If recent trends continue – and there’s no reason to think they won’t – several other states will join the $5 club soon, including Indiana, Pennsylvania, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and others.
he cost of gasoline hit a new record high on Monday as many Americans kicked off the summer season traveling over Memorial Day weekend. The average price of a gallon of gasoline climbed to $4.62 a gallon Monday, up about a penny from Sunday and $1.58 higher than last Memorial Day, when the average cost was $3.04.
In what has been dubbed the Great Resignation, Americans have been quitting their jobs in record numbers in recent months – a trend that shows no signs of slowing. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 4.5 million Americans quit their job in March 2022, the most ever recorded in a single month, and up from 4.4 million quits in February.
We all require a certain amount of money each month to pay for normal living expenses, and in recent months, that amount has gotten much higher. Whether at the pump or the grocery store, Americans are being hit with a severe case of sticker shock.
Then White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in October that inflation increases “will be transitionary.” But today, they have surpassed 40-year highs, and many believe the U.S. is already entering a recession or soon will be. Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said the U.S. is probably already in a recession in a discussion with the hosts of the All-In podcast.
The United States is in a period of historic inflation. The consumer price index rose by 8.5% over the 12 months ending in March 2022, the fastest increase in over four decades. Though it is not keeping pace with inflation, income is also on the rise in the United States.In Rhode Island, per capita income stands at $64,156, slightly lower than the national figure and the 18th highest among states.
The American housing market took off during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The homeownership rate – or the share of housing units occupied by their owner – jumped by 2.6 percentage points from the first quarter to the second quarter of 2020, by far the largest increase ever recorded. By the end of 2020, there were 2.1 million more homeowners in the United States than there were a year earlier. In Rhode Island, the homeownership rate stands at 61.6%, lower than the national average.
WalletHub has ranked Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island as the three best states for supporting working mothers in its 2022’s Best & Worst States for Working Moms. Vermont ranked seventh in the report, which indicates that 68% of women with children under the age of 18 are in the work force since 2021.
Inflation is surging in the United States – in large part because of rising food prices. In cities across the country, food today is 8% more expensive on average than it was a year ago, and American families are feeling the pinch. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank, a family of four – two adults and two children – can expect to pay an estimated $9,835 on food in 2022.
As it currently stands, the price point for Canadian generics (the same drug without the name brand) is, on average, 38% lower than the comparable brand price in Canada. In stark contrast, generic prices within the United States were 74% lower than the comparable U.S. brand price. Comparing the two, patients who purchase drugs in America are paying up to 88% over their Canadian counterparts.
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 […]
Are Rhode Island Teacher Unions Unlawfully Collecting Dues? Unconstitutional Provisions Discovered in Many CBAs School District Employees Not Being Informed of Their Rights Providence, RI – A report released today by the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity detailed how over 1-in-4 reviewed school district Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA), put into place since the landmark2018 […]
Grover Norquist is the president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a taxpayer advocacy group he founded in 1985 at the request of President Reagan. ATR works to limit the size and cost of government and opposes higher taxes at the federal, state, and local levels. In this clip from the #InTheDugout podcast, he tells […]
Sten ON A TEAR 5PM #InTheDugout Watch LIVE ON TWITCH Topics: -settles BoSox ground-rule-double controversy -Guest, Nicole Solas, domestic terrorist, files POLICE REPORT, Jim Crow/DOJ – Westerly CRT on nat’l news -Doc Skoly & #ParentsUnited update -Economic & Health Dep’t malfeasance
While upgrading EV charging infrastructure may sound good on the surface to some: giving electric car owners more places to charge their glorified go-karts, it does nothing more than help the state’s wealthy. Looking at RI’s median household income of $67,167, a large majority of RI residents cannot afford an electric vehicle, making the spending virtually useless.
Today’s show is live at 5pm. Watch it now then share it on social media! Topics: -CRT infecting our schools, we’re investigating. -Grover Norquist in a Liberty Byte -Mario Lopez of the Hispanic Leadership Fund & Eli Berkowitz on why the regressive RI “sugary drinks” tax especially hurts low-income families & small businesses struggling to […]
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.
On its one year anniversary, it would be irresponsible not to look at the effectiveness of the COVID-19 lockdown. Florida and California vividly demonstrate that the answer is “completely ineffective”: the two states have had similar outcomes to very different approaches, making it clear that lockdowns did not and do not work to slow or stop the spread of COVID-19.
What about Rhode Island? Well, we locked down. And we have the third highest COVID-19 deaths nationally.
Lockdowns, even if they worked exactly as hoped, were never a good solution because of the enormous public health and other consequences they inflict. One year later, it is clear, as they do not achieve even their hoped-for goal, that they are entirely destructive with zero public health benefit.
Now, let’s look at where Rhode Island stands on the original reason for a lockdown: two weeks to flatten the curve and not overwhelm hospitals. Below is the trend of Rhode Island’s hospitalizations; specifically, Column U, “Currently Hospitalized” of this sheet:
4/28/2020: 375 (Spring, 2020 peak)
12/15/2020: 516
1/25/2021: 380
3/9/2021: 141
By this original goalpost, Rhode Island can open up fully, now. (Please stop with the agonizing and ineffective baby steps.) More to the point, the state never needs to lock down again for this (or any) reason. This is because, to her credit, former Governor Gina Raimondo set up COVID-19 field hospitals. While they were recently shut down because COVID-19 cases have dropped markedly, they will remain in place in the event of a surge.
The evidence and observed science one year into COVID-19 lockdowns is blaring and indisputable: they do not work. All states can and should open up immediately, fully, without restrictions – including nursing homes with reasonable protections. Refusing to do so is to deny the plain evidence and prolong the needless suffering and very serious health and other consequences of lockdowns.