Charlestown Democrat Jennifer Douglas pays fine and turns in late reports to settle three-year-old case.

Unlike her opponent Elaine Morgan, Jennifer admits ‘I was wrong.’ 

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

Editor's note: I supported Jennifer in each of her efforts
to topple MAGA Sen. Elaine Morgan. I am still certain Jennifer
would have been a far better Senator for Charlestown. - Will Collette

Three years, $2,000 in civil and criminal fines, and a trio of misdemeanor charges later, a former state Senate candidate finally turned in her overdue campaign finance reports, the Rhode Island Board of Elections announced Wednesday.

The resolution comes after Jennifer Douglas, a Charlestown Democrat, provided the state elections panel with seven missing campaign finance reports spanning 2021 to 2022. Douglas turned in the paperwork on Friday, May 9, a day after entering a no contest plea in Rhode Island District Court on three criminal misdemeanor charges of violating campaign finance laws, according to public court records.

Douglas in an interview Thursday said she failed to keep up with the paperwork due to a loss in her personal life.

“I went through a very difficult time and was only concentrating on my kids and myself,” Douglas said. “Things just got away from me.”

She emphasized that failure to file reports was different from misuse of campaign funds. 

“My campaign finances are to the penny right now,” Douglas said. “It wasn’t like I stole campaign funds, it was simply bad accounting, and a failure to do my due diligence.”

She added, “I was wrong. It played out the way it should have.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: Jennifer's opponent in her three election runs was Charlestown embarrassment incumbent Sen. Elaine Morgan. Morgan was also busted for campaign finance violations. In her case, Morgan was charged with illegally diverting money from her campaign account to finance personal spending sprees.  The Boston Globe flagged these items in the Board of Elections audit of Morgan's spending:

· In January and February 2020, Morgan spent $1,227 from her campaign account for personal use, including a $500 cash withdrawal; $584 in expenses for food, beverages, and meals; and $142 in miscellaneous expenses.

· In April 2020, she used her campaign account to pay for $73 in groceries from Aldi.

· In April 2021, she used her campaign account to pay $320 at a Chelo’s restaurant.

· In February 2022, she used her campaign account to pay $108 for “grooming expense” at V Nails and Spa By Han.

· In February 2022, she used her campaign account to pay $875 to Patriot Coins.

Thank you, Fox

Don’t be too quick to blame social media for America’s polarization – cable news has a bigger effect, study finds

Homa Hosseinmardi, University of Pennsylvania

Joe Biden and Donald Trump supporters, like these two, are more likely
to be polarized by TV news than online echo chambers.
 AP Photo/Allen G. Breed

The past two election cycles have seen an explosion of attention given to “echo chambers,” or communities where a narrow set of views makes people less likely to challenge their own opinions. 

Much of this concern has focused on the rise of social media, which has radically transformed the information ecosystem.

However, when scientists investigated social media echo chambers, they found surprisingly little evidence of them on a large scale – or at least none on a scale large enough to warrant the growing concerns. 

And yet, selective exposure to news does increase polarization. This suggested that these studies missed part of the picture of Americans’ news consumption patterns. Crucially, they did not factor in a major component of the average American’s experience of news: television.

To fill in this gap, I and a group of researchers from Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania and Microsoft Research tracked the TV news consumption habits of tens of thousands of American adults each month from 2016 through 2019. We discovered four aspects of news consumption that, when taken together, paint an unsettling picture of the TV news ecosystem.

UPDATED: Charlestown hires Allan Fung to help the town spend its money

Fung’s law firm given open-ended contract to spend American Rescue Plan funding

By Will Collette

UPDATED: Fung's campaign for Congress, 2nd District, got a boost when one of his two opponents dropped out of the race. State Senator Jessica De La Cruz dropped out after only one month since her declaration and endorsed Fung. That leaves only Robert Lancia to oppose Fung in the GOP primary. It also makes Fung's hiring by the town of Charlestown even more wildly inappropriate in my opinion. - W. Collette

I can’t say this is the weirdest thing I’ve seen the CCA-controlled Town Council do, but it’s right up there. At the April 11 Council meeting, the Council voted to give Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz authority to execute two consultant contracts to help Charlestown figure out what to do with its $2.3 million share of funding from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). 

