Robert Redford, you will be missed

So many great movies. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The Sting. All the President's Men. Plus, his support and advocacy for quality film-making, the environment and a civil society.

Donald Trump reacts:

RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Panel May Restrict Covid-19 Shots for Those Under 75, Citing Unverified Death Reports

Get your shots ASAP!

Stephen Prager for Common Dreams

Can't imagine why

Health officials working under Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may seek to restrict access to the Covid-19 vaccine for people under 75 years old.

The Washington Post reported September 12 that the officials plan to justify the move by citing reports from an unverified database to make the claim that the shots caused the deaths of 25 children.

The reports come from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a federal database that allows the public to submit reports of negative reactions to vaccines. As the Post explains, VAERS “contains unverified reports of side effects or bad experiences with vaccines submitted by anyone, including patients, doctors, pharmacists, or even someone who sees a report on social media.”

As one publicly maintained database of “Batshit Crazy VAERS Adverse Events” found, users have reported deaths and injuries resulting from gunshot wounds, malaria, drug overdoses, and countless other unrelated causes as possible cases of vaccine injury.

As Beth Mole wrote for ARS Technica, “The reports are completely unverified upon submission, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff follow up on serious reports to try to substantiate claims and assess if they were actually caused by a vaccine. They rarely are.”

Nevertheless, HHS officials plan to use these VAERS reports on pediatric deaths in a presentation to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) next week as the panel considers revising federal vaccine guidelines.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut, as well as other blue states, have issued state mandates requiring insurers to cover shots and allowing pharmacies to administer them. CLICK HERE to read Rhode Island's official order. However, given recent Trump regime actions, don't be surprised if Bobby Junior and the feds attempt some action to override these state protections. I've scheduled my COVID and flu shots for Friday in anticipation of more extreme anti-vax action from Trump and RFK Jr.  - Will Collette

Charlestown will soon hold a special election to fill Town Council vacancy

Meanwhile, CCA reminds voters again why they lost the last two elections

By Will Collette

Rippy Serra, RIP

At a December 2 Special Election, Charlestown voters will be asked to pick a replacement for recently deceased Town Council Vice-president Rippy Serra who died unexpectedly on August 8. This means another election pitting Charlestown’s former rulers, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) against their arch-rivals, Charlestown Residents United (CRU).

Rippy was one of the leaders of CRU who whipped the CCA in the 2022 election, ending their 10-year reign as Charlestown’s rulers. The CRU completed the job by beating all five CCA Council candidates in 2024.

Earlier than expected, we get to see the CCA’s plan to regain Charlestown hegemony when they pick one of their own to seek to regain a seat on the Town Council. The oddsmakers favor CCA warhorse Bonnita Van Slyke who, in the CCA’s Bizarro Charlestown, earned the honor through her last place finish in the 2024 election. But who knows, we could be in for a surprise.

Since getting pounded in 2024, the CCA has been relatively muted, posting mainly public event notices on their website. But occasionally, they post a political piece that touts their core value of stopping all housing development while pushing more town land purchases.

Dark Sky is nice, but not a cash cow

How the CCA views plans for Ninigret Park

In the 2024 election, the CCA made Charlestown’s dark sky their central campaign theme accusing the CRU of wanting to install stadium lights on every street corner, while the CCA wants to keep Charlestown dark, even during the daytime, so we can see distant galaxies with the naked eye.

Of course, I’m exaggerating but so has the CCA every time they have seriously suggested that the CRU wants to despoil Ninigret Park so they can obliterate the nighttime sky. The difference is that I’m joking and they’re not.

The CCA launched a new dark sky offensive right after losing the 2024 election with a piece called Stargazing Tourism: How Charlestown’s Dark Skies Could Boost Our Local Economy under the byline of Sarah Fletcher. Fletcher is a losing CCA Town Council candidate who had a 6^th place finish.

In this article the CCA claims Charlestown is ripe for “astro-tourism” through which Charlestown can emulate England’s northernmost region, Northumberland. The CCA claims Northumberland takes in “an estimated €25 million each year from visitors who come just to enjoy the stars.” As usual, the CCA doesn’t source their claim and I could find nothing to back it up other than articles that discuss the region’s high hopes for tourism.

