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151

Tolls Having a Toll On Voter’s Opinion of State’s Future?

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Interesting results from a poll commissioned by Bryant University’s Hassenfeld Institute for Public Leadership and carried out by Fleming & Associates. Rhode Islander’s view of the state’s future is trending downward.

A new survey of 403 registered Rhode Island voters shows only 31% think the state is heading in the right direction, while 50% now say it’s headed in the wrong direction. Less than a year ago, in September, it was a different story – voters were evenly split, with only 40% saying the state was moving in the wrong direction.

It is notable that this trend started in September when the state’s economy (purportedly) was improving. Could this public pessimism be a result of General Assembly leadership jamming through Governor Raimondo’s highly destructive toll plan last session? Pollster Joe Fleming lists that as one of the potential causes.

Fleming suggested voters are less concerned with the economy as it’s improved but have been alarmed by controversies at the State House such as the debate over truck tolls, the tourism campaign debacle, and the resignation of former House Finance Committee Chairman Ray Gallison amid a law enforcement probe.

152

Investigative-Film Maker a Sign of America’s Frightening Turn

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When the day comes that all but the most deluded must acknowledge that the United States has become a country unlike the one that stood against totalitarianism in the last century, nobody will be able to claim there weren’t warning signs.  To pick just a few examples from a very long list during the past few years, the United States is a country in which a film maker finds himself scooped up by police in the middle of the night, apparently as a cover-up to the administration’s ineptitude in a foreign country, authorities raid the homes of people connected to a particular politician, apparently as a political attack, the IRS targets grassroots groups of a particular political persuasion, apparently in an effort to blunt their effectiveness during election season, and prosecutors go after a governor and presidential possible under the pretense that he used his veto power illicitly.

It’s not surprising, in this atmosphere, to see an activist/journalist who conducted undercover investigations of Planned Parenthood have his home raided and his computers and videos confiscated for careful review by politicians and bureaucrats who are sure to be favorably disposed to the abortion mills he exposed as trafficking in the body parts of the babies they’d killed:

Authorities seized a laptop and multiple hard drives from his Orange County apartment, Daleiden said in an email. The equipment contained all of the video Daleiden had filmed as part of his 30-month project, “including some very damning footage that has yet to be released to the public,” he said.

A spokeswoman for California Attorney General Kamala Harris (D) said she could not comment on an ongoing investigation. But the raid confirms that California is among the states looking into possible criminal activity on the part of Daleiden and his organization, the Center for Medical Progress, which have been the center of controversy since releasing videos purporting to show that Planned Parenthood illegally sells fetal tissue for a profit.

Two lessons for people who might fall on the same side of the political divide as Daleiden and who might be considering similar approaches to making the world a better, more just, place:  Think carefully about the state and region of your base of operations, and ensure that copies of your work are well dispersed if you don’t release it all to the public from the start.

153

Laws Are for the People, Not Their Betters in Government

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During yesterday’s discussion on the Rhode Island House floor of H7147, the bill’s primary sponsor, Democrat John “Jay” Edwards (Tiverton, Portsmouth) presented it as a matter of fairness.  Those poor, put-upon elected officials have to provide some degree of transparency into their finances, while local grassroots groups that (very suspiciously) oppose many of the things those politicians want to do to their towns get away with spending money to voice their opinions on local issues without having to provide the politicians’ friends with ammunition for whisper-and-intimidation campaigns.

I’ll leave it for later to go into detail about Edwards’s dishonesty during his State House performance, yesterday.  For the moment, I’ll simply note the audacity of this line of argument coming from a supporter of imprisoned former Speaker of the House Gordon Fox and move on to a national issue that gives some sense of the contempt that Americans should have when government officials chastise the People to be more transparent:

The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton reports that lobbyist, Michael J. Brady, asked in a private email for a little favor of EPA General Counsel Joe Goffman, his insider friend at EPA: “Joe, would you please send this email to Gina for me? I would have sent it to her directly with a cc to you but I don’t have a private email address for her and would prefer to not use an office email address.” (Emphasis added) Brady represents a number of green energy groups that want to support EPA’s Cross-State Pollution Rule. Goffman

The casual tone of the email exchange shows “that it is a regular practice of senior officials of this EPA to use private e-mail accounts and other ‘off-book’ techniques to craft rules with ‘green’ activists with clear financial and political interests is now clear beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Chris Horner, the man who exposed former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s “Richard Windsor” email moniker.

