RI Future

19/03/2019

Editor and publisher Bob Plain is taking a sabbatical from journalism to work on a CBD cannabis farm in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom.

The last time I took a sabbatical from journalism was 20 years ago in Hardwick, Vermont. Truth be told, I just wanted to hang out with the local hippies more than I wanted to work for the local newspaper. I quit my job with the Hardwick Gazette, moved into an off-the-grid cabin, learned how to run a...

07/10/2018

Justine Caldwell says this letter is from a fake feminist and it's designed to damage her campaign.

“The is here!” says a campaign letter that was mailed to East Greenwich voters last week. It purports to be from a feminist and in support of Justine Caldwell, a Democrat running to represent East Greenwich at the State House. But the House District 30 candidate – who has made ...

28/09/2018

Is devil's triangle a drinking game?

“I like beer,” said Supreme Court hopeful Brett Kavanaugh when Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse asked if his high school “ralph club” referred to alcohol-induced vomiting. “Do you like beer, Senator?” the potential justice then shot back at Whitehouse. “What do you like to drink...

18/09/2018

Not a great look for your campaign when you come around to agree with the incumbent you are maligning.

The accusation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh tried to r**e a 15-year-old girl as a drunken high school student has captured the beltway’s and the nation’s attention. Here in Rhode Island, it’s also shed some light on the campaign between Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the incumbent D...

13/09/2018

While the trend nationally has been to oust the incumbents, and the local pundits and politicos seemed braced for an upset, Rhode Islanders stuck by the status quo in the 2018 primary election Wednesday.

21/08/2018

We interviewed Sheldon Whitehouse over breakfast at the Corner Cafe in Newport.

You wouldn’t know it by watching him work the crowd waiting for a breakfast table in Newport, but Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island’s junior senator who is facing re-election this year, says he’s uncomfortable in the public spotlight.

08/08/2018

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, observed Charles Dudley Warner in 1850, and it seems true enough this campaign season in Rhode Island as the highest-profile incumbent Democrats are each taking fire from not only Republicans, but also the progressive left. Sometimes even on the same issues.

07/08/2018

Want to help small businesses? Medicare for All.

Dr. James Cowan has seen how health insurance works from multiple angles and both sides of the pond, consulting for the National Health Service, the United Kingdom’s public health-care system, to serving as an expert for the health-care insurer Aetna here in the United States. Now acting as an adv...

03/08/2018

Want to know the economics behind implementing Medicare for All in Rhode Island? We did the math for you.

31/07/2018

Medicare for Rhode Island, says Matt Brown.

Democratic candidate for Governor Matt Brown announced last Friday that he supports a “Medicare for All” plan for Rhode Island, which will both counter Gov. Raimondo’s Medicaid cuts and “save Rhode Island money every year,” he said in a press release.

30/07/2018

Why does GoLocal block so many reporters on Twitter? Publisher Josh Fenton and some of those who he blocks offer theories.

GoLocalProv‘s company catchphrases is: “See it. Read it. Share it.” But the often-abrasive tabloid-esque news website doesn’t always make it easy to share – or even see – its content on Twitter. Especially for local reporters.

28/07/2018

What does Sean Spicer know about what Michael Cohen knows?

I had time to ask Sean Spicer, the former press secretary under President Trump for six months last year, exactly one question during his book signing at a Middletown Barnes and Noble on Friday.I asked: “This week, reports were released saying that Michael Cohen testifies that Donald Trump knew ab...

27/07/2018

Does RI really want to be America's test case for blockchain?

Jeff Pulver, the vice chairman of the blockchain investment group Alchemist which co-hosted the 2018 Rhode Island Blockchain Summit.

26/07/2018

It's patently illegal in Rhode Island to charge students for services that are part of their public school education. But Warwick is asking anyway.

In an effort to balance its budget, Warwick wants to charge students $1 to take the bus to and from school as well as a fee to participate in after school sports. But because these cost-cutting moves flout state law, the local school committee is seeking the approval of the state Department of Educa...

26/07/2018

Only Governor Raimondo, who is running for reelection, has total confidence her tax incentives programs are responsible for RI's improving economy. Either way, they are sure to be a major campaign issue in the primary and, if she wins there, in the general election too.

Gov. Raimondo at the groundbreaking for the Wexford Innovation Complex in Providence last September. The development’s owner, Wexford Science & Technology, is among the recipients of the Rebuild Rhode Island Tax Credit. Photo by Steve Ahlquist

24/07/2018

Hospital employees are now on strike, and they have tons of support.

The sound outside of Rhode Island Hospital and Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence was deafening on Monday afternoon as hundreds of nurses and other members of Local 5098 of the United Nurses and Allied Professionals (UNAP) began their five-day strike for a fairer contract.

20/07/2018

Meet the DSA of PVD.

Thea Riofrancos, a co-chair of the Providence DSA executive committee and political science professor at Providence College.

20/07/2018

Organizers and workers from Local 26 are picketing the Omni Providence hotel on Friday afternoon to call for fairer access to affordable health care for hotel workers.

19/07/2018

This is income inequality in Rhode Island.

