April 14, 2011

The Consistent(ly bad) Governor

Justin Katz

Before the news cycle moves on, I'd like to highlight the following, from Philip Marcelo's story on the tax-increase dispute:

One floor up from where business leaders gathered, in a room adjacent to his office, the governor repeated his challenge to detractors: provide an alternative solution, and be specific. ...

Chafee rejected business leaders’ arguments that the tax plan would hurt job creation. "Show me the evidence," he said.

The Chafee administration's attitude is entirely in keeping with the theme that inspired Anchor Rising's very first "Chafeedom" post. You'll recall that, soon after his election, Chafee evinced a pattern of declining to meet with advocates who disagreed with him on their particular issues. Supposedly, he'd already conducted all the meetings he needed and didn't think any more would be constructive. The ban on participation in and denunciation of talk radio soon followed.

Now, those who oppose his tax-increasing ways are called upon to show him evidence and propose solutions that he'll find acceptable. Only, one would be entirely rational to suppose that acceptability is a false hurdle, impossible to clear.

Mixing in the fact that "his administration could not produce an analysis on the potential impact to businesses," it's clear that this guy really doesn't care for discussion and open discourse, as he claims. That's just an illusion (fooling, most of all, the governor himself) accomplished by always insisting that the other side has to do more while one's own view is correct by assumption.

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"The sky is green. Show me the evidence otherwise...and be specific."

Posted by: Patrick at April 14, 2011 1:57 PM

Definition of ARROGANCE
: an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions

Posted by: John at April 14, 2011 3:00 PM

Wow, he has no idea what he's doing does he?
$25 says he'd give anything to get the heck out of the statehouse for good.

Posted by: bobbbbb at April 14, 2011 6:32 PM

The real Linc Chafee. Protected from his lack of intelligence by a family name and private schooling; spoiled; coddled; pouty and mean. "To the manor born", he doesn't need to support anything he says because he is, in his own mind, royalty. Above us all. Someone told him tax increases was his idea, and that it was a great idea - the ONLY idea, the ONLY way. Linc needs nothing more, he demands nothing more, he can't comprehend anything more. Linc issued an edict - let there be more taxes!

Having been slapped by the GA he refused to grade (I'll bet Linc cast a few "Fs" the GA's way since last night), the mean and nasty Linc is out, and I'll bet his handlers have been wrestling with him since last night. I hope he's spit out "I'm quitting" a few times and his handlers are even half as anxious about their futures (and paychecks) as the working people of RI have been since Linc took office.

Posted by: riborn at April 14, 2011 6:50 PM

riborn-Amen to all you said!!
Add 30 or so IQ points to the above and you've got Sheldon.

Posted by: joe bernstein at April 14, 2011 9:46 PM

RI had always been a tough place to make a living for me. My dad had no connections and I never aspired to a "state" job. With years of political neglect, corruption and cronyism in its history RI is now ripe for implosion. Witness the latest election. The WORST candidate became Governor. This is no random happenstance. RI is in retrograde orbit for logical reasons. The Emperor has no clothes and all the Kings men are corrupt union bosses.

Posted by: ANTHONY at April 14, 2011 11:51 PM

Show me the evidence? What's funny is the fringe-right responds in exactly that fashion all the time. In fact, usually with the demand that they be provided with "proof" (reflecting the lack of understanding of physical science more than anything else).

When a Republican is in office it's all my way or the highway, I'm the decider, or we're spending our political capital. But get someone in a bit left of center and suddenly out come the complaints that the leadership isn't singing Kumbayah with every zenophobe who wants to get some coverage in the news cycle. The horror!

Posted by: Russ at April 15, 2011 12:14 PM

"But get someone in a bit left of center and suddenly out come the complaints that the leadership isn't singing Kumbayah with every zenophobe who wants to get some coverage in the news cycle. "

Right. Because when Carcieri was in office, we never heard any of your leftist organizations screaming "He never consulted with us! The Governor doesn't care what we think!"

C'mon Russ, it plays both ways.

Oh and nice job with the recent flight of the Earls post on the other blog where you again assert that Justin believes it is driving out the rich. A statement that he has refuted many times. But hey, yet again if you keep repeating it, it's true, right?

Posted by: Patrick at April 15, 2011 12:33 PM

Russ's comment makes me wonder if he was educated. The entire process of physical science is rigorous proof of hypotheses by experiment, induction and deduction. Nothing is considered certain until it has been proven. But the Left believes things that are highly conjectural or have been demonstrated failures (such as the "Great Society" and "progressive pedagogy) with a faith as fierce as a jihadi's, in spite of overwhelming evidence against them.

Here's some proof for you: Before the Progressives got hold of this country, it was the fastest-growing, most successful, most powerful nation on earth, a beacon to all who yearned for freedom and opportunity. And it was all because this country was founded on the concept of individual rights trumping government power. Show me a socialist country that has been even a fraction as successful as either an economic or a moral magnet for humanity.

