May 11, 2015 – RI Future

May 11, 2015May 11, 2015

Beluga whales spotted in Narragansett Bay

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How rare of a marine mammal sighting are the beluga whales that have been spotted at various locations in Narragansett Bay on Sunday and Monday?

“It’s the second one ever in Rhode Island,” said Bob Kenney, an oceanography professor at the URI Bay Campus who studies whales and wrote this about belugas.

“The first one was last year,” he added.

In July, 2014, a fisherman spotted and videoed a lone beluga whale in the West Passage between Jamestown and Saunderstown. At roughly the same time, a second beluga whale was seen in the Taunton River near Fall River last year.

Then on Sunday, David DeSalvo and Matt King videoed three beluga whales north of the Newport Bridge and just off the eastern shore of Jamestown. DeSalvo estimated they were about 12 to 15 feet long.

On Monday morning, the RI Department of Environmental Management fielded reports that the three beluga whales were seen further north up Narragansett Bay off Rocky Point in Warwick. A team from DEM and Mystic Aquarium dispatched a 22-ft research boat, crewed by two biologists and a veterinarian, to ensure the mammals are healthy on Monday. They appeared healthy in the video, said April Valliere, a supervising biologist who studies marine mammals with DEM.

She said increasingly colder waters in southern New England may be enticing beluga whales from their native habitat of the St. Lawrence Seaway in northeastern North America.

“I suspect cooler water temperatures have something to do with it,” she told me. “It’s off several degrees. It’s still in the 40’s outside the Bay.”

But she said scientists really don’t know yet. “We’re not really sure. Obviously there is food for them,” she said, noting that squid and menhaden are now running in Narragansett Bay.

There’s a theory that the heavily-polluted St. Lawrence may be causing cancer in beluga whales. Perhaps the pearl white whales are relocating to a cleaner habitat? In a Providence Journal op/ed last year, Mystic Aquarium President Steven Coan said a changing climate is opening up new southern habitat to beluga whales. “The sight of a Beluga in southern New England is rare and unusual today but could quickly become a more frequent occurrence. Climate change is affecting our seas and the creatures that live in them. In some cases the natural food supply for a certain species may shift location, moving to a warmer or cooler spot in the ocean.

Beluga whales aren’t the only whales that visit Narragansett Bay. Minkie whales frequent the lower Bay as does the occasional fin whale in the winter. Several species of whales live in or pass through the Rhode Island and Block Island sounds, the parts of the Atlantic off the coast of Rhode Island.

Whales are protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and as such it’s a felony to disturb them. Boaters, Kenney and Valliere both stressed, should take extreme caution.

“Anything a boater does that disturbs teir natural behaviors is a violation of federal law, you could go to jail for up to two years” Kenney said. “The best thing to do is shut the engine down and watch them. They may just come close. But don’t chase them.”

May 11, 2015

Rhode Island: you want to be here

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The future of Rhode Island could be very simple…

Our goal could be to intentionally make our small state an expensive place to do business in, but make it worth every penny.

For every dollar in taxes paid, our citizens would reap benefits. The purpose of commerce is to support the people, not the reverse.

How could this come about?

It begins with the governor, speaker and senate president declaring that no longer will our state subsidize and pander to business.

Instead, we will insist that corporations, like citizens, contribute to the well being of our communities.

No longer will we bribe businesses with cash and tax cuts. Our government will take its share and use it wisely.

Money will be spent on those things that Government can do well, when it is not gasping for cash: improve the roads, build statewide infrastructures, contribute to the education of its citizens, protect our environment, and provide for public safety.

Our polity cannot predict or gamble on the industries of the future. Likewise, we must not allow ourselves to be cowed into beggardom by greedy national and international corporations.

We are a small and lovely state in a prime location on the East Coast. We have the wealth of the sea at our doorstep. Because of past failures, we are severely undervalued, yet those of us who have lived here for a long time know that this truly is a marvelous place, a home to live in for an entire life.

Of course there are problems in our body politic. No human system is perfect, but it is insane to funnel millions from taxpayers into for-profit businesses, or to cut taxes for large corporations to “encourage growth” or “attract jobs”. The wealthy have learned that the threat of scarcity prods politicians to fork over money from citizens. Failures are rarely blamed on the businesses, which have banked their gold, but on the politicians.

Rhode Island will never thrive if we depend on companies that require payoffs and “incentives.” It is illegal for a United States citizen to pay bribes in other countries, but here in Rhode Island campaign contributions and bills that grease a bottom line are considered legal and even necessary.

It is no longer acceptable.

The spigot from gambling is about to thin as more casinos open nearby. We cannot afford to give a single dollar to underwrite someone else’s profit margin. Our government is notoriously bad at picking “winners.”

We must begin tooting our horn, not in our own backyard, but around the world. We have natural beauty, localized industry, centers of higher education, a diverse population, and restaurants and arts that are world-class. No more government handouts for businesses. No more racing to the bottom to underbid our wealthy neighbors.

