Marc Comtois
Dan Yorke had URI Professor Dr. Ed Mazze on yesterday (podcast and related column here), who sketched out how we got in this mess (sub-prime collapse and overall housing problem in RI was the leading cause of recession in the state; 6000 jobs lost since January). Such things contribute to a simultaneous lack of consumer…
Looks like Bob Corrente is going to need a lot more than the “word” of John Celona to help him with Operation Dollar Bill…. Former CVS executives John R. “Jack” Kramer and Carlos Ortiz have been cleared of charges that they tried bribing former state Sen. John Celona to win favor in the State House…
Mac Owens has a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, “Blame Congress for High Oil Prices.” A sample: To understand the depth of congressional complicity in the high price of gasoline, one must understand that crude oil prices explain 97% of the variation in the pretax price of gasoline. That price, which has risen to…
From an editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal: [T]he latest news of Michigan’s deepening budget woe is a national warning of what happens when you raise taxes in a weak economy. Officials in Lansing reported this month that the state faces a revenue shortfall between $350 million and $550 million next budget year. This is…
Rebecca Walker (h/t Freeman Hunt), daughter of feminist Alice Walker, has a sad tale to tell. I was raised to believe that women need men like a fish needs a bicycle. But I strongly feel children need two parents and the thought of raising Tenzin without my partner, Glen, 52, would be terrifying. As the…
From Senator Tom Coburn (R, OK): Becoming Republicans again will require us to come to grips with what has ailed our party – namely, the triumph of big-government Republicanism and failed experiments like the K Street Project and “compassionate conservatism.” If the goal of the K Street Project was to earmark and fund raise our…
The Congressional Budget Office has released a new report, “Data on the Distribution of Federal Taxes and Household Income,” which covers 1979-2005. Here’s the “money graph”: Here’s an explanation, including: CBO’s analysis of effective tax rates assumes that households bear the burden of the taxes that they pay directly, such as individual income taxes (including…
My dispositional inclination is to agree with the ProJo’s Bob Whitcomb: Sen. Barack Obama visited the Capitol in his glory the other week, with other, lesser politicians crowding around to be photographed — testifying to his charm and to the tendency to suck up to the winner. It recalls how we pay far too much…
Ya know, if the current resident of the Oval Office had talked about visiting all 57 States in America or had momentarily slipped up by complaining that we didn’t have enough Arabic translators in non-Arabic speaking Afghanistan, I do believe the Daily Show and Colbert Report would have been all over it. But when He…