Tina Jackson admits ethics violation

Another fine added to the others arising from her 2012 campaign

Also: Jackson stiffs Charlestown Fire District on taxes - Dec. 10 tax auction

Tina Jackson: admits she violated Ethics law

By Will Collette

In the 2012 campaign, Republican Tina Jackson of Charlestown ran against incumbent Democratic state Representative Donna Walsh for the right to represent all of Charlestown and Block Island, plus portions of Westerly and South Kingstown.

Jackson got thumped. Voters chose Donna Walsh’s proven record of long and faithful service to the community over Tina Jackson’s long and impressive record of arrests and convictions for drugs, bad checks and assault that was revealed in the Westerly Sun and GoLocalProv.

Jackson later was picked by the outgoing Republican state Party Chair to pull a coup d’etat over the existing Republican Town Committee. Jackson’s attempted takeover of the Charlestown Republicans was based on a claim they were not duly registered, even though they were, and that they were inactive, which they weren’t.

URI tick fighters ask for your support

Just one tick can change a life.

“By helping prevent tick bites, you can help change the lives of hundreds.”

By Lafleche Giasson

300,000… that’s the number of new cases of Lyme disease contracted each year…and that’s just Lyme disease. In North America alone, did you know that ticks can transmit more than 10 other serious infections also capable of destroying peoples’ lives.

The TickEncounter Resource Center at the University of Rhode Island is a national leader in promoting tick-bite protection and tickborne disease prevention by engaging, educating, and empowering people to take action. 

L&M bosses are no-shows at bargaining session

And they lie about the reasons

By Matt O'Connor

Today, nurses and techs showed up as agreed to last week to resume talks to end the lockout of nearly 800 caregivers by the corporation that operates L&M Hospital. But at 1:00PM, their representatives were a "no-show," making good on a threat made yesterday to refuse to meet unless talks were restricted to our union’s negotiations committee.

It's bad enough that we came ready to work toward a resolution and managers stayed home. Before the talks were even scheduled to start, they spun another story in a "Fast Blast" email message to other corporation employees. 

The communication, sent before 10:00AM, falsely claimed "the negotiation session scheduled for today has been canceled by the unions' negotiating team." 

Save the Bay offers local nature cruises

Westerly cruises run through the end of December

From Save the Bay

Harbor seals on the rocks in the Pawcatuck River, Westerly

Join Save The Bay and the Stonington Historical Society for an hour and a half (90 minutes) river cruise aboard M/V Alletta Morris as we venture down the Pawcatuck River and into Little Narragansett Bay and learn more about the coastal history, winter wildlife, and environmental issues in the region.  

The boat will be leaving from  Viking Marina, Westerly.

Opponents take lots of hard shots at wind project

Resistance to Deepwater Fails at State Properties Meeting
By Tracey C. O’Neill

State Senator Dawson Hodgson

Providence - State Senator and Deputy Minority Leader Dawson Hodgson (R-Dist. 35) appeared before the State Properties Committee (SPC) on Wednesday, joining several constituents and resident opponents to the Deepwater Wind offshore wind demonstration project and the company’s request for easements over state lands and highways.

“I am a state senator representing the southern half of Narragansett and I am here today speaking in opposition to this proposal. [I] object to this project in the strongest possible terms on behalf of my constituents and on behalf of the individuals and business ratepayers across this whole state.”

Hodgson after listening to presentations to the committee by representatives from the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) and Department of Environmental Management (DEM),  urged the SPC to stand up and stop what he believed to be a “terrible deal for the people of RI.” 

Hodgson asked the committee to deny utility easements and assignments to Deepwater Wind Transmission LLC (Deepwater Wind) and Narragansett Electric Company, for passage of its subterranean and terrestrial transmission cables through state properties at Scarborough State Beach and Dillon’s Corner in Narragansett.

L&M Hospital bosses renege on their agreement to negotiate

L&M will not negotiate if rank-and-file members are present

By Matt O'Connor

Editor's Note: L&M is also the owner of Westerly Hospital which is NOT directly impacted by this labor dispute. Yet.

Management at L&M Hospital yesterday walked away from  their agreement last week to meet on Tuesday for talks to end their lockout, now in its eighth day. 

Their representatives had indicated they would not meet again unless talks were "closed," meaning they would be limited to members of our union's negotiating committee. We have been clear on this point. We cannot agree to further disenfranchising our members and allowing the corporation's record of false claims and mischaracterizations of the issues being discussed to continue. 

