Destructive Policies, Waning Influence
Let’s be honest. This would be a healthy thing for the country:
If the trend since 2010 — dropping an average of two spots a year — continues, Rhode Island will be relegated to a single House seat [in the U.S. Congress] when the 2020 U.S. Census is tabulated.
If you’ve got a state that can’t keep the population it has and to which others don’t move, it’s clearly doing something — a lot of things — wrong.
Obviously, things don’t have to be this way. Rhode Island has the natural advantages to thrive, but the thing is… it won’t. An hour of listening to politicians shift blame and utter falsehoods concerning energy costs, yesterday, was an instructive exercise.
They want to do what they want to do, whether for friends or for ideology, and no amount of pain for the rest of us will penetrate that personal interest. Worse: We’ve proven unable to overcome their institutional (and probably corrupt) advantages to make the electoral system work as it should.
At least in the case of Congress, there’s a formula to force some acknowledgement of the “these boots were made for walking” vote.