No Accountability with Cicilline
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
With that backdrop, there are days when I just don’t feel like fighting, I just want something easy. I just want to go to Dunkin Donuts, grab my coffee – or hot chocolate in my case, go to work, come home and enjoy the few hours I have with my family without having to be inundated with what’s wrong with the world.
It’s really tiring fighting against all the evils in the world. But, it seems like every time I get to that point something happens to wake me up to the reality that we can’t take a day off fighting injustice because when we do, we wake up to David Ciciline as our U.S. Congressman.
As a rule, I don’t like to clutter this space with retread topics. Two weeks ago, I wrote about how David Cicilline was the real Prince of Providence, bringing the city to its financial knees. Between then and now I’ve spoken with a number of GoLocalProv readers who were glad that I exposed the former Mayor of Providence who have been further encouraged by the Congressman’s dismal approval ratings. I was perfectly content to do battle with the Cicilline machine in a year and a half when he sought reelection.
Even yours truly, would love to report the positive going on rather than what’s wrong with politics and politicians. Unfortunately, Congressman Cicilline sent an e-mail requesting contributions while calling out Republicans that made me realize he has no regard for the citizens of Rhode Island. And I just can’t stand the hubris and arrogance on display by our first term Congressman. I can’t.
Cicilline blames Republicans for Obama’s budget cuts
In the e-mail, Cicilline writes:
Emboldened by their victories last November, Republicans are attacking women’s health services, educational investments, like Head Start and Pell Grants, and essential programs like National Public Radio and the National Endowment for the Arts. [emphasis added]
A few clicks of your mouse and you can find the President’s budget at the White House governmental site. Regarding Pell Grants:
Accordingly, the President’s Budget provides $77.4 billion for the Department of Education. This includes new investments in innovative, outcome-oriented programs that build on the “Race to the Top” model, and preserves the recent increase in the maximum Pell Grant to $5,550. At the same time, the Budget makes hard choices as part of a government-wide effort to reduce spending. To put Pell Grants on firm financial footing, the Budget eliminates the ineffective in-school interest subsidy for graduate students and eliminates the costly new “year-round” Pell Grant Program which provides two grants in a single award year. To support reform in K-12 education, the Budget consolidates 38 K-12 programs into 11 more flexible programs, and it cuts or eliminates funding for programs without proven outcomes. Excluding Pell Grants, the Budget provides $48.8 billion, a significant increase that is nonetheless smaller than last year’s due to the fiscal environment.
Last I checked, President Obama was a member of the Democratic party and no one held a gun to his head, presumably, to make these cuts. Nonetheless, Cicilline is doing what I’ve seen him do since I first saw him do a news channel interview during the summer of 2002 – dodge, evade, and blame someone else.
Same song, different year.
Let’s start the ABC Coalition
I don’t know about you, but I’m just frustrated that we elect people like Cicilline who seem more concerned with getting elected than actually helping people. It’s disappointing, regardless of the political colors you espouse.
So can someone encourage me and say that we’re not going to reelect David Cicilline to a second term to Congress? Are we the good people of Rhode Island going to look at what he’s done and what he continues to do and say, “No problem, congressman, run the city into the ground, blame everyone but the man in the mirror for what’s going wrong. It’s ok, you still have our vote in 2012”?
Well, today I’m offering you all to join with me and join the ABC Coalition. Just like the Rainbow Coalition, we’ll be made up of people from all walks of life, colors, creeds, ethnicities, etc. The thing that will unite us is David Cicilline. Actually, Anybody But Cicilline (ABC) will do. There’s a lot of time between now and November 2012 for us to find the candidate, any candidate, that will treat Rhode Island better than the former mayor has the past several months.
If enough of Rhode Island joins this new multi-ideological coalition who knows what could happen. Here’s one possibility – we vote out Cicilline and send a message that in Rhode Island we won’t stand for being told one thing and finding our political leaders have actually done another.
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Comments:
Charles Drago
9:07am on Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Anybody But Cicilline?
Not a chance in hell!
Why would you empower David Cicilline to decide, in the ultimate passive-aggressive fashion, who the next U.S. representative from the Rhode Island 1st will be?
Are you seriously suggesting that the Xenophobe Laughlin is somehow preferrable to the sociopath Cicilline?
