How today's House Republican tax and budget bill will affect Rhode Island

What we will pay for tax cuts for the super-rich

What you need to make to be "comfortable"

Visual Capitalist infographic

Rhode Island is tenth highest.

This visualization illustrates the income necessary for two working adults with two children to maintain a comfortable lifestyle in each state.

“Comfortable” is defined as the income needed to cover a 50/30/20 budget, with 50% allocated to necessities like housing and utilities, 30% to discretionary spending, and 20% to savings or investments.

The calculations for family income needed in each state were done by SmartAsset, using the cost of necessities sourced from the MIT Living Wage Calculator, last updated on Feb. 14, 2024.

RI Republican senators vote against safe gun storage

Safe weapons bill passes through Rhode Island Senate

By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current

Republicans are OK with this

After advancing out of committee through a partisan vote the week prior, the Democratic-led Rhode Island Senate on Tuesday approved legislation that would require gun owners to safely store their firearms when not in use.

The bill sponsored by Sen. Pam Lauria, a Barrington Democrat, was passed 28-7. All five of the Senate’s Republicans voted against the measure, along with Democrats Leonidas Raptakis of Coventry and Frank Ciccone III of Providence.

And of course, Charlestown state Senator Elaine Morgan
voted NO while our other Senator Victoria Gu voted YES.

Providence Democrats Ana Quezada and Tiara Mack were not present at Tuesday’s session.

“How do we protect our children from the leading cause of death in their age group?” Lauria asked her Senate colleagues. “How do we reduce targeted school gun violence? How do we reduce children firearm suicides? And how do we reduce gun thefts? Research reveals that locking firearms and ammunition is associated with a dramatic reduction in all of the above.”

Lauria’s bill requires that all firearms be stored in a locked container or equipped with a tamper-resistant lock when not in use by the owner or another authorized user. 

New Democratic Party chair responds to RIGOP snark

 

Here is the "compliments" note sent by the Republican chair that sparked the retort above:

Despite MAGA fear-mongering, crime is down, in the US and RI

New FBI report shows fear-mongering over crime doesn’t match reality

By Uprise RI Staff

Despite ongoing claims of a nationwide “crime wave” from some politicians and media outlets, the latest FBI data released this week reveals a more nuanced picture – both violent and property crime rates continued to fall or hold steady in 2022. 

The data simply does not support declarations of a crime crisis. But truth often takes a backseat to political rhetoric in an election season.

A sober, thorough analysis of the facts shows violent crime, including homicide, robbery and assault, dropped 1.7% last year versus 2021. This extends an ongoing 30-year decline – today’s violent crime rate is less than half what it was in the early 1990s, a true watershed moment for public safety. 

The homicide rate specifically is down 6.1% in 2022 and plunged nearly 12% in major cities so far in 2023, according to a New York Times analysis. This sharp drop contradicts predictions of an endless “murder wave” and points to progress on curbing deadly violence through targeted prevention and intervention efforts.

As for property crimes like burglary and theft, the rate held nearly steady last year after plunging during the pandemic. But it remains near historic lows, with 6.5 million property crimes in 2022 versus 7.4 million back in 2018 – a significant reduction. 

Crime trends in Rhode Island reflect the national picture. 

Essential workers in RI struggle to make ends meet

Treat essential workers as essential
By Economic Progress Institute in UpriseRI

The Economic Progress Institute released its biennial Rhode Island Standard of Need (RISN) report which shows what it costs to live in Rhode Island. The RISN calculates a no-frills budget that includes the cost of housing, food, transportation, health care, child care, and other basic necessities. 

It also highlights how federal and state work supports help Rhode Islanders meet the costs of basic needs. This year’s report also looks at racial and ethnic disparities in the ability of Rhode Islanders to meet basic needs and how additional government support has helped essential and other workers and their families during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The findings of this report show that Black and Latinx Rhode Islanders are less likely to be able to meet expenses.

“We know it is expensive to live in Rhode Island and many individuals do not have the necessary income to meet their basic needs” said Rachel Flum, executive director of the Economic Progress Institute. 

"Achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls is the unfinished business of our time"

Celebrating Progress at the End of Women's History Month

By Maureen Martin 

As Women's History Month comes to an end, it is a time to honor the outstanding achievements of women throughout history and celebrate the work that remains ongoing through various movements and organizations.

