State reps punished for dissent

Speaker Mattiello retaliates against Reform Caucus members with committee assignments

By Steve Ahlquist

Rhode Island Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello (Democrat, District 15, Cranston) said he would not retaliate against the members of the Reform Caucus for opposing his election to Speaker and challenging him on the House rules, but the committee appointments he made say otherwise. 

In a petty and vindictive display of power, members of the Reform Caucus were stripped of their positions of authority, and removed from committees they have long served on.

Committee chairs who are members of the Reform Caucus have not only lost their positions, they have been moved to other committees. 

One person who is not a member of the Reform Caucus, Representative Marcia Ranglin-Vassell (Democrat, District 5, Providence), has suffered the same punishment as caucus members. 

Representative Carol Hagan McEntee (Democrat, District 33, South Kingstown, Narragansett), who left the Reform Caucus, perhaps in a deal to get some legislation fast-tracked, has kept her committee assignments.

House Republicans, who also defied the Speaker and advocated for Rules Reforms, were not punished but rewarded with multiple plum committee assignments.

The first committee to meet will be the House Committee on Judiciary. Though Committee Chairs are supposed to set the agenda, the agenda for this meeting was set days before committee assignments were announced.

See Projo piece here: Mattiello denies retribution as dissidents ousted from House committee seats.

Recycle fruitcake

Tough choice

VIDEO: Cool ice

Brown researcher sets up webcam to watch Maine ice disk

Kevin Stacey  

To watch and get hypnotized by this ice disk, check YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVB4VU3zx8A

A Brown University researcher is keeping a close eye on a strange natural phenomenon that’s been stirring up the internet recently.

In mid-January, residents of Westbrook, Maine, noticed a circular ice disk, hundreds of feet in diameter, slowly spinning in the Presumpscot River. Drone video of the formation taken by town officials promptly went viral. 

The sheer size of the disk and its eerie resemblance to the face of the Moon captivated many and led to some wild speculation about its origins. (Spoiler alert: It’s not aliens.)

For Chris Horvat, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society (IBES), the disk was a serendipitous research opportunity. 

Horvat is a polar oceanographer who studies the connections between sea ice and climate. He realized that he had an interesting research specimen held captive in a place where it’s easily monitored.

How fasting can improve overall health

Protects against aging-associated diseases

University of California - Irvine

In a University of California, Irvine-led study, researchers found evidence that fasting affects circadian clocks in the liver and skeletal muscle, causing them to rewire their metabolism, which can ultimately lead to improved health and protection against aging-associated diseases. 

The study was published recently in Cell Reports.

The circadian clock operates within the body and its organs as intrinsic time-keeping machinery to preserve homeostasis in response to the changing environment. 

And, while food is known to influence clocks in peripheral tissues, it was unclear, until now, how the lack of food influences clock function and ultimately affects the body.

Spaced out

Space Cadet Bonespurs Star Wars scheme

By Jim Hightower 

If you think our government’s war policy has become out-of-this world cuckoo, consider the spaciness being proposed by the cosmonauts on Spaceship Trump.

Spending $700 billion a year on maintaining the five branches of the U.S. war machine (not counting the costs of actually fighting all the wars they get into) isn’t enough, they now tell us. 

So prepare to soar — militarily and budgetarily — into a boundless war theater where none have gone before: Yes, outer space!

It seems that Captain Trump himself woke up one morning and abruptly announced that he was bored with the fusty old Army, Air Force, etc., so he wanted a shiny new sixth military branch to play with.

Queue the space music sound effects — we’re getting a “Space Force” to carry America’s war-making power to a cosmic level.

Trump’s loyal lieutenant, Mike “Yes-Man” Pence, promptly saluted, calling Trump’s whim “an idea whose time has come.” 

America’s military leaders rolled their eyes at this folly, but they’ve since snapped to attention and are preparing to launch Cap’n Trump’s grandiose space dreams.

We need bold action, not symbolism

Weak and Poor Rhode Island Climate Council has Little Impact

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff

As we enter 2019, and the fifth year since the much-heralded Resilient Rhode Island Act was passed, a recent climate assessment laid out the bleak situation: the Ocean State needs to move beyond business as usual when it comes to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

The 2014 law created the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council (EC4) and gave it an ambitious to-do list. But Rhode Island’s pass-the-buck General Assembly expected the unpaid 12-member board, with no staff to conduct research or handle administrative tasks, to address the many challenges of climate change with no funding and no authority. Half a decade later, marginal support from the Statehouse has left Rhode Island running to stand still.

The recently released Civic Alliance for a Cooler Rhode Island (CACRI) assessment sheds light on Rhode Island’s lack of urgency when it comes to concrete actions on climate-change mitigation and, to a lesser extent, adaptation.

The assessment says that while the “EC4 has done an outstanding job in basic respects” and “serves a vital function that needs to be continued … it is not sufficient to achieve needed progress.”

The author of last month’s assessment, Ken Payne, said part of the problem is that the EC4 was never given any authority to enforce climate targets. He noted that the Resilient Rhode Island Act neither includes a grant of powers to the EC4 to perform its duties nor provides for an allocation of resources needed to do the work.