The goal here is simple and focused: Make certain that the public life of the incompetent, lying David Cicilline ends no later than January, 2013.
The political and social values FALSELY espoused by Cicilline are, FWIW, the values I and many others embrace and by which I and many others attempt to live. Why in the name of God would I or any other thinking person conflate those values with a pathetic, likely criminal little man whose actions in public life repudiate them?
Why would any objective, astute observer conflate the Democratic Party and the ideals of David Cicilline and his Willing Executioners (see RI Democratic Party leadership) with the Democratic Party and ideals of John Pastore, Claiborne Pell, John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy?
NO! Not "Anyone But Cicilline."
Render David Cicilline moot.
Elect in his stead the man or woman who will do most to help shape this country to conform to the political and social values you hold most dear.
This is a critical, indeed all-important distinction.
Charles Drago
1:45pm on Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Wait a minute ...
You ... you're crafty ...
Your "Anyone" no doubt would be the Xenophobe Laughlin or a similar flag-waving, border-patroling, corporation-enriching, worst angels of our character-enticing, Tea Bagging Neanderthal.
You WANT Cicilline in the General Election.
Wow ... Michael Steele could take some lessons from you.
We must NOT allow ourselves to accept the FALSE CHOICE of Cicilline v. Anyone.
It's what the Loughlins of the world are counting on.
Repudiate them all!
John Loughlin
10:02pm on Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Charles,
Wow, xenophobic, flag-waving, border patrolling, corporation-enriching, worst angels of our character Tea Bagging Neanderthal! That’s quite a list Charles.
Please allow me to take them on one at a time?
1.) Xenophobe – used in this simplistic context, I think I can assume you mean a hatred of strangers, especially foreigners. I think my grandfather Giuseppe Farinelli , an Italian immigrant and my grandmother Maria Vetroni Farinelli might not agree with your assessment. I won’t even get into my great grandmother who supported her family scrubbing the steps of the Worcester city hall, because that’s the only job an Irish woman could get. There is nothing in my background, up bringing or conduct to even remotely suggest xenophobia. Of course you won’t find that on your steady diet of DCCC talking points.
2.) Flag Waiving – if by this you mean I am proud to have served my country as an Army Reserve officer for 26 years, enlisted and a E-1 Basic Airman and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel, combat scout helicopter pilot and saw duty in Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of the implementation force for the Dayton Peace accords, or a reference to the pride I take in being an Eagle scout, then I guess you are correct. It might just be, Charles, that its because of my great-uncle Peter Farinelli, an Italian immigrant who at age 30 enlisted in the Army’s 77th Infantry division and as killed in action, or that my father was a Second Lieutenant and Bronze Star recipient in the Korean conflict. If that’s what you mean Charles by flag waiving – then sure.
3.) Border Patrolling – Can I assume here that you don’t think a sovereign nation has a right to secure its own borders? Sorry, I don’t trust my current Congressman to come up with a comprehensive strategy to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, even as an all-out war between Mexico and its violent drug gangs has claimed 35,000 lives and pushed hundreds of thousands of immigrants into the United States.
4.) Corporation Enriching – Gee, that’s a good one, I own a small business and I work hard to try to grow a better life for my family. Look around, at the rate things are going there won’t be an corporations to enrich.
5.) Worst Angles of Our Character Enticing – Honestly, Charles, you spew a hate-fill laundry lists of pejoratives about someone you clearly know nothing about and I’m appealing to our worst angels? – Please.
6.) Tea Bagging – This is another pejorative (kind of xenophobic of you) for members of an organization called the Tea Party. I am not a member of the organization but support their calls for smaller government, lower taxes, greater openness and transparency in public discourse.
7.) Neanderthal – The last Neanderthal walked the Earth about 28,000 years ago (give or take, in case Polit-Fact is reading this) . This was during the late Pleistocene Epoch. It is likely that the Neandertals evolved from Homo heidelbergensis in Southern Europe so perhaps I have picked up their traits from my Italian heritage (see 1 above). I believe your reference is designed to both minimize my worth, while at the same time aggrandizing the all-knowing enlighten Charles. In other words, because I disagree with you I must be a lower form of life. Now is that the kind of attitude that leads to the best decisions for society as a whole? Nope, or in Neanderthal, Uggg
It seems a true shame that we can’t judge the quality of those elected to serve us in the simplest terms. As an Army Officer Candidate, we were taught not to lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do. By not challenging our incumbent Congressman I would be in violation of this simple but effective code – maybe you can tolerate those who do Charles, but I will not.