As some may recall, Stankiewicz told the Providence Journal that town staff were not capable of handling the ARPA money:

"We’re playing it slow," said Town Administrator Mark S. Stankiewicz. 

The small town has an equally small staff, and those employees have limited bandwidth and aren't necessarily "attuned to all the ins and outs of federal regulations," Stankiewicz said. As a result, Charlestown will likely hire an outside consultant to figure out how to best use the money without running afoul of any guidelines. 

These remarks imply that Stankiewicz DOES have the right skill set to navigate the nooks and crannies of federal funding, begging the question that if he’s so smart, why doesn’t he do handle the ARPA funds himself?

Another idea came to mind when I read those remarks: are about to be raided by the FBI for misspending past federal funding?

We have been getting Community Development Block Grant money for decades. We get FEMA money after almost every major storm. We get federal grants for environmental improvements and for many other purposes. 

For many of the town staff, ARPA is not their first federal funding rodeo. 

What makes ARPA so different? Please note we are not talking about APRA, Rhode Island’s Access to Public Records Act. When it comes to the APRA, Stankiewicz could hire himself out as a consultant to help public bodies find loopholes to avoid public disclosure of embarrassing records. 

One Charlestown ARPA contract will go to iParametrics which is based in Alpharetta, Georgia. That contract, capped at $56,680, will be for technical issues. Several other Rhode Island municipalities are using them. 

The other contract will go to the law firm of Pannone, Lopes, Devereaux and O’Gara LLC,

The total amount of the contract is unspecified (i.e. open-ended) but it will pay $250 an hour for the services of law firm partner, ex-Cranston mayor and current Republican candidate for US House District 2 Allan Fung. 

Fung’s self-proclaimed ARPA expert status is based on his experience as mayor of Cranston where he oversaw the spending of the same kind of federal money Charlestown has handled, only in much larger amounts. 

You can do your own Google search on Cranston finance and tax issues (their parking ticket scandal was one of my favorites). Suffice to say that I doubt Cranston would Charlestown’s first pick for a role model. 

Allan Fung is a Republican who is running for US House District 2, most likely against current state General Treasurer Seth Magaziner. District 2 includes Charlestown. 

Fung faces a primary before he can move on to the general election.

His party membership is significant, given that Congressional Republicans voted unanimously against the American Rescue Plan. Not one single GOP House member or Senator voted yes to ARPA, although now, many are taking credit for it. 

So it is relevant for us to ask Fung:

• Do you even believe in the ARPA?
• Would you have voted for it?
• If you don’t believe in or support the ARPA, why should Charlestown trust you to make a plan to use those funds?

I have asked Charlestown’s newest lawyer for his answers to these questions. He has not. 

Personally, I think it’s unethical for Charlestown to hire someone who is running for elected office to represent us. Are we hoping he will win and that we can use this fat contract to curry favor with him? Is this the CCA’s backdoor way of funneling taxpayer money to their election choice? 

What’s next? Do we hire Blake “Flip” Filippi as Charlestown General Counsel? After all, Flip is a prodigious though largely unsuccessful litigator who even sued his own mother. To be precise, he counter-sued Mom; she sued him first alleging he cheated her. 

Maybe we should hire Elaine Morgan as town Sergeant of Arms to enforce the new CCA civility code. Morgan likes to dress up in a copuniform. Or Dennis Algiere to be our Treasurer. 

Don’t you think Fung might be a little busy between now and November trying to win a seat in Congress? 

While Fung might have been popular in Cranston, he’s not very popular in Charlestown. In 2018, he ran against Gina Raimondo for Governor and lost Charlestown by 17.1%. UPDATE: Fung also ran against Raimondo four years earlier, in 2014, in a 5-way race. Charlestown also voted against Fung, though by a closer margin.

