Earth-shaking news or Nothingburger?

An end to Blake Filippi’s career-ending lawsuit

By Will Collette

Last Friday, the news media carried an announcement that due to Speaker of the RI House Joe Shekarchi’s decision to reactive the Joint Committee on Legislative Services (JCLS), Charlestown’s former state Rep. Blake “Flip” Filippi would drop his lawsuit against General Assembly leaders.

Shekarchi actually told the Democratic caucus he would reactivate the JCLS in 2020 but, on the advice of House lawyers, he held off due to pending litigation, which we’ll discuss below.

This Joint Committee was supposed to be a mechanism for Senate and House leaders of both parties to get together and make big decisions about the operations of the General Assembly.  

On paper, this is an important committee. In reality, it’s just another committee. Three years ago, Filippi was in a feud with then House Speaker Nick Mattiello. Mattiello didn’t think much of the JCLS and simply didn’t convene it, making decisions himself that otherwise would be sent to the JCLS.

Flip needed an issue to frame his feud with Mattiello as one of good versus evil, liberator versus tyrant. He decided the JCLS was the ticket so, in addition to a relentless effort to stir up public outrage, he filed a lawsuit.

Well, the JCLS thing never really got a lot of traction. As Filippi’s own lawsuit noted, the JCLS had not met in over a decade – and apparently no one except Flip noticed. Or cared.

Make no mistake – Mattiello was a tyrant and was broadly despised by critics left and right. But as some pundits put it, the JCLS is such an “inside baseball” issue that it’s really not an issue at all. Quick: without referring back to paragraph one, what’s the JCLS’ full name?

Is there anyone who follows politics in the state of Rhode Island who was shocked to hear that Mattiello made all the decisions? 

In the run-up to the 2022 election, Blake “Flip” Filippi made the surprise announcement that he was not going to run for re-election. Flip had a relatively safe seat, thanks to a lot of campaigning for him by the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA), plus he was the leader of the House Republicans.

But he gave it all up, saying that he needed to focus all of his attention on his JCLS lawsuit.

WTF? Over the past 8 years, if there’s one thing Charlestown has learned about Blake “Flip” Filippi is that he needs to be in the public spotlight all the time. Sure, Flip got a lot of coverage after making this announcement until Tina Spears’ landslide election to replace him. But after that, not so much.

I cannot believe that Flip gave up a job that gave him what he craves most – power and attention – to work on a piddling lawsuit about an agency no one’s heard about, or cares.

Filippi tweeted:

I’m thrilled Leader Chippendale and Speaker Shekarchi have agreed to regular meetings of the JCLS – which was the goal of the lawsuit I filed in 2000. With their agreement in place, I’m more happy [sic] to dismiss my lawsuit, and look forward to the first JCLS meeting in over 10-years.

Except that Flip got his dates wrong. He filed his lawsuit in 2020, not 20 years earlier, and had to refile it in 2021 because his first suit was dismissed.

I still can’t believe Filippi didn’t run for re-election for this stupid lawsuit. If you have any theories or better, proof of why Filippi didn’t run for re-election, please e-mail Progressive Charlestown. 

In a lot of ways, Filippi reminds me of former Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey who was a thing for a few years in the early 2000s when he seemed like a dangerous rising star in conservative Republican politics. After being mayor for four years, he made challenged Lincoln Chafee in the 2006 Republican Senate primary.

Laffey lost, as did Chafee in the General election to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

Like Filippi, Laffey went into cattle ranching after moving to Colorado. He kept his hand in, though, running for the US House in 2014. Laffey came in last among four candidates vying for the Republican nomination.

Like Filippi, Laffey is a raging narcissist with a casual relationship with the truth, wacky conservative politics but a certain amount of charm that appeals to some segments of the electorate. Despite his cattle ranch, you could say Steve Laffey is all hat, no cow.

But you can’t keep a good narcissist down. Laffey has just declared that he is now running for the Republican nomination for President in 2024. Despite reports in the news media that Nikki Haley is the first declared challenger to Donald Trump, Laffey actually beat her by a couple weeks. But then, no one outside Rhode Island ever heard of him or takes him seriously.

Maybe Filippi will also throw his cowboy hat into the Presidential ring too.

Right-wing meltdown

Rhode Island political groups on the far-right-wing fringe seem to be undergoing a kind of traumatic breakdown.