Blow-by-blow of the Charlestown Town Council monthly meeting

Town Council meets. Can you stand the excitement?

On the agenda - CCA Party plans for new mandates on business
regarding shrubbery, mulch, parking and more

By Will Collette

Quick meeting tonight. Adjourned at 8:39 PM.

I had such a good time last month taking on my colleague Tom Ferrio's usual live-blog of the Council meeting that I couldn't wait to do it again. 

Not. Actually, Tom is tied up so here I am. I'll be doing a blow-by-blow as up to the minute as possible, so bear with me on the typos.  

As I noted in my preview, the Council is due to hold a continuation of its public hearings on proposed Ordinance #359 on shrubbery and mulch, and Ordinance #360 on parking.

Even though the Town Council claims our ordinances do not give the town the power to regulate bad quarry operations, and the Town Police say there is no town ordinance protecting people from gunfire from aircraft, clearly these issues must wait in line while the Council decides how to regulate the depth and color of mulch used on business properties.

And so it goes it in Bizarro Charlestown. Read on for the blow-by-blow.

Genetic deformities may be due to toxic exposure

Congenial Heart Defects in Children Linked to Environmental Toxins

From: Editor, ENN.com  

Approximately 8 out of every 1,000 newborns have congenial heart defects — abnormalities in the heart's structure that happen due to incomplete or irregular development of the fetus' heart during the first stages of the mother's pregnancy. While some are known to be associated with genetic disorders, the cause of most of these heart defects is unknown.

However, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2013, heart defects in children may be associated with their mothers' exposure to specific mixtures of environmental toxins during pregnancy.

VIDEO: No more silence

Massachusetts moves to curb fracking

Legislative Committee OKs Fracking Moratorium

By ecoRI.org News staff

BOSTON — The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture has approved a 10-year moratorium on hydraulic fracturing — better known as fracking. 

The committee’s approval of a bill introduced by Reps. Peter Kocot, D-Northampton, and Denise Provost, D-Somerville, came after Environment Massachusetts and its allies presented the committee with documented cases of water contamination, illness and other damage from fracking operations elsewhere.

Major step forward for off-shore wind

Deepwater Wind Secures State Property Easements

By Tracey C. O’Neill

Burnside Ave. at Scarborough State Beach, Deepwater
Wind’s Alternative Landing Site.
(photo Tracey C. O’Neill)

Providence - Deepwater Wind (DWW) on Wednesday surmounted the latest hurdle in its quest to bring its Block Island Wind Farm energy transmission cable to the mainland.

Despite an upsurge in opposition to the project, after several hours testimony and commentary concerning DWW’s alternative landing site at Scarborough State Beach, the State Properties Committee in a 2-0 vote with one abstention, granted the offshore wind corporation easements for passage and construction at two state-owned property sites.

“It’s a good day,” said Jeff Grybowski, CEO of Deepwater Wind.

Political Hacking 101

Never Let A Good Crisis Go To Waste

 By Robert Yarnall

CCA Ethicists Slattery & Areglado Pausing For a Moment
of Reflection Before Conducting Their Own Investigation

The past five years in Charlestown have been as politically tumultuous as any period in the town’s history, aside from, and with all due respect to, the struggles of the Narragansett Indian Tribe.

When (not if) our town is finally required to deal with the reality of Native American sovereign rights, the discussion will make petty arguments about weekend Ninigret concerts seem like a stroll in the park. Demographics, the ultimate cultural glacier, can reshape a political landscape in a couple of generations, far quicker than the millennia required to craft Charlestown’s geological terminal moraine. But that’s a topic for another day.

Currently, in terms of local politics, the oddly conjugal sagas of Whalerock and Ninigret Park have produced a handful of bastard children (in the figurative sense of the term for the concrete-burdened literati of the CCA) who have snaked their way into town politics.

It’s not unusual that budding political careers thrive on a Miracle-Gro kicker of timely political crises. Winston Churchill, not Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel as some mistakenly credit, authored the timeless maxim, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”

Can't wait!

Cell cell
By Jen Sorenson

If you're looking forward to using your cell phone on flights, click here.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Planetary Nebula Abell 7

From NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day

Very faint planetary nebula Abell 7 is some 1,800 light-years distant, just south of Orion in planet Earth's skies in the constellation Lepus, The Hare. Surrounded by Milky Way stars and near the line-of-sight to distant background galaxies, its generally simple spherical shape, about 8 light-years in diameter, is outlined in this deep telescopic image.