I doubt he will boost his popularity in Charlestown by picking our pocket.

McKee cancels fund-raiser hosted by Trumplican

McKee expresses SHOCK that such a thing could happen

By Will Collette

Our accidental DINO Governor Dan McKee issued a statement expressing his utter shock that his upcoming May 12 fund-raiser was going to be hosted by the co-chair of the Rhode Island Trump 2020 Campaign, Exeter's Paul Zarrella. At Zarrella's house.

Zarrella is a former Democrat who switched to the Trumplican Party and played an active part in trying to get Rhode Islanders to vote for Orange Julius Caesar Trump.

Zarrella also mounted a weird primary campaign against local wingnut incumbent Representative Justin Price, even though Price is so dedicated to Trump that he (Price) took part in the January 6 storming of the Capitol to try to overturn the election.

I guess Price wasn't sufficiently Trumplican for Zarrella despite being one of Trump's most reliable flying monkeys in Rhode Island.

As for McKee's disclaimer, it's bullshit. He claims he didn't know about Zarrella's Trumplican ties until last Friday even though Zarrella was a high-profile radical Republican throughout the 2020 campaign. 

No sentient politician, especially one at McKee's level, would accept such an invitation without vetting the host. At minimum, this is terrible staff work, but it could just be another McKee lapse of ethical judgement.

Like McKee's acceptance of a 2018 endorsement from radical MAGA-man Michael Earnhart as well as his acceptance of campaign contributions from the OxyContin tycoons in the Sackler family or the Wal-Mart scions in the Walton family. He rivalled Gina Raimondo in the amount of money he took from Wall Street.

Dan McKee became Governor when Gina left to become Joe Biden's Commerce Secretary. His unplanned ascendency has given him an undeserved incumbent's advantage when he runs for Governor on his own in 2022.

He had a lackluster six-year run as Lieutenant Governor - and almost lost re-election to Aaron Regensburg's surprise insurgent primary challenge in 2018. Until COVID hit, McKee's main passion was promoting charter schools. Now, it's promoting small businesses by lifting pandemic restrictions, against medical advice.

I sincerely hope McKee gets his ass kicked in the 2022 primary and goes back home to Cumberland.

Postscript: the state Trumplican Party piled on to McKee with this statement from GOP chair Sue Cienki:

Trump’s insulin plan – yet another trick on senior citizens

Don’t hold your breath waiting for your “savings”

By Will Collette

As a seventy year old diabetic on insulin, I was very interested in Donald Trump’s May 26 announcement that he had negotiated a terrific deal to “cap” the cost of insulin for people on Medicare at $35 a month.

He said he had worked out a fabulous deal with Big Pharma, insurance companies and Medicare. 

Now he is bestowing the fruits of his deal-making skills on older people, a major part of Trump’s 2016 voting bloc, but according to polls, are now abandoning him in droves.

In his announcement, Trump said:  

"If you don’t take insulin, I just wrote this down, you go blind, stroke, amputation, kidney failure and other things. So we’re getting it out…I hope the seniors are going to remember it, because Biden was the one who put us into the jam because they didn’t know what they were doing. They were incompetent….I don’t use insulin. Should I be? Huh? I never thought about it, but I know a lot of people are very badly affected.”

And why not: after all, Trump took hydroxychloroquine to prevent COVID-19 when medical experts and scientists said hydroxychloroquine not only doesn’t prevent COVID-19 but was also a dangerous and ineffective treatment for the disease. Maybe injecting a few hundred units of insulin would be just the thing to clear the fog out of his brain.

Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams had to come up to answer continuing questions to Trump about why he thought he should take insulin:

“Your body, Mr. President, actually makes insulin endogenously and people such as you and I, we make our own insulin. So yes we do utilize insulin, but we make it ourselves.”

