Charlestown Chunks #9: cooperation, payback and shame

See how Charlestown's registration breaks down, Ashley wins judgment, and more

By Will Collette

Eligible voters in Charlestown. Precinct 3, the heart of CCA's voting base, is also the most conservative. As of Tuesday, September 6, 127 Charlestown voters have already cast their ballots for the Sept. 13 primary: 49 by mail and 78 by voting early at Town Hall.

With the September 13 Democratic primary coming fast – early in-person voting and mail-in voting has already begun – the media are all over many of the state’s key races. While mud-slinging campaigns get a lot of attention, I was pleased to see a piece in the Providence Journal that featured cooperation between candidates for Senate District 38 (Westerly, south Charlestown, South Kingstown) on the issue of beach access.

The article featured rival Democrats Victoria Gu and Michael Niemeyer who both pledged to make beach access a top priority. As you may recall, this year’s beach access bill failed even though it won in the House unanimously because bill sponsor Blake “Flip” Filippi forgot to line up a Senate sponsor. Well, if either Gu or Niemeyer win on September 13, they will push the bill in the Senate. They face Westerly Town Council President Sharon Ahern in a three-way primary.

This article and other recent pieces also highlight the role fake fire districts – fire districts that don’t fight fires but do block off the beach – play in the access issue. Hopefully, we’ll see legislation that requires all fire districts to actually fight fires or lose their tax privileges.

Ashley gets some belated justice

Many of us in Charlestown remember our former town Planner Ashley Hahn and her frequent clashes with Planning Commissar Ruth Platner. Among the most memorable was Ashley’s 2012 discovery that Charlestown had misclassified many properties under Charlestown’s zoning ordinance, often to the property owner’s advantage.

Platner lost her argument that this wasn’t really a problem - Ashley had done her research. Platner had no option but to promise the problem would be fixed but it never has been.

Ashley left in November 2013. Platner replaced her with our current and far more compliant Planner Jane Weidman who, conveniently, had just been terminated by Block Island.

Ashley’s next job was as West Warwick’s town planner but that job ended badly. According to a detailed article in GoLocal, Ashley was terminated when she needed time off for treatment for post-partum depression. Rather than make reasonable accommodations for her medical needs, the town manager fired her on bogus grounds (the lie that planning committee members didn’t like her) and replaced her with a childless white male.

In 2015, she filed suit arguing that the town violated three sections of the Rhode Island Civil Rights Act of 1990, illegally discriminating against Hahn based on her disability and sex. 

After an unusual delay, Ashley finally got a jury trial, which she won. The Town of West Warwick has signed a Consent Judgment ordered in the Kent County Superior Court to pay her $800,000. That works out to $100,000 a year over the eight years since she was wrongfully terminated.

While “justice delayed is justice denied,” winning so decisively definitely doesn’t suck.

Preserving a sordid history

John Brown. University founder and slave trader

Area historian and author Christian McBurney of West Kingston was profiled in The Independent that featured his new book “Dark Voyage: An American Privateer’s War on Britain’s African Slave Trade.”

McBurney also produces “Small State/Big History, The Online Review of Rhode Island History.” It’s an anthology of papers by other local historians as well as his own work. Much of the material focuses on South County. You can sign up for a weekly e-mail that lists that week’s featured article. I’ve been getting it for years and enjoy it.

His new book details the sordid history of the Marlborough, a South County-based privateer chartered by the Continental Congress to attack and seize British shipping. 

John Brown, founder of Brown University, was the ship’s principal investor. As such, he received 50% of the spoils – the value of the ship and its “cargo.”

The Marlborough specialized in capturing British slave ships working with John Brown’s extensive knowledge of the slave trade. They sold the captured slaves to plantations in the French Caribbean. As McBurney put it: 

“The mastermind and primary investor behind the voyage was Providence merchant John Brown. With his experience as a slave trader — he had been an investor in two previous slave voyages.”

You can buy “Dark Voyage” from the Rhode Island Publications Society at https://ripublications.org/rips-store/, online at amazon.com, click here, or the publisher’s website.

Bad flood maps?

WPRI.com

On September 4, FEMA Director Deanne Criswell told CNN’s State of the Union: “The part that’s really difficult right now is the fact that our flood maps don’t take into account excessive rain that comes in. And we are seeing these record rainfalls that are happening.”

