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Tuesday, October 21, 2025

The real cost of Washington’s shut down here in Rhode Island

"Here in Rhode Island, we can’t control what happens in Congress, but we can do what Washington won’t. We can help families."

Representative Megan Cotter in SteveAhlquist.news

My husband works for the federal government. Like so many Rhode Islanders, he hasn’t seen a paycheck since the shutdown began. We rely on his income to make ends meet, pay the mortgage, keep the lights on, and buy groceries. We’re far from alone.

There are families where both parents work for the federal government, and right now they’re not seeing a single paycheck come in. These are households suddenly left with no income at all, trying to figure out how to pay bills and care for their kids while the shutdown drags on.

There are folks out on maternity or paternity leave relying on this income. These aren’t the people making decisions in Washington. They’re regular, hardworking Rhode Islanders who serve their country and now have to figure out how to survive while politicians argue.

Surrender!


 

He respects nothing. He lies about everything.


Raise your hand if you believe Trump's claim that no taxpayer money will be used for his $250 million ballroom. The guy who has cheated contractors throughout his career says he and private donors will pay. 

Also, this construction violates federal law requiring prior approval to alter the White House given its status as a historic site.

ICE Barbie Gets Two Luxury Private Jets as Trump-GOP Shutdown Threatens Food Aid for Millions

Nothing's too good for Kristi Noem

Jake Johnson for Common Dreams

The US Coast Guard has purchased two luxury private jets for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a total cost of more than $170 million in taxpayer money as the federal government remains shut down, imperiling food aid and other assistance for tens of millions of Americans.

The decision to buy two Gulfstream G700 jets for Noem—a central figure in President Donald Trump’s lawless mass deportation campaign—drew swift criticism from Democratic lawmakers, who said the purchase underscores the administration’s corruption and contempt for those struggling amid a government shutdown with no end in sight.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the top Democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security, called the spending “wholly inappropriate,” “blatantly immoral,” and “probably illegal” in a statement issued Sunday.

What are the odds the Trump regime will act to remove pesticides from food?

Pesticides on your plate – New study warns of need to better understand health effects

Carey Gillam

Eating plenty of fruits and veggies is recommended as key to a healthy diet, but new research underscores how consuming family favorites such as strawberries, peaches, spinach and kale commonly comes with side of pesticide residues that could be harming your health.

Using data sets generated by US government researchers, a team that includes scientists from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and the Brown University School of Public Health said in the study released Wednesday that they found the foods that had the highest pesticide loads included spinach, kale, strawberries, potatoes, nectarines, peaches, apples and raisins.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), says that fruits and vegetables “provide essential vitamins and minerals, fiber, and other substances important for good health.”

“Eating fruits and vegetables as part of a healthy eating plan may reduce the risk of some types of cancer and chronic diseases,” the agency states on its website.

But the new study, published in the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health, looked at the relationship between consumption of pesticide-contaminated foods and levels of pesticides showing up in human urine, and warns that consuming certain pesticide-laden foods leads to higher levels of pesticides found in the human serums. Better tracking of the potential health impacts is needed, the study states.

Reassessing Assessment

How property tax assessments become random

Tom Sgouros in SteveAhlquist.news

Charlestown property assessments are skewed by
out-of-state buyers paying far more than assessed value.
This house was bought for almost $4 million when
it was assessed at under $2 million
In a previous column, I wrote that property taxes in Rhode Island are limited to a 4% increase each year. This is oversimplified in two ways: first, because the 4% limit applies to the total amount a town collects (which is weird and worth an article itself), and second, each city and town suffers a state-mandated “revaluation” every three years, where the assessment of each home is adjusted up or down according to recent sales prices.

Property in Rhode Island is taxed according to its market value, and has been for at least a couple of centuries. This is widely perceived as a fair way to do things, but what is a home’s value? You don’t ever know until it sells, and even then, you might not *really* know. 

This is another way Charlestown's tax
assessments are artificially skewed
Pao Lun Cheng, a longtime business professor at the University of Massachusetts, wrote in 1970 that the value of a house is an essentially unknowable abstraction because any particular sale price is confounded by complicating factors: the acumen of the buyer, the patience of the seller, the competence of the agent, the rectitude of the appraiser, and so on. He wrote that if you could sell a house many times over, the average sales price could be a good estimate of a property’s value, but a single sale price is hardly enough data.

