Politics as Usual by Jim Baron

As someone who writes for a living, I appreciate a nice turn of phrase, and Hasbro Chairman Al Verrecchia’s description of Rhode Island’s economic development effort as “a basket of frogs” caught my attention. I probably would have made it “pail of frogs” to make it sound less tidy than a basket, but that is nit-picking.

Anyway, I was reminded of Verrecchia’s frogs on Saturday when I attended Operation Clean Government’s panel discussion on the Rhode Island economy. You will recall that Verrechia explained his metaphor by saying: “There is an enormous amount of energy being expelled, but it is not being channeled or focused, and if we could just channel and focus that, I think it will go a long way toward accomplishing our goals.”
Anyone dedicated to bringing reform to Rhode Island’s government and politics should have that sentence tattooed on his or her forehead.
You could hear the frogs croaking at the OCG event: “pension reform,” “term limits,” “abolish the master lever from election ballots” (that’s a mouthful for a frog), “property tax reform,” “magistrate selection,” and the “ethics loophole” presented by the Sen. William Irons speech in debate decision.
With the exception of term limits, those are all worthwhile issues — how can you promote the power of the people over the politicians by tying the hands of voters at election time? — but if the good guys’ attention is going to be dispersed by having folks leap off in all those disparate directions, the chance of their actually accomplishing something is going to be greatly diminished.
One lady at the forum seemed to grasp the concept when she said the recent Tax Day Tea Party on the Statehouse lawn, “was a Woodstock, it made the different fragments see that there are more than just a few people out there. But now we have to take it inside the Statehouse.”
To do that effectively is going to take focus and discipline.
There should be a summit meeting of all Rhode Island reform groups, a mini-convention that will set priorities among all of the items on the good government wish list and set out to accomplish them one at a time. Pick one issue, hammer at it until it gets done, then go on to the next one. You can’t fight a war against as powerful an adversary as the General Assembly on five or six different fronts.
By directing all of their troops and firepower at one time toward one spot on the enemy’s line of defense, they could break through, then choose the next battlefield on which to fight.
It won’t be easy. Those reform cats are hard to herd, because each feels so passionately about their favorite cause.
Until the insurgents all learn to work together as a unified force, they are going to continue to be repelled by the legislature’s formidable defenses.

Bring prostitution out into the legal open
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about how indoor prostitution is legal in Rhode Island.
Well, it isn’t. It just isn’t illegal. We should make it legal.
We should legalize it, we should license it, we should regulate it, we should inspect it and, yes, we should tax it.
Like so many other areas where government has tried to stick its blue nose into “immorality” and “vice” with laws intended to mandate rectitude, it has, rather than eliminate such activity, created a slimy and dangerous, not to mention enormously lucrative, black market to service the undeterred demand for prohibited pursuits. (See: prostitution, Prohibition, bookmaking, War on Drugs)
So now we have indoor prostitution, but it is conducted by skanky Asian massage parlors in dismal storefronts that further drag down the neighborhoods where they are located, using scared and desperate women trafficked from faraway countries into indentured servitude. If we’re going to do it, why not do it right?
If there were one or more (perhaps one each in Providence, Newport, South County (seasonally) and northern Rhode Island) legal brothels, licensed by the state, inspected routinely by the Department of Business Regulation, with the sex workers checked regularly by the Department of Health, there would be no place for sex traffickers to conduct the equivalent of slavery and sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS, could be kept in check.
If the state licensed well maintained, modern, clean brothels that aspired to the highest standards of that particular industry, what john — man or woman, gay or straight — would bother with the scuzzy massage parlors that perpetuate female slavery or the wretched crack addicts who walk the streets? And if the whole enterprise were taxed, there would be a happy ending for taxpayers as well.
Don’t kid yourself; the Ocean State is already up to its waist in sexual tourism. The Foxy Lady has a reputation throughout the northeast as a top-flight “gentleman’s club,” attracting celebrities from the sports world and other high-rolling clientele. The gay sex clubs down off Allens Avenue bring in people from all over New England who spend cash, eat meals, perhaps spend the night (or at least a few hours) in area hotels and maybe gas up the car before they go home — paying taxes at each step along the line. There is a word for that: Tourism. 
Whether or not you like what goes on in those places — not that it’s any of your damned business — it is economic development. How many other businesses in Rhode Island have held job fairs in the middle of the Great Recession, as the Foxy Lady did recently?
And spare me all the hand-wringing about Rhode Island’s reputation. That’s a lot of hooey.
Nobody calls Nevada, the other state where indoor prostitution is not against the law, an embarrassment or a laughingstock. They call it a tourist capital, or an entertainment mecca.
Legal brothels, where customers would not have to worry about being ripped off, beaten up, getting a disease or getting arrested, would be one more draw to fill up the too-often-empty Rhode Island Convention Center and Dunkin Donuts Center with events. Some of the conventioneers will want to visit the Newport Mansions during their stay here, others will spend time at the beach, or going to PPAC or Trinity, and others will want to go out to the bawdyhouse and get their freak on. Why do we care what they are doing as long as they are coming here and spending their money?
Making prostitution illegal hasn’t stopped it for thousands of years — why do you think it’s called the oldest profession? I don’t think any legislation passed by the General Assembly is going to reverse that tide of history. Driving prostitution further underground isn’t going to stop it, and it isn’t going to make the situation better for anyone — the women, the customers, the neighborhoods or the state as a whole.
Bringing it out into the legal open could diminish the dangers and downside of something that is going to go on anyway.