I am encouraged and amused by the stunned silence of the "usual suspects".
On another note, some things that I haven't seen in this proposal but hopefully will be in the FY 10 budget-due in 2 weeks:
1. Get the state OUT of the babysitting business. Period.
2. Repeal Caroulo Act.
3. A strict 2 year cap on all welfare programs-with NO bogus "hardship waivers".
4. E-verify!
5. Get the state out of the school meals business entirely. Kids should eat breakfast at home and bring bag lunches under the non-government M.O.M.M.Y program which most of us took part in.
6. Legalize drugs and free all drug prisoners. Reduce ACI staffing levels to national medians. Both these steps will save about $130 million a year.
7. Minimum retirement age of 55 for polic/fire. All disability pensions (99% of which are bogus) are made TAXABLE.
8. Teacher's and state worker's minimum retirement age of 62 not 59. State Police only execption-55.

Great speech by the Governor. He needs to make more direct appeals to the public like that.

Mike,

With regard to your plan, I like the idea of legalizing drugs, but only with the establishment of huge import duties and tariffs, to prevent the US and other drug poor Northern Hemisphere nations from becoming economically subservient to drug rich Southern Hemisphere nations.

The only way to prevent us from becoming economic slaves to drug rich Southern Hemisphere nations, is to make them pay richly into our tax coffers to bring their drugs into our country and state.

Taxing the end products at the counter would only increase the economic burdens on our own citizens, and allow the drug importing Southern nations to get rich at our expense.

We must make the drug rich Southern nations pay richly for the privelege of importing drugs into our country.

We also have to close the borders to any more of their human interlopers, so we can set about rebuilding the economic strength of our state, country and people.

With regard to welfare, I think benefits should be given only to the descendants of citizens, and denied to recent arrivals from other states and countries.

That's only fair, since recent arrivals did not pay into the system, and therefore have no business drawing out of it.

They really don't have any business being here at all, unless they are here to bring business into our state, or perform some employment function a native born citizen can't perform.

Same for all the other gov't freebies you mentioned... yes for the descendants of citizens, whose ancestors paid into and built the system, but no to any recent arrivals.

I mean, why should we create more employment and economic hardship for our own citizens, workers and taxpayers, while tens or hundreds of thousands of new arrivals from other countries are loafing, reproducing and getting a free ride on our own citizens, taxpayers and workers backs?

Erik "The Potentially Schizoid Man" D:

In an incredible coincidence, someone else with your handle and email had this to say about improving things in Rhode Island...

Refraining from selectively persecuting immigrants and instead continuing to be a welcoming place for foreigners would go a long way towards rehabilitating RI's image as a provincial, reactionary, scapegoating nest of xenophobes and nativists.

Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesis

But to answer your question, after reading one poster here state that "Rhode Island lost 150,000 productive taxpayers, and replaced them with 150,000 black and brown leeches from elsewhere", I started to see the states financial crisis in a different light.

When I reflect also that Central Falls was the "cocaine capitol of the (Northeast or USA) in the 1980's, and realize that this is obviously due to the unwise importation of a sizable number of Columbian immigrants by self appointed do-gooders for some inexplicable reason in the 1970's, and then look at the devastating cocaine and crack epidemics that have destroyed Americas cities, I started to see immigration in a different light.

Then while driving through Central Falls recently, I noticed that most of the latinos were well dressed, driving newer model cars, carrying bags full of purchases, and going into fast food restaurants to buy meals... I began to wonder where the money for all this comes from.

Yet strangely, most of the black youth I see, most of whom are probably descendants of our nations slaves, look dishsheveled and directionless, and none of them seem to have bags full of purchases in their hands.

So, to me it seems unfair and unwise for us to import millions of brown skinned, largely unassimilable and somewhat hostile latinos, give them free food, housing, medical, education and affirmative action jobs at our expense, while at the same time many descendants of slaves, who affirmative action was created for, are going without.

Or to put it another way, when I was commenting to a Californian about the dysfunctional habits of many blacks out there, he responded that "at least they're Americans" and had a right to be here, and he pointed out that, because of the massive wave of latino immigration swamping and bankrupting the nation, "we've got to unite against these brown clowns".

While reflecting on the destruction wrought on our nation by these tens of millions of recent latino arrivals, from the importation of deadly and addictive cocaine, to the brown on black and brown on white gang wars in California neighborhoods and prisons, to the bankrupting of the entire CalCare state medical plan due to unpaid bills of illegals, and a hundred other examples, I've come to agree with him that we have to repel this unending wave of latino immigrants, before we are all swamped, and go down with the ship.

Because to be fair, societies handouts, such as food stamps, housing, medical, education, and affirmative action programs in hiring, college admissions and government contracts, belong first to those Americans in need of help, or who were historically shortchanged by our government.... native americans, black descendants of slaves, veterans, the disabled and the elderly.

Any immigrant coming into this country and taking freebies from those programs is essentially stealing from those rightful recipients, and I see now that we are wrong to allow it to happen.

Even that analysis may be an oversimplification of the problem, because I have heard faint rumblings of claims that latino immigrants from Central and South America are fleeing civil wars and destructive industrial policies, which Americas elite are allegedly responbible for concocting.

However, I don't know enough about those issues and claims to comment definitively, so that latest opinion is the best I can offer.

How exactly we got into this fiscal mess, and what it would take to perfectly and equitably naviagate our way out of it, is a massive project that would take a huge amount of analysis, and I don't know anyone who is willing or able to complete it.

What I do know, is that if our State and Federal Government officials value what's left of Rhode Island and the United States of America as we know (or knew) it, they had better close those borders now, and not let in even one more immigrant, legal or illegal, or the entire fiscal house of cards that makes up our monetary and economic system is going to collapse in a devastating heap, never to rise again.

It happened to the Roman Empire, and was followed by a terrible 1000 year long "Dark Ages", in which ignorance, disease, superstition, poverty and military invasion were epidemic in Europe, and it can, and almost certainly will, happen here, unless we take steps to avert it.

I dunno Erik, you seem to be so far ahead of the rest of us when it comes ignorance and superstition, I doubt the rest of society will ever be able to catch up.

You keep repeating variations on a theme of "I don't understand this"; "no one can understand this". Just remember, when you poison your mind with enough folk-Marxism and nutty racism like you apparently have (whether you believe it, or you're just trolling), all things become incomprehensible.

Well, at least you prefaced your remarks with the qualifier "I dunno".

And the incomprehension continues...

lol

But now that you mention the dreaded "r-word"...

Milton Friedman stated that open borders and a welfare state could not
co-exist.

Open Borders + Welfare State = Bankrupt

What happens when you add a declining job market to that mix?

Open Borders + Bankruptcy + No Jobs = !

And what happens when you add broad based affirmative action to that mix?

Open Borders + Bankruptcy + No Jobs + Affirmative Action = !!!

Kaboom!

That loud detonation you just heard was your former country fragmenting into a million tiny little pieces.

Anyone around here have a broom handy?

In other words, no matter what you do on a state level, it's going to matter very little, because our problems are national and structural in nature, and things are much worse than most of you appear to realize.

But carry on in your little puddle you big financial sharks you.

Mike, unfortunately your statement that "99.9% of police and fire bonuses are bogus" is fallacious at best. You, and the Governor, for that matter, are ignoramuses. You, nor him, are qualified to make statements of that kind. The unions are not the problem in this state, period. The problem is the illegal immigrants who are taxing our welfare system, schools, and health care system. Please think for yourself and stop listening to the politicians who blame those who work for a living. One can confirm this by simply looking at the budget.