At first, I was just bothered by the passivity evidenced in the first sentence of the following paragraph:

Because Rhode Island’s economy is interconnected with the regional and national economies, the slowdown in the national economic recovery in the first quarter of 2011 affected Rhode Island, according to the [Bryant University-RIPEC] report. The U.S. Gross Domestic Product increased at an annualized rate of 1.8 percent in the first quarter, compared with 3.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Why should it just be assumed that Rhode Island will follow the national trend?
But then, I reread the first paragraph of the article:

Rhode Island’s economy expanded 1.9 percent in the first quarter of 2011, sustaining about the same rate as in the last two quarters of 2010, according to an economic index to be released Monday.

So, the national growth is actually down significantly from the last quarter of 2010, while Rhode Island’s anemic growth is about the same as it was during the last quarter of 2010. Do we only follow the national economy when it’s bad to do so? Or were we really expecting a huge non-national surge in our state that was dragged down?
Whatever the case, I still think we need to cut taxes, slash regulations, and eliminate mandates in order to set our state free of economic shackles — whether of our making or the nation’s.