Under the Government’s Wing

Things We Read Today, 8

By Justin Katz | September 11, 2012 |

Today: September 11, global change, evolution, economics, 17th amendment, gold standard, and a boughten electorate… all to a purpose.

Things We Read Today, 7

By Justin Katz | September 10, 2012 |

Today it’s debt and gambling, from bonds to pensions to entitlements, with consideration of regionalization, ObamaCare, and campaign finance.

Things We Read Today, 2

By Justin Katz | September 4, 2012 |

Today’s quick(ish) hits touch on: Partisanship as evidenced by Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow, and Nick Gillespie. The libertarian-conservative divide and this year’s election. Ed Fitzpatrick’s one-way love of fact checking. The dependency nation as an existential threat. Read all about it on the Ocean State Current…

Against Incentivizing Cooperative Strategic Workarounds with Comprehensive Market-Driven Measurables

By Justin Katz | September 2, 2012 |

At the risk of repeating myself, I have to opine that one of Rhode Island’s core economic challenges is the frequency of sentences like this: To position Rhode Island to compete successfully for jobs and investments, a new public/private economic-development partnership should be designed to implement an integrated economic-development strategy that focuses on business retention…

All of Us Are the Job Generators

By Justin Katz | August 31, 2012 |

Although with regret, I have to opine that former East Providence city councilman Robert Cusack misses the target in his op-ed, yesterday, suggesting a way for Rhode Island to rejuvenate its sputtering economy: We need to identify a job generator, make the changes needed to attract those jobs and then promote Rhode Island to execute…

When I Grow Up, I Wanna Be a Crony

By Marc Comtois | August 24, 2012 |

I can’t confirm if this was filmed in Rhode Island or not (h/t): “I’m gonna fight for MY piece of the taxpayer pie.” “What’s a crony?” “It’s like having a best friend who gives you other people’s stuff.” “We take care of our friends.” “We get to spend taxpayer money any way we want.” “Why…

Bristol Withdraws From the EBEC Wind Turbine Project – And Other Reservations While We’re At It

By Monique Chartier | August 19, 2012 |

Some quick background. The East Bay Energy Consortium (“EBEC”) consists of nine towns on the East Bay of Rhode Island which had banded together with the following goals. … to develop a regional wind energy system that will produce a sufficient quantity of electricity equivalent to the total municipal load of all nine members. We…

What the Dependency Portal Changes

By Justin Katz | August 13, 2012 |

Over the weekend, two people whose opinions I value disagreed — with disconcerting vociferousness — with my objection to the innovation that the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity is calling “dependency portals.” When that happens, there are two possibilities: either my gut aversion was wrong and my reasoning was mere rationalization, or I’m not…

Bringing the Dependency Portal into Focus

By Justin Katz | August 8, 2012 |

The RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity has posted a hub page to explain and trace the development of Rhode Island’s health benefits exchange into a full fledged “dependency portal,” drawing people into government programs. As much as I strove to explain the concept on that page, two of the five points that one advocacy…

Hopkins Center Milton Party (and Thoughts on the Fuel of Capitalism)

By Justin Katz | August 1, 2012 |

The Stephen Hopkins Center for Civil Rights’ panel discussion on the event of Milton Friedman’s hundredth birthday offset “liberaltarian” Brown professor John Tomasi with June Speakman, a Roger Williams professor more inclined to agree with the prefix of the coinage. The panel would have benefited from the inclusion of an unabridged conservative who agreed with…