In Depth
10. S0330: Independent voters would not need to become a member of a political party, to vote in that party’s primary. (S Judiciary; Thu, Feb 28) 9. H5389: Spencer Dickinson’s proposal for a binding arbitration process for teacher contracts. In the Dickinson process, only the school committee could choose to go to binding arbitration, but…
Local Impact: Coventry, Foster, Johnston, Middletown, North Kingstown, Woonsocket 2 Anyone know the background on this one? H5322: Prohibits unauthorized use of the emblem of the Attorney General of the state of Rhode Island. 21. S0341: A potpourri of changes to criminal law, including the decriminalization of a first offense for shoplifting or driving without…
My previous post referenced the circularly structured political spectrum that Justin proposed a few weeks ago. Samuel G. Howard criticized Justin’s mapping in a post at Rhode Island’s Future, one objection being that choosing individual emphasis versus community emphasis as a defining axis leads to problems that are intractable…I suspect it would be difficult for…
Last weekend, a small number of people turned out at Los Angeles Police Department headquarters, in some combination of protest and memorial for former LAPD officer Chris Dorner, who killed four people in Southern California, before killing himself during a standoff with law enforcement. Meanwhile, in the virtual world, a Facebook tribute describing Dorner as…
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…