Based on its flat 7% sales tax rate, Rhode Island wound up in the middle of the pack in a nationwide analysis of states’ policies. In its 2023 analysis of state and local sales tax rates, the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Tax Foundation ranked Rhode Island No. 24.
According to the RI Public Expenditure Council (RIPEC), Rhode Island’s economy continues to lag the New England region and the United States in several indicators of economic growth according to the Rhode Island Key Performance Indicators (KPI) Briefing for the fourth quarter of 2022, released today. After decades of liberal-progressive tax and spend polices, along with […]
A mixture of federal and state funding are being used to address Rhode Island’s housing situation. More than $166 million will be put to work to support the construction and preservation of affordable housing in the state, Gov. Dan McKee said. RIHousing has now opened a competitive funding round that will be used for financing those efforts throughout the state.
A taxpayer watchdog group has released an “anti-inflation agenda” that it says the federal government should follow to combat the persistent inflation felt across the country. The Washington, D.C.-based National Taxpayers Union said in the recent policy paper that the agenda “could make modest and near-term contributions to reducing inflation, even though monetary policy at the Federal Reserve will still have the largest role to play.”
A federal judge sided with Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and 12 other plaintiff states in a Louisiana-led lawsuit, issuing a permanent injunction against the Biden administration’s moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal lands and water.U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty issued the permanent injunction, declaring that the president exceeded his authority when halting oil and gas leasing and drilling permits.
Today’s shocking federal data showing a 9/1% year-over-year inflation rate should come as no surprise to anyone with a basic understanding of money-supply economics. The LESSON that all lawmakers – state and federal – should keep in mind is that indiscriminate or wasteful government spending leads to increases in the money supply and the velocity […]
Ocean State motorists dodged a bullet last December when the TCI Gas Tax was defeated here and in 13 other northeast states. The “Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI)” would have artificially increased gasoline prices by up to 35 cents per gallon, while steadily reducing available fuel supplies, by ceding a major portion of our state’s […]
It would be cruel for lawmakers to impose this fuel tax, which will especially harm rural and low-income residents, just so the elite can receive a subsidy for their expensive electric vehicles.
The innocently named “2021 Act on Climate”, H5445, has been ominously rocketing through the General Assembly. It passed the full House on March 23 and the full Senate is scheduled to vote on it this afternoon. If it passes, it will have cleared the General Assembly and presumably be sent straight on to Governor Daniel McKee for his action within seven (ten?) days.
Informally dubbed “Rhode Island’s Green New Deal”, H5445 would mandate the reduction to zero by 2050 of greenhouse gases in Rhode Island – a goal that could only be accomplished by eliminating the use of all fossil fuels and transitioning entirely to renewable energy sources, wind and solar; i.e., from reliable, reasonably priced energy sources to intermittent, exorbitantly expensive ones. More about it here, including why the effective date of substantial implementation would be 2026, not thirty long years from now.
But perhaps we are missing something. Have proponents of the bill answered the critically important question about cost of implementation?
The old saying goes, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” but advocates of the left-wing’s modern monetary theory (MMT) want you to think there is. Read about the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s suggestions for use of federal COVID-19 aid.
Take action now! Add your voice to the many thousands who have asked Governor Dan McKee to live up to his promises as an advocate for the small business community, to take decisive action to relieve businesses of excessive green mandates and to ensure our state’s long-term viability by VETOING Rhode Island’s Green New Deal.
If we are going to revive our economy, we have to revive our sense of responsibility and become more engaged in what’s happening around us.
The Rhody Reporter is flabbergasted at the scope of a wildly progressive bill just passed by the RI legislature. It would cede all legislative and executive prerogative on RI carbon emissions to an unelected state commission. Mark Zaccaria explains en route to asking everyone to call the governor and beg for a veto!
The Transportation & Climate Initiative (TCI) is just another big-government attempt to manipulate the people.
A full on assault against the average Rhode Island family is rocketing through the General Assembly. The Ocean State is quickly moving to put our own version of the Green New Deal into law. We need you to take action immediately to voice your opposition to it, before it is too late. Click here now to say NO to this far-left radical scheme from the land of make-believe.