As I said, this is a national matter, but there can be little doubt that it’s an issue at the state level, too.  For example, we’d have had no idea that George Nee — a big-time labor figure who sits on multiple government boards at the state level — used his Yahoo email account to lobby for a union-friend’s daughter to get a 38 Studios job if those emails hadn’t been part of the giant scandal of the company’s bankruptcy that lead to lawsuits and legal disclosures.

It’s increasingly clear that people in government don’t see themselves as our representatives, but as our aristocracy, with free license to seek out ways to make it impossible for us to operate without their permission.

154

More Clarity About How Rhode Island Works

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Some folks on social media have noted an op-ed by Mark Ryan in today’s Providence Journal encouraging Rhode Islanders to stop “drowning in negativity” and instead “applaud Gov. Gina Raimondo, House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello and Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed” and “encourage them to further achievement.” Ryan proceeds to offer a boosterish list of the trio’s achievements, which looks a lot like what one might expect if he’d asked the politicians’ spokespeople for a short list of what good things they think they’ve done over the past year.

Readers should note that Mr. Ryan has handed out over $10,000 to Rhode Island politicians since spring 2014. $2,000 of that went to Governor Gina Raimondo, half just a month before her election and half the following January. Another $2,000 went to General Treasurer Seth Magaziner, half a week before the election and half this past November. These donations are notable, in part, because as Ted Nesi summarized last September in a post on some of the depositions in the 38 Studios trial, Ryan’s law firm, Moses Afonso Ryan, is “a prominent local law firm that often works on government bond offerings.”

For example, however much the firm received for its work on the bonds related to 38 Studios, it agreed to pay the government $4.4 million. The public could be forgiven for thinking that, for such people, campaign donations aren’t so much expressions of support as investments. The other partners in the firm give generously to select politicians, and they also give to the firm’s associated political action committee (PAC), which then gives more to politicians.

And it’s an intricate scheme, too. Ryan gave former Providence Mayor Angel Taveras over $4,000, and as his official bio states:

He was recommended by Mayor Taveras and appointed by Governor Chafee as a commissioner on the I-195 Commission, Chair of the Search Committee for an Economic Development Director for the City of Providence and Co-Chair of the City of Providence Mayor Angel Taveras’ Transition Team.

In short, it’s about as surprising that Mr. Ryan would be a supporter of the politics and brand of economic development of Raimondo & Co. as it is that the Laborer’s union likes the idea of pouring hundreds of millions of dollars immediately into construction projects. The fact that Ryan is former executive vice president and general manager of The Providence Journal only completes the picture of how Rhode Island operates and why it’s in the condition that it’s in.

Insiders profit. You pay. In the absence of a functioning, truly representative democracy, the process is little more than legalized theft.

159

Coming up in Committee: Bill Sets 4 thru 35 to be Heard by the RI General Assembly, March 31 – April 2

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4. H5631: Allows individuals who have property confiscated as part of a civil forfeiture proceeding to “seek a court determination as to whether the forfeiture is disproportionately excessive to the gravity of the offense giving rise to the forfeiture”. (H Judiciary; Tue, Mar 31)

5A. H5610: Mandates that the Department of Public Safety begin “to implement an electronic automobile and commercial vehicle liability insurance confirmation and compliance system” that includes “an automatic license plate recognition system to electronically capture license plate images in two seconds or less and noninvasively attempt verification of the insurance and when possible, the registration status of the vehicle”. (H Finance; Wed, Apr 1)

5B. H5606: Requires that applicants for operators and chauffeur licenses have a valid social security number. (H Finance; Wed, Apr 1) It will be interesting to see how many legislators end up taking the position that requiring social security numbers for operators and chauffeur’s licenses is unreasonable, while supporting an electronic system that is supposed to watch every automobile in the state.

6. H5495: Minimum-manning for social workers at public schools, one per 400 students. (H Health, Education and Welfare; Wed, Apr 1)

7. H5961: Unambiguously establishes that holding a seat on the Cumberland Fire District board is holding public office — and that “members shall hold no other public office”. (H Judiciary; Wed, Apr 1) I understand and agree with the spirit of this bill: it’s crazy that here in Rhode Island, we pretend that there’s ambiguity about whether Fire Districts are part of the government or not. However, 1) a bill like this shouldn’t be confined to one community and 2) the authors of the bill need to carefully review the law in this area, to make sure there aren’t potential problems (legal and ethical) with burdening Cumberland Fire District Board members more than other local officials.

