Basic Government Functions
A brief exposition of an entry put down in an actual dead-tree notebook, referring to a news-subject worth watching, at a time where there is certainly no shortage of subjects vying for public attention… Secretary of Commerce vs. RICWFA paradox — A group of Rhode Island leaders led by General Treasurer Gina Raimondo announced a…
Very good editorial, entitled “Waste-and-fraud report”, in today’s Providence Journal. Mr. Block came back with what was a first glance at the problem; he lacked the data to do a more extensive survey. But he found signs of serious fraud just below the surface — demonstrating that our elected officials and bureaucrats should better monitor…
Ok, so there’s this green tree kerfluffle thing at the Statehouse. People are making a big deal over it and what name the Governor chose to refer to it. He even went on the Bill O’Reilly show last night to talk about it, and I think he did better than I expected. I wish he…
From Walter Russell Mead of the American Interest, in a blog post titled “Hurricane Sandy and the Perils of Nanny State Governance”…The problem with nanny state governance isn’t just that it’s intrusive. It isn’t just that it stifles business with over-regulation, and it isn’t just that it empowers busybodies and costs money. It’s that it…
In today’s GoLocalProv, RISC’s Harriet Lloyd concurs with the reservations of Common Cause’s John Marion about an election loophole exploited by Capitol TV, resulting in the taxpayer funded promotion of incumbent legislators – strangely, all Democrat ones. Just last week, Capitol TV ran “interviews” in which the legislature’s $70,687-ayear inhouse TV host, Dave Barber, gave…
President Obama’s teleprompter style has been the subject of substantial (often mocking) critical commentary, and with some justification, as this nearly parodic 2010 video from a Virginia classroom proves: Given recent political events, one can sympathize with the desire of public officials to avoid extemporaneous speech. In a world in which one’s every public utterance…
I’ve been following taxpayer migration data for years, but in a haphazard way. A new study that I’ve coauthored for the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity finally gave me the opportunity to review all fifteen years of available data from the IRS. The picture — from the 2003 beginning of what can only be…
On Tuesday, Andrew wrote about the “imminent peril” that the Board of Elections (BoE) felt that voters’ information was in. Then Justin live-blogged the actual BoE meeting where they voted to put off the issue of making this data confidential. What they are concerned about is some radical NH citizen posted the RI voter information…
While we continue to hear about money we don’t have being spent on bad loans to green economy darlings like Solyndra and Fisker, it turns out that there is cash sitting there waiting to be spent on good old fashioned things like our waterfronts and waterways. In the latest Federal Transportation bill (h/t), which is…
Thank you, Andrew. Let me get this straight. A city that has no money, because it spends more than it takes in, is loaning money to an organization that receives all of its money from public sources — raising the question of how the “loan” will be paid back — … … the Rhode Island…
