Under the Government’s Wing
Tomorrow (July 16) at 7:00 pm on the URI Bay Campus in Narragansett (215 South Ferry Road; Coastal Institute Building, Hazard’s Room), the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will be holding a “public information session”. Below is a description of the scope of the hearing. BOEM leadership is hosting the following public information sessions…
A brief that I wrote for the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity describing the reasons that Rhode Island should opt out of the Medicaid expansion and health benefit exchanges of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) refers to “dependency portals.” That is, the exchanges will be used to draw new enrollees into…
Ted Nesi notes that Rhode Island has moved up a couple of notches on a nationwide scale when it comes to funding higher education in the state budget. The reason, however, is that our officials are better at dancing to the federal tune: However, Rhode Island was one of only five states that has federal…
The article to which Justin referred discusses the mutual aid societies that cropped up during the late 19th and early 20th century to deal with poverty and other social issues. Historian Walter Trattner, author of From Poor Law to Welfare State, was quoted in the article: Those in need. . . looked first to family,…
My knowledge of social history is not sufficiently detailed to take this without some suspicion (although those on the other end of the political spectrum will no doubt dismiss it without consideration). There may certainly be a significant “yes, but” required in the assessment of the period in question, but this strikes me as something…
Fred Schwartz highlights two stories related to Environment Protection Agency (EPA) dictats. First, it turns out that Americans are still disinclined to spend money on electric and hybrid vehicles. Second, the EPA has now put companies in the position of being fined for not including an additive that they simply can’t get. Both articles reflect…
An article in today’s Providence Journal describes a familiar aspect of a town’s movement toward receivership that might point to a common contributing factor: A national investment ratings agency, Fitch Ratings, on Thursday downgraded the outlook for Woonsocket. In its report the agency said the city of almost 42,000 people faced a School Department deficit…
Somehow, I thought the state would go a bit more slowly when it came to using its new “tool” for taking over governance of Rhode Island municipalities: Again raising the sense of urgency and severity, Governor Chafee appointed a financial commission to oversee East Providence on Tuesday. The decision makes the city the state’s first…
I’ve found the ProCAP matter to highlight a thoroughly depressing fact of the modern civic arrangement, and it came to a point when Russ stated the following, in a comment to one of Andrew’s recent posts: If providing a bridge loan is cheaper than taking over the functions that would be lost if PROCAP goes…
This seems like another one like I referenced earlier with the call for a “Wait, What?!” category, or maybe it’s even slipping into a different one, some three-letter acronym that begins with the same letter as “Wait, What?!” What is going on with this redistricting process? Let’s take a step back for a minute. What…