We will point to our resources: citizens who are eager for work, a coastline that inspires, deep water ports, real estate that is reasonably priced, and a long history of innovation in design, education, manufacturing and reinvention.

We will loudly disavow the efforts of the one percent to leach off the work of the average citizen, while simultaneously nullifying the powers of government to improve the common lot.

Our state can willingly offer companies an easier path to regulation and licensing, modification to roads, worker-training schemes in community colleges. We can rebuild our urban schools so that companies can feel comfortable knowing that their workers can accept reasonable wages and send their children to public schools.

We can acknowledge the shifts that climate change and global warming are likely to bring, and plan future building and growth carefully.

These changes will not see a quick stampede of business toward our shores.

Given our history of corruption, it will take time for them to believe. During that time, our government will have no choice but to learn to do more with less, to increase efficiency and eliminate redundancy and waste. We must continue to protect those who have little, and resist the idea that poverty is sin and an inescapable trap. We must teach our children for their benefit, not for the profit of an increasingly corporate education industry. We can encourage our existing small businesses to grow with confidence knowing that they’re getting the same fair treatment as the giants.

We only need to stop begging and bribing and change our philosophy.

Our new slogan could simply be, “Rhode Island: you want to be here.”

Now we must work to make it so.

May 11, 2015May 12, 2015

Bernie Sanders finds Rhode Island support for presidential run

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People of all ages from all over Rhode Island met Saturday at the Greenville Public Library to help elect Bernie Sanders president of the United States of America.

Sanders, a Vermont senator, declared his intent to announce his presidential candidacy on April 30th. He plans to officially enter the race on May 26, challenging former Secretary of state Hillary Clinton and former Rhode Island State Governor Lincoln Chafee for the Democratic Party nomination.

As a senator, Sanders was an independent, caucusing with the Democrats. He is expecting to run his campaign on a paltry $50 million, made up of small donations from people, as opposed to Clinton’s estimated $1 billion campaign made up of both small personal and large corporate donations.

Lauren Niedel, deputy state coordinator of the Rhode Island Progressive Democrats, ran the meeting, starting with introductions of the more than 30 people who attended, then onto the planning of phone banking, canvassing and house parties. They have a lot of ground to cover.

Clinton has near universal name recognition. Sanders does not. Spreading the word on a populist candidate fighting for the little guy takes work and dedicated volunteers.

Smartly, Sanders has hired Revolution Messaging, the firm Obama hired to do his “online fundraising, social media and digital advertising.” This is a very smart move, as a grassroots campaign needs a strong social media presence, and Sanders will be relying on younger voters.

Sanders 01 — Lauren Niedel addresses Sanders supporters

The people attending the meeting in the library – and the campaign as a whole – are not running from the fact that Sanders is a socialist. The caveat is that he’s a democratic socialist, not a state socialist. Far from a negative, this is seen as a positive to many. One Sanders supporter, a Rhode Island business owner, said that she sees socialism as an American value. “This is a socialist country,” she said, “and the more socialist we are the better we’ll be. We have to take care of people.”

Another supporter identified as a Christian Socialist, socialism derived from the teachings of Jesus. To her, economic and social justice are religious values.

Socialism isn’t the dirty word it was during the Red Scare of the 1950’s or the Reagan era. A Huffington Post piece summarized it nicely:

A Pew Research Center survey recently found that while only 31 percent of Americans had a positive reaction to the word “socialism,” barely 50 percent of Americans had a positive view of capitalism, and 40 percent had a negative response. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement.

“The Pew poll found that young Americans are about equally divided in their attitudes toward socialism and capitalism. Among 18-to-29 year olds, 49 percent had a positive view of socialism, while 47 percent had a positive view of capitalism. Similarly, only 43 percent had a negative view of socialism, compared with 47 percent who had a negative view of capitalism.”

Socialism aside, most of the people at this meeting were just happy to have found a candidate who could speak to their issues in a serious, populist way.

“I’m eager for our issues to be a part of the conversation,” said one supporter at the meeting. “Bernie Sanders is the only one who is saying anything I want to hear,” said another.

Niedel summed up the reasons for her support when she said that Sanders “represents the people. He does not represent the 1 percent. He does not represent the corporations.” Niedel presented the group with Sanders’ 12 point economic policy plan, which seemed to resonate well with those in attendance.

Can a 73-year-old socialist senator from Vermont really take the nomination away from Clinton, who has all but been anointed as the Democrat’s 2016 contender? His supporters see a potential change in direction for American politics. If Sanders pulls it off, it will be because of the dedicated support of tens of thousands of people across the country who are much like those who gathered in the Greenville Library meeting room on Saturday.

The Rhode Island Sanders contingent will be tabling at RI Pride on June 20th, doing outreach and collecting signatures to get Sanders on the ballot. You can find out more about the Sanders campaign here.