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In an email to members, RI Taxpayers, one of the key conservative organizations in the state, announced that they are ceasing operations due to the death of their founder Harry Staley and budget shortfalls.
Justin Katz, writing on the conservative Ocean State Current, lamented the passing of RI Taxpayers but said, “While it’s discouraging to watch one of the key players on our side fall off the board, time may prove that resources and talent can be salvaged and won’t be lost.”
The memo, copied below, was signed by President Larry Girouard and Chairman Larry Fitzmorris.
It is with deep regret that we announce that R.I. Taxpayers must suspend its operations effective March 10.
Despite efforts to raise the necessary funds to keep our advocacy on behalf of the taxpayers of Rhode Island fiscally liquid, they have fallen short.
Harry Staley (founder, past president and Board Chairman), founded RI Taxpayers, (formerly the RI Statewide Coalition … RISC) twelve years ago. Over that period, the organization was a strong voice in driving many positive changes resulting from its efforts to improve the political culture of Rhode Island, and its competitiveness.
With Harry’s untimely passing in June of 2014, we were unable to maintain the fundraising levels that he was so successful in driving.
We would like to thank all our supporters for your devotion to RI Taxpayers over these past years.
Harry Staley had a noble vision for a better Rhode Island with citizens having a key voice in the realization of that vision. While yesterday’s edition was the last Taxpayer Times, we hope that you will all stay involved with helping to drive Rhode Island to a higher level by reaching out to other good government groups in Rhode Island.
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Douglas Matthews of Roslindale, MA, devoted family man, inspiring teacher and advocate for social and economic justice, passed away February 11, just three days after his sixty-third birthday, following a long illness. Doug worked in Rhode Island in the 1980s at the Coalition for Consumer Justice (CCJ) and Workers Association for Guaranteed Employment (WAGE). He is well remembered by his many friends in RI as an impassioned community organizer and canvass director and as a generous sharer of his extensive knowledge of political theory – including feminist theory, music, books, movies and life-experiences.
While in Providence, Doug met the love of his life and future wife, Sarah Lamitie. After marrying in 1988, they settled in Boston and raised two children: Claire Lamitie and Finley Matthews – both now in college. A natural educator, at the age of 40, Doug transitioned from community organizing to teaching school – primarily at Attleboro High School where he taught social studies for the last 18 years. He was known for teaching current global affairs so his students would always be informed about the world around them. He created courses on topics such as Islam and global conflict and brought guest speakers into his classes from all ends of the spectrum. He was the long-time advisor to many student clubs including: Amnesty International, environmental clubs, the Gay Straight Alliance and Model U.N.
Because of his flexible teacher’s schedule, Doug was deeply involved in his children’s lives, a role he relished. He was a consistent support and presence in their lives. Doug will be sorely missed by his family, friends, neighbors and colleagues alike who came to know him and his loving, gentle nature, good humor, patience, deeply principled and joyful approach to life.
A memorial service is planned for March 26, 2016 at 2:00 p.m. at Theodore Parker Unitarian Church, 1859 Centre Street, West Roxbury, MA. Donations in Doug’s memory may be made to Attleboro High School in support of the Model UN Program (508-222-5150); Roxbury Youthworks, Inc (www.roxburyyouthworks.org), or Heifer International (www.heifer.org).
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On March 4th 2016, I attended a CSEC (Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children) training by DayOneRI at the Warwick Public Library. Sara Eckhoff was the trainer and when she started her Powerpoint presentation I almost fell out of my chair. This time DayoneRI was claiming that there were 330,000 US children being exploited in the US and that the pimps and traffickers were making 8 billion dollars a year. Yet we know this myth was also recently proved to be false by the Washington Post’s fact checker.
Eckhoff then said that the average age of entry was 14 and when I corrected her, she went on to say that CSES has seen 14 be the average age of entry based on the children they are working with. However, she then said that the program she works with through DayOneRI only includes kids up until age 14. Eckhoff also reconfirmed that DayOneRI does not house any of these children and that rescued children get placed into foster homes.
Eckhoff then explained how pimps are grooming kids, and how gang members were tattooing the victims and how the pimps were waiting down the road from the foster homes. Eckhoff told us one sign of trafficking is when teenage girls start wearing mini skirts and that they might even become sexually promiscuous. Elizabeth Nolan Brown has highlighted the damage caused by these hysterical myths here.
Eckhoff also mentioned that DayOneRI has to meet with the teens an average of 6 times before the teenagers will open up to them, and that these teens are just looking for love and a sense of family. Yet she couldn’t seem to explain why the teenagers keep running away.
