My home State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations is under the foot of the unions and the Democratic politicians they control.
This tiny beautiful state is politically pathetic, with a voting death grip on big goverment. It’s a death spiral, as witnessed by the loss of population, RI population decline ‘unprecedented’:
U.S. Census Bureau estimates show that Rhode Island’s population has declined by 24,000 people since 2004, an unprecedented loss of state residents.
According to our news partners at The Providence Journal, the population drop easily tops the decrease of nearly 2,600 residents between the censuses of 1970 and 1980, the only decade that Rhode Island’s population has declined from one census to the next. The 1980 census captured a population loss after the U.S. Navy all but left Narragansett Bay in 1974.
WPRI.com Reporter Ted Nesi first reported the population loss last month, and pointed out that Rhode Island was only one of two states in the entire country to lose population. Vermont was the other state.
North Dakota saw the highest increase, amid a booming job market due to growth in its fossil-fuel sector.
Nesi also pointed out that Census Bureau information showed Rhode Island was the slowest growing state in New England, and the second-slowest in the country.
RI population decline ‘unprecedented’
Meanwhile, Texas is booming:
The Texas Legislature will have 12.4 percent more revenue to spend in the next two budget years because of higher-than-expected tax collections, state Comptroller Susan Combs projected on Monday.
“Texas experienced a very strong rebound from a severe recession,” said Combs, who issued her biennial revenue estimate a day before the Texas Legislature convenes.
Let me see if I can do the math. The most Democratic state in the country run by unions and in love with big government is failing and people fleeing, while a solidly Republican free-enterprise loving state which tries to get government out of the way is thriving.
Turn out the lights Rhode Island, the Democratic Party’s over.
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So, when the last Republican leaves, will they change the state’s name to State of Rhode Island and Nuthouse Plantation?
Besides people parting the state for parts far away, like Texas or others, I know of two families that moved just across the border into MA. I’ve heard of people moving into coastal CT like Stonington and Mystic. They aren’t necessarily getting away from all of the liberal and taxation craziness, but they are immediately getting into better school systems for their kids. So, I guess it’s pretty easy to avoid a lot of the ills of the state without necessarily having to change jobs or radically change the family’s lives.
@Casual: as are New Yorkers moving over to Connecticut, from Westchester into Fairfield county.
Professor, in our corner of Rhode Island, on the coast, people are COMING, not leaving. Buying up land, and not just any land, only oceanfront one-of-a-kind land. The $10 million+ kind of land. Oceanview land is for the little people. They are building building building. Hedgies mostly, from MA and CT, young and dripping in money. Granted they aren’t calling RI their primary residence, yet, but give Connecticut and Massachusetts a little more time, and RI might not look so bad!
In Texas, if you like, you can speak both French and Russian and ride the mechanical bull at Gilley’s while living there avoiding huge tax burdens.
Gilley’s is just a sad, fond memory… 🙁
But I hear [read] what you’re sayin’. Our school funding mechanism is a bit fouled up, and the property taxes are high, but that is more than off-set by the cost of living, the wide open spaces and the good folks that live down here. Oh, in Houston, you can buy three nice homes for what a dump costs on the Left Coast or in the northeast.
better yet if you go to a place like Giddings or Snook for the price you pay for a 3 bedroom ranch in a decent neighborhood in Dallas or Houston you can have the same house and enough land that your neighbors can’t see you
Having grown up in the oil patch in the Permian Basin, the smell of the H2S around Giddings makes me positively homesick! 🙂
Pedestrian Voting like this gives the liberal media, and blue state tax collectors, acid indigestion.
We ran the Check Point Charlie blockade at the Massachusetts border and escaped into ‘Free America’ to settle in Arizona.
So far, we have denied Massachusetts of over $20,000 dollars in fees, levies & tax collection revenues *sadface* and are benefiting Gov Jan Brewers’ state revenues *happyface*
We rejoice in ‘Free America’ and smirk at ‘Iron Curtain America.’
Reminds me of the Wall Street Journal editorial today on the declining birth rates in Europe, with Portugal, Spain and Italy coming in even lower than the northern social democracies. Maybe RI conservatives should heed one of my daughters, who urges every conservative family to have at least one more child than they originally planned.
As each day passes, I find myself more and more in a “Lone Star State of Mind”.
I stopped my contribution(s) to the RI community back in 1990 and can state with certainty, it’s hellava good feeling!