Monique Chartier
A friend remarked yesterday that Sarah Palin made some great points in her CPAC speech. Undoubtedly. But this was my favorite moment. (Apologies for the preceding ad.) Click here for audience reaction in a double screen shot. Click here for an explanation which, of course, stars New York City’s power-mad mayor. And a great rebuttal,…
The campaign flyer at the center of this allegedly campaign law violation, and its dissemination at the last minute of the 2012 campaign, was such a nasty maneuver that part of me cheered when I heard that it has resulted in an arrest. (Jim Archer, candidate for the General Assembly, was the target of the…
The headline of Governor Chafee’s OpEd in today’s Providence Journal summarizes his premise: Gay marriage key to flourishing R.I. economy But is it? Several analyses have placed Rhode Island at or near the bottom for business-unfriendliness. What criteria did they use to rank the states? Helpfully, in their December, 2012 report [PDF] “A Review of…
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…
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.…
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…
On Monday, WPRI released a detailed expose about how, as Scituate’s pension fund was becoming progressively more underfunded, the Scituate Pension Board, from the middle of 1999 and July 2011, met on exactly one occasion. The WPRI story is all original work, well and thoroughly done. It includes, by the way, an aborted, so-called “ambush”…
It was very tempting, indeed, to title this post: “Seriously, are certain Central Falls officials anticipating a commission from the Receiver’s legal fees?” Presumably, the answer is, no, they are not. However, as the “stand-off” between state officials and certain C.F. council members now moves, ludicrously, to mediation, an observer can be forgiven for wondering…
On January 22, by a vote of two to two with four others abstaining (that’s right, four abstentions due to possible conflicts of interest), the Chariho School Committee failed to implement a policy of non-seniority based layoffs for the Chariho school system. Late yesterday afternoon, possibly in response to this uncourageous vote by the Chariho…