WaPost: Gist controversial on national level too
Deborah Gist is not only raising hackles with the education community here in Rhode Island, she’s doing it on a national level too! On Tuesday, Chiefs for Change released a letter attacking labor leader Randi Weingarten for opposing high stakes testing. Gist is on the board for Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change group and she [...]
Supreme Court Declines To Hear My RNC Civil Suit
I was arrested while walking through a park at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota four years ago. Along with many other alarmed citizens, I was charged with Felony Riot and taken to Ramsey County Jail. With the support of Minneapolis Hip Hop group Atmosphere and the Rhode Island music label Strange Famous [...]
What Will Obama Gun Regulation Accomplish?
Recent controversy over which actual weapons were used at Sandy Hook, including MSNBC’s report as to whether an assault weapon was used at all, is likely to have no impact on the government response moving forward. Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Similarly, the fact that the government told [...]
Fiscal Cliff Negotiations, As Told By SNL, Robert Reich
Let’s hope this isn’t how negotiations go between President Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner as they try to hammer out a deal on the fiscal cliff. Although the real joke is that Democrats could cave in spite of all the negotiating power they have… Just in case Obama and the Democrats do [...]
George McGovern: POTUS Candidate, Progressive
If ever there was a presidential candidate that progressives could be proud of it was surely George McGovern, who died this morning at 90 years old in his hometown of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. McGovern spoke out angrily against war, he advocated passionately for the poor and the middle class and he sounded the alarm [...]
Jill Stein, Green Party Candidate for President, Comes to RI
In the most exciting news, our very dynamic Green presidential candidate, Jill Stein, will be in Rhode Island today and wants to meet you personally, to talk about the “Green New Deal,” and hear your views on solutions for America. You may have heard Jill’s incredible interview on National Public Radio, or seen reports of her recent arrest at a housing foreclosure [...]
Congrats to RI, John Joyce for Homeless Bill of Rights
Rhode Island should indeed be proud as it is the only state in the nation to pass a law that specifically protects the rights of the homeless. The newly-enacted Homeless Bill of Rights protects those without homes by ensuring they can vote, that they can rent an apartment, that they can get a job and [...]
Time to Move Woonsocket Cross to Private Land
The Supreme Court today denied an appeal in a case involving the Mount Soledad Cross in La Jolla, California, thereby effectively ruling the 29-foot tall cross on public property unconstitutional. (For a history of the Mt. Soledad cross, see Wikipedia. For a report on today’s ruling, see here.) This ruling should give supporters of a [...]
Metts Says He Doesn’t Know How He Got On ALEC List
Another Democratic state legislator says he doesn’t know how he got on a list of current and former ALEC members at the State House. Sen Harold Metts, a progressive Democrat from Providence, told me he doesn’t know why he was listed as a former member of the American Legislative Exchange Council. “The only thing I [...]
Reed Now Supports Marriage Equality, Too
Thanks, presumably, to President Obama’s historic announcement of support for marriage equality, Rhode Island’s entire congressional delegation now believes gay couples should enjoy the same relationship rights as heterosexual couples. Senator Jack Reed was the lone holdout to support same sex marriage among the state’s beltway pols, but about three hours after the president announced [...]
North Carolina Votes for Marriage Inequality
So Amendment One in North Carolina passed via voter referendum, and it passed overwhelmingly. Simply put, Amendment One criminalizes love. Not only does it add a ban on the rights of homosexuals to marry (already illegal in North Carolina) to their state constitution, it bans the existence of civil unions between even straight couples. It passed [...]
ALEC Funds Brien’s Travel Costs to Annual Meeting
Conservative Rep. Jon Brien, of Woonsocket, will be attending his first ALEC meeting as a member of the far right wing group’s board of directors when he travels to Charlotte, NC on Thursday for its annual Spring Task Force meeting where, he said, one of the orders of business will be “coming up with a [...]
Bank of America Protest: First PVD, Then NC
After a protest in front of the downtown Bank of America building this afternoon at 5pm, about 15 Rhode Islanders are heading off to Charlotte North Carolina to join thousands of others from across the United States to protest at the bank’s annual shareholder’s meeting. Today’s action in downtown Providence in front of the Superman [...]
Union Objects to Taxes Funding ALEC Costs
Writing on behalf of the 80,000 members of the AFL-CIO, union leaders George Nee and Maureen Martin sent a letter to every member of the legislature asking that ALEC memberships not be funded with taxpayer money. “If the views and priorities of ALEC align with your personal beliefs, then by all means remain a member,” [...]
Tassoni: Second Legislator To Drop Out of ALEC
Citing the “self-serving ideas of corporations and rich, powerful interests,” Sen John Tassoni, a Smithfield Democrat, become the second member of the General Assembly to officially distance himself from the American Legislative Exchange Council, the shadowy far right wing organization known as ALEC that pairs legislators with corporate interests, after news that more than 20 [...]
Reed, Cicilline Speak Out on Student Loan Debt
Rhode Island’s congressional delegation is getting in on the ground floor of the fight over student loan interest hike. Last week, the House passed a bill that would keep interest rates low but at the expense of health care programs for women. Sen. Jack Reed, author of a bill that would prevent Stafford Loan interest [...]
Taxpayers Are Funding Legislators’ ALEC Memberships
Rhode Islanders taxpayers are funding legislators’ memberships in ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, said House spokesman Larry Berman. He said the state paid $800 in January for eight new members (more than 20 percent of the legislature are members) that Rep. Jon Brien, a conservative Democrat from Woonsocket who was recently put on the [...]
Dem. Lawmakers Distance Themselves from ALEC
Democratic legislators distanced themselves from involvement with ALEC, the far right wing group that acts as a stealth lobby organization to state legislators, saying they signed up because Rep. Jon Brien asked them to do so. Many said they didn’t know much about the organization, even though it has been all over the news as [...]
More than 20% of General Assembly Involved with ALEC
More than 20 percent of Rhode Island’s General Assembly is affiliated with ALEC, the right-wing group sponsored by corporate America that drafts model legislation for use at state houses across the country, according to a list provided by Rep. Jon Brien, the state chairman and a member of the group’s board of directors. There are [...]
Brien Joins ALEC Board as Group Comes Under Fire
Conservative House Democrat Jon Brien of Woonsocket is not only a card carrying member of ALEC, the right wing group backed by some of America’s most powerful corporations that writes model legislation for use in state houses around the country, but he’s also the lone Democrat on the group’s 17 member board of directors. “I [...]
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