August 16, 2012

DePetro Barrington House Owned by David Caprio

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beach mansion — 32 Lorraine St. in Barrington is an 9,000-square-foot vacation rental owned by former state Rep. David Caprio.

The Barrington house where radio shock jock John DePetro allegedly sexually harassed WPRO coworker Dee DeQuattro is owned by former state Rep. David Caprio.

Sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity confirmed the address of the house in question as being 32 Lorraine St., a very high end vacation rental known as Beach House, a 9,000-square-foot, 1895 Victorian-style mansion that rents for $8,800 in the summertime, according to a vacation rental website.

Barrington property records indicate the property is owned by John LaRochelle and David Caprio, both Providence attorneys. It is appraised at $1,545,800 and has 24 rooms, 14 bedrooms and 5 full bathrooms.

Caprio, a Democrat, was a state legislator representing Narragansett from 1999 until 2010 when he lost in a primary to Rep. Teresa Tanzi. His brother Frank ran for governor against Linc Chafee and famously told President Obama to “shove it.” Their father Frank is a well-known local TV judge on the show “Caught in Providence.”

A phone number of the vacation rental website rings Caprio’s phone, who could not be immediately reached for comment. According to a press release dated January 21, 2011 from his web designer, Caprio has recently stepped up efforts to rent the property.

“Former State Representative David Caprio recently stepped up efforts to attract visitors to his 9,000 square foot vacation home in Barrington, Rhode Island,” reads the press release. “Although the Victorian estate, affectionately known as the Beach Mansion, has been available for booking in the past, Caprio received fewer reservations than he would have liked.”

According to DeQuattro’s lawsuit, her and DePetro were to get lunch together on the afternoon of May 21.

“DePetro instead stated he had another place in mind and drove to a house on a dead end street in Barrington,” according to the filing. “Plaintiff inquired where they were and DePetro said he owned the property and insisted plaintiff exit the car and come into the house while he retrieved an item. While inside the house DePetro made sexual advances towards the Plaintiff.”

DeQuattro declined to comment on the lawsuit or the house in question.

August 16, 2012

OMG Breaking News – – – – – – – – NEXT WEEK!

In what can best be described as yet another bizarre Anthony Gemma stunt to garner attention to his largely fake and irrelevant campaign, Gemma posted this on Facebook this morning:

Apparently, breaking news that will have an immediate impact really means next week, according to a BREAKING GoLocalProv report with the stunning news that Gemma scheduled a press conference next week.

At least we can all take comfort knowing that Anthony Gemma will be there for us through his cries for attention.

August 16, 2012April 12, 2014

Corporate Agenda Behind Public Charter Schools

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This investor dude is making big dollars for himself and his rich clients by taking money out of your public school system. But no, the charter movement is totally progressive.

Here’s the setup. CNBC is interviewing David Brain, head of a major investment trust, about why charter schools are such phenomenal money-makers for investors like him. Here’s the transcript.

Anchor: Charter schools have become very popular as parents seek more choice in educating their children. But are charter schools a wise addition to your investment portfolio? Well let’s ask David Brain, President and CEO of Entertainment Properties Trust. David, why would I want to add charter schools into my portfolio?

DB: Well I think it’s a very stable business, very recession-resistant. It’s a high-demand product. There’s 400,000 kids on waiting lists for charter schools, the industry’s growing about 12-14% a year. So it’s a high-growth, very stable, recession-resistant business. It’s a public payer, the state is the payer on this category, and if you do business with states with solid treasuries then it’s a very solid business.

Anchor: Well let me ask you about potential risks, here, to your charter school portfolio, because I understand that three of your nine “Imagine” schools are scheduled to actually lose their charters for the next school year. Does this pose a risk to investors?

DB: Well, occasionally—our Imagine arrangement’s on a master lease, so there’s no loss of rents to the company, although occasionally there are losses of charters in certain areas and they’re used to peculiar, particular circumstances. In this case it’s a combination of relationship with the supervisory authorities and educational quality; sometimes the educational quality is very difficult to change in one, two, or three years. It’s a long-term proposition, so there are some of these that occur, but we’ve structured our affairs so this is not going to impact our rent-roll and in fact you see this is maybe even a good experience as the industry thins out some of the less-performing schools and we move on to the best-performing schools.

Anchor: David there has been somewhat of a backlash to charter schools in some areas given their use of public money, as you noted. Any risk to the growth of charter schools generally?

DB: I don’t—there’s not a lost of risk, there’s probably risk to everything but the fact is this has bipartisan support. It’s part of the Republican platform and Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education in the Obama Administration, has been very high on it throughout their work in public education. So we have both political parties are solidly behind it, you have high demand, high growth, you have performance across the board, most studies have charter schools at even or better than district public education. So, I think it has some risk because it’s new and it’s emerging and it is a high-growth category. But at the same time I think much more’s going forward so it’s still a safe area for investment.

Anchor: You’ve invested in retail centers, ski parks, you’ve got charter schools, you’ve got movie theaters. If you could buy one thing right now, David, one type of asset in real estate, what would it be?

DB: Well, probably the charter school business. We said it’s our highest growth and most appealing sector right now of the portfolio. It’s the most high in demand, it’s the most recession-resistant. And a great opportunity set with 500 schools starting every year. It’s a two and a half billion dollar opportunity set annually.

Two and a half billion dollar opportunity set annually.

August 16, 2012August 16, 2012

Progress Report: Accusations and Employment; Gemma’s Fake Followers; Gina’s Finance Friend; Paul Ryan

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Conservatives across Rhode Island are upset that a Warwick public works employee didn’t lose his job after being accused of stealing from the city. Accused, mind you, not convicted. Meanwhile, not a peep from the right about what WPRO should do with the state’s biggest blowhard John DePetro, who is accused of something far worse than property theft. He’s accused of sexual harassment, something that can cause serious emotional scars on another human being. But I suppose so long as it doesn’t cost them any money, conservatives just don’t care about who does what.

When we reported on Anthony Gemma’s suspicious social networking prowess way back in March, we just knew things didn’t seem right. WPRO actually put it to a test and found out as much as 79 percent of his Twitter followers might be fake. While having 80 percent of your followers might seem high, it actually might be low; if WPRO’s analysis is correct, he’d still have almost 200,000 real followers and I doubt he does.

GoLocal accuses Gina Raimondo of helping to funnel state work to a venture capitalist who donated to her campaign and helped launch her career in finance.

The Providence Journal editorial board seems to be the only ones in the nation who doubt Paul Ryan’s conservative credentials. They say not until Obama became president did “the deficit and Big Government suddenly became all-important to Mr. Ryan.”

Here’s more on his Medicare proposal.

And we meant to mention this one the other day … the Rhode Island Center for Freedom for the Prosperous got a half true from Politifact for its assertion that RI has the highest number of health insurance mandates in the country. It’s actually not true, but the Projo gave them half credit because they did read it somewhere.

On this day in history both Elvis Presley and Babe Ruth died. Conversely, Charles Bukowski and Madonna were born. By the way, Babe Ruth died when he was one year younger than Madonna is now. Elvis was only 42 when he left the building once and for all.