Leading healthcare professional joins WRHS board

Regan Pennypacker of Hope Valley was unanimously elected by Wood River Health Services Board

The Wood River Health Services Board of Directors has unanimously elected Regan Pennypacker of Hope Valley to the board.

Regan is Senior Vice President at Gorman Health Group, LLC, a leading solutions and consulting firm for government-sponsored health programs based in Washington, DC.  

She leads the Compliance Solutions practice, responsible for multidisciplinary projects such as Medicare Advantage and Part D audits, new applications, risk assessments, and training engagements.  

As the leader of this practice, she has provided compliance direction and insight to health plans and pharmacy benefit managers.  

Prior to joining GHG, Regan managed the Medicare & Medicaid Regulatory Compliance team at Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island in Providence, RI.  

Not such a great deal after all

The Meretricious Myth of Roth IRAs

By Robert S. McIntyre and Gerald E. Scorse, Progressive Charlestown guest columnists

Meretricious means “based on pretense, deception, or insincerity.” That makes it the perfect word to describe the creation and spread of Roth individual retirement accounts (IRAs), especially the claim that they’re a plus for the Treasury. Just the opposite: the initial boost from Roths is largely a ruse, and the accounts in fact are a fiscal train wreck.

Let’s see what gives the myth a veneer of truth, why it persists, and what needs to happen to stem the losses that Roths are inflicting on the Treasury—and will be inflicting for decades.

The deception began at the beginning. When lawmakers created Roths in 1997, they got around the budget rules by counting incoming revenue but ignoring lost revenue. They counted the upfront tax on Roth contributions, but not the uncollected taxes on the back end. 

There are no taxes on Roth distributions, and no mandatory distributions at all. Contrary to the myth, the design of Roths effectively guarantees that the Treasury will lose money. Over the last several years, thanks to repeated cases of “pretense, deception or insincerity,” the Treasury’s downstream Roth losses have risen by the tens of billions.

VIDEO: Pumpkin carving in America

To view this directly on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2uVS0XXAyE

As I watched this video, I tried to figure out if this was humor or an actual instructional. What do you think?

Kitty of the week

Meet Frazier

Animal Rescue Rhode Island

Meow! My name is Frazier and I'm the coolest cat around.

I'm a savvy cat who knows the score; I'm pretty unflappable.

I don't mind entertaining myself, but a human companion at the other end of the couch and a nice scratch behind the ears always makes my day.

I get along with other cats because I like to do my own thing.

So if you're looking for a handsome and resourceful addition to your team, think about signing this true MVP - Most Valuable Pussycat!

If you live in Charlestown and need heating help….

SCCAA Moves Heating Assistance Program to NK

WAKEFIELD – Following the recent renovations to its facility in North Kingstown, South County Community Action Agency announced that the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program [LiHEAP] has been moved to the 415 Tower Hill Road location.

“By relocating the LiHEAP program, we hope to provide better accessibility to the clients and their families who need this critical support,” explained South County Community Action CEO Joseph DeSantis. “We are also providing applicants with more privacy by having a dedicated space for intake meetings with our staff.”

An Awfully Bitter Brew

Should one beer behemoth control 70 percent of the U.S. market?

By Jim Hightower

Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall/ 99 bottles of beer/ Take one down, pass it around… only one bottle of beer on the wall.

Most people never sang that old song all the way to the end. But one multinational brewing corporation is finally ready to belt out the last verse.

The world’s biggest beer conglomerate, Anheuser-Busch InBev, intends to gulp down the second biggest, SABMiller, leaving us with only one behemoth of brewing. The two mega-stouts of mass-market beer have agreed to a $104 billion merger deal.

Both giants are creatures of the global merger-mania that’s consumed the industry in the past decade.

Anheuser-Busch was a St. Louis company built on the Budweiser brand. It was taken over in 2008 by a Brazilian consortium that had previously merged with a huge European brewing conglomerate. 

So plain old “Bud” is now AB InBev, headquartered in Belgium and also producing Corona, Stella Artois, Modelo, and a host of other brands.

URI book honoring Rhode Island’s shellfish heritage honored at Council for the Humanities event

Not on the CCA Aqua-NIMBY reading list

Todd McLeish

KINGSTON, R.I. -- The Coastal Institute at the University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island Sea Grant and the Coastal Resources Center at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography, along with author and URI alumna Sarah Schumann, were honored at the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities’ 2015 Celebration of the Humanities.

The URI group, one of four honorees at the event on Oct. 8, received the Innovation in the Humanities Award for Rhode Island’s Shellfish: An Ecological History. 

