Justin Katz
It was one thing when Representative Art Handy (D, Cranston) decried the injustice of the little known diaper-service tax shelter during his testimony supporting his Economic Death and Dismemberment Act. We could at least give him the benefit of the doubt that he was speaking extemporaneously. But he apparently liked the image so much that…
But let’s not lose sight of a principle that looms pretty large in conservative philosophy: that social pressure is often the appropriate means of guiding individuals toward behavior that is healthy for society. This concept puts conservatives at the obvious political disadvantage of giving liberals cover to declare that they judge nothing but judgement and…
Forgive me if this post has a patchwork feel to it, but I’ve had a dreadful day. Here’s a telling time line for you: 6:12 a.m. (just before I begin getting ready for work) — A post of mine hits the Internet. 7:21 a.m. (just about the time I’m pulling into my boss’s shop) —…
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.