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| Didn't Trump say other countries would pay the tariffs? |
Tuesday, November 25, 2025
R.I. must speed up lowering carbon emissions to meet Act on Climate mandates
We need more and better alternatives to cars
By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current
The 9.52 million metric tons of carbon dioxide produced from travel, buildings, and other human activity across Rhode Island in 2023 marks a 1.4% increase over 2022 level emissions, according to the 41-page analysis published Friday.
Even worse: The long-term pace of progress, while showing modest reductions in emissions, is too slow to meet deadlines set under the state’s Act on Climate law.
The 2021 decarbonization mandate requires that Rhode Island achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, with incremental progress markers, including a 45% reduction from 1990 levels by 2030.
If Rhode Island continues to decrease its fossil fuel reliance at the same rate as it has over the last five years, it will miss the 2030 target, while further jeopardizing its 2050 goal, the report warns.
“Significant decarbonization of transportation, electricity consumption, and buildings are instrumental to attain net-zero emissions by mid-century,” the report states.
The warning comes amid major shifts in federal incentives and policies under the Trump administration that are expected to make state clean energy mandates harder to achieve.
“The Trump administration’s rollback of clean-energy initiatives and its cuts to billions of dollars in funding have intentionally undermined the clean-energy future for states across the nation,” Gov. Dan McKee said in a statement Friday. “As federal policies continue to shift, we will keep working with our partners to chart a practical and responsible path forward on reducing emissions.”
Leading the way is the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council, a consortium of state agencies charged with helping Rhode Island meet its decarbonization mandates.
Initial projections reported by the council suggested the state was poised to fall short of that 2030 milestone, though the 2022 report emphasized that the model was “simple” and “preliminary.” A more detailed report will be published by the end of this year, informed in part by the latest state greenhouse gas emissions.
Terry Gray, DEM director and chair of the council, called the latest emissions results “disappointing,” but noted that it mirrors national trends which saw a rise in travel-related emissions in 2023.
FACTOID: Charlestown remains the only Rhode Island municipality with no RIPTA bus service, except of course Block Island.
Monday, November 24, 2025
The Verdict of History
Trump and his fascist glorification
Trump has ordered the U.S. Treasury to draft a $1 coin featuring him on both sides, for the purpose of “honoring America’s 250th Birthday and @POTUS,” according to Treasury officials.
Meanwhile, Trump wants the
Washington Commanders to name their planned $3.7 billion stadium after him. A
senior White House source told ESPN:
“It’s what the president wants, and it will probably happen.” Presumably,
Trump’s name will be carved into a granite facade at the stadium’s entrance.
The giant $300 million ballroom that Trump is adding to the
White House is called “the
President Donald J. Trump Ballroom” on the list of donors to the project, and
senior administration officials say the name is likely to stick.
Trump is moving to immortalize himself with his name etched
into coins, carved into pediments, and inscribed into White House marble. He
wants to glorify himself in the most permanent ways possible.
This is what fascist dictators do when in power. Stalin,
Hitler, and Mussolini built monuments to glorify themselves so they’d be
exalted in history.
Democracies don’t do this. They memorialize their heroes
only after they’ve died, and only if the public wants them commemorated.
He must be remembered as the president who claimed without
evidence that an election was “stolen” from him. Who then instigated a coup
that included false electors, threats to state officials, and an assault on the
U.S. Capitol that resulted in five deaths and injuries to 174 police officers.
He should be remembered as the president who, after being
reelected, tried to erase the nation’s memory of what he had done by pardoning
1,600 rioters who had been criminally convicted for participating in the
Capitol attack and 77 people who had conspired with him to carry out the
attempted coup. He called them all “patriots.”
He must be remembered as the president who then usurped the
powers of Congress. Who denied people due process of law. Who prosecuted his
political opponents. Who violated international law by killing people he
labeled enemy combatants. Who sent the military into American cities over the
objections of their mayors and governors. And who openly and brazenly took
bribes.
We must not allow Trump to erase this history with false
tributes to himself, etched into silver, marble, or granite.
Instead, after he is gone, a monument should be erected to
remind future generations of Trump’s treachery and the treachery of officials
who supported him.
It would be a simple building constructed of iron and
cement, containing the records of his attacks on democracy and the names of
everyone who aided him.
Over its doorway would be the words “Trump’s Treason.”
It would be situated on the White House lawn where the Trump
ballroom (since demolished) once stood. It would face Pennsylvania Avenue so
that families visiting the nation’s capital — including those commemorating
America’s 500th anniversary — have easy access, and will long remember this
catastrophe.
Bad toys!
Choking hazards, toxic resin and unfiltered AI teddy bears, oh my!
By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current
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| (NY Public Interest Research Group) |
They were displayed on a table at a downtown Providence shop Friday afternoon in a collection of popular toys families might be considering purchasing for their kids this holiday season.
But they’re also among the most dangerous, according to the latest “Trouble in Toyland” report recently published by the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), a Denver-based consumer rights nonprofit.
