Rhode Island Politics
Unlike Matt Jerzyk, Tom Sgouros’s difficulty in assessing the different interests at the Handy/Moura hearing wasn’t that he emphasized their irrelevant differences, but that he bound them together with reductive equivalence: Before the hearing, there was a rally in the rotunda protesting cuts to Head Start, the early-childhood education program. “Great,” you say, “yet another…
Yes, there are most definitely arguments to be made for the practices, and truth be told, I’ve grown to be bring a mountain of skepticism to media accounts of income related to high-level government positions, but every now and then — especially in the current political and economic climate — it’s difficult not to suspect…
Not to pick on Linc, but it must sting somewhere deep down to know that, after years as a U.S. Senator, more years as an Ivy League professor, and now as an author with a new book out, his opinion remains of public interest more with reference to what his father’s opinion would have been:…
Providence Journal Deputy Editorial-Pages Editor Ed Achorn has dubbed me a “critics” (emphasis added): RHODE ISLAND is facing massive deficits. Rather than slash spending, large numbers of legislators last week proposed $340 million in new and increased taxes, under a bill that critics have aptly dubbed the 2008 Economic Death and Dismemberment Act. These pols…
It was one thing when Representative Art Handy (D, Cranston) decried the injustice of the little known diaper-service tax shelter during his testimony supporting his Economic Death and Dismemberment Act. We could at least give him the benefit of the doubt that he was speaking extemporaneously. But he apparently liked the image so much that…
Committee hearing in full swing, two minutes before they cleared the room of us standees. That’s Dr. Nick Tsongas in the witness chair and on the screen cheerfully admitting that it is “undeniable that this is redistribution of income”. One of the overflow areas, including a t.v. with live feed from the hearing room. These…
Well, it’s already after eight o’clock, and the thing’s still going, so it’s as good a time as any for my first visit to the State House. It’s worth visiting such places, I find, just to sense the grandeur of marble stairs and high ceilings. It’s easy to imagine how two-bit legislators get to feeling…
This Associated Press report does not inspire confidence, on multiple fronts…Rhode Island’s government has fallen weeks behind on paying its bills, leaving hundreds of businesses and contractors in a financial lurch. Officials in Gov. Don Carcieri’s administration say the state is at least five weeks late on many bills. It will need at least two…
When it so happens that the powers that be seem intent on acting in opposition to crystal clear reality, citizens are compelled to act. In Rhode Island, there’s hope — or, in any case, we’ve hope — that plain information will serve to stop the tides, because it is in the universal self-interest to do…
I may be incorrect about this, but the historic tax credits appear to be of a different nature than the movie industry tax credits. The latter are ultimately advance giveaways of tax money yet to be collected. The credits are handed to a production company, which can sell them to third-parties that aren’t at all…