Political Thought
The government (abstractly speaking) has somehow wiggled its way into a comfortable position in which, as an entity, it need never take blame. Consider a letter from Ben Jones, in Providence: When my wife and I moved to Rhode Island, my wife’s employer-provided insurance plan increased its pricing to over twice the cost, with fewer…
Something’s curious about Mark Barabak and Faye Fiore’s presentation of the lack of street creds in Congress when it comes to healthcare: Too much, too fast, too expensive. Those are some of the objections lawmakers have voiced against the healthcare overhaul Democrats are attempting on Capitol Hill. But many Americans think Congress is out of…
Today’s epiphany — which I wouldn’t be surprised to find to be common understanding among a great many people more insightful than myself — is the intellectual proximity of those who would erase from the books any “victimless crime” and those who see a “victim” of a social crime in every unhappy circumstance. The first…
While perusing YouTube videos of one of our [cough] U.S. Senators, Sheldon Whitehouse, for a bit of writing that may turn out to be more than a blog post, I came across an astonishing indication of Mr. Whitehouse’s political philosophy in a prepared Senate floor speech from June (italic emphasis in speech; bold emphasis added):…
John Stossel shows that it doesn’t take but a little of that common sense of the right-wing variety to produce an “oh” moment: It’s crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It’s even crazier to do it by August. Yet that is what some members…
I’m not sure why Governor Carcieri would choose this time in the history of the state and nation to add to the messages that Rhode Island sends out to reinforce its image as a state in which various factors make it very difficult to operate and advance. He has declined to veto legislation (PDF) that…
The beastliness of tarring and feathering has probably been the most deeply disturbing smack of history as I’ve worked my way through HBO’s John Adams presentation on DVD. During a childhood vacation, I walked through a wax museum with my parents, and although much of the attraction is lost to my memory, I still remember…
Quite revealing, the underlying premise of regular Providence Journal contributor Tom Sgouros’s latest. He describes new education standards recently promulgated by the state Board of Regents that appear to give local school committees and districts more freedom in designing their curricula. What’s the problem with that? The upshot is that school districts will be freed…
Mark makes an interesting point in the weekend Steyn: The real bubble is a consequence of big government. The more the citizenry expect from the state, the more our political class will depend on ever more swollen Gulf Emir–sized retinues of staffers hovering at the elbow to steer you from one corner of the fishbowl…
Quip though it may have been, this paragraph from an article about the General Assembly’s probable rush to pass a bunch of bills over the next couple of weeks expresses the appropriate sentiment: House Minority Leader Robert Watson, a vocal critic of the Democratic leadership, quipped that the state may be better off if the…