She said FEMA maps are “outdated” due to the excessive rain generated by climate change. She said, “FEMA’s maps right now are really focused on riverine flooding and coastal flooding and we work with local jurisdictions to update the maps,” but as we know in Charlestown, excessive rain fall can make predictable floods a lot worse.

Curt Schilling says debt forgiveness makes people lazy

Ultra-conservative former Red Sox pitcher and conman Curt Schilling condemned President Joe Biden’s executive order allowing forgiveness of between $10,000 and $20,000 in student loan debt.

He said this plan benefits “a generation of lazy unaccountable uneducated children being covered by hard working debt paying Americans.”

I have to assume Schilling is not counting himself as one of those “hard working debt paying Americans” after ripping off hard-working Rhode Islanders when he defaulted on $75 million loan for the infamous, now defunct, 38 Studio business in 2014.

What Schilling got through his debt default is equivalent to as many as 7,500 people getting student loan forgiven through Biden's plan.

Curt Schilling, once a hero but now just another right-wing asshole hypocrite.

Why do we need this?

Lehman and family. So he's the guy to get more blacks and Hispanics
to hunt?

Starting August 1, RIDEM has a new staff member, Dan Lehman, who is “filling a new position… as the hunter recruitment, retention and reactivation specialist.”

His mission is to get more people to hunt and trap our state’s beautiful forest creatures.

He’s going to focus on kids aged 12-15. Plus, he’s determined to “encourage more women, families, millennials and people of color” to go out and kill something. Or trap it, which is even more horrifying to me.

Apparently, not enough people are buying hunting licenses – 8,800 last year compared to the state’s peak year 2000 when 11,600 people bought licenses. I sometimes think there are at least 8,000 shooters in the woods behind my house.

Of all the things to spend taxpayer money on…to paraphrase Eminem, “Rhode Island’s got 99 problems but not enough shooters ain’t one.”

Speaking of 99 Problems

Have the smelling salts ready when Faith LaBossiere reads THIS ARTICLE.

 Apparently, people in bike-crazy Europe are having second thoughts about riding bikes to work and for exercise and enjoyment. 

It’s just not safe.

CCA leader LaBossiere has long been Charlestown’s bicycling gadfly, pushing bike paths regardless of cost, practicality, property rights, etc. including the infamous and largely unused “Faith’s Folly” in Ninigret Park.

Look who's on the board of Steve Bannon's fraudulent "We Build the Wall" group

Crazy has a new home - QAnon

Worse than Pizzagate conspiracy theory is gaining force among Trump supporters

Mark Sumner  Daily Kos Staff

Sometimes “deplorable” just isn’t deplorable enough. 

That’s the case with a core set of Donald Trump supporters who have come together around a new conspiracy theory that’s … not Pizzagate. Because it’s worse. 

And, as the Washington Post reports, this new conspiracy is already spilling from under the rocks of alt-Reich websites, into living, screaming Trump rallies.

Believers in “QAnon,” as the conspiracy theory is known, were front and center at the Florida State Fairgrounds Expo Hall, where Trump came to stump for Republican candidates. 

As the president spoke, a sign rose from the audience. “We are Q,” it read. Another poster displayed text arranged in a “Q” pattern: “Where we go one we go all.”

Who or what is QAnon? It’s the handle for a racist troll who pretends to be “a government agent with top security clearance” working with Donald Trump to take out the “Deep State.” 

Starting with connections to the original Pizzagate, QAnon has built up followers through mystery appearances in the Trump-loving depths of Reddit. 

Curt Schilling thinks he can beat Elizabeth Warren for Senate in Massachusetts if he can just figure out Jews

So he asks network reporter to explain it to him

By April Hamlin

  ·

No, Curt, I'm not Jewish. Why do you ask?

Curt Schilling, who is challenging Elizabeth Warren for her senate seat [in 2018], took part in an interview on CNN October 21. And well, let’s just say that it didn’t go very well for him.

Schilling finds himself completely baffled by Jews and just can’t figure out why they vote for Democrats. 

So he decided to ask Jake Tapper because he’s a Jewish guy. 

In hindsight, he will hopefully realize what an ass he made out of himself in the process.

From the guy who brought us 38 Studio

Curt Schilling Doubles Down On Transgender Hate On Facebook, Adds Racism

By Sarah

After ESPN fired washed-up MLB pitcher Curt Schilling, and rightfully so, for posting an extremely transphobic image on his Facebook page, he decided that wasn’t enough hate, so now he’s added some racism to the mix.