I mentioned how DayOneRI was part of the RI Trafficking Task Force and how they just did an “End the demand sting” in Cranston and arrested 13 men. Eckhoff directed my question to another DayOneRI rep at the back of the room, who tried to deny this. I pressed on and said it was published in the media that the sting was done as a group effort by the RI Trafficking Task Force, at which time she said that people were only arrested if they had outstanding warrants. I asked, how arresting clients helps trafficking victims. The rep offered to speak to me outside privately after the training which demonstrated to me that DayOneRI has no interest in transparency and has a lot of interest in silencing sex workers who have different narratives.
I tried to tell Eckhoff that the majority of youths interviewed report that they don’t have pimps and that they teach each other how to find clients. Eckhoff responded that this isn’t what they see at DayOneRI. I told Eckhoff that the data shows that more teens were being arrested for prostitution in the 80’s and 90’s than in most recent years and we just have a new name for an old problem. The new name is sex trafficking and the problem is runaway and thrown away kids. But that didn’t slow Eckhoff down, because five seconds later she was telling the audience that sex trafficking is on the rise.
So I tried a different approach. I explained that 97 percent of all sexual abuse on children happens by someone the child knows and only 3 percent happens in the sex industry. I asked Eckhoff why we are not teaching the public how to identify kids that are being sexually abused by someone they know. After all, she just told us 90 percent of sex trafficking victims were sexually abused as kids. Sara says that she understands 97 percent of abusers are someone the child knows, but this training was just on CSEC.
Now you would think the audience would be happy that there was someone in the room that had accurate information, however one woman had the nerve to say that she wanted me to stop asking questions and to stop correcting Eckhoff. The woman told us how she thinks there use to be a brothel in her neighborhood, and how it must have been shut down, because now it was a Church.
Eckhoff explained how people could access “the victims compensation program.” I told her that anyone involved in prostitution was not eligible for that program and how we had to fight to get that regulation changed in CA and how this would be a great goal to work on in RI. At this point Steve Morley came to my defense and confirmed what I had said was true. He is the new department head at DCYF (Department of Children, Youth & Family). Morley explained he was retired law enforcement and I felt that he understood the reality people in the sex industry lived in.
DayOneRI told the public that gangs were raping girls and forcing them into prostitution. I wonder how many young men from poor communities will be victimized during the next, “End the demand sting” or the next time the RI Trafficking Task Force interrogates a minor caught working as a underage sex worker.
COYOTE RI would like others to utilize our experts and experience and we are willing to offer free trainings to all service providers, law enforcement and DCYF workers.
Here is a study on 45 trafficking victims from 32 states. 90 percent of them were arrested, not rescued. Some have been arrested 20 or 30 times and services were only offered to those who played the victim role.
So far we have surveyed 43 New England Sex Workers. Some of the most interesting findings thus far are that 77 percent of respondents reported that they have never tried reporting a crime while working in the sex industry. For those who did try making a report to the police, 77 percent said the police did not take their report. 4 percent were arrested while trying to report a crime. 26 percent report being threatened with arrest while trying to report a crime. 29 percent said they did not report the crime because they thought they would be arrested. 27 percent said they did not report the crimes because they didn’t think the police would do anything and 32 percent did not report because they didn’t want to draw attention to themselves or their co-workers. This and other similar data reveal how sex workers bear the negative consequences of anti-sex trafficking policing.
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This presidential election cycle has me a bit confused, especially on the Democratic side. It seems that many of our leaders have forgotten that we are a nationof revolutionary ideas.
I’m a millennial who enlisted in the Marine Corps in 2001, emboldened by the fervor of unity that swept our country after the 9/11 attacks. Mix the boundless ego of a Marine with an 18-year-old’s propensity for taking risks and it seemed all things were possible.
But you don’t need to be a Marine to believe that we’re capable of big things. Any entrepreneur worth their salt has pushed the envelope with an almost irrational belief in their capacity to make big things happen. Most of us know what it’s like to be a young child with limitless curiosity, a hunger to explore, and a fearlessness to peer into the unknown.
It is that fearlessness and vision that gave birth to a revolution, one that would shape the future of the world. It was our revolution and it happened not all that long ago in the grand scheme of things.
The story of America isn’t a fairy tale. The men who created it weren’t gods, they were human. When did we become so timid about big ideas?
We created a self-governing republic that was unlike any other that came before it. This is our history. And the people who led this revolution and the people who fought this revolution were not super human. They were finite, they were flawed, but they were courageous.
America desperately needs a John Adams, a Jefferson. It desperately needs a people so belligerently unaccepting of social injustice that they rise up with their vote, their voice, and their aspirations.
No matter the cause of our sleepy abdication of power, we are still a self-governing republic. No matter the influence of big money, our vote cannot be bought. And there are still big ideas worthy of our history.
Ideas like making healthcare a civil right, converting our energy system from fossil fuels to renewables, and ending a corrupt campaign financing system that reduces our politicians from statesmen to frenetic fundraisers.
