Entries by RI Center for Freedom

Cranston Pensions to be focus of Task Force organized by the Center for Freedom

Our Center has assembled another team of nationally renowned think tanks that will focus on the City of Cranston, Rhode Island by providing useful analysis and research. This follows our successful task force on the statewide pension crisis last fall. NEW – Cranston Police & Fire pension data now online! Click the title above to read more …

Scholarship Program Recommended for Special-Needs RI Students

The freedom to choose is a staple of almost every component of life in America except perhaps the most important area – education. With all the talk about providing for our state’s neediest residents, we challenge our public officials to actually do something about it. Senators Ciccone and Walaska are called upon to take action to back up their own “School Choice Week” Resolution …

Governor’s Sales Tax Hike will Hike Unemployment

There is a common and fundamental miscalculation when it comes to projecting the effects of tax policy on state revenues. Too often, the more short-sighted and simplistic static calculation is utilized, when in reality is the more complex dynamic effect should be evaluated. The downstream effects of tax policy on various aspects of the economy are rarely discussed or quantified, either at the state or municipal level.

Little State, Big Spending

In yet more news to file under thank-god-for-pension-reform-but, the Providence Business News reports that while Rhode Island public sector spending is surprisingly lower than the U.S. average, medicare costs are significantly above national averages. Medicaid-related vendor payments accounted for more than 20 percent of state and local government spending in Rhode Island from 1999 to 2009, […]

Task Force ProJo OpEd: Alarming Outlook for Municipalities, even w/ Pension Reform

As part of our Center’s special pension Task Force, Eileen Norcross from the Mercatus Center, followed up on her recent report by publising an OpEd that appeared in the Nov. 17 Providence Journal, and co-authored by Benjamin VanMetre. *** Even with reform, R.I. outlook alarming by EILEEN NORCROSS and BENJAMIN VanMETRE FALLS CHURCH, Va. – The heated […]

Dead State Walking

So Reuters reports that Jefferson County Alabama has filed for backruptcy becase of an usupportable $5,000,000,000 debt.  With 660,000 people in the county that’s about $7500 in debt per person. Rhode Island has somewhere in the vicintiy of $30,000,000,000 in debt when you include the (true) penson liability ($18B) , the infrastructure debt ($9B), the ‘OPEB’ […]

Occupy Phil Donohue

If you are under the illusion that the ‘Occupy’ folks are onto something new… check out this terrific video blast from the past from the Phil Donohue show … Milton Friedman on the socialist utopia: “Where in the world are you going to find these angels who are going to organize society for us?”  … Burnside […]