In a recent stroke of brilliance—or perhaps madness—AI has once again proven its uncanny ability to blend the realms of technology and absurdity. Brace yourselves, folks, because the world now has AI-generated representations of dog breeds for each U.S. state. Yes, you heard that right. It’s like your favorite childhood game of “Guess Who?” met […]
On Monday of this week, a majority of the Hopkinton Town Council, members Hirst, Burns, and Geary, expressed their concern for the proposed $150 million dollar bond being proposed by the Chariho school district. The push for the bond came about fairly quickly, with little school committee discussion, in an attempt to meet a February […]
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Public and private employee unions along with their Left-leaning allies and elected officials in Rhode Island, for years, have been seeking to punish success by raising taxes on wealthy residents. Why? So the state can spend more money on projects that benefit unions and big-government spenders. Oh, and, of course, in echoing their […]
EDITOR”S NOTE: We add the following to the column below for your consideration: Did the singer-writer choose “Richmond” simply because of its geography (south of DC) … or because of its obvious “rich men” play on words with “rich mond”? Or is Richmond, as the former capital of the Confederate South, symbolic of a brewing […]
Senator Elaine Morgan introduces legislation to eliminate state tax on Social Security income Senator Elaine Morgan introduced legislation to completely eliminate the tax on Social Security income in Rhode Island. Bill S84 specifies for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2024, an individual may subtract from federal adjusted gross income all Social Security income. PROGRAMMING […]
Richmond, RI – With battlelines already being drawn on the Chariho School District’s budget, the Forgotten Taxpayers PAC demands that school officials leverage the state-wide data in the uniform chart of accounts (UCOA) to find savings. There is a real opportunity this budget season to move away from an endless ratcheting of the budget up […]
EDITOR’S NOTE: You can watch Louise Dinsmore’s recent appearances as a guest on The Current’s In The Dugout with Mike Stenhouse video podcasts here and here. **** As a parent whose child attended Richmond Elementary School from K-3, I witnessed the love, dedication and professionalism of Chariho teachers and teaching support staff. There is […]
On May 4, residents of South Kingstown will be voting on an $85,000,000 school bond referendum.
That’s a pretty high amount for town residents to go on the hook for, mainly because the town’s student enrollment has been steadily declining but also because the cornerstone component of the proposed works, the high school, would not be newbuild but conversion of an existing school building. Two miles AWAY, by the way, from its current in-town location.
As there would be state funds involved, the project itself, its costs and its proposed funding sources have to be approved by the Rhode Island Department of Education. (Link here to the town’s facility application submitted to RIDE).
So the Ocean State Current reached out to RIDE with the questions below and received the indicated answers.
Take action now! Add your voice to the many thousands who have asked Governor Dan McKee to live up to his promises as an advocate for the small business community, to take decisive action to relieve businesses of excessive green mandates and to ensure our state’s long-term viability by VETOING Rhode Island’s Green New Deal.
My weekly call-in on John DePetro’s WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM show, for March 22, included talk about:
I’ll be on again Monday, March 29, at 12:00 p.m. on WNRI 1380 AM and I-95.1 FM.
The Transportation & Climate Initiative (TCI) is just another big-government attempt to manipulate the people.
A full on assault against the average Rhode Island family is rocketing through the General Assembly. The Ocean State is quickly moving to put our own version of the Green New Deal into law. We need you to take action immediately to voice your opposition to it, before it is too late. Click here now to say NO to this far-left radical scheme from the land of make-believe.
This, along with the TCI Gas Tax, will paralyze our state. As we struggle to recover from the pandemic, it should be inconceivable that state lawmakers would choose NOW to consider an additional 30-40 cents per gallon gas tax increase or impose a radical, prohibitively expensive energy scheme.
Yet, the price of gasoline could soon rise (even more than it already has) if a new stealth carbon-tax scheme – the TCI Gas Tax – is implemented … a move that would necessarily increase costs on families and business, driving more people out of our state. The House of Representatives will vote on House Bill 5445 this Tuesday. This version of the state’s green new deal has already passed the RI Senate.
Even if you have contacted lawmakers already, we need you to take action again to oppose RI’s Green New Deal: Click here to contact lawmakers to say NO to the TCI Gas Tax and H5445, Rhode Island’s Green New Deal!
The simple form, once completed, will automatically send an email to the Governor and to legislative leaders telling them to reject the regional gasoline cap-and-trade scheme and RI’s Green New Deal.
Tell them today that you stand against these radical energy schemes. Thank you for taking action, and remember that your voice counts.
A new term highlights the reality that what is good for the community might not be good for the people who wish to govern that community.
The Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity calls on the newly sworn-in Governor of Rhode Island, Daniel McKee, to officially withdraw the Ocean State from the regional gasoline cap-and-trade scheme, known as the Transportation & Climate Initiative (TCI).
“For years as Lieutenant Governor, Dan McKee expressed verbal support for the small business community. Now is the time for the Governor to take action and to separate himself from his predecessor’s anti-business policies. The Governor should immediately put to rest any notion that his administration will impose a job-killing, budget-destroying gasoline tax on businesses and families who are struggling to recover from the pandemic,” commented Mike Stenhouse, the Center’s CEO. “Today, our Center calls on the Governor to take executive action to formally withdraw Rhode Island from the TCI compact.”
