Thank you, Sheldon Whitehouse

Whitehouse uses Kavanaugh’s own calendars, yearbook and notes to catch him in lies in his denials of attempted rape

By Will Collette

I want to share two articles with you about the stand our Senator Sheldon Whitehouse took during the confirmation hearings on Trump’s pick for Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh had, until Friday, tried to play the role of chaste, respectful altar boy, a man of impeccable character unstained by any sordid past.

None of what Dr. Christine Ford said about him could possibly be true. And to “prove” it, Kavanaugh introduced his calendars for his high school years at Georgetown Prep.

Personally, I think that Kavanaugh’s production of his calendar notes is enough to show he is unfit for the Supreme Court because they do not, to paraphrase Princess Bride, say what he thinks they say. I ask you - would any competent lawyer do that?

That’s where Sen. Whitehouse came in. Using Kavanaugh’s own calendars and notes, Whitehouse took him apart, focusing in particular on phrases and notes Kavanaugh himself wrote.

Before we move on to the two articles, I just want to note how stressful all this must be to Charlestown’s resident curmudgeon Jim Mageau, who took to the Letters to the Editor page of the Westerly Sun on September 21 to blast Senator Whitehouse. 

Mageau charged Whitehouse with engaging in “political theatre” and using unproven charges like this to destroy the family and reputation of an outstanding jurist” and calls for Whitehouse to be disbarred.

Well, Jim, a lot has changed since September 21. I wonder if you will now write a letter to the editor with your apology.

Here are two articles.

Senator Whitehouse talks about the upcoming election

Breakfast with Sheldon Whitehouse

By Bob Plain in Rhode Island’s Future

You wouldn’t know it by watching him work the crowd waiting for a breakfast table in Newport, but Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island’s junior senator who is facing re-election this year, says he’s uncomfortable in the public spotlight.

“In the world of people in politics, way shyer than average,” is how he described himself over breakfast at the Corner Cafe on Broadway recently. “It’s been a constant tension for me as long as I’ve been doing this.”

It was near-debilitating in the early days of his political career, he told me as he waited for his eggs Benedict, Hollandaise sauce on the side. “I found it really hard to go up to people I don’t know and introduce myself.” Telling a story about his first campaign appearance the first time he ran for public office, he said, “After a while I gave up and went back to the car.”

Of course, he eventually got out of the car, and even managed to press some flesh, he said. And then he went on to win the state attorney general’s office. That was in 1998. 

Now that he’s seeking his third term as a United States Senator, he can hardly seem to imagine life outside of electoral politics.

The economics of single payer health coverage in Rhode Island

Medicare for All would save RI money—and here’s the math

By Will Weatherly 

Savings under a proposed single-payer
health-care system in RI

Would health care in Rhode Island cost less if everyone had access to it? 

The question, brought to the national stage in arguments surrounding Sen. Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All plan, came to Rhode Island repeatedly, whether it was when Democratic gubernatorial candidate Matt Brown announced his own Medicare for All plan, or in reactions to Ted Nesi’s report that a Blue Cross & Blue Shield CEO received a $1.15 million payout a full year after he stepped down.

Two days before the state learned of that exorbitant sum, a spokeswoman for Governor Raimondo told the Providence Journal that the Affordable Care Act “is working in Rhode Island.” 

But for Jerry Friedman, an Economics professor at the University of Massachusetts who has been studying Rhode Island’s health-care costs, massive administrative bonuses are just one reason why he doesn’t think that’s the case.

“I don’t know what she means by working,” Friedman told me on Thursday. 

“Yeah, Rhode Island has done a good job compared to the rest of the country, but there’s still a lot of uninsured people and a lot of underinsured people. So a lot of people are dying in the state because they don’t have health care or they don’t have access to health care.”

Matt Brown goes after Raimondo for slashing pensions

Raimondo’s pension cuts benefited hedge funds more than RI, says Brown

By Will Weatherly in Rhode Island’s Future

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Matt Brown attacked pension cuts for state employees dating back to Governor Raimondo’s previous role as state treasurer at a town-hall style “Restore Our Pensions” event at the WaterFire Arts Center in Providence on Monday evening.

The event came mere hours after WPRI published polling results showing Brown lagging behind in name recognition, and featured vocal ire from one advocate for the governor.

Despite those setbacks, an overwhelming majority of attendees, many of whom were retired teachers, responded to Brown’s proposals and critiques of Governor Raimondo with excitement, and many expressed a sense of betrayal at the governor’s previous management of the pension fund.

