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:
AboutThe Rhode Island Policy Reporter is an independent news source that specializes in the technical issues of public policy that matter so much to all our lives, but that also tend not to be reported very well or even at all. The publication is owned and operated by Tom Sgouros, who has written all the text you'll find on this site, except for the articles with actual bylines. Responsibility: Tom Sgouros
|
Fri, 25 Jul 2008
Lobbying success costs industry money
A good AP article points out that had the food industry not successfully lobbied the Bush administration to relieve them of "burdensome" paperwork requirements, they might not have lost $250 million over the tomatoes/jalapenos/salmonella crisis.
09:27 - 25 Jul 2008 [/y8/jy]
Wed, 23 Jul 2008
A subscriber wrote in to point out that I'd forgotten an important point in my article inspired by this deeply uninformed blog post (caution: fancy graphics, crashes my browser sometimes).
My only quibble is about responding to the assumption there was little population growth in RI. 1950 population of RI was about 792,000 but in 2000 it was about 1,067,000 an increase of 275,000 people, almost 35%, not an inconsiderable number (but pop. growth often ignored by both right and left).
Well, add that to the other points in the article. (It's in issue 32, just out.)
16:08 - 23 Jul 2008 [/y8/jy]
Mon, 21 Jul 2008
For those interested in further reading about the studies I mentioned in this week's column (coming Wednesday and Thursday), read here:
- Christopher and Sarah Lubienski's research comparing public and private schools using the NAEP math tests can be found here.
- Courtney Bell's paper on school choice. Describes how different parents choose rationally among the choices they perceive, but points out that the choices they perceive aren't necessarily the choices education reformers think they have.
- The data about school choice in Chicago were presented in the book Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. The relevant chapters aren't available on line, though google is your friend here. But the book is a best-seller, so it won't be hard to come by a copy.
22:49 - 21 Jul 2008 [/y8/jy]
Mon, 14 Jul 2008
After a long wait, for which I apologize profusely.
- Where has the money gone? If it's not welfare or medicaid, then why is government so much more expensive than it was 50 years ago? You probably won't like the answer.
- Book review: Bad Money by Kevin Phillips
- Press follies: Can we have good politics with a bad press?
Didn't you mean to subscribe?
10:11 - 14 Jul 2008 [/y8/jy]
So we're going to bail out Fannie and Freddie, the mortgage giants. But why? Maybe we need them, but do we need them to be private, for-profit entitities? Why, exactly? From here:
The government uses conditions all the time when it offers help to low and moderate income people. Unemployment insurance, TANF, food stamps, and even student loans come with all sorts of conditions.
It is only when it comes to giving money to extremely rich people that we find it impossible to impose conditions. Again, we could have told Fannie and Freddie that no executives will get more than $2 million a year in total compensation. We could have told their shareholders that they are out of luck, because that is what is supposed to happen when you invest in a bankrupt company.
Instead, we told the people who work as truck drivers, school teachers, and fire fighters that they will have to pay more in taxes to help some of the richest people in the country escape the consequences of their own stupidity. While kicking the poor is always fun for politicians, neither the Bush administration nor Congress are prepared to tell the very rich that they are on their own.
In 1991, RI suffered a banking disaster of our own. We had an opportunity then to turn that sow's ear into a silk purse, but passed on it because it would have meant government getting into the banking business, and that's anathema to people who are hide-bound by ideology. So because of ideology, we overlooked a practical solution that would have gotten everyone their money back without spending a dime of taxpayer money. Ideology is expensive.
10:08 - 14 Jul 2008 [/y8/jy]
Sat, 12 Jul 2008
11:22 - 12 Jul 2008 [/y8/jy]
Fri, 11 Jul 2008
Annual report. See p.2 (profits up 27.9%).
11:16 - 11 Jul 2008 [/y8/jy]
Ads and the like:
(A funny book you should own)