In December, former Governor Gina Raimondo signed-on Rhode Island, just one of three states to do so, to the TCI Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU). Implementation of TCI would lead to a significant increase in automobile and diesel gasoline prices, while also systematically limiting regional supplies of vehicle fuel.
In calling on Governor McKee to eschew the costly TCI gas tax, the Center points to research and polling that shows why TCI is poor public policy:
Later this week, the Center will announce a public campaign to petition the Governor and state legislative leaders to reject the TCI compact.
More information about the proposed TCI gas tax can be found on the Center’s TCI webpage: RIFreedom.org/NoTCItax. The Center is one of over two-dozen organizations in the northeast working cooperatively to defeat TCI in their respective states.
[This is a public statement released by the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity today.]
The bonds on the ballot this week are the sort of thing that government officials do when the people paying the bills are last in the line of their concerns.
Sixth highest spending per mile for some of the country’s worst infrastructure. If money were going to solve the state’s infrastructure issues, they would have been fixed long before now. No on Bond Question #4.
The shocking words they admit they can’t say publicly… were just made public. They say, if YOU heat your homes or drive passenger cars, YOU are the “bad guys.”
Whether it is “you,” “the person up the street,” or “the senior on fixed income”… the radical environmentalists who support TCI say it is you who they want to “turn the screws on” and “point the finger at,” so they can “break your will” to force you to “stop emitting.”
See the alarming video of the MA Undersecretary for Climate Change talking about the abusive TCI scheme: https://youtu.be/muxVGmgykA4
Learn more by clicking here now to read about how the TCI Gas Tax is bad for Rhode Island families.
Count me among those somewhat surprised to learn that the electric grid of the State of Texas, perhaps best known for oil production (and proud of it), incorporates wind turbines in its electric grid. In fact,
… wind generation ranks as the second-largest source of energy in Texas, accounting for 23% of state power supplies last year
But as you have probably seen, this “green energy” source has turned into a big Achilles heel for Texas’ electric grid in the cold front that has descended on that state and much of the country. As of yesterday,
Frozen wind turbines have caused almost half of Texas’s wind generation capacity to go offline in the midst of an “unprecedented storm”.
The Lone Star state is under a state of emergency after freezing conditions swept the region, causing dangerously icy roads and leaving nearly 3 million people without power.
Update: frozen wind turbines led to a drop in Texas’ wind power from thirty one gigawatts to six and there are currently 3.4 million power outages. The situation is getting worse, not better.
Texas, and other states, has resorted to rolling blackouts. In below-freezing temperatures, this is literally a life-threatening situation for states like Texas which rely on electricity for heat (and lots of other critical activities).
A small but vocal group of advocates, promoted by many gauzy-eyed members of the mainstream media, have for years been pushing to transition to green energy away from fossil fuel.
What’s so special about March 2nd? That’s the date of a Special Election in Rhode Island. Its only questions – seven of them – are for the approval of a wide spectrum of bond authority so more than six hundred million dollars worth of deficit spending can be undertaken. Mark Zaccaria says NO! You should, too.
Rhode Islanders clearly feel, after all we’ve been through, that now is not the time to punish people for driving their vehicles!
This week, the Center released a new poll that shows the initial conceptual support for the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI) Gas Tax drops significantly when voters learn the policy will result in gas tax hikes, a significant projected loss of jobs, and a major reduction in the average family’s disposable income.
On the flip side, by not adopting this TCI scheme and keeping gas taxes where they are, our Ocean State would gain a competitive advantage over our Massachusetts and Connecticut neighbors.
Rhode Islanders oppose TCI when they learn about its high costs – including a $0.23 increase in the gas tax, an estimated 2,000 jobs lost, and a $1,200 reduction in disposable income for the average Rhode Island family.
Another false “feel good” narrative (from far-left Never Never Land) is not worth the loss of disposable income and jobs costs for virtually zero environmental impact. Learn more now by clicking here to see the full poll results!
One doesn’t have to be a climate-change skeptic to wonder why our elected officials would pursue an agreement that hands over some of their authority in order to impose a significant burden on the people they represent for a small benefit to others… all just as Rhode Islanders struggle to regain their feet from the COVID lockdown that the same governor imposed through executive order.
This morning on the WPRO Morning News with Gene Valicenti – link to audio – General Treasurer Seth Magaziner elaborated on his call for Rhode Island Representative Justin Price to resign from the House of Representatives for spreading misinformation, saying
When elected officials use their platforms to spread (mis)information, to spread lies, they have to be called out for it.”
And
…as elected officials, we should be held to a higher standard …
Interesting. Alright, check out this analysis from August, 2018 by Mike Riley.
In assessing the effort to keep the PawSox in Rhode Island, it is important to review the role of General Treasurer Seth Magaziner. The state treasurer was asked to analyze the costs and opine on affordability, as would be expected with a large borrowing like this. Mr. Magaziner opined in October 2017 and in June 2018 as numbers changed along with the terms of the deal and then opined again recently, finally giving a nod to the deal.
