Thursday, October 17, 2024
October 22: "town hall" meeting on repairs to the Charlestown Breachway, fittingly at the Breachway Grill
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When It Comes to Open Space and Land Conservation, R.I. Votes Green
Yes on Question 4
By Colleen Cronin / ecoRI News staff
Since 2000, every Green Bond put before Ocean State voters
has passed breezily and, drilling down on the municipal level, the initiatives
aimed at increasing open space and promoting green programs have enjoyed
comfortable approval in each of Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns.
Providence and New Shorham lead the state, with average
support in this century for the Green Bond reaching about 82% and 78%,
respectively, according to Rhode Island election results.
Even in Foster and Glocester, the communities with the
lowest average support, approval ratings were about 62% and 61%, respectively.
Last chance to sign up
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Why Trump accuses people of wrongdoing he himself committed
"Projection" - a symptom of narcissism
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| After complaining about how Hillary Clinton handled classified documents, Donald Trump stored national secrets in a bathroom. Justice Department via AP |
On Oct. 3, 2024, Trump accused the Biden administration of spending Federal Emergency Management Agency funds – money meant for disaster relief – on services for immigrants. Biden did no such thing, but Trump did during his time in the White House, including to pay for additional detention space.
This is not the first time he has accused someone of something he had done or would do in the future.
In 2016, Trump criticized opponent Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecured personal email server while secretary of state as “extreme carelessness with classified material.”
But once he was elected, Trump continued to use his unsecured personal cellphone while in office. And he has been criminally charged with illegally keeping classified government documents after he left office and storing them in his bedroom, bathroom and other places at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
More recently, the Secret Service arrested a man with a rifle who was allegedly planning to shoot Trump during a round of golf. In the wake of this event, Trump accused Democrats of using “inflammatory language” that stokes the fires of political violence. Meanwhile, Trump himself has a long history of making inflammatory remarks that could potentially incite violence.
As a scholar of both politics and psychology, I’m familiar with the psychological strategies candidates use to persuade the public to support them and to cast their rivals in a negative light. This strategy Trump has used repeatedly is called “projection.” It’s a tactic people use to lessen their own faults by calling out these faults in others.
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
CRU a winning slate for Charlestown
"Exceptional leadership, dedication, and a commitment to improving the quality of life for all Charlestown residents."
By Ronald H. Russo
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| Left to right, top: Rippy Serra, Steve Stokes, Peter Slom. Bottom: Deb Carney, Craig Marr |
Under the council’s guidance, our town has seen exceptional
budget management practices that have led to one of the lowest real estate tax
rates in the state. This is a testament to their collaborative efforts in
working for the common good of Charlestown. These dedicated public servants
have demonstrated that effective governance transcends political divides, in a
time when fiscal responsibility is paramount.
One of the most recent notable achievements of the current
Town Council was their collaborative effort for an emergency repair to the west
wall of the Charlestown breachway. Due to three consecutive storms in December
2023 and January 2024, the walls of the breachway could not keep up. Emergency
action was required. This devasting situation has had a profound impact on the
health of the pond and on our town’s residents and local businesses. The
council’s ability to work collaboratively with all those involved, listening to
the concerns of residents and taking decisive action was instrumental in moving
forward with the emergency repairs, which should be completed by the end of the
month.
Furthermore, council members Carney, Serra, Stokes and
Slom’s commitment to transparency and open communication has been exemplary.
They have facilitated well-run regular town meetings, community forums and
accessible online resources ensuring that residents are well-informed and have
ample opportunities to voice their opinions and concerns.
I believe their vision is exactly what our town needs. Their
proactive approach to addressing change and their commitment to the well being
of our town are truly commendable.
In conclusion, I wholeheartedly support and endorse the
reelection of the four members of our current CRU-majority Charlestown Town
Council; Deb Carney, Rippy Serra, Peter Slom and Stephen Stokes and the
addition of Craig Marr.
I also support the following CRU-endorsed candidates: Glenn
Babcock and Laura Rom for Planning Commission, Ray Dreczko for town moderator,
and Laura Chapman for School Committee.