But this little display of Trump’s medical acuity was just a sideshow. The real question is whether his announcement has any substance to reduce the brutally high cost of insulin - due in large part to actions by Trump's Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who ran leading insulin producer, Eli Lilly (see graphic, above left). 

Spoiler alert: this plan is too little, too late.

Vote by mail fraud?

Mail-in voting: threat or menace?

What’s The Problem With Mail-In Voting?

By Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport Opinion Editor

I mailed my absentee ballot early last week for the New York primary. I was able to vote at home over breakfast. No lines. No coronavirus threat. I just needed to be awake and have a stamp—though some states even have pre-paid envelopes.

I filled it out, put it inside two envelopes as instructed and met the deadline.

It was so civilized and easy that it is hard to see what all the arguing is about.

No one came to my door with a fraudulently pre-filled ballot, no one tried to make me step up to an imagined partisan line.

Of course, there also was no sticker later to say that I had voted.

All this arises because Donald Trump is persisting in his attacks on mail-in voting in November as a safe alternative to the near-certainty of having voters stand in line for an extended time, and for having poll workers, who often are older volunteers, be exposed all day long to unmasked voters who may be contagious. 

Mail-in voters will lead to “MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE,” he tweeted, with no evidence for the claim.

I know that Trump is hard of empathy for others, but actually putting people in harm’s way because he fears that democracy may deliver an outcome he dislikes seems extreme even for him.

Indeed, the anti-mail voting kick seems increasingly to be echoed in the official Republican Party strategies as a vehicle for fraud. It was highlighted again this week by massive voting machine breakdowns in Georgia—and once-again rising coronavirus infections and hospitalizations.

Is There Fraud?

The best case for fraudulent mail-in ballots involved a Republican operative in a congressional election in a rural North Carolina district last year. Professional Republican Party organizers went to homes with pre-filled ballots or stood there offering advice as voters filled in their own.

Leslie McCrae Dowless was charged with two felony counts of obstructing, justice and perjury in handling absentee ballots in an election that had to be re-run—with a new Republican candidate, who won.

That’s not exactly the kind of fraud Trump is floating.

He sees undocumented immigrants and unregistered voters—or those registered at multiple addresses—as overwhelming the ballot. Without a shred of evidence.

Of course, Trump and Melania have voted from the White House in Florida, Ivanka has cast mail-in ballots, as have many at the top of the Republican National Committee. No problem. 

Except, Trump tried to register using 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. as his address, which was “illegal” and then registered from Mar-a-Lago in West Palm Beach, officially listed as a club and not a residence.

That’s, um, fraud. (The Florida state official in charge flipped the issue to the town of West Palm Beach.)

US could learn how to improve election protection from other nations

Trump acquittal is an open invitation to foreign hacking of the 2020 election
Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call Scott Shackelford, Indiana University

Even though Trump has called Russiagate a hoax, 16
Russian nationals have been indicted for hacking the
2016 election in Trump's favor. They are likely to do it
again in this year's polling.

Hacking into voting machines remains far too easy.

It is too soon to say for sure what role cybersecurity played in the 2020 Iowa caucuses, but the problems, which are still unfolding and being investigated, show how easily systemic failures can lead to delays and undermine trust in democratic processes. 

That’s particularly true when new technology – in this case, a reporting app – is introduced, even if there’s no targeted attack on the system.

The vulnerabilities are not just theoretical. They have been exploited around the world, such as in South Africa, Ukraine, Bulgaria and the Philippines. Successful attacks don’t need the resources and expertise of national governments – even kids have managed it.

Congress and election officials around the U.S. are struggling to figure out what to do to protect the integrity of Americans’ votes in 2020 and beyond. The Iowa caucuses are run by political parties, not state officials, but many of the concepts and processes are comparable. 

A look at similar problems – and some attempts at solutions – around the world offers some ideas that U.S. officials could use to ensure everyone’s vote is recorded and counted accurately, and that any necessary audits and recounts will confirm that election results are correct.