Now they come here for welfare benefits and are registered to vote by ACORN and other elements of the Progressive fraud machine. And the Left says we are immoral for not wanting to give all of our hard-earned money to these people who earn none of theirs. And somehow receiving money taken from someone is somehow good provided it is run through the government first.

Huh?

Posted by: BobN at April 15, 2011 12:41 PM

"...it plays both ways."

Yes, of course it does (never said it didn't).


"Oh and nice job with the recent flight of the Earls post on the other blog where you again assert that Justin believes it is driving out the rich."
www.rifuture.org/the-ri-tax-exodus-myth.html

Actually, I didn't mention Justin (interesting he comes to mind when I talk about right-wing myths). And I said "the productive class," which of course Justin has claimed in leaving the state.
www.anchorrising.com/barnacles/011973.html

Anybody who reads Anchor Rising knows that I've been referring to the "productive class" (upwardly mobile working and middle class families) as those leaving the state, and Ed Achorn has been making similar arguments, at least in the several years since I first posted my related research...
Posted by: Russ at April 15, 2011 2:20 PM

Russ you fall into the 2 party trap (witness the birth of the Tea party). Chaffee was a Republican. The worst kind. He had no backbone or positive vision for America.... much like Hussein in the White House. RI is the 2011 version of the Den of Thieves. Soon there will be no private sector to feed them. The cannabilisim will begin and it will not be pretty.

Posted by: ANTHONY at April 15, 2011 2:25 PM

"Russ's comment makes me wonder if he was educated."

What a shock! Personal attacks from the usual suspects (happy now, Godwin Law folks, that I didn't say "brownshirt")?

The entire process of physical science is rigorous proof of hypotheses by experiment, induction and deduction. Nothing is considered certain until it has been proven.

No, that's not correct, although I agree that no physical theories are certain (by definition). The point here is that it's not possible to prove physical theories. Here's Stephen Hawking from "A Brief History of Time:"

In order to talk about the nature of the universe and to discuss questions such as whether it has a beginning or an end, you have to be clear about what a scientific theory is. I shall take the simpleminded view that a theory is just a model of the universe, or a restricted part of it, and a set of rules that relate quantities in the model to observations that we make. It exists only in our minds and does not have any other reality (whatever that might mean). A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements. It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations. For example, Aristotle believed Empedocles’s theory that everything was made out of four elements, earth, air, fire, and water. This was simple enough, but did not make any definite predictions. On the other hand, Newton’s theory of gravity was based on an even simpler model, in which bodies attracted each other with a force that was proportional to a quantity called their mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Yet it predicts the motions of the sun, the moon, and the planets to a high degree of accuracy.

Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.[my emphasis]

Posted by: Russ at April 15, 2011 2:33 PM
Chaffee was a Republican. The worst kind. He had no backbone or positive vision for America....

Well, personally I had a lot of respect for his vote against the Iraq War authorization, something most Democrats didn't have the spine for at the time.

Posted by: Russ at April 15, 2011 3:10 PM

btw, I can appreciate the comment about the "2 party trap." I've voted 3rd party many, many times (including once for Ron Paul back in '88).

Posted by: Russ at April 15, 2011 3:41 PM

Hey Russ-it's xenophobe,not zenophobe.
Well,you still can't match Crowley for confusing homonymns.
Yes,Chafee voted against the Iraq,whoopee do-he does one thing right and we're supposed to fall on our knees in gratitude.
He's a miserable excuse for a human-a coddled,arrogant,"blueblood'who thinks most citizens of this state are a bunch of idiots.
Well,about 36% of the voters were.
And your "brownshirt"stuff is getting REAL old.Calling someone a racist or a Nazi with no evidence is a lowlife move.
Or "zenophobe" for that matter.
Don't you leftists ever think for yourselves?

Posted by: joe bernstein at April 15, 2011 5:42 PM
Actually, I didn't mention Justin (interesting he comes to mind when I talk about right-wing myths).

Or interesting that I come to mind when you mention "right-wing blogs"... while using a phrase ("productive class") that I coined.

It's all a strawman, anyway, Russ, which I trust you're smart enough to know already. I've never stated that taxes alone are driving people out. I've looked at Census and IRS data to determine who appears to be leaving and then proposed (per my mantra) changes in taxes, regulations, and mandates.

Even those three don't account for all of the impetus to leave the state, but addressing them will require muting of other negative factors (e.g., corruption, insider culture). But it's an interesting tell-the-left-what-it-wants-to-hear study that you've found, so I'll try to look more closely and point out its flaws next week. I do love the fact that it claims not to have found any correlation between taxes and emigration but can't deny some link between the state to which those emigrants immigrate and taxation. Yup: They don't leave RI (for example) because of taxes, but appear to go wherever they go because of taxes.

I'd laugh, but I know you don't think I'm educated enough to comprehend the subtle arguments being made...

Posted by: Justin Katz at April 15, 2011 7:00 PM
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