The Innovation Award recognizes the innovative implementation of the humanities by a group of organizations to achieve a common goal, in this case the “powerful use of the humanities to connect cross-sector stakeholders including the R.I. Department of Environmental Management and Coastal Resources Management Council, URI, and Roger Williams University in the process of designing Rhode Island’s Shellfish Management Plan, by examining shellfish as resources interwoven with the state’s identity and history” through the development of the book, which is forthcoming later this fall.

Charlestown red light cameras will now issue actual tickets

After three years delay, cameras are now fully functional

By Will Collette

Cameras to catch drivers who run red lights are widespread nationwide and always controversial. There are those who believe they invade the privacy rights of motorists while they are breaking the law and endangering the lives of other drivers. 

There are others, like me, who think the cameras are one tool to help cut down on roadway vehicular homicide. In my view, there is no expectation of privacy when you use your driver’s license to drive your state-registered car down a publicly-funded roadway…and break the law, putting innocent people at risk.

Charlestown’s Colin Foote was killed at the intersection of Route One and West Beach Road in 2010 when Laura Reale, a habitual traffic offender, ran the red light. That sparked an effort to secure a contract to install red light cameras in Charlestown, a deal that costs the taxpayers nothing but might help to save lives through deterrence and punishment.

In 2012, the Town Council heard from two bidders and chose the worst one, Sensys, on the basis of false claims by the sales rep that the company was “Rhode Island based” and knew the area. They made this decision even though I provided the town with records showing that Sensys was a Swedish company with its US headquarters in Miami. It was a dead giveaway that Sensys was going to have trouble meeting their own hype when the Sensys sales rep got lost on his way to the Charlestown Town Hall and couldn’t get his Power Point presentation to work.

Lost in the woods?

From Fake Science

Drink up, not.

Who is responsible for Benghazi deaths?

The Great Pumpkin Shortage Is Coming

Spooky weather patterns are disrupting specialty crops.

By Emily Schwartz Greco

Pumpkin fever is back.

The latest bout of this seasonal disorder has infected Hostess Twinkies and moved Starbucks to put a smidge of real pumpkin in its pumpkin spice lattes. 

Previously, the ubiquitous coffee purveyor used a common ploy: It evoked agrarian and holiday nostalgia with artificial food coloring, a cloying mix of spices, and loads of sugar.

Whether you’re hooked on making your own pumpkin coffee with a blob of the canned stuff or just want to avoid a last-minute scramble before baking a Thanksgiving pie or two, you better stock up now.

The Libby’s canned food company says that overly wet weather near its Morton, Illinois factory halved this year’s harvest. The quintessentially American brand — in reality a division of Nestle SA, a sprawling Switzerland-based food conglomerate — produces the bulk of our nation’s pumpkin puree. And it buys all of its pumpkins from dozens of family farms located near its only packing plant.

In fact, the imminent pumpkin shortage is only the latest example of how changing weather patterns are endangering some of our favorite foods and drinks. Thanks for nothing, global warming. If this is news to you, try this sampler plate:

Looking for the real job killer

The Morality of a $15 Minimum

By Robert Reich

Have you noticed how often conservatives who disagree with a policy proposal call it a “job killer?”

They’re especially incensed about proposals to raise the federal minimum wage. They claim it will force employers to lay off workers worth hiring at the current federal minimum of $7.25 an hour but not at a higher minimum.

But as Princeton University economist Alan Krueger pointed out recently in the New York Times, “research suggests that a minimum wage set as high as $12 an hour will do more good than harm for low-wage workers.”

That’s because a higher minimum puts more money into the pockets of people who will spend it, mostly in the local economy. That spending encourages businesses to hire more workers.

“He loved his work and all the ways he could use his work for good"

Community Mourns Death of Jon C. Boothroyd, Acclaimed Coastal Geologist

By Tracey C. O’Neill

Multiple environmental agencies participated in volunteer beach profiling training led by Dr. Jon Boothroyd, Professor Emeritus, URI. In 2014 Boothroyd explains changes seen at South Kingstown Town Beach over the decades. (Photo credit Tracey C. O’Neill)

SOUTH KINGSTOWN – The University of Rhode Island announced the loss of their “beloved Geosciences Professor Emeritus Jon C. Boothroyd, a field researcher, Coastal and Environmental Geologist,  and active participant in development of the Rhode Island Shoreline Change Special Area Management Plan (Beach SAMP).

Boothroyd provided his expertise, time and advice to students, organizations and environmental agencies across the state, and worked closely with the Coastal Resources Management Council on coastal issues including beach erosion, coastal inundation, sea level rise and climate change initiatives.

Booooo!!!