RI Political Corruption
Robert Benson‘s solution, proposed in last Friday’s Projo, to the legal question of whether ethics rules can be applied to the official lawmaking activities of legislators presented by the Rhode Island Ethics Commission v. William Irons case…Why not keep the speech in debate provisions in place except when the legislator is accused of a serious…
Robert Benson, first vice president of Operation Clean Government, calls for outrage over Superior Court Judge Francis Darigan’s ruling that legislators cannot face consequences for votes cast in response to bribes: This is not just some arcane legal conundrum of little interest to most Rhode Islanders. Darigan’s decision essentially guts the state’s Code of Ethics…
I understand that part of historian Doug Burgess’s argument is that piracy was once a somewhat respectable occupation among American colonies, but I can’t help but take this as an indication of the historical nature of conservative reformers’ current task: Newport became a Colonial capital for pirating. “The Colony [of Rhode Island] now began to…
The link is more associative than direct, but something in attempts to use recent research to paint as a myth the pervasive impression of rampant corruption in Rhode Island has seemed off to me. I’ve thought, for example, that there must be something in the fact that journalists put Rhode Island at the top of…
Here’s a better explanation of the point regarding Felix Garcia’s tax-lien that I didn’t do a very good job of making on Matt Allen‘s show on Friday night: If the standard operating procedure in the City of Providence is to release a tax-lien, before even a promised partial payment has actually been made, the City…
Wherein, I express tiredness with political corruption on the Matt Allen show. Why aren’t other people fed up with the likes of Cicilline? Stream by clicking here, or download it.
How’s this for a study in contrasts: OF ALL THE COMMUNITIES EXAMINED BY CHANNEL 12, THE STATE POLICE HAD THE LOWEST RATE OF ACCIDENTAL DISABILITY PENSIONS. MOST CITIES AND TOWNS WERE UP AROUND 40, 30 PERCENT, SOME IN THE 20S. YOU GUYS WERE AT EIGHT PERCENT. I THINK IT WAS OF 230 RETIREES, ONLY 19…
Participating in several generations of dishonorable conduct strikes me as a pretty substantial harm to the public good when done by a police officer. If only to send a signal, “retired” Captain John Ryan, formerly of the Providence PD, ought to lose his pension: City officials have resumed their effort to take away the pension…
The Hatch Act has been a topic of conversation in these parts over the past few months, and the Lincoln Republicans think they have a candidate in Democrat State Representative Mary Ann Shallcross Smith. Furthermore: The Lincoln Republican Town Committee also issued statements around Shallcross-Smith’s campaign with specifics regarding the use of her 501 (c)…
URI economics professor Leonard Lardaro can’t believe the inaction in the statehouse: To my utter amazement, in spite of all these economic difficulties and the lessons to be learned from our past mistakes, our leaders apparently have yet to see any need to meet or do anything to deal with this crisis. I have even…