In 2011, Raimondo announced that the state would freeze cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for two decades, as well as invest more than $1 billion in retirement assets in hedge funds for “hybrid,” 401(k)-style retirement plans.

In 2016, Treasurer Seth Magaziner rolled back Gov. Raimondo’s plan, shifting $500 million away from hedge funds to more stable assets. Magaziner told CNBC that the hedge funds “did not perform well” and “did not provide protection during the periods of volatility that we’ve had over the last year.”

Brown pushed further, arguing that “the drastic cuts that Governor Raimondo put in place did not need to be made,” and that the state had lost $500 million in in “high-risk, high-fee” hedge funds, as opposed to what would be made in stable index funds, in the process.

Can Rhode Island provide universal health coverage?

Matt Brown calls for “Medicare for All”

By Will Weatherly in Rhode Island’s Future

Democratic candidate for Governor Matt Brown announced last Friday that he supports a “Medicare for All” plan for Rhode Island, which will both counter Gov. Raimondo’s Medicaid cuts and “save Rhode Island money every year,” he said in a press release.

“If people lose a job, they lose their health care. Small businesses pay so much to insure their employees, it stops them from hiring even when they need the extra help,” said the press release. 

“For 40,000 Rhode Islanders, there is no affordable insurance plan so they have none; they use emergency rooms and urgent care clinics, and the bills pile up.”

Brown’s proposal, he says, will “create a state health insurance system that mirrors the most successful, affordable and comprehensive health insurance provider in the country—Medicare —and covers the health care needs of everyone in Rhode Island.”

He says it will save the state money by shifting “administrative costs and insurance executives’ high salaries.” 

This week, the Mercatus Center, a Koch-funded libertarian think tank, agrees. It released a report which found a national Medicare for All plan would save Americans around $2.054 trillion over a ten-year period, according to a report at Jacobin.

Blockchain has a far-right past.

Does it have a future in Rhode Island?

By Will Weatherly in Rhode Island’s Future

Here is a list of some of the figures who have shown interest in bitcoin cryptocurrency and its associated “blockchain” technology: white nationalist Richard Spencer, who called bitcoin “the currency of the alt right.” 

Former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, who has had private meetings with cryptocurrency investors. Peter Thiel, the PayPal founder and libertarian venture capitalist who quietly advised the Trump administration for months. 

And in Germany, the rising far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), who had its co-leader speak at a cyptocurrency conference as a ““economist and bitcoin entrepreneur.”

And now? Governor Gina Raimondo and Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello, who both spoke at the first Rhode Island Blockchain Summit at the Omni Hotel in Providence on Thursday, an event the former Trump press secretary (of 10 days) Anthony Scaramucci was rumored to attend.

It would be a grave mistake to overgeneralize, or to argue that sharing a curiosity for cryptocurrency at all entails a substantial agreement between Rhode Island leaders and these crypto-stakeholders’ far-right stances. There are now 1,952 cryptocurrencies in existence, making the technology a particularly wide tent. 

Republican candidate for governor and former state senator Giovanni Feroce has made blockchain a pillar of his campaign, calling for voters to make him the “blockchain governor” and proposing the technology be incorporated “directly into the government’s own administrative infrastructure.” 

Sean Spicer returns to home state to flog his book about being Trump’s spokesperson

Spicer claims Cohen doesn’t have info against Trump during sparse book-signing

By Will Weatherly in Rhode Island’s Future

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Alex Lombard (see text for his encounter with Spicer)

I had time to ask Sean Spicer, the former press secretary under President Trump for six months last year, exactly one question during his book signing at a Middletown Barnes and Noble on Friday.

I asked: “This week, reports were released saying that Michael Cohen testifies that Donald Trump knew about a meeting of campaign officials with Russians attempting to interfere with the election. 

"You have previously stated [on a WPRI Newsmakers interview Friday] that the campaign learned about Russian tampering through reports from officials who said that there were attacks to both the RNC and the DNC, and who told you to demonstrate your confidence in the electoral process. 

"Can you still defend that position and that confidence now?”

“I’m sorry, so what does the Cohen thing have to do with this?” he asked. “Your confidence that Donald Trump did not know about Russian interference in the election before you were notified,” I told him.

“I don’t think there’s anything in the Cohen tapes which suggest that,” he responded.