This doesn’t mean throwing up one’s hands, but trying to be clear about what sales data tells you: a little, but not that much.

Before 1997, property in Rhode Island was assessed every ten years, when all properties were to be examined and revalued. But those revaluation years were marked by a tremendous number of complaints as people saw huge jumps in their property tax bills. I had a retired neighbor in Fox Point in the 1980s who saw his home’s value triple after a revaluation. His tax bill didn’t increase as much, but it jumped a lot. A real estate agent I mentioned it to told me my neighbor should be happy that his property’s value had gone up so much—small comfort to a guy who did not want to move. In the 1990s, among Mayor Cianci’s many transgressions was putting off the mandated revaluations by three years to help one of his reelection bids, because he knew how much people hated the inexplicable and unpredictable jumps in their tax bills.

Monday, October 20, 2025

If you don't want to be called a Nazi, stop acting like one

‘Disgusting’: racist, homophobic, antisemitic, and violent private chats of GOP leaders exposed

Jon Queally for Common Dreams

Is this who they are when not in view of public judgment or recrimination?

That is just one of the questions being widely asked after Politico on Tuesday revealed nearly seven months of grotesque private chats between members of Leaders of Young Republicans, the party’s batch of up-and-comers, though already in positions of power within the faction’s ranks.

From praising Adolf Hitler to casual use of racial slurs and calls for violence against their opponents, the Telegram chat logs obtained by Politico paint a picture of vile individuals who share a deep loyalty to President Donald Trump and reveled in sadistic contempt for their political enemies, hatred of minorities, and lust for power.

As Politico reports,

They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n--ga” and “n--guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”

Reaction to the leaked private messages was swift and full of contempt, if not shock.

“Welcome to Trump’s Republican Party,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) in response to the reporting. “Disgusting.”

“Racism, rape, homophobia, antisemitism … Are we greater yet?” asked Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. “Feel safer?”

According to Politico, “the messages reveal a culture where racist, antisemitic and violent rhetoric circulate freely—and where the Trump-era loosening of political norms has made such talk feel less taboo among those positioning themselves as the party’s next leaders.”

How New Think works

Sen. Whitehouse shows how Trump cuts to ACA help can hurt you


Meanwhile, ICE Barbie got what she wanted:

Should URI start a medical school?

Senate commission feasibility study finds URI ‘well-positioned’ to launch medical school

Dawn Bergantino

A Rhode Island Senate special legislative commission charged with studying Rhode Island’s health care workforce and issues related to the state’s primary care crisis met to hear public testimony regarding the prospect of creating a medical school at the University of Rhode Island.

In advance of the public hearing, the commission released an independent feasibility study that found establishing a medical school at URI is “both viable and necessary to meet the state’s pressing healthcare needs.” 

The 21-member commission was appointed in July 2024 by late Senate President Dominick J. Ruggerio, and is chaired by Senator Pam Lauria and URI President Marc Parlange. The independent study, conducted by consulting firm Tripp Umbach, a nationally regarded firm with leadership in economic impact studies and consultation services for academic medical campuses and medical schools, was commissioned in February 2025 following a competitive process.

Demystifying mushrooms

Learning to love delicious fungi
By Matthew Lawrence 

A close up of mushrooms

AI-generated content may be incorrect.If you feel daunted by the idea of picking your own mushrooms, you are not alone. Ryan and Emily Bouchard explain that it’s cultural, that fear of mushrooms is common in the United States and dates back hundreds of years to the British colonizers, who came from the south of England. 

They didn’t like mushrooms there, either. The stigma has traveled to other places that were also colonized by the Brits, like India. In contrast, wild mushroom foraging is common and celebrated in other countries like Italy, France, Germany, and throughout Eastern Europe.

The Bouchards founded the non-profit Mushroom Hunting Foundation to educate people about the many fungi growing around them. Together they present educational workshops around the northeast, give guided mushroom and wild plant walks, and offer cooking demonstrations so people know what to do with the mushrooms they’ve foraged. 

Ryan has written a number of field guides for mushroom foraging, while Emily has written about wild plants, a related but different passion. (Mushrooms are fungi, a completely separate kingdom of life on earth.)

