Progressive News, Opinion, and Analysis
Sunday was a somewhat rainy day but the spirit of solidarity was not dampened as family members and supporters, including General Assembly member Aaron Regunberg and local candidate Jeremy Rix. Noisemakers and even a few costumes were to be found as there was a great deal of spirit within the crowd.
The Sierra Club’s ally the Communications Workers of America (CWA) is currently on strike against Verizon and Verizon Wireless (Verizon) in 9 northeast and mid-Atlantic states, including Rhode Island, after contract negotiations broke down. (The other states are MA, NY, NJ, PA, MD, DE, DC and VA). CWA members have been critical allies to the Sierra Club on issues ranging from democracy to trade to climate disruption. Now it is our turn to stand up for them.
While Verizon employees are struggling for fair jobs, communities from Baltimore to Appalachia are struggling to transition to the 21st-century clean energy economy without access to high-speed internet due to Verizon’s neglect. This denial of access to an essential tool of the 21st century economy is a prime example of the links between environmental and economic injustice.
Verizon has been raking in billions of dollars of profits every year, yet they are still trying to outsource good union jobs, transfer technicians away from their homes for months at a time, take away employees’ health benefits and avoid paying federal income tax. At the same time, they are still refusing to expand their FiOS high-speed internet to low-income and communities of color, despite getting tax breaks and subsidies to do so. To make matters worse, Verizon is refusing to sit down and negotiate a fair contract with its employees.
In negotiations over their union contract, Verizon employees are coming together to fight the outsourcing of their union jobs and to make sure that everyone has access to quality service. If Verizon employees lose this round of contract negotiations, other companies will see that they too can get away with shoddy service, offshoring jobs, contracting out work, and poor treatment of their employees.
We must ensure that our friends and neighbors have jobs that sustain their families and bolsters the economy in Rhode Island. For good jobs and a just transition, Sierra Club stands in solidarity with Verizon workers.
[From a press release]
Today on the prompting of Lauren Niedel, the Rhode Island State Representative for the Bernie Sanders campaign, I took a tour of various picket lines featuring striking Verizon workers. The day proved to be very educational in a variety of ways.
Over the past few weeks, I have ridden by Verizon pickets on a regular basis. Here is what happened one day when the marchers protested around a van with scab labor inside parked behind the central branch of the Providence Public Library.
I began the day at a coffee shop where Jobs With Justice’s Mike Araujo came in with his family. We are neighbors and friendly enough that we had a brief chat where he expressed pleasure at the idea of Sanders supporters marching the picket lines with workers, that the movement was using his candidacy as opposed to the other way around. This expresses something that is important to articulate, the fact that there are no disparate protest efforts, there is one movement. It has a long and interesting history here in Rhode Island where it has been called many names but it has always been one, organic, cohesive striving towards social and economic justice.
From the days when Moses Brown began to agitate for the abolition of slavery and when Thomas Dorr began to do the same for poor workers who wanted voting rights, it has existed in a continuity and been called the suffrage movement, the labor movement, the Old and New Left, the black liberation and civil rights struggles, the feminist movement, LGBTQQI rights, ACT-UP, the anti-globalization, anti-GMO organic food farmer markets, #BlackLivesMatter, the environmental and anti-fracking movement, all these and more are part of a whole.
Araujo often talks about how labor is like the Catholic Church, once you are a worker you are in forever, and while I loathe the tendency to equate politics with religion by default because it fails to say that the movement uses religion, as in the case of the Quakers, Malcolm X, or Liberation Theology, he is correct in more than one way. Like the Catholic Church, the movement also has an existence reaching farther back in time than to the life of Karl Marx or whatever persona can be selected from history because, at its core, it is not an individualist movement, it depends on diversity and multiplicity of the masses and in that sense today was, in my mind, indicative of its vibrancy.
Almost 40,000 Verizon workers went on strike today, more than 1,000 of them work in Rhode Island. Four of them set up a picket line outside of the Verizon store on Ten Rod Road in North Kingstown.