160

Some of the Larger, Seriously Ill-Advised Items In the Governor’s (What Kind of) “Jobs Budget”

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During the days following its release, reporters, analysts and observers worked to unpack the budget that Governor Raimondo sent to the General Assembly — and found some unpleasant items therein. Here is a bullet list of some of the bigger ones.

Proposed Statewide Property Tax

… aka, the Taylor Swift tax.

Justin got clarification from Governor Raimondo’s office that the INTENT is not to include apartment buildings as properties to be taxed. This conforms to Governor Raimondo’s attempt to sell this tax as having only a narrow list of targeted properties. (So, gosh, don’t worry about it. And, anyways, we only want to tax those icky rich people.)

Intent, however, is completely secondary. If this tax passes into law, the door will be opened wide for future – and current! – governors and General Assemblies to tax apartment buildings (of all classes and sizes); commercial buildings; second homes of less than one million dollars; PRIMARY homes of more than one million dollars; primary homes of $750,000 – $1,000,000; et empty state cetera. The critical issue is not that the initial list of targeted properties is short. It’s that the list comes to exist at all. To subject just one property classification to a new, statewide tax would set the precedent to subject virtually all real estate in Rhode Island to a statewide property tax via an easy tweak of the targeted property list.

In a perfect bit of timing, RIPEC released an analysis right before the governor released her budget of just how much Rhode Islanders are already taxed. By one measure, Rhode Island already has the fourth highest property taxes in the country. The governor is seriously proposing to raise that ranking? In fact, the one thing above all that our elected officials should not do is exacerbate this burden.

Further, there’s the matter of Rhode Island’s already undesirable reputation as a high tax state. On Twitter, Gary Sasse correctly asks,

When Tax Foundation.et. al.rank tax climate will new statewide property tax impact rankings w resulting reputation risks?

Further to “reputation risks”, WPRO’s Gene Valicenti pointed out Friday morning that the governor’s mere proposal has made the national news via the AP’s feed. This is exactly the kind of publicity that Rhode Island needs to avoid, not curry.

Governor Raimondo’s Proposed Statewide Property Tax Redefines Ownership of Real Estate as a Privilege

This one was a great catch by Justin.

161

The Bookends of RI’s Library of Decline

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A pair of articles in yesterday’s Providence Journal give an excellent indication of why Rhode Island is the way it is.  The first is about the receiver’s plan for firefighters’ new employment deal with the Central Coventry Fire District.  The details of the plan are definitely interesting, but the key part, in my view, comes at the end:

The union will contest the new terms in bankruptcy court.

“We’ll out-lawyer them and outspend them and out-fight them,” Gorman said.

Think of the structural conditions — political and legal — that underlie that threat.  A financially struggling fire district must balance legal fees against the employment packages that the union is protecting.  Meanwhile, the union is fighting with money absorbed, at the point of the taxman’s gun, from local residents.  Can we agree that the union’s ability to “outspend” the employer (if true) is a pretty good indication that maybe the union has gone a bit beyond fixing a supposed imbalance between employer and employee?

The second article is about some hires by the new general treasurer of Rhode Island, Seth Magaziner:

Treasurer-elect Seth Magaziner has announced another round of staff picks, including Tom Sgouros as his senior policy adviser.

Sgouros, who waged a short-lived 2010 campaign for treasurer, describes himself as an engineer at Brown University and a freelance writer and public policy consultant who has consulted in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, California and Vermont “on public finance, banking, tax policy, and sustainable economic development.”

Reporter Kathy Gregg leaves out the important background that Sgouros is one of the central spokesmen for Rhode Island’s far-left progressives.  (For fun, rewrite Gregg’s second sentence as it would appear if some conservative treasurer had appointed me as senior policy adviser.”)

In fact, we’re watching a whole generation of far-left progressives work their way into state government positions.  In 2013, then-Governor Chafee hired progressive activist Kate Brock, for example, and  even the supposedly conservative Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello (D, Cranston) hired RIFuture founder Matt Jerzyk to his legal staff.  That hiring produced this statement, which can’t help but resonate oddly for long-time followers of Rhode Island’s Left and Right:

“Matt’s experience in city and state government will be a valuable addition as we continue to focus on growing the economy and creating jobs,” Mattiello said in a statement.

