Russell Moore: Elorza, Smiley and Double Standards

Russell Moore: Elorza, Smiley and Double Standards

A new double standard has emerged in politics as of late, though I can't really point out when. And, surprise! It's a standard that supports new spending, bloated budgets, and higher taxes. For all I know, this new double-standard may have originated in God's Country, AKA, Little Rhody.

I've noticed that if a candidate proposes a tax cut, almost immediately, those who love taxes (progressives, mostly) will squawk in their whiniest voice, "where ya gonna make up the lost revenue from?"

Let's put aside, for a second, the argument that decreases in taxes free up money for economic investment which grows the economy and provides more revenue to the government and assume, for the sake of argument, that that's not the case. (The argument has validity, by the way, but I digress.)

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With that premise regarded as true, my tax-loving progressive friends are correct. It would be irresponsible for candidates to propose tax cuts without saying where they're going to cut spending correspondingly.

The problem, of course, is that those people are stage 5 hypocrites. That's because these very same folks will propose new spending like whoah, without telling us which taxes they'll raise, and to what extent so, in order to pay for their new initiatives.

The man with (vague) plans

Allow me to introduce exhibit number 1, the Poster Boy for this new double standard: Providence Mayoral candidate Brett Smiley. Smiley has been running all over our capital city bragging about how many plans he has, and how smart he is and on and on. So I went over to his website and read his public safety plan and his education plan. The sum and substance of both is that he wants to hire more police officers for safety, and the best teachers for schools. 

Who on the surface can disagree with those goals? As usual, the devil is in the details. Actually, in this case, the devil is in the generalities, because there are no details. The most he'll say about how he'll pay to hire more police officers or to pay for the best teachers is to "secure funding".

When I hear "secure funding", I know it means “tax increases". And we'll all be paying them. Providence gets about half its money from the state. The rest comes from the city's beleaguered property taxpayers. And that's anybody who lives there. Taxes are built into the rent prices.

I doubt anyone has been as hard on Governor Lincoln Chafee as I've been, but in a way, he deserves credit for telling people he thought they were under-taxed during his 2010 campaign. He, of course, couldn't have been more wrong, but at least he up front about his love for taxes (for other people).

I figured I'd try my hand at plans the same way Smiley does, and I applied his approach to business. I've come up with a plan to create a retail store chain that will put Wal-Mart out of business. Ask me how, and I'll just blabber some generalities about low prices and good customer service. I'm not telling anyone where I'm going to get the capital to do such a thing, other than to say I'll "secure funding". Do I really have a business plan? I think not.

Unfortunately, Smiley isn't the only jayvee player we've got in the Providence Mayoral race. When it comes to half-baked, pie-in-the-sky ideas, his so-called progressive counterpart Jorge Elorza is no better.

Last week, he proposed that the city get into the business of providing high speed broadband internet. When I heard this, I thought I had accidentally gone for a ride in The DeLorean Time Machine. I hurried to check my calendar on my phone and saw that, it was not the year 2001, but was, in fact, still 2014.

A great idea, for a decade ago

All kidding aside, the city partnering up with a company to provide high speed net access would've been cool about 10 years ago, but it's probably the last thing we actually need now. A recent study by the state legislature found that Rhode Island has some of the best high speed net access, per capita, in the nation. 

So here was have a candidate addressing a problem that we don't actually have, (in fact, it's one of the things we're actually good at) while failing to tell us how he's going to fix our crumbling schools, and potholes, most of which seem more like craters.

And naturally, he never told us how in hell he'd pay for us to provide that internet access that we don't need.

For the record, I've got nothing against these two gentlemen personally. They just ought to be more specific about how they're going to pay for their ideas. God knows if one of their opponents proposed tax cuts we'd be hearing "where ya gonna get the revenue".

A native Rhode Islander, Russell J. Moore is a graduate of Providence College and St. Raphael Academy. He worked as a news reporter for 7 years (2004-2010), 5 of which with The Warwick Beacon, focusing on government. He continues to keep a close eye on the inner workings of Rhode Islands state and local governments.