July 17, 2013 – RI Future

July 17, 2013July 19, 2013

11 actually awesome things about RI

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A Facebook friend of mine posted this piece of crap BuzzFeed list apparently sponsored by Mini USA purporting to be “11 Awesome Facts You Never Knew About Rhode Island”. Of course, there’s tons of cool stuff here, but whoever is in Mini USA’s research department couldn’t be bothered to even correctly pull facts off of our Wikipedia page.

I figured since I actually live here and actually LOVE my state, I could do better. So here’s 11 Actually Awesome Facts About Rhode Island. We know most of them, but this is for non-Rhode Islanders.

1. The Narragansett language is the origin of words like “moose”, “squash” and “pow-wow”. You can thank them yourself for having such great words if you’re ever in the area.

If you're British, you call this a "marrow" (via Wikimedia Commons) — If you’re British, you call this a “marrow”. “Squash” is objectively better. (via Wikimedia Commons)

2. RI has a state drink, and it’s coffee milk (suck it, Indiana). It’s made like chocolate milk, you mix syrup into the milk. We have multiple brands of coffee syrup. You can try Autocrat and Eclipse by Autocrat, or try Dave’s Coffee Syrup.*

Autocrat and Eclipse are both made by Autocrat (via Wikimedia Commons) — I see there’s “gourmet” coffee syrup as well. (via Wikimedia Commons)

3. The shore is publicly-owned for all Rhode Islanders, according to our constitution. The shore in this case goes up to the “mean high water line” although there’s a debate about that. In short, in RI, you can’t own the ocean.

4. One of our governors invented sideburns. They’re named after him. But backwards.

Ambrose Burnside. You wish you had those sideburns. (via Wikimedia Commons)

5. Pell Grants are named after Sen. Claiborne Pell, who was the primary sponsor in the U.S. Senate. So millions of Americans can read BuzzFeed articles like Mini USA’s about RI and go “do they not know what ‘awesome’ means?” thanks to Sen. Pell.

6. The RI State House has the fourth largest self-supporting dome in the whole world; after St. Peter’s Basilica, the Minnesota State Capitol, and the Taj Mahal.* The dome was the third largest when it was completed, but by then, Minnesota had already got jealous.

RI State House (north facade) — You might remember it from the movie Amistad; it played the U.S. Capitol. A building of many talents. (via Wikimedia Commons)

7. We have the First Baptist Church in America. Like, it’s literally the first. So you can go to your first Baptist church in wherever you live in not-Rhode Island, and while it might be the first in your area, it’s not The First. Also, first synagogue in America as well.

Providence First Baptist Church — (via Wikimedia Commons)

8. Thomas Dorr, the guy who led a rebellion against our actual government? We count him as our 16th governor. He’s even got a special governor decoration on his grave.

Thomas W Dorr — Try to do what he did, and see if they call you Governor after. (via Wikimedia Commons)

9. Rhode Island and Providence Plantations isn’t just a quirky, longest name for a state. It also describes the first two areas under British rule in the state. Rhode Island (now called Aquidneck Island to distinguish it; yes, Rhode Island is an island) and Providence Plantations (now a number of towns and cities in the northern part of the state). For a long time, we couldn’t agree on a capital, and just swapped it between the two places, until 1901.

Aquidneck Island — That’s the official “Rhode Island” in red. Whether it’s named after the Isle of Rhodes is debatable. (via Wikimedia Commons)

10. Rhode Islanders burned a British warship and shot one of its officers in 1772, over a year and a half before Bostonians were inspired to toss tea into harbors.

Gaspee Affair — Now that is an act of war. (via Wikimedia Commons)

11. If you confuse Rhode Island with Long Island, a good Rhode Islander will ruthlessly lead you on as though Long Island is a new state. Virtually every Rhode Islander has a story like this.

Confused Guy — Yeah, I’ve had this look before. (via Wikimedia Commons)

*EDITS: An earlier version forgot about Dave’s Coffee Syrup, and incorrectly stated that there were only two brands of coffee syrup. Thanks to Kathy DiPina for the catch! And RI Grad also points out that I wrote unsupported instead of self-supported.

July 17, 2013

Smiley to ‘seriously explore’ running for mayor

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Providence voters will probably have a progressive to elect mayor in 2014 even if Angel Taveras runs for higher office as Brett Smiley says he’s put together a high-powered committee to “seriously explore” running for mayor if Taveras doesn’t.

“I love Providence and know first-hand the positive impact a passionate and committed mayor can have on the city and its residents,” Smiley said in a statement released today. “I believe I bring the business background, broad community involvement, ideas and energy needed to get this big job done.”

Helping Smiley assess the situation will be Myrth York, perhaps the most important progressive in the Ocean State in terms of competing in a hotly contested election, and Lauren Nocera, who managed Taveras’ successful run for mayor. They are joined by Christine West, chair of the Providence City Plan Commission.

“York is an East Side resident and West a West Side one,” points out the press release.

“I have worked closely with Brett Smiley and I know he has the management skills, temperament, and work ethic that will serve him and the residents of Providence well as Mayor,” York said.