Clearly pissed that he lost his job, Schilling decided to repost an image put out by conservative blogger and wannabe comedian Steven Crowder. 

In the image it throws noted writer and activist Shaun King under the bus in its pathetic attempt to be funny. Which, I’m sure to the myopic, racist and transphobic crowd Crowder plays to, is hilarious.

The image says:

“Liberal Logic:Shaun King: Fakes being a black man. Gets Promotion.Curt Schilling: Thinks men should use men’s bathrooms. Fired by ESPN.”

Like we need another one

Ken Block is a Barrington version of Don Carcieri

By Bob Plain in Rhode Island’s Future

“Only an outsider can fix what’s broken here,” said Barrington businessman Ken Block during last night’s first Republican debate for governor.

His opponent, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, may want to paint Block as a opportunistic flip-flopper, but to me he sounded a lot like the last affluent private sector executive from the suburbs to preach the “outsider” gospel.

And we all know how that turned out.

VIDEOS: Hot primary race for General Treasurer

But the choice is pretty simple

By Will Collette

The Rhode Island Democratic State Convention will take place on Sunday, June 22. My wife Cathy and I are both State Committee members so both of us will be there and voting for the candidates our town committee, the Charlestown Democrats, have endorsed.

For General Treasurer, we like Seth Magaziner because he has a record of success as an investor and fresh ideas for how to get Rhode Island’s economy growing again. Plus, we think he’s a helluva guy. 

South County residents can find that out for themselves this Saturday when he comes to the Charlestown Gallery for a fund-raiser party being hosted by friends and supporters. Please bring your checkbook.

As if all of Seth’s positive qualities weren’t enough, Cathy and I would still be voting for him at the State Convention because he is, in our opinion, the only actual Democrat among the three candidates running for the state party endorsement.

His two opponents are former General Treasurer and failed candidate for Governor Frank Caprio and former RI Auditor General Ernie Almonte. Neither Caprio nor Almonte are real Democrats, and I don’t simply mean they aren’t our particular brand of Democrat, which is the progressive variety. Nor are they qualified to be General Treasurer.

RI's big strike-out

Rhode Island Considers Defaulting on Bonds for Notorious 38 Studios Deal

By Thomas Cafcas in Clawback by Good Jobs First

The aftermath of Rhode Island’s biggest economic development scandal isn’t over yet. In 2010 the state’s privatized economic development agency loaned 38 Studios—a video game company founded by former major league pitcher Curt Schilling—some $75 million in subsidies which the state borrowed to provide. 

The firm soon failed, apparently leaving taxpayers with an obligation that has risen to $89 million (with interest), including a $12.3 million payment due next year.

Those payments are now in question. Rhode Island’s House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello has scheduled meetings with Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s to discuss the consequences of failing to pay. While these bonds are not backed by the full faith and credit of Rhode Island, a previous consultant to the state made dire warnings about failure to pay, claiming that the move would degrade Rhode Island to junk bond status.

Pay or fight?

Will Kilmartin stand up to the ratings agencies?

By Alex Moore in Rhode Island’s Future

In a recent post, I highlighted how the US Department of Justice is suing ratings agency S&P concerning their suspicious ratings practices that essentially fueled the financial crisis. In the same post, I also wrote about how I believe ratings agencies S&P and Moody’s also artificially inflated the 38 Studios bond ratings as investment grade.

Although not impossible, it is difficult for taxpayers to file lawsuits due to what is known as the standing law doctrine. It is therefore the obligation of attorneys general to defend taxpayers when they have been wronged.

Nick goes to Wall Street

Mattiello is meeting with ratings agencies, but what will he learn?

By Tom Sgouros in Rhode Island’s Future

House Speaker Nick Mattiello is in New York today meeting with representatives of Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s, the two biggest of the credit ratings agencies. (No word on how Fitch feels about the snub.) It’s not perfectly clear what he thinks he’s going to get from this trip. Perhaps he’s going to look into the Moody’s representatives eyes and “get a sense of his soul” the way George W. Bush did with Vladimir Putin? That went well, didn’t it?

So what will Mattiello find when he meets with these guys? I predict he will find earnest, intelligent, kind, and solicitous people. They will make sympathetic noises about the awkward plight of our poor state and the unwise choices made by our previous governor and speaker of the House.