This, along with the TCI Gas Tax, will paralyze our state. As we struggle to recover from the pandemic, it should be inconceivable that state lawmakers would choose NOW to consider an additional 30-40 cents per gallon gas tax increase or impose a radical, prohibitively expensive energy scheme.
Yet, the price of gasoline could soon rise (even more than it already has) if a new stealth carbon-tax scheme – the TCI Gas Tax – is implemented … a move that would necessarily increase costs on families and business, driving more people out of our state. The House of Representatives will vote on House Bill 5445 this Tuesday. This version of the state’s green new deal has already passed the RI Senate.
Even if you have contacted lawmakers already, we need you to take action again to oppose RI’s Green New Deal: Click here to contact lawmakers to say NO to the TCI Gas Tax and H5445, Rhode Island’s Green New Deal!
The simple form, once completed, will automatically send an email to the Governor and to legislative leaders telling them to reject the regional gasoline cap-and-trade scheme and RI’s Green New Deal.
Tell them today that you stand against these radical energy schemes. Thank you for taking action, and remember that your voice counts.
On Tuesday, the Rhode Island House will be voting on H5445A. It would mandate the reduction to zero of greenhouse gases in Rhode Island. While the deadline in the bill is 2050, the real deadline is five years from now, at which point, the lawsuits can start. From the bill:
The Rhode Island attorney general, any Rhode Island resident and any Rhode Island corporation, company, organization, nonprofit or other Rhode Island legal entity or organization registered with the Rhode Island secretary of state may bring a civil action to enforce this chapter.
Click here, courtesy UpriseRI, for the case in favor of the bill.
Nowhere in that article or anywhere has there been offered any science or evidence that this most drastic of measures would have any impact whatsoever on global warming nor has there been remotely adequate disclosure about the ludicrous cost of bringing it about (converting every house and building in the state to electric-only heating and AC) or the impact on our power supply of changing the grid over from a reliable, constant fuel source to an unreliable, intermittent one (routine rolling blackouts) while simultaneously adding enormous demand to it or the impact (sky-rocket) on residents’ and businesses’ electric bills of being compelled to purchase power only from renewable energy sources.
In the presumably deliberate absence of this information, accordingly, combined with our observation of the experience of other states who converted even a small portion of their grid to renewables, we can assume the worst on all of those fronts.
If you, like so many of us, do not think this is a good idea, feel free to share your concerns with your state representative before Tuesday.
Mark Zaccaria sketches out the opportunity that stands before newly elevated Governor Dan McKee. The commentary urges listeners to remember that McKee’s success is a win for all Rhode Islanders. The Rhody Reporter wishes the new administration well, even as it keeps a weather eye on the proceedings.
Although the bureaucratic experts who continue to suppress our lives (and the journalists who enable them) might believe differently, numbers showing that compliance rules had little, if any, effect on the pandemic aren’t some interesting abstract datapoints on a page.
If the United States had a properly functioning representative democracy, a lot of lockdown-state politicians would be feeling massive heat and near certainty of defeat for themselves and their parties.
Our state and federal governments are using their regulatory and policing power to shut down an industry sector to make themselves and their fashionably green friends rich and powerful at the expense of our rights, our prosperity, and increasingly our lives.
Rhode Island’s government is failing on every level. You’d think a news media that’s serving the public would be behaving as if that were the case.
The Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity calls on the newly sworn-in Governor of Rhode Island, Daniel McKee, to officially withdraw the Ocean State from the regional gasoline cap-and-trade scheme, known as the Transportation & Climate Initiative (TCI).
“For years as Lieutenant Governor, Dan McKee expressed verbal support for the small business community. Now is the time for the Governor to take action and to separate himself from his predecessor’s anti-business policies. The Governor should immediately put to rest any notion that his administration will impose a job-killing, budget-destroying gasoline tax on businesses and families who are struggling to recover from the pandemic,” commented Mike Stenhouse, the Center’s CEO. “Today, our Center calls on the Governor to take executive action to formally withdraw Rhode Island from the TCI compact.”
In December, former Governor Gina Raimondo signed-on Rhode Island, just one of three states to do so, to the TCI Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU). Implementation of TCI would lead to a significant increase in automobile and diesel gasoline prices, while also systematically limiting regional supplies of vehicle fuel.
