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I’m pretty sure Arlo Guthrie’s classic “Alice’s Restaurant” became a Thanksgiving carol not because it has much to do with Thanksgiving, though the story does start with Arlo and friends getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner but rather because it’s 18 minutes long and dj’s who had to work on Thanksgiving could enjoy an extended break.
So I dedicate this to anyone who has to work today, or doesn’t have family and friends to enjoy the holiday with.
Please let us know in the comments below what you are thankful for…
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Monday Nov 25, 2013 North Kingstown, RI — Good morning, Ocean State. This is Bob Plain, editor and publisher of the RI Future blog podcasting to you from The Hideaway on the banks of the Mattatuxet River behind the Shady Lea Mill in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.
Its Monday, November 25th, the first day of the rest of our lives with Iran … and here on the home front it’s freezing outside. In fact, the last time it was this cold for this long, it was February! And don’t expect it to get any warmer until Wednesday, when it’ll be raining cats and dogs. This will obviously stink for all the folks traveling home to see friends and family … but Thanksgiving and Buy Nothing Day will be cold and sunny so you can enjoy high school football and a post-meal walk and then on Friday, you can take in a Walmart protest and the winter coat exchange at the State House.
If you’re looking for a holiday charity to support …. the ProJo says Speaker Gordon Fox and Majority Leader Nick Mattiello are holding fundraiser on December 4 … The House Leadership PAC only has $66,000 on hand, so you can drop off second hand clothes and cans of food at Camile’s on Federal Hill after purchasing a $125 ticket. It costs less to Springsteen than Speaker Fox.
WPRI reports that 34 percent of students from the urban core – Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls and Woonsocket aren’t graduating from high school on time. What do you want to bet this 34 percent of the population some day becomes the roughly one-third of the state on food stamps and become most of the 15 or 20 percent of the state that can’t find a job. Meanwhile … on NBC 10 Wingmen this weekend, Justin Katz, Bill Rappleye and I debate whether or not Rhode Island’s economic woes are pretty much isolated to the urban core. You can watch that video on RI Future….
It’s not true that Rhode Island only tops the charts when it comes to bad business rankings … our very own Superman building was named Gizomodo’s number 1 zombie tower in the nation. The empty icon was abandoned by Bank of America last year, and now the building owners are suing the super-sized bank for $23 million, saying it left our Industrial Trust Tower a wreck.
In all fairness, the Ocean State does well on many rankings not related to ALEC’s agenda … like recently the Providence was named the fourth best city for hipsters, behind only Portland, New Orleans and San Francisco.
Russ Moore writes in GoLocal in a column praising business owners, “Nobody can tell me that the government bureaucrat is a public servant but a private sector business owner isnt.” Well … perhaps somebody should, because one works for the public and the other works for him or herself. This isn’t to say that business owners aren’t good people, but Moore says there would be no public sector without the private sector. Yeah, because the human race would wither and die without a seaside restaurant at which to enjoy fried seafood….
GoLocal also profiles Rebecca Fisher, a Middletown shift captain and thus the highest ranking female fire fighter in state history. “Being a female firefighter is really the same as being a firefighter,” she said, adding, “The job does not change based on your gender.”
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse was mostly correct to classify Republicans under the age of 35 think climate change deniers are “ignorant,” “out of touch” or “crazy,” ruled Politifact. Gene Emery gives him points off for only relying one poll … anyone want to pay Joe Fleming to ask 500 young Rhode Island Republicans this question?
The brilliant Scott MacKay of Rhode Island Public Radio has a , the possible progressive choice for governor in 2014. Comparing him to Angel Taveras, MacKay says, “Pell had a different head start. Hes a son of wealth, WASP privilege and summers in Newport.”
Reverend T. J. Jemison, who in Baton Rogue, Louisiana in 1953 organized one of the first bus boycotts, died last week. He co-founded with Martin Luther King and others the Southern Christian Leadership Council.
Today in…
1911, Emiliano Zapata, Mecixan revolutionary, first proclaims the Plan de Ayala, which demanded elections and land be returned from big hacendados to villagers. In short, “Tierra y Libertad!”
1970, Sax player Albert Ayler is found floating in the East River … here he is performing Swing Low Sweet Chariot recorded in New York City six years earlier…
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The 16th Annual Buy Nothing Day Winter Coat Exchange will take place at 9 locations in Rhode Island on Friday November 23. Winter Coats will be given away starting at 9 or 10 AM at locations in Bristol, Cranston, East Providence, Newport, North Kingstown, Pawtucket, Providence, Wakefield, and Warwick.
In the age of Wall St crashing the economy and climate change, we have raised overconsumption to an art form that is tearing apart the ecosystems of the planet and our communities. To remind us of the madness many years ago people started celebrating Buy Nothing Day to protest basing our society on consumerism. This year for the 16th year people in Rhode island will gather to collect winter coats from those who no longer need them, and distribute them to Rhode Islanders who can use them. Over the years we have grown to 9 sites and hundreds of volunteers (thanks to the YMCA for adding a number of sites to the network this year) that collect and give away winter coats instead of heading to the malls, We are sending a message of rethinking consumerism while actively providing a resource for our communities.
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It’s amazing some of the things we’re willing to believe … Jesus was born to a virgin, Thomas Jefferson thought all men were created equal, Reaganomics works and, the perhaps the biggest doozie of them all, that Rhode Island did its due diligence in assessing the 38 Studios deal.
