Either through subsidy or regulatory pressure, government encourages purchases that align with some fashionable social policy.  Businesses spring up to take advantage of the sudden market where there was not one before, and then the businesses go bankrupt.  Maine State Representative Laurel Libby, a Republican, highlights the expanding costs in the case of Maine’s electric school buses:

Maine taxpayers are now footing the bill for “mitigation strategies” and “disposal plans” for buses that were SUPPOSED to save money and “help the environment.” The state even hired a Vermont consulting firm to provide “one-on-one support” to districts… MORE taxpayer dollars spent cleaning up a mess created by the Biden administration!

This isn’t just about buses. It’s deja vu. Politicians roll out expensive, ideological experiments without thinking through the consequences. When they fail, Mainers are left holding the bag. (Think, solar subsidies!)

A worthwhile exercise for Republican staffers and (oh, I don know) journalists in Maine would be to investigate what connections there might have been between local, state, and federal politicians and the companies that wound up benefitting.  One reason we keep seeing such things happen is that nobody in office ever pays a price.

By “a price,” I don’t mean some small increase in the difficulty of getting reelected.  I mean a tangible financial or reputational price for setting taxpayers up for failure.

The battle of Rhode Islanders who own waterfront property and agents of the state who want to assert authority over that property continues:

I’m not sure I believe him, here:

Senate Majority Leader Frank Ciccone III says he will soon file legislation to protect Rhode Islanders from the examples of unconstitutional conduct by federal immigration officers making headlines in other states.

“Look at what’s taking place across the country, we don’t want that to happen here,” Ciccone said in an interview Friday. “We don’t want somebody just picking someone up without a warrant.”

As illustrated by the fact that Ciccone’s legislative superior, Senate President Valarie Lawson, is also the president of one of the state’s two teacher unions, which is perhaps the most radical and powerful activist group in the state, I’m inclined to suspect Rhode Island’s Democrats would love to bring the chaos and unrest we’re seeing in other Democrat-run states to Rhode Island.

Left-wing riots would give them additional political leverage, give them opportunities to force state and federal taxpayers to fund union employees for the clean-up and repair, and give them excuses to crack down on the speech and rights of their opposition.

At absolute best, Ciccone is merely pandering.  Look how quickly he filed his legislation, even admitting in the article he’s ignorant of the facts of the Alex Pretti shooting.  Moreover, the legislation is useless.  A state statute “requiring [ICE] agents to conduct their duties in full compliance with the United States Constitution” is redundant on its face.

Whatever Ciccone’s level of cynicism, Rhode Islanders must see through these performances as the scams they are.  If state officials really wanted to ensure ICE conducted itself properly and all citizens’ Constitutional rights were protected, they’d be working with the agency, not resuming the poses of the southern Democrats who started a Civil War.

I’ve continued to see Democrats and mainstream journalists point to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal as if everybody simply knows it’s a huge liability for President Donald Trump.  Because I don’t require purity in politics, only the most practical and lesser of the available evils, I’m not greatly invested either way, but there’s reason to (further) discount the credibility of anybody who’s still expecting Epstein to bit Trump:

Naturally, those who’ve been using the name, Epstein, as a running barb against the President will simply flip back to ignoring the story once it’s clear it’s only going to undermine their entire social class.  Once again, even if it comes back to include Donald Trump, the aristocrat who’s bringing down the corrupt aristocracy is preferable to those who would continue to bolster it and cover up its crimes.

For that reason, I think perhaps I’ve paid too little attention to the story.  Here’s a clip of Bill Maher quoting self-help gurus who buddied up to Epstein and enjoyed dipping into his perverse lifestyle.  These are the people who presume to tell us how to live and for whom to vote.  Indeed, I agree with the first reply, from Klay Thompson, to the post with the video:

I don’t think they appreciate the amount of resentment that this builds within a society, when it knows its elites have committed such crimes and it is going completely unchecked.

As with all the political scandals of the last 20 years, somebody has to pay a consequence.  For me, it’s no longer enough to stop the bad behavior.  It has to be rooted out.  We have to recover our capacity to be disgusted by it.

Why is “the argument that the state should… simply spend less… unrealistic?”  The editorial goes on to emphasize that it’s a “gubernatorial election year,” implying that lower spending is politically “unrealistic,” but the editors’ point isn’t clear.

The headline is “Can we grow jobs with a wealth tax?”  The state’s leading publication focused on business should be willing to make that a sentence: “We can’t grow jobs with a wealth tax.”

I realize everybody with a position to defend in this state wants to stay on the good side of progressives and to remain sympathetic to the political challenges of less-progressive Democrats, but at some point, you’ve got to take a stand.

