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
Now at bookstores near you, or buy it with the button above ($14, or $18 with shipping and sales tax). Contact information below if you'd like to schedule a book-related event, like a possibly entertaining talk on the book's subjects, featuring the famous mystery graph. Join the RIPR Mailing List! For a weekly column and (a few) other items of interest, click here or send an email to ripr-list-subscribe@whatcheer.net. RIPR is a (paper) newsletter and a weekly column appearing in ten of Rhode Island's finer newspapers. The goal is to look at local, state and federal policy issues that affect life here in the Ocean State, concentrating on action, not intentions or talk. 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:
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:
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
|
Tue, 28 Apr 2009
Fun for the whole family! Click on the card for details!
10:35 - 28 Apr 2009 [/y9/ap] link
Sat, 25 Apr 2009
Good news from the front, sort of
The annual fact book is out from Rhode Island Kids Count. This is sort of an almanac of child welfare, and covers everything from the number of kids in day care to the number of homeless children to the number who drop out from high school. (You can get the book yourself at rikidscount.org.) This week I'd like to focus on some of the good news, sort of.
Public school test scores are up. Did you know that? Fourth and eighth-grade reading and math scores are up in the last few years, both by the NECAP (RI, NH, VT) and the NAEP (national) tests. So celebrate!
In a way this is not terribly surprising. Education policy in our state (and nation) has become so focused on test test test TEST! that it would be shocking if there were not some positive result. I don't think many people without children in the schools are really aware of how many tests there are, and how much time is wasted on them. Gathering good data is important, and it's how public enterprises should be evaluated, but entire weeks of the school year are lost to testing, which is plainly ridiculous. Honestly, it's little more than a symptom of the mass hysteria about public education we suffer, and I and my children are more than ready for that ol' pendulum to swing back the other way a little bit.
07:40 - 25 Apr 2009 [/y9/cols] link
Thu, 23 Apr 2009
Issue 36 of the Rhode Island Policy Reporter is out:
- A review of "cap and trade," the plan to control global carbon dioxide emissions. Did you know we have lots of experience with plans like this? Some lessons from that experience.
- A closer look at the controversy over EFCA and secret ballot union elections. "Card-check" is not the provision large employers find most alarming, just the issue that polls better.
- Book review of the final report of the Governor's blue-ribbon commission on tax reform. Summary: hackneyed plot, but interesting conflict.
Didn't you mean to subscribe already? Subscription details here.
08:10 - 23 Apr 2009 [/y9/ap] link
Wed, 22 Apr 2009
We get mail:
Dear RI Policy ReporterI was at the "Tea Party" you wrote about on April 15th. I had a Giant poster of a Tea cup, labeled "Iraq - One big cup of tea. Stop big spending! $660 billion of our tax money spent." Funny thing is I was not made very welcome and had -"support the troops" and other comments spoken or occasionally shouted at me - the most disturbing one was an older man, well past the age of military service that shouted that I "should be ashamed of myself?" I am confused, I though I was protesting big wasteful spending of tax money handed out to the politically favored. Were did I go wrong? Help me RI Policy Reporter.
Confused in Providence
Some people are just trouble makers.
08:32 - 22 Apr 2009 [/y9/ap] link
Sun, 19 Apr 2009
Boston Tea Party a protest against corporate tax cuts
A funny piece points out that the East India Company was granted a huge tax break that threatened the livelihood of anyone in America who sold tea and that this was the real background to the tea party. Puts some of last week's tea-related festivities in perspective.
00:35 - 19 Apr 2009 [/y9/ap] link
Here's a record of successful Prop 2½ override votes. It's an interesting list. Apparently summer communities do this pretty frequently, which is not terribly surprising. But some of the others aren't obvious candidates.
