Monique Chartier

We Need to Prune Regulations, Not Regulate Pruning

By Monique Chartier | January 19, 2011 |

Pulling out a bill from Andrew’s latest handy-dandy list, it’s not at all clear to me, setting aside crass considerations like the impact on our hedge trimming and lawn mowing bills, how this would improve our rankings of 49th worst business climate and 49th worst economy in the country. A bill sponsored last week by…

Palumbo’s 180 is Only the Latest Ominous Development on Smith Hill Pertaining to the Discharge Petition

By Monique Chartier | January 17, 2011 |

GoLocalProv reported on the 180; h/t Justin. [Newly appointed Rules Committee Chairman Rep. Peter] Palumbo [D, Cranston] said he has just started poring through all the rules, but he already has some ideas about what he would like to see changed. For one, he’d like to tweak a rule that allows a state rep to…

Romney Flashes

By Monique Chartier | January 14, 2011 |

RealClearPolitics reports that he has chosen a political director (what the heck is that??) and a pollster. The Boston Globe reports that, on Tuesday, he resigned from the Board of Directors of the Marriott. Meanwhile, as we speak, Mitt Romney is on an educational tour in the Middle East. And a poll taken last week…

Arlene on the Rescinding of the E.O.: Bromides In Place of Analysis

By Monique Chartier | January 13, 2011 |

Awesome editorial by Arlene Violet in today’s Valley Breeze about Gov Chafee rescinding the Executive Order on illegal immigration. Despite anticipatory breast-beating to the contrary by advocates of illegal immigration, Arlene points out that there was not one instance of abuse of the Order in the two years that it was in place. She also…

Timely Embargo Coverage of MA District Four Race by MA PBS

By Monique Chartier | January 8, 2011 |

In July, 2009, the dining room table told three college-aged PBS interviewers that I’m tired, and I think . . . it’d be nice to have some free time, not have to read a lot of stuff I don’t care about. One would have thought that the easy solution was for Congressman Frank to simply…

Serendipitously Insightful Headline Juxtaposition?

By Monique Chartier | January 5, 2011 |

On the front page of this morning’s Woonsocket Call. The first headline: Lincoln Chafee Sworn In The second headline: Vultures Descend on City The second story is about a flock of actual, avian vultures which has recently made Woonsocket home. It was hard, though, not to link it back to the first headline and what’s…

So Rep Lally Favors an Increase in Health Insurance Premiums for Rhode Island?

By Monique Chartier | January 2, 2011 |

On Thursday, the Providence Journal printed an OpEd by Dr. Joseph Cambio of Urologic Specialists of New England and RI House Deputy Majority Whip Donald J. Lally (D, Narragansett & South Kingstown). We’ll stipulate for a moment the problem that they name because it sounds all too plausible. … Rhode Island health insurers reimburse the…

Baron re Chafee and Gist

By Monique Chartier | January 1, 2011 |

Yesterday, Jim Hummel, filling in for WPRO’s Dan Yorke, played excerpts from his interview, to be released in Tuesday’s Hummel Report, with Governor-Elect Chafee. In it, the gov-elect confirms that he remains steadfastly non-committal about the continued tenure of Ed Commissioner, Deborah Gist. In his “Politics As Usual” column a couple of days earlier, the…

Damn the NYC Sanitation Department

By Monique Chartier | December 31, 2010 |

… not because their catastrophically timed labor action caused death, injury and serious inconvenience to hundreds of thousands but because they have succeeded in the impossible: casting the micro-megalomaniac mayor of that city in a favorable light by exculpating him. The New York Post reports. Selfish Sanitation Department bosses from the snow-slammed outer boroughs ordered…

The “RI Recipe for a New Way Forward” (per L. Chafee)

By Monique Chartier | December 28, 2010 |

Today’s Yesterday’s ProJo Political Scene reports that the following recipe was handed out, attached to a large candy cane, to guests at a party recently held by Governor-elect Chafee. (It was Senate President Paiva-Weed who shared hers with the Political Scene.) “One 10-pound satchel of HONESTY … A gallon of LISTENING … Three quarts of…