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RIPR is a (paper) newsletter that looks at local, state and federal policy issues that affect life here in the Ocean State. Each issue focuses on particular policy areas of interest. Future issues will examine controversial aspects of environmental policy, health care, state tax reform, and education spending. The intention is to look at action rather than talk. RIPR also issues a weekly column about public policy, carried by ten of Rhode Island's finer newspapers. See here for an archive of recent columns. If you'd like to help, please contribute an item, suggest an issue topic, or buy a subscription. If you can, buy two or three (subscribe here). Search this siteAvailable Back Issues:
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Contact:For those of you who can read english and understand it, the following is an email address you are welcome to use. If you are a web bot, we hope you can't understand it, and that's the point of writing it this way. editor at whatcheer dot net Archive:
Links:Links pageRSSRIPR is primarily a print publication (yikes! how 20th century!), and the work it represents is supported by its subscribers. Feel free to use this link to an RSS feed for the blog, but the real meat is in the newsletter, so come back and subscribe when you have a chance. Responsibility: Tom Sgouros
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Tue, 24 Jul 2007
An article in the Projo reports that EDC wants to establish a new tax credit, in order to raise the average salary in Rhode Island. This, of course, is crazy, for reasons outined in issue 11.
That issue was written in 2005, and the data have changed somewhat since then. You can find an updated rankings table below.
21:07 - 24 Jul 2007 [/y7/jy] link
Mon, 16 Jul 2007
Have you wondered why the newly-Democratic Congress has gotten so little done on their agenda this year? Here's a list of legislation that has been blocked in the Senate by Republican threats to filibuster.
See here for more.
12:14 - 16 Jul 2007 [/y7/jy] link
Fri, 13 Jul 2007
Read here for another column (by me) in the Woonsocket Call (as well as the Pawtucket Times and some of the weekly papers) about real estate speculation. It's essentially a reprise of some of the data first developed for issue 23. The short version: there's a lot more of it than you think, and it has a lot bigger effect on prices than you think.
(If you were a subscriber, this would be old news.)
09:32 - 13 Jul 2007 [/y7/jy] link
Thu, 12 Jul 2007
Economists and Weathermen, more
Another list of economic orthodoxies that continue to be orthodox despite the lack of evidence that they are, you know, true or anything.
11:54 - 12 Jul 2007 [/y7/jy] link
Wed, 11 Jul 2007
Here's the real shame about Michael Moore's new movie: "Journalists" feel they have a pass to call him a fact-fudger even when their own facts tell the same story.
The link is to a collection of CNN clips interviewing Moore, where he's being forced to defend himself against being called a liar by a CNN reporter whose facts don't disagree with his in any important way. They do, of course disagree in the details: Does the US spend $7000 per capita each year on health care, or is it only $6000? Both numbers come from respectable sources (Moore's is from the US Dept of Health and Human Services, CNN's from the World Health Organization), and either way, it's way more than any other country. The only reason to argue about distinctions like this is because you don't understand how such numbers are compiled and imagine that there is only one, undisputable, answer to the question of how much a country spends on health care in a year.
What's more, Larry King seems unable to understand that being called a liar on national television is something to which one ought to respond angrily. Sanjay Gupta seems unable to understand that his critique will only be used to discredit the larger point of Moore's movie, a point with which he claims to agree. Bizarre.
Try this for more. Here, too.
10:26 - 11 Jul 2007 [/y7/jy] link
Thu, 05 Jul 2007
Selling out or making the world a better place
Why do so many people feel there has to be a choice? Is there a better way to arrange the world so the choice isn't so stark? Read here.
10:55 - 05 Jul 2007 [/y7/jy] link
Mon, 02 Jul 2007
Sorry about that.
Subjects:
- Education funding and the state budget.
- Budget secrecy, and why it's all personal now.
- $2.5 million for more contractors?
- Joint book review: Boomsday by Christopher Buckley and Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust Funds, by Henry Paulson, Elaine Chao, Michael Leavitt, et al.
Wouldn't you like to subscribe?
17:40 - 02 Jul 2007 [/y7/jy] link
Why Aren't Economists as Accurate as Weathermen?
This is particularly useful information here, where economists are always predicting a spectacular flowering of investment or a breathtaking exodus of wealthy people after what is really a small change in our tax laws. Some state and local taxes are significant because they are the only ones. There is no federal property tax, or sales tax. But there is an income tax and it's much bigger than the state income tax. So predicting that vast changes can occur based on changes to a second-order tax is pretty odd, when you really think about it.
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