A graphic included in the EPI’s report demonstrated the percentage of income growth captured by the top 1% from 1973 to 2015.

19/07/2018

Peace activist Pat Fontes sees challenging Sheldon Whitehouse as a path to a world without wars.

Pat Fontes, a stalwart of the local antiwar movement, used to support Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. “I did not vote for Obama but I voted for Sheldon Whitehouse,” she told me in a recent interview. Now the 81-year-old peace activist is making her first-ever run for elected office by challenging Rh...

19/07/2018

Another nail in the coffin of the proposed 600-foot Fane Tower.

After an extensive public hearing Wednesday night, the Providence Council Ordinance Committee voted three to one, with one member abstaining, to recommend the full council deny the zoning amendment necessary for the 600-foot Fane Tower proposed for Route 195 redevelopment land located in the Jewelry...

18/07/2018

Early results are in ... Kat Kerwin to run unopposed.

Kat Kerwin, one of Providence’s youngest candidates for city council, has perhaps already won the Ward 12 seat—by default.

09/07/2018

The Providence City Council could take a hard tack to the left if some of these progressive activists can beat the establishment candidates.

The uproar in Rhode Island’s Democratic Party might also be seen in Providence City Council campaigns this summer as several new, progressive candidates are running races far to the left of longtime incumbents—often with the claim that the establishment has been largely absent from their constit...

06/07/2018

What do Matt Brown and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have in common?

Matt Brown, Democratic candidate for governor of Rhode Island, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, overnight political superstar from the Bronx, have a lot in common. They both want America to make a major investment in renewable energy. They both think $15 an hour is a fairer minimum wage. They both beli...

05/07/2018

Good news for Moira Walsh and Bridget Valverde. Marcia Ranglin-Vassell and Jeanine Calkin still have endorsed primary opponents.

The Rhode Island Democratic Party wants to take back two of four controversial legislative endorsements that lit a fire under the local progressive movement and drew the attention of national media. If successful, Michael Earnheart, a Trump voter challenging incumbent Rep. Moira Walsh, and Greg Acca...

02/07/2018

"It's spammy but probably legal."

When Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Flanders was the state-appointed receiver for cash-strapped Central Falls in 2012, the affluent East Greenwich resident infamously offered municipal employees a haircut or a beheading in balancing the city’s budget. As such, public sector workers probably ...

02/07/2018

What do Jeanine Calkin, Moira Walsh, and Marcia Ranglin-Vassell have in common? They are women, they are progressive, they are incumbents, and they didn't get the endorsement of the Rhode Island Democratic Party.

Being a progressive woman may be beneficial at the ballot box in the 2018 election but it doesn’t seem to help with respect to endorsements from the Rhode Island Democratic Party.

29/06/2018

Bob Flanders doesn't think community college graduates are qualified to serve in Congress.

Republican Bob Flanders had some nice things to say about Bobby Nardolillo yesterday, his now-former opponent in the GOP primary for a U.S. Senate seat who dropped out of the race yesterday. “He is a dedicated public servant with a bright future,” Flanders said of Nardolillo in a tweeted stateme...

29/06/2018

In announcing her campaign for City council, Justice Gaines says Providence needs to focus on people not corporations.

At one of the coziest campaign kickoffs in recent memory, Justice Ameer Gaines announced her bid for Providence City Council for Ward 1, encompassing the Fox Point, Wayland, and Downtown neighborhoods.

27/06/2018

If you're looking for a progressive wave in RI this year, here are the races you should be paying attention to.

As the deadline to run for elected office came and went Wednesday afternoon, there are more than a few political newcomers—many young, and many centered around social justice—that could constitute the makings of a progressive wave in Rhode Island.

25/06/2018

Last night’s RI Democratic State committee meeting offered no surprises in the outcome — incumbent Governor Raimondo and Lt. Gov. McKee received expected endorsements — but the process of getting there provided moments of conflict that illuminated tensions within the Party.

21/06/2018

Graduate workers at Brown University announced a landmark agreement with the university Thursday afternoon, paving the way for one of the first collective bargaining agreements for graduate employees at a private institution in the country.

21/06/2018

Those who attended Nika Lomazzo‘s first stand-up show at AS220 were met with a bit of an apt misnomer: the show was titled “Imposter Syndrome,” but it was clear that Lomazzo, an outspoken figure in her neighborhood of Federal Hill in Providence, was nothing but the real deal. Her trenchant cri...

20/06/2018

We interviewed David Cicilline on his visit to Texas immigration facilities where children are being separated from their moms. Here's what he told us.

The Rhode Island Democrat was describing what he saw after visiting immigration detention centers on the Texas/Mexico border this weekend where President Donald Trump’s family separation policy is playing out as a moral and political crisis before America’s and the world’s eyes.

15/06/2018

Will Weatherly takes a deep dive into how the House budget hurts medical ma*****na patients by favoring monopoly compassion centers.

Buried under mounds of drama surrounding the House budget proposal, up for a vote on the floor Friday afternoon, those considering opening a medical ma*****na dispensary in the state can find bad news and a rate hike to make your head spin. The House has stubbornly rebuked Gov. Raimondo’s previous...