Justin Katz
Providence Journal photographer Kathy Borchers (and her editor) lobbed a softball out there to accompany Steve Peoples’s predictable coverage of the other night’s State House events (PDF), and Matt Jerzyk hammered it into the ground: In one corner we have MEN IN SUITS who are longtime advocates for lowering taxes on the richest millionaires and…
The essential argument behind that dreadful tax legislation (whose name we dare not speak) is, as Tom Sgouros put it in testimony last night: The state takes “too much money from people who can’t afford to give it, and not much money from those who can.” Or, as those who are less worried about the…
Well, it’s already after eight o’clock, and the thing’s still going, so it’s as good a time as any for my first visit to the State House. It’s worth visiting such places, I find, just to sense the grandeur of marble stairs and high ceilings. It’s easy to imagine how two-bit legislators get to feeling…
Tom Sgouros (who is apparently more involved in this bill than I’d thought) just said: The state is getting too much of its money from people who can’t afford to give it, and not much money from those who can. But this is different in kind from what he’s been arguing thus far, which has…
Rep. Handy, who introduced the atrocity of a bill currently being discussed, just described one of the “injustices” that he’s seeking to alleviate: He spent the past few years paying taxes on diapers for his child, but a rich person who could afford a diaper service would be free of that burden. I’d dispute the…
The Big Government folks have themselves a win-win situation with punitive taxation: interested citizens are kept unnaturally busy just making ends meet, so their ability to become involved is diminished. Well, it’s going to take me a while, but I hope to get down to the statehouse tonight, assuming the hearing continues.
Any additional educational freedom for Rhode Island’s parents would be a good thing, but Julia Steiny’s Sunday column on interdistrict school choice left me wondering about the mechanics of the thing: Cross-district choice would allow the parents to decide which schools should be closed for lack of enrollment and interest, and which should thrive. Right…
Let me say right up front that access to healthcare must be improved and expanded, although it goes beyond the scope of this post to delve into the different understandings of the whats and hows of that mandate. Even were that goal to be achieved quickly, however, I suspect that the life expectancy gap between…
Not surprisingly, taxation appears to be Rhode Island’s method of being a world leader. We’re tied with West Virginia for seventh highest top total corporate tax rate in the world. Oddly, China and India aren’t among the global Top 30. Go figure. (via Instapundit)
