Essay
Well this must really be absolute crazytown. When I’m on the same side of an issue as Bob Plain and opposite from WPRO’s Matt Allen, it really makes me wonder if I’ve been replaced by aliens or something. Tonight on his radio show, Matt was debuting the new and more crotchety Matt Allen. A changed…
Rhode Island’s Republican candidates for Federal office would like to replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, aka Obamacare) with something different. Senate Candidate Barry Hinckley calls for outright repeal on his campaign website; Second District Congressional candidate Michael Riley wants most of it repealed while retaining certain provisions, and First District Congressional…
Checking in on single-family home sales across Rhode Island, as I did for July and 1Q12, reveals a mixed picture. Results for the state are mildly improving, but the “downward spiral index” worsened for 22 of the 38 listed cities and towns. The downward spiral index is the sum of the three percentages given in…
The latest Brown Poll is full of approval ratings and horse-race numbers. Ian Donnis and Ted Nesi are just a couple of those breaking it down. For me, the most interesting was the contrast between question #15 and #16: 15. Would you describe the state of Rhode Island’s economy these days as excellent, good, not…
In a white paper out yesterday from the Cato Institute, Governor Lincoln Chafee (as the chief executive of the Rhode Island government) received a score of D for fiscal policy. His score of 41 is based on spending, revenue, and tax changes that he proposed and/or that were implemented under his watch from January 2010…
People across the United States should consider Rhode Island as a canary in the ObamaCare coal mine, whistling the tune of the President’s larger public welfare project. When he spoke on the first night of the Democratic National Convention, RI’s Lincoln Chafee introduced himself as “the nation’s only independent governor.” That’s “independent” as in belonging…
I’d finished an email exchange with Providence Journal reporter Philip Marcelo somewhat encouraged, on Friday night. He apparently had some questions about the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s RIVotes.org site; some legislators disputed that they’d missed as many votes as the site says. On my way out the door to a social function, I didn’t…
An inherent problem with price fixing identified in basic economics is that we tend to see the proximate results of forced changes on the system, but not the more systemic results. Moreover, fixing prices prevents us from addressing the underlying difficulties that drove them up or down in an undesirable way. The same is true…
–> The latest proposal for fighting global warming: we need to set in motion help from “above”. To combat global warming, scientists in Scotland now suggest an out-of-this-world solution — a giant dust cloud in space, blasted off an asteroid, which would act like a sunshade for Earth. –> Oopsie, sea levels are not rising…
I had a discussion recently with GoLocalProv.com writer Dan McGowan after his article on college loan debt and we got onto the topic of whether that debt might ever be dischargeable through bankruptcy. I do think we’ll see a time when bankruptcy clears out loan debt and if Obama returns to the White House, he…