On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- Business-poaching from state to state
- The unlikelihood of Washington Bridge accountability
- Providence city government looks for a role in Brown-Lifespan
- Republican campaign finance woes
- Baldelli-Hunt poll
- Don’t believe demands to not believe your eyes in national politics
- The continuing paneling of Bob Walsh
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 40 and Photoshop AI.
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On Thursday, Governor Dan McKee appeared on The News with Gene Valicenti for an “Ask the Governor” segment on WPRO. (No podcast to link to.) During the segment, while rattling off accomplishments of the just-passed state budget, Governor McKee said
… nursing homes, which we basically have saved …
An interesting statement. In fact, six nursing homes in Rhode Island have closed since 2020 and a seventh, the well-rated Linn Health & Rehabilitation, announced about a month ago that it would be closing. Add to that three that declared bankruptcy in 2023.
In a call to the Tara Granahan Show on WPRO that same morning, Richard Gamache, CEO of Aldersbridges Communities, the non-profit parent company of Linn Health & Rehabilitation, clarified what the governor and General Assembly had done – added $10M for nursing homes to the state budget effective July 1 – and the impact.
It’s not enough to save – I mean, it’s like, it’s something and I’m sure nursing homes, everybody’s grateful for it. But it’s certainly not enough to save.
Gamache elaborated,
Those are the three things that the governor did. Suspending the fines, $10M ARPA funds in the budget and then the re-array October 1. But all of those things are too little too late. And I know that, from conversations with my peers, Linn is not going to be the last nursing home to give notice; that there are others that are on the brink and that this is going to continue. We will continue to see the collapse of post-acute care in the state of Rhode Island. We don’t prioritize elder care and we have a high percentage of elders in Rhode Island. And we have to …we need to think of ourselves as, we could be a model here in the state of Rhode Island. There are things we could do and change the system, become a model. But right now, post acute care is a mess.
In an August op-ed, Matthew R. Trimble, President & CEO of Saint Elizabeth Community, supplied the hard numbers for Rhode Island’s nursing homes which confirm the trajectory that Gamache warns about.
The cost of providing care rose 30% between 2019-2022, according to our estimates. During that same time, Medicaid reimbursement rates rose only 4.7%.
Meanwhile, on the state spending front, Rhode Island officials are pressing ahead at this point with state participation in, as well as re-directing federal funds to, an absurdly expensive residential conversion project in Providence and a non-essential (understatement) sports stadium in Pawtucket with a price tag marked up 500% due to interest.
These are the more high profile but certainly not the only instances of dubious state spending; e.g., why does the replacement to the Washington Bridge have to be an epic bridge of a lifetime, to paraphrase Governor McKee, with double the lifespan? Wouldn’t a regular, serviceable bridge do us just fine? Less costly and faster to build. And is every state-dollar-funded item in the just-passed budget more important than a home and care for beloved seniors?
Important to note that the quizzical spending and non-spending raised in this article is not solely on Governor McKee. It is very much a joint effort by the governor, the Speaker of the House, the Senate President and every Rhode Island legislator who voted for it. Additionally, nursing homes bear higher operating costs as a result of stepped up state mandates from the COVID era, as Matthew Trimble alluded to. Are all of these necessary now that the COVID-19 pandemic is over? Should these perhaps be looked at as part of a larger, though definitely not the entire, solution?
The featured image is of a bake sale that the residents of Linn Health & Rehabilitation held in December to try to save their care facility. Fast forward to Thursday; Gamache informed Granahan during their conversation that the last resident of Linn had been transferred on Wednesday.
To recast the expression slightly, Rhode Island needs to head to a place where nursing homes are properly funded and sports stadiums and profligate residential re-developments have to hold a bake sale. And we need to head there quickly. Contrary to his assertion Thursday, Governor McKee and the General Assembly have not saved Rhode Island’s nursing homes. In fact, the domino effect on nursing homes of their inaction has started.
Featured image: the bake sale held in December by residents of the now-closed Linn Health and Recovery. From Linn’s website; re-printed with permission.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- McKee Antoinette’s budget cake
- David Place gets Magaziner’s game
- Miller not running
- What’s behind incumbent withdrawal
- A new corrections head, despite “controversy”
- Gun control theatrics
- The AG gets millions
- Money wasted on billboards
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 40.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- Ethics Commission roped into corrections head appointment
- RI pols love the American Revolution pose
- Comparing “Appeal to Heaven” with the keffiyeh
- McKee’s gun pandering
- e-Bike politics
- Ruggerio back in the building
- Police and BLM politics
- Teacher union gets an all-good from the Ethics Commission
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 40 and Photoshop AI.