I am confident that our community will be best served under their leadership.
A version of this article appeared as a Letter To the Editor in The Westerly Sun on October 7, 2024.
Magaziner Leads Letter to Reunite Americans with their Lost Retirement Benefits
Show us the money!
There are 29.2 million left-behind or forgotten 401(k) accounts holding approximately $1.65 trillion in assets. The workers and families who own these funds often have no idea of their existence because they have changed jobs or their former employer has gone out of business.
While state unclaimed property programs already work to reunite individuals with financial assets — such as the contents of a safe deposit back or utility reimbursements — regulatory ambiguity allows thousands of accounts to go unclaimed. The letter urges the DOL to develop a uniform, nationwide regulation that allows state unclaimed property programs to help reunite individuals with their lost retirement checks.
“Retirement benefits belong to the Americans who worked hard to earn them, not the large financial institutions who service them,” said Representative Seth Magaziner (D-RI-02). “As the former state treasurer of Rhode Island, I know that Rhode Island’s unclaimed property division works tirelessly to reunite individuals with their missing property and can do the same for missing retirement checks. Everyone deserves to retire with dignity and financial security.”
The Deep, Indigenous Roots of ‘Rhode Island Corn’
Wouldn't be jonnycakes without it
By Colleen Cronin / ecoRI News staff
The law describes the corn as “a light amber color, hard and
sound of kernel,” usually called Rhode Island white cap corn, and it specifies
that it must be grown in the Ocean State.
The penalty for misbranding corn and falsely attributing it to Rhode Island
comes with a $100 fine for each offense.
Although the 1940 law clearly associates the agricultural product with the
state of Rhode Island, white cap corn has another name, tying it more closely
to its true origins: it’s also known as Narragansett flint corn.
While the variety made its mark on a colonized New England —
it’s an essential ingredient in jonnycakes and was commonly ground in the
state’s early grist mills — Narragansett flint corn’s history and importance
for the Indigenous people goes much deeper.
“This is a long conversation,” Lorén Spears said over the phone, when asked about the significance of flint corn, “but the short version of this conversation, of course, it’s extremely important to the Narragansett people historically, as well as through today.”
Spears is a member of the Narragansett Tribal Nation and
executive director of the Tomaquag Museum,
which is the only Indigenous-lead museum in the state, focused on telling the
stories of people native to land now considered New England.
The corn, with its hearty kernels, “created sustainability
for our people,” she said. It could keep during the winter months and was
incorporated in “journey cakes” — which Spears said has now become jonnycakes —
that could go along with tribal members when they traveled.
The corn stalk is also a part of the “Three Sisters,” along with beans and
squash, a sustainable agricultural practice that Indigenous people taught
European colonists to help them survive when they first arrived from across the
Atlantic Ocean.
Kamala, Sheldon Whitehouse lead in URI poll of Rhode Island voters
Party line split on issues like election security. Democrats most concerned about housing, Republicans about roads and bridges
CQ Roll Call.
Amid a polarizing presidential campaign, a University of
Rhode Island opinion poll released today finds agreement across party
affiliations on issues of election integrity, trust in election officials and
concerns about election-related violence – while seeing a divide in worries
over voter fraud.
The poll – the second annual edition from URI’s Rhode Island Survey Initiative – surveyed a representative sample of 500 Rhode Island residents ages 18 and older between Aug. 15 and Sept. 8, 2024.
The survey was
administered by the highly respected polling firm YouGov via the internet;
participants were chosen from YouGov’s opt-in survey panel of Rhode Island
residents who agree to participate in YouGov surveys. The margin of error for
the poll is +/- 6.02%.
“While there are national polls that also focus on American
confidence in election administration, our survey results offer a detailed
snapshot of Rhode Islanders’ levels of trust in election authorities and
systems and trust in government as well as attitudes about democracy, media,
policy, and political participation in the state,” said Emily Lynch, URI
professor of political science. “The survey results indicate that Rhode
Islanders trust state election systems, but at the same time they have concerns
about the upcoming election in a number of areas, such as AI-generated fake
political information and political violence.”