Northumberland and Hadrian's Wall. From Wikipedia, 
By PaulT (Gunther Tschuch) - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

I’ve been to Northumberland and neighboring Scotland. I went there to walk Hadrian’s Wall, as well as some ancient castle ruins. There is an enormous swath of dour, treeless moorland between Newcastle and Edinburgh, attractive in a Heathcliff-Wuthering Heights sort of way, where indeed the sky is dark and great for stargazing. But there’s no evidence of the CCA’s claimed tourist bonanza.

As if they knew this article was coming, the CCA ran a piece this morning noting a positive mention in Travel and Leisure magazine about the Frosty Drew Observatory in Ninigret Park. My congratulations to Frosty Drew but I remain unconvinced this will have any effect on Charlestown's tourism economy.

Look, I’ve often said I love our dark sky – I wanted to be an astronomer when I was a kid. Relative to Providence, our sky is wonderful. But I’ve travelled enough to know that the CCA’s fetish for dark skies only means they’ve never seen the sky over Montana. Or New Mexico. Or the Rockies. Or Nebraska. Or even New Hampshire and Vermont. Given the multitude of places near and far with darker skies than ours, it’s silly to think our small patch of night sky will make us a tourist mecca.

Unless the CCA manages to black out South Kingstown, Narragansett and Westerly and bans cars from travelling at night with lights on, Charlestown will never be the black hole tourist haven the CCA wants it to be. Besides, given how our population during the summer swells from 8,000 to 30,000, do we really need more tourists?

If the CCA wants to run on the dark sky issue again in the upcoming special election, fine.

The frenzy to buy more open space

The CCA has also ventured opinions about how the CRU is managing the budget and dealing with the balance left in the town’s open space bonding authority.

There’s a tie-in between the CCA’s odd and ultimately dysfunctional management of town finances and their dark sky fetish since it all seems centered on CCA founder and de facto leader Ruth Platner’s fixation on the need to endlessly expand town-owned open space.

According to maps in Platner’s own Comprehensive Plan, more than 60% of Charlestown’s land mass is already protected from development. 

Platner’s iron-fisted control of the Charlestown Planning Commission has made new housing construction as difficult as possible even under new state legislation to alleviate the affordable housing crisis.

In 2015, Platner championed a $2 million bond that Platner used as collateral to acquire land, usually at inflated prices, to set aside as open space. 

Contrary to Platner’s claim that she has the voters’ mandate, the 2015 bond issue passed by only 11 votes. That’s a margin of less than 1%.

Despite the bond authority, the actual purchases of land – over a million dollars’ worth - were made through the use of taxpayer money from the town’s General Fund with some state taxpayer funding. That doesn’t count the $2.14 million that came out of 2004 bonds to buy the moraine property that was proposed as the site of the Whalerock wind turbines.

We’ve been paying cash rather than issue the low-interest municipal bonds authorized in the 2015 referendum. This fits the CCA’s peculiar notion that the town should generally pay in cash for capital investments rather than issue bonds like normal municipalities.

Remember, we all avail ourselves of low-interest financing such as mortgages and car loans to make major capital investments. For normal people, it makes more sense to use credit than saving for years to be able to pay cash for a house or a car or stove.

These days, you only see major cash transactions when money laundering is involved or purchases by elderly folks who grew up during the Great Depression. I don’t propose a spend-and-borrow spree but do suggest we should act like a normal municipality.

The result of the CCA credit-phobia was the creation of various accounts throughout the Charlestown budget to cover various contingencies. The CCA also increased property taxes nearly every year during its reign to pump up the town’s Uncommitted Fund Balance.

They were reluctant to spend any of that money except, of course, on Platner’s shady land deals.

The Saw Mill Pond scam

Ruth Platner complained bitterly after one such deal fell through. She blames CRU Council members for blocking the 2022 Saw Mill Pond deal even though it was one of the CCA Council members who caused the deal to fail. It’s a case worth a closer look especially since it’s a key Platner bullet point in her case against Charlestown Residents United.

