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Politics as Usual by Jim Baron Governor Carcieri just can’t help it.
Even when he is trying to invoke the gloom and doom of a state teetering on the brink of disaster — “All of Rhode Island’s virtues, all of its assets, all of Rhode Island’s bright promises are overshadowed and, in fact, threatened by the budget crisis we face” — his innate sense of optimism insists on shining through.
I say this because his State of the State address last week was basically a call for action to the average, working, taxpaying Rhode Islanders (for a minute there, listening to the speech, I thought he was going to get all Nixonian on us and appeal the “the great Silent Majority of Rhode Islanders”) to contact their state legislators and demand change.
That is pure, cockeyed, futile optimism for two reasons:
Rhode Islanders are not going to do it, and
It wouldn’t much matter if they did.
The only time in a long career of watching politics and government in the Ocean State that I have ever seen the populace actually rise up and actively make demands on their political leaders was when their bank accounts were frozen during the credit union crisis of the early 1990s. Short of that, it is hard to think of anything in politics or government (with the possible exception of low-numbered license plates) that would get and hold their attention enough to make them take a hands-on approach to self-government.
Sometimes I think the state motto should be changed from “Hope” to “Inertia.” That would go well with that big old anchor in the middle of the state flag. You wouldn’t have to change a thing.
And let’s face it, cutting back on government spending (even when it comes with the carrot of a no-new-taxes promise) is hard to form a popular movement behind. You are not going to get people to rally in the streets on behalf of an agenda of austerity.
But even if, magically, letters, phone calls and e-mails started coming into Smith Hill from John and Jane Citizen as a result of the governor’s appeal, it would certainly represent a break with tradition if it made any difference.
For decades now, the leadership of the General Assembly has in one way been like the Politburo of the old Soviet Union. Public opinion does not do a whole lot to sway them. Sometimes internal politics can roil the waters a little bit, but overall, the sentiment of the proletarian masses do not hold a lot of clout when it comes to determining the direction of the state legislature.
Another reason that Carcieri will find it difficult to rouse the masses is that his critics successfully paint him as insensitive, mean-spirited and even cruel. After watching him up close for six years, I really don’t think he is any of those things.
He is not hard-hearted, but he is hard-headed.
Once the governor convinces himself that tough choices have to be made, he isn’t going to let himself get moved by sentimentality or hard-luck stories. Carcieri is going to stand in front of the steamroller, even after it becomes obvious that it is going to rumble right over him, leaving a flattened impression on the ground of him holding a veto pen.
One problem is that Carcieri, the former corporate CEO, truly believes in the Big Lie of modern American politics.
He proved that once again in his speech last week. Unfortunately, House Speaker William Murphy is a believer as well, as is Majority Leader Gordon Fox and (although, I have an inkling, to a lesser extent) Senate President Joseph Montalbano.
The particular Big Lie to which I refer has been around for a long time, but I call it modern because it got its resurgence and has been accepted as near gospel by middle class Americans who should know better since President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s.
The Big Lie is this: if we just cater to the interests of the rich, lowering their taxes and putting the levers of government at their disposal, that they will turn around and provide for the rest of us, assuring our own prosperity and security with the trickle-down from their outsized fortunes.
If we simply give the wealthy their way, they won’t put their money into buying a third Lexus or a vacation condo in Aruba or stuff it into offshore accounts their bought-and-paid-for lackeys in the state and federal government will make sure are insulated from any estate taxes. No, they will make sure every penny of it goes to providing high-paying jobs for worthy Rhode Islanders.
And so that is why once again, according to statements made by the governor and leaders of both chambers of the General Assembly, recently enacted tax breaks for the rich — the so-called flat tax (almost $25 million in 2009) and the reduction of the capital gains tax (another nearly $40 million) — will be sacred cows, uncuttable by any budget knife.
Even if that means thousands of blameless immigrant children have to be hacked from the RIte Care health insurance rolls; state workers will face wholesale layoffs; cities and towns will be forced to squeeze more money out of beleaguered property taxpayers, and that the poor, elderly and feeble have to be eliminated from welfare and other social service programs.
It will all be worthwhile because the rich will use their tax cuts to take care of the rest of us.
That, of course, is nonsense. The rich are going to look after and take care of themselves — first, last and always. That is, after all, how they became rich in the first place. It has worked for them up to now, why would they change it?
For those rusty on their history, the Big Lie was one of the principal tools of Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels.
Here is how Goebbels himself explained it: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the state to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state.”
Res ipsa loquitur. |
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