Progress Report: State Senate and Marriage Equality; Dismantling the EDC; Angel, Gina and Campaign Cash

The must read piece of the day – if not the summer, to date – is Phoenix editor David Scharfenberg’s excellent piece on the marriage equality debate in the state Senate. So great is this piece that I’ll be taking a closer look at it later today, too.

As pleased as I am with Scharfenberg’s piece, I am equally upset with Phillipe and Jorge’s tasteless joke … I might not be Polish myself but I happen to be madly in love with someone who is.

The Projo reports this morning that those who typically want to shrink government now want to “dismantle” the EDC, and are using the 38 Studios debacle as the impetus. Rhode Island may well want to look at new options for how the public sector helps the private sector, but it’s important to remember that the 38 Studios mess is Republican Don Carcieri’s doing; EDC was just doing what he told them to do.

Ian Donnis says money won’t likely be the deciding factor if Angel and Gina square off for governor in two years. That’s good news for the mayor of Providence, because the state treasurer has proven she can raise significant cash from out-of-state donors who might perhaps benefit from her top-down, finance first style of governing.

Dan McGowan keeps hammering on the back and forth over who’s more Rhode Island: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse or Boca Raton Barry Hinckley.

And over at Prosperous Rising (if the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and Anchor Rising are going to report the same stuff, we may as well give them one name) Monique Chartier says there is going to be a protest against the proposed Sakonnet River bridge toll today. This should be a progressive issue, too. It’s a very regressive way to raise revenue and will adversely affect the working class people of the East Bay who commute back and forth across the bridge. It would be imminently better for the state’s economy to make us East Greenwich residents pay a toll to commute to our white collar jobs in the big city.

Anyone who has ever gone through depression should reads the great column in today’s Projo about how Bruce Springsteen did too. Anne Michaud writes: “It’s startling that a person so fabulously successful could have been depressed. Even more surprising, depression hit after his breakthrough commercial album “Born to Run” in 1975. But without role models for healthy recovery, individuals may reject treatment for fear they’ll be mistaken for “crazies” who dye their hair orange and allegedly hunt movie patrons. They rob themselves of the chance for recovery.”

Don’t forget to watch the Perseid meteor shower Saturday night. And, when you do, wish upon a shooting star. But do so judiciously, as it is likely to come true…