This deal began in 2021 with a mysterious, unprecedented motion by then CCA Council rep Bonnita Van Slyke to authorize Charlestown to pursue DEM funding for a piece of property. She wanted the location, name of the owner and even the proposed sale price kept secret from the public. The CCA majority on the Council naturally approved this motion.

In early 2022, DEM approved a $400,000 50% matching grant. That meant the deal price was going to be at least $800,000. We also found out that the piece of property was ALREADY designated as open space and had been getting tax breaks for years under the Farm, Forest and Open Space program. The assessed value of this property was $312,800. 

CRU Council members Deb Carney and the late Grace Klinger pushed for an honest appraisal before buying land for more than double the assessed value since it was already open space. The 3-2 CCA majority usually overrode such objections, but not this time.

Former CCA Council member Cody Clarkin (←left) recused himself because his mom was an abutter. Without his vote, the deal died on a 2-2 tie vote. 

So ended the CCA Council majority’s last shady land deal before voters booted them out of power later that year.

How much is enough?

Generally, the CCA believes you can’t have too much money salted away. The CCA still takes that position, criticizing the CRU-led Town Council for failing to continue to build up the fund balance. For its part, the CRU has held that raising taxes just to salt away cash to never use it except in dire emergencies – or to satisfy Ruth Platner’s land lust - is poor money management.

If they were still controlling Charlestown, the CCA would probably put all of the town's revenue into mayonnaise jars buried in former Budget Commission Chair Richard Sartor's back yard. 

It's a fair question to ask how much the town needs to save especially since the Trump regime has made it clear states and localities are on their own in local emergencies. We already have enough uncommitted cash to run the town for a year with no outside help. But the CCA wants to add more plus some unspecified amount for other catastrophes that might occur over a 10 year period.

Charlestown is lucky to have so much cash that we can even have this conversation, but at what point does it become ridiculous to pay more taxes to soothe the CCA’s anxieties?

The CCA’s antiquated beliefs in squirreling away cash ultimately bit them in the ass. Having so many excess fund accounts led to sloppy money management that culminated in the infamous 2022 “$3 million oopsie.” Town auditors noticed $3 million was missing, later found to have been “misallocated” for two years to a fund where it didn’t belong.

Rather than learn the Watergate lesson that it’s the cover-up that gets you, the CCA tried to lie, deny and deflect their way out of trouble. However, it cost the CCA the 2022 and 2024 elections.

Getting our money back

The CCA has pitched a fit over a proposal from Council President Deb Carney to actually issue the $2 million in open space bonds and use half of it to reimburse the town’s General Fund for the money the CCA spent to buy land for Platner.

Platner says this would violate the will of the 50.9% of the voters who ok’d the 2015 bond issue. Except, as Platner knows, the ballot question read:

“Shall the Town of Charlestown finance the acquisition, preservation or protection of open space or any interest therein alone or in conjunction with federal agencies, state agencies, land conservancies, land trusts or preservation organizations for preservation and approve the issuance of bonds and notes therefor in an amount not to exceed $2,000,000?” 

The CCA used General Fund money to buy the land, not bond money. Deb Carney’s proposal to use the bond authority to put money back into the General Fund keeps faith with the voters’ intention to issue bonds for open space buys.

The key word is “therefor” which means “for that object or purpose.” Voters approved $2 million in bonds to “finance the acquisition…of open space…” not to set up an untouchable cash kitty. Paying for land deals from the General Fund and then failing to use bonding authority to put the money back was not what voters approved in 2015.

I hope Platner and the CCA test their self-serving interpretation of the 2015 bond referendum with today’s voters in the upcoming special election. I also hope Charlestown voters will pay attention and come out to vote. Our town budget only drew 160 voters out of 6,895 active voters on the rolls.

We’ll see how close I’ve come to forecasting how the CCA will approach the upcoming December 2 Special Election. In my opinion, the main issue remains the same as it was for the last two General Elections: who can you trust to manage YOUR money?

