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Available Back Issues:
- Aug 09 (38) - How your government's
economic policies have worked against you. What a fake nineteenth
century nun can teach us about the tea party protests.
- Jun 09 (37) - Statistics of
optimism, the real cost of your government. Judith Reilly on
renewable tax credits. Review of Akerlof and Shiller on behavioral
economics.
- Apr 09 (36) - Cap and trade, the
truth behind the card check controversy, review of Governor's tax
policy workgroup final report.
- Feb 09 (35) - The many varieties of
market failures, and what classic economics has to say about them,
review of Nixonland by Rick Perlstein.
- Dec 08 (34) - Can "Housing First"
end homelessness? The perils of TIF. Review of You Can't Be
President by John MacArthur.
- Oct 08 (33) - Wage stagnation,
financial innovation and deregulation: creating the financial
crisis, the political rhetoric of the Medicaid waiver.
- Jul 08 (32) - Where has the money
gone? Could suburban sprawl be part of our fiscal problem? Review
of Bad Money by Kevin Phillips, news trivia or trivial
news.
- Apr 08 (31) - Understanding
homelessness in RI, by Eric Hirsch, market segmentation and the
housing market, the economics of irrationality.
- Feb 08 (30) - IRS migration data,
and what it says about RI, a close look at "entitlements", historic
credit taxonomy, an investment banking sub-primer.
- Dec 07 (29) - A look at the state's
underinsured, economic geography with IRS data.
- 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
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Responsibility:
 Tom Sgouros
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Sat, 20 Sep 2008
A Campaign Season Contest!
A couple of weeks ago, Bill Connelly, a
candidate for state senate district 36 in North Kingstown and
Narragansett, handed me a flyer. I put it in my pocket, and checked
it out when I got home. It had a nice picture and capsule bio. For
policy planks in his platform, it had only four bullet points. I was
particularly interested in two: One said, "Increase state aid to
education" and right after it was, "Hold the state to spending and
taxing limits."
Well, golly, when you put it like that, it sounds pretty good. Easy,
too. I mean why didn't anyone think of that before? But why stop
there, let's just eliminate all taxes and make the schools better,
too. Or maybe offer us all free commuting helicopters? Better yet,
free ice cream and cookies at every meal!
Now, in fairness, Bill is a perfectly nice gentleman, and his
opponent, incumbent Sen. James Sheehan, though an energetic and
effective legislator, is not widely regarded as a fiscal prodigy. But
really, candidates shouldn't even think they can run with this kind of
empty and self-contradictory platform.
Though my exalted peers at publications further up the journalistic
food chain balk at taking it on, it is role of the press to call
politicians on stuff like this, and here I am, published in newspapers
and online. So this is my challenge to you. In mid-October, I'm
going to award prizes for the most absurd campaign literature I run
across (2008, Rhode Island general election), and I'm inviting your
nominations.
Don't submit any just for bad photos or slogans, please. I'm
interested in flyers or letters that promise the unattainable or the
contradictory. So when some candidate tries to hand you their flyer,
take it, and look it over. If you get a candidate letter in the mail,
read it, and if you learn about a candidate's web site, go there and
check it out. If you think you've found something that can beat my
example here, send it in for judging by a panel of impartial judges
I'll appoint. (You can send nominations for judgeships, too. After
all, vying for judgeships is traditional in politics.) Send your
nominations to me electronically, or c/o
The Times Newsroom, 23 Exchange Street, Pawtucket, RI 02860. Enter by
October 15 or so. May the
best candidate win!
02:08 - 20 Sep 2008 [/y8/cols]
link
Do you want change or just to shout about it?
As perhaps you know by now, the state ended the last fiscal year
around $33 million in the red, and the accusations and
counter-accusations are flying. There are some important
misconceptions flying around, though, and it's worth clearing some of
them up. So last week I spent some time reading the preliminary
financial report for the fiscal year that ended June 30.
For one thing, several reports have pointed out that the Department of
Human Services is where the bulk of the overspending seems to have
occurred. You might think, "Aha! It's because we still spend too
much on social services." But in fact, the overspending appears to be
that the DHS administration had promised $19 million in general
revenue operational savings that they were unable to achieve. That
is, someone high on the chain of command appears to have decided they
could peel off that much spending while not affecting service, and it
didn't happen. In reality, looking only at state tax dollars, every
single division of DHS was under their original budget, except for
Medicaid, which was over by $641,000, or less than 0.1%.
See more ...
02:05 - 20 Sep 2008 [/y8/cols]
link
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