Basic Government Functions
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…
Whenever a rating agency lowers their estimate of the ability of a state to pay back its bonds, the interest rates the state pays go up. Moody’s just lowered its rating for Rhode Island. Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded the outlook on Rhode Island bonds to negative from stable because of “the potential impact of…
Really, watch the whole thing (7+ minutes). Yes, it’s much easier to do with a “new” city (4 others have followed the Shady Springs model). But older cities can do the same thing. The difficulty is with selling the change. Especially to the workers.
Matt and I discussed the federal government’s billion dollar giveaways to states to make up for their poor management and failure to adjust to the economic times, on last night’s Matt Allen Show. Stream by clicking here, or download it.
Joe Mysak takes up the topic of Bell, California’s highly paid public servants: In his only statement to the press to date, the $787,637 man, [City Manager] Robert Rizzo, told the Los Angeles Times, “If that’s a number people choke on, maybe I’m in the wrong business. I could go into private business and make…
