Basic Government Functions
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…
For this post and the prior, I’ve been tempted to create a new A.R. category: “Shady Quangos”. It is not difficult to imagine that ProCAP is not the only government funded non-profit which spends its tax dollars in questionable ways. Today, we add to the list of troubling practices at ProCAP. Further to my concerns…
Two developments yesterday at ProCAP: the Executive Director has been fired suspended, followed in short order by [edit] the firing of the organization’s COO and attorney. On Wednesday, what we knew was that ProCAP vendors were not being paid, personal loans had been made to the director and some staff members, hundreds of thousands of…
One thing that the great majority of voters can agree to be a legitimate government function is public infrastructure. If all residents can move about with equivalent ease, then they can compete economically and they can resist de facto segregation. Tolls and other usage fees actually serve to diminish this justification; as prices go up,…
This AP analysis — or whatever you would call such an essay — by Calvin Woodward and Martin Crutsinger is dumb to the point of being offensive. Woodward and Crutsinger try to put the debt ceiling debate in terms of family finances, and the lede that the Providence Journal gave to the story captures the…
The Associated Press is reporting that the House’s budget bill won’t be introduced until a week from today…Rhode Island lawmakers say they’ll introduce a new state budget proposal next week… The new proposal is expected to be unveiled next Friday before the House Finance Committee. If the committee endorses the spending plan it could go…
For years, I’ve been arguing against transportation bonds on the grounds that such basic matters of infrastructure are the first expenses that our government ought to make. Instead, the political strategy becomes one in which elected officials and unelected bureaucrats spend as much money as they can on non-basic services and then return to taxpayers…