Essay
In yesterday’s dead tree edition of the Woonsocket Call (on-line edition sometimes behind a paywall), Russ Olivo reported that, on Monday, Woonsocket will meet with the city’s 780 retirees. On the agenda is the fiscal necessity to shift all retirees to Medicare at age 65 and to abolish the pension COLA for the 250 retirees…
….keep this in mind. 1) There are no cuts as regular people define them. Just a reduction in the planned for “regular” growth that Washington, D.C. cooks into the budget pie year after year. 2) The sequester was President Obama’s idea in the first place. Bob Woodward: My extensive reporting for my book “The Price…
Amazing. If you need any better illustration of the mindset of certain individuals (read: not all) in Rhode Island government, this article from W. Zachary Malinowski at the Providence Journal yesterday is about as clear as you can get. Moreau’s brother, Frank, said the coziness of small-city politics led the ex-mayor astray. “People that got…
I stumbled across the Acculturated web site a couple weeks ago and found their Symposium on Manliness to be an interesting read. They used a piece by Kay Hymowitz as a jumping off point: Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and…
Another economic development study presentation at the State House, liveblogged.
Ten years ago occurred the horrific and completely avoidable fire at the Station Night Club in West Warwick. Far from being held accountable, the person most responsible for the one hundred deaths and two hundred injuries, West Warwick Fire Inspector Dennis LaRocque, was actively shielded by then Attorney General Patrick Lynch for what can only…
In response to my e-mailed inquiry, the following was received from Dave Kane, the father of the youngest victim of the Station Night Club fire. I promised myself that after the release of the Station fire land to the victims and their families, I would stop writing press releases and go quietly into the night.…
Bruce Landis had an article in the Sunday Providence Journal with the telling title, “Few, but enthusiastic, riders.” The “few” are people actually taking advantage of the new length of commuter rail to Wickford. The train goes on from Providence to Boston. Data from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority show monthly rider- ship increasing from…
Earlier this week, USA Today highlighted that Rhode Island was the state with the most teacher absenteeism in the country (GoLocalProv picked it up today), according to a study by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. New research suggests that teacher absenteeism is becoming problematic in U.S. public schools, as about one…
Funny that this should pop up now. (Major H/T Michael Graham. By the way, welcome back to the air, Michael. We missed you.) It’s the reason that I haven’t shared the enthusiasm [link added] for the … um, fiscal “achievements” of Mayor Taveras’ tenure, genuinely nice guy though he is. His pension reform, as tepid…