Menu Bar

Home           Calendar           Topics          Just Charlestown          About Us

Monday, March 26, 2012

Short take round-up

Good news for the CCA…We’re so blue…and sexy…the campaign against straw holes…Doreen Costa is a hypocrite…men get stupid around women
By Will Collette
Charlestown: NOT the best place for kids. You could hear the champagne corks popping in the secret clubhouse of the Charlestown Citizens Alliance when Business Week released its annual rankings of the best places to raise kids. In Rhode Island, according to Business Week, Bristol is the best place to raise kids. If Charlestown had won that distinction, it would have set back the CCA’s anti-family, anti-kid campaign immeasurably.
Imagine how hard Planning Commissar Ruth Platner would have to work to block any new housing that can accommodate families with children. Town Council Boss Tom Gentz and Council VP Deputy Dan Slattery would have to work harder to cut and slash the Chariho School budget. But relax, guys, we dodged the family-friendly honors again.



Blue on Blue. According to the Gallup Poll, Rhode Island is one of the most `liberal’ states in the country. We rank third, behind the District of Columbia and Vermont. Massachusetts and Connecticut rank just behind Rhode Island.
The most conservative states are mostly in the old Confederacy and mountain West, with Mississippi ranked #1, followed by Idaho, Alabama, Wyoming and Utah.
And here’s why we rank so well. According to the wellness website RealAge.com, Providence ranks among the Top Ten Best Places for Sex for both men and women.
Providence came in 5th in the ranking for men, behind San Diego, Miami, Las Vegas, and San Francisco. For women, Providence ranked #8, behind Knoxville, TN, Tampa, Miami, Los Angeles, Houston, Orlando, and Sacramento.
Not sure why New Orleans didn’t make the list. After all, where else can you get drive-thru hard liquor drinks (daiquiris, margaritas, Hurricanes) with a straw hole in the go-cup. But one spoilsport legislator wants to ban go-cups with pre-perforated lids. Senator Dan Claitor of Baton Rouge wants to make it harder for drivers to put a straw into their drinks while they’re driving. He’s tried to get this legislation passed before, without success. 
Doreen Costa is a hypocrite. Tea Party state rep Doreen Costa (R-No Kingstown) made a big deal to GoLocalProv.com about how much she hates legislative grants. She just doesn’t think it’s right that state legislators can draw from a budgeted pool of state funds to support local charities. Costa told GoLocal that instead of getting a legislative grant for a worthy local organization, legislators should do what she does and give to charities from their campaign funds. “I see it as a way to buy votes from their communities,” Costa said. Costa claimed she has done so “many times.” 

Errr, not exactly. Costa is nearing the end of her first term. She has raised a boatload of money from the Tea Party and other right-wing sources. Yet she gave NOTHING – zero, nada – to charity until last July when she gave $225 to the East-West Greenwich track team. She sent $100 to a charity in Georgia last October. She gave another $290 in January, again to East-West Greenwich sports, $50 to the North Kingstown Food Pantry, $50 to the Warren Animal Shelter and $25 to the Davisville Free Library. A grand total of $740 in charitable donations.

Not exactly big bucks and certainly not a tithe, given how much she has hauled in. However, Costa did donate a lot more than that to local Republican town committees around the state, the RI Statewide Coalition and other right-wing political groups and candidates.

By contrast, our local state Representative Donna Walsh works hard to get legislative grants for groups in her district. She just handed a $2,000 check to Deb Nigrelli at RI-CAN. In the current fiscal year, Donna has also gotten $1,000 for the Charlestown Animal Shelter, $1,000 for the Matunuck Elementary School and $1,500 for Charlestown’s Memorial Day Parade. That’s $5,500.

People's Exhibit #1
Shocking new scientific study. According to Scientific American, Dutch researchers have determined that when men interact with women, men get stupid. The study determined that when men believe they are being observed and evaluated by women, their thinking becomes clouded and they show distinct signs of being “cognitively impaired.” Women showed no signs of such impairment. In a separate but similar study, the researchers found that lower income subjects also show signs of cognitive impairment when they believe they are being observed and evaluated by higher income persons.