Marc Comtois
In today’s ProJo story on the RI population loss (mentioned here and here yesterday), the Governor, policy experts and academics agree that a shrinking population isn’t a good thing for the economy. Some quotes from the article: John Logan, Sociology Professor, Brown University – “Michigan and Rhode Island have something in common, which is the…
Tipped off by 7 to 7, I went over to the U.S. Census Bureau web site, which has just released population estimates up to July 2007 (raw data here). From the AP summary: Rhode Island is losing residents at a faster clip than any other state in the nation. New population estimates being released today…
One of the little things that Christmas reminds me of is the first time I saw Washington Crossing the Delaware at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art when I was in college back in the early 1990’s. (Why? Well, Washington crossed into Trenton on Christmas Eve). Now, I’d seen pictures of it, sure. But…
Surprised? Providence Fire Union president Paul Doughty has not come to work for much of the last three years, staffing what Chief George Farrell said appeared to be a no-show position in the department’s training division instead of working a fire truck. At the same time, Doughty was making extra cash working overtime shifts to…
As my daughters have grown up, I’ve become more aware of the pop culture canonization of people who are famous (some for its own sake, aka Paris Hilton). What’s disturbing to me is that there is no age limit to the phenomena. More specifically, the recent Hannah Montana ticket “controversy” is symptomatic of our culture’s…
Editor & Publisher focuses it’s microscope on sports journalists and how they missed baseball’s budding steroid scandal way back in 1995: It wasn’t a particularly long story. The 730-word piece by sportswriter Bob Nightengale in the Los Angeles Times on July 15, 1995, included no flashy graphics or leaked documents. But what it said turned…
Democrat State Rep. Peter Palumbo and Democrat Sen. Christopher Maselli have filed new legislation aimed at curbing illegal immigration in Rhode Island. The legislation, a revamped version of a bill that died during the last General Assembly, aims to tighten state laws regarding issuance of driver’s licenses and to make it unlawful for businesses or…
Pew has come out with an analysis of state pension systems. The Providence Business News sums it up: Rhode Island was ranked among the top performers in pension funding, with $5.5 billion set aside toward a pension bill of $9.8 billion as of fiscal 2006. But on benefits, the state was ranked as “below par,”…
Some of you may not care about baseball, but it is one of our country’s cultural and historical touchstones. Former Senator George Mitchell’s report (PDF)on the use of steroids and human-growth hormone in Major League baseball contains several names of players implicated in the use of either or both. And though Sen. Mitchell attempted to…
On Saturday, the ProJo took the opportunity to compare the expansion of Manchester, NH’s airport to the lack thereof at T.F. Greene (though they’re still trying). Arguing over the efficacy of expanding T.F. Green is fine, and I have my own opinion. But comparing Green and Manchester isn’t apples to apples by any means. Here’s…