No Accountability with Cicilline
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Do you ever get tired? Permeating the news are wars and uprisings (Libya, Yemen, and Egypt), devastating natural disasters (Japan), and signs that we’re all getting older (Elizabeth Taylor dying).
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.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTAs 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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