Rhode Island Politicians Never Attack the Cause

Maybe I’ve just become so jaded that I can’t get into inside-deal scandals like the the state Probation and Parole Office lease.  We all know it goes on; we all know that it’s one of the problems holding RI back.  But it never manages to get a rise out of the people in Rhode Island.  That’s the problem that nobody ever wants to attack; the corruption is a symptom, and nobody wants to attack the disease.

The underlying reason may be that we’re governed by technocratic statists.  “Look!  Scandal!  All of the on-paper protections that we’ve put in place, like open meetings laws, are failing to stop people from acting on the obvious and tremendous incentives created by big-government programs and spending!  Quick, get more paper!”

So, gubernatorial candidate Ken Block pledges to extend the deadline for posting about public meetings from 48 hours to 96 hours before they occur, as if the problem is that Rhode Islanders just can’t rearrange their schedules to attend a State Properties Committee meeting with only two days’ notice.

With solutions like that (used here as a small sample of the whole moving-the-needle, now-that-we’re-done-with-same-sex-marriage-we-can-spend-time-on-the-fact-that-people-can’t-find-jobs, and we’re-boycotting-talk-radio mentality), the corruption looks like a problem that can’t be fixed, and the structural things that make it difficult to limit or shrink big government never come into question.

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