Majorities from each party – Democrats (92%), Independents
(69%), and Republicans (55%) – say they feel votes are somewhat often or very
often counted accurately. And solid majorities of all three parties – Democrats
(85%), Republicans (79%), and Independents (73%) – think political violence is
a somewhat or very big problem in the U.S. today. A smaller majority of all
three are concerned about civil unrest after election day in Rhode Island.
There was a divide on questions about fraud, however. A
majority of Republicans and Independents are somewhat or very concerned about
voter fraud – specifically noncitizen voting, citizens voting more than once,
vote tampering, and people claiming to be another person in order to vote.
Democrats lagged on all four questions – with the highest level of concern
(37%) found with regard to vote tampering.
The survey also asked respondents who they will vote for on
Nov. 5 in the presidential race and the state’s U.S. Senate race. Among those
who indicated that they were registered voters, 53% said they would vote for
Vice President Kamala Harris and 27% backed former President Donald Trump,
while 52% indicated they would vote for incumbent U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse,
and 24%, state Rep. Patricia Morgan.
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Early voting, mail-in ballots start this week amid confusing ballots for Charlestown voters
Mixed up Council listings and 11 Charter revision questions make it hard to make informed choices
By Will Collette
If you are a Charlestown voter, you face a daunting challenge of figuring out how to make intelligent decisions in the face of a ballot that doesn’t really tell you what you need to know.
Two sections of the ballot are especially cumbersome: (1) the
Town Council race and (2) the 11 proposed revisions to the Charlestown Town
Charter. Today, we’ll deal with the Council.
The Town Council
Several factors make your choice harder. First, you won’t
see the CRU or CCA labels on any of the candidates. The CRU and CCA are both
PACs with radically different visions for Charlestown.
After losing power in 2022, the Charlestown Citizens
Alliance (CCA) broke its longstanding promise to run its candidates strictly as
independents. All their newcomers are running either as Republicans or
Democrats even though none of them have any actual connection to either party’s
town committee.
Neither the Republican nor Democratic Town Committees made
candidate endorsements in time to affect ballot placement, leaving the individual
placement to a lottery.
In other words, a mishmash. Sometimes well-placed campaign
signs can help with such confusion. This year, I’m afraid both the CRU and CCA
wasted their money. Their signs are similar in appearance and crowded-with
lists of names that are almost unreadable to passing motorists.
The mailers are somewhat more helpful because at least you
can see the names of the officially endorsed candidates though the effect is
diminished by the excruciating amount of detail crammed into each mailer.
In Charlestown, party labels (i.e. D versus R) matter less
than CRU versus CCA. There are sharp differences on important issues between
the two political committees that should guide your choice.
The Big Issues
Let’s review.
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| The tax rates from 2011 to 2023 show a steady rise under the CCA. Source: Charlestown Tax Assessor. |
In the two years since Charlestown Residents United (CRU)
ousted the CCA from power, the tax rate is down. So is the actual tax residents
have had to pay.
NOTE: To get much more detailed analysis of Charlestown taxes, financial
management and the differences between the CRU and the CCA on these subjects, CLICK HERE.
I include links backing up each detail as well as to the state Auditor General
who supported my assertations that the CCA messed up the money and the CRU has
been effectively fixing it.
Town Financial Management. This
was the major factor that led to the CCA’s defeat in 2022. They
messed up the money. They misplaced $3 million for almost two years, ran up
a huge deficit, and, instead of fixing the problems, they spent the past two
years denying the problems existed, blaming the messenger and mourning the
departure of the individual town officials most responsible for the problems.
According to the Rhode
Island Auditor General, the CRU wiped out the CCA deficit, reduced town
debt by 25%, reduced expenses by $1.5 million, increased town savings by 17%
and improved pension funding. These are hard, documented facts showing a
remarkable turnaround in town finances under the CRU’s leadership.
