We already know that the Bush White House is the most secretive administration since that of President Nixon. But here's some news for those chatting on talk-radio yesterday about President Bush's sincerity or how he's "keeping us safe" -- a viewpoint at odds with that of our own federal government:

In the run-up to the Fourth of July, you can't ask the leader of the free world even an innocuous question without having your press credential quickly taken away.

As Katie Mulvaney reports in today's ProJo:

WPRI-TV, Channel 12 reporter Jarrod Holbrook had his White House press pass snatched after he shouted “Mr. President!” twice as President Bush greeted Air and Army National Guardsmen gathered on the tarmac at the Air National Guard base in Quonset.

A member of the president’s entourage pointed at Holbrook after he first tried to get Mr. Bush’s attention. The man then ripped the pass from Holbrook’s belt after he shouted again to the president, who was about 10 feet away.

Holbrook said afterward that he just wanted to ask Mr. Bush how he enjoyed his visit to Rhode Island. Members of the media were not told they could not ask the president questions.

URGENT:  PLEASE CALL THE CITY TO KEEP BRADFORD STREET OPEN AND KEEP OUR NEIGHBORHOOD WALKABLE, BIKEABLE AND HUMAN SCALE

 

The vote

On Thursday, July 5^th at 7pm, the Providence City Council will vote on a petition to abandon Bradford  Street to make way for a 32 story skyscraper (in a spot zoned for 3 story) in the heart of Federal Hill and on the edge of Downtown. This project has not followed the proper city process for review of street abandonment and adequate public input has not been given.  It will have an enormous impact on our city and our neighborhoods.

 

The Issues

1.  Clearing the Way for Massively Overscaled Buildings in Our Neighborhood.  The West Side and Federal Hill are not New York City or Hong Kong!

 

This vote would be a critical step to make way for a 32 story skyscraper that would occupy x blocks in a neighborhood of mostly 2 and 3 story buildings (zoned for 3 story) in the heart of Federal Hill at the Gateway to the West  Side.  It would open the floodgates to more extremely tall and massive buildings that would tower over and shade out the existing buildings and over time completely change the character of our neighborhood from one that is walkable and human scale to the scale of major high rise cities like New York.

 

2.  Closing Off a Street and Making it Harder for us to Get Around our Neighborhood.

 

The proposed abandonment in and of itself would also hurt the neighborhood by making it harder to get around this part of the city by eliminating a route that is now used by people in cars, on bikes and on foot.   

 

3.  The Process Has Failed To Give Us a Chance to Review and Comment on What Would be a Massive Change to Our Neighborhood and the Way We Live

 

This project has not followed the proper city process for review of street abandonment and we have not been given a chance to comment.  (see process information below)

Please call or email the Mayor, Councilman Lombardi, your city council person, the Planning Department, Rep. Costantino, Senator Jabour, and the media. 

 

See below for contact information for the elected representatives and the media.  PEOPLE OF PROVIDENCE we need you to speak out.  ASK THEM to:

 

--Vote against this decision because

·        the process was wrong

·        the project hasn’t had adequate public input

·        the street is used street by the public

·        this project and the street abandonment violates the city’s comprehensive plan, zoning code, the West Side Action Plan, the Broadway plan and the Broadway Historic District

·        we have worked to make this a walkable, bikable, livable neighborhood, not a cityscape of massive towers sprawling over many blocks.

A day after federal immigration legislation fell apart, William "Terry" Gorman, the founder of Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law Enforcement, also made an appearance on Newsmakers, for the show to be broadcast Sunday.

Gorman, the subject of a profile last Sunday by Karen Lee Ziner, was ecstatic about the collapse of the immigration bill. He repeated some trademark gripes of immigration critics, asserting that word of Rhode Island's taxpayer-funded social benefits reaches all the way to the Mexican border.

Following taping, Gorman shared printouts of a rave by a conservative Web site, World Net Daily, about a new book, The Late Great USA, by Jerome Corsi, who also wrote Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. The dubious use of that book in the 2004 presidential race -- as well as the backing for Corsi's latest thesis by multi-office candidate Christopher Young -- might tell you something.

World Net Daily, though, blurbs Corsi's new book, due to be published July 4, thusly: "Finally! The full expose of North American agenda. Book documents plan for merger of U.S., Mexico, Canada."

Considering how critics of illegal immigration tend to focus their fire on Democrats, I wanted to ask Gorman why this is the case, considering how Republicans have held the White House for most of the last 27 years, and controlled Congress for most of the last 13 years.

Since groups like RIILE point to "cripping economic effects" from illegal immigration, I wonder why they don't complain about companies like Wal-Mart, whose practices have resulted in the transfer of US jobs to China.

(With limited time, I only got ask him on-air about whether the previous employment of illegals by the Massachusetts State Police and Mitt Romney, as janitors and landscapers, respectively, shows that they help fill menial jobs undesired by US citizens. Gorman responded, in part, by saying that such jobs should pay well enough to attract interest from citizens.)

Anyway, here's more of World Net Daily's report on The Late Great USA:

Resistance to immigration laws and border security by political elites in the nation's capital is, at least in part, a result of plans to promote political, social and economic integration of the U.S., Mexico and Canada, charges a new book . . . "It is the only context in which the current immigration travesty makes sense," says Jerome Corsi . . . "and it must be stopped.

. . . .