One such movement, #MeToo, was founded by Tarana Burke. Ms. Burke appeared at Roger Williams University before an enthusiastic audience where she explained that, "[t]he movement is about supporting and healing survivors, about organizing communities to become safe places, and about changing the culture of gender-based violence." (PJ, 2/14/2018.)

It is not, she emphasized, about "taking down men," but instead, it focuses on "making it safe for people to speak their truth."

Rhode Island Democratic convention elects party regulars despite challenges

Plenty of drama, no surprises at Rhode Island Democratic Party State Committee Meeting

By Steve Ahlquist,  UpRiseRI

Moira Walsh and Teresa Tanzi

Some of those who were challenging the incumbent Rhode Island Democratic Party (RIDP) State Committee members were announced ahead of time, a few came as a surprise. 

The purpose of the meeting was to elect the members of the RIDP State Executive Committee and to approved the new State Party Platform. 

The nine positions voted on were for Committee Chair, First Vice-Chair, Second Vice-Chair, Third Vice-Chair, Secretary, Corresponding Secretary, Recording Secretary, Treasurer and Assistant Treasurer.

The Sunday night meeting, held at the Cranston Portuguese Club, was packed with about 300 people, but only about 172 of them were able and willing to vote. 

As roll call votes were taken over the course of the evening, more and more people left, decreasing the number of voters. 

In the last roll call vote only 122 people voted, just over half of those eligible to vote in Party elections.

All eyes were on the race for RIDP Chair and Secretary. On Friday, Representative Moira Walsh (Democrat, District 3, Providence) challenged Representative Joseph McNamara (Democrat, District 19, Warwick) for the position of Chair of the Party. 

The final vote was for McNamara, 144 to 28.

Also, Representative Teresa Tanzi (Democrat, District 34, Narragansett, South Kingstown) challenged conservative Representative Arthur Corvese (Democrat, District 55, North Providence) for the position of Secretary of the Party. The vote went to Corvese, 126 – 40.

Neither won their challenge as the vast amount of Democrats in the room went with centrist or conservative candidates.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I was also in attendance as a voting member for House District 36. I saw the contested votes as mainly a clash between party regulars and challengers from various other factions within the party, and not always Left versus Right. I voted with roughly 30-40 other delegates for most (but not all) the challengers. I was especially proud to vote for Rep. Teresa Tanzi for Secretary. I loved her speech which included a great punch line that she recognized she had a better chance of winning the Powerball than winning this vote.

Steve covered the entire meeting and you can watch the videos of all the speeches on Steve's great website (CLICK HERE). 

He noted that as the hours passed, people left since each of the many roll call votes involved calling out almost 200 people's names. As a diabetic at an event  where no food was served, I would have left too had I not packed a sandwich. I know I wasn 't the only person in the room with diabetes or other conditions that made attending a long meeting problematic.  - Will Collette  

Rhode Island ACLU sues feds for tricking immigrants who were trying to follow the law

ICE and USCIS Conspired to Arrest, Detain Immigrants Wishing to Remain with Families

ACLU of Rhode Island

Calderon family

It was no coincidence when undocumented immigrants like Rhode Island resident Lilian Calderon were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials immediately after showing up for interviews at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offices (CIS) to legalize their status. 

Instead, documents released yesterday reveal that CIS officials informed Boston ICE agents of the interviews, scheduled them at a convenient time for ICE, and sometimes even notified ICE when an individual arrived for his or her interview and how the interview was progressing. 

The disclosures came in a request for a preliminary injunction against the practice made by ACLU of Massachusetts attorneys in a class-action lawsuit filed in April on behalf of Ms. Calderon.

Ms. Calderon, who has lived in the country since she was three years old and has two young children, appeared at the local CIS office with her citizen husband for an interview designed to confirm their marriage, the first step in a sanctioned “provisional waiver” process designed to minimize family separation and encourage noncitizens with final orders of removal to seek to obtain legal status. 

The ACLU has now learned that ICE agents in collaboration with CIS, used the waiver process as a trap to bring individuals in for interviews for precisely the opposite reason – so that ICE could detain them, separate them from their families, and seek to deport them. 

Watch your mailbox!

8,000 Rhode Islanders with To Be Reunited With $1.3 Million

RI Treasurer Seth Magaziner announced that checks will be mailed to more than 8,000 Rhode Islanders this week under his new YOUR MONEY program, which automatically reunites Rhode Islanders with their unclaimed property.

