Essay
There’s always bad news to talk about around here–fish in a barrel. So when good stuff comes down the pike, we’ve got to be able to take advantage of it. KPMG recently did an international survey and analysis (PDF) of business tax costs around the world. Part of the survey included a ranking of U.S.…
For comment on the Rhode Island Public Expenditures Council (RIPEC) report on the Economic Development Corp. (EDC) in his Sunday Providence Journal article, Paul Grimaldi turned to the Massachusetts affiliate of the free-market RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity, the Pioneer Institute. While the general sentiment that CEO Jim Stergios expressed is apropos, it is…
I think back to the old Southwest Airlines commercial (see it) advertising the all the great things about Philadelphia, including the cabbie proclaiming “Well there’s a lot, a lot of culture here” and then all the other people in the commercial just proclaiming the greatness of the cheesesteak. Sometimes, I feel like people here in…
Bob Plain’s petit four of class warfare; CA’s bid for more pension fund dollars; a martial metaphor for regionalization; a downturn for the never-recovered; Coulter v. View mention of RI. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
Of one thing, we can be reasonably confident: Coverage of proof and arguments against that sliver of papyrus purporting to prove that Jesus had a wife will have a far smaller profile than the initial boom of proclamations that it had been discovered. Not surprisingly, the Vatican has stated its opinion that the artifact is…
Two lines of debate in the battle of Left versus Right cross frequently. One is the question of whether history has an inexorable pull toward which it progresses, making it possible for there to be a “right side” of history that one can predict beforehand for a given issue. The other is whether one’s side…
Retired Providence Journal political columnist M. Charles Bakst has offered, via Ted Nesi’s Saturday column, a cute analysis of how both Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren could wind up in the U.S. Senate next session. While RI’s mainstream press ponders hypotheticals about the Senate race next door, Rhode Island blogger and Cornell law professor William…
Last night, I attended the first organizational meeting for the Tiverton branch of Sakonnet Toll Oppostion Platform (STOP), a cross-community effort to stop the state of Rhode Island from placing a toll on the Sakonnet River Bridge. If I was skeptical about the ability of residents to prevent the tolls before, I’m pretty well convinced that…
I thought GoLocalProv.com was on to something with a little feature they came up with for this week where they’d show where each federal candidate was spending their campaign money, in-state or out of state. However, I don’t know how much good it does for your story when you show the numbers and then basically…
Recently, we’ve seen a report from RIPEC about the troubled EDC and how to improve it. Everyone wants to improve the business community, or at least they say they do, but as one of the points in the report, Rhode Island lacks a clear vision or path toward making any improvements. Reports like that can…