The perfect alternative energy approach for Charlestown!

It’s not wind power and fits our demographics

By Will Collette

As we Baby Boomers age and become an increased burden on our families and on society, there’s hope that we might also become an important natural resource.

A funeral home in Durham, England has developed a system where they use the waste heat from their crematorium to generate electricity. Each corpse they burn generates 150 kilowatts of electricity.

I swear I am not making this up. It came up clean on Snopes.com, the top site that uncovers internet hoaxes. After falling for the "Coal Cares" spoof, I checked.

With Charlestown’s NIMBY problem, aversion to wind energy and aging population, this concept could be PERFECT. And our zoning rules appear to allow it, so it should escape falling prey to the Platner Principle (“Anything not permitted is prohibited").

Grab your guns!

The scent of cordite in the woods - smells like VICTORY

What's wrong with this picture?
Answer: those wimples should be fluorescent orange

By Will Collette

Just another reminder that shotgun deer hunting season started last Saturday. We could tell, because of the fusillade of shots we heard coming from north of us (we're half a mile south of the border for Burlingame Park.

The season  runs through Sunday, December 11 and from Monday, December 26 through Sunday, January 1. From Saturday, December 3 through Sunday, December 18 and from Monday, December 26 through Sunday, January 1, shotgun season is open on private lands. NOTE: you should post your land for no trespass or hunting if you want to prevent shooting on your property.

Republican nightmare

Be careful what you wish for
By Tim Eagan


See the whole cartoon here.

UPDATED: RI and local politics, in brief

DC impasse could cost RI $400 million; mapping road fatalities….Will Schilling go back to Massachusetts?....Sonquipaug neighborhood wants a $430,000 xmas present….Mageau-gram….Setting the record straight

By Will Collette

Higher taxes on working families? At the end of December, federal legislation will expire that gives every working person a 2% cut in their payroll tax. That saved the average worker $1000. Also in that expiring legislation are federal extended unemployment benefits. 

Members of Congress generally want to extend this legislation but cannot agree on how to pay for it. Democrats want a one-year 2% surtax on the top 1% wealthiest Americans. Republicans are united in opposing a tax hike on the rich, but divided on whether they want to cover the cost of the legislation by either (a) simply tacking it on to the deficit or (b) making even more cuts to social programs. And there are the members of the Republican Tea Party caucus who want to end federal unemployment benefits and don't really care about the payroll tax cut.

The estimated cost of failure to pass the extension on Rhode Island: $400 million in higher payroll taxes. 

Save energy on laundry day

Save Energy on Laundry Day

By ecoRI News staff 

If every U.S. household used the most-efficient washers, it could save the equivalent of up to 40 million barrels of oil annually, according to EarthShare.

Here are some environmentally tips to consider on laundry day:

Why shred the state’s Affordable Housing law?

Before and after the CCA affordable housing plan

CCA says the real problem is for-profit developers who exploit the law

By Will Collette

The Charlestown Citizens Alliance sent out an urgent e-mail message to its supporters in an effort to rally them to a Town Hall workshop and special Town Council meeting on December 7 on affordable housing.

According to the CCA e-mail (which uses  Planning Commissar Ruth Platner words): “In CCA's opinion, for-profit developers should not be allowed to build more dense developments for higher profits under the guise of affordable housing.”

I agree.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos!
From NASA

Light Echoes from V838 Mon 

The American Dream

Any child can achieve greatness
By Ruben Boling




See the whole cartoon here.

Catering to the Frozen Pizza Lobby

Doting on the financial interests Coca Cola, ConAgra, and Del Monte instead of America's school kids isn't going to get the approval rating for Congress recover from an all-time low.

By Jim Hightower

How small-minded is Congress? How tangled-up in a right-wing ideological knot is it? How subservient to corporate lobbyists is it?

The answers to these three questions are: pizza, tomato paste, and spuds.

At a time when doctors and nutritionists are sounding a national alarm about a diabetes epidemic caused by gross obesity, including in children, the Congress of the United States of America, in all its majesty, has killed an effort by the Agriculture Department to make school lunches healthier. Why?

Three reasons:

The Ultimate Self-Help Guide

Rugged individualism
By Tom Tomorrow




For the full cartoon, click here.

Shocked and Disappointed

Walmart's sales are down because people are skimping on things like milk and food while Saks Fifth Avenue is selling lots of $1,000 handbags and $2,000 suits.

By Donald Kaul

In the spirit of the holiday season I have a gift for you: a freshly minted Herman Cain joke.

Q: Mr. Cain, what about Libya?

A: I never laid a hand on her.

PC Digest: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Photo credit: Brian Thompson

Some people still are not receiving our usual daily e-mail digests, so we’ve put together a summary of recent content on the blog. Just because you don’t get an e-mail doesn’t mean we’re not still publishing lots of hard-hitting stuff! So bookmark us and visit often, or use any of the other available methods to keep up with what’s going on.

By Linda Felaco

Local news briefs

Watch out for this guy

You can read some pretty strange stuff in newspapers

By Will Collette

In the past few days, there have been newspaper stories about never-daunted Deputy Dan Slattery’s new transparency jihad; a string of complementary Sun pieces on Jim Mageau; the CCA’s worst nightmare and the Planning Commission’s odd turn on preserving Charlestown’s dark skies.

But first, BE AWARE that shotgun deer hunting season has started. 

Hunters and non-hunters – e.g., hikers, Cub Scouts, meditating nuns, etc. – must wear at least 500 square inches of orange fluorescent clothing above the waist and visible in all directions when you are in a designated hunting area. That includes portions of Burlingame Park. See DEM description of its hunting policy here. Be very careful out there.

Deputy Dan and his posse. Even though the Charlestown Town Council did not support Deputy Dan’s effort to get Charlestown to send Chariho a nasty letter telling them that we (i.e., he) can’t understand their budget, Deputy Dan is going ahead anyway.

Breaking news: the Christmas goat is toast

SCREENSHOT: Fire started near the hind end and spread in seconds

Gavlebocken torched!

By Will Collette

Sad news from Sweden:

"Här brinner bocken upp"

It was only days ago that I suggested that we look to Sweden for a way to resolve our annual battle between right-wingnuts who think everyone else is engaged in a "War on Christmas" and my left-wing friends who really don't have that much of a problem with that.

A Main Street Jobs Agenda

Putting more money in the hands of those who already have jobs so they can buy more Chinese imports does very little to put Americans to work in good jobs that pay good wages.

By John Cavanagh and David Korten

Most Americans are now waking up from the Thanksgiving holiday and the bruising Washington battles of a failed congressional "supercommittee" with a giant hangover. The hangover results from the lack of clear answers to the most important question facing most of us: Where are the jobs that our children, our communities, and our nation so desperately need?

Neither major national political party has a credible plan for putting America to work. Republicans generally argue that freeing Wall Street and the wealthy from regulation and taxes is the path to job creation. But we've tried that and wound up with sky-high Wall Street profits and bonuses at the expense of working people and Main Street businesses.

Democrats are more likely to see a need for appropriate regulation, a progressive tax system, and government stimulus spending. But both parties ignore the fact that putting more money in the hands of those who already have jobs so they can buy more Chinese imports does very little to put Americans to work in good jobs that pay good wages.

The two of us are the principal authors of a new report that offers a seven-point jobs plan that builds on a past American success story.