Ripple
The news cycle flows by so quickly, lately, that political actors and activists are learning it’s sometimes best to just keep your head down and let the controversy of the day join the rest of the noise tomorrow. Nonetheless, I think there’s something worth noting in the now-passed story about Russia funding some conservative commentators.…
I find it ominous that one of my children’s dentist just cancelled an appointment for tomorrow due to short staffing. RI’s medical infrastructure feels a bit like we could get the equivalent of an emergency Washington Bridge closure at any time. Or maybe we’ve been getting them, but the people who run the state are…
Last night, I read a business case about a handful of billionaires who’ve been trying to make lab-grown meat a viable consumer product, and I wondered something tangential. Imagine if a handful of billionaires decided they needed to have a pliable big-government progressive in the White House. They might flood her accounts with hundreds of…
It’s a passing thought, of course, but Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee’s mild lament that a State House celebration of a basketball trophy is happening during school hours bugs me. Somehow, it emphasizes the point that our government officials see the well-being of children — of all regular Rhode Islanders, for that matter — as…
Something more like a cookbook or plantation. I’ve heard complaints that conservatives have “no plan for you” — or “no vision for what the town should be” — repeatedly over the years, and I think it’s the most disturbing complaint progressives make. Chris Rufo articulates my view: Where do I see the town, state, or…
The reason it’s terrifying isn’t only that unrealized gains are purely hypothetical. The proposal (and defenses of it) show that for many taxation has become purely a money-finding scheme requiring the scantiest of rationale. By their nature, unrealized capital gains do not actually exist; they are hypothetical. While striving to come up with some sort…
With the caveat that we have to infer what he’s trying to suggest, I think we can conclude Attorney General Peter Neronha is implying Rhode Island isn’t keeping up on electric vehicle charging ports: Well, yeah. Rhode Island is a small state, geographically, meaning people are never very far from home, and in any event,…
But we have to be wary of the political whipsaw. Evan Masse’s tweet was dumb and insensitive, but his practical problem was that he was caught up in what we might call a Democrat call for evidence. It would be a very normal reaction to pause upon seeing Walz’s son at the Democrat National Convention…
Katherine Gregg took a look at the current state of the race for leadership of the Rhode Island GOP, and the question that comes to my mind is whether it really matters. On a surface level, the uncertain proposition is that even a functioning GOP could make a difference, which I’m not sure the Rhode…
We should repeal all federal income taxes. Income taxes are a great evil that has changed the nature of our relationship with government. Instead, the federal government should be funded through a capitation (per-person) tax payable proportionally by each state. That is, our states would be responsible for collecting a tax calculated based purely on…
