In Depth
Deepwater Wind is seeking waiver of a $700,000 fee payable to CRMC. So, in addition to charging two and a half to three times the current market rate for the electricity to be generated, they don’t want to pay a fee that they are legally liable for. Here’s an idea. Don’t build the project. You…
Senate bill S0117 is one of those pieces of legislation that disguises its major effect in the description that most people will see (even among the minority of people who actually dig that deeply). The five initial sponsors of the bill are Senators Harold Metts (D, Providence), Elizabeth Crowley (D, Central Falls, Pawtucket), Paul Jabour…
6. H5114: A preliminary sign that the Rhode Island General Assembly may once again be taking a keen and perhaps unusual amount of interest in the rental of motor vehicles; this bill would require anyone “who rents or leases more than five motor vehicles in any one year” in the state of Rhode Island to…
Senator Whitehouse has just returned from a trip to the Middle East with a pronouncement: the United States should help Syrian rebels just as France helped the American Revolutionaries in the 1700’s. Actually, the French reference to the situation in Syria that can far more easily be envisioned is nearly two hundred years later and…
(This essay appears in the January 25, 2013, Providence Journal.) For two years in a row now, The Journal’s article about the first baby born in the new year has contained no mention whatsoever of a father. Studies on the subject are clear that fatherlessness will be a disadvantage to these children, even if they…
Justin liveblogs from the Senate’s “Moving the Needle” Summit.
John Hill’s Providence Journal article about Woonsocket’s deficit problem contains two important lessons … The first lesson is that everybody who’s interested in these topics should read the Ocean State Current. An article here from last May explains the problem … … the second lesson of the article: The public is being poorly served by…
During the handful of interactions I had with Connie Grosch at the State House, last session, she was friendly and very helpful. Moreover, she did her job taking photographs for the Providence Journal well. So, I was sorry to see her name added to the list of personnel cuts that the paper has made in…
Let’s really make the new Rhode Island General Assembly session official; the list below is based on the Rhode Island General Assembly website as of 11:00 am today… 3. On Tue, Jan 22, the Senate Rules Committee will discuss the Senate rules for 2013-2014. 2. H5086: Allows “developmental disability agencies” to operate their own “self-insurance”…
It started with an email exchange among the contributors to Anchor Rising. Somebody suggested that moderates are essentially liberals who “believe in economics.” That got my mind (when hungering for procrastination) to filling out the rest of a political spectrum, and it turned into the circle illustrated below. As you can see, there are eight…