The following sentiment, expressed here by a small-business owner being crushed by the Washington Bridge closure, has been expressed by people seeking to reform Rhode Island for decades, so it is encouraging to find it somewhere outside of our meetings and events:

“think of how successful we could be if we weren’t having to pick up the slack of other people”

Rhode Island could be the gem of the Northeast.  Rhode Island could be the archetype of America’s promise.  Rhode Island could be the hub of such dynamism as historians will talk about for centuries.

The problem is that its obvious potential has made the Ocean State vulnerable to rent-seeking toll collectors who stand in the way but promise we only have to pay them off a little.  They’ve collected, though, and there are so many that the purpose of the state has shifted from a vision of thriving to the burden of supporting their slack.

A question that must concern us all is at what point they’ve utterly ruined even the possibility of that vision.