00:26 - 19 Apr 2009 [/y9/ap] link
Sat, 18 Apr 2009
Last week was April 15, tax day. Celebrants gathered at the statehouse to applaud all the wonderful things your state and local governments do for you: pave your roads; educate your children; arrest, try and imprison criminals; put out fires; and keep poor people from dying in the streets. Because they are activists, they have taken the time to learn about some of the things your government does for you that don't always get a lot of attention: police insurance companies; deliver (and inspect) drinking water; maintain sewers; monitor beaches for water pollution; register vehicle and land titles; create and enforce land-use plans; provide care for long-term disabled people; run bus and train service; and much more.
Oh, sorry. Well a boy can dream, can't he? Actually, as anyone reading this well knows, the activists were at the statehouse yesterday not to applaud any of that, but to complain they wish it was cheaper. They brought tea bags with them, a cute touch meant to remind us of Sam Adams. The mystery, of course, is that they think there exist people who disagree. For example, I don't.
17:44 - 18 Apr 2009 [/y9/cols] link
Sat, 11 Apr 2009
While debating the state budget last week, Senate Majority Leader Daniel Connors (D-Cumberland,Lincoln) said the budget "doesn't represent the hard choices we're going to have to make." He was apparently referring to the fact that the budget didn't cut enough. You hear this kind of talk about "hard choices" all the time. As if there's anything hard about sticking it to poor people and cities.
What's hard about it? Suburban legislators like Connors routinely get elected and re-elected by mouthing platitudes about hard choices, tsking piously about the problems of our cities, and by promising to get tough on unions. Legislators who vote for these things still get invited to good parties. They can still raise money for their re-elections and no one throws eggs at them when they speak in public. Life is good.
What's more, they routinely follow through on these promises, this year stripping cities and towns not only of the state aid promised them last June, but also most of the stimulus money promised by Congress and President Obama. In the last few years, the pensions and health benefits for state employees have been cut, teacher unions all across the state have given back health benefits, health care for poor people has been trimmed and cut and pruned. Did you know that the monthly cash benefit for welfare recipients is the same today as it was in 1989?
What provokes people to claim choices are hard is that occasionally they realize these policies may be popular, but are also shortsighted and, well, stupid.
15:07 - 11 Apr 2009 [/y9/cols] link
The NCSL mistake rears its ugly head
In 2007, the National Conference of State Legislators made a terrible mistake about RI's budget, calling a tax that had been on the books for a dozen years a "$70 million tax increase." They were wrong, but the error lives on, most recently in the RI section of this document, brought to my attention by the organizers of the tea-bag rebellion business.
You can read the original column, or the followup regarding NCSL's use of copyright laws to prevent me from showing their errors to the reading public, such as it is.
13:32 - 11 Apr 2009 [/y9/ap] link
Sat, 04 Apr 2009
Keep Coastway Credit Union small: Vote NO!
Coastway Credit Union, based in Cranston, but with several branches around the state, is one of Rhode Island's unsung successes. A modest-sized community credit union with about $300 million in assets, it provides a good deal in bank services to its members. I haven't managed to see detailed financial reports, but from the accounts I have seen, they are a solid, well-run institution. This month they are asking their members' permission to convert from a credit union into a mutual bank. They are a credit to us all, and that's why I hope their members vote NO.
Among the first things I had to learn about in my career as a public policy nerd was credit unions. Only those who weren't here won't remember how some high-flying local banks and credit unions managed to bankrupt the meager resources of the local bank "insurance" scheme in 1990. Around a third of the state had money frozen in the collapse, and the economic devastation lasted years. Over the next decade, the state paid around a billion dollars -- an entire extra year's worth of taxes -- to make up for the idiocy of a relatively small number of bankers with ambition.
What else have the marvels of our financial sector done for us? We deregulated banks in the 1970's, savings and loans in the 1980's, insurance companies and commercial banks in the 1990's and investment banks in 2000. What did it get us? Huge bank fees and usurious credit card rates, the savings and loan crisis of the 1980's, the Rhode Island credit union fiasco of 1991, the current global credit meltdown, and more.
Ads and the like:
(A funny book you should own)