“Really?” I asked. “Even given the reports this week?”

“Again, nothing that I’ve seen,” Spicer said. “Then again, I’ve kind of been promoting a book.” He laughed. “So, sorry!”

Then he signed my copy of his new memoir, “The Briefing: Politics, the Press, and the President,” and my time was up.

Raimondo says her incentives spur job growth

EPI isn’t so sure

By Will Weatherly in Rhode Island’s Future

Governor Raimondo’s support for corporate incentives have become a contentious frontline in the race for governor. 

Both Democratic candidate Matt Brown and Republican candidate Allan Fung have attacked her commerce incentive programs (such as the Rebuild Rhode Island Tax Credit) according to a report in the Providence Journal on Tuesday. 

The article shows Gov. Raimondo reflecting critiques back on Fung and Brown, saying that without the economic growth spurred by her incentive program, “A lot of people are going to lose their jobs if either of those men become governor and it is time we focus on that risk.”

But are corporate incentives and job growth as closely aligned as the governor argues they are? 

Doug Hall, director of economic and fiscal policy at the Economic Progress Institute, told RI Future earlier this month that it’s more complicated than a simple equation of the two. 

“If a corporation says we need a million dollars in tax credits, and we’re going to create X number of jobs,” Hall said, “you give them a million dollars, they create the jobs, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have created those jobs in the absence of the tax credit.”

Rhode Island’s rich get richer and, you guessed it, poor get poorer

RI faces an expansive income gap, according to EPI report

By Will Weatherly in Rhode Island’s Future

A report released by the Economic Progress Institute (EPI) on July 19 put a spotlight on income inequality in Rhode Island, declaring that the country has entered a “new Gilded Age.”

According to the study’s findings, the top 1 percent of Rhode Island residents earned 18.2 times more than the rest of the state, according to an analysis of data from 2015. 

In order to qualify for the 1 percent income bracket, Rhode Islanders would have to earn $346,657 or more annually; the average income for the top percentile was $928,204 annually.

Rhode Island fell around the middle range of income inequality in New England states. 

Definition of chutzpah

Flanders spams public sector employees seeking campaign cash

By Bob Plain in Rhode Island’s Future

When Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Flanders was the state-appointed receiver for cash-strapped Central Falls in 2012, the affluent East Greenwich resident infamously offered municipal employees a haircut or a beheading in balancing the city’s budget. 

As such, public sector workers probably won’t prove to be a major source of support for Flanders, a small government conservative.

Nevertheless, his campaign is using government email addresses to solicit campaign cash. 

Flanders dishes out snob treatment

Bob Flanders doesn’t think community college is college

By Bob Plain 

Watch this video on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0r70dRF6C4

Republican Bob Flanders had some nice things to say about Bobby Nardolillo, his now-former opponent in the GOP primary for a U.S. Senate seat who dropped out of the race. “He is a dedicated public servant with a bright future,” Flanders said of Nardolillo in a tweeted statement.

Before Nardolillo dropped out, Flanders focused on his past rather than his future.

That Flanders so quickly changed gears with Nardolillo is no surprise. Politicians, and people for that matter, tend to say nicer things about those who do what they want than those who challenge them. 

Instead consider on what grounds Flanders chose to criticize Nardolillo.

“He’s not even a college graduate,” Flanders says in the video, from a GOP event in Woonsocket in April. “God bless him, he went and got a two year degree – it took him five years to get it.”

I don’t know what kind of college degree Nardolillo has, or how long it took him to get it, but I do know Flanders is wrong about at least one thing here. Those with associate’s degrees ARE college graduates.

Rep. Cicilline visits immigrant children prison

Cicilline describes life inside, and politics behind, tender age detention centers

By Bob Plain in Rhode Island’s Future

The facility Cicilline visited is a former Wal-Mart

“It’s horrific,” said Congressman David Cicilline. “It’s barbaric.”

The Rhode Island Democrat was describing what he saw after visiting immigration detention centers on the Texas/Mexico border this weekend where President Donald Trump’s family separation policy is playing out as a moral and political crisis before America’s and the world’s eyes.

“It is horrifying to see young children behind a chain link enclosure,” he said. 

“There’s no furniture. They are sitting on the floor, a few of them have mats, looking afraid, not sure of what is happening to them. It’s disgraceful. No child should be in that kind of facility ever and certainly children who are fleeing violence.”