Respectfully, Rep. John J. Loughlin II
Hank S
11:08pm on Wednesday, March 30, 2011
John, maybe you should learn to spell. "Angel"? I believe you mean angle.
Charles Drago
11:59pm on Wednesday, March 30, 2011
____________________________________________
My Dear Watchman,
You’ve stood down from the tower, kicked the sand from your boots, and now you would defend your flank.
1. Put away your straw men and women. During the campaign you staged oh-so-manly paramilitary photo ops at the U.S. – Mexico border in truest demagogue fashion in order to stimulate the fear of “others” that drives the tribal instincts upon which you and your ilk depend for power and influence. Without borders and flags – which is to say, without the demonization of those not like us – you would be just another venal, politicized opportunist looking for advantage. How proud your grandparents would have been to see you playing soldier far out of harm’s way and strictly for the cameras.
Fighting man from head to toe, aren’t you?
I see your Farinellis and raise you my Beatinis – kind, generous, loving people who were respected and even loved for the manner in which they welcomed and aided Irish, Polish, and even Negro immigrants into their neighborhoods to eat at their tables.
Shame on you, sir, for your ham-handed attempts at rhetorical evasion and, even worse, for the cowardly manner in which you throw your own grandparents into the line of fire.
Shame.
2. Ah, the Grandparent Gambit again. Ratcheted up to the Dead Grandparent level. Dr. Robert Ballard has not seen the submersible that can come close to reaching the depths you routinely plumb in your quest to cater to the ignorati.
As for describing you as a “flag waver,” I simply point out what you routinely make so glaringly obvious: namely, that you are living proof of the adage, “patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.”
You were an Eagle scout. Fine. Then it’s likely you’re familiar with the term “God and country.” Please pay attention to the billing.
3. Until you can demonstrate the ability and the will to engage in an in-depth discussion of the geopolitical factors which drive the Mexican drug trade – most especially the copiously documented decades-old, official and off-the-books complicity of U.S. intelligence agencies and officers of government – then you can tell it to the Farinellis. Or better yet, to the Farrelleys, who in their most inspired moments could not create a character who combines Chaplin-like exaggerated arrogance and ignorance in Loughlin-esque proportions.
4. Look up the definition of “Fascism” and get back to me.
And in the name of simple decency save your country-and-family evasions for the tone-deaf ignorati with whom they resonate.
5. All I know about you is what you tell me. As revealed again and again during your campaign, you seek political advantage by routinely appealing to and ratcheting up the fear, insecurities, and pent-up frustrations that we all experience on a daily basis.
6. Tea Baggers are, for the most part, hapless victims of the demagogues who speak your language – poor, put-upon, fearful people whose desperation is the red meat on which you would feed.
7. Thank God for Google, wouldn’t you say? Now if only your intellectual curiosity could extend to understandings of analogy and metaphor.
As someone who would not serve in the military under any circumstances, I am proud to note that I was taught not only not to lie, cheat, or steal, but also to believe in and act to bring about repentence and forgiveness.
The lives of my beloved grandparents were as sacred as the lives of any human criminal you may choose to spotlight in support of your political agenda.
Until the life of the terrorist is held to be as sacred as the life of the terrorized, the terror will continue.
There is a distinction between simple and simple-minded. Your response as it appears here, like every public statement I’ve known you to issue, is consciously designed to conform to the latter description.
Simple may be elegant and persuasive. Simple-minded is just plain stupid.
So save your family and military record references for the poor, misguided, simple-minded fodder to whom you and yours routinely appeal.
I respect your humanity even as I repudiate the manner in which you pervert it.
Charles R. Drago
Gary Arnold
8:30am on Thursday, March 31, 2011
Whew, nonsense in this blogg.
It's about SissyLeani screwing the people of RI, plain and simple. He needs to be brought up on charges and put through the ropes for his misdeeds. Make HIM pay.
As for John Loughlin, he has my vote, the rest of the wordy folks in this blogg are exactly what the problem is with RI.
Charles Drago
9:02am on Thursday, March 31, 2011
___________________________________
P.S.
When the stars align, Johnny baby, they align.