Attempts at “gender reassignment” of minors were always and obviously going to go the way of every medical and scientific example of “what were we thinking?”  Anybody still defending it should be considered for psychological evaluation, and anybody who previously defended it should, at a minimum refrain and be restrained from opining on any matters of public interest that take the slightest bit of discernment.

This award should have been much higher, and we should see many, many more:

We can hope that these lawsuits come to Rhode Island, as Nicole does, but I also hope they go much farther.  Teachers and school systems that facilitated “transitioning” should find themselves subject to lawsuits, particularly where the lied to parents.  Regulators, including in the Department of Education, who facilitated the madness should also face consequence, as should legislators who’ve supported “shield laws” to protect providers of this obviously barbarous practice.

This poll result from RI News Today’s X account makes for an interesting study:

Personally, I’d tend to answer “is a journalist,” mainly because I think there’s a low bar for that designation.  The large majority who answered “not a journalist,” however, are probably closer to the mark of the question that’s actually being asked.

The framing of the question — which Lemon and his supporters have encouraged — conflates the propriety of his action with his status as a journalist, but it’s a non sequitur.  Whether or not he is a journalist is irrelevant to the question of whether he’s authorized to enter onto private property in coordination with an activist group and disrupt (arguably “terrorize” fits, here) religious services.

Two important considerations haven’t been considered in the public debate about the incident.  The first comes from Lemon.  If he were a journalist and genuinely saw himself as acting as one, he’d take a very different stance; something like:  “I thought this was an important story to capture, so I knowingly took the risk that I’d be violating the law in the process, and I’ll accept the consequences if that turns out to have been the case.”

The second important consideration is for the journalistic community.  If its members wish to continue being seen as holding a special place in our representative democracy as investigators and tellers of truth, then they should be more concerned than anybody with defining and maintaining boundaries.  Journalism professors should be on the talking head shows debating whether Lemon crossed a line and explaining what he could have and should have done to make his role clearer.  Instead, from the little I’ve seen, we get histrionics about how it is unacceptable to imagine there might be a line to cross.

Neither of these considerations has gotten any airing because Lemon and his community of self-credentialed journalists want to maintain the illusion that they hold some special place so they can continue doing activism under the cloak of journalism.

It’s difficult to believe this is a news article and not a mildly implausible TV comedy pitch:

A Woonsocket lawmaker is once again attempting to give pet owners a telehealth option for their pet rather than first taking the animal to a veterinarian.

It is the second time this bill is before lawmakers. Rhode Island law prohibits initial telehealth visits prior to the animal first having an in-person visit with a licensed veterinarian, but allows the option after an in-person visit. The bill died in committee last year.

They’re pets.  As long as their owners aren’t treating them in such a way as to make them a public health or safety hazard, why should any approach to medical care be “controversial” from a legal perspective?

Of course, if we putting common sense aside, the answer is obvious.  The American Veterinary Medical Association is working to block telehealth because it’s not in the financial interests of its members, so they’re using government to increase the value of their services.  It’s simply rent seeking.

Gathering news from a multitude of sources, I may have lost my understanding of what the “typical” person is aware of, but I suspect this isn’t on the list:

It’s telling what mainstream sources, especially here in New England, think is and isn’t news.  This is why conservatives tend necessarily to be much better informed.  We can’t help but hear what the other side is talking about, because the other side controls the public messaging.

This is also why Democrats around here seem so cartoonish.  To them, there can be no other explanation than “Gestapo!” for what’s happening in Minnesota.  Republicans can remain fully aware of, and even disagree with, the Trump administration’s approach to immigration enforcement (although I do not disagree with it), but we also see the context of Democrats’ being shoulder deep in theft from the American taxpayer through political and welfare laundering.  The Antifa insurgency, then, exists for us in a rich context of overlapping policy, politics, and crime.

Silence on this story is a scandal in its own right.  If journalists were even a fraction of the truth-seekers they claim to be, they’d have a ready-made drama with more angles than they’ve got cub reporters to take on.  But they don’t like the conclusions to which the story leads, and so they’ll ignore it, thrusting their industry into decline and their readers into ignorance and dragging our country into a new Dark Age.

Candidate for lieutenant governor, John Loughlin, asks a question of the sort Rhode Islanders should ask more often as they go about their lives:

One of the cumulative conclusions from my years of watching Rhode Island policy and politics is that the powers who be in the state very rarely ask themselves questions in the form, “Why would X want to do Y in Rhode Island?”  The question they find important enough to consider is usually more like, “Given that X wants to do Y in Rhode Island, how can I force them to do or fund Z?”

The most important word in that typical question is “given.”  None of it is given, and eventually it won’t be.  That is why the state’s focus has increasingly turned to forcing rather than attracting.