For anyone still hanging onto that most recent bit of malarchy, Tim White and Ted Nesi have some news for you.
One of the most interesting aspects of their scoop is Linc Chafee’s letter to Keith Stokes about the impending deal, and Stokes’ reply – which was essentially that smarter business minds than Chafee’s had already vetted the deal … which goes to show, I think, that being successful in the free market doesn’t always – or even all that often – translate into having a flair for what works with regard to public policy.
The banksters don’t want Elizabeth Warren on the Senate committee that oversees their industry. No surprise there … I wonder what the people want? And which constituency will get its way?
How small is Rhode Island? We would fit into Alaska more than 547 times! I once lived in a county in Oregon that was about four times the size of our state. And before that in an unincorporated hamlet in Northern California that only had about 200 full-time residents, but was at least twice the size of the Ocean State.
Marion said the rule request was prompted by Providence Journal reports concerning two legislators’ controversial trips. One trip was taken by Senate Majority Leader Dominic J. Ruggerio, to a Buenos Aires, Argentina, luxury hotel last year, paid for by a New Jersey organization, the Senate President’s Forum. The other, Marion said, “was by soon-to-be former Senator Jon Brien’s travel to these conferences held by the American Legislative Exchange Council, otherwise known as ALEC.” Marion said, “In both instances, that travel wouldn’t have come to public light except for the reporting that had occurred about them.
One clarification: that was my shoe leather on the ALEC story. In an email to me this morning, Marion confirmed, “It was the Projo reporting on Ruggerio that first led us to this idea, and RI Future’s reporting on ALEC that pushed us to make a request of the Commission.”
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Nope, it’s not just you. It turns out most Americans don’t want to deal with Christmas until after Thanksgiving, according to a new poll by Harris Interactive.
According to the survey, a whopping 75 percent of people surveyed don’t want to see holiday decorations in stores until after Thanksgiving. Similarly, 78 percent said they didn’t want to hear holiday music in stores until after Thanksgiving.
“The results of our Holiday Readiness Survey show that Americans think stores shouldn’t ‘Deck the Halls’ until after Thanksgiving,” said Tom Lounibos, the CEO of SOASTA, the online testing company that commissioned the poll.
Oh, and by the way, I stand corrected … there may be some labor protests at local Walmarts after all. According to this Facebook page, there will be actions at the Walmarts in Fall River at 11am, Seekonk at 1pm and at the Providence Walmart at 2pm.
According to a press release, here’s the methodology for the poll: “This survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of SOASTA from September 17, 2012 – September 19, 2012 among 2,346 adults age 18+. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.
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We’re now the number one state in New England for food insecurity, reports the ProJo this morning. 15 percent of households in the state can’t afford the food it needs. This is a crisis of epic proportions that goes largely unaddressed because the influential class doesn’t tend to know many people that are affected by it.
Scott MacKay, who knows how local politics works as well as any Rhode Islander, suggests its time for the state and labor unions to strike a deal on pension reform … letting the legal system work it out, he argues is potentially very expensive and at the least very risky for taxpayers. Plus, Providence and Mayor Taveras has shown that this is a far better option politically, as well.
Speaking of pension reform, not one of the 17 state legislators who voted against it lost in the election for doing so, reports GoLocal.
And back to RIPR for a moment … Ian Donnis seems irked that I’m still irked that WPRI kept Abel Collins out of a televised debate! Interestingly, I actually think WPRI did Collins an electoral favor by snubbing him – he got more earned media by not being included than he would have had he debated, which wasn’t his strong suit as a candidate in the first place. That said, I don’t think affect on outcome is the standard by which media organizations should determine who should and should not be included in debates. I think it should be based on what potential voters should know about their options … news coverage doesn’t exist for candidates to benefit from, it exists for consumers to learn from.
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Black Friday, America’s annual homage to rampant consumerism, is not only the day after Thanksgiving, it’s also the perfect enemy of the day we give thanks to all the things that really matter in life: family, health and harvest. Conversely, Black Friday celebrates stuff we don’t need, and so often shows just how ugly we can be when trying to obtain it.
And now Black Friday wants to move in on Thanksgiving’s mojo by infringing on the original holiday. Local retailers are complaining that local blue laws won’t allow them to open on the most widely-celebrated and uniquely American of holidays.
RI Public Radio last week let a little astroturfing slide on the subject, calling Paul DeRoche the director of the Rhode Island Retail Federation. In reality, he’s the lone member of that “federation” and is better known as a lobbyist for the Providence Chamber of Commerce.
The retail giant wants more opportunities to sell its junk to consumers, so it sent out a couple press releases and whispered in the ear of some local pro-business groups and just waited for the the media to do it’s thing.
But as the rest of the country is learning that employees at thousands of Walmarts from Washington D.C to Seattle are planning a strike to protest being forced to work on Thanksgiving, the media here is largely simply parroting Walmart’s talking point that Black Friday is being oppressed by anachronistic blue laws.
If anything, as a society, we should be working on ways to extend the Thanksgiving mojo not the Black Friday vibe. One way to do this is to , where Greg Gerritt will be collecting clothes to be shared with those who can’t afford to participate in the Black Friday madness.
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