|
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 site
Available Back Issues:
- Oct 07 (28) - Choosing the most
expensive ways to fight crime, bait and switch tax cuts, review
of Against Prediction, about the perils of using statistics
to fight crime.
- Aug 07 (27) - Sub-prime mortgages
fall heaviest on some neighborhoods, biotech patents in decline, no photo
IDs for voting, review of Al Gore's Against Reason
- Jun 07 (26) - Education
funding, budget secrecy, book review of Boomsday and the Social
Security Trustees' Report
- May 07 (25) - Municipal finance: could citizen
mobility cause high property taxes?
What some Depression-era economists had to say on investment, and why
it's relevant today, again.
- Mar 07 (24) - The state budget
disaster and how we got here. Structural deficit, health care,
borrowing, unfunded liabilities, the works.
- Jan 07 (23) - The impact of real
estate speculation on housing prices, reshaping the electoral college.
Book review of Blocking the Courthouse Door on tort "reform."
- Dec 06 (22) - State deficit: What's
so responsible about this? DOT bonding madness, Quonset, again,
Massachusetts budget comparison.
- Oct 06 (21) - Book review: Out of
Iraq by Geo. McGovern and William Polk, New rules about supervisors
undercut unions, New Hampshire comparisons, and November referenda guide.
- Aug 06 (20) - Measuring teacher
quality, anti-planning referenda and the conspiracy to promote them,
affordable housing in the suburbs, union elections v. card checks.
- Jun 06 (19) - Education report, Do
tax cut really shrink government?, Casinos and constitutions, State historic tax
credit: who uses it.
- May 06 (18) - Distribution
analysis of property taxes by town, critique of RIEDC statistics,
how to reform health care, and how not to.
- Mar 06 (17) - Critique of commonly
used statistics: RI/MA rich people disparity, median income, etc.
Our economic dependence on high health care spending. Review of
Crashing the Gate
- Feb 06 (16) - Unnecessary
accounting changes mean disaster ahead for state and towns, reforming
property tax assessment, random state budget notes.
- Jan 06 (15) - Educational equity,
estimating the amount of real estate speculation in Rhode Island,
interview with Thom Deller, Providence's chief planner.
- Nov 05 (14) - The distribution of
affordable houses and people who need them, a look at RI's affordable
housing laws.
- Sep 05 (13) - A solution to pension
strife, review of J.K. Galbraith biography and why we should care.
- Jul 05 (12) - Kelo v. New London:
Eminent Domain, and what's between the lines in New London.
- Jun 05 (11) - Teacher salaries,
Veterinarian salaries and the
minimum wage. Book review: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
- Apr 05 (10) - Choosing a crisis: Tax fairness and school
funding, suggestions for reform. Book review: business location and
tax incentives.
- Feb 05 (9) - State and teacher
pension costs kept artificially high. Miscellaneous tax suggestions for balancing the state budget.
- Dec 04 (8) - Welfare applications and the iconography of welfare
department logos. The reality of the Social Security trust fund.
- Oct 04 (7) - RIPTA and DOT, who's really in crisis?
- Aug 04 (6) - MTBE and well pollution, Mathematical problems with property taxes
- May 04 (5) - A look at food-safety issues: mad cows, genetic engineering, disappearing farmland.
- Mar 04 (4) - FY05 RI State Budget Critique.
- Feb 04 (3) - A close look at the Blue Cross of RI annual statement.
- Oct 03 (2) - Taxing matters, a historical overview of tax burdens in Rhode Island
- Oct 03 Appendix - Methodology notes and sources for October issue
- Apr 03 (1) - FY04 RI State Budget critique
Issues are issued in paper. They are archived irregularly here.
Subscription information:
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:
2007 print columns
2008 print columns
Deep archive
Links:
Links page
RSS
RIPR 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
|
|
Thu, 30 Aug 2007
Issue 27 out
About time, too. But look what's in it:
- The sub-prime market meltdown: what's in store for us?
- Overvaluing another kind of asset: what some new discoveries mean for
gene patents.
- Why photo ID laws for voting are worse than the disease they
purport to cure.
- Review of Al Gore's new(ish) book: The Assault on
Reason
Didn't you mean to subscribe by now?
23:25 - 30 Aug 2007 [/y7/au]
link
Random References for Issue 27 (coming real soon now)
08:07 - 30 Aug 2007 [/y7/au]
link
Wed, 29 Aug 2007
Wish I'd written it.
See this rant.
Sample quote:
I would happily pay for universal healthcare just so I never had to
read an op-ed like this again. It's not that Williamson doesn't have a
point, it's just that this beggar-thy-neighbor attitude is enough to
make me retch, and I see it all the time. I don't get dental coverage,
so why should grocery workers? My copay went up last year, so why
shouldn't everyone else's? I don't pay for healthcare for my
housecleaners, so why should I pay it for school cafeteria workers?
Our wretched private healthcare system has turned us into a nation of
spiteful and small-minded misanthropes.
20:43 - 29 Aug 2007 [/y7/au]
link
Tue, 28 Aug 2007
Budgeting For Disaster
[Appeared last week in the RIMG newspapers, including the Woonsocket
Call, Pawtucket Times, Kent County Times, and the rest.]
The Senate last week held hearings about some terrible things that
happened in some of the state's foster homes. Some families and
children were put in awful positions by what appear to have been poor
choices by DCYF. But DCYF has been put in an awful position by poor
choices made by our elected leaders. When you budget a disaster,
should we be surprised when that's what we get?
See more ...
11:22 - 28 Aug 2007 [/y7/cols]
link
Beacon in the news
Beacon Mutual is in the news (still). The
DBR report
about their
market conduct is pretty entertaining. I especially enjoyed the part
about using company funds for "golf-related events" and spending
hundreds of thousands of company dollars at pro shops. It seems their
executives were treating themselves like, well, executives.
What's particularly funny about it is that all this was done while
premiums were actually fairly low. See the
Oregon
ranking of workers' comp costs. This is a market that other
insurance companies were abandoning because it wasn't profitable not
so very long ago, and yet Beacon figured out a way not just to earn a
profit, but to earn a scandalous profit from it. Puts insurance
company kvetching in some perspective, doesn't it?
11:22 - 28 Aug 2007 [/y7/au]
link
A Bridge or Two Fare Well
[Appeared a couple of weeks ago in the RIMG papers.]
The awful news from Minnesota has brought to light a way in which
Rhode Island leads the nation: we have a higher proportion of
"structurally deficient" bridges than any other state in the nation.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, 191 of our 753 bridges are
considered deficient enough to need repair. As Kazem Farhoumand, the
deputy chief engineer at DOT has been emphasizing in interview after
interview, "'Structurally deficient' doesn't mean the bridge is unsafe
to travel on." He's right, but it does mean they're on the way to
being unsafe unless they get attention. There are 191 bridges in need
of attention, and it's not clear when any of them will get it.
See more ...
11:19 - 28 Aug 2007 [/y7/cols]
link
Sun, 05 Aug 2007
Bridge Deficiency
Check out the Federal Highway Administration's survey of bridge
conditions. Fodder for the current discussions about the
Minnesota disaster and risk assessment of our own states. For Rhode
Island, notice that the number of "structurally deficient"
bridges has remained pretty much constant since at least 2000. I
guess we have the expert management of our business-executive governor
to thank for that.
01:17 - 05 Aug 2007 [/y7/au]
link
|
Ads and the like:
Cost of the War in Iraq
(JavaScript Error)
|