TOM WARD - Dependence Day

I don't recall what year I began watching, but I was probably only about 5 or 6 years old. From the highest rear windows of my North Smithfield home I and my eight little brothers and sister squeezed together in our shorty summer pajamas to see the July 4 fireworks in the distance at Cold Spring Park in Woonsocket. We had a lot to celebrate and be thankful for back then, less than 15 years after our parents had won the Second World War.

We've had recessions before, and joblessness, but I don't remember there ever being a year where we couldn't afford the fireworks on the Fourth of July. From Woonsocket to North Providence, budget cuts have been applied to the "low hanging fruit" of municipal expenses, and fireworks are an easy target. (Cumberland, on the other hand, will have their fireworks Friday night. Police should be prepared for the onslaught of out-of-towners).

As a backdrop to these cuts, the Rhode Island General Assembly last week approved a budget that for the most part manages the decline of our state, as opposed to laying the groundwork for a better future. I say "for the most part" because House leaders did finally approve funding for the Mayoral Academies, $700,000 in seed money to start Mayor Daniel McKee's Blackstone Valley Democracy Prep school in Valley Falls, a school that will be freed from the suffocating shackles of union interference. It was a courageous move by Speaker William Murphy and Majority Leader Gordon Fox, and I thank them for their leadership against a withering attack from teachers union leaders. Democracy Prep will be an enlightening experiment indeed!

Early this year, Governor Carcieri had proposed some cuts to corporate and other taxes that would have made Rhode Island more competitive with other New England states and attractive to businesses that provide jobs, but his pleas were ignored.

What we were left with is a little more to pay for gas, a crushing and unfair burden on addicted smokers, and far higher capital gains taxes that will repel job-creating entrepreneurs and make Rhode Island a state not worth investing in.

I am struck by how our political leaders believe they faced down a tough budget as revenues declined during the past 12 months. In fact, while some revisions were made to state pensions for those who will retire well into the future, the cuts didn't reach nearly far enough, in my estimation. Despite what you've read and heard, our state will still provide some of the most generous pensions in America, and my prediction is that our legislators will be forced to revisit further cuts in the not-too-distant future. They had a shot at real pension reform, backed by a House-sponsored report that backed up the cuts, but they fumbled the ball. Too bad. They'll have to do it all again someday.

As for revenue: First they blew the tobacco money, and now the bailout money. The real state budget is not in balance, dependent this year on the crack cocaine of stimulus funds that have not even been raised in taxes yet.

When I watch the Cumberland fireworks on Friday night, perhaps for the final time, I'll look a the little ones gathered around me and wonder, what will they be looking at 50 years from today? Will they still be in a free country that embraces and rewards those who work hard to create the wealth and jobs that feed us all, private and public sector alike, in a partnership that made us the greatest nation in the world? Or will they be barely able to afford the Fourth of July hot dogs that will be need to be cooked not with propane, but a magnifying glass on a sunny day?

Will they still be comfortable, or near destitute under the crushing burden of taxes that their parents would not pay, parents who took "federal stimulus" in the misguided hope that silver-tongued politicians of all stripes would forever keep our lifestyles afloat in a sea of debt?

God once blessed America with liberty. I pray we're not trading it in for the "security" that will certainly damn us all.

- Ward is publisher of

The Valley Breeze newspapers