Disclaimer

Stamp out

Olympian and civil rights hero John Carlos to speak at URI, Feb. 13, as part of Black History Month

Events scheduled throughout the month celebrate poetry, art, film, culture

Dawn Bergantino

Olympic athlete, scholar, activist and author, John Carlos, who with fist raised, made history during the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City will be the keynote speaker during the University of Rhode Island’s celebration of Black History Month. 

Carlos’ lecture “Cultural and Symbolic Protests in the Context of International Human Rights,” is presented by the Department of Africana Studies in collaboration with URI’s Race, Violence and Democracy Colloquium

The event, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 6 p.m. on Feb. 13 at the Center for Biological Sciences Building, 120 Flagg Road, Thomas M. Ryan Family Auditorium, on the Kingston campus. In concert with the main lecture, Carlos will host a talk with URI student-athletes. He will also convene a workshop with the broader URI student body.

In the 50 years since Carlos received the Olympic bronze in the track and field 200-meter event, he has become a nationally recognized scholar and activist. He is the author, with sportswriter Dave Zirin, of, “The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment that Changed the World,” an autobiography that recalls the events around his Black Power salute, with track athlete Tommie Smith, on the Olympic games podium.

Following the Olympics, he went on to tie the world record in the 100-yard dash, and eventually, to beat the 200-meter world record. In the early 1980s, Carlos became involved with the United States Olympic Committee and helped to organize the 1984 Summer Olympics. Since 1985, he has been a counselor, in-school suspension supervisor and the track and field coach at Palm Springs High School in California. In 2003, Carlos was inducted into the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame.

Not so green after all

“Environmentally friendly” flame retardants break down into potentially toxic chemicals

Brian Bienkowski for Environmental Health News

A purported "eco-friendly" flame retardant breaks down into smaller, possibly harmful chemicals when exposed to heat and ultraviolet light, according to a study from German researchers.

The study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, is the first to show that a popular insulation flame retardant degrades into dozens of smaller chemicals and casts doubt that the "green" flame retardant is as harmless as touted.

It's also the latest example of manufacturers discontinuing harmful chemicals only to produce replacement chemicals with similar structures and exposure concerns.

Like a story line out of "The Americans"

Meet The Illegals: They Are Probably Not Who You Think

By Randa Morris  ·

Sometime in 2001 or 2002 the FBI began a decade-long investigation formally known as “Ghost Stories.” 

Over the course of the investigation, agents tracked an infamous group of hardened criminals, who later became known to those involved in the case as ‘the illegals.’

The investigation ultimately led to the arrests of ten Russian operatives, in June of 2010.

While much of the information about the investigation remains sealed, sifting through the FBI archives (here) a chilling, albeit abstract picture of Russia’s motives and methods begins to emerge.

Public documents reveal that the majority of these Russian operatives had been living inside the United States, under false identities, for decades. 

Some were in possession of fake documents purporting to show that they were natural-born citizens of the US. Others had “identification papers” supposedly issued in Canada, Peru and Uruguay. 

Only two of the ten were thought to be using their actual names; Anna Chapman, a former employee of Barclay’s Bank and Mikhail Semenko, a political consultant with direct links to Putin.

The FBI described these “illegals” as “a network of United-States based agents of the foreign intelligence organ of the Russian Federation (the SVR).”

According to the charging documents:

“The targets of the FBI’s investigation include covert SVR agents who assume false identities and who are living in the United States on long-term, “deep-cover” assignments. These Russian secret agents work to hide all connections between themselves and Russia, even as they act at the direction and under the control of the SVR; these secret agents are typically called “illegals. “

Unhealthy healthcare

Healthcare in Rhode Island at risk

By J Mark Ryan in UpriseRI

I read the text of Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo’s State of the State address in which she says “the ACA [ACA] is working in Rhode Island” and the real threat comes from Washington. 

She seems to believe that Rhode Island mainly needs to pass laws protecting the ACA to properly protect Rhode Islanders’ healthcare. A closer examination says otherwise.

Health insurance premiums have risen about five percent per year for the last 40 years – more than double the rate of inflation. 

When President Donald Trump cut the ACA’s cost-sharing reduction (CSR), payments the federal government gave directly to insurance companies, Blue Cross of Rhode Island raised the premium of their ACA silver plans 12 percent for 2018. 

So, the ACA subsidizes private insurance middlemen and cannot actually control skyrocketing costs. About 1/3 of every dollar spent on “healthcare” in the United States goes to administrative costs and corporate profits. Why not instead use that money to pay for actual health care under a Medicare-for-All single payer program?

Medical costs are still the most common cause of personal bankruptcy in America. In Massachusetts, two years into RomneyCare, the system upon which the ACA is modeled, bankruptcy due to medical bills stayed at about 62 percent of all bankruptcies. 

A Kaiser Family Foundation study in 2015 found over a million bankruptcies nation-wide due to health care costs, five years after the ACA was passed. The number of bankruptcies due to medical costs in other industrialized countries with single payer universal health insurance?

Zero.

New investigation: Is Trump being disloyal to Russia?

For more cartoons by Ruben Bolling, CLICK HERE.

Just no