How exactly are our leading elected officials planning to “grow the economy and create jobs” with staffs full of progressives?  Whatever the answer to that question might be, the two articles from yesterday’s paper  illustrate the left-right punches by which progressives implement policies and insiders, like public-sector labor unions, benefit from the unfair rules of the game.

The next round of RI’s political history has only just dawned, but it’s a safe bet that we’re entering four more years of what the last four brought, more or less.

162

Rep. Lally’s Opposition to a Constitutional Convention

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My clock for blogging has run out, already, today, but an opinion essay that Representative Donald Lally (D, Narragansett, South Kingstown) sent out through the legislative press office merits a quick response.

The essay, which does not appear to be online, yet, expresses concern about the cost of a Constitutional Convention and about the possibility that “special interests… could hijack the convention and call for changes to the Rhode Island Constitution that actually weaken the rights of the citizens of our state.”  Moreover, he says, “supporters of a Constitutional Convention… tend to also be detractors of the General Assembly.”

While considering Lally’s comments, Rhode Islanders (especially voters in Rep. Lally’s district) should note three things.

First: Lally’s Freedom Index score, from the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity, was -56.6 for 2014, ranking him 73rd in the whole General Assembly.  According to the interactive Freedom Index Live, Lally’s three-year average score is -60.1, which is handily the worst of any legislator from either town that he represents, including progressive stalwart Teresa Tanzi.

Second: A look at Rep. Lally’s political donors shows he’s got no problem taking money from “special interests.” Here are his top 10 donors since 2002:

  • NRA Political Victory Fund PAC: $3,850
  • RI State Association of Firefighters: $2,700
  • NEARI PAC (National Education Association of RI): $2,450
  • RI Laborer’s Political League: $2,400
  • ATU Cope Special Holding Account (Amalgamated Transit Union): $2,300
  • Brian Goldman (of Goldman Law Offices Attorney/Lobbyist): $2,250
  • NECSA (New England Convenience Store Association): $1,650
  • Realtors PAC of RI: $1,650
  • RI Dental PAC: $1,600
  • Fund for Democratic Priorities: $1,575

It’s enough to make one wonder if Lally’s largest concern is actually that his contributors will have another option for their political donations for a couple of years.

Third: According to the Secretary of State’s candidate list for the General Assembly, Rep. Lally had no competition in his primary and has no competition in the general election in a couple of weeks.

In short, Rhode Islanders who aren’t happy with the laws that Rep. Lally has helped to put in place to weaken their rights and who fear the influence that his special-interest donors have over him have no other option than a Constitutional Convention.

163

State Taxes and Economic Health

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The effect of taxes on a state’s economic health is one of those repeated questions that is never resolved.  The obvious reason (I’d propose) is that it’s one of those areas that depends hugely on specific circumstances, but the ideological intentions of those having the discussion tend to promote specific findings as broad conclusions.

The last sentence of the most recent academic contribution to the debate, by Pavel Yakovlev of the Mercatus Center, probably captures about the broadest statement that can be made:

… not all tax variables exhibit a significant correlation with the selected measures of economic activity, but when they do, the relationship is usually negative.

Yakovlev concludes his summary in a way that’s probably more comprehensible to the average person:

Not all types of tax increases can be expected to significantly harm economic outcomes, but higher taxes are generally correlated with lower standards of living.

In the phrasing of a popular meme: I don’t always affect the economy when I increase taxes, but when I do, it usually hurts.

Another important variable that Yakovlev mentions in the course of presenting his findings is the quality of public services provided.  It is assumed that in some circumstances (or at least to some people) the trade-off of higher taxes for quality government services favors the latter.  Presumably, it is less common for people to want to have high taxes in order to finance poor government services.

Throughout the study, Yakovlev looks at two competing ways of calculating the correlation of variables that can sometimes serve to support different ideological preferences.  On the government-spending side of the ledger, the results find a positive correlation between taxpayer migration and education spending, but negative correlation of migration with infrastructure spending, public health spending, and public welfare spending.

