Under the Government’s Wing
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…