The General Assembly as RI's All-Purpose Charity

It's a small thing, perhaps, but then they're all small things, from a certain perspective. This is just too perfect an emblem of the government under which we're living:

All the funds raised for those three [charitable] purposes, listed on the "Rhode Island Checkoff Contributions" portion of the tax return, go directly into the state's general fund.

And they have since 1995.

The state uses the money however it wants, from plowing roads to paying the salaries of members of the General Assembly, which voted in 1995 to divert the money without telling taxpayers that it was no longer going toward the stated purpose.

Give this greedy beast nothing more than it can take by force. Apart from its catastrophic incompetence, the government of Rhode Island simply cannot be trusted.