Monique Chartier
On June 26, 2009, Congressman Patrick Kennedy returned to the House of Representatives to cast a partisan vote in favor of the Waxman-Markey Climate Change bill known as Cap & Trade. A few days later, a blast e-mail arrived from the Congressman’s office to tell Rhode Island how proud of this vote he was. Despite…
Justin notes the state’s latest unemployment figure. Rhode Island now has the second highest unemployment rate in the nation. A Providence Bus News article posted July 8 suggests a major contributing factor in the form of other dubious rankings, which together mean that Rhode Island’s economic outlook ranked 48th among states in a new study…
[Following are paraphrased comments by School Committee members as they debated and then unanimously voted last night for an adjustment to the school budget that consisted of forty furlough days per teacher and the elimination of most student activities.] What’s needed is a fair funding formula by the state. We need to say that Woonsocket’s…
The non-end of this year’s General Assembly session gives us the chance to return to some important legislation that would have otherwise fallen through the cracks. One of these is the e-verify bill that would require Rhode Island employers with three or more employees to participate in the federally instituted E-verify system to verify the…
What’s confusing is the statement by the parade committee that the handing out of these Constitution leaflets posed a danger. The leaflets were handed out along the side of the parade, not from the float itself. As I understand, no one was running up to this float to get a leaflet. In terms of danger,…
… and, therefore, the actions of all past and future Constitutional Conventions? In addition to trivializing ethics, as Marc put it, and all but decriminalizing bribery, hasn’t the R.I. Supreme Court legally voided everything that was implemented by the 1986 Constitutional Convention [scanned PDF] with their ruling [PDF] on the Irons matter? If the original…
Admittedly, yes, he is in part motivated by a lust for federal gold. But this factor in no way abated the fury of certain former supporters of Mayor Thomas Menino (D!) when he announced last month a volte face support of charter schools as a means of achieving education reform in Boston. The speech took…
The Rhode Island Senate has ordered a study of the legalization of marijuana. Would that the goal was merely to adjust our illicit drug use ranking by reclassifying one of the drugs. Alas, they specifically voted to explore how much Rhode Island might collect in revenue if it were to make all sales of marijuana…
Wide open. And in an interview yesterday afternoon with the ProJo’s Katherine Gregg, the holder of the most powerful office in the state sees no particular reason to change this state of affairs. I don’t care what state you are talking about, you are always going to have one or two people who are going…
A cautionary photo courtesy Dave Barry.