But what everyone needs to know is that $350 million dollars in debt for Pawtucket’s other post-employment benefits (OPEB) for former employees was not used in his analysis. This is more than twice the city’s pension debt! In fact, it was purposely left out by Magaziner. Including OPEB debt would obviously have made the City of Pawtucket’s borrowing look dangerous and ill-conceived. … This $350 million is so significant and overwhelming, it would be irresponsible for any treasurer to think Pawtucket absorbing new debt was a good idea.
Well, that’s an eye-opener. Nice work by Mike Riley catching that serious piece of misinformation by General Treasurer Magaziner. Ultimately, the PawSox left Rhode Island and these ill-conceived, unaffordable bonds were never issued. But that was very much despite this substantive misinformation that Treasurer Magaziner issued about Pawtucket’s financial condition.
Now, it is absurd to call on an elected official to step down due to a statement of misinformation; in part, because it falls into a broader category of free speech and, in part, because about three quarters of all elected officials in the country would instantly have to step down. (I heard that; stop cheering!).
But that is the position of General Treasurer Seth Magaziner.
I do agree with him when he says, as he did this morning, that “As Americans, we all have a duty to speak up when we see people in positions of authority spreading misinformation” and that elected officials “should use our platforms responsibly”. Via this post, accordingly, I am fulfilling that duty. Specifically, I am calling out Mr. Magaziner for a piece of misinformation that is especially egregious because he communicated it in his capacity as the state’s General Treasurer in an analysis about a major financial decision facing a municipality and the state.
Clearly, Mr. Magaziner did not use his platform as General Treasurer responsibly by including misinformation in this important analysis. Now, I myself am not calling on him to resign as the state’s General Treasurer for this. But by his own standard, he must do so immediately. Referring once again to Mr. Magaziner’s own words on WPRO this morning, elected officials have a duty to tell people the truth, to be honest. He failed notably to do so.
It behooves us to keep a watchful eye on how the incentives of government change and shift over time, and COVID offers many exercises for doing so.
The governor gave herself unprecedented power to make us do and not do things for our own good (from her perspective) with COVID-19, and there was never any reason to believe she would restrict that philosophy to the pandemic if she could get away with pushing the envelope. Well… she’s pushing the envelope.
Let’s review eight months of unconvincing reasons for implementing, then not ending, Rhode Island’s COVID-19 lockdown, then go to the video tape for what’s looking like the real explanation.
Eight months into the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, let’s examine the goal of the lockdown, the critical matter of its effectiveness and the collateral damage it has caused.
We are living through one of the most peaceful times in human history. Given the tumult of 2020, it is easy to lose perspective. The number of people living in poverty is plummeting – globally. And even with a pandemic raging, we are seeing extraordinary advances in our ability to fight disease. Whether together or apart, we will soon see the arrival of Thanksgiving – a pause to give thanks, and maybe gain some perspective.
Before we arrive at this pause, we have an election to endure. The Gaspee Project board is committed to advocating for free market principles and supporting conservative candidates. These principles lead to more freedom. Freedom leads to prosperity (jobs). History has shown this to be true.
Conservatives believe in the individual rights and a free society. This is why private property and a limited government are so important.
From a just-issued press release by Gaspee Project Chairman Clay Johnson:
Steve Laffey, the former Mayor of Cranston, has volunteered his time and voice to bolster an ad blitz for The Gaspee Project in the final week of the 2020 campaign season.
Laffey’s has recorded a radio spot and multiple robo-call ads that will run this week in support of 8 General Assembly candidates and the Republican party. In the spots, Laffey stresses how the Democrat party is no longer the party of JFK and has been taken-over by radical-left mobs, while the Republican party is still the party of Lincoln and stands for common-sense, pro-jobs policies.
Also this week, a second round of mailers, social media ads, and print ads by Gaspee are expected to run, which in combination with previous Gaspee election materials, will reach almost one-hundred thousand households, social media accounts, print ad readers, and radio listeners.
Thanks very much to Steve Laffey for doing this. He understands, as many of us do, that Rhode Island would be very poorly served by the election of far left, “progressive” candidates who will push to put on steroids the misguided, leftie policies that have already damaged the state: raising of taxes (often disguised as fees, tolls and budget scooping) even higher; ratcheting up of already burdensome regulations (that often pose as a redundant effort at diversity) on business; more encroachment on private property rights; and the cramming down of effectively non-existent, exorbitantly expensive, politically correct energy sources.
(Seriously, “progressive policies” has to be one of the biggest oxymorons in the history of political branding.)
If you are alarmed at the prospect of the expansion of these non-progressive policies in Rhode Island, please consider pushing back by donating to the Gaspee Project to bolster the reach of these radio ads and mailers.
RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity CEO Mike Stenhouse speaks with nationally renowned conservative Stephen Moore about economics, President Trump, and politics.
At each step, the imposition of new rules and technology seems minor and maybe justified, but eventually, the people find themselves tangled in a network of regulation and taxation.