some primaries to run. ....
I have not given myself a deadline because this race has been like a bucking bronco. It has been up and down, up and down. Not just in terms of results of independent primaries, but in terms of who is gaining momentum, who is breaking through.
One of the good things about this campaign is that both of these candidates have been tested by the media, by the different issues, etc.
That is something that has been constructive not only to them, but to us.
[Note: I regret my earlier slapdash description of RI Monthly, which didn't do it justice, and which, as someone affiliated with the magazine points out, is similar to how some might draw a simplistic description of other publications, including the one for which I write.]
The ProJo reports today on the unusually sharp reaction to a Rhode Island Monthly story about teen drinking in Barrington, including an explicit threat to the author of the piece, Massachusetts-based contributor Gretchen Voss.
The article, with a cover headline “Fatal Attraction: How kids, cars and drinking are tearing Barrington apart,” has sparked hundreds of reactions on the Internet, many from a new Facebook group called Boycott Rhode Island Monthly and many more on the Web site of the magazine itself, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Providence Journal.
Editor Sarah Francis said she wrote Police Chief John LaCross last week after one writer on the Facebook site suggested that the author of the story, freelance writer Gretchen Voss, should be sexually mutilated and then forced to watch her family being slowly killed. The individual suggested how to keep a body from being discovered, adding in a second post: “Remember, if there is no body there is crime.”
Missing from Gene Emery's article is any irony about how a story rather typical of its genre -- in a magazine which mixes serious reporting and lifestyle features from which readers usually seek tips on a plastic surgeon or a trendy restaurant -- has inspired unusually tough tactics from the denizens of an affluent suburban enclave.
At least on the surface, the situation is vaguely reminsicent of how Adrian Nicole LeBlanc encountered a harsh case of blame-the-messenger when she wrote, for the now-defunct New England Monthly, about a wave of teen suicide cases in her native Leominster, Massachusetts.
Matt has the details:
Attention political junkies!
There will be a screening of THE WAR ROOM, the 1992 Clinton campaign documentary on Wednesday, May 7th at 700pm at Local 121's speakeasy (downstairs). Marti Rosenberg Yours truly will be moderating the post discussion with Scott MacKay, Ian Donnis, and Kate Coyne-McCoy.
This event is free and open to the public.
As indicated by Halperin's media roundup:
Russert on MSNBC: “We now know who the Democratic nominee is going to be, and no one is going to dispute it.”
NY Times’ Nagourney: “Tuesday’s results did not fundamentally improve her chances of securing the Democratic presidential nomination. If anything, Mrs. Clinton’s options for overtaking Senator Barack Obama may have dwindled further.”
TIME’s Michael Scherer: “Clinton ended the night no closer to winning the nomination than when she began the day - in fact, she emerged an even bigger mathematical long-shot to taking the lead either in pledged delegates or the popular vote.”
WashPost quoting “senior Clinton official”: “Absent some sort of miracle on May 31st, it’s going to be tough for us. We lost this thing in February. We’re doing everything we can now . . . but it’s just an uphill battle.”
LA Times’ Wallsten: “Clinton is preparing to push the contest beyond the voting phase of the process and into the realm of committee meetings and credentialing rules, where her campaign believes she may have a chance to overtake Obama before the party’s nominating convention in late August.”
The biggest question: Will any of her supporters (including Wes Clark) say publicly or privately she should quit?
 NY Post
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
David Brooks has a good op-ed read in today's NYT on the fundamental differences between Barack and Hillary:
Hillary Clinton went on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” incarnating her role as the first Democratic Rambo. The Clinton campaign seems to want to reduce the entire race to one element: the supposed masculinity gap. And so everything she does is all about assertion, combat and Alpha dog dominance.
A few questions in, Clinton rose from her chair and loomed over Stephanopoulos. The country hasn’t seen such a brazen display of attempted middle-aged physical intimidation since Al Gore took a walkabout on the debate stage with George Bush. It was like watching someone get elbowed in a dark alley by their homeroom teacher.
But her attempt to take over the show was nothing compared with her attempt to dominate the truth. For the first 30 minutes, she did not utter a single candid word, including, as Mary McCarthy would say, “and” and “the.”
She peddled her sham gas-tax holiday and repeated her attempt to blame Indiana’s job losses on outsourcing and Nafta. Stephanopoulos asked her to name a single economist who thinks a tax-holiday plan would work, and the daughter of Wellesley and Yale took the chance to shove the geeks into their lockers: “I’m not going to put my lot in with economists.”
When Stephanopoulos pointed out that Paul Krugman, a Times columnist, has raised doubts about the plan, Clinton lumped Krugman in with the Bush administration and said she wasn’t going to listen to the people responsible for the last seven years.
This wasn’t just shameless spin, it was shamelessness with a purpose. Clinton signaled that she wasn’t going to concede even an inch to the vast elitist conspiracy. She wasn’t going to feel guilty about ignoring the evidence. She was going to stomp on it, flay it and leave it a twisted mass of jelly quivering on the ground. She was going to perform the primordial duty of an alpha dog leader — helping one’s own.
Barack Obama gave off an entirely different vibe on “Meet the Press.” His campaign has been in the doldrums for the past few months. He’s never come up with an explanation about how he would actually transform politics, and his conventional substance is beginning to overshadow his unconventional style.
But, as Sunday’s contrast made clear, Obama still seems like a human being. He still seems to return each night to some zone of normalcy where personal reflection lives. He wasn’t fully candid when answering questions about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but there are some inner guardrails that prevent the spin from drifting too far from the truth. Thoughtful and conversational, he doesn’t seem to possess the trait that Clinton has: automatically assuming that critics are always wrong.
Obama still possesses his talent for homeostasis, the ability to return to emotional balance and calm, even amid hysteria. His astounding composure has come across as weakness in the midst of combat with Clinton, but it’s also at the core of his promise to change politics. He vows to calm hatred and heal division.
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