Marc Comtois
UPDATE: Kennedy’s office confirmed the ProJo’s John Mulligan that Kennedy WILL NOT seek re-election. Here is the ad that started it all. MORE: According to Cianci, RI Dem. Chair Bill Lynch was selling an ad package dealing with Kennedy’s announcement to be released this Sunday. The ad was being sold as a Democratic Party ad.…
This article by Rich Lowry and this piece in the Wall Street Journal both alluded to Franklin Roosevelt’s wariness towards public employee unions. I was surprised. So I dug around and found one source that supports this claim. In a letter to a public employee union, Roosevelt explains that, yes, they do have a right…
I think now is the time to support Bob Healey for Lt. Governor. This is why: He has long argued that the office of lieutenant governor is unnecessary and a waste of public money. For fiscal 2010, the budget for the lieutenant governor’s office was $973,262, though the governor has since proposed a revised spending…
We’ve heard the caterwauling in reaction to the recent Supreme Court ruling regarding corporate political donations. But, whether you like the idea of big business giving directly to political candidates or not, you have to admit that at least it’s a relatively transparent process. A simple check of any number of sources will readily reveal…
Pink slips are flying at teachers in Woonsocket, East Providence and Lincoln and probably soon in your town, too. Two points: 1) State law dictates that all layoff notices be sent by March 1st. Why then and not later, say mid-May? Could it be that it is more politically beneficial for some to have teachers…
In case you missed it, the medical journal The Lancet has retracted it’s oft-cited study that purported to find a link between the Mumps/Measles/Rubella vaccine and autism: [T]he study by British surgeon and medical researcher Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues appeared in 1998 in The Lancet, “the arguments were considered by many to be proven…
1) Congrats to the Saints and their fans. For the rest of us, the game was entertaining and was capped off by a nice pick-6 and the Manning Face (and schadenfreude for Pats fans). 2) 3 Penalties called in the whole game. Wish there was more of that during the regular season. The refs let…
In “Strange Bedfellows“, sometime ProJo book reviewer Erik Chaput and Russell J. DeSimone explain how free blacks in antebellum Rhode Island joined forces with the conservative Law and Order party to help put down the egalitarian and populist Dorr Rebellion. [I]n Rhode Island, forces loyal to Governor King, including some 200 black men from Providence,…
The WPRI poll Monique mentioned highlights the poor favorability ratings for Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (apparently because he has the lowest approval numbers of RI’s Federal delegation). Yet, Senator Whitehouse isn’t up for reelection for a couple more years, so the more immediate–and actionable–item is the news that Congressman Patrick Kennedy has a high unfavorability rating.…
State Rep. John Loughlin formally announced his run against Patrick Kennedy for the 1st Congressional District seat. From the ProJo report: “When we should have been focused on jobs, Congressman Patrick Kennedy was voting for a massive government takeover of our health care system that would have raised taxes, increased spending and cut Medicare for…