Progress Report: Spending on State House Races; RI Has a Budget Surplus; Verizon Saves Your Texts, Henry Thoreau

One has to like not only the name, but also the motivation, of a group backing progressive candidates for State House seats.

According to WPRI’s Ted Nesi: “People for Rhode Island’s Future spent $26,500 this week to support six pro-gay-marriage candidates (David Gorman, Gene Dyszlewski, Lewis Pryeor, Adam Satchell, Laura Pisaturo and Roberto DaSilva) and oppose six others on the ballot (Lou Raptakis, Frank Lombardi, Marc Cote, Michael Pinga, Michael McCaffrey and Dan DaPonte).”

Fight Back RI, a local group working for marriage equality, also endorsed some legislative candidates recently.

Meanwhile, Nesi goes on to report that 50CAN, a national PAC that supports the corporate charter school model for public education, is also spending money supporting local candidates. “50CAN Action Fund said it spent $44,902 on Aug. 30 supporting four candidates in next week’s primary: DaPonte, Jon Brien, Maura Kelly and Mia Ackerman,” Nesi writes. “The group’s Rhode Island chapter endorsed all of them except DaPonte.”

Rhode Island should be concerned that RI-CAN, the major proponent of the big box charter school model in the state, is supporting Brien. He’s one of the most conservative members of the General Assembly who is already a direct conduit for corporate America into our political system through his involvement with ALEC.

And spending money is only one of the ways in which the corporate charter school agenda is trying to influence local politics. Ed Fitzpatrick looks at the race for Senate District 3, which pits former RI-CAN executive director Maryellen Butke against Gayle Goldin, who works for the Women’s Fund of Rhode Island.

Here’s one of the biggest problems with our political process: many pretend that the state is broke but it isn’t. In fact, it turns out Rhode Island enjoys a $115 million surplus in its budget this year.

Yet still, the state is cutting services that help those hardest hit by the recession.

Such contradictions are just one of the many reasons we should discount blowhards like Harriet Loyd of RISC … especially when she uses inflammatory rhetoric like trying to “eradicate” incumbents.

Speaking of nonsense from GoLocal, there is so much that is offensive about this story and the way it is presented, I hardly know where to start. How about with the stock photo of the bloody knife? GoLocal could write the same story about any weekend night on the East Greenwich waterfront, but I think it’s safe to say it wouldn’t.

Verizon is keeping a copy of the texts you send, and if asked they’ll share them with law enforcement.

Bill Clinton’s line of the night at the DNC: “We believe ‘we’re all in this together’ is a better philosophy than ‘you’re on your own.'”

Elizabeth Warren had a pretty good one too when she explained how corporations are not, in fact, people.

On this day in 1847, Henry David Thoreau leaves Walden after two years of living deliberately and moves in with Ralph Waldo Emerson.