The complete domination of the Democrat political machine across Rhode Island has been accomplished in the past fifteen years, and the poison fruits can be seen in legislation that tramples Rhode Islanders’ rights.  As the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s annual Freedom Index makes clear, our rights are no longer a consideration when legislators make the laws by which we all must live.

The Center’s CEO, Mike Stenhouse, provides a partial list in an essay in the Providence Journal:

Private property rights were corroded through an expanded eminent domain law...

Rights of freedom of association were trampled upon by a new state “individual mandate”…

The rights of public employees were abraded. A new law forces non-union members to utilize and pay for union officials in a grievance. …

The rights of the unborn were eviscerated via our state’s new unrestricted abortion law. …

The health and economic rights of patients recovering from major medical procedures were infringed upon via a counterproductive new tax on legal opioid prescriptions. …

The health and privacy rights of adults were violated via enactment of a new law that forces medical providers to hand over your personal medical data to the state, without your permission...

All of us suffered a loss of economic freedom after I raised awareness about a state law that required a sales-tax rate cut once Rhode Island started collecting sales taxes on Internet purchases. Lawmakers not only ignored the law, but had the gall to repeal the law, while simultaneously increasing the range of e-products that would be subject to the Internet tax.

The ill health of Rhode Island’s political system has opened the door for incompetent legislators who are driven either by radical ideology or by a cynical desire to cash in on a well-established insider system.  In other words, our elections are selecting for candidates of bad intent, or at least of bad ideas.

A rigged electoral process combined with pervasive tolerance for dishonest viciousness have made heroic courage a requirement for opposition to this machine.  Simply being competent, reasonable, and dedicated to public service is no longer enough.

But it has to be enough.  We must create the space in which Rhode Island can benefit from the experience and dedication of its smartest and most well-intentioned citizens.  We must open voters’ eyes to the machine as it really is and defend those whom it attacks.