He who must not be named

"I can do anything"

Courtesy of Mitchell Zimmerman

Audit shows Rhode Island Energy really is overcharging, $2 million to state agencies alone

The scope of RI Energy's overcharging is unknown at this point

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

Photo by Steve Ahlquist

Rhode Island Energy overcharged state agencies by $2 million on 2024 energy bills — more than double initial estimates —  according to a new state audit published on Sept. 5. 

The 13-page report by Andrew Manca, chief of internal audits with the Rhode Island Office of Internal Audit and Program Integrity comes as state utility regulators deepen their own review of potentially more widespread billing errors by Rhode Island Energy.

“At this point, one of my concerns is that we don’t fully understand what the problem was, or how many people it affects,” Todd Bianco, chief economic and policy analyst for the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission (PUC), said in an interview Thursday. 

Flooded by customer complaints alleging artificially high winter energy bills, including from state government administrators, the PUC in May ordered Rhode Island Energy to  hire a consultant to probe for evidence of billing inaccuracies. Last week, the PUC authorized a contract with Virginia-based professional services firm Guidehouse, Inc.  — one of three firms to respond to Rhode Island Energy’s request for proposals. An initial kickoff meeting between parties was held Wednesday, Bianco said.

The cost of the Guidehouse contract has not been made public.

Under state regulators’ directives, Guidehouse has until Nov. 15 to report results of its own audit into Rhode Island Energy’s billing practices. Manca’s report, which exclusively covers the 2,250 Rhode Island Energy electric and gas accounts held by the state government, will be incorporated into Guidehouse’s review of other commercial and residential customers.

And if the state review is any indicator, the problem may be more pervasive than anticipated. In July, state auditors identified overcharges of roughly $1 million. The deeper dive revealed state agencies were actually overbilled by over $2 million, according to the audit report.

The primary cause identified by the state was the transition from a legacy billing system inherited when PPL Corp., Rhode Island Energy’s parent company, bought the state’s electric and gas operations from National Grid in 2022. 

Brown pediatric endocrinologist reveals why iodine deficiency is on the rise

Not getting enough iodine? 

By Jonathan Garris, Communications Specialist, Division of Biology and Medicine, Brown University

Doctors and researchers are puzzled by a recent rise in what might seem like an antiquated problem: iodine deficiency.

Iodine, a trace element that helps regulate metabolism and produce vital hormones, is essential for many aspects of human development, especially in children. Specialists like Dr. Monica Serrano-Gonzalez, a pediatric endocrinologist and associate professor of pediatrics, clinician educator, at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School, are hoping that studies like one she recently led can shed light on how to combat a growing challenge that transcends many population groups.

In a Q&A, Serrano-Gonzalez shared how experiences with patients inspired her and other Brown-affiliated colleagues to study iodine deficiency, and how they’re educating the public on how to get enough.

Q: Why are physicians seeing an increase in patients with iodine deficiency?

There are very few food sources for iodine. The main ones are dairy products, seafood and eggs, as well as meat and poultry. In some countries, grain products like bread are made with iodized salt, but this is usually not the practice in the United States. Other foods like fruits and vegetables have very low levels as they depend on the soil iodine content. 

In the 1920s, American manufacturers began adding iodine to table salt widely available in stores. Part of the problem is that now there are a lot of trendy salts — Himalayan, sea, kosher and others — so many people have moved away from eating iodized salts. Organic dairy also has less iodine, as do processed foods and bread. Patients who have restricted diets, such as practicing vegans or people with dairy intolerance, food allergies or autism spectrum disorder, are also at higher risk for deficiency. Children and pregnant or breastfeeding women are more susceptible, as their iodine requirements are higher.

There is no public health mandate for iodization in the U.S., so many of the salts you buy in the grocery store don’t have iodine, and the salts that do have varying concentrations. The public health messaging has been so strong against salt due to its connection with blood pressure issues, and people appear to be hyper-aware of that. In the clinic, we have noticed that patients often think that iodized salt, specifically, is bad for health, as opposed to all types of salt. 

It's official: Charlestown Special Election to Town Council vacancy caused by the death of Rippy Serra is December 2

Notice posted by Charlestown Town Clerk Amy Weinreich

Special Election – Town Council Vacancy

A Special Election will be held to fill the vacant Town Council seat.