Cicilline joined a congressional delegation that included senators Jeff Merkeley, Oregon, and Chris Van Hollen, Maryland, and representatives Peter Welch, Vermont, Mark Pocan, Wisconsin, Shelia Jackson-Lee, Texas, and Vincente Gonzalez, who represents the Texas district where the facilities are located.

“Every legislator in Washington should have seen those children and talked to those mothers,” Cicilline said, and I think they would understand what we are doing – what’s being done in our name – is un-American and needs to stop and doesn’t reflect the basic values of this country.”

Whitehouse and Reed blast Trump policy of breaking up immigrant families

Reed, Whitehouse counter forced separation of undocumented families

By Will Weatherly in Rhode Island’s Future

Sen. Jack Reed and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse renounced the Trump administration’s separation of immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border during a meeting of immigration advocates, community leaders, and pediatricians at Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island on Monday. 

Both senators have announced their support for the Keep Families Together Act, introduced by California Senator Dianne Feinstein, which seeks to put an end to a practice widely critiqued as irreparably destructive for undocumented families and violently traumatic for undocumented minors.

Border and customs officials forcibly tear children away from their parents as a result of arrests of undocumented immigrants crossing the border.

Those children are then transported to “sponsors” within the country or detention centers, in many cases thousands of miles away, and within facilities as decrepit as the boarded-up Walmart Texas Senator Jeff Merkley tried (and failed) to enter in Brownsville, Texas on June 3. 

Bill to help people facing foreclosure needs to pass

Foreclosure protection law set to expire July 1, a bill would keep it in place

By Bob Plain in Rhode Island’s Future

Nearly 10,000 homes went into foreclosure during the mortgage crisis in Rhode Island. Then, in 2013, the General Assembly passed the Foreclosure Reduction Act, which mandated banks to work with homeowners before repossessing property. 

Since then, the law helped some 600 Rhode Islanders avoid losing their homes.

But the Foreclosure Reduction Act is set to expire in July, which would leave Rhode Island as one of only 15 states in the country that wouldn’t require either a judicial or mediation process prior to a foreclosure. 

The other states are: New Hampshire, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas, Wyoming, Montana, and Arizona.

Environmental groups join Sen. Whitehouse to spotlight plastic pollution

Whitehouse calls volume of plastic waste in the ocean “intolerable”

By John McDaid in Rhode Island’s Future

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse was joined by local environmental groups at a press conference April 23^rd in Middletown to discuss the crisis of plastic pollution in our oceans and highlight federal legislation and local actions being taken to address the threat.

Dave McLaughlin, executive director of Clean Ocean Access, hosted the event at their headquarters. 

“Earth Day worldwide started a campaign to end plastic pollution,” said McLaughlin. He reported on an event Sunday in Portsmouth where Clean Ocean Access, joined by five local Girl Scout Troops, removed 1,425 pounds of marine debris from Pheasant Drive beach.

 “Breaking free from plastic and saying no to single-use plastic is imperative to improve the health of our oceans and our environment,” said McLaughlin.

Sen. Whitehouse echoed that sentiment. “Every year we dump five shopping bags of plastic trash per foot of coastline into our oceans,” said Whitehouse. “If we keep it up, if nothing changes, if we just go with status quo then by 2050 there’s going to be more plastic waste in our ocean than there will be swimming fish. That’s not a world we should tolerate having to leave to our children.”

Trump buddy and candidate for RI Governor displays Trump-style attitude

Joe Trillo’s racist response to Starbucks incident

By Bob Plain in Rhode Island’s Future

Never let it be said that Joe Trillo can’t mobilize people into political action. 


The former Republican state legislator who is waging a quixotic independent bid for governor by following Donald Trump’s campaign strategy of hate and division clearly energized Democrats when he weighed in on racism late last week.

“I am so sick of hearing people scream the word racism every time a minority gets arrested for something unlawful,” Trillo said in a statement responding to two Black men being erroneously arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks. 

No charges were filed and the Philadelphia Police Department as well as the Starbucks have apologized and admitted error, but Trillo said in his statement, “It’s not racism, it’s what happens when you break the law.”

Help for coastal towns, like Charlestown, dealing with effects of climate change

Whitehouse debuts $30M fund for coastal resiliency

By John McDaid in Rhode Island’s Future

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse chose the flood-prone Island Park section of Portsmouth as the backdrop to introduce the National Oceans and Coastal Security Fund. With local business, government leaders, and NGOs looking on, Whitehouse announced that the fund received its first $30 million appropriation in last month’s omnibus spending bill.

