Walter Russell Meade on the massive debt burying the state of Rhode Island: Years of blue social policy have wrecked local and state government finance in the country's smallest state, and now the bills are coming due. Services are being cut to the bone and elderly retirees are losing money they thought was secure. In Rhode Island, it is Democrats, not nasty union-hating Republicans, who are doing the dirty work. Democratic mayors are telling their unions that there isn't any money - not because they are vicious corporate stooges who hate working people and want to see them suffer, but because There. Isn't. Any. Money. Because Rhode Island listened to timeserving blue politicians too long, and union leaders and public sector workers lost their grip on any mathematical realities beyond the numbers at the ballot box, the pension system grew more and more out of control. State and local governments lurched into a crisis. Vote yourself a raise, vote yourself a pension: why not? But...(Read Full Post)