These Verizon employees told me one of their demands is for more high-speed FIOS to be installed in Rhode Island. This would increase work for employees and service for customers. Verizon reported more than $5 billion in profits last year.
As reported earlier today by Andrew Stewart, Verizon went on strike this morning, and picketers were out in front of the downtown Providence offices starting at 6am. Here are some pictures.
After several months of fruitless negotiations, unionized workers at Verizon have decided to go on strike. Sources indicate that, due to the training of non-union labor over the period of negotiations, this could be a long strike.
IBEW Local 2323 said the following via FaceBook:
After waiting all day for Verizon reach out to the Union in an effort to avoid a work stoppage, they have responded they have nothing for us. Verizon has nothing for your hard work, sacrifice, and dedication to this corporation that off the fruits of your labor have been able to make profits of $1.5 billion dollars over the last 18 months.
Our Unity is our Strength!
Our picket lines will be set up tomorrow morning at 6:00 a.m.
We will continue to cover this story as it develops.
We have reported on issues throughout the past year related to the ongoing contract struggle between management at Verizon and the IBEW and CWA. A source familiar with these matters forwarded us this email from their bargaining unit which we quote in full:
Regional Bargaining Report
Friday February 5, 2016
As you know from prior bargaining reports the CWA District 1/IBEW Local 2213 and IBEW New England Regional Committees made a proposal which addressed needs of both the Company and the Union. One of the critical issues for the Company is the cost of healthcare. The Union addressed this in our proposal which would save the Company over $200 million during the term of the contract.
Another critical issue for the Company is workforce flexibility and the Union made a proposal to help the Company reduce the workforce in a way that would not hurt our members.
Two weeks ago the Company rejected the Union’s proposal and gave the Union another unacceptable proposal which did not address any of the Union’s critical needs.
Over the last week there have been more high level discussions where our Union leadership told Verizon executives that since we addressed the Company’s needs, we expect the Company to address our needs.
We went back to the bargaining table yesterday to receive another proposal from Verizon. The Company still has many retrogressive demands on the table and has failed to meet any of the Unions needs.
Earlier today Marc Reed put out another deceptive e mail about the status of bargaining. He stated that the Company has “presented proposals that would provide the Company greater flexibility in managing the work and the work force while recognizing current job security provisions”. What their proposal really means is that the Company will withdraw their Job Security proposal if the Union agrees to all of the following:
Giving the Company the ability to move you wherever and whenever they want is not how the Union defines Job Security.
In New York, Verizon’s Vice-President Jay Beasley implemented a new process called QAR, where managers are required to sit employees down and question them for hours about their daily activities. We demanded that they stop this practice of intimidation and harassment and told them if they want a new process in the future they must bargain over the issue.
It is clear to your Bargaining Committee that this enormously profitable company- which made $18.3 billion in profits in 2015 and paid its top five executives $44.5 million in 2014- is determined to gut our contract and destroy the working conditions that CWA and IBEW have fought so hard and earned over the last 50 years.
We need every member engaged in this fight. It is more important than ever that we take this fight to a new level.
Ready to STRIKE for a fair contract!!!
As we have said in our previous reporting, this is a major struggle to support. If Verizon were to win this struggle, it would be a massive loss for private-sector unions, as detrimental as the forthcoming Supreme Court case over public sector unions are expected to be. It is extremely important to show support for labor here and stand in solidarity in any way possible.
Verizon worker negotiations with the company have come to a major impasse and a strike now seems imminent, says a source close to the situation who asked not to be identified.
In an email to members, the IBEW said:
“The Business Managers informed us that the company has started the process toward a unilateral imposition of their contract terms,” said the IBEW T6 Mobilization Committee, in an email to all Verizon union employees in New England. “Those terms include the elimination of job security. The company has begun making “last and final” proposals and the situation is urgent.”
As I have written in a previous series of articles, this is a tremendously important struggle that will impact the labor union movement in the private sector as severely as the coming Friedrichs Supreme Court case will affect the public sector. If Verizon is able to impose their will and defeat the union, this would have a ripple effect on the entire job market, threatening the basic coordinates of unionized middle class jobs.