Erick Erickson puts this well:

Nicole Solas has noted a curious inconsistency in reporting about a grant that Rhode Island’s leading teacher union says it gave to the state Department of Health:

Nicole emphasizes the difference in reporting, but I think by far the bigger story is the fact of the grant at all.  Why would a labor union organized to represent teachers and some healthcare workers be giving money to the Department of Health?  That seems a bit off.

In a reply to her own post, Nicole wonders whether the grant is connected with a joint task force RIDOH established with NEARI “to mobilize members to advocate against federal policies that harm public health and our members.”  So now, you’ve got the union giving money to a state department (i.e., the “management” that sits on the other side of the negotiating table from “labor”) to engage in implicitly partisan political activism.

A healthy polity would see this violation of boundaries from a mile off, but Rhode Island barely notices it.

Benjamin Schettler offers his first-person perspective on an anti-ICE rally:

I was surrounded by a mob of leftists.

In less than 60 seconds of walking up to some protesters and asking them “why are you here?”

I was surrounded and harassed.

It was like a real-life zombie movie. A mob of mindless humans all on the attack. For years the left claimed… pic.twitter.com/5ehOWH0QmU

— Benjamin Schettler (@BenSchettler) February 1, 2026

From this perspective, you see it for what it is:  The non-radical entering the crowd gives them a focal point for what is otherwise empty emotion.  The enemy is fictional, so anybody who isn’t entirely in line with them gets to play the role.

Nicole Solas gives a case in point:

I was hopeful when Peter Neronha first took office, but his open government division quickly wiped that hope away.  This is why I’m extremely skeptical of calls for a new inspector general’s office, by the way.

At least if they’re not progressives, citizens seeking enforcement of open meetings and access to public records law will find the AG’s office to be another obstacle to overcome, not a fellow advocate for good government.  It’s just the way it is.

Subtle political theory is required, but Lincoln’s issues with water supply are deeply related to the way we do government in Rhode Island (and the United States, for that matter).  Sofia Barr reports for the Valley Breeze:

Water Commission Board Chairperson Ken Booth estimates that it will take around two years to establish additional water sources in Lincoln, but what happens to development applications until then? …

While there’s no moratorium in place, Booth said that the Water Department is not approving water availability at this time.

This is not an insurmountable problem, and there are ways other than connecting to nearby water systems to supply water for a population.  The problem is that this becomes an added expense requiring debt and/or tax increases.  And that points to the key problem:  We operate our governments at the maximum tax burden the population will bear, not the minimum.

If people in Lincoln and Rhode Island felt they were getting immense value for their money and that public services were reasonably priced and well provided, then there’d be excess capacity for the town to spend money for something as fundamental as water supply.  It’s only a problem when the fundamentals have to be added unexpectedly on top of what is already near the maximum burden people will tolerate.

People who run households will recognize this concept as simple prudence.  Live well within your means, and surprise necessities are actually expected contingencies.  We don’t budget like that, in Rhode Island.  The people who run government want to get as much on their own books as possible, rather than leaving that money in residents’ bank accounts when the government doesn’t need it immediately.  That creates a big pool of funds that special interests attack relentlessly… and drain dry with entitlements and commitments of law and contract.

Ryan Medeiros of WJAR has posted some videos of the anti-ICE protest in Providence, today.  The protests are clearly organized, and they’re shutting down city streets entering into a Friday rush hour.  In one video, I see clearly labeled state police standing by while non-police block a busy intersection, including holding up a school bus.  (Contrary to the belief of some, wearing a reflective vest does not impart authority to do such things.)

The presence of the idle officers, who are making no visible attempt to remove the deliberate obstruction of people’s right of motion, raises an important question.  Do these people have the appropriate permits?  If not, could they have even gotten them for this time of day in frigid weather?

Most organizations would need special events permits from the city, especially when closing down streets.  On state roads, parades are specifically noted as requiring permits.

Do these laws apply evenly, or are they understood to be waived and given police escorts when they support the state’s ruling regime?

On Monday, an eatery that had made it past the notable five-year mark announced its closure, blaming the fiasco of the Washington Bridge, which Rhode Island government failed to maintain.  Here’s the tone deaf (I’d say, “clownish”) answer from the governor:

“When you have an infrastructure that is interrupted, or is down, whether you’re putting sewer lines in or water lines in by businesses, that it’s going to impact our businesses,” McKee said. “So, we’re going to do everything we can to keep our businesses operating and functional.”

Very often, infrastructure like sewer line maintenance and repair can be planned, and they shouldn’t cause years of disruption.  Businesses can prepare and also account for a future after the work is done.  The Washington Bridge is an unknowable quantity because nobody trusts the state government to replace it efficiently.

