For a variety of reasons… I know… there are folks doing their best to do best by the state of Rhode Island who would like very much to be able either to ignore me or to say that I’m wrong, whatever I say.  Much to my own dismay, frankly, I’m not wrong as often as I’d like to be.

Note this item from Ian Donnis’s weekly Friday column:

Rhode Island’s unemployment rate dipped again in September, even as the state continued shedding jobs. Meanwhile, the ProJo’s Kate Bramsontook note this week of a worrisome trend: “While population has been stagnant, there is evidence that qualified individuals are leaving the state, which reduces the pool of qualified labor.”

Look, this isn’t rocket surgery. Progressives ’round these parts like to attack my credentials; I was a carpenter when I looked at the data honestly and began writing about Rhode Island’s loss of the “productive class” years ago.  This is obvious stuff.  Anybody who pretends it isn’t obvious wants to avoid the inevitable conclusions.

Rhode Island needs to stop electing big-government, insider-focused Democrats (or Republicans, for that matter) and give people the freedom to act in their own self interest.  The folks in power — whether they’re politicians, locally respected businessmen, or journalists — have been misleading everybody about the way the world works and killing the state.  They’re trying to preserve a fantasy that lets them believe the world is as it isn’t and (more often than not) gives them financial security in the process.

It isn’t a sure thing that Rhode Island can even be saved at this point, but it’s worth a try.  Start learning lessons, please.  If you need some incentive, consider that a right-wing carpenter is able to out-predict you by the better part of a decade because you won’t acknowledge the truth.