This is going to be a hard and long battle, but the stakes are too high to sit this one out. Simultaneously, the UAW has just recently averted a strike with Fiat Chrysler. United Steel Workers are currently facing a lock-out with Allegheny Technologies Incorporated in New Bedford and other plants across the country. Mayor Elorza continues play a cruel game with the firefighters union while rolling out his corporate charter school agenda to bust the teachers union. United Nurses and Allied Professionals have been engaged in continuing negotiations over a contract with Lifespan Hospital Network.
These are not isolated incidents or random occurrences. Both the Democratic and Republican Party are collaborators in the neoliberal ideological apparatus that intends to destroy the union movement, the middle class, and ultimately the hard-earned gains for the social safety net made during the New Deal and Baby Boom periods. It is impossible to deny that there are still some strong pro-worker figures in the political landscape that reject this ideology, but they are few and far between. With a career-minded politician like Gina Raimondo in power and hungry still for ascension to higher prospects in Washington DC, it is clear that a pillar of American democracy is under attack.
Visit the Stand Up To Verizon website by clicking here.
The CWA can be reached at 401-275-0760.
The IBEW can be reached at 401-946-9900.
Nearly three hundred workers representing over a dozen different unions, as well as family members, gathered outside the Verizon offices on Washington Street in Providence to rally in support of 900 IBEW 2323 members who are entering their second month of working without a contract. When the contract with Verizon expired on August 1st at midnight, 39,000 IBEW & CWA, from Massachusetts to Virginia, were affected.
Even as Verizon demands cuts in job security, health care and retirement security, and even seeks to eliminate benefits for workers injured on the job or caring for a sick family member, the company “made over $18 billion in profits over the last 18 months–$1 billion per month–and paid its top executives $249 million over the last five years,” according to a press release.
Meanwhile, here in Rhode Island, “many of our neighborhoods are suffering from neglected phone and internet services… Verizon has even refused to build their new high-speed internet lines, FiOS, in low income communities, communities of color, and rural areas, again claiming poverty as the reason they can’t put people to work doing much needed repairs.” Workers see these areas as growth opportunities for Verizon, and are eager to “string the lines.”
After IBEW workers David Fontaine and Bill Dunn opened the event with “The Star Spangled Banner,’ a steady stream of union officials and one state representative took the stage, promising to support workers in their bid to negotiate a fair contract. Over all their message was simple: Stay strong, organized labor has your back, and we can win this fight.
Below is the video of the speakers.
Dan Musard, IBEW 2323
Jim Riley, Secretary-Treasurer of Local 328
RI State Representative Ken Marshall
Chris Buffery, Asst Business Agent, IBEW 2323
Maureen Martin, AFL-CIO
Michael Sabitoni, Rhode Island Building and Construction Trades Council
Matt Taibi, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 251
Frank Flynn, Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals
Paul MacDonald, Providence Central Labor Council
Michael Daley, IBEW 99
Mike Araujo, RI Jobs With Justice
Steve Murphy, Business Manager, IBEW 2323
Within the past few years, the issue of privacy in telecommunications has become a major controversy. Following the revelations by Edward Snowden and the WikiLeaks organization, the role of the providers in collaboration with the National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other law enforcement agencies has become a subject of debate. On August 28, Jenna McLaughlin of The Intercept published a story on the ruling by the US Court of Appeals regarding bulk metadata collection by the government which involved Verizon’s cooperation.
My sources revealed to me that union members on the ground level of customer service have been able to access tools that collect metadata in ways that disturb them. There is one tool in particular, called the ‘spy tool’ or the ‘creepy tool’, that could be used in an improper fashion. Approval for its use is to be found in the small print of the Terms of Services agreement under the guise of ‘marketing’. The union does not have an official position on not using this tool, but some union members savvy of privacy ethics refuse to use it.