As a scholar researching cybersecurity and internet governance for more than 10 years, I have come to the conclusion that only by working together across sectors, industries and nations can the people of the world make their democracies harder to hack and achieve some measure of what I and others call cyber peace.

The Big Picture

Impeachment Trial of Donald Trump, so far

By Robert Reich

To watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX1B3BZWc6A&feature=emb_title

Don’t get bogged down by the marathon minute-by-minute coverage of the Senate impeachment trial stretching late into the night. Don’t get overwhelmed by all the complex procedural maneuvers aimed at securing a fair and open trial with witness testimony and new documents that Republicans want to prevent at all costs.

We must stay focused on the big picture.  Here are the 10 big things you need to understand about the Senate trial and the historic moment our country is in right now.

1. Trump’s attempt to get foreign powers to help him win the 2020 election is an impeachable offense. 

It’s precisely the sort of thing the Framers of the Constitution worried about when they created the impeachment clause. If presidents could seek foreign help winning elections, there would be no end of foreign intrusions into American sovereignty and democracy.

Fight Bots! Free Online tool

You can join the effort to expose Twitter bots
Pik-Mai Hui, Indiana University and Christopher Torres-Lugo, Indiana University

In the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections, more than 10,000 automated Twitter accounts got caught conducting a coordinated campaign of tweets to discourage people from voting. 

These automated accounts may seem authentic to some, but a tool called Botometer was able to identify them while they pretentiously argued and agreed, for example, that “democratic men who vote drown out the voice of women.” We are part of the team that developed this tool that detects the bot accounts on social media.

Our next effort, called BotSlayer, is aimed at helping journalists and the general public spot these automated social media campaigns while they are happening.

It’s the latest step in our research laboratory’s work over the past few years. At Indiana University’s Observatory on Social Media, we are uncovering and analyzing how false and misleading information spreads online.

One focus of our work has been to devise ways to identify inauthentic accounts being run with the help of software, rather than by individual humans. We also develop maps of how online misinformation spreads among people and how it competes with reliable information sources across social media sites.

Put up or shut up

Institutionalized child abuse

Worse than the wall

By Karla Molinar-Arvizo

For more cartoons by Mike Luckovich, CLICK HERE

The current administration has bent over backwards to force-feed its anti-immigrant agenda to the American public. 

That agenda remains broadly unpopular, but they’ve tried every trick in the con artist book to impose it anyway.

Despite years of hysterical anti-immigrant propaganda, most Americans continually report positive views of immigrants and immigration in opinion surveys. 

Yet we’ve been faced with constant threats of government shutdowns or made-up “national emergencies” if we don’t give the administration money for a wall most of us oppose.

While politicians debate these things, real people die.

Jakelin Caal Maquin, a 7-year-old, was separated from her father, kept in a cage, and died in Border Patrol custody. 

Felipe Gomez Alonzo, an 8-year-old, died just weeks later in custody in New Mexico.

Roxana Hernandez, a trans woman seeking asylum from Honduras, died in ICE custody last spring, with an autopsy showing signs of abuse. 

Thousands of migrants, in fact, have reported sexual abuse and other mistreatment in ICE and CBP custody.

Rhode Island’s shame

Study shows RI Voter ID had ‘a significant negative effect’ on turnout

By Steve Ahlquist in UpriseRI

Since Rhode Island passed a Voter ID law in July 2011 there’s been a debate as to whether or not the legislation has hurt voter turnout. 

Now, with nearly a decade of data, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has released a new study, “Effects of Photo ID Laws on registration and turnout: Evidence from Rhode Island” that shows that “[t]urnout, registration, and voting conditional on registration fell for those without licenses after the law passed.”

Further, the researchers, Francesco Maria Esposito, Diego Focanti and Justine S. Hastings, found no “evidence that people proactively obtained licenses in anticipation of the law,” nor did they “find that they substituted towards mail ballots which do not require a photo ID.”

