Rhode Island Guardsman died saving Afghan girl: According to the Rhode Island National Guard and the U.S. Army, [Spc. Dennis] Weichel was in a convoy a week ago with his unit in Laghman Province, in northeast Afghanistan. Some children were in the road in front of...
Long-time Rhode Island blogger Justin Katz, formerly of Anchor Rising, is heading up a new blog, The Ocean State Current: Managing Editor Justin Katz attracted national attention when he joined an early wave of bloggers with his site DustintheLight.com in 2002 — back when one frequently...
Republicans can learn something from Rhode Island about standing up for taxpayers as a winning political strategy. I have written many time before about the efforts of Democratic Mayor of Providence Angel Taveras, who has taken on school teacher unions and other public sector employees in...
The long suffering people of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations elected Linc Chafee Governor in 2010, on the Independent line. When Chafee was a Republican Senator, he was ranked as the No. 1 RINO by Human Events. Chafee lost his reelection bid in 2006 to Sheldon Whitehouse. In 2010, Chafee...
The City of Providence, in my home State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, is in dire financial trouble, as I have posted here many times before. The City, with its large tax-exempt university base and decades-long history of lush public sector benefits, has struggled under...
It's still legal. Spotted in my hometown in Rhode Island: ...
I have posted many times before about David Cicilline, former Mayor of Providence who hid the city's financial problems during the 2010 election, and ran a scare grandma campaign, allowing him a relatively (for Rhode Island) narrow win over John Loughlin in my home RI-01...
You know about the RI pension mess, because I've been pounding that issue pretty much since the founding of this blog three years ago. The New York Times takes a devastating look at Rhode Island, The Little State With a Big Mess (h/t @amandacarpenter): ON the night of...
Of course, the day started out as take your child to school, but the school turned it into a field trip to the otherwise sparsely populated Occupy Providence encampment, as tweeted by most excellent Rhode Island talk show host John DePetro: ...
I was surprised to go to The Providence Journal website today and to see an announcement that ProJo had built a new website with a new url. (no longer projo.com but providencejournal.com) and a paywall: The Providence Journal news organization is moving to the paid eEdition to...
Back in June I posted about how RI Gov. Linc Chafee was refusing to turn Jason Wayne Pleau over to the feds because Pleau potentially was subject to the death penalty in connection with a murder committed on the steps of a federal bank. The feds never indicated...
is pretty well set out in this article in The Providence Journal about intimidation of legislators who are considering reforms needed to save Rhode Island from fiscal collapse (see my post yesterday for background): Philip Keefe, the president of the second-largest state employees union, the R.I....
I know you know about Rhode Island's public sector employee pension problem, because I've posted about it so many times. But take a look at this chart which shows how household contributions to public sector pensions (state employees and teachers) is expected to climb to just over...
I'm sure that by "fight back" they don't literaly mean "fight" back, it's just a turn of phrase. Like "take these son of bitches out," words, just words. And when it comes to the pension system in Rhode Island, which is on the brink of collapse, "fight...
You know all about Rhode Island's pension and other fiscal problems stemming from an out-of-control public sector which made promises which could be kept only under the most rosy of scenarios, in a state almost completely controlled by unions: Is Rhode Island Our Future Under Obama? High...
My town in Rhode Island still is mostly without power, as is much of the state. My wife returned there briefly today (we were in Ithaca when Irene hit) and called me to say "I've never seen anything like this." Even several days later the...
Rhode Island still is without power in much of the state, including my neighborhood. National Grid is estimating that power will not be restored to the entire town until September 5. As of yesterday, as reported by The Providence Journal: Electrical power was the biggest casualty of...
The after-Irene hype is that Irene was overhyped. Yes, maybe in the big cities Irene was no biggie. It's easy for a Philly Inquirer columnist to refer to Irene as a "Category Feh" hurricane. But in those areas of the northeast which city dwellers normally only train or drive...
Ron Coleman