It’s the 40th year the group has published its annual list of toys that could be dangerous to children, Henry Welch, a campaign associate for the Rhode Island chapter, told reporters gathered outside Craftland Friday afternoon.
In the past, Welch said the biggest dangers with toys were choking hazards and lead.
“A lot of the toys that we found that were dangerous are no longer available,” Welch said. “However, some of these dangers are still out there, including some toys that seemed like a dystopian science fiction of the past that are now available.”
Exhibit A among those dystopian toys is that teddy bear on the table.
Sold for $99 by Singapore-based FoloToy, “Kumma Bear” uses OpenAI models to hold “both friendly chats and deep conversations to stimulate curiosity and learning,” according to its now-gone product page.
But the PIRG report found Kumma’s programming had very few guardrails in place.
Charlestown Dems invite you to event for Council candidate Jill Fonnemann tomorrow night at the General Stanton
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Just follow orders or obey the law?
There are certain situations in which the military should not fall in line
The lawmakers have all served either in the military or the intelligence community. Their message sparked a furious response on social media from Donald Trump, who called the legislators’ action “seditious behavior, punishable by death.”
One of the lawmakers, Sen. Elissa Slotkin, told The New York Times that she had heard from troops currently serving that they were worried about their own liability in actions such as the ones in the Caribbean.
This is not the first time Trump has put members of the military in situations whose legality has been questioned. But a large percentage of service members understand their duty to follow the law in such a difficult moment.
We are scholars of international relations and international law. We conducted survey research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Human Security Lab and discovered that many service members do understand the distinction between legal and illegal orders, the duty to disobey certain orders, and when they should do so.
The ethical dilemma
Indeed, since Trump returned to office, many of his actions have alarmed international human rights observers. His administration has deported immigrants without due process, held detainees in inhumane conditions, threatened the forcible removal of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and deployed both the National Guard and federal military troops to Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, Chicago and other cities to quell largely peaceful protests or enforce immigration laws.
When a sitting commander in chief authorizes acts like these, which many assert are clear violations of the law, men and women in uniform face an ethical dilemma: How should they respond to an order they believe is illegal?
The question may already be affecting troop morale. “The moral injuries of this operation, I think, will be enduring,” a National Guard member who had been deployed to quell public unrest over immigration arrests in Los Angeles told The New York Times. “This is not what the military of our country was designed to do, at all.”
Troops who are ordered to do something illegal are put in a bind – so much so that some argue that troops themselves are harmed when given such orders. They are not trained in legal nuances, and they are conditioned to obey. Yet if they obey “manifestly unlawful” orders, they can be prosecuted. Some analysts fear that U.S. troops are ill-equipped to recognize this threshold.
Sunday, November 23, 2025
With only days before Charlestown’s December 2 Town Council special election, CCA candidate dodges the real questions
CCA tries to deny and deflect its fiscal failings
By Will Collette
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| For continued good government in Charlestown, elect endorsed Democrat Jill Fonnemann for Town Council |
Call it click-baiting if you will, but there’s a remarkable
similarity between the way the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) treats
Charlestown’s financial meltdown that led to their 2022 and 2024 election
defeats and the way Donald Trump is dealing with his friendship with pedophile
Jeffrey Epstein.
I have been urging the CCA to come clean on how they managed
to lose $3 million dollars used to fund CCA leader Ruth Platner’s shady land
deals and then ran a cover-up campaign to hide what they did.
After two straight election drubbings, you’d think someone
in the CCA might have figured out that rather than deny, distract and deflect, maybe the
CCA should admit and apologize.
A key figure in those scandals is one of the December 2
candidates, Bonnita B. Van Slyke. Van Slyke was on the Charlestown Town Council
throughout the 2022 scandal but bailed out before the 2022 election rather than
be on the CCA ticket rejected by Charlestown voters.
She tried a comeback in 2024 but ran in last place, 10th out of ten, as the CCA tried to make that election about dark skies (seriously, the darkness of the sky was their big issue) rather than address the financial mess they caused. The CCA lost the last of their Council seats in that election.
And now, here comes Van Slyke again.
In this special election, Van Slyke and the CCA again want
to focus voter attention on “issues” where there is no disagreement among the
three candidates – how much we all love Charlestown and its beauty, and clean
water, green forests, dark sky, and golden beaches. And critters ranging from wildlife to
dogs. She wants to talk about “over-development in sensitive areas” but without
talking about how the CCA allowed shoreline property owners to do anything they wanted.
Why does Van Slyke want to raise these issues? Because she
and the CCA want to distract voters away from other important issues the CCA doesn’t
want to talk about. These include:
· Who
can voters trust to properly manage their money?
· Who
will do the better job of keeping administrative costs and taxes down while
providing effective government services?
· Who
will run an honest and open government, free of shady deals, secrecy and
attempts to cover up mistakes?
· Why
pile up money in surpluses by over-taxing residents?
· Who
will do better at ensuring fair taxation?
Voters sent the CCA a message in 2022 and 2024: if you screw up the money, you can’t run the town.