 

"For hard-working Rhode Island families, a little extra cash can make a big difference," said Treasurer Magaziner. "Through the YOUR MONEY initiative, we are now able to efficiently reunite many Rhode Islanders with missing money that is rightfully theirs."

Treasurer Magaziner's YOUR MONEY initiative matches unclaimed property lists with known addresses, which means that for thousands of people, their missing money can be returned to them automatically - with no paperwork required. 

In the past, every resident had to check the state's online database to see if they have unclaimed property and then submit a claim form.

Connecticut Set to End “Dual Arrests” in Domestic Violence Cases

Rhode Island also has "dual arrest" option

By Sarah Smith, special to ProPublica

The Connecticut Legislature has sent a bill to the governor’s desk that seeks to end having victims of domestic violence arrested along with their abusers because they fight back during the course of an assault.

For years, Connecticut’s domestic violence victims have been at risk of “dual arrests” — instances in which police arrest both the victim and the perpetrator of domestic violence. 

The state has a dual arrest rate of about 18 percent in “intimate partner” incidents, a ProPublica analysis in early 2017 found. The average for the rest of the country hovers at about 2 percent. EDITOR'S NOTE: RI's dual arrest rate runs between 2 and 5 percent under state law described as follows by the American Bar Association:

Rhode Island law gives the police discretion to arrest only the "primary aggressor."

Channel 10 boycott goes after NiRoPe

Anti-SinclairMedia campaign targets Cardi’s for advertising on WJAR/10

By Steve Ahlquist in UpriseRI

There are lots more photos in Steve's original article.

Turn Off 10, a campaign coordinated by the Rhode Island Kent County ReSisters and Indivisible Rhode Island protested outside Cardi’s Furniture & Mattresses at 1681 Quaker Lane in West Warwick because of the company’s continued advertising on the Sinclair Broadcast Group‘s television station. About 30 people attended the protest.

Sinclair Broadcast Group is an American telecommunications company. The company is the largest television station operator in the United States by number of stations and total coverage. 

Since taking ownership of WJAR, Sinclair Media Group has mandated that WJAR include two minutes of right-wing or pro-Trump  propaganda in local news broadcasts nine times a week.

In March a new mandate was announced according to internal Sinclair memos leaked to CNN. It is called an “anchor delivered journalistic responsibility message.” 

Working to fix RI’s Medicaid program

11 projects funded to serve Medicaid recipients

Carol McCarthy

Rhode Island’s Executive Office of Health & Human Services has partnered with the University of Rhode Island to develop innovative education and training programs that will prepare the health care workforce with the knowledge and skills needed to help achieve the goals of the R.I. Medicaid Health System Transformation Project.

The funding comes from about $130 million in matching funds awarded to the state in 2016 by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. 

Most of the award was earmarked for redesigning the health care delivery system that serves the more 300,000 Medicaid beneficiaries. 

About five percent was set aside for workforce development to train future health care workers.

Planned Parenthood calls for YOU to help protect birth control access in Rhode Island

Contact state representatives before Tuesday

Craig R. O’Connor, Planned Parenthood Votes! Rhode Island

Please, go to http://bit.ly/Fight4BirthControlRI and ask your State Representative and the House Corporations Committee to protect access to birth control in Rhode Island by passing H 7625.

Trump and Congressional Republicans have taken aim at health care—particularly undermining women’s health. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, access to affordable, convenient, and effective contraception has led to significant declines in unintended pregnancies, abortion, and unplanned births.

Rhode Island cannot afford to go backward!

Join us by RSVPing to the hearing on H 7625.

Tuesday, April 24
4:30 pm
House Committee on Corportations, room 203
State House, 82 Smith Street, Providence

Brown will help state crunch the numbers behind public policy decisions.

RI Innovative Policy Lab at Brown transitioning to a state-focused policy research center

After three years of designing evidence-based policies to support efforts of the State of Rhode Island to better serve families, the Rhode Island Innovative Policy Lab (RIIPL), located at Brown University, will be transformed into a permanent University research center under new leadership and governance.

RIIPL was founded as a partnership between Brown researchers and the State of Rhode Island in 2015 by Justine Hastings, professor of economics and international and public affairs at Brown.

Projects undertaken by RIIPL include using big data and data science to find new solutions to lower emergency health care costs, curb the opioid crisis, improve worker training programs, create tools to connect dislocated workers to benefits, and help Rhode Island children reach proficiency in reading and math tests. 

