ARLENE VIOLET – Ho, hum. Business as usual

http://www.valleybreeze.com/2016-11-21/north-providence/arlene-violet-ho-hum-business-usual

Another state election has come and gone and the status quo remains with the Democratic Party firmly in control of the Statehouse and with a spending bond binge having been approved by the voters. In other words expect nothing to change in our national rankings. As Mike Stenhouse, CEO of the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity recently pointed out in an op-ed in the Providence Journal:

“Rhode Island has virtually one of the worst business climates, a near-bottom entrepreneurial endeavors ranking and is 48th on the National Family Prosperity Index;

Educational reforms are backtracking with efforts to remove any objective standard for skills performance as a result of teacher union pressure;

The large structural deficit and interest on debt just took another hit with run-away approval of bonds;

And the same old “economic development” tools of giving handouts to special interests from small families and business will continue unabated since Democrats love corporate welfare.”

I have long been a critic of handouts to corporations whose top management throw money at Democrat leaders’ campaign coffers while these politicians, in turn, throw our money at them. Take CVS as a classic example. In fiscal year 2016 CVS received $21.2 million in state tax credits, up from the $15.4 million awarded it during the Gov. Lincoln Chafee era. These credits are given to enhance employment. Yet CVS laid off 70 workers recently and in early November announced another staff reduction of 250 employees in Rhode Island. Has anyone in the Raimondo Administration balked at the failure of what should have been a quid pro quo, i.e. tax credits to hire people and not fire them? The silence is deafening! At least a “refund” should be due!

It’s bad enough that most jobs that CVS creates are clerk-like jobs at minimum wage with enough working hours shaved off so that the company doesn’t pay health care. Of course, Joe Taxpayer again bails out CVS since these same clerks, no doubt, seek health policies under the Affordable Care Act which taxpayers subsidize. But the real kicker is the fact that CVS has been anything but a model corporate citizen.

Under its former head, Thomas Ryan, CVS was a part of the Rogues Gallery where former R.I. legislators ended up in the hoosegow as a result of doing the bidding of the corporate giant. The former Senate president dodged a bullet when the Ethics Commission was stripped of any jurisdiction over legislative ethical misdeeds. Oversight, fortunately, has just been restored by a referendum.

Just about any regulatory body related to health care has fined CVS. It paid a huge fine for Medicare violations, HIPPA privacy violations, outdated drugs in poor areas like Roxbury, Mass., being a pill-mill in Florida where two of its stores ordered one to two million oxycodone pills a year which is 27 times the national average. This $22 million fine paid as a result of a DEA investigation put those pharmacists out of business.

So, the beat goes on. Who’s to blame for the upcoming business as usual? The voters, of course, who put the same people back into office!

Violet is an attorney and former state attorney general.

Filed under: General Problems