Within its confines are beautiful, more complex details enhanced by the use of narrowband filters. Emission from hydrogen and nitrogen is shown in reddish hues with oxygen emission mapped to a bluish-green color, giving Abell 7 a more natural appearance that would otherwise be much too faint to be appreciated by eye.

A planetary nebula represents a very brief final phase in stellar evolution that our own Sun will experience 5 billion years hence, as the nebula's central, once sun-like star shrugs off its outer layers. Abell 7 itself is estimated to be 20,000 years old. Its central star is seen here as a fading white dwarf some 10 billion years old.

Every little bit helps

How to Keep Watersheds Healthy as Climate Changes
By DORIE STOLLEY/ecoRI.org News contributor

A rain garden next to Great Herring Pond in
Plymouth, Mass. (Watershed Action Alliance)

Does it seem like rain is falling harder these days compared to years past? It’s not an illusion. Here in New England, it’s raining more and with greater intensity. Between 1960 and 2010, the total amount of precipitation we receive in Massachusetts annually increased by about 10 percent. In Boston, that has meant a change from 40 to 45 inches, and more of that precipitation is coming in heavy downpours.

This presents a challenge to maintaining healthy watersheds. Big, heavy raindrops slamming down forcefully on bare dirt wash a lot of soil into waterways. Also, when a lot of rain falls in a short time, the ground is unable to absorb it all.

Defense Fund for L&M Hospital Caregivers Illegally Locked Out by Employer Raises Over $20K in Less than 24 Hours

Nurses and technicians maintain picket, file charges over insurance cancellation. Talks set to resume Tuesday

By Matt O’Connor 

New London - Professional patient care providers locked out of Lawrence & Memorial (L&M) Hospital a week ago by their employer will have access to financial aid through the efforts of their union. Lawrence & Memorial Corporation (LMC) last Saturday cut off pay and terminated medical and dental coverage for nearly 800 registered nurses (RNs), licensed practical nurses (LPNs), healthcare technicians and technologists and their families. 

AFT Connecticut and its national union yesterday set up a militancy/defense fund that has already raised over $20,000.00 to provide relief with the economic hardship of the lockout.

VIDEO: Just when you think they can’t say anything worse….

Rick Santorum Compares Obamacare To Apartheid, Himself To Nelson Mandela

BY STEPHEN D. FOSTER JR. Addicting Info

Never one to shy away from insanity, Rick Santorum claimed that his fight against
Obamacare is like the fight Mandela waged against apartheid.
Cartoon by John Darkow, CagleCartoons.Com.

On December 5, the world lost one of the greatest human rights giants in history. 

Nelson Mandela spent his life fighting for civil rights and human dignity. 

He died peacefully at the ripe old age of 95. 

But instead of paying tribute to Mandela, former and perhaps future GOP Presidential candidate Rick Santorum went on Fox News that night and compared himself and the Republican Party to the celebrated world leader.

Rick Santorum compared Obamacare to apartheid.

During an appearance on the O’Reilly Factor, Santorum claimed that his fight against Obamacare is like the fight Mandela waged against apartheid. Apartheid was the brutal system of racial segregation that dominated life in South Africa for decades until it came to an end in 1994. Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act, is the program that provides health insurance options to millions of Americans.

But, Santorum insists that the two are one and the same.

“Nelson Mandela stood up against a great injustice and was willing to pay a huge price for that, and that’s the reason he is mourned today, because of that struggle that he performed,” Santorum said. “And I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives, and Obamacare is front and center in that.”

Here’s the video from the O’Reilly Factor. after the jump. 

SLO Going

High School Graduation Rates: Not a Measure of Student Achievement

By Hank Morgan, Special to Progressive Charlestown

Commissioner Gist (NEARI photo)

Maybe Education Commissioner Deborah Gist was justified in sounding triumphant when she reacted to the Rhode Island Kids Count news that the graduation rates of students in the state’s poorest cities – Central Falls, Pawtucket, Providence, and Woonsocket – have increased 10% since 2007. 

After all, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education, if the nation’s 2011 dropouts had earned a diploma, they, over the course of their lifetimes, would have saved taxpayers $154 billion. This is because dropouts are more likely to be unemployed, receive welfare benefits, abuse substances, commit crimes and land in prison.

Dropouts also generally earn less money than students who earn diplomas; therefore, they generate less tax revenue. 

Reacting to the latest graduation rates, Gist told the Providence Journal’s Lynn Arditi (11/26/13), “We can no longer support a system in which students graduate but are not ready for success in college and careers.” 

