Joe could sure help grow that safety net if he and Speaker Murphy would give up those big SUV's. The gas savings alone could probably feed a family of four (one 19 year old Mom and three kids)for a year!

Think of what could be accomplished with the $70 million if it isn't spent on a new courthouse. All those baby mommas and so little money.

It's all enough to bring a tear to the eye.

The insanity of it all is that the policies put in place by the General Assembly are CLEARLY designed to push more and more people to need assistance from the Government in one form or another by taking more and more of our discretionary income away from us in order to pay for those very programs.

Am I wrong in stating that the intent of Rhode Island Government is to GROW poverty and government dependence?

I think you are right on target Greg. I just don't think the Pols ever thought that they would be exposed for what they were trying to do and never in their wildest dreams believed that it would be front page news when good people, their families, and their businesses would take up and leave RI because of the high costs associated with becoming the "Welfare State".

Ask state officials to give up their SUVs? Contemptible! LOL
There's gonna be plenty of pain, but I don't expect M&M or their fat-cat lobbyist pals to be feeling any.

What Gio and his team over there at the RIGOP have to do is get on the radio, television, semaphore flags, etc... and make it clear that additional fees are taxes. Revenue enhancement of any kind is a tax. And those taxes have to be paid by those at the bottom rung just as much as those on the top.

If it costs more to register your car, buy gas with more taxes on it, more cigarette taxes, alcohol taxes, anything... it ain't the rich guy that feels the pain. It's the poorest members of our state.

If the RIGOP doesn't get AHEAD of the dems this year they'll never be able to. Beat them endlessly over the head with "These 'solutions' you propose will HURT those your claim to want to help!"

Then they need to concede the capital gains tax, and a luxury tax. Have Republicans propose those taxes. Own the issue and frame it. Take class warfare away from them and they lose a powerful re-election weapon.

Good ideas, Greg, but pigs will fly before Carcieri ever supports any kind of capital gains or luxury tax, whether it's to the GOP's advantage or not.
And Laffey will work the word "RINO" into any discussion of them.

"Hard times call for hard choices. It wasn't the Republicans that got us here, but we're willing to compromise with those on the other side of the aisle to help change the course of this ship of state. We're counting on the voters of this great little state to help us help them by returning the government to a true two-party system in November. We don't seek a majority in government. We only seek to stop veto overrides and the rubber-stamping of union-created budgets."

Any of you guys over there writing this down?

"We have made a decision as a society to provide a safety net for those most vulnerable Rhode Islanders"

Yes. So why has the safety net been extended to include others, thereby facilitating bad personal decisions and expanding poverty?

And how is either the state as a whole or the additional people "caught" better off by this extension of the safety net?

"Ask state officials to give up their SUVs? Contemptible!"

Wait, wait, wait. We need to know what legislative leaders in the other 49 states drive on the taxpayer dime. An Eddie Bauer designer edition just may not cut it.

They need SUV's!

How else could they get to their fundraisers when the streets aren't plowed????