Especially on the infrastructure count, that finding might be counter-intuitive, because we tend to think of better roads and bridges as a contributor to economic health.  One plausible explanation for the results is that the amount of spending on infrastructure doesn’t translate well into results.  In other words, over a basic minimum of spending on roads and bridges, additional dollars are wasted.

Of course, an objective viewer of Rhode Island would have to conclude that this level of discussion is mostly moot in the Ocean State, as the latest competitiveness report card from the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity illustrates.

All of our taxes are high.  Most of our services are poor.  People are generally leaving; opportunity remains difficult to find.  And the hope of substantive change is limited.

164

Observations of Needed Change in Education

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Like it or not, the notion of competition is creeping in on Rhode Island public schools. Rhode Islanders should be wary of approaches that drive alternatives out of business without securing real improvements.

165

Coming up in Committee: Seventeen Sets of Bills Being Heard by the RI General Assembly, May 20 – May 22

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3. S2657: “The information contained in a portable electronic device shall not be subject to search by a law enforcement officer incident to a lawful custodial arrest except pursuant to a warrant”. (S Judiciary; Tue, May 20) The same bill was vetoed by Governor Chafee two years ago and, according to the Wall Street Journal, Governor Jerry Brown recently vetoed a similar bill in California, telling “the legislature not to require warrants for cellphone searches, saying the issue belongs in the courts”. We’ll see what happens in RI this session.

4. S2985: Allows “a health care facility licensed as an organized ambulatory care facility” to operate at multiple locations without having to seek an individual license for each site. (S Health and Human Services; Tue, May 20)

5. S2208: Extends full state school-housing facilities support (which I believe means state aid to assist with capital construction costs) from district-sponsored charter schools to any Rhode Island charter school, e.g. Mayoral academies. (S Finance; Thu, May 22)

6. S3014: Adds “the real property of any person having debts secured by casino-issued lines of credit” to the list of property “exempt from attachment on any warrant of distress or on any other writ”. (S Finance; Thu, May 22)

7. S2072: If the annual gross receipts of a Rhode Island C-Corp or LLC are less than $500, the corporation gets an automatic tax-refund in the amount of the difference between its gross receipts and the $500 corporate minimum tax it would have to pay… (S Finance; Tue, May 20) …i.e. changes the corporate minimum tax from a tax that certain corporations owe to the government just for existing, to requirement that certain corporations pay the government the first $500 they make each year in the form of corporate income tax.

166

Coming up in Committee: Twenty-Seven Sets of Bills Being Heard by the RI General Assembly, May 13 – May 15

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1A. On Tuesday, May 13, SJ Advisors presents their report on payment of the 38 Studios moral obligation bonds to the House Finance Committee.

1B. S2694: “…neither the general assembly nor any governmental or quasi-governmental entity created by it shall issue any bonds, commonly called ‘moral obligation’ bonds in excess of fifty thousand dollars…” (S Finance; Tue, May 13) While the purpose of this bill makes sense, “moral obligation” bonds were themselves created to make a practice clearly prohibited (issuing bonds without voter approval) appear to be legal by renaming it. How would a law like this guarantee that a future legislature wouldn’t get around it, simply by coming up with yet another name for issuing debt without voter consent?

2. S2345: Writes into law in-state tuition at RI public colleges and universities for students, including illegal aliens (but not non-immigrant aliens) who graduated from a Rhode Island high school that they spent three years at, including illegal aliens who have applied for citizenship, provided that the Federal government has provides a pathway to citizenship as part of an amnesty law. (S Finance; Tue, May 13)

3. S2332: Establishes a floor for the Central Falls pension settlement such that, for 2016, “no retiree shall receive less than” 75.6% of their pre-bankruptcy pension amount, and raising that floor to 100% over the following 20 years. (The bankruptcy settlement initially cut a number of pensions to 55% of their original amount, though the state authorized “transition” funds to raise that to 75% for five years). Unlike the version submitted to the House, this bill does not expressly make the state responsible for the pension. (S Finance; Thu, May 15) So where will the difference between the 55% and the rising scale that starts at 75% come from? The bill doesn’t say.

