Taxation
Yes, the common advice is simply to ignore NEA-RI Assistant Executive Director Pat Crowley, and for psychological purposes, that is certainly an attractive approach. Its problem is that it’s in Crowley’s nature to rush to expose more broadly forming strategies and flaws in thinking of the local left. So, when he devotes so much of…
Senators Frank Maher and Leonidas Raptakis were on Matt Allen’s Violent Roundtable last Friday night, and the trio spent a bit of time discussing the potential gross receipts tax. As I wrote a few weeks ago, at bottom, this scheme merely shifts the tax burden to businesses, probably to the benefit of the wealthy. Be…
I have tended to avoid the written-questionnaire format for interviews of political candidates and officeholders, because the ratio of informative-answers-from-the-candidate-himself-or-herself to canned-answers-written-by-committee can often be less than optimal. Or it could be that I’m just bad at writing questionnaires, as RIFuture‘s Brian Hull has been able to get substantive answers to some very good questions…
The state of Rhode Island’s revenue take is like a chest of treasure sinking to the bottom of the ocean, and some folks are intent on having us all chase it to the bottom: “We’ve already been cutting, cutting, cutting,” said one of the few people watching Wednesday’s discussion, Russell Dannecker, fiscal policy analyst for…
If you should attempt to discuss state-to-state migration trends related to taxation, Tom Sgouros will proclaim the whole thing far too complicated, with insufficient data available, to make broad statements. When it comes to people moving from town to town within the state related to taxes and services, well, he’s not so reserved: When a…
We are taught at an early age to call 911 in case of an emergency. People’s perception of what an emergency is may differ, but one fact does not; we expect our calls to be answered expediently. Fire departments handle most 911 calls in our area. Those departments pride themselves on a speedy response to…
Reviewing a recent RIPEC study (PDF), Brian Hull pulls back from the most relevant question: When we look at the 2007 Per Capita Personal Income for RI, MA and CT we find the following: Rhode Island is $39,829, far less than Massachusetts ($48,995) and Connecticut ($54,981). The per capita personal income of MA is a…
Could be I’m missing something: Governor Carcieri’s administration director, Gary Sasse, gave a roomful of state senators a list of “two to three things” to do over the next few months as the state tries to climb out of its financial abyss. … The third was a variation on a key piece of an ambitious…
The following e-mail was distributed today to members of NEARI. A message from NEARI President Larry Purtill: URGENT!!!! The RI House Labor Committee will hear legislation on binding arbitration for teachers Wednesday, October 21, 2 PM at the State House, and the full General Assembly is scheduled to reconvene October 28-29. After over two decades…
What an improvement is the reemergence of sincere argumentation on RI Future. I may find its new owner, Brian Hull, to be wrong about the implications of taxation, but I trust that he’s attempting to express his opinion to persuade rather than to mislead. Thus, not only may exchanges be fruitful, but the actual assumptions…