Rhode Island Politics
Just checking in from Operation Clean Government’s event at the Quonset Club. A little shy of 200 people are here, many of them familiar faces, but not all. My initial thought is that there are a number of people from different segments of local activism. Local Tiverton folks, RISC folks, politicians, activists, and so on.…
I remain reluctant to relinquish the innocence that leads to my being surprised that such people as Pat Crowley exist outside of Charles Dickens novels and the bureaucracies of totalitarian madhouse societies. Last April, I informed readers of the Providence Journal opinion pages that, “according to tax returns filed in 2005 and 2006 (based on…
Our state is in dire financial trouble based on structural deficits, is on the wrong end of just about every state-by-state comparative list, and is losing its “productive class” by the thousands every year, but the matter of concern for a special legislative commission is, in the words of its Co-chairman Sen. James Doyle (D.,…
As damaging as his arrest for drunken driving may be to the reputation of RI Deputy Majority Leader Rep. Raymond Sullivan (D., Coventry), more damning, still, is the slate of legislation on which Mr. Sullivan has placed his name. If Rhode Islanders take the opportunity of his appearance in the news to review his latest…
Put your wonk hat on. Economists Brian Wesbury and Robert Stein write: While the theory of public choice can be broadly applied, it is the ideas of “special interests” and “rational ignorance” that are useful in understanding last week’s tea parties. Here’s an example of public choice at work. Let’s say teachers could benefit by…
For his latest RI Policy Reporter column, Tom Sgouros has moderated his vitriol and, in one way of reading it, attempted to explain what he meant by his statement that tea party goers are “afraid if they do learn about [the issues they claim to speak about], they will lose the purity of their opinions.”…
We’ve been remarking on the seemingly unconscionable inability of our General Assembly to close the indoor prostitution loophole (here, here, here) for a while now. The ProJo has editorialized about it and offered a fine investigative piece about it. As I wrote in 2007, “Rep. Joanne M. Giannini…has done yeoman’s work in presenting a comprehensive…
For those inclined to throw their hands up in the air and say “dat’s the way da game is played” in response to the appointment of Jack McConnell to a Federal District Court judgeship, take a moment to remember that before he was a Senator with direct influence on judicial appointments, Sheldon Whitehouse joined an…
Kudos to John Mulligan and the Providence Journal for shining some light on the nice chunk of change that proposed federal judge John McConnell has contributed to his political sponsors. The McConnells [John and his wife Sara Shea] gave $8,800 to Reed’s reelection campaign. They gave $3,000 to reelect Rep. James R. Langevin and $4,600…
All one needs to know about Lincoln Chafee and his pending run for governor (including his status as a garden-variety left-wing Democrat) is revealed in this: The Republican-turned-Independent Chafee has been out and about seeking support from George Nee, secretary-treasurer of the state AFL-CIO, among others. Late last week, Nee said he had lunch with…