Politics as Usual by Jim Baron

You have to admire Pawtucket Rep. William San Bento and West Warwick Rep. Timothy Williamson.

You don’t have to agree with them, but you do have to give them points for having the courage of their (wrongheaded) convictions, something that is far too rare in the General Assembly these days, as we will discuss more fully in the next section.
San Bento and Williamson cast the only two votes against a bill that would require legislators to pay a crummy 10 percent of their taxpayer-funded health insurance costs. They weren’t the only lawmakers in the chamber who oppose the idea, not by a long shot. But they were the only ones with the guts to press the red button (opposed) when the bill came up for a vote in the House. They could have done what everyone else in the House who opposed the bill sponsored by Newport Rep. Amy Rice did: Vote in favor of it to make a good showing for constituents in an election year and depend on the Senate to kill it dead, dead, dead. (See NGN below). But they didn’t, and for that they deserve at least a modicum of credit.
I don’t mean to paint San Bento and Williamson as heroes, here. A hero would have proposed eliminating health insurance for part-time legislators altogether. O.K., Williamson did suggest that during the debate, but he was either just bluffing, or busting chops on the Republicans, who were waxing sanctimonious about how they had already started kicking in the paltry 10 percent voluntarily.
Ten percent! Mighty gracious of you!
I welcome anyone — no, I defy anyone — to name a part-time job where a person can earn $13,000 a year in salary, but get a fully-paid $16,000 heath care plan. The vast majority of $13,000 part-time jobs won’t even make heath insurance available. I will go out on a limb and say absolutely none of them will offer a fully paid plan. There is only one job that will do that in this state: Rhode Island state legislator.
But you know what? When it comes to standing your ground for a venal cause, San Bento and Williamson were eclipsed during the very same debate. Majority Leader Gordon Fox had the brass ones (and I don’t mean knuckles) to put forth the proposition that this 10 percent gesture that they knew was going to its death on the other side of the Rotunda was an example of the General Assembly legitimately “shar(ing) the pain” with the kids getting kicked off RIte Care, low-income people being slashed from state social programs, state workers losing their jobs, etc., as a result of state budget cuts.
That was truly breathtaking arrogance, even for a Rhode Island politician.

NGN
 Was anybody really surprised last week when, at the CVS bribery trial, it was revealed that in the Rhode Island Senate, certain bills would come down from the leadership to committee chairmen marked NGN — for Not Going Nowhere?
We may not have known those initials, but longstanding readers of this column have been told time and again how a small handful of bigwigs make all of the important decisions and the sheep-like legislators dutifully obey vote the way they are told, despite what they — or, for that matter, their constituents — might want.   
Jailed former Sen. John Celona merely provided the acronym (actually, it is an initialism, but there isn’t the time or space to split that grammatical hair here), in his testimony last week in federal court about how he sold his votes and other legislative services for a grand a month to the corporate drug store giant.
Next time it is getting to be 9 or 10 p.m. and you have been waiting hours in a crowded, stuffy legislative hearing room to deliver the testimony you know is going to sway the senators or representatives in the room to vote for the bill you support, ponder whether the bill being heard wears an NGN that was placed on there before the hearing even started, before the bill was even scheduled for the hearing.
Then wonder how important it is to cast an informed vote in your district’s Senate and House races in November. 

Reform going nowhere
If I had my way, political literature and political advertisements would have to include not only the creator’s name and address, but a cell phone number as well, so they could be reached at any time to answer reporters’ questions.
But what I would like to see and what the law should be are two entirely different things.
Cranston Rep. Nicholas Mattiello and West Warwick Rep. Patricia Serpa’s bill to eliminate the requirement for political ads and leaflets to identify by name the person who produced them is a good, solid piece of reform legislation.
Stamp that baby NGN right now, for that very reason.
Who benefits by requiring that political speech carry the name of the speaker? Who has the power to crush the dirty S.O.B. who says something nasty about them? The answer to both questions is, of course, incumbents.
The Founding Fathers, many of whom authored political tracts anonymously, or under assumed names from ancient Greece and Rome, felt that robust, uninhibited political speech was essential to the republic, and etched that belief into the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Forcing authors and speakers in a vigorous and contentious election race to identify themselves with every political opinion (either as part of a campaign or as an independent individual) can only have a chilling effect on those who would dare challenge or question incumbents.
H-7767 — which was proposed by the state Board of Elections, to its credit — is perhaps among the Top 3 best pieces of legislation introduced in this session. It should be brought back out of committee and voted into law immediately. Too bad it won’t be.

Good luck, Senator
No matter what your political persuasion or ideological bent, you have to be rooting for Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, diagnosed last week with a malignant brain tumor.
Since the early 1960s, if there was a big fight in this country about something important – health care, education, housing, immigration, poverty -- you would find Ted Kennedy down in the center of the pile, swinging away, usually on behalf of the little guy.
Kennedy is walking, talking history. History doesn’t long remember many senators, but just like students today study Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, Robert LaFollette and Robert Taft, historians of the next couple of centuries will read and write about Ted Kennedy.
Get well, senator.

Reed for veep?
Sen. Jack Reed has been tapped by the Great Mentioner.
Reed can say whatever he likes about wanting to stay in the Senate and not seeking to be a vice-president or defense secretary in the next administration should a Democrat be elected president, which he has maintained repeatedly in response to long-buzzing rumor and politics-wonk analysis.
But it means nothing when so great an eminence as David Broder, the Washington Post columnist and universally acknowledged “dean of the Washington Press Corps,” positions you prominently as a likely veep.
Here is what Broder had to say in his column yesterday, after discussing the vice-presidential possibilities of Hillary Clinton or one of her top surrogates: “Beyond that, many Democrats hope Obama will shore up his fragile national security credentials by picking someone who has worked prominently in that arena — a defense maven and veteran such as Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, or even a general.”
Does that have the ring of destiny, or what?
 Reed will reject this, of course. It is impractical at best to run for re-election while saying, “Gee, if I could be vice president or snag the top job at the Pentagon, I’d be gone in a minute.”
But if both he and either Obama or Clinton win in November, Reed might have to start thinking about an exit strategy, and I don’t mean for U.S. forces in Iraq.
You know, Reed is still a young enough man that if he served for four or eight years as vice president he just might…Well, that’s for another column 

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