I want to share with you an outstanding piece of reporting done by our Ocean State Current on a violent politically-motivated assault of a veteran by an alleged member of Antifa last Saturday. The Current broke this important story, and brought Rhode Islanders the real message of what was happening.
Residents who think giving the state more influence over local zoning when it comes to solar farms may discover that the bigger muscles of the bigger government pull in a direction they don’t like.
The government pension problem hasn’t gone away; it’s just gone quiet for a while, during which time, politicians are working to ensure that nobody ever notices it again.
A Canadian man’s belief that he is female (defined as “somebody who pays less for car insurance”) raises the question of what cost there might be to banning accurate descriptions of each other.
Anybody who is concerned that judgmental people can now sic the law on them should not at the same time want to increase government’s excuses to pass judgment itself.
Every Thursday morning, as you probably know, WPRO’s Gene Valicenti hosts RIDOT Director Peter Alviti on the WPRO Morning News for a half hour plus segment. (Yeah, I know, I find it annoying, too.) Alviti takes questions from callers and spends a significant amount of air time promoting Governor Gina Raimondo’s wasteful, unnecessary, highly damaging RhodeWorks toll scheme.
On July 19, Alviti ratcheted it up a notch by involving his host.
For eight years, progressive-left politicians have told us that the ‘new normal’ for economic growth would be limited to the 2% range. And for years, our Center and other free-market advocates argued that major tax and regulatory reductions would reverse this course and lead to rapid economic growth, meaning more money and prosperity for families. After this week’s 4.1% GDP growth report, there can no longer be any doubt that we were right.
A couple of weeks ago, Governor Gina Raimondo’s Department of Transportation announced the locations of the balance of ten toll gantries and released an Environmental Assessment [PDF] of them. They also announced that hearings to take questions and comments on the E.A. would occur in three locations on July 27 – tonight, as a matter of fact.
Yes, that’s right, RIDOT is holding public hearings on a very significant project on a summer Friday evening. Quite similar in spirit, as a matter of fact, to the scheduling and location of the hearing for the first Environmental Assessment – in that case, two days before Thanksgiving hard by a cow pasture in South County so remote, the cows themselves need GPS to get there.
Rhode Island Trucking Association’s complaint about a bureaucrat’s regular use of air time to promote a gubernatorial candidate points to our problematic campaign finance system.
The experience of actual people of poverty and prosperity suggests that there really isn’t a 1%, but a healthy and productive churn that progressives will disrupt, thus harming us all in the long run.
If we’re in “a new Gilded Age,” maybe big-government, redistributionist policies are to blame.
The failure of classical liberalism isn’t that an atomistic vision of the individual has produced a failure of society, but that society won’t let such a vision come to fruition… one way or another.
Rhode Island’s commercial real estate market has stopped being a tenant’s market, which provides a lesson in the problem with our economic development strategy.
If urban, coastal progressives are tired of having to grapple with the resentments of rural whites, perhaps they should stop trying to push their ideology into every corner of the country.
A Forbes essay promoting Governor Raimondo’s preferred narrative illustrates how she’s constructed a contrary reality… and how much organizations like Gaspee are needed as a counter.
Americans (especially Democrats and liberals) aren’t feeling as enthusiastic about the United States as they used to; getting Zinn/Marx out of education and prosperity back into life may be the cure.
Progressives and conservatives frame things like tax policy differently, and not only does it prevent fruitful discourse, but progressives’ errors undermine an economic system that makes shared prosperity more likely.
When a drug price rockets like Venezuelan inflation, civic society is apparently not well tuned to figure out the problem.
Human beings may tend to be most satisfied when they’re within a hierarchy, but it would be mistaken to assume that it’s actually the hierarchy that gives them purpose.
Negative effects from minimum wage increases, no long-term benefits from welfare programs, and questions about the earned income tax credit show that there is no subsidy for freedom and prosperity.
The Supreme Court didn’t decide the Masterpiece Cakeshop case as narrowly as many in the mainstream are suggesting.
As public opinion rejects one attempt to back a new baseball stadium after another, insiders are becoming more creative (and dangerous) in their tricks to hide the risk and the subsidy.
Rhode Island should pause and think about what it really means to give the state government bureaucracy a mandate to analyze the pay differences of every employer within our borders.
Just as central servers can lose their ability to “govern” the many computers they connect, a centralized government can’t handle all of the relationships between human beings.
The Rhode Island Department of Health proposal could expand a child immunization database into a universal health tracking tool.
Legislation ostensibly to ensure “equal pay” between men and women is actually an ideological power grab that changes the nature of government and puts every RI business at risk.
Building off the successful “Justice Reinvestment” reforms that were enacted in by Rhode Island lawmakers in 2017, the state’s asset forfeiture laws should next come under scrutiny, as they can often lead to the unfettered government seizure of cars, cash, and other private property. While many policymakers might assume that such laws are directed at criminals, in reality, simply being accused of a crime or violating a regulation may be sufficient for the state to take your property.
Tax rates matter, and people playing class warfare over the property tax bills of people in their town may be missing the way in which that drives up taxes on the working class.
Over-eagerness to proclaim a Rhode Island boom raises questions about government’s “gaming the indexes” to produce cranes without much underlying improvement in health.
Whether it’s removing market signals with a value-added tax or creating incentive to block new children through zoning, public policy shouldn’t remove its red flags and should seek to address original problems, not symptoms.