Charlestown Economy. The
CCA covers its fanatical devotion to expanding open space by claiming this is
good for tourism and, by extension, the town economy. They’re fine with Charlestown
perking up on Memorial Day and then dying on Labor Day.
.webp) |
| No matter how tasty, burgers are not the key to Charlestown's prosperity |
The CCA still uses Planning and Zoning to torture small
businesses. Because of CCA restrictions, Route One still remains our Boulevard
of Broken Dreams with its array of empty businesses.
For a preview of what a new CCA term of power would do to
small business, check
out their new “Design Standards.” If the CCA regains power, these
micro-managed minutiae will become law and further destroy small business. The
CRU by contrast, blocked Planning Commissar Ruth Platner (now a Town Council
candidate) from making these “standards” an ordinance.
The Environment. The
CCA claims supremacy on all matters environmental, but do their claims pan out?
They claim they are responsible for Charlestown’s dark sky, yet they diddled
for years on a draconian but unenforceable anti-light ordinance when they could
have gotten much
better lighting compliance by helping businesses and residences convert to
low-impact lighting.
They added some more open space even though more than 60% of
Charlestown land is a protected from development. Many of the CCA’s
land deals were with insiders, mainly CCA supporters, and nearly all at way
over assessed value and even land that was already classified as open space. Despite
their open space zeal, the CCA bitterly opposed, and tried to block Frank
Glista from selling 20
acres to the state Water Resources Board as a protected water resource.
The CCA concocted multiple fake issues about Ninigret Park
conflating plans to provide temporary portable lights at the field behind Town
Hall to allow Peewee Football to go a couple more hours in the fall into a
major crisis. The CCA forecast such lights would shut down the Frosty Drew
Observatory and trigger the federal government to take back Ninigret Park. Utter
nonsense.
The CCA has shown little interest in any
other environmental issue other than open space. They routinely ignored
hazardous waste problems, especially at Ninigret Park dating back to the
decommissioned Ninigret Naval Air Field. They effectively
banned all wind power, even small residential units. They
botched the fight against the Copar Quarry and even allowed the
mob-connected owners to acquire a second quarry in Charlestown.
They claim they are leaders in the climate change fight,
even though they have done nothing, other than to claim credit. Real
credit goes to our state
Senator, Victoria Gu, and state Representative, Tina Spears, both Democrats,
for getting legislative passed and funding for climate resilience.
Charlestown Residents United (CRU) in its two years in
office has not caused the environmental disaster predicted by the CCA and, in
fact, kept a steady, even hand on environmental matters and clearly states it
intends to protect our rural community.
Housing. The CCA has opposed all forms of new housing. Period.
They have been tolerant toward some building by rich people in their voter
strongholds along the shoreline, but remain adamantly
opposed to affordable housing, workforce housing, family housing or senior
citizens housing.
Former CCA
leader George Tremblay even claimed that building elderly housing will only
attract rich senior citizen speculators who will buy affordable senior
housing and then flip it as market-rate housing. He based this on a debunked
story out of New York City.
The CCA’s primary weapon to block housing has been
exclusionary zoning accompanied by nitpicking and delay to drive up costs.
Planning Commissar Ruth Platner, now running for Town Council, was the master of
exclusionary zoning. She covered her practices by claiming that families with
children were a plague because they would cost taxpayers beaucoup cash when the
kids attend Chariho, even concocting
a mathematical formula to “prove” her thesis.
Charlestown Residents United (CRU) has not been able to
overcome Platner’s roadblocks, though a lot hinges on the November election.
The CRU’s stated position is to support affordable housing for Charlestown’s “workforce,
seniors and adult children.” Getting this done will require the CRU to hold the
Council majority and change the majority on the Planning Commission.
Secrecy and cover-ups, panic and
alarm. Under the CCA, we saw one shady land deal after another,
often overshadowed by fake alarms and outside threats, whether from the Tribe, Amtrak
or “others.” Often the truth behind these deals and bogus alarms was uncovered
by diligent investigation through the town’s public records.