They will understand immediately the ramifications of our difficult position. But they will point out all the worst-case scenarios, because they are also people who believe very strongly that the end of western civilization will be nigh if a state is allowed to renege on a commitment they imagine it to have made.

Essential reading in the 38 Studios bond debate

38 Studios bond only one way Wall St. treats states unfairly

By Tom Sgouros in Rhode Island’s Future

One of the things I admire most about the debate over whether to repay the 38 Studios bonds is the way that we’re supposed to ignore the plain meaning of legal language. On the front page of the prospectus for the 38 Studios bonds, in capital letters, there is a paragraph that reads:

THE 2010 BONDS AND THE INTEREST THEREON DO NOT CONSTITUTE A DEBT, LIABILITY, OBLIGATION OF THE STATE OR ANY POLITICAL SUBDIVISION THEREOF (OTHER THAN A SPECIAL OR LIMITED OBLIGATION OF THE ISSUER) AND NEITHER THE FAITH AND CREDIT NOR THE TAKING AND TAXING POWER OF THE STATE OR ANY POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OR MUNICIPALITY THEREOF IS PLEDGED TO THE PAYMENT OF THE 2010 BONDS OR THE INTEREST THEREON. THE ISSUER HAS NO TAXING POWER. THE OBLIGATION OF THE STATE TO MAKE PAYMENTS FOR DEPOSIT INTO THE CAPITAL RESERVE FUND IS SUBJECT TO ANNUAL APPROPRIATION BY THE STATE GENERAL ASSEMBLY.

As if this isn’t enough, the paragraph is repeated verbatim (also in solid capitals) in the body of the document, on page 2, and again on page 11. And there are other sentences to reinforce it, too. So my question is which other sentences in the prospectus are to be ignored? Is there some secret legal code that says that if it’s repeated three times in all caps it doesn’t count?

Thanks, Donald

Why conservatives play fast and loose with RI’s credit

By Bob Plain in Rhode Island’s Future

Don Carcieri’s epic economic fail of investing in 38 Studios may have a silver lining for the local conservative movement he once led. And both Republican candidates for governor are for it, while the Democrats are opposed.

The Providence Journal points out that gubernatorial candidates are split along party lines when it comes to repaying the 38 Studios bond.

Allan Fung said the warnings from Wall Street about fiscal repercussions are overstated and Ken Block, who never met a opportunity to issue a press release he didn’t exploit, railed against “the threats coming from Wall Street insiders of dire consequences for the state if they fail to make good on the 38 Studios bond,” according to the ProJo. 

Leading Democratic candidates were equally united that the bond should be repaid and Sam Howard wrote about why the bond payment should be made in a recent post.

VIDEOS: Charlestown Tapas

More bite-sized bites of news

By Will Collette

Renowned Narragansett elder passes away

Our sincere condolences to the family of Dr. Ella Wilcox-Thomas Sekatau who was laid to rest with full tribal honors at the Narragansett Indian Cemetery in Charlestown on April 11. She died at age 85 on April 7. Her Narragansett name Sekatau means “Firefly Song of the Wind.”

She was a medicine woman and historian whose research was vital to the Tribe’s success in regaining federal recognition in 1983. 

She also labored hard to keep the Narragansett language alive and spread its use and the tribe’s history among generations of tribal members. Her son John Brown carries on her tradition.

Please click here for her obituary.

What’s missing from this list?

From I Luv RI via Greater Westerly-Pawcatuck Area Chamber of Commerce, These Are The Best Places To Live In Rhode Island:

Give up?

Keep reading to find the answer....

Corporate subsidies often cost more than state retirement costs

Attacks on Pensions, Safety Net Programs, Distract from Corporate Giveaways that Exacerbate Economic Inequality

By Greg LeRoy, Good Jobs First

EDITOR’S NOTE: Though Rhode Island was not one of the states included in the study, it might as well have been. The problems detailed in this free-for-download report could fairly describe Rhode Island’s problem, especially when you consider that giving money to 38 Studios, and paying state funds to investors who bought 38 Studios bonds has taken precedence over keeping the promises made to state retirees.

Washington D.C. -- State lawmakers who are considering drastic cuts to the retirement benefits of state workers are simultaneously giving away billions of dollars in corporate tax subsidies and loopholes, often in amounts far exceeding the cost of pensions, according to a new report.

