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Rhode Island Tag

Last week I chronicled the saga of Central Falls, Rhode Island, which has filed for receivership, the state equivalent of bankruptcy, under the weight of union contracts and debt, Has First Public Sector Union Domino Fallen?Now it turns out that Central Falls has been using...

A bill introduced by Democratic Deputy Majority Leader Peter Palumbo in the Rhode Island House of Representatives, similar to the Arizona immigration law, will not be permitted to go to a committee hearing, much less a vote:House Speaker Gordon D. Fox decided Monday that Rep....

There is a legal and political drama unfolding in Central Falls, Rhode Island, which has national implications for municipalities suffocating under union contracts and pension obligations, but which has received little attention outside Rhode Island.As I posted two days ago, the City of Central Falls...

Central Falls, a Rhode Island city which gained fame when it fired its entire High School teaching staff after unions refused concessions (the unions later agreed), now has filed for receivership, the state equivalent of bankruptcy: A Rhode Island city facing a severe financial crisis...

A Democratic state legislator in Rhode Island has filed a bill similar to the immigration law recently enacted in Arizona. As reported by The Providence Journal:State Rep. Peter Palumbo, D-District 16, Cranston, has filed a bill that largely copies a controversial Arizona law considered the...

The fiscal equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome:A term used to describe a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein government officials express adulation and have positive feelings toward unsustainable union contracts that appear irrational in light of the danger or risk posed by such contracts to the government.Our politicians...

Just ask Jack McConnell, who appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee today.McConnell has been nominated by Rhode Island Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (for whom McConnell used to work) and Jack Reed for an open seat on the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island.McConnell made a fortune...

Steve Malanga wrote an excellent article for City Journal about how public sector unions have controlled, and ruined, California, The Beholden State:How public employees became members of the elite class in a declining California offers a cautionary tale to the rest of the country, where...

Underfunded state retirement systems are one of the greatest problems facing states. There does not seem to be a way out, as municipal and teachers' unions are loathe to negotiate substantial reforms and state governments simply do not have the money to meet unsustainable promises.An...

Someone, somewhere is stoking the notion of Sheldon Whitehouse for the Supreme Court spot being vacated by John Paul Stevens. From the Providence Journal:Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island Democrat, has appeared on some early lists of prospects whom President Obama may consider - or...

In early March I wrote how the Southern Poverty Law Center had exaggerated regarding the alleged presence of the Ku Klux Klan in Rhode Island as part of SPLC's report on a "surge" of hate groups.Specifically, I pointed out that SPLC claimed the Ku Klux...

Rhode Island is the poster child for how municipal employee and teachers unions have devastated state and local budgets through unsustainable contracts obtained through political contributions.Rhode Island is drowning in pension promises it cannot meet and benefits it cannot pay. Yet the municipal employee unions...

Wait for it. The next bailout will be for hospitals devastated by cut-backs as a result of Obamacare. In Rhode Island, the prognosis already is not good for the survival of hospitals already struggling financially, which may be pushed over the brink. As...

Barack Obama backed the decision of the Central Falls School District in Rhode Island to fire all teachers at its underperforming high school, much to the anger of teachers' unions.Now a teacher at the school has hung Obama in effigy:Responding to a rumor that one...

William Lynch, Chairman of the Democratic Party of Rhode Island for the past decade, has thrown his hat into the ring to run to replace Patrick Kennedy.Please, please let Lynch get the Democratic nomination. Lynch is so deeply part of the problem, has opposed almost...

The bowing out of Patrick Kennedy is a plus, on many different levels. But this positive should not be construed as a guarantee that the seat will leave the Democratic Party.Rhode Island is one of the bluest states. The Democrats control the legislature and most...

As readers of this blog already know, I am cursed with two of the looniest Congressmen in existence, Patrick Kennedy in my home state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and Maurice Hinchey in Ithaca, NY, where I live during the academic year.In the wake...

Sheldon Whitehouse, my Democratic Senator from Rhode Island, has joined the Alan Grayson wing of the Democratic party with a speech so over the top that it is an infuriating embarrassment. I wasn't going to post on this. But then I listened to the speech, in...