4. S2074: Sets the threshold for the RI estate tax at $2M (annually adjusting it upwards for inflation) and assesses the tax only on the amount over the threshold. (S Finance; Tue, May 13)

5. S2077/S2148: Bases car-tax assessments on trade-in instead of retail value. (S Finance; Tue, May 13)

167

Coming up in Committee: Thirty-Two Sets of Bills Being Heard by the RI General Assembly, April 29 – May 1

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1. H7512: Eliminates the straight-party option, aka “the master lever”, from Rhode Island general election ballots. Also, H8072 eliminates the the master lever from Rhode Island general election ballots, and provides for “community outreach” in order “to educate the public, including the elderly” about how to vote without using the master lever. (H Judiciary; Tue, Apr 29)

2. H7767: Repeal of Rhode Island’s voter-ID law. (H Judiciary; Tue, Apr 29)

3. Proposed amendments to the State Constitution, that would require ratification by the voters:

• H7024: Trades an extension of Senator/Representative terms to 4 years, for a term-limit of 3 terms. (H Judiciary; Tue, Apr 29) I’m not in favor of across the board 4 year terms for the Rhode Island General Assembly, but if they were to be implemented, shouldn’t they be staggered so roughly half the seats are up every two years?

• H7458: Reduces the number of House districts to 50, with two representatives being elected from each district, one male and one female. (H Judiciary; Tue, Apr 29)

• H7593: Unambiguously extends the jurisdiction of the State Ethics Commission to the legislature (H Judiciary; Tue, Apr 29)

• H7594/S2420: Removes free-speech protections from any activity that involves the spending of money. (H Judiciary; Tuesday, April 29 & S Special Legislation and Veterans’ Affairs; Wed, Apr 30) The publication of newspaper editorials that offer candidate endorsements could be regulated by the government under this amendment — that is, if there’s weren’t a First Amendment to the Federal Constitution, that supersedes any attempt by Rhode Island’s governing class to limit political speech.

• S2113: Requires “Senators, representatives and general office holders [to] contribute twenty percent (20%) towards the premium for health care coverage paid for by the state of Rhode Island”. (S Special Legislation and Veterans’ Affairs; Wed, Apr 30)

• S2397: Changes the state’s current duty under Article XII to promote schools and libraries into a (judicially enforceable) “right to an adequate education”. (S Special Legislation and Veterans’ Affairs; Wed, Apr 30)

• H8014: Line item veto (including the option of line-item reductions), with the GA able to override any item through the usual process. (H Judiciary; Tue, Apr 29) One thought here: Does a provision like this need some kind of protection, so that the GA can’t just override everything that was line-item vetoed, with a single en masse override vote?

4. S2309: Repeals the the provisions in the law allowing “deferred deposit” loans, i.e. “pay-day” loans, and that allow check-cashing businesses to automatically operate as pay-day lenders. (S Commerce; Thu, May 1) According to the official description, this is a complete repeal of pay-day lending.

5. H7263: Clarifies that existing law states that the home address of someone confined to a correctional facility, for voting purposes, is the address they had before they began serving their sentence, and creates processes to make sure this law is properly enforced. (H Judiciary; Tue, Apr 29)

171

Coming up in Committee: Thirty-Two Sets of Bills to be Heard by the RI General Assembly, May 7 – May 9

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1. Different ways to reorganize government, with the goal of improving the business climate in Rhode Island. (H Finance; Tue, May 7) However, the best bill for actually improving the business climate here in RI may actually be…

2. H5207: Creates a “Joint Committee of the Repealer” within the legislature, to recommend laws & regulations to be repealed. (H Judiciary; Thu, May 9)

3. A series of pro-life bills concerning abortion, banning abortions as a means of sex-selection, requiring the “voluntary and informed consent” of a woman seeking an abortion, requiring that an obstetric ultrasound be performed before informed consent can be given, and the addition of some specificity to the partial-birth abortion law. (H Judiciary; Wed, May 8)

4. S0768: The title of the bill is “Drivers license for foreign nationals”. The text of the bill makes no reference to illegal or legal immigration status, though it’s hard to see why a legal immigrant to Rhode Island would want the second-class driver’s license created by this bill, if he or she is eligible for a regular one… (S Judiciary; Tue, May 7)

176

Things We Read Today (11), Friday

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Being right about district 1 messaging; PolitiFact prepares for the election; what’s a charter; being right about quantitative easing, First Amendment; and Bob Dylan says what he means.

178

Things We Read Today, 4

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Today, Justin touches briefly (for him) on long-term vs. short-term recovery, who’s better off, RI’s long spiral (and potential for quick resurgence), and the significance of different ballot types in Cicilline-Loughlin.

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