Some signs of that breakdown from just the past month:

• “Think tank” Ocean State Policy Research Institute goes out of business
• Rhode Island Tea Party fractures into pieces
• Leading right-wing blog, Anchor Rising, faces money problems, cuts back
• RI Statewide Coalition CEO Harriet Lloyd hallucinates
• Tea Party darling, Rep. Doreen Costa (R-No Kingstown), found to be liar, again
• Trial balloon “Steve Laffey for President” crashes and burns
• Right-wing scribe Stephen Beale (writer of Laffey piece) loses gig

More Short Takes and Crazy Politics

Schilling gets $75M state IOU tattooed on his arm

Sports Makes Politicians Stupid. Speaking of which, Curt Schilling’s 38 Studios has received another $4.1 million installment on its $75 million Rhode Island loan guarantee. Former Governor Don Carcieri slid this deal for the former Red Sox pitcher through at the end of his term, sticking Gov. Chafee with a project he did not want from a company that has no product to sell. 38 Studios designs online multiplayer video games and hopes to market its very first game on February 7. It recently announced that it had signed a deal to produce a second game. As I have reported previously, the likelihood that the state will get stuck for the $75 million is very high. Even if Schilling’s first game is a big success, it will have to sell an impossibly high number of games to come close to making the company solvent. But, hey, this is about Sox star pitcher Schilling!

CCA breaks its silence with more "Voices of Greed"

For a while, it looked like the Charlestown Citizens Alliance was going to sit on the sidelines and let its proxy groups do all the work to block progress and common sense on June 6th. Their last e-bleat was May 22 and the last time they gave even a passing mention to the beach toilets issue was May 14.

At Progressive Charlestown, we were waiting to see if the CCA would actually come out and take a position, or just run anonymous e-mails? Will they start acting like a responsible civic group as many believe they once were?


Nah. All we get, apparently, is another e-bleat sent out from CCA's secret headquarters today.

Tax the Rich

Our two State Representatives Larry Valencia (D-District 39) and Donna Walsh (D-District 36) are offering a pretty good alternative to raising the sales tax or making more draconian cuts to balance the budget. They propose increasing the state income tax on high earners by 4.1%.

The tax hike would apply to families earning $250,000 or more and individuals with more than $200,000 in income. Larry says that 95% of RI taxpayers would pay no additional tax.

This is Larry Valencia’s bill (Donna is a co-sponsor) which he calls the “95/5 Civic Responsibility Plan” (2011-H 6095). Larry’s campaign manager Robert Malin posted a lot of information on the bill on RI Future. The news release says his bill would reverse the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy.

Royal Wedding and Short Takes

Another Update: a federal appeals court decision allowed the NFL owners to reestablish their "lock-out" of the players on last night. By 2-1, the 8th Circuit Appeals Court granted the NFL owners a "stay" against the effects of earlier lower court rulings against the owners and for the players. The owners filed the appeal with the 8th Circuit because of its reputation for being anti-union. Still, the justices vote was split. Though the lock-out seems to be back, players and managers across the league are confused about its impact on the draft and training camps.

SEE UPDATE, below on the surprises at last night's Planning Commission roast of the Whalerock project.

House of Love. If you plan to watch the Royal Wedding tomorrow, this viral video is a must-see. If you haven't seen this already, you've probably heard about it.

Right on, Mrs. Krantz. Bernice Krantz, a CCA founder and steering committee member  wrote an outstanding letter printed in today's Providence Journal. She skewers birthers, Donald Trump and bigots.

Bring on the crazy!

The world of politics seems to be getting even crazier, if that's possible. It's now normal to call school teachers, police officers and fire fighters the villains in the on-going persecution of millionaires and billionaires. It's now ok to consider throwing senior citizens and the disabled under the bus rather than raise taxes on the filthy, stinking rich.

South of One millionaires cry crocodile tears that their seaside mansions haven't been assessed high enough, although they still don't want to pay taxes for schools.

Donald Trump is tied for first place in polling among Republicans as their choice to be President in 2012 (and almost as crazy, Trump's co-leader is Mike Huckabee).

I could go on (and will) but first an important announcement. On Wednesday, April 13th, the Washington Post announces the winners of its annual Peeps® contest. This is almost as big a day for me as International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19).

Now, back to the crazy....