The “Great Deliberative Body” splits on human-caused climate change.

Denial of Senate: debating the undebatable

By Peter Dykstra, Environmental Health News

The day after President Obama dropped some snark on climate deniers in the State of the Union Address, I made a terrible mistake.

I watched the Senate debate something that virtually the entire world has accepted as un-debatable.

The Senate voted on whether or not climate change is human-caused. According to the Senate, it is, by a plurality of one. Forty-nine senators formally went on the record as climate deniers.

Yikes. Wow. Holy Cow. Or as they say in social media, OMFG.

“If you don’t like the facts, make them up"

The Republican’s Magical Mystery Tour

By Robert Reich

According to reports, one of the first acts of the Republican congress will be to fire Doug Elmendorf, current director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, because he won’t use “dynamic scoring” for his economic projections.

Dynamic scoring is the magical-mystery math Republicans have been pushing since they came up with supply-side “trickle-down” economics.

It’s based on the belief that cutting taxes unleashes economic growth and thereby produces additional government revenue. Supposedly the added revenue more than makes up for what’s lost when Congress hands out the tax cuts.

Dynamic scoring would make it easier to enact tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, because the tax cuts wouldn’t look as if they increased the budget deficit.

Mitt to the Future: Part III

It takes 1.21 Gigabucks to win the Presidency

By Brian McFadden 

Mitt Romney is determined to be President if he has to run until the end of time. Click here to find out how he finally succeeds.

Great contest for Middle, High School students

Promoting common sense in a chamber of fools

US Senate says: ‘climate change is real and not a hoax’

By Bob Plain in Rhode Island’s Future

The United States Senate is now on record, 98 to 1, that “climate change is real and not a hoax.”

That’s the language of an amendment Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse squeezed into a bill on the Keystone Pipeline, which was overwhelmingly approved – and even co-sponsored by Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe. No small feat, considering Inhofe, an infamous climate change denier, once wrote a book called, “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.”

Whitehouse chalked it up as a victory. “This resolution marks a historic shift for many of my Republican colleagues,” he said in a statement. “While a number of Republicans have long acknowledged that climate change is real, including Senator Graham who spoke once again today, many others either denied the science or refused to discuss it.”

But the beltway media suggests the idea may have backfired.

Can we produce the food we consume in our region?

Ambitious Vision for Region’s Food Future

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff

The Mount Hope Farm Farmers Market in Bristol is one of about a dozen markets being held in Rhode Island this winter. (Joanna Detz/ecoRI News)

Food Solutions New England, a network that serves as a “convener, cultivator and champion” for the region’s food system, has an ambitious goal: have 50 percent of the food New England consumes come from the six-state region by 2060. This lofty goal is frequently cited by bureaucrats, foodies and farmers, but how do we get there? Can we get there?

Currently, about 90 percent of the food consumed in New England comes from outside the region, according to a 48-page report released last year by the regional collaborative network coordinated by the University of New Hampshire. 

This imported food is supplied by a global system that produces abundant, and often cheap, sustenance that comes with plenty of hidden costs: displaced populations; low-paid farmers, fishermen and factory workers; a host of negative environmental impacts; and public-health concerns.

Record Number Of Americans Identify As Independent

But More Lean Democrat

By Ryan Denson

It appears Americans really have had it with the two-party system in Washington. 

While the media might have you think America is more two-sided polarized than ever, they gloss over the fact that independent voters are growing, and they are growing fast. Can anyone blame them?

According to Gallup Polling, a record 43% of Americans consider themselves political independents, with the reluctance of the two party system growing fast:

Here are the people who REALLY need state tax relief

RI taxes the poor 5th worst in the nation

By Bob Plain in Rhode Island’s Future

Poor people in Rhode Island pay almost twice as much a percentage of their incomes than do the wealthiest residents, according to a new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

 

This disparity, while unjust, isn’t abnormal. Rhode Island has the 23rd most unfair tax structure in America, according to the report. But only four states tax their poor worse than Rhode Island:

VIDEO: Deflate-Gate gets commercialized already

A new round of grants available for raising specialty crops

Grant Applications must be submitted to DEM's Division of Agriculture by March 31

PROVIDENCE - The Department of Environmental Management announces that $150,000 in farm viability grant funding is available for projects that enhance the competitiveness of specialty crops grown in Rhode Island. 

The funds are from the US Department of Agriculture's Specialty Crop Block Grant program. Specialty crops are defined by this federally-supported program as fruits and vegetables, dried fruit, tree nuts, and nursery crops including floriculture, honey, hops and turf grass production.

Grant awards will range from $10,000 to $50,000 with no direct match required. Funding will be provided in two stages, with 50 percent of the monies given up front and the remainder provided at the satisfactory completion of the project. The grants may be used for projects of up to two years in duration.

Funds may be used for research, promotion, marketing, nutrition, trade enhancement, food safety, food security, plant health, product development, education, "buy local" initiatives, and for programs that provide for increased consumption and innovation, improved efficiency and reduced costs of distribution systems, environmental concerns and conservation, and development of cooperatives. Grant funds may not be spent on construction projects.

