What's this? A Book!
Or buy here: Light Publications, Powell's, or Bn, Amazon A look at the lousy situation Rhode Island is in, how we got here, and how we might be able to get out. Featuring
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Sun, 30 Mar 2008
What do you think about the Electoral College?
What was the most outrageous thing about the election of 2000? You might think it was the conduct of Florida's election, or the way the Supreme Court ruled that counting votes wasn't as important as preserving George Bush's presumption of victory. I think it was the fact that the loser got half a million more votes than the winner. Is this how we want to run a democracy?
As most of us realized in 2000, we don't have a national election for president. We have 50 elections to choose "electors" who go off and meet as the Electoral College and choose the president. The College is one of those undemocratic vestiges of a time when the founding fathers were willing to endorse democracy in principle, but not so much in practice. This year, there's a bill in 44 state legislatures, including ours, that could spell the end of the Electoral College. It has an uphill battle here, though, and needs your support to get through the Assembly.
23:00 - 30 Mar 2008 [/y8/cols] link
Sat, 22 Mar 2008
Evading the rules and learning from experience
Last week, the news was about the RI Resource Recovery Corporation, and it was enough to give anyone pause. A state audit uncovered land deals that seem pointless to the agency's charge, charitable contributions that seem to have been made at the pleasure of various RRC board members, and legal work awarded to friends and relatives.
There was some related news, too, though maybe it didn't seem that way to you. The House is considering a move by Governor Carcieri to merge the state's three environmental agencies, CRMC, DEM and the Water Resources Board. CRMC fired a salvo in that battle by pointing out that DEM workers had violated some wetlands rules by clearing land at Fishermen's park. (This was apparently not news at DEM and seemed mostly an attempt by CRMC to embarrass people into dropping the idea of the merger.)
What's related about these? Just this: both agencies were created to get around what were perceived as overly restrictive state rules, and both have lived up to their founders' intentions by becoming havens for, well, let's call it something less than the professionalism I expect from my government.
17:41 - 22 Mar 2008 [/y8/cols] link
Sun, 16 Mar 2008
It sometimes seems I spend too much of my time writing about taxes on the rich and the poor. It's uncomfortable territory on which to stake one's tent. People accuse you of socialism, and make sneering remarks about not getting the memo about the fall of the Soviet Union. This gets dull, to be honest, but the truth is I occupy this uncomfortable (and fairly lonely) little outpost not for ideology, but because the arithmetic drove me there. A transfer of taxes from rich people and corporations to the poor and middle is what we've experienced at both the state and national level over the past 25 years. There's simply no way to get around it, because that's what happened.
17:21 - 16 Mar 2008 [/y8/cols] link
Sat, 08 Mar 2008
One of the persistent myths about the conduct of our state government is that the Governor and Assembly are two poles of a struggle. The idea is somehow that the Governor is engaged in a titanic battle for control over our government, pushing to cut expenses and hold the line on taxes, and Democrats in the Assembly are thwarting him at every turn.
This is, however, absurd in almost every particular, a fairy tale that bears almost no relation to what really goes on under that big white dome.
00:23 - 08 Mar 2008 [/y8/cols] link
Tue, 04 Mar 2008
Via here, I read that US corporations are apparently flush with cash. From the New York Times:
The increase over the last decade in the amount of cash, as a percent of total assets, for the companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index has been steep....According to S.& P., the total cash held by companies in its industrial index exceeded $600 billion in February, up from about $203 billion in 1998.
This is not at all surprising. As was noted last year in RIPR 25, declining investment opportunities may have already become the most significant untold economic story of the 21st century. During the Depression, economists clearly saw that this was a problem to be addressed, and academic disputes raged about why opportunities were in decline. (Joseph Schumpeter and Alvin Hansen representing two of the important antagonists.) But after WWII, there was plenty to invest in, and the topic faded from importance.
But just because a topic isn't trendy doesn't mean that it isn't relevant, and that appears to be what's happening here. Ask yourself: if $40,000 dropped in your lap tomorrow, what productive investment would you make with it? Can't think of anything? You're not alone, and that's a problem.
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