Declarations of Candidacy

Available at the Town Clerk’s Office (4540 South County Trail, Charlestown, RI 02813)

Also available online at the RI Secretary of State Candidate Calendar

Filing Period

Declarations must be filed in person at the Town Clerk’s Office on:

Thursday, September 25, 2025 – 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Friday, September 26, 2025 – 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Election Dates

Primary Election (if required): Tuesday, November 4, 2025

Special Election: Tuesday, December 2, 2025

Resources

View the full Election Calendar, forms, and FAQs

Request a Mail Ballot

Additional updates will be posted here as they become available.

Questions?
📞 (401) 364-1200
📧 arweinreich@charlestownri.gov

Trump's favored fossil fuel industry kills tens of thousands of Americans every year - no "windmill" ever did this

Oil and gas industry linked to thousands of yearly US deaths and preterm births, study finds

Shannon Kelleher 

Air pollution from oil and gas activities is responsible for an estimated 91,000 deaths and over 10,000 preterm births in the US each year, according to a new study that examined the impacts of the industry through its lifecycle from extraction to refining to burning fuel in power plants.

The study, published August 22 in the journal Science Advances, also attributes an estimated 216,000 annual incidences of US childhood asthma to air pollutants from fossil fuels, as well as over 1,600 lifetime cancers.

California, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey have the highest total health burden from all stages of oil and gas production and use, according to the study, with racial minorities facing disproportionate exposure to harmful air pollutants that include fine particulate matter, ozone and nitrogen dioxide.

The findings, based on data from 2017, likely underestimate the health toll of the US oil and gas lifecycle, the authors said, given annual production increased by 40% from 2017 to 2023 and consumption increased by about 8%.

The art of classification

REAL secrets of success revealed

Block Island bird study reveals some good news for island’s migrating songbirds

Long-term Block Island bird data reveals stable numbers since the 80s at migration site

Kristen Curry 

Recent graduate Lauren Michael has coauthored a study of
long-term Block Island bird data, revealing stable numbers
at this important migration site.

Block Island welcomes scores of tourists all summer long, with the Block Island ferry pulling into port 15 times a day. Come fall, new visitors arrive: migrating birds by the thousands.

This fall, a new University of Rhode Island graduate is publishing some good news on their numbers.

Lauren Michael, who received her master of science degree in biological and environmental sciences in May, analyzed 66,288 birds from 22 species, which visited the island between 1970 and 2021. Her coauthored paper, with URI professor of natural resources science Scott McWilliams and Steve Reinert ’75 ’78, on songbird levels on Block Island will be published in the November issue of Ornithological Applications.

The banding station was established on Block Island by
Elise Lapham in 1967, providing the foundational work
for long-term study of bird populations on the island.

The Hopkinton resident came to URI with a decade of experience studying birds at sites across North America, before making her way to the island nine miles off the coast of Rhode Island that’s an important stopover site for migratory birds. The bird monitoring station, known as the Block Island Banding Station, was established by Elise Lapham in 1967. She operated the station each fall and spring alongside her daughter, Helen Lapham, and Kim Gaffett, who joined in 1981. Gaffett, now a naturalist at the Block Island office of The Nature Conservancy, has continued the banding operation to this day.

Michael says that stepping into a project started before she was even born was a humbling experience and credits the Laphams and Gaffett for their decades of commitment to the study of birds on Block Island.

“Without their dedication, this project would not have been possible,” she says. “The Block Island Banding Station is one of the longest continuously running bird banding stations in the country. All of these women were volunteers and dedicated decades of their lives to this study.”

Doctors Just Found Out What Metformin Really Does Inside You

Metformin: More Than Just a Diabetes Drug

By Kobe University

Metformin is the most commonly prescribed medication for diabetes worldwide. In addition to lowering blood sugar, it has been linked to a wide range of positive health effects, including protection against tumors, inflammation, and atherosclerosis. 

Yet, despite more than 60 years of use, scientists still do not fully understand how it works, which has slowed efforts to design even more effective treatments for these conditions.

