--The floggings will continue until moral improves! I hope you see the insanity in that statement. I also hope the Rhode Island General Assembly sees it as they seem to sink deeper into the abyss of the self-delusion that they can maintain spending on their entitlement programs and for the huge increases in the budget to run their legislative branch of government but not increase taxes on those who could vote them out of office. Of course, we all know that they have been raising taxes in a cowardly way each year by directly causing municipal governments to increase taxes locally. They’ve increased taxes on businesses as much as they possibly could, including passing on to each employer an additional tax to pay for all the extensions of unemployment benefits. You talk about insanity. Taxing the employers who are struggling to keep as many people employed as they can in order to support those who are unemployed makes it more unlikely employers will be able to hire more people in the future. And it appears now the assembly will get with the trend to start pitting us against each other in “class warfare” by increasing taxes specifically on rich people. People who are not rich think this is just the thing to do. But it doesn’t make sense to me to single out anyone. Except those who didn’t do their jobs right to begin with, and failed to protect Rhode Islanders from the worst of this mess, that is.

Let’s look at this for a moment. If you raise taxes on poor people, they cannot afford to move away, especially if you keep funding entitlement programs. But it would be too honest of you to tell them you’re going to raise taxes on them anyway because they might get mad at you.

However, if you raise taxes on richer people, they can afford to go where the taxes are lower and they will move. But the assembly will produce a budget balanced, they will tell us, with increased taxes from rich people. The Reps and Senators will then crow about how they screwed the rich and protected the downtrodden poor. Another election year lie. History teaches us that what actually happens next is that the rich people will move away and the money won’t come into the state treasury so the poor people will get to pay those tax dollars anyway. Sounds diabolically sinister, if you look at it that way. Or, in the case of the Rep or Senator who drank the leadership’s Kool-Aid and believed they were doing something smart, it appears either carelessly manipulative or insidiously idiotic. Either way, they escape addressing the real cause for the troubles, spending.

I just wish somebody at the statehouse would have the honesty to look us all in the face, tell us “we’re all screwed and this is gonna hurt”, and then pull the proverbial band-aid off quickly and get it over with. Cut spending. Hurt your friends. Cut programs. Get your spending in line with revenue or it will never, ever end. Do it now. This juvenile “putting it off until next year” is only prolonging the pain and ultimately hurting more people.

--Since our last meeting, new information has come to me rendering one comment I made last week in these pages apparently incorrect. A supporter of U.S. Congressman David Cicilline, former R.I. State Representative Chris Fiero, read my update on the so-called Stop Online Piracy Act where I stated that Congressman Langevin had already come out against the measure, but that Congressman Cicilline and Senators Reed and Whitehouse were waiting to hear from the Democratic leadership to know how they felt about it. Chris pointed out that Cicilline had also come out against the bill before I wrote those admittedly sarcastic words. I have no reason to think that Chris would say this if it weren’t true, so I replied that I regretted not seeing the congressman’s press release on the subject and posted an immediate correction on the web edition of my weekly column on my website. I’m still waiting for the senators, by the way.

I feel a bit uncomfortable being so sarcastic about it, but the aforementioned public officials have, in my opinion, disgraced themselves repeatedly by their partisan rhetoric while representing a state which has historically been very independent- minded. I think people earn their reputations over time. And I certainly do not approve of the reputations our members of congress earn each time they let the Democratic party leadership send out publicity pieces under their names which contain comments which are so partisan and one-sided as to disgrace the intellect of these otherwise smart individuals. Their public comments after the president’s State of the Union speech last week were so predictable that I had to stop reading Jim Baron’s report before finishing it to keep my temper in check.

Let’s face it folks, a person in the 21st Century does not run for congress and win without having a lot ‘on the ball’. I mean to say, these are intelligent individuals, every one of them. So why do they do things which do not honor their intellect? I know, that is a rhetorical question, but I wish it weren’t. Is it possible we are seeing the all-too-common phenomena, noted for centuries, that humans as individuals are wonderful beings of incalculable worth, but when you put them in a group they act like followers and do things to their own detriment? Well, if that is what is at play here, our Rhode Island congressional delegation had better slap on some Aqua Velva and wake up to the fact that they are not followers, they are leaders. And I think they should act as such. Do not turn off your brains, gentlemen, you’re going to need them. --That’s what I think. What do you think? Comments to dave@onworldwide.com or mail to Dave Richards, WOON Radio, 985 Park Avenue, Woonsocket, RI 02895- 6332. Thanks for reading.

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