Progress Report: URI Is ‘Dramatically’ Underfunded; Local Politcal Dynasties; New Sales Taxes, Strange Speech in NK


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In less than a decade, URI has cut spending by an astonishing 47 percent per student. Here’s how the Providence Journal put it: “State support for Rhode Island’s only public research institution has fallen so dramatically in the past decade that the mission and future of the University of Rhode Island are threatened, according to a national report that echoes the concerns URI’s leaders have voiced for years.”

It’s amazingly shortsighted that our elected leaders wouldn’t properly invest in its higher education students’ future. And make no mistake about it, more public funding for the University of Rhode Island is an investment that would pay huge dividends for the state.

The top 11 political families of Rhode Island.

The Barrington Town Council plans to vote on a proposed ban to plastic bags at its meeting tonight.

State sales taxes increase today on dog grooming and clothes that cost more than $250. People who purchase such goods and services can generally afford to pay the difference.

A North Kingstown resident has a sign in their yard that reads: “We Live Next to A Child RAPIST.” North Kingstown Patch has found no evidence that the accusation is true.

New York Times: The Party Politics of the Father-Daughter Dance

Mitt Romney, as governor of Massachusetts: “we’d be a lot better off in this country if we had European gas prices.”

This website, and its previous editors, have long debated what is better for the state and the Capital City at the Port of Providence: a working waterfront or new mixed-use development there. What do you think?

Progress Report: Brien Brings Hatch Act in Woonsocket, New Leaders Project’s ‘Pro Jobs’ Agenda; State Sues Orphan


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Downtown Providence from the Providence River. (Photo by Bob Plain)

Rep. Jon Brien thinks he can retain his House seat without winning the election. His path to victory: eliminating the man who beat him in a primary. Brien thinks the federal Hatch Act might prohibit fire fighter Stephen Casey from serving in the state legislature because the Woonsocket Fire Department got a $300,000 grant from the U.S. government.

Like RIPEC’s report itself, the Providence Journal’s editorial on it is light on specifics and heavy on platitudes. It strikes me as patently false when politicians, activists or the news media assert that Rhode Island doesn’t have a governmental position to serve the business sector of the state’s economy. You don’t have to like the EDC, but intellectual honesty requires its existence at least be acknowledged!

The New Leaders Project, a local political action committee that endorses State House candidates, is confounding some for its unconventional endorsements. The PAC says it advocates a “pro-jobs” agenda but what does that really mean? Well, its president, East Greenwich School Committee member Jack Sommers, was fined by the Department of Labor Training in 2010 for not paying an employee nearly $2,000 in wages. Pro jobs but anti pay check, I guess…

One year after closing five schools, Providence education officials are anticipating student enrollment to “surge” by some 2,000 students, says the ProJo. The so-called ed reform movement seems to work far better at shrinking public education than it does at serving it.

So here’s pretty much all you need to know about what America values in its workforce: NFL refs should get pensions, but public school teachers on the other hand, not so much…

You know things are getting bad in Rhode Island when the state is suing its orphans. Miss Hannigan would be proud.

Seems like the debate over a mega-port at Quonset is heating up again. For those who don’t remember, the idea for a deep water port at Quonset pitted quality of life in North Kingstown against economic development for Rhode Island.

No one wants the Cranston father-daughter dance controversy to continue … except of course local Republicans and national conservative groups who are using the situation as an opportunity to beat up on the ACLU.

Here’s what the mayor of Phoenix said after trying to live on food stamps for one week: “I’m tired and it’s hard to focus.”

Back in 1967, it was Republicans accusing Democrats of being “brainwashed” by the “military industrial complex.”

Progress Report: Economic Development Void in RI; GOP Fans Father-Daughter Dance Flames; James Diossa


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Downtown Providence from the Providence River. (Photo by Bob Plain)

It seems RI Future and RIPEC agree on at least one thing. “Rhode Island does not have a clear vision of how to expand its economy or a governmental structure that helps create jobs, encourage companies to expand, attract businesses and develop workers’ skills,” reports the Providence Journal about RIPEC’s report on the EDC this morning. We may not agree what to do about it, though. We think the state should invest more heavily into this sector.

The Cranston School Committee last night agreed to petition the state legislature to lift the state ban on father daughter dances. The reality is few people are actually worked up about this and the name isn’t a longstanding tradition in Cranston. It’s just about local Republicans trying to drum up animosity using the ACLU as their boogieman.

Good luck to Central Falls City Councilor James Diossa, who launches his campaign for mayor today.

Here’s Gina Raimondo on NPR’s Talk of the Nation yesterday talking about Rhode Island’s early effort to reform public sector pension benefits.

URI professors, who are teaching without a contract right now, are among the lowest paid college professors in the region, according to the ProJo this morning … yet political pressure from the Chafee Administration prevented them from getting an already-agreed upon pay raise. Stay tuned.

Here’s why Romney is losing.

Hilarious Saturday Night Live skit on some of the questions undecided voters are still asking.

On this day in 1957: “Under escort from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, nine black students enter all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.”

And on this day in 1690, the first newspaper was published in the new world. It was called Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick.

Progress Report: Cicilline Surging Against Doherty; GOP for Father-Daughter Dances; Affordable Housing; 47 Percent


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David Cicilline is surging. After comfortably beating Anthony Gemma in the primary it now looks like he’s comfortably ahead of his conservative challenger Brendan Doherty in polls commissioned by the Democrats. While Republicans, Buddy Cianci and other Cicilline detractors might dismiss partisan polls, it still gives the incumbent an advantage and shows momentum.

We’ll have more on Cicilline’s surge later this morning…

State House Republicans say they will join in the controversy in Cranston about what to call elementary school dances in Cranston (your tax dollars at work?). But this isn’t a partisan issue, as evidenced by David Cicilline’s position on the issue.

Three cheers to Gina Raimondo for using her political capital to advocate for affordable housing funding. She’s pushing for voters to approve a $25 million bond to build and/or rehab 600 units. This is an important economic development opportunity for Rhode Island. Raimondo is a longtime board member of Crossroads Rhode Island and her commitment to homeless people is admirable.

That said, we find it distasteful that she claims pension cuts made it possible to go out to bond for affordable housing. Of course, rolling back tax cuts for the wealthy – a move she objects to – would have a similar effect on the state’s finances. And, it would do so without pitting the working class against itself. In other words, she is arguing that the state needed to take money from teachers and state workers in order to give it to the homeless. Her logic reminds me of railroad tycoon Jay Gould’s famous quote: “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”

Speaking of class warfare, the Providence Journal weighs in on Mitt Romney’s 47 percent comment with a pretty muddled editorial. More to the point is what the New York Times editorial board said about it: “It turns out that Mitt Romney was right. There is class warfare being waged in the 2012 campaign. It is Mr. Romney who is waging it, not President Obama, and he’s stood the whole idea on its head.” Even the conservative-leaning Washington Post editorial board writes: “Mr. Romney suggests that Obama voters are such sheep that there is no point in reaching out to them — and that their support for Democrats is purely selfish. The possibility that principles might motivate their political behavior does not even occur to Mr. Romney. It’s a demeaning, as well as inaccurate, view of the people he hopes to lead.”

GOP strategists think Romney’s comments could give Democrats the inside track for control of the Senate. And Democrats think it could put them in position to take back the House. Unlike moderate Republican candidates from across the nation, RI GOP candidates have been completely silent on the controversy.

Update: Brendan Doherty has distanced himself from the comments, according to the ProJo.

Happy birthday, Upton Sinclair. The author of “The Jungle” was born today in 1878.

And today in 173, Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in tennis.