Tag: dan hurley

Gordon Fox’s reelection battle has become one of the most watched contests in Rhode Island, and Ian Donnis yesterday busted out what I think is the best local campaign journalism of the year summarizing his race against Mark Binder.

“Fewer than 9,000 voters will decide one of Rhode Island’s most important elections on November 6,” reports Donnis. He does a great job of laying out both Mark Binder and Fox’s talking points, but the real gem is the audio he gets of Fox going door-to-door.

A voter says to Gordon Fox: “Do you deserve a good, swift kick in the ass?” Fox responds, “To keep me focused, we all do. We all do from time to time.”

The ProJo’s cleanup hitter Mike Stanton follows that up this morning with a pretty good front page overview of his own.

Here’s why Lawrence Lessig is so prophetic: “The real corruption isn’t the total amount of money raised; it’s the total amount of time spent raising money — not from all of us — but from the tiniest slice of the 1 percent,” he tells the ProJo’s Ed Fitzpatrick. Lessig, a Harvard professor, will speak at Common Cause RI’s annual dinner tonight. Hope to see you there!

Speaking of the inherent issue with political fundraising from the 1 percent, Gina Raimondo already has more than $1 million in her campaign account. It isn’t middle class Rhode Islanders who couldn’t afford to to pay for public sector pensions who are making this big donations … it’s the uber rich who know how good Raimondo’s pension reforms have been for Wall Street and the finance industry.

And speaking of the 1 percent, Tim White takes his annual look at highest paid state workers in Rhode Island. It seems as if for the first time in many moons URI’s head basketball coach won’t be the highest paid public sector employee in the state … not that new coach Dan Hurley doesn’t deserve it. The Hurley Bros are gonna turn our program around!! He’s also a lot of fun to follow on Twitter.

And speaking of the highest paid local folks, we looked into the highest paid CEO’s in Rhode Island back in April. Compare their salaries to the highest paid state workers and then consider which jobs are more important to our society. Then compare both sets of salaries to what you might earn, or what the fire fighter or public works employee who saved your ass during Hurricane Sandy might earn. The reality is one of the biggest problems with the way our economy functions is the utter lack of any relationship between pay grade and job importance. This is ridiculously obvious when you consider what the richest Rhode Islanders “earn” compared to the rest of us. But, according to the laws of corporate-controlled capitalism, those who serve the stock market best get the most money…

As I’ve argued before, farmers should be the highest paid sector of an economy that serves the people … and supporting local agriculture should be the most bipartisan issue in America. It’s great for the economy, the environment, health and wellness, real estate values, even local taxing capacity … to that end, support ballot question 6 on Tuesday.

The ProJo editorial board applauds URI for moving its MBA program to the Capital City, and endorses the idea of partnering with CCRI and move its nursing program to the I-195 land to be closer to Brown. I concur.

I have no idea why, but I thought GoLocal’s look at what local pols gave out for Halloween candy was great journalism.

American Pirate Party, anyone? Sounds pretty good to me…