Less than twelve hours after I posted the response above, I opened the just-delivered Providence Journal of March 31, 2011. Therein, on page A10, I found “166 years later, a bid to right anti-immigrant wrong,” written by Katie Mulvaney.
The story details efforts by a group in part comprised of at least one attorney and a clergyman representing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence to convince Governor Chaffee to pardon John Gordon.
Based on surviving evidence, Irish immigrant Gordon, the last person put to death by the State of Rhode Island, was innocent of the charge of murder. It seems he was the victim of the very same brand of politically driven Xenophobia to which you so desperately cling and regularly and cynically appeal.
But don’t take my word for it. Read the story. Google the “Dorrites,” who, as Ms. Mulvaney accurately reports, “favored voting rights for immigrants” when immigrants were being demonized and literally hunted by mobs spurred on by amoral politicians (and their media sponsors; the Providence Journal recently published an editorial in which it supported the pardon effort even as it admirably referenced the fact that, at the time of Gordon’s hanging on Valentine’s Day, 1845, the paper opposed the Dorrites and all for which they stood).
If only you had been of age back in that Golden Era of strong men, stronger jingoism, and strongest hemp. Of course, with a name like Loughlin you just might have ended up on the wrong side of the rope.
My point? Only that your brand of potentially deadly Xenophobia can’t even claim the simple virtue of being original.
And by the way, since you seem so fond of Google, you should check out the fall of the Weimar Republic and the manner in which the political party that rose to power in its wake embraced Xenophobia as a core principle and tactic – a sine qua non for its very existence.
As for the Loughlin supporter self-identified here as Gary Arnold, please note the anti-intellectual basis of his comment. The celebration of ignorance and the demonization of education and knowledge -- more keys to the rise and, one must hope, the eventual fall of Loughlin and his ilk.
Charles R. Drago
Gary Arnold
10:22am on Thursday, March 31, 2011
For those that vote for AS IS IN RI, you are the problem, just look in the mirror and you will be smiling at SissyLaeni. We have problems in RI, like heading for bankruptcy, failing education and strangulation by UNIONs. Let's stay on the problem and stop trying to face facts.
Charles Drago
1:18pm on Thursday, March 31, 2011
_________________________________
"[S]top trying to face facts."
PRECISELY the kind of voter upon whom the Loughlins of the world depend.
joe bernstein
7:27am on Saturday, April 02, 2011
John-there's no point arguing with this individual-a total waste of energy.No one pays him much mind anyway.
He does however,have two good points-he goes after Cicilline and Jerzyk.
Apparently he doesn't know much about you.
Personally,I like to piss off some people on blogs-like "klaus"on kmareka or "triplerichard"on AR because I can just see their impotent anger causing them to spit pea soup on their keyboards.
Charles Drago
11:15am on Saturday, April 02, 2011
Joe,
I seem to recall that once you and I had kindly agreed to disagree in a posture of mutual respect.
Anyway ... You and Loughlin seem to be paying me a great deal of mind (although he doesn't have a great deal of discretionary income in that account). So I thank you for the ratings.
And if you're the slightest bit puzzled by how I can reject both Cicilline and Loughlin, it's because I reject false choices -- especially those that aren't real distinctions to begin with.
John Loughlin and David Cicilline are peas in a pod: They will say and do anything and everything -- and victimize anyone and everyone -- to satisfy their egos and serve their twisted world views.
There is a third alternative out there. These cads are to be rejected at all costs.
As for Jerzyk -- Mayor Taveras's "Senior Advisor" who has been stripped of most of the responsibilities originally assigned to him -- let dying dogs sleep.
Charles R. Drago
joe bernstein
12:03pm on Saturday, April 02, 2011
I know we agreed to void certain subjects we'd never agree on.
However,there is little in common between Cicilline and John Loghlin aside from living in the same district.
I know Mr.Loughlin and both respect him and like him.
Advocating enforcement of existing federal law hardly seems xenophobic.
There is no country without immigration laws anywhere in the world.
The Projo lied about Mr.Loughlin to enable Cicilline,well knowing his irresponsible style of governing.
Mr.Loughlin served his country well.Don't sneer at that unless you've walked the walk.
Serving in a war or on foreign deployment is no joke,as I know very well myself.
Mr.Loughlin was an honest legislator and the very first to pay part of his health care premiums.
Do you even know the man?