Job market paradox

Zero employment = zero unemployment

By Ted Rall

Click here for the solution to this paradox.

Lawrence and Memorial Managers cut off health insurance for locked-out nurses and technicians

Help Nurses and Caregivers Locked Out at L&M Hospital

By Matt O’Connor

EDITOR’S NOTE: The New London Day reported L&M management cancelled health insurance for the 800 locked out union nurses and medical technicians on Dec. 1, offering them continued coverage only by paying the full cost of the policy. That’s tricky when you are also no longer receiving a paycheck. The union charges that Connecticut law requires management to give 20 days’ notice before cutting off benefits. This adds to the long list of unfair, if not illegal, practices by L&M bosses.

Nearly 800 registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and healthcare techs and technologists at L&M Hospital have been locked out by the corporation that owns the community hospital. The community they serve has been asking how they can help in this, their most difficult time.

Help them continue to make this stand by making a donation today. Your support will be a vital part of their lifeline so that they don’t have to choose between putting food on the table or keeping the heat on at home during the corporation’s lockout.

Genetic Engineering Lies Prevail Again

Perpetrators of electoral deception over food labeling laws can run, but eventually they won't be able to hide.

By Jim Hightower

If you doubt that big money and lies can pervert elections, look at Initiative 522 in Washington State. A grassroots coalition of consumers, organic producers, environmentalists, and others who want honesty in food labeling put it on the ballot. They lost.

The measure would’ve required grocery manufacturers that slip genetically manipulated organisms into their products to state that fact on their food labels. Public opinion polls indicated an easy win, so Big Food lashed back with a dishonest, multi-million-dollar PR campaign. 

Grand Bargain or Raw Deal?

Many elderly Americans are close enough to poverty's edge that Social Security cuts of any size could push them over the brink.
By Peter Hart

Following the government shutdown drama, politicians in Washington appear hopelessly divided, according to conventional wisdom.

Fair enough. But there’s at least one area where many politicians from both of the major parties agree — and many of the TV talking heads and newspaper pontificators are with them, too. Social Security, they insist, “needs” to be cut.

For the last few years, after a major standoff, the usual Beltway pundits have been talking about something they like to call the “grand bargain.”

That sure sounds like a good thing. Who doesn’t love a bargain? Well, here’s the question you should ask yourself: Who’s actually getting one? It’s more likely than not that the savings aren’t headed your way.

In Washingtonspeak, a “grand bargain” means some kind of budget deal where everyone is forced to give a little in order to reduce the budget deficit and tackle the country’s debt. To get Republicans to agree to raise more revenue (i.e., taxes), Democrats have to agree to some spending cuts.

Struggling with Mother Nature

Beach Project and Climate-Change Planning Collide

By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI.org News staff

There’s planning for climate change and then there’s reality. In Rhode Island, at least, the two are sometimes on different paths.

Some 3,000 truckloads of sand are on order for restoring Misquamicut State Beach from the lashing the Westerly coastline took during Superstorm Sandy, an act the state’s top coastal planner called “crazy.”

“It will probably disappear as quickly as they put it on,” said Grover Fugate, executive director of the state Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC).

PREVIEW: Town Council meets Monday

Planning Commission returns with revised anti-business ordinance proposals

By Will Collette

Bring us a shrubbery!

Planning Commissar Ruth Platner will take another run at trying to drive the last of Charlestown’s small businesses out of business as she returns to the Council with revised versions of her proposed Ordinance #359 on shrubbery and mulch, and Ordinance #360 on parking.

While most Charlestown residents have probably not thought of shrubbery, mulch and parking as serious issues in Charlestown, let me tell you that these are issues of paramount importance for the radical conservationist wing of the CCA Party. 

They have been working for over a year on these issues, using a consultant paid for with your tax dollars to come up with a comprehensive, minutely detailed approach to deal with these dire threats to the safety and well-being of the town’s citizens.

The October presentation of these ordinances did not go well for Platner or for fellow CCA Party leader Faith Labossiere, who actually proposed stronger and more expansive controls over mulch and shrubbery. 

Labossiere held the podium for an hour on October 7 to expound on the need to strictly police what town businesses do to promote the planting and maintenance of berry-growing shrubbery on their property, and to also crack down on businesses who do not lay down deep layers of natural mulch.

How the job creators do it

How Rich People Create Jobs 

By Monte Woolverton

It's really very clever. Click here.