This tool is one which has the capability to allow the technicians to see how many television set-top boxes are within a residence. In many cases, the installation technician or customers will label the boxes based on the room, meaning therefore the customer service technician can see what someone watches in which rooms. The tool works as an aggregator and creates a profile of the customer, showing hours of television watched, what channels, how long on each channel, and other material. This sort of data collection and profiling is easy to gather and use in fashions that would be extremely dangerous. For example, if a stalker had access to this data, the person would be able to see what room their intended victim spends time in the most, at what hours, and, by understanding whether the person is watching a movie channel or one that is playing music, what level of attention is paid to the program. And in this era of cyber attacks and hacking, it is not a remote possibility that such instances could occur.
Some union members actively oppose using these tools because it causes technicians to ‘cross crafts’, something that leads to weakening of the union bargaining position. However, the obvious concerns over privacy and security are something that the union could address and take up as a cause, which is not without historical precedent.
An interesting example of unions taking up prominent civil liberties issues is the instance of their role in the racism struggles of African Americans. The American Federation of Labor collaborated with the government in the enforcement of segregation in the Gilded Age, leading to the formation of rival unions, such as the Industrial Workers of the World and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, both of which saw their ranks grow precisely because of their anti-racism positions. After the Red Scare and the merger of the AFL and the CIO, the leadership of the Civil Rights Movement were able to get key endorsements and support from labor. Indeed, a major backbone of the March on Washington was a large contingent of labor union members. Figures like A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin had cut their teeth in the labor organization movement of the 1930’s and ’40’s. Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act in part because of progressive voices from within the remnants of the New Deal coalition pledged their political support in the 1964 election against Barry Goldwater.
Also in that case, there were both practical results for their union members, ending disparities in the lives of their members, and wider social results, collapsing the Jim Crow system. There are real issues to contend with, going up against the will of the military-police-industrial complex is fraught with major challenges. But after years of being championed by anti-union libertarians like Rand Paul, there would be a great level of support gained by labor if they took up the cause of privacy protection.
This is a fight we all need to be concerned about. In the next term, the Supreme Court is hearing a case that was tailor-made to decimate the Abood decision and revoke the right of unions to collect dues in public-sector workplaces. The Verizon struggle, if lost by the workers, would have the same effect on private-sector unions. If you have any ability, whether it be through money, agitation, or just a FaceBook post, stand in solidarity with Verizon workers. The stakes are too high to sit this one out.
Visit the Stand Up To Verizon website by clicking here.
The CWA can be reached at 401-275-0760.
The IBEW can be reached at 401-946-9900.
Previously I posted a story regarding the current standoff between the IBEW and CWA with Verizon in regards to its impact on the labor movement. This post will discuss how a strong unionized workforce impacts the customer service of subscribers.
The issue of customer service is fundamentally an issue of unionized labor. If the call centers are unionized, then the customers will get quality service. Furthermore, if the service is union-certified, it carries with it a level of insurance that can be the difference between life and death. That might strike some as a bit hyperbolic, but anyone who has ever dialed 911 knows exactly what I mean.
The company has engaged in a series of practices intentionally meant to break the union, including the roll-out of automation tools that have hindered the ability of unionized workers and shortened shifts. For readers who are Verizon customers, they probably have begun to experience instances when they 4 out of 5 times have quality customer service, but then 1 out of 5 times they have had awful service. This is not an accident, it is because the company has been redirecting calls to non-union contractor offices either at vendor centers within the US or in Latin America where the labor force has no access to the services they are supporting. This is particularly gruesome because these laborers are subjected to brutal work regimens for little money and can be disciplined if calls last longer than a few minutes.
One source told me “If Verizon really cared about working families, they wouldn’t be paying basically what equates to slave wages in South America and minimum wages to folks in other vendor centers.” Should Verizon break the unions, customer service, which they do not care about, would drop significantly and it would be equivalent to Time Warner or Comcast, who have totally non-union help lines. A source told me that s/he sees the work of non-union customer service reps in the files of people s/he works with. S/he said there are problem-solving steps skipped, wrong answers, and a lack of literacy in the products being serviced because these workers are so poor they do not have access to these first-world niceties.