New data shows how little Rhode Island needs guns and the gun industry

Rhode Island is 3^rd LEAST dependent on the gun industry

Adam McCann, Financial Writer for WalletHub

For more cartoons by Wiley Miller, CLICK HERE.

With gun sales still in decline since Donald Trump took office and with the recent Parkland school shooting prompting more debates on the gun industry, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on 2018’s States Most Dependent on the Gun Industry.

To determine the states that depend most heavily on the arms and ammunitions industry both directly for jobs and political contributions and indirectly through firearm ownership, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 16 key metrics. 

The data set ranges from firearms industry jobs per capita to gun sales per 1,000 residents to gun ownership rate.

A Rhode Island connection to the Olympics

Brown alumna Lauren Gibbs captures Olympic silver

Olympic silver Class of 2006 alumna Lauren Gibbs (left) and teammate
Elana Meyers Taylor captured the silver medal in women's bobsledding
at the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. Getty Images

Four years ago, Brown graduate Lauren Gibbs left a lucrative career in sales to become a bobsledder. 

On Wednesday, that big risk netted her Olympic silver.

Gibbs, who earned her bachelor’s degree in business in 2006, is the first Brown alumna to medal at the Winter Olympics since Becky Kellar, a Class of 1997 graduate, captured gold with Canada’s women's hockey team in 2010.

Together with her teammate, Elana Meyers Taylor, Gibbs finished just 0.07 seconds behind German duo and gold medal winners Mariama Jamanka and Lisa Buckwitz — the closest margin between first and second place ever recorded in women’s Olympic bobsledding.

Women in House don black to say no to sexual harassment

Male legislator accused of sexual harassment DURING anti-sexual harassment training.

Many female members of the House of Representatives donned black for session Tuesday in solidarity with the Time’s Up movement and to make a united statement against sexual harassment.

The action was organized by Rep. Marcia Ranglin-Vassell (D-Dist. 5, Providence) Monday, the day after many attendees at the Golden Globes also donned black for the same reasons.

Time’s Up is a movement launched last week by 300 women in the entertainment industry to fight systemic sexual harassment in Hollywood and in blue-collar industries nationwide.

Representative Ranglin-Vassell said the members plan to continue wearing black on Tuesdays at least through February to maintain the focus on addressing sexual harassment, an issue that gained traction worldwide this fall as news of sexual harassment by power brokers in the entertainment industry emboldened women from all walks of life to share their stories of sexual harassment.

She said she hopes for even greater participation in the future, since this week’s action was hastily arranged by word-of-mouth among the female representatives.

“As leaders, we owe it to our constituents to be outspoken advocates for the changes that need to be made in our society,” said Representative Ranglin-Vassell. “As women, we owe it to ourselves, our families and the women who came before us and will come in the future to say, ‘No more. We will not accept disrespect or mistreatment of women anywhere.’”

Said Rep. Kathleen Fogarty (D-Dist.35, South Kingstown),” We wear black to support the Time’s Up movement. As leaders, we support sexual harassment prevention. We want to see the end of pay disparity between men and women. We reject discrimination in all fields of work.”

Rep. Katharine S. Kazarian (D-Dist. 63, East Providence) added, “I wore black to show solidarity to those women and men who have been victims of sexual harassment and/or sexual assault in the workplace. The first step in solving a problem is acknowledging that there is an issue. We need to bring awareness to this problem so that we can work together to ensure that no person ever has to say ‘me too’ again.”

Unfortunately, the General Assembly’s voluntary training program on sexual harassment was marred by a charge by Rep. Moira Walsh (D-Providence) that Rep. Ramon Perez seemed to misunderstand the purpose of the session.

Early xmas for 35,000 Rhode Islanders

First time ever in Rhode Island: Treasurer will automatically return unclaimed property  

Rhode Island Treasurer Seth Magaziner announced "YOUR MONEY" a program which is mailing money to more than 35,000 Rhode Islanders who have unclaimed property with the state.

  

"It's hard for families to make ends meet, and ever harder when banks, insurance companies and other corporations fail to send you money that is rightfully yours," said Treasurer Magaziner. "I developed YOUR MONEY to make sure as many Rhode Islanders as possible get their missing money back in their pockets where it belongs."

  

About 1-in-5 Rhode Islanders have unclaimed property waiting for them. 

In the past, residents have had to check the state's database to see if they have unclaimed property and then submit a claim. 

YOUR MONEY matches unclaimed property with known addresses so money can be returned automatically.

  

Give thanks for what really makes America great