Weekend weather – who do you believe?

Snow estimates range from next to nothing to Snow-mageddon

By Will Collette

Starting Friday night and continuing through Saturday, there will be a major winter storm off our coast that will do something in our area.

The National Weather Service and Channel 10’s Mark Searles both predict little or no snow accumulation. 

At the other end of the spectrum, the local Patch news sites are saying we’re going to get blitzed with six inches or more of heavy, wet snow – the kind that knocks out power and causes heart attacks to those who try to shovel it.

Here is the National Weather Service forecast for Charlestown covering this afternoon through Sunday:

Threat of famine, bread riots

Global warming reduces wheat production markedly if no adaptation takes place

Natural Resources Institute Finland, Science Daily

Future global wheat harvest is likely to be reduced by six per cent per each degree Celsius of local temperature increase if no adaptation takes place. Worldwide this would correspond to 42 million tons of yield reduction, which equals a quarter of current global wheat trade.

Wheat plays an important role in feeding the world, but climate change threatens its future harvest. Without adaptation, global aggregate wheat production is projected to decline on average by six per cent for each additional degree Celsius temperature increase. Worldwide this would correspond to 42 million tons yield reduction for one 1°C global warming.

This result has been generated by an international research consortium to which Natural Resources Institute Finland (previously known as MTT Agrifood Research Finland) substantially contributed. The results were published online in the high impact journalNature Climate Change.

Losses expected throughout the world

The researchers found out that in response to global temperature increases, grain yield declines are predicted for most regions in the world. Considering present global production of 701 million tons of wheat in 2012, this means a possible reduction of 42 million tons per one degree Celsius of temperature increase.

RI is one of only 5 states where people may bring guns into schools without the knowledge of police or school officials

Group seeks to close loophole allowing guns in schools

By Steve Ahlquist in Rhode Island’s Future

The law seems quite clear when RIGL 11-47-60 (a) states that, “No person shall have in his or her possession any kind of firearm or other weapons on school grounds.” 

But there is a curious exception. 

Under RIGL 11-47-11 it is stated that a person with a concealed carry permit (CCP) may carry their weapon “everywhere.” Presumably, this means schools.

Which law takes precedence?

Health Department Inspectors cite over 100 violations at local food establishments

Some local favorites get dinged for health and safety violations

By Will Collette

Get out your barf bags, boys and girls, as we take another look at Health Department inspection reports on area eating establishments. This is a regular Progressive Charlestown feature and you can see all the articles we’ve done by clicking here. You can check out any food establishment (restaurant or food market) on the RI Health Department database for yourself by clicking here.

This batch of inspections were conducted during late September through December. I took a look at all of Charlestown’s listed establishments plus a sampling of Westerly and South Kingstown eateries. 

In my last report, I expanded to include our new state Representative Flip Filippi’s Ballard’s Inn on Block Island, which has quite a colorful health and safety track record. It’s off season so they weren’t inspected in the last quarter of 2014.

In this installment, we’ll look at twenty local establishments. As usual, I have cut-and-pasted in their most recent inspection reports at the end of this article, which is what makes this longer than the usual Progressive Charlestown piece.

In Charlestown:

• Charlestown Rathskeller – one inspection, five violations. That’s in addition to 13 other violations it has drawn since it reopened in September 2013.
• Downey-Weaver Post – seven violations. They had 10 other violations between 2012 and 2013.
• Famous Pizza of Charlestown – eight violations. They had 22 earlier violations.
• General Stanton Inn – one inspection, no violations.
• Kingston Pizza – one inspection, five violations. They have an additional 72 violations on their record, the highest number in Charlestown.

In South Kingstown:

• Cap’n Jack’s – one inspection, 14 violations. Their record with the Health Department shows another 70 violations.
• Estia – one inspection, six violations. They have 44 early black marks on their record.
• Matunuck Oyster Bar – one inspection, six violations. Sixteen earlier violations.
• The Mews – four inspections, six violations, including selling contraband fish. They have sixty earlier violations.
• Shogun – Five inspections (they’ve had problems) and six new violations. The first three in the quarter were clean, but the two most recent were not. They had 37 violations in 2013 and the first part of 2014.
• South County Hospital (cafeteria) – one inspection, six violations. Not a good thing in a hospital.
• South County Hospital (coffee shop) – two inspections, the first clean, the second with three violations.
• Trattoria Roma – one inspection, 18 violations. They have 29 prior violations.

In Westerly:

• Corner Thai – one inspection, four violations.
• Guytannos – one inspection, five violations.
• New China Pavilion – three inspections. One was clean, the other two not so much with 23 violations. This is one of my favorite local Asian places mainly because they are usually clean, but these latest inspections are not good.
• Shelter Harbor Inn – one inspection, seven violations.
• Westerly Hospital cafeteria – one inspection, two violations

So what do you do with information like this?

The purpose of Health Department inspections is to protect public health and safety and it’s great that they have a public database you can use to get information for yourself.

Now you have to decide what to do with it.

Pity the rich!

Reactions of the 1% to President Obama's State of the Union tax proposals