But there are other issues to consider. Currently, our internet and cable in America is the highest-priced for the lowest-quality service in the developed world. In comparison to South Korea, a nation that only exists because of the American military presence in the Pacific, we are a joke. Even Google Fiber and municipally-owned internet services embarrass Verizon. This lack of quality can be attributed to what is labelled by many as the ‘oligopoly’. In essence, the major cable companies have conspired to fix the prices and speeds of the utilities so to maximize profits and minimize user satisfaction. Our existing infrastructure is capable of much higher capacities but is intentionally prevented from reaching full potential by the corporations’ collusion and greed. A unionized workforce helps serve as a final barrier to complete corporate hegemony and consumer robbery.
But also consider the aforementioned copper cable. Currently, Verizon is allowing the existing lines, some of which are literally wrapped in paper, to rot. This is so they can roll out a wireless service that would cut back the necessary unionized workers significantly. The proposed method would be Verizon installs on every house an LTE X antennae that receives the broadcast video and data signals. Leaving aside the obvious health concerns to be raised by flooding the area with that many electro-magnetic bursts of energy, there is the issue of quality of service. Wireless phone service is inferior to copper cable, with higher wait times and fewer amenities. Also, important health and safety services, such as LifeAlert and 911, do not always work with wireless in the same fashion they do with copper cable. And when you are in a health emergency where seconds can mean life or death, a little bit of lag can result in a lot of grief.
Some of the infrastructure for wireless calling that would end copper cable as we know it has already been put in place. For example, in New York, Verizon Voice Link has already begun the roll-out of wireless-based landline phone service in certain circumstances. The Verizon Quantum TV set-top boxes contain chips that are unactivated but would serve as wireless IP set-tops and contain technology that could be used by the cellular network. Verizon claims this is about everything from customer satisfaction to environmental concerns. But the bottom line is simply busting the union and maximizing profits from the established LTE-X network.
As previously mentioned, it is vital that both customers and non-customers reach out to both Verizon and the unions to express solidarity. If you are a member of a faith community, consider both offering prayers and raising funds for the union should they strike. If you are a community leader, express public solidarity. Write your local newspaper, post on social networks, make a public show of solidarity. This is a winnable battle if the people unite.
Read the first part in this series here.
Visit the Stand Up To Verizon website by clicking here.
The CWA can be reached at 401-275-0760.
The IBEW can be reached at 401-946-9900.
This is the first of a three-part series. Part two deals with customer service and part three deals with privacy issues.
On August 1, 2015, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Communications Workers of America contract with Verizon expired. However, unlike previous years, they decided to not strike – a move meant to undermine the company’s hiring and housing of scabs. This is a labor struggle that will have a major impact on the entire labor movement.
“I think the days of the short strike is over,” said Dan Murphy, a retired member of the union. “Verizon wants to break the union and is willing to overwork lower levels of management in the process.”
But it also could impact customer service for one of the biggest telephone, internet, and television providers in America as well as basic issues of privacy.
The current ownership of the Verizon Communications Corporation is one of the most militantly anti-union groups in the country despite the fact they have brought in $1 billion per month for the past 18 months. Their CEO Lowell McAdam has been public about his intention to “kill the copper,” eliminating all the landline service within the Verizon network. How that would impact customer service will be addressed later, but from a labor perspective, it is important to understand that these words translate to plain old fashioned union busting. But first a little explanation is required.
Verizon as a company is in fact two extremely segregated workforces, the unionized wire telecom services provider and the nonunion wireless provider. By eliminating the wireline business, including copper cable and FiOS fiber optic, the company would be able to justify a significant series of layoffs, diluting the union presence. In February 2015, Verizon sold off the copper landlines in 14 states and fiber wireline footprint of FiOS West to Frontier Communications. They would have sold more of the FiOS service, but the unionized labor costs were far too great. Therefore, when their two-year contract expired last month, this presented the company with an opportunity to bust two of the major labor unions in America, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and Communications Workers of America (CWA).
