Carroll Andrew Morse
Ken Block’s Eliminate the Master Lever in Rhode Island! website is now reporting that a majority of the members of the Rhode Island House of Representatives say they support the elimination of the straight party option (a.k.a. the “master lever”) from Rhode Island general election ballots. The RI Senate tally still shows 10 votes in…
Anyone want to attempt some big-picture speculation about what the numbers presented by Jeff Wise in Slate Magazine imply for a society that has baked the assumption of a growing population into its institutions and basic perceptions of the future…Instead of skyrocketing toward uncountable Malthusian multitudes, researchers at Austria’s International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis…
According to Ken Block, founder of the Rhode Island Moderate Party and creator and sponsor of the Eliminate the Master Lever in Rhode Island! website, just five more State Representatives out of a total 31 undecideds are needed for a majority of Reps to be on record as supporting the elimination of straight-party voting (a.k.a…
The “protection of freedom of religion” in the same-sex marriage bill introduced into the Rhode Island House by Representative Arthur Handy (D – Cranston) is extremely narrow. As it currently stands, the text reads…15-3-6.1. Protection of freedom of religion in marriage (a) Consistent with the guarantees of freedom of religion set forth by both the…
Rhode Island citizens, legislators and lobbyists are invited to use this compilation of various laws from neighboring states relating to marriage and freedom of religion protections as a resource for their upcoming deliberations on same-sex marriage. ConnecticutSection 46b 22b:Refusal to solemnize or participate in ceremony solemnizing a marriage on religious grounds. (a) No member of…
Dee DeQuattro has a post up on the WPRO (630AM) blog, reporting that John Robitaille, the 2010 Republican candidate for Governor of Rhode Island, has announced that he will not run again in 2014. The article also sets out an initial pool of candidates who might be interested in a 2014 run…Other Republicans who are…
Here is what is at stake in the lawsuit to void Rhode Island’s 2011 pension reform law, Rhode Island Public Employee’s Coalition et al. vs Chafee et al., being litigated in Judge Sarah Taft-Carter’s courtroom today. The state’s public employee unions are asserting a right to veto legislation that impacts their direct economic interests, i.e.…
Philip Marcelo of the Projo reported last week that…Governor Chafee said on Friday that he is not considering major changes to the state Economic Development Corporation, despite a state-commissioned report calling for a major overhaul of the embattled agency, which came under fire for its handling of the 38 Studios debacle.I know every other state…
While Ross Douthat‘s New York Times column from this week isn’t exactly an election postmortem, it certainly suggests that a politics focused solely on economic efficiency is incomplete…Beneath these policy debates, though, lie cultural forces that no legislator can really hope to change. The retreat from child rearing is, at some level, a symptom of…