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I’m a little delayed in reacting to this, but it isn’t encouraging news:
State Rep. Patricia Morgan, who is one of two Republicans running in Rhode Island’s U.S. Senate race this year, has declined to debate her opponent in the primary, 12 News has learned. …
“We need our party united for when Ray drops out or loses in the primary come September. A debate between Patricia and Ray would, mostly likely, not center on policy differences, but would instead center on personal traits and accomplishments,” [Morgan Director of Communications Anthony] D’Ellena explained.
That’s a thin “explanation.” RI Republicans aren’t really in a position to reinforce the notion that front-runners don’t have to debate. More importantly, they can’t afford not to increase interest in their campaigns or give their base a feeling of real activity.
Morgan’s making a big mistake, here.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- Questions not raised about Matos signature controversy
- $14 billion state budget
- Pension fund set to take a hit
- The reason for DiPalma’s new gig
- Citizens Bank looks for a handout
- National hypocrisy about the integrity of the judiciary
Featured image by Justin Katz using Firefly.
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Two things occurred to me when I saw this aerial video of a wind turbine blade graveyard in Texas:
First, this sort of thing already exists for 20-year-old turbines in an industry that is supposedly just getting started as a major industry. What sort of acreage will we be talking as we approach the “net zero” fantasy?
Second, we should store this junk under the ugly solar farms for which we’re leveling forests. At least then the ugliness will be consolidated.
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I’m tempted to modify this message, just a bit, by suggesting that this is always the choice:
We’re getting strong reminders, lately, that a free society with mutual respect for rights is vulnerable to those who have no such respect and don’t much like freedom. Among the most-stark examples I’ve seen is this incident, in which pro-Hamas Columbia activists encircle and bodily remove a student who objected to their destroying a campus building:
Two observations are glaring, here. The first is that the activists are behaving as if they are a police force authorized to determine who has a right to stand where and take organized action to control the situation. The second is that they completely dehumanize their target. He’s just an obstacle to remove, not a human being.
In her post, Marina Medvin implies an expectation that he’ll have some compensation for this violation of his rights, which is appropriate, but a problem remains. That approach to justice merely allows these activists — who will not likely be found, identified, or prosecuted, especially in New York City — to offload the consequences for their actions onto somebody else.
A similar reminder comes with the increasingly frequent road blockages, with activists disrupting the lives of perhaps thousands of motorists by clogging major thoroughfares. In both cases, the victims are reluctant to cross lines of civility and law, and indeed, there’s good reason for that. For years, now, the message has been clearly conveyed across the West that our governments afford special privileges to left-wing activists. The overriding standard for the law is not what a person does, but why the person claims to do it and who the person is. Obviously, the kangaroo-court prosecutions of Donald Trump lead the field of examples.
This has to change. The young man pictured above rightly notes that the activists are assaulting him, and he may, with some effort, be compensated by the university, but the damage done to all of our freedom is not recompensed as long as the incentives remain for activists to increase the pressure. They’re doing the same thing to our rights that they did to the young man: actively and deliberately eliminating them from the scene.
At a minimum, it should be unambiguously permissible for victims to remove the masks of their assailants so they can be identified. The law should also include a presumption that any harm occurring in such situations, no matter to whom, is squarely the responsibility of those who give themselves the authority to bodily remove people.
The tyrannical activists are deliberately playing at the edge of assault and others’ right to self-defense. We must mount a civilizational defense, and for that purpose citizens must know that their government supports them, not the people who wish to dehumanize them.
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 3.
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We’re in heavy times, these days, what with our system of government collapsing around us, so sometimes we need a change of soundtrack or cinematic distraction. Finding new entertainment, however, has become more-difficult, too. Very little music feels fresh, and movies are terrible.
On those rare occasions that I’ve thought to watch a new movie, I’m almost always disappointed to the extent of vowing not to make the attempt again. Lately, it’s seemed like the once-great hope for streaming television shows was passing, as the early entries used up all the available innovations.
The weird mix of ideological preaching and the shift of standards such that things once unmentionable are exaggerated and things once exaggerated are unmentionable keeps movies from feeling new and compelling.
So, I’ve turned to artificial intelligence to help me dig into the past for things I might not yet have discovered, and it’s proving fruitful. Start with a prompt with a “top 10” feel — such as “a list of the quintessential movies/albums from each decade” — and then tweak it to your tastes and mood. Other adjectives can generate interesting responses, too, like “underappreciated” or “a movie/album for each decade that almost made it, but never quite broke through.”
Basically, imagine a conversation you might have had with your friends late on a Friday night while hanging around before social media (if you can remember back then) and ask your favorite AI. One advantage is that the tastes of your friend group probably overlapped too much for genuine discoveries. Another advantage is that streaming services make it possible to try out the recommendations for no or little additional cost beyond your existing services.
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