Wonkette
Poor Rhode Island is a wee state with a huge unemployment problem, horrible taxes, and an abysmally high cost of living. Fortunately, it’s also got a governor with a can-do attitude who sees one very obvious way to dig the state out of its current budget mess: just get state workers to take two and a half weeks off, unpaid, over the next year or so.
The shutdown will force 81 percent of the roughly 13,550-member state work force, excluding its college system, to stay home a dozen days without pay before the start of the new fiscal year in July.
The closures come as the worst recession in decades has eliminated hundreds of millions of dollars in tax collections and pushed unemployment to 12.7 percent, the second-highest jobless rate in the nation behind Michigan.
Jesus! At least Michigan has the auto industry to blame. What’s Rhode Island’s excuse? Have consumers suddenly lost their taste for bribery and quahogs?
Anyway, of course the unions are bellyaching about these furloughs, and the governor is saying “tough titty,” which means there will be lawsuits and misery for many months to come.
RI gov to shut down state government for 12 days [AP]
I had a philosophy professor who was a Rhode Islander, and he was the only college professor I ever knew who could hold his own in a dirty bar fight. Could not knock that mofo down. He was like a strict determinist bear.
On a more serious note: much of the Debt that Obama is racking up to help claw our way out of this near-depression is actually a result of State Governments being constitutionally barred from running budget deficits. Here’s a prime example, as this move will negatively impact economic recovery… well, to the extent that a state with a population of 163, occupying 120 square miles of land can negatively affect the nation’s economic recovery.
I hope no one needs an emergency birth certificate during those dozen days.
Maybe they could balance the budget with a fundraising concert by some washed-up 80s hair bands.
As a recovering Rhode Islander, and a good-old tax-and-spend liberal, even I think RI has way too much going on… the taxes are ridiculous, and the cost of living makes it impossible for people to get by. It’s a death spiral.
Bring back Buddy!!!!
Those states should handle their ‘Balanced Budget’ laws the way we do it in NJ. new The Governor has four years to hide the debt he found after the last governor hid it when he left office. If he can’t figure out a way to hide it again, he goes gay and quits. Worked before.
Will the State’s legal prostitutes be required to take furlows? If so, how will people do during their 2 1/2 weeks off?
State workers don’t do shit anyway. Overpaid and underworked and the government shouldn’t be paying employees on my overtaxed and hard-earned money anywa- oh, hey this isn’t RedState??
They should sell off the “and Providence Plantations” part of their name that they’ve been dragging around for more than two hundred years. The savings in lettering alone should be a huge help, not to mention that nobody knows what the hell a Providence Plantation is.
In VT we don’t have a constitutional requirement to balance the budget, yet we also are taking 2 1/2 unpaid weeks off. Well, actually, for my department, we work 40+ hours per week and get paid for 38. I loves me some capitalism.
At least they excluded the college system, they didn’t spare them in the forced vacations in terrible hell-hole Jersey.
Note to RI public employee unions: Either eat some unpaid time off or not have a job. Where I live, the public unions belly ached about taking a whole 5 days off till the wingnuts got elected and then chopped the “cibil serbise” by 30% (including teachers and nurses when they didn’t need to.)
Of course public employees, it isn’t wrong to ask if the gubiner isn’t going to be taking a bite from the same shit sandwich though.
Advocatus_Diaboli:
Working 40 hrs and paid for 38? That’s just a salary cut for which they don’t want to do the paperwork.
At least New Jersey still has political corruption to fall back on when times are tough…
Suck it Rhode Island!
Maryland is proposing the same thing:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/24/AR2009082402896.html
Capitol Hillbilly: as long as they skip the fireworks ….
They should just double the sales tax on all falafels sold on Thayer Street. All the Brown frosh who consume them can afford it. Crisis averted.
SayItWithWookies: Rhode Island could always sell corporate naming rights — instead of I-95, it’d be “Bank of America Freeway;” instead of Providence, it’d be “GEICO, RI.”
Advocatus_Diaboli: No state really has a truly balanced budget, in the populist Mike Huckabee dipshit meaning of the word. States sell bonds. Bonds are debt. Therefore, the budget isn’t balanced. Also, with a mortgage, my budget isn’t balanced.
When will these nimrods get right with reality?
Have we verified that Rhode Island is actually in America? Can’t they just give some of that shit back to Massachussets? That would save them some coin, and nobody would be the wiser. I just vacationed there and I am here to tell you that the condition of the roads is appalling. Maybe the furloughed workers could be trained to lay down some tar.
Is that a picture of a Rhode Island communist?
“Abysmally high”? Is that like the height of the Great Depression?
Grammar/language nerds, at your service, thank you very much. And don’t use that virgule!
Gorillionaire: Wow, where did you go to school? It sounds like fun!
Amy Carter went to Brown, and that started this whole mess….
Is that chicken a Rhode Island “Red”? Is our littlest state not even safe from these Communie Muslin Terrists?
Illinois is doing the same and the state Universities are included. Unions have their panties in a twist over it. The rest of us long for a day off.
McDuff: Unless they allow Russian gangsters or personal injury lawyers in on the bidding, ain’t nobody gonna buy the rights to Woonsocket.
user-of-owls: always have thought Woonsocket should be used as a slang anatomy term — “Ouch, he really took a hit in the ol’ Woonsocket!”
McDuff: Yeah, the woonsocket is right next to the fracas, near the melee.
McDuff: “Ouch, he really took a hit in the ol’ Woonsocket!”
“Yeah, that’s gonna leave a helluva Blackstone! Another ‘gansett down here bartender”
Little Rhodey, be the first in the country to legalize dope. You were born to be different; embrace the non-conformity that is your birthright.
The two guys who are the RI highway department are pretty grouchy about it, and the part-time lady who is the Dept. of Children and Family Services said that both her foster kids will be harder to keep track of.
Sounds like a terrible episode of “Brotherhood” on Showtime. Perhaps that’s redundant.
They should just nationalize the proceeds from Buddy Cianci’s secret sauce (or gravy, whatever you bizarre Yankee hicks).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_Cianci#Trivia
Not enough jokes about Coffee Milk and Del’s Lemonade. You guys aren’t even fucking trying anymore.
YOU INSOLENT FOOLS! At last! The state is crumbling at the foundation built of old money and exiled Puritan skeletons, now is our chance! Follow me as your new ruler, and I will make sure that no man, woman, or child goes unemployed, as you will all be my serfs! Surely a feudal society will do much better than this upside-down excuse of democracy we have now.
Be prepared! As soon as I win Powerball I plan to purchase the state. I’m sure I can get it on foreclosure for a few million!
Today Iggy’s Doughboys, tomorrow, THE WORLD!