We didn’t draft the Declaration of Independence thinking, “Nothing will ever change anyway, why even try.” Men and women didn’t sacrifice everything they had on earth saying to themselves, “Freedom would be really awesome, but it’s not pragmatic or realistic.”
Stop being so cautious America. If there’s anything about who we are as a people that we can agree on, it’s that we’re revolutionary. Start acting like it.
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After its untimely death last year, carbon tax is back in the Rhode Island legislature. On March 7, the Energize RI sent out an email:
The Energize RI Act is about to take a big step forward: the hearing in front of the House Environment and Natural Resources Committee is planned for March 10th at the Rise of the House (details below). We need you to support the bill alongside over fifteen expert witnesses who will be demonstrating why carbon pricing is a win-win solution. Read on to learn more about the hearing, or shoot us an email, and we’ll help you draft your own testimony for the bill.
The goals of the bill are admirable:
(4) Reduce public health, public safety, economic, and natural resource impairment risks associated with climate change; and
(5) Meet the state emissions goals for 2035 as set by the “Resilient Rhode Island Act” in 2014.
Fortunately, the bill has various provisions that will address the problem that Camus summed up as: “It is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.” To put it differently: we should be taxing the upper income brackets at the 1950s level of more than 90%.
The carbon tax collected under the Energize RI Act will be used as follows:
25% will be used for climate resilience, energy efficiency and conservation, and renewable energy programs that benefit low-income residential and small business properties.
30% is to be used to provide direct dividends to employers.
40% shall be used to provide direct dividends to residents.
If you want to maximize the economic benefit of those carbon tax revenues, it is widely known that public spending/investment is a better approach. Multipliers for public investment are much higher than for tax cuts.
One may wonder whether, as is the case in Connecticut, installing more natural gas will be counted as part of item #1: “Switching to natural gas couldn’t be easier,” Evensource advises its customers and then refers them to the Green Bank for financing. Would you put something like that past Governor Raimondo’s step-on-the-natural-gas Office of Energy Resources?
It’s wonderful to see that we are having this discussion and that our legislators continue to think seriously about how to deal with climate change. I certainly appreciate the efforts of the sponsors of the Energize RI Act, Representatives Regunberg, Handy, Carson, Tobon, and Bennett.
Undoubtedly, experts will testify about the success of British Columbia’s carbon neutral tax bill. Before we get too excited about an attempt to duplicate the BC success story in RI, it might help to look at the following graph, which is from a post with the ominous title “British Columbia’s Carbon Tax and ‘Leakage’ Into the U.S.”
As the post states:
The chart makes it clear that there was a giant surge in Canadian vehicles crossing from British Columbia into the United States (solid red line) starting shortly after introduction of the BC carbon tax (in mid-2008).
If this kind of leakage occurs in British Columbia, what do you expect for a small state like Rhode Island? The only feature of the bill that might avoid this problem is the tax itself: $15 per ton of CO2e. That boils down to ¢13 per gallon of gas. No sane person would believe that such a minimal tax will even remotely phase out fossil fuels. The bill may start a trend that might be followed by neighboring states, which indeed is the only way to avoid the “leakage” problem.
But, if setting a trend is the idea, it better be the right trend and this is the major problem with this bill. It contains a tax for methane that escapes unburned even out of state. That the bill recognizes this problem is a majors step forward, but the details matter. Getting so-called fugitive methane completely wrong is precisely why the national Clean Power Plan is a disaster.
To tax fugitive methane, the Energize RI Act will rely on numbers provided by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The RI Office of Energy Resources, which will be responsible for the implementation of this part of the Energize RI Act, will rely on bad EIA numbers.
Even this February’s EPA publication (see page E13, line 13) still uses outdated numbers for the global warming potential of methane and amortizes its effect over next century. We only have about a decade, if even, to avoid a climate catastrophe. For more about time scales and the fugitive methane problem see Precaution the new aggression.
The EPA has a long history of underestimating fugitive methane. The upshot of these errors is that the Energize RI Act might set a trend of under-taxing fugitive methane by roughly a factor ten. Exxon Mobil —#ExxonKnew, our nation’s biggest fracker— undoubtedly loves this trend! None of this should come as a surprise: the head of EPA has been a political appointee since its inception in 1970. The good news is that I’ve been told that, if the Act is passed this year, its sponsors will try to amend it to fix the flaw in the present act.
Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.
Humanity must reduce its emissions by 5-7% per year as of today to stop the wild dash off the climate cliff.
We, the industrialized carbon-debtor nations, have already outspent our greenhouse gas budget.
Finally, to add to your sense of reality, watch Hansen’s latest video, but don’t share it with the kids!
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