Rhode Island Politics
How’s this sound on the face of it? A bill sponsored by Senators Jabour, Crowley and Pinga would remove the restriction that prevents state employees from running for election for a state seat. So a state employee could run for the General Assembly or any of the other General Officer seats. It sure sounds like…
Andrew has been banging this drum for a while now with a post earlier this year on bills being held for further study as well as his great explanation last year of how our elected leaders could put an end to the practice. Justin has also been live-blogging from some of the hearings and from…
Recent polls show that General Treasurer Gina Raimondo and Providence Mayor Angel Taveras enjoy broad-based, multi-partisan support in the state, particularly for their willingness to take stances that are politically unpopular amongst their natural consistencies. These “pragmatic progressives” have thus benefited from some good press and good feeling that, perhaps, they were a different sort…
With all due respect to Governor Chafee and to the position of RI Governor, the title of this post is in reference to a 1992 Clinton presidential campaign theme first coined by James Carville. However, I found it surprising, if not laughable that the Governor attributes his low approval ratings to the current economy. Chafee…
Why are unemployment numbers always “revised” towards the negative? Could it be the current political climate induces a need for optimism such that it is reflected in somehow too-rosy estimations? I don’t know. Today, Occupy Providence will be protesting in….Connecticut? Makes as much sense as anything else they do…. Former WPRO online journalist Bob Plain…
Polls from Brown University’s Taubman Center and WPRI-TV (CBS 12) say that Congressman David Cicilline is in serious electoral trouble. The X-factor impacting his near-certain use of a standard medi-scare campaign is that Brendan Doherty can counter with “David Cicilline will leave Social Security and Medicare in the same condition he left Providence — and…
Wow, more than a few of our elected leaders can’t be too thrilled with the results of a recent Brown University poll. For starters, just when you thought that David Cicilline’s numbers couldn’t get much worse than the 17% approval rating that he put up last year, he did get worse in this, an election…
Rep. John Edwards (D, Tiverton, Portsmouth) has submitted legislation (H7060) that — in attempting to add ballot-question sorts of direct democracy to the list for campaign finance disclosures — would erode Rhode Island’s already apathetic civic participation. Political candidates receive votes, ultimately, based on the decisions that they will make in the future, and voters…
So yesterday, Judge Sarah Taft-Carter issued a temporary injunction against the City of Providence rolling public retirees into Medicare once they hit 65. The trial to determine whether the injunction should be made permanent starts in May. The city had to demonstrate a compelling public “emergency” in order to do so; the retirees had to…
I’ve asked before, why does the state’s redistricting process need to be done this way? The state hires an outside consultant who takes some of the data, draws a map, shows it to some people, gets feedback, draws another map and the process continues until finally a few of them agree that they’ve created a…