New dish of Charlestown Tapas

Peeps®, rankings, surprise resignation, big state land purchase, taxes and Taylor Swift, reasons to get upset and finally, ticks

By Will Collette

Nobel Prize, please!

Leading off this week’s Charlestown Tapas (crunchy little news bits for the discerning reader) is this wonderful piece of news. Prairie Farms of Illinois has come out with Peeps® flavored egg nog for Easter. This wonderful idea is, regrettably, limited to their market area in the Midwest and upper South, but I can only hope that they will either take this national, or license the idea to other regional dairies so we all can enjoy it.

It may not replace coffee milk in the hearts and minds of Rhode Islanders, but would be a much-welcomed addition for Peeps® aficionados.

State Rep from Narragansett abruptly resigns

After 25 years in the state House of Representatives, Donald Lally (D-District 33) handed in his resignation, effective immediately. Lally just won another term last November running without an opponent. Lally was second in seniority in the House.

Lally, sometimes called “Landslide Lally” for his narrow margins of victory when Republicans managed to recruit an opponent, doesn’t leave much of a legacy. 

He was not known either for his work ethic or his achievements. In his letter to Speaker of the House Nick Mattiello, Lally cited the recent death of both of his parents and a realization that he wanted to spend more time with his family as the reasons for his surprise and immediate resignation.

OK, but pardon me if I think there might be more to this story. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, Democrat Susan Cicilline Buoanno has declared her intent to run for Lally's seat in the special election that will have to held. She is the sister of Congressman David Cicilline.

DEM closes deal for Kimball sanctuary

Charlestown is letting DEM take over Kimball Sanctuary without a Peep

The state DEM is about to complete the purchase of the entire Audubon Society Kimball Wildlife Sanctuary off Prosser Trail and adjacent to Burlingame State Park. 

Last July, I first reported this deal here when it followed on the heels of Charlestown’s adoption of the Slattery-Platner Doctrine that holds that no state or federal agency can do business in Charlestown without asking for the town’s permission.

I asked Town Administrator Mark “Stonewall” Stankiewicz if DEM had had any talks with the town about the Kimball purchase. Stankiewicz refused to answer, except to say “there are no documents responsive to your request.” Happy Sunshine Week, Mark!

The CCA Party leadership in town has been adamant about demanding check-off rights on any land deals in town by the state, even to the point of getting our new Libertarian state Rep. Flip Filippi (I-Lincoln) to introduce state legislation imposing such a restriction on the state Water Resources Board.

But for inexplicable reasons, the CCA Party town leadership have been silent on this transaction even though it involves a large and critically important piece of land.

Unfortunate rankings

In the last Tapas, I noted that a survey showed how each of Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns ranked for safety. Oddly, Charlestown only ranked at #15. Richmond at fifth place was rated tops in South County. South Kingstown came at #8.

There’s another survey out, this time by SafeWise, which specializes in examining safety issues. They only listed the top ten with Glocester coming in at #1. South Kingstown moved up to #3. Charlestown did not make the list.

Charlestown also failed to make the list of Rhode Island’s Fifteen Best Towns, as reported by Rhode Island Monthly in their March edition. We’re just not on that list at all. If you’re not a RI Monthly subscriber, you can’t see the entire article to understand their scoring and rationale. They do offer you a peek at one of the elements here.

I’m sure there are lots of theories about why Charlestown isn’t doing very well in these rankings. At 6.1%, we have high unemployment. We have very little affordable housing; no assisted living for the elderly. We have no public transportation. Our taxes are relatively high, given that we offer almost no public services.

But even though we have great beaches and scenic beauty, there isn’t much to do in Charlestown. One objective way to measure that is to look at the recent revenues given to the towns by the state as their share of the 1% add-on tax for restaurant meals and hotel lodging.

In December of 2014, Charlestown received a total of $8,097 in hotel, beverage and meals tax which means our local establishments had revenues of over $800 thousand.

Click here for beverage and meal data and click here for hotel data.

But compare that to Westerly which received $52,980 as its share of the revenue, almost seven times more than Charlestown on over five and a quarter millions in hospitality business revenue. South Kingstown received a similar amount - $52,014 on more than $5 million in restaurant business in December.

Not so bad numbers

Yet again, Rhode Island gets scored a “D” by the advocates of charter schools who place Rhode Island 33^rd out of 42 states and the District of Columbia for fostering the growth of charter schools. Good, although charter schools have a lot of grease with Gov. Raimondo and practically own RI Lieutenant Governor Dan McKee.

In statistics released on St. Patrick’s day, it turns out that Italians slightly edge out the Irish as the state’s largest ethnic group. The five municipalities with the highest percentage of residents of Irish extraction are Middletown, Narragansett, Charlestown (!), Scituate and Jamestown.

Rhode Island taxes are not as bad as you would think

In the last Tapas, I noted a study by the conservative think tank the Tax Foundation that rated Rhode Island as only #38 among the states plus DC meaning Rhode Island’s tax burden is actually among the lightest in the country.

Lest you think that was a fluke, MarketWatch, a conservative investor website, ranked “10 states with the worst taxes for average Americans.”

Their rankings are pretty much the opposite of what you would think with Indiana, Florida and Texas coming in first, second and third place for having the highest taxes on “average Americans.” While these, and the others in the Top Ten, are often considered havens for the 1%, they stick it to the middle-class through high property taxes, fees, and other kinds of regressive taxation.