“Brett Smiley has the strong commitment to fostering entrepreneurship and innovative development that is key to revitalizing Providence’s economy and improving our quality of life,” said West.

Smiley is a professional political consultant who also chairs the Providence Water Authority. He’s worked on important progressive issues such as marriage equality and payday loan reform.

July 17, 2013July 17, 2013

Thank you, Governor Chafee

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220px-Lincoln_Chafee_official_portrait — Governor Lincoln Chafee

Governor Lincoln Chafee wisely vetoed the “Choose Life” license plate bill last night, holding fast to his oath to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States.

The bill, which would have put the state of Rhode Island in the dubious position of passing the collection plate for CareNet, an Evangelical church posing as a crisis pregnancy center, was hastily cobbled together and forced through the General Assembly at the 11th hour by Senate President M Teresa Paiva-Weed as a sop to religiously conservative groups still sore about the passage of marriage equality.

Not only did Governor Chafee veto a bad piece of legislation, he also sent a strong rebuke to a Senate President and General Assembly that plays fast and loose with rules when doing so becomes politically expedient and self-serving.

Some conservative religious figures in Rhode Island have been busy rationalizing the bill and obfuscating the meaning of the First Amendment and the principle of separation of church and state, sowing confusion in the hopes that their anti-American, theocratic agenda can gain a foothold in our legal system. It is fortunate that Governor Chafee stood strong against this bill because the lawsuit that would inevitably arise has the potential to go all the way to the Supreme Court. Defending the “Choose Life” license plates would put taxpayers on the hook for this defense, to the tune of potentially millions of dollars. Under this analysis vetoing the bill becomes a form of fiscal prudence.

Governor Chafee, in vetoing this bill, also stood by women and his pro-choice values. Women’s rights and access to reproductive health care are under serious attack across the country. A “Pro-Choice” license plate is small potatoes when compared to some of the legislative outrages occurring in Texas, North Carolina and elsewhere, but it is telling that a bill like this could be passed by the Rhode Island General Assembly in the same year that a bill that sought to increase funding for women’s health failed. The priorities of the General Assembly are profoundly out of whack, and the Governor’s veto may serve as a needed corrective.

Here in Rhode Island, we not only respect the core American principles of freedom of (and from) religion and freedom of conscience, we invented them. The founder of our state, Roger Williams, ensured that Rhode Island was the first government, anywhere on Earth, that separated the church from the state. This radical principle has helped transform the world from one in which a person’s beliefs were forced upon them by a theocratic and capricious government under threat of banishment, imprisonment or death to one where free thought and free expression are the norm.

Governor Chafee did a small thing when he added his signature to that veto yesterday, but he also did a great thing, when he defended your right to conscience and expression.

Thank you, Governor Chafee.

July 17, 2013July 17, 2013

What is mixed-member proportional representation? (Part 3 of MMP RI)

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Imagine that in 1994 voters had approved similar constitutional amendments to those they did. The House would be reduced to 75 districts, and the Senate would be reduced to 38. However, both chambers would actually end up expanded; as the House would receive 75 additional seats and the Senate 38 additional seats.

These seats wouldn’t be attached to districts, but rather they’d be apportioned based on the total vote a party collected across all races for each chamber. Thus if the Democrats won 60% of all votes cast in Senate races and 70% of all votes cast in House races, they could expect a roughly proportional number of seats in the Senate and House.

The results of the district races would be unchanged, and the legislature would grow above the 150 seats in the House and 76 in the Senate based on those results. Thus if an independent candidate won a race, they’d still take their seat, but the legislature would grow by one seat to accommodate them while keeping the party balance roughly even to the vote for parties.

The non-districted seats would be filled from a list of candidates selected by the parties. How the parties selected these candidates would be entirely up to them.

What I’ve just described is roughly how the West German Bundestag set up as its electoral system following World War II. Most of its state legislatures did the same.

Initially, the Bundestag used the system described above, where the votes cast in the district races were used to calculate how the list seats should be apportioned. However, this has since been changed to having a separate vote for party preference. This allows voters to think strategically in their votes in the district races, while still being able to vote for their favorite party. Unfortunately, we can’t do more than guess how voters would select the favorite party, so I’ve chosen to use the original Bundestag system.

There’s a bit more though. It’s not as simple as “you get 40% of the vote, you get 40% of the seats.” There are multiple ways of calculating how many seats a party should get. I chose the D’Hondt method, which is a highest averages method. The D’Hondt method favors large parties and disadvantages smaller parties, which I thought would be appropriate to how our electoral system is already setup.

Many electoral systems also feature a “threshold,” requiring a party gain a certain proportion of votes before it can gain seats. Typically, this is set at 5%. In this case, I’ve left out a threshold. I feel if this really were implemented, there would be a threshold, but I felt it would be more interesting to see whether any third party could break into the General Assembly without that extra hurdle. Currently, Rhode Island political parties require 5% of the statewide vote in either the US Presidential race or the Governor’s race to be recognized as a state party.

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