In calling on Governor McKee to eschew the costly TCI gas tax, the Center points to research and polling that shows why TCI is poor public policy:
Later this week, the Center will announce a public campaign to petition the Governor and state legislative leaders to reject the TCI compact.
More information about the proposed TCI gas tax can be found on the Center’s TCI webpage: RIFreedom.org/NoTCItax. The Center is one of over two-dozen organizations in the northeast working cooperatively to defeat TCI in their respective states.
[This is a public statement released by the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity today.]
Perhaps this isn’t the time to be throwing roadblocks in front of the U.S. economy? Nah. It isn’t the progressive puppeteers who’ll suffer.
URI Professor Len Lardaro lectures on about how to improve Rhode Island’s Economy. But is anyone listening? Your Rhody Reporter says NO! and explains why the administration and the legislature ignore the professor’s good advise. Here’s a hint: because it isn’t their job to do so. Sound crazy? Welcome to the Ocean State. Check out this segment of the Rhody Reporter and all will become clear in three minutes.
The bonds on the ballot this week are the sort of thing that government officials do when the people paying the bills are last in the line of their concerns.
Sixth highest spending per mile for some of the country’s worst infrastructure. If money were going to solve the state’s infrastructure issues, they would have been fixed long before now. No on Bond Question #4.
If the Public’s Radiiiiio wants to serve the public, its reporters should begin digging into the actual story of small business in RI, although it’s one where the Secretary of State and the political establishment will have to be challenged rather than simply cited as if they’re experts by virtue of their political success.
The shocking words they admit they can’t say publicly… were just made public. They say, if YOU heat your homes or drive passenger cars, YOU are the “bad guys.”
Whether it is “you,” “the person up the street,” or “the senior on fixed income”… the radical environmentalists who support TCI say it is you who they want to “turn the screws on” and “point the finger at,” so they can “break your will” to force you to “stop emitting.”
See the alarming video of the MA Undersecretary for Climate Change talking about the abusive TCI scheme: https://youtu.be/muxVGmgykA4
Learn more by clicking here now to read about how the TCI Gas Tax is bad for Rhode Island families.
Count me among those somewhat surprised to learn that the electric grid of the State of Texas, perhaps best known for oil production (and proud of it), incorporates wind turbines in its electric grid. In fact,
… wind generation ranks as the second-largest source of energy in Texas, accounting for 23% of state power supplies last year
But as you have probably seen, this “green energy” source has turned into a big Achilles heel for Texas’ electric grid in the cold front that has descended on that state and much of the country. As of yesterday,
Frozen wind turbines have caused almost half of Texas’s wind generation capacity to go offline in the midst of an “unprecedented storm”.
The Lone Star state is under a state of emergency after freezing conditions swept the region, causing dangerously icy roads and leaving nearly 3 million people without power.
Update: frozen wind turbines led to a drop in Texas’ wind power from thirty one gigawatts to six and there are currently 3.4 million power outages. The situation is getting worse, not better.
Texas, and other states, has resorted to rolling blackouts. In below-freezing temperatures, this is literally a life-threatening situation for states like Texas which rely on electricity for heat (and lots of other critical activities).
A small but vocal group of advocates, promoted by many gauzy-eyed members of the mainstream media, have for years been pushing to transition to green energy away from fossil fuel.
Rhode Islanders clearly feel, after all we’ve been through, that now is not the time to punish people for driving their vehicles!
This week, the Center released a new poll that shows the initial conceptual support for the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI) Gas Tax drops significantly when voters learn the policy will result in gas tax hikes, a significant projected loss of jobs, and a major reduction in the average family’s disposable income.
On the flip side, by not adopting this TCI scheme and keeping gas taxes where they are, our Ocean State would gain a competitive advantage over our Massachusetts and Connecticut neighbors.
Rhode Islanders oppose TCI when they learn about its high costs – including a $0.23 increase in the gas tax, an estimated 2,000 jobs lost, and a $1,200 reduction in disposable income for the average Rhode Island family.
Another false “feel good” narrative (from far-left Never Never Land) is not worth the loss of disposable income and jobs costs for virtually zero environmental impact. Learn more now by clicking here to see the full poll results!