Investigating Metals in Diabetes Patients

According to Kobe University endocrinologist Wataru Ogawa, “It is known that diabetes patients experience changes in the blood levels of metals such as copper, iron, and zinc. In addition, chemical studies found that metformin has the ability to bind certain metals, such as copper, and recent studies showed that it is this binding ability that might be responsible for some of the drug’s beneficial effects. So, we wanted to know whether metformin actually affects blood metal levels in humans, which had not been clarified.”

To explore this question, Ogawa and his colleagues conducted a study involving roughly 200 diabetes patients at Kobe University Hospital. Half of the participants were taking metformin, while the other half were not. The researchers compared blood serum samples from both groups, measuring levels of copper, iron, and zinc, as well as indicators of possible metal deficiencies.

Far-right broadcaster Sinclair Inc. now owns ABC6 as well as WJAR (NBC10)

They immediately FIRE popular weather reporter Kelly Bates and other news staff

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

Sinclair Inc., the parent company for Rhode Island’s WJAR, is taking over the infrastructure and operations for one of its rival market stations, ABC6 (WLNE), Jessica Bellucci, company spokesperson confirmed to Rhode Island Current on Friday morning.

The local market share agreement between Sinclair and ABC6’s parent company, Standard Media Group, lets Sinclair take over the equipment, operations and infrastructure for the second broadcast station, without changing the license ownership. The transaction closed Friday morning, Bellucci said.

“Sinclair is committed to producing distinctive content that delivers value and strengthens the connection to the local communities we serve,” Bellucci said in an email. “WJAR and WLNE represent the best of local broadcasting in the region, and we look forward to building on that legacy to continue to serve viewers across Southern New England.”

Bellucci declined to answer additional questions. 

However, beloved local TV meteorologist Kelly Bates posted on social media Thursday that she and other ABC6 workers had lost their jobs due to the new agreement.

“It happened again,” Bates said in a Facebook video. “Our station was just bought by the station that I worked for previously and that parent company has decided I am a redundancy and needed to go.”

The recent massacre in the Caribbean was a step toward making America a police state under President-for-Life Trump

Eleven Dead on the High Seas. Trump Is Testing the Waters For Illegal Military Rule in America.

By Mitchell Zimmerman

Why is Donald Trump committing murder on the high seas?

Last week President Trump bragged that “On my Orders,” the Navy destroyed a speedboat with eleven people aboard, claiming that those slain were “Tren de Aragua Narco terrorists . . . transporting illegal narcotics, heading for the United States.”

The legal procedure for dealing with drug traffickers on the high seas is actually for the Navy or Coast Guard to stop and board the suspect vessel, confirm it is carrying illegal drugs, then arrest and prosecute those on board.

Instead, Trump treated what should have been an (alleged) criminal law enforcement matter as open warfare and, without any need, killed everyone aboard. 

Why? Because Trump wants the lethal use of military firepower on supposed foreign “bad guys” to serve as a model for militarizing American cities – in the name of stopping an imaginary crime wave.

One week after the Caribbean Sea attack, Trump and the Defense Department have yet to provide evidence the vessel was carrying drugs to America. But even if had been, summarily killing eleven civilians is still murder.

Calling a criminal gang a “foreign terrorist organization” does not make it legal to slay alleged gang members without a trial – particularly when the gang has not been linked to acts of political terrorism, as confirmed by the fact that the Justice Department’s two indictments of gang members include no charges of terrorism.

Senator Reed condemned the strike as a premeditated use
of lethal force carried out without congressional authorization,
clear legal justification, or evidence of an imminent threat

Still less does tagging them “Narco terrorists” mean that the United States is in “armed conflict” with a gang, to which the laws of war might apply. Gangs aren’t enemy nations and they’re not fighting for a political ideology – they’re in it for the money. Suppressing them isn’t warfare. The Navy was not engaged in a naval battle with a speedboat.

A former State Department attorney specializing in counterterrorism, Brian Finucane, put it succinctly. “Outside of armed conflict, we have a word for the premeditated killing of people. That word is murder.”