There have previously been signals that Verizon is trying to eliminate the landlines and therefore the unions. Following Hurricane Sandy, they were given substantial subsidies to rebuild the infrastructure, funding that would have covered 50 percent of their costs, but they claimed the storm’s damage was too significant to rebuild. This is of course complete nonsense.
In June, the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications released a damning report that showed Verizon had broken a major agreement with the Five Burroughs. In 2008, the company had accepted a bargain in exchange for a cable television franchise, agreeing to lay fiber optic cable and bring high-speed internet to everyone in the city. But apparently, the company merely activated the cable service and refused to roll out the fiber optic, thereby keeping unionized workers from acting on what would have been the most fruitful jobs on the Eastern seaboard. In response to the report, Verizon denied the charges and blamed the union.
The general feeling of the workers is that the company wants to take all the money and run, as made obvious by the sale to Frontier. The company is trying to reduce the workforce, wants to raise the cost of healthcare despite the savings created by the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and gut job security. Already they have had some success, forcing workers to pay into a 401 (k) as opposed to the pension system that defined the benefits package of the Ma Bell and Baby Bell telephone companies for generations.
As the end of the contract approached, unionized customer call center workers noticed something very odd. First, under the auspices of a farcical ’employee well-being’ effort, the company cut the hours of the Providence office significantly, from 7 am-11 pm to 7 am-7 pm. Overtime was offered during peak hours to other offices for reasons sources tell me had to do with hurting the New England labor force. ‘Preferred shifts’ were offered to employees as part of a re-canvass of the office, allowing workers to keep their different pay, but it still was problematic for both the work and outside life of many employees.
Then, as closing approached, the workers noticed their call queues jump into the hundreds every night. Sources tell me they see this as a blatant sign that the company was training scab labor in this window of time. This and a variety of other signs led the union leadership to choose not to strike as they did two years ago.
But this is not a painless effort, it is causing great stress for the workers and their families. They are going in to work daily and getting pay as well as benefits, but they have no arbitration process in place in case of grievances. Hoping to provoke a walk out and implement their scab workforce, the company made a proposal to the unions that was repulsive. And keep in mind, Frontier, who just bought a large section of the Verizon network, settled with IBEW and CWA without a strike very recently. The writing is on the wall, this is an effort to destroy the union, a serious blow to organized labor that would carry as much of an effect as the laws passed by Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin just a few years ago.
There are, however, some interesting developments to consider. Recently, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that corporations must directly participate in negotiations with labor unions at franchises. Previously, if a union were to form at a fast food restaurant that is a franchise, the union would need to negotiate with the individual owners. But now, should Verizon Wireless franchise workers choose to organize, Verizon would need to directly negotiate with the side of their business they have worked so hard to prevent from doing so. As such, a union victory here could eventually lead to an organization drive in Verizon stores by the CWA, who organizes groups like graduate students and nontraditional workplaces.
There are things that both customers and non-customers can do to express solidarity. Those who are not paying a Verizon bill can reach out to their local IBEW and CWA branches and ask if they are accepting donations for support during this time. The unions know if they strike that this could be as brutal as the Caterpillar battle in the mid-1990’s. It is going to take old-fashioned solidarity to help them stay above water, but unions, as non-profit organizations, are allowed to accept donations.
Customers can also do a great deal. Write Lowell McAdam and the Board of Directors and tell them to settle fairly with the unions or else you are canceling your subscriptions. If you make a call to Customer Service, ask if you are speaking to a union operator, and if not, ask to be transferred to one. There are already a variety of utilities that can take the place of Verizon cable services, such as Netflix, Hulu, or YouTube. There is a way to make them know the customers stand with the workers. Part Two of this series will address customer service and the future of telecom while Part Three will address privacy concerns.
Visit the Stand Up To Verizon website by clicking here.
The CWA can be reached at 401-275-0760.
The IBEW can be reached at 401-946-9900.
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.