The couple discovered foraging in 2009, shortly after they first met. “We always loved walking in the woods together,” says Emily. “But then we took a great class by Joe Metzen of the Audubon Society of Rhode Island. After that we started learning a whole lot from mushroom books, eventually meeting most of the authors of those books and learning from them.” They began teaching their own classes in 2012.

The first thing to know is that some mushrooms are edible and some mushrooms are poisonous, and it’s important that you don’t try eating any of them until you know for sure what they are. 

Trump Admin OKs CIA Action in Venezuela Amid Growing Alarm Over Bombed Boats

Trump escalates undeclared war on Venezuela. Part of his 2026 Peace Prize campaign?

Jessica Corbett

Trump's orders to destroy shipping near Venezuela
violates the international Law of the Sea. Efforts must
be made to identify, stop and board vessels. Firing
on such a ship can only be legal if the vessel poses
an eminent threat and certainly not unless there is
evidence to justify interdicting such a vessel.
No proof has been offered.
As outrage over Donald Trump’s deadly boat bombings mounts, The New York Times reported that his administration secretly authorized the Central Intelligence Agency “to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela and conduct a range of operations in the Caribbean,” with the ultimate aim of ousting the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro.

“The agency would be able to take covert action against Mr. Maduro or his government either unilaterally or in conjunction with a larger military operation,” according to the Times, which cited unnamed US officials. “It is not known whether the CIA is planning any operations in Venezuela or if the authorities are meant as a contingency.”

“But the development comes as the US military is planning its own possible escalation, drawing up options for President Trump to consider, including strikes inside Venezuela,” the newspaper noted. The administration’s Venezuela strategy was “developed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with help from John Ratcliffe, the CIA director.”

The White House and CIA declined to comment on record, though some observers speculated it was “an authorized leak.” The reporting comes as Democrats in Congress, human rights groups, and legal scholars sound the alarm of Trump’s five known strikes on boats he claims were smuggling drugs, which have killed at least 27 people.

Critics highlighted the United States’ long history of covert action in Latin America, as well as how the reported CIA authorization contrasts with Trump’s so-called “America First” claims.

“This is absolutely insane,” said Tommy Vietor, a former Obama administration official who went on to co-found Crooked Media. “America First was not sold as CIA regime change operations in Venezuela.”

Critics also noted Trump’s mission to secure the Nobel Peace Prize; this year, it went to María Corina Machado, a right-wing Venezuelan who dedicated the award to not only the people in her country, but also the US president.


Sunday, October 19, 2025

Elon Musk Should Pay the Same Social Security Taxes You Do

Pop the cap, save Social Security

By Jim Hightower 

My life goals have never included making a lot of money… and I’ve certainly succeeded in that regard. Yet I do consider myself rich. Not Wall Street rich, but rich in the modest sense of being middle-class and able to make ends meet.

It’s not my good looks that puts me in this lucky zone, but one particular public asset that has long been serving the common good for decades, lifting millions of workaday Americans to some decent level of shared prosperity: Social Security.

Plutocratic elites and their political puppets constantly wail that Social Security is a socialist scam, a wasteful giveaway to old people. But regular folks know that’s hokum, since nearly all of us pay into the plan every month of our working lives. In short, it’s our money!

Moreover, each of our Social Security accounts steadily build up. The most valuable financial asset for 9 out of 10 American families, is not their houses or Aunt Tillie’s will — it’s their Social Security holdings. Even for rock-solid, middle-class families, Social Security provides for about a third of their total lifetime wealth.

When right-wingers screech that “fiscal prudence” demands they slash the program’s benefits, that’s bank-robber code for looting wealth you’ve banked for years in this people’s retirement system. There is absolutely no excuse for such thievery.

Especially since an honest, fair, and simple adjustment would keep the program fully funded in perpetuity. If billionaires and other extremely wealthy Americans paid Social Security taxes at the same rate the rest of us do, a study found, we wouldn’t just be able to continue the program. We’d be able to increase the benefits.

Rather than letting gazillionaires like Elon Musk put practically none of their massive incomes into this egalitarian effort to provide a decent retirement for all, make them pay Social Security taxes exactly like regular workers do.

OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.

Nothing

There actually was an arrest at a No Kings rally yesterday