As bad as it is on its own, the Washington Bridge is mostly a representation of the burden that Rhode Island government places on our lives every day, in every way, which is why the Ocean State is dead last for starting a businesses:

Governance also plays a role. Rhode Island has experienced decades of one-party political dominance, along with a long history of public corruption cases involving elected officials. While reforms have been enacted, critics argue that limited political competition and recurring scandals have weakened accountability and dampened investor confidence.

The government of Rhode Island does not exist to serve the public or facilitate our interactions.  It exists to siphon off our wealth for insiders and special interests.  For a few decades, the parasites tried to be smart about not killing their host, but they’ve become too bloated and too ideological to maintain that balance.  They’ll kill the state if they’re not removed.

Especially vital activities like healthcare.  This story is terrible in large part because it targeted police, but we shouldn’t assume it’s only them at risk:

To progressives, everything is political, and having different political or policy views than they have makes you less than human.  It’s a fanatical religion, and we’ve allowed it to permeate vital industries like healthcare and education.

In Australia, which is farther along than we are, a story is just out of a hospital that changed the name of a Jewish patient and victim of Islamic terrorism so the staff wouldn’t do her harm.  The United States is not far from this, especially if we don’t recognize that we’re in the midst of civilizational war, and progressive Democrats are on the side of the destroyers.

We do well to be circumspect about the findings of marketing surveys like this, but the result isn’t surprising:

Young Rhode Islanders ranked among the least optimistic when it comes to their job prospects, according to a recent survey.

Careerminds, a global outplacement and career development firm, surveyed 3,011 respondents aged 18 to 25 and Rhode Island placed 49th when it comes to optimism for career advancement in 2026. Only Delaware was more pessimistic.

The biggest reasons cited in the article are AI and automation, but Rhode Islanders’ relative pessimism has been the case for decades.  It doesn’t matter what the threatening technology of the day may be; it doesn’t matter how well the economy is going, generally.  Rhode Islanders are rightly concerned that our state is not well prepared to address adverse turns or take advantage of beneficial ones.

We’ve got a blob of insiders and special interests who won’t let Rhode Island do anything unless they benefit most of all, and it shows in our results and the lack of hope that pervades the state.  The worst part is that it doesn’t have to be this way.

Well, let me amend that:  It only has to be this way if we can’t find it in ourselves and our community to start saying no to the insiders and special interests.

I’ve been watching Rhode Island politics for too long to do anything but yawn at this sort of news:

We’ve seen this story repeatedly.  Smart, dedicated people spin their wheels for years trying to get one of these incremental reforms.  In the meantime, the topic distracts that segment of the population who pays attention and allows them to avoid addressing underlying problems.

If the policy ultimately goes through, it’s only because the insiders have figured out how to eliminate the reform in the reform, or even to turn it to their corrupt advantage, and either way, they’ll deploy the reform to distract from their corruption, buying themselves more time without attention paid to those underlying problems.  Consequently, the results are either underwhelming or even unexpectedly negative:

• The Ethics Commission becomes a way to bless unethical (but legal) actions.
• Campaign finance regulation becomes a way to tangle up opposition and convince everyday Rhode Islanders not to get involved.
• The Master Lever is permitted to go away only because mail ballots are about to wipe away most possibility of truly competitive elections.

Promoting reforms like the line-item veto and an inspector general might be politically useful for its messaging value, but nobody should waste any time, resources, or (especially) political capital trying to actually make them happen because they’ll prove to be performative, not reformative.

As the state police have gone around pitching their new, invasive camera system to communities, they’ve emphasized extreme and urgent situations — the kidnapped child, the murder and hot pursuit.  What we’re seeing in North Providence, with its eight cameras so far, isn’t quite that:

So far, North Providence police have made 12 arrests based on alerts from the Flock cameras, according to Ruggiero, including someone for possession of a stolen motor vehicle where a large amount of cocaine was discovered. There have been two incidents of stolen vehicles solved with help from the cameras, he said.

Others caught with assistance from the cameras include a fugitive from justice in Massachusetts, someone wanted for domestic assault, another domestic violence charge, and a couple of suspended licenses.

While the more serious cases might have gotten caught sooner in other communities even without the cameras in North Providence, Ruggiero said that if someone was driving 26 mph in a 25 mph zone and essentially following all other laws, officers would not have known to pull them over. With the alerts in place, he said, it helped officers locate the vehicles and most operators.

What a rousing endorsement:  “the more serious cases might have gotten caught sooner in other communities even without the cameras.”  Pay particular attention to the last item on the list — “a couple of suspended licenses” — because that’s where we’re headed.  Soon, we’ll be seeing people pulled over for things like late tax bills or campaign finance violations.  The cameras will become the equivalent of a police officer sitting on the side of the road and running license plates to catch every violation that passes his way.