Hmm. I bet if you got rid of all the illegal aliens in manufacturing in this state you'd be able to put thousands of the state's legitimate citizens back to work and get that unemployment rate back down to the national average.

>Members of the House Finance Committee spent the morning visiting five prospering manufacturing companies around Rhode Island ...

So they hit just about every one of the prospering companies in one day, five of them.

Well. that's a lot easier than trying to visit the thousands of struggling companies in RI.

This was fine but shouldn't the next field trip be to states which are fiscally successful?

Does Nevada count?

So where were they five years ago, when policy changes might have had a chance of turning things around -- or at least shoring them up -- before the storm hit?

Everything I've heard so far -- ports, better worker training, partnerships with universities -- is, at best a medium term solution and at worst pablum. None of these proposals does anything to solve the immediate problem: revenues are collapsing, and the state is running out of cash to meet its obligations. And as Don H can surely tell, that is the acid test when it comes to turnarounds.

As I've said many times here, the end game in RI promises to be utterly fascinating -- and we're in it now. And what a surprise -- the GA leadership is paralyzed. Nobody wants to be the one to tell the public sector unions that their pensions must be cut (there is no way RI can dig itself out of this hole), and the welfare crowd that even more cuts must be made there too. And that's after taking the axe to state aid to local governments, and forcing many of them into Chapter 9.

And so instead of facing reality, they're all sitting around and hoping that, despite you-know-who winning the Dem primary in RI, President Obama will save the day with a big dollop of federal aid dollars. Of course, anybody with an ounce of experience in RI realizes that said federal aid would merely postpone the day of reckoning for another year. But that's one year closer to cashing out and moving to Florida, which is the only goal that counts for many of our "leaders." Of course, these same people are also taking the Ostrich approach when it comes to wondering whether their RI pension checks will actually clear once deposited in their local Florida bank.

But that's all part of the end game.

No wonder pony tail boy has cleaned up his act and gone into a more respectable line of work -- ambulance chasing.

The times they are a changin' -- at an ever faster rate.

Well said, John.