“Taylor Swift Tax” draws conservative fire

One very exciting feature in Gov. Gina Raimondo’s first proposed state budget is her idea to impose a state level property tax on residential property with absentee owners assessed at $1 million or more. This would hit right at the heart of the Charlestown Citizens Alliance’s political donor base and I love it!

But predictably, Rhode Island’s right is pretty upset. Here’s an article from Ocean State Current where the headline pretty much tells you the whole story: “Raimondo’s Outrageous Statewide Property Tax Actually an Attack on Property Rights”

Never in a million years would I think Gina Raimondo would turn out to be a class warrior, but the right-wingers certainly think so.

The right-wing blog Ocean State Current cites an interesting and less foaming-at-the-mouth piece by a new Rhode Island blogger (an anonymous but intelligent one) who writes Coffee Black RI. This person, whoever he or she might be, questions whether the Raimondo proposal is also an apartment tax since there are plenty of properties all over Rhode Island that are residential, worth over $1 million and not owner-occupied, or whether the proposal is simply worded sloppily.

That’s an interesting question, but hardly a deal-breaker for me, even though Ocean State Current describes it as “another disconcerting creepy-crawly of progressive thinking.”

CCA Party Wagon Train will be heading to Washington on March 25

The Senate Indian Affairs Committee will host a roundtable discussion on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Carcieri v. Salazar on March 25. This case arose from Charlestown’s battle with the Narragansett Indian Tribe and the Tribe’s plan to build affordable housing on land owned by the Tribe. The Tribe wanted to place the land in trust with the US Interior Department but Charlestown, and ultimately the state, fought that transfer of jurisdiction.

The Supreme Court issued one of its worst and most bizarre decisions, ruling against the Tribe on the grounds that Congress did not make it perfectly clear in 1934 that the major federal legislation governing US-Tribal relations applies to all tribes and not just those that had federal recognition before 1934.

The effect of that ruling was to slash the sovereignty rights of the Narragansetts and over 500 other tribes. Since that court decision, legislation has been introduced to state the clear intent of Congress to have federal laws apply equally to all tribes – that’s called the “Carcieri Fix.”

The CCA Party, which has continued Charlestown’s perpetual war on the Tribe, is unalterably opposed to the “Carcieri Fix” despite the damage it has done to tribes across the US.

One state where the Carcieri decision is causing the most mischief is Massachusetts where state and local voters actually want casino development and where at least one of the planned casinos is supposed to be tribal-owned. The issue of placing land into trust has come up repeatedly, stalling final selection of an eastern Massachusetts site.

Noteworthy Business Notes

Washington Trust is in the middle of its 15^th Annual Peanut Butter Drive. They are working with local sports teams, schools and civic groups to collect peanut butter for distribution to people in need. It’s pretty smart to pick a non-perishable, easily portable, high-nutrition item. Hats off to them. Click here for more information.

A couple of local food purveyors were singled out as “Local Heroes” by Edible Rhody Magazine. Arcadian Fields Organic Farm in Hope Valley won in the farmer category and Dave’s Coffee of Charlestown won in the “beverage artisan” category. Congratulations to them both!

Sons of Liberty Spirits of South Kingstown once again won honors for its oddly flavored whiskies. This time, they won the 2015 Best Flavored Whiskey in North America award from Whisky Magazine (which I only read for the crossword puzzle). Their pumpkin spice whiskey won last year. This year, it was for their seasonal hop-flavored whiskey.

John Sylvan, the guy who invented the Keurig coffee-maker with all those nasty little unrecyclable plastic tubs, says he’s sorry it did it. He doesn’t own one himself. This is how he described his invention (which he sold for $50,000 to Keurig) this way to Atlantic magazine: “It’s like a cigarette for coffee, a single-serve delivery mechanism for an addictive substance.”

Tapas of tapas

I collect tidbits of information and links to articles that interest me and perhaps to others. Anyone, I thought you might be interested in:

Here's an interesting piece on the current state of secession threats. This is still a thing despite the Civil War pretty much settling the issue decisively. Secession talk really cranked up after President Obama won in 2008 and is fairly widespread – take, for example, our own state Representative Flip Filippi who thinks “nullification,” the first step toward secession, is a perfectly good thing.

Much of the serious secession talk is in the Deep South and especially Texas. Frankly, if they want to leave, maybe this time we should let them. We would save a lot of tax money since these states take a lot more federal money than they contribute. A bunch of free-loading moochers, IMO.

For more cartoons by Pat Bagley, click here

An example of what I won’t miss if southern states secede is nonsense like the state of Florida which has banned state workers from using terms like “climate change” or “global warming” in official state communications. After all, as far as they’re concerned, climate change doesn’t exist. Wonder if they’ll keep saying that when Miami is under water.

All those folks might find the website, Obama Conspiracy Theories, very useful. This is a wonderful piece of very hard work, regularly updated, that catalogs all the various claims made about the President with links to data that either debunks or explains the claim. Great fun and very useful.

Finally, wrapping up this edition of Tapas, have you ever wondered how it’s possible to get a tick bite (as I have) even when it’s very cold outside? According to researchers at Yale University, the little f***ers have anti-freeze in their blood in the form of a protein that protects them from freezing. 

These researchers have discovered that they can isolate this protein and that it protects mice from frostbite, and I’m sure we all worry about our mice getting frostbite during harsh winters. I’m not making this up.