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| Stonewall Stankiewicz |
The CCA says it is pledged to “provide open, honest,
responsible leadership. Their track record says otherwise.
The candidates
Both the CRU and the CCA are running full slates of five
candidates for Town Council. Both are a mix of Democrats and Republicans. The
only two “independents” are hardline CCA people, the aforementioned Ruth
Platner and her puppet, former town Council member Bonnita Van Slyke.
Four of the CRU slate – Deb Carney, Rippy Serra, Steve
Stokes and Peter Slom – are already on the Council and have a commendable
record as previously discussed. The fifth CRU candidate is well known Breachway
Grill restauranteur Craig Marr.
Based on their records, characters and the strength of the
CRU’s performance in its first term, they’ve got my vote.
I’ve already given you ample reasons why Ruth Platner is not
qualified to serve on the Town Council. Her pal Bonnie Van Slyke holds all the
same beliefs, but with an added deficit of consistently making goofy arguments
that are filled with lies and nonsense.
I wrote an entire series labeled “Slyke of Hand” devoted to
fact-checking and rebutting Van Slyke’s nonsense. CLICK
HERE for the final installment.
About the remaining three CCA candidates, to paraphrase
Donold Trump, some might be “very fine people,” but all I really know about
them is that they were willing to run as CCA candidates while appearing on the
ballot under their registered parties, despite having no actual ties to the
local Democratic or Republican committees.
I can say this about them: if you run under the CCA label,
you are not a free-thinking individual. You must toe the CCA party line,
meaning strict obedience to Ruth Platner, or you will be punished.
The CCA set their Politburo style right from the start by
purging their first elected Town Council. They won a clear majority but turned
on their own people. Why? The CCA Councilors supported wind power development
in Charlestown largely because at that time, the CCA was pro-wind, especially
their leader Tom Gentz.
But after the Sachem Passage Association made a political
deal with Gentz’s partner in crime Dan Slattery to do a 180-degree turn to
oppose wind power in the form of the Whalerock wind development, the CCA
Council majority couldn’t keep up with the shift. The CCA excommunicated them.
In its second run for power, the CCA ran a brand new slate,
led by former wind-supporter but now opponent Tom Gentz and Dan Slattery and
ousted all but two of the former CCA apostates.
On those rare occasions when a CCA Council member has failed
to obey Platner, they usually come to the next meeting to push for an opposite
position. For example, CCA’s Susan Cooper initially voted her common sense to
end anti-Indian Joe Larisa’s contract, but at the next meeting, after a trip to
the woodshed, Cooper pushed a “Motion to Reconsider” to reverse her own vote
and rehire Larisa.
Van Slyke actually
said “One would hope that the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee
might put an end to the telling of whoppers such as this one spouted by someone
who is a CDTC member.”
That may be the way the CCA operates, but that’s not how it
works in a democracy. And that’s the last reason I offer for voting to keep the
Charlestown Residents United (CRU) majority.
In case you were wondering what's bugging Blake Filippi these days....
...Here's the answer
Former Charlestown state Rep Blake "Flip" Filippi has turned into a Robert F. "Worm Ate My Brain" Kennedy Jr. fan with several favorable "tweets" on Elon Musk's "X" platform.
Flip's most recent tweet highlights the debunked conspiracy theory that offshore wind turbines are responsible for killing whales. Here it is:
Legislative Study Commission Hopes to Prepare R.I. for Climate Impacts
Charlestown state Rep. Tina Spears on the Commission
By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff
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| Tina (left) and Charlestown state Senator Victoria Gu have been working hard on this issue |
Its official name is a mouthful — the Special Legislative Study Commission on Climate Change Impacts and Solutions — with an equally long agenda and a member roster to match.
Rhode Island has been no stranger to strong, intense storms,
but it’s not the infamous Hurricane of 1938 that lawmakers have been inspired
by. A trio of stronger-than-usual nor’easters whacked the state last winter,
causing an epidemic of coastal flooding and beach erosion in all of the state’s
coastal communities.
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