Obviously, they didn’t get the
message by running Van Slyke, a key player in their financial SNAFU, as their candidate in this special election.
The heart of the CCA’s money management deficiencies is its
obsessive effort to turn Charlestown into an exclusive retirement enclave for
the independently wealthy while driving out families, mostly those living north
of Route One, while erecting barriers to any new families moving in.
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| All the gray-marked areas in the center of the map are Narragansett tribal land - i.e. open space |
According to data from the town’s Comprehensive Plan, belatedly submitted by CCA and Charlestown Planning Commissar Ruth Platner, around 60% of Charlestown is tax-exempt or tax-favored open space. See map 👉. But that’s not enough for Platner, Van Slyke and the CCA.
Through a series of shady land deals, Charlestown expanded
the amount of town-owned open space often by buying property at much higher
than its assessed value. CLICK
HERE for a prime example.
They usually paid cash despite a voter-approved referendum
that called for the town to use low-interest municipal bonds. Paying cash meant the cost of major capital expenditures were dumped on taxpayers that year instead of being amortized over time.
Several of their land deals were blocked by public pressure
after we dug up public records exposing the details. Click on the links to see
what we exposed in two of those deals: the SPA-Gate scandal HERE
and the Saw Mill Pond scam HERE.
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| Under the CCA, this was the typical response you got after paying for a public record |
The result was that records about land deals were then
offered with cost estimates of several hundred dollars payable in advance. If you paid the money, all
you eventually got were pages almost totally blacked out. See sample 👈to the left.
I believe these secrecy practices not only contradicted the CCA's claims about "open and transparent government," but also contributed significantly to Charlestown's out of control administrative costs (see table below).
Van
Slyke herself was behind the most outrageous abuse of the open government
norms when she introduced a resolution to buy a land parcel but insisted that the
name of the seller, the location of the property and the price for the purchase
were withheld from the public!
The CCA Town Council majority approved the deal to proceed.
We later discovered the land in question was the Saw Mill
Pond property that was already classified as open space and taxed accordingly
by the town. The proposed purchase price was never actually disclosed but based
on the paperwork, it had to be at least $800,000. The assessed value was only
$312,800.
Van Slyke and her CCA Council colleague Susan Cooper voted
yes to proceed with the deal. However, they were thwarted by no votes from late
CRU council member Grace Klinger and Council President Deb Carney plus the recusal ofCCA council member Cody Clarkin on ethical grounds.
If Van Slyke really wants to talk about land use, these
concrete cases of waste, fraud and abuse need to be part of that conversation.
While debates over land use raged, the town’s administrative
functions were undergoing some serious dry rot. Town Administrator Mark
Stankiewicz geared Town Hall to serve the CCA’s political agenda. Under Stanky
and CCA leadership, Charlestown racked up the worst administrative costs in the
state. That’s according to the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council. Check out Charlestown at the very bottom of this 👇table. More details
HERE.
Aided by former Budget Commission chair Dick Sartor, Charlestown accumulated a massive surplus far in excess of what was needed. Here’s what the Rhode Island Auditor General wrote in his report on Charlestown about that surplus during the CCA’s final years, saying "unrestricted fund balances significantly exceeded the GFOA reserve recommendation (17% of fund expenditures/other financing uses)."
The CCA's policy resembled putting taxpayer money under the mattress.
Apparently, that excess surplus was moved around from pocket to
pocket without proper management. In early 2022, the town’s auditor reported
that $3 million had apparently been misplaced for an almost two-year period.
This came to be known as the “$3 Million Oopsie.”
Van Slyke was the public voice of the CCA in trying to deny,
diminish, deflect then ultimately attack critics of the “Oopsie.” Behind the
scenes, Stanky and Budget chair Sartor worked hard to come up with any
answer that didn’t involve blame falling on them or the CCA.
Van Slyke’s only glancing mention of this whole mess has in her most recent mailer
where she continues to plug an unnecessarily high surplus fund to deal with “hurricanes
and other crises.”
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| From Van Slyke election mailer, received November 22. |
The state Auditor General has already criticized the inappropriately high fund balance salted away by the CCA when it ran the town. (See above). Remember: it’s your tax dollars being put away in Bonnita’s mayonnaise jar.
I could go on but suffice to say that since the Town Council
control shifted from the CCA to Charlestown Residents United (CRU), things have
gotten a lot better. Don’t take my word for it, look at what the RI Auditor General reported:
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| Note that the final column on the right is the first year (2023) that Charlestown began to be managed by the Charlestown Residents United Council majority. The previous four years were under the CCA's control |
Cathy and I have already voted by mail for endorsed Democrat Jill Fonnemann who is also supported by the Charlestown Residents United. She manages a large chunk of the Rathskeller’s business which makes her far more qualified than Van Slyke to be diligent about protecting the taxpayers.
You can meet Jill and see for yourself why she is the best choice for Town Council at the General Stanton Inn Tuesday night.
Let’s turn out for Jill and make her Charlestown’s next Town
Council member.
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