I know you're knowledgeable about Cicilline.So am I-at least as an attorney for drug dealers.
I tend to stand by my friends.
joe bernstein
12:06pm on Saturday, April 02, 2011
PS:Jerzyk's been sidelined?I guess his overwhelmingly pleasant demeanor endeared him to the legislators.
I still think he's behind the decision to try opting out of Secure Communities.
But you probably wouldn't disagree with him on that.
Charles Drago
12:44pm on Saturday, April 02, 2011
____________________________________
Joe,
There's nothing not to respect about standing by friends.
A few more points in response:
1. It is not the fact that Loughlin advocated the enforcement of laws to which I object. It is the style of his advocacy – an appeal, in times of economic hardship, to fear of “the other.” That most certainly is a working definition of the political appeal to and reinforcement of xenophobia within a body politic.
I couldn’t care less about knee-jerk, off-point negative reactions to comparisons to Nazis and Nazism; accordingly, I suggest that you take a long, hard look at how the nascent German National Socialist Party came to power – in particular, the role its appeal to xenophobes played in its ascendency.
2. The Providence Journal lied and otherwise published disinformation about all Cicilline opponents. This fact tells us nothing about the character of any of these people.
3. Loughlin’s honorable military service hardly mitigates his immoral, simple-minded appeals to the simple-minded. Nor does it somehow ennoble his pathetic, transparently insincere efforts to play GI Joe at the Arizona-Mexico border in order to stir the electorate’s passions and – here it comes again – enflame their individual and collective xenophobic behaviors.
Neither Loughlin nor any other veteran has any moral or intellectual advantage over me whatsoever based solely on the fact of their service. The veterans for whom I hold respect are those in the mold of Smedley Darlington Butler – a true hero who I’m certain would have seen through Loughlin in a heartbeat and done everything in his power to repudiate him.
4. Loughlin was an honest legislator? So what? Is that fact enough to negate his shameless appeals to the worst angels of our nature?
5. Loughlin was the first legislator to pay part of his health care premiums? So what? Sounds as much like a cynical political ploy as a public-spirited sacrifice. I and others choose to see it as the former.
6. I don’t know Loughlin, nor do I care to make his acquaintance. For me, he’s just another dime-a-dozen conservative hack (who writes, by the way, as if English is his third language). And if your point is that we can’t truly evaluate a politician unless we enjoy a personal relationship with him or her, I just don’t know where to begin to argue against such nonsense other than by repeating it.
7. The ONLY aspect of David Cicilline’s life which I admire is the fact that, as an attorney, he represented defendants who society most savagely demonizes. I hold Cicilline in contempt IN SPITE OF his representation of drug dealers – accused and convicted – and NOT BECAUSE OF IT.
Much as I hold in contempt Loughlin and all other politicians who would butcher the United States Constitution to move forward their ideological agendas.
8. I repeat for emphasis: Loughlin and Cicilline are peas in a pod: They will say and do anything and everything—and victimize anyone and everyone—to satisfy their egos and serve their twisted world views.
9. I’ll leave Jerzyk well enough alone. There’s not enough Purell ...
Fondly,
Charlie Drago
joe bernstein
12:50pm on Saturday, April 02, 2011
I can see we're at a standoff.I think we're better off not letting it devolve.
OK-Smedley Butler?A man with two Medals of Honor.
A distant relative of one of my grandparents received the Medal along with Butler and another Marine in 1915 at Fort Riviere,Haiti.
Charles Drago
1:14pm on Saturday, April 02, 2011
______________________________
Agreed. And isn't it refreshing when two dyed-in-the-wool ideological opponents know when to back off and shake hands?
As for Butler: Yes, he did win two Medals of Honor (and thanks for the info about your distant relative). But what sets Butler apart is the manner in which he responded to the Fascist oligarchs' entreaties to join them in their attempt to overthrow the government of the United States.
He single-handedly defeated them. See Jules Archer's seminal "The Plot to Overthrow the White House" for details.
And, of course, we must celebrate Butler's understanding that -- as he put it in the title of his invaluable and courageous book -- "War is a Racket."
Typical Resident
9:46am on Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Charles Drago makes me "lol".
Charles Drago
1:08pm on Tuesday, April 12, 2011
_____________________
Really?
Well, this unrepentent class clown thanks you.
And I'm curious: Just what did you find funny?