Rhode Island’s Voter ID law requires the presentation of a photo ID at polling places in order to exercise the right to vote. The law was passed by a General Assembly under Democratic control. 

Previous to Rhode Island, only Republican controlled legislatures had passed such laws. 

Charlestown choice makes some life changes

Aaron Regunberg's next steps

By Will Collette

Aaron Regunberg ran against incumbent Dan McKee for the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor in the 2018 primary. 

He ran with the enthusiastic endorsement of Charlestown Democrats and carried Charlestown by more than 10 percentage points. 

Unfortunately, he was not able to squeak out a  win statewide, losing by only 2% against an entrenched incumbent.

In a January 11 e-mail, Aaron stated:

I am actively considering another run for public office in 2022. I still believe deeply in the vision I ran on last year - that our government can and must work for everyone in our state. Growing up, my mom always taught me if you get knocked down, you get back up and try again.

He is staying in politics, becoming Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza's Senior Advisor on Policy today. 

So festive

For more cartoons by Jen Sorenson, CLICK HERE.

SK politics gets ugly and personal again

Newly elected South Kingstown School Committee members facing harassment and threats

By Steve Ahlquist in UpriseRI

An unusual Friday night meeting of the South Kingstown School Committee became contentious over what should have been an easy procedural issue, revealing deep divides within the community. 

The School Committee was voting on whether or not to terminate the legal services of Sara Rapport and begin the search for new legal counsel.

It is quite common for an elected board or council to adopt new legal counsel when there is a big change in makeup.

This last election, a group of four women, Stephanie Canter, Sarah Markey, Emily Cummiskey and Jacy Northrup, calling themselves the “final four” because they were listed last on the ballot, took four of the five open positions on the school committee.

Another candidate, Democrat Katherine Macinanti, was also elected. The last two members of the seven member committee, Alycia Collins and Michelle Brousseau-Cavallaro, were not up for re-election.

The recent history of the South Kingstown School Committee is filled with twists and turns. Four members of the Committee resigned over the course of 2016/2017.

Get one of these on Black Friday

For more cartoons by Tom Tomorrow, CLICK HERE.

Daring Donald

Now what?

OK, now that Democrats won big in the House, can they go bold, too?

By Sam Pizzigati | November 14, 2018

For more cartoons by Ted Rall, CLICK HERE

Tony Maxwell, a retired African-American naval officer, was trying to get his Jacksonville, Florida neighbor to go vote with him. The young neighbor, a high-school-dropout, had no interest.

“Voting,” the young man declared, “doesn’t change anything.”

Can Democrats use their newly won House majority to reach that dispirited young man in Jacksonville? 

That all depends on their eagerness to think big and bold — and to challenge the concentrated wealth and power that keeps things from changing.

Of course, big and bold new legislation will be next to impossible to enact with a Republican Senate and White House. But just pushing for this legislation — holding hearings, encouraging rallies, taking floor votes — could move us in a positive direction and send the message that meaningful change can happen.

This sort of aggressive and progressive pushing would, to be sure, represent a major break with the Democratic Party’s recent past. The reforms Democrats in Congress have championed have often been overly complicated and cautious — and deeply compromised by a fear of annoying deep-pocketed donors.

The fight goes on

Local Protesters Return from D.C. with Big Expectations for Climate Action

By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff

A growing movement of young activists is pushing action
on climate change and gun safety. (Sunrise Movement)

The election is over but the activism continues, at least for the growing progressive environmental movement.

Energized by popular political newcomers such as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, students from the environmental activist group Sunrise Movement recently staged a sit-in outside the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. 

The protesters want quick progress on the “Green New Deal” and an end to political contributions from fossil-fuel companies. 

What is the Green New Deal? Like the original New Deal that led the country out of the Great Depression, the green successor is a government-led, nationwide, job-creating economic transformation of the energy system to address climate change. 

The job-works programs are intended to produce equitable incomes, improve the economy, and address climate change.