Putting State Pension Costs in Context by Good Jobs First examines 10 states where elected officials are threatening to undermine retirement security by cutting the pension benefits of their teachers, firefighters, police officers, and hundreds of thousands of other public employees. The states included in the report are Arizona; California; Colorado; Florida; Illinois; Louisiana; Michigan; Missouri; Oklahoma; and Pennsylvania.

Donna Walsh gets economic advancement measures written into the budget

There’s more than one way to get the job done

By Will Collette

Saving family farms, promoting the arts and helping people find jobs

For the past several years, Rep. Donna Walsh has been trying to get a change to the state estate tax law passed that it crucial to saving family farms. Under current law, when the owners of a farm die and the property goes to probate, the land value is calculated based on its worth as a commercial or residential development, not as a farm.

The result is a crushing – and unfair – estate tax bill on the surviving family members that often results in a self-fulfilling prophecy where the only way to pay the bill is to put the farm up for development. For example, an average Rhode Island family farm is about 50 acres and might be worth about $650,000 as a working farm. But if it is valuated as house lots, it could be worth around $5 million, costing the heirs about $500,000 in inheritance taxes.

Gordon Fox - head DINO

Progressives should vote against the budget

Gordon Fox's leadership strategy

By Samuel Bell in Rhode Island's Future

Progressives have always had a complicated relationship with House Speaker Gordon Fox.  Though deeply concerned that Fox’s very conservative economic policies are destroying our state, we have always supported the House leadership team because Fox’s likely successors, Helio Melo and Nick Mattiello, are even more conservative than he is.

When Speaker Fox faced the progressive voters of the East Side in November, they were angry—angry at the bevy of red-state legislation Fox had actively pushed for.  Fox promised to change. 

He promised to sunset the ALEC-backed voter ID law he supported, a law he passed even though the chairwoman of the national Democratic Party called him to beg him to reconsider.  He promised to consider not bailing out Wall Street on the 38 Studios deal he helped orchestrate. 

Budget priorities out of whack

RIte Care cuts could prove to be a killer

By Tom Sgouros in Rhode Island’s Future

Do you support the compromises made to put together this year’s state budget?  Would you support them if you knew they will cause people to die?  Statistically speaking, one cut is likely to cause as many as 30 deaths over the next few years.

The problem with discussions of the state budget is that they’re usually conducted in the abstract.  We talk about budget numbers and cutting a little here and moving this number into that column and it’s all rather academic and somewhat bloodless.  To make it a little less bloodless, I’d like to look at just one number and see what it really means.  And since we’re talking about blood, let’s look at the Medicaid cut.

The answer is no

The $100 million question

By Bob Plain in Rhode Island's Future

Should we the people of Rhode Island pay large institutional bondbuyers $100 million we don’t legally owe them?

It’s the biggest political and economic dilemma facing the Ocean State since pension cuts and our elected officials don’t want the discussion to happen.

Last week, a legislative committee tasked with investigating the pros and cons to taxpayers was roundly criticized for holding an informational meeting on the $100 million question but only presented one side of the debate. After the session, Ted Nesi, Rhode Island’s most respected reporter, wrote this gem of a lede:

Don't pay off the 38 Studio bonds

Debate: should we repay 38 Studios bondholders

By Tom Sgouros in Rhode Island’s Future

Spent some of the afternoon Thursday discussing the 38 Studios bonds with Elaine Heebner, John Chung, a law professor at Roger Williams, Gary Sasse, the former director of the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council, Mark Higgins, the dean of the URI Business School, and Bob Cusack, a guy who’s been on one side or the other of the municipal bond market for 35 years.  The event was a co-production of the Stephen Hopkins Center for Freedom, Prosperity, and Motherhood and Occupy Providence, and Bill Rappleye of Channel 10 moderated us all.

You can check out WJAR’s account by clicking here. 

What to do about the 38 Studios debt

Who Do We Pay?

By Samuel G. Howard in Rhode Island's Future

With the House of Representatives bringing in its “neutral” expert on defaulting on the 38 Studios moral obligation bonds, the lingering question to me still remains. Why is it alright to unilaterally bail out on our pension obligations to state employees, but our “moral” obligations to bondholders who knew the risks must be honored at all costs?

That was the question posed to Gov. Lincoln Chafee a month ago by conservative columnist (writing then for Bloomberg View) Josh Barro. Chafee’s never answered that fundamental question, and Barro rightly excoriated the Governor for claiming to call for moderation when in fact he called for a more radical version of pension reform than what was enacted.