Whitehouse began by showing the two dozen attendees at the Thriving Tree Coffee House a map of Island Park with multiple levels of potential sea level rise, pointing out the location where they sat, amid swaths of color indicating the land around them that could be underwater by the end of the century.

“Businesses like this, communities like Island Park, municipalities like Portsmouth need resources,” said Whitehouse. “It is not baked into their budget to be able to do the things that need to be done: to redo the FEMA mapping which isn’t any good, to take a look at what’s happening to beaches. We have a beach SAMP going on run by Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC), but it’s starved for resources.”

View larger map

Let’s encourage advertisers to #TurnOff10

Cardi’s considered pulling ads from Sinclair-owned NBC10

By Bob Plain in Rhode Island’s Future

For more cartoons by Mike Luckovich, CLICK HERE.

Nick, Ron, and Pete Cardi turned their family furniture store into a Rhode Island institution by featuring the trio of brothers in a seemingly never-ending stream of local advertisements. 

They considered pulling those ads off of NBC10 this week after learning that Sinclair, the station’s parent company, forced anchors all over the country to read corporate communications during newscasts.

“We looked at the whole station and said if we pull them, then we are liable,” Peter Cardi said in an interview with RI Future. “Those guys are sue crazy – not the local guys, the national guys.”

Cardi’s Furniture and Mattresses is one of NBC10’s largest and last local advertisers (the car companies and department stores mostly have national corporate backing). Peter said he and his brothers spoke with NBC10 Station Manager Vic Vetters at least twice this week in regards to the situation. ”

Bob Healey’s shadow?

Can Cool Moose’s ghost posthumously swing RI governor’s election?

By Bob Plain in Rhode Island’s Future

The 2016 results

It’s deja vu all over again in the race to be the next governor of Rhode Island. 

Governor Gina Raimondo, the incumbent Democrat, leads her Republican rival, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, by just two points, 38 percent to 36 percent, according to a new WPRI/Roger Williams University poll that revealed eerily similar results as last time these two squared off for governor, when Raimondo took 41 percent of the vote and Fung won 36 percent in 2014.

Somewhere Bob Healey just lit up one of his signature stogies and a wide smile spread across his forested face. Rhode Island’s perennial third party phenom who passed away in 2016 could prove as influential from beyond the grave as he was on the ballot.

The poll found 17 percent of respondents are undecided, even if the two leading candidates are the same. 

In 2014, Healey, who famously founded the Cool Moose Party but campaigned as a member of the Moderate Party, took 22 percent of the vote. 

It’s entirely unclear if today’s undecided voters supported Healey four years ago, but it’s a fairly safe bet that they aren’t a dissimilar lot.

Will the 2016 election affect some South County districts in 2018?

Trump won 19 districts represented by Democrats

By Bob Plain in Rhode Island’s Future

Will a blue tide in November sweep out Flip Filippi?

Of the 114 legislative districts in Rhode Island, President Donald Trump carried 28 of them. But only nine of those districts sent Republicans to the General Assembly. 

That means there are 19 Democratic legislators who represent districts that voted for Trump in 2016.

The most famous example is House Speaker Nick Mattiello, whose Cranston district voted for Trump 54 percent to 39 percent. 

But Mattiello is far from alone among House leadership in representing districts that voted for Trump.

Majority Leader Joe Sherkarchi’s Warwick district voted for Trump over Clinton 46 percent to 45.4 percent.

House Pro Tempore Brian Kennedy’s district in Westerly/Hopkinton voted for Trump over Clinton 49 percent to 42.6 percent.

And three deputy majority leader’s districts voted for Trump over Clinton: Rep. Greg Costantino’s Johnston/Smithfield district voted for Trump over Clinton 53.4 percent to 39.2 percent.

Rep. Deb Fellala’s Johnston district voted for Trump 53.8 percent to 40.7 percent. Rep. Steve Casey’s Woonsocket district narrowly voted for Trump over Clinton 45.6 percent to 45.5 percent.

The House minority leadership isn’t immune to a similar but opposite dynamic. Both Minority Leader Blake Filippi and Senior Deputy Minority Leader Anthony Giarrusso represent districts that Clinton carried, taking Filippi’s Charlestown/Block Island district 52.2 percent to 38.9 percent.