Rhode Island Culture
I intend to spend a little more time perusing the report titled Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom (PDF), put out by the George Mason University Mercatus Center, but Rhode Island’s predictable rankings, among the 50 states, are notable without extensive commentary: Fiscal policy: 41 Regulatory policy: 48 Economic…
So I took a 14% reduction in my hourly pay rate this week. My other option was to quit and look for another job (without the benefit of a few months of unemployment insurance). Desperate times are here. Meanwhile, the Sakonnet Times did run Richard Joslin’s diatribe against the Tiverton taxpayers group with which I’m…
Just so’s we’ve all got the same impression of the culture of our state, let’s review: In Rhode Island, nobody is willing to close a loophole in the law that makes prostitution legal. In Rhode Island, the judiciary just ruled that legislators who take bribes for votes are immune to prosecution on ethical grounds. And…
ProJo’s 7 to 7 reports that “Grande Dame” of the RIGOP Eileen Slocum has passed away: Eileen Slocum, grande dame of Newport society and a nationally known Republican Party advocate and fundraiser, died yesterday at Newport Hospital, according to her son. She was 92. Slocum, who hosted fundraisers in her Bellevue Avenue mansion and opened…
Daniel Barbarisi has a story in today’s Projo on the strip clubs vs. the Puerto Rican Cultural Festival. Apparently, there’s much more to this story; it is but a single battle in Providence’s larger waterfront development war…The waterfront flare-up between developer Patrick T. Conley and businesses on Allens Avenue is starting to burn out of…
From Anchor Rising’s newly opened Bizarro-world bureau: Owners of Providence strip-clubs are worried that nearby cultural events will drag their neighborhood down. Organizers of the Puerto Rican Cultural Festival scheduled for this weekend at Providence Piers are circulating a press-release claiming that a lawyer representing an Allens Avenue strip-club has formally objected to the festival,…
Times are so dark — and the general thrust of the solution so obvious — that special interests and other general-revenue soakers can’t even escape to the Lifebeat section for relief. Credit goes to Rita Lussier for using her influence for the cause of sanity: Not to alarm you, but this situation is a ticking…
A couple weeks ago I mentioned that Phoenix Rising: A Benefit for The Station Nightclub Fire Victims was happening on February 25th. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it again on this, the fifth anniversary of the tragedy (and here). God bless the victims and their families.
So sayeth Forbes: Misery is defined as a state of great unhappiness and emotional distress. The economic indicator most often used to measure misery is the Misery Index. The index, created by economist Arthur Okun, adds the unemployment rate to the inflation rate. It has been in the narrow 7-to-9 range for most of the…
On February 20th, 2003 I started blogging. The next day, February 21, 2003, the Station Night Club Fire (