Corsi shows how the SPP [Security and Prosperity Partnership], an agreement signed in 2005 by Bush, Paul Martin of Canada, and Vicente Fox of Mexico, is nothing less than a full-frontal assault on American sovereignty.

As the ProJo's Daniel Barbarisi made clear a few months back, Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline's budget was overly rosy, since it included no money for expiring contracts for four city unions and counted on the General Assembly supporting a series of new targeted fees. The latter didn't happen, and, as could be anticipated, new contracts will almost certainly come with new costs.

Asked today during a taping of Newsmakers whether his budget was too optimistic, Cicilline says he designed it with the notion that a property tax increase should be a last resort. Well, yeah, of course. (The show will be broadcast Sunday, at 5:30 AM on WPRI, CBS, Channel 12, and at 10 AM on WNAC, Fox Providence.)

With the US Conference of Mayors having passed a motion calling for a timetable for withdrawing US troops from Iraq, Cicilline nonetheless defended his endorsement of Hillary Clinton. Hillary, of course, voted for the war and angered critics of the war by long declining to disavow that vote. Cicilline says that if Hillary knew then what she knows now, she would have voted against the war. Yeah, of course.

Can you detect a pattern here?

Cicilline deserves credit for a number of accomplishments during his time at City Hall, but as he seemingly moves closer to a gubernatorial run in 2010, his relentlessly on-message patter can sometimes be frustrating, if not annoying.

It's too much to expect that more pols would be as candid and self-revealing as Lincoln Chafee. But can't more of them make their points with a less predictable line of talk?

Last week in the Phoenix, Mary Ann Sorrentino wrote that police cheaters don't deserve pensions:

The Providence Journal quoted Police Chief Dean Esserman as asking the Retirement Board to “do justice” by revoking Prignano’s pension. The story did not mention, however, whether the pensions of other officers associated with the cheating scandal will also be reviewed. (Esserman declined to comment for this article, and Karen Southern, spokeswoman for Mayor David N. Cicilline, referred inquiries to the city’s legal department, which did not respond.)
 
City Treasurer Stephen Napolitano confirms, though, that former Sergeant Tonya King Harris, who was fired after the cheating scandal, continues to receive a monthly check from Providence. (In April, the ProJo reported that Harris, who denies cheating, won reinstatement and back pay in return for her agreement to retire with her pension intact. This was due, ironically, to how Prignano refused to be cross-examined by her lawyer regarding his admission that he helped her cheat.)

Today, the ProJo's Greg Smith writes about those perceived as being among "the ones who got away."

“They” are former Detective Sgt. Tonya King Harris and her husband, former Sgt. Michael M. Harris, who were among 10 officers implicated in a Police Department promotions scandal that had the department tied up in knots for years.

The city Retirement Board yesterday approved a pension for Tonya King Harris, fulfilling a largely secret deal that city officials made in order to get Harris and her husband off the police force.

You can hear the dulcet tones of yours truly, along with Bob Seay and URI's Maureen Moakley, during broadcasts tomorrow morning of WRNI (1290 AM)'s Political Roundtable. The segment is broadcast Friday mornings at 5:40 AM, for you early risers, and then repeated at 7:40 for the slackers. Topics of conversation include President Bush's visit to RI; the fate of Newport Grand; the aforementioned Patrick Lynch, and the future of privatization in the state.

In his latest roundup on the prospective Providence mayoral field for 2010, RI Future's Matt Jerzyk interestingly includes the name of General Treasurer Frank Caprio. Perhaps, with a potentially crowded gubernatorial field on the Democratic side, Caprio is keeping his options open. Speaking of the gubernatorial field, AG Patrick Lynch hasn't helped himself with his quickly rescinded threat not to sign off on the state tobacco bond money. 

[A balky server at the office has delayed my blogging for the day, but here goes . . . ]

This question, in the aftermath of the General Assembly's passage of the budget last week, is the guiding frame for a rountable published in today's Phoenix:

At a time when most state budgets are flush with surpluses, Rhode Island’s fiscal house remains in disrepair. Although lawmakers defend the budget they passed over a gubernatorial veto last week, a lot of people have reason to be unhappy with the results [see “The worst of your new state budget,” TJI]. More ominously, Rhode Island faces budget deficits for the foreseeable future. Without significant changes, painful cuts and partisan polarization will remain as constants on Smith Hill.
 
Given all this, we decided to ask a bipartisan selection of political observers and elected officials three questions:

1. In the aftermath of the spending plan backed by the General Assembly, how bad is the budget situation facing Rhode Island in future years? What will be the most adverse consequences if the situation isn’t corrected?

2. How would you fix the situation?

3. How should cuts in state spending be focused? How should the state raise more revenue?

. . . .

Providence Mayor David Cicilline on Question 2:

The most important step is to craft a thoughtful, strategic five-year plan and then stick to it. To develop that plan, I would convene a group of experts from within and outside of Rhode Island. I would task them with offering recommendations to achieve the following goals: 1) a path to fiscal stability and closing the structural deficit; 2) modernization of state government to provide better services with as few resources as possible; 3) a plan to fund the world’s best system for educating children; 4) a restructuring of the tax system to eliminate reliance on the property tax; 5) restoration of the image of Rhode Island. While that plan is being formulated, I would also mobilize an aggressive, full-court press to accelerate economic development. Externally, send Rhode Island ambassadors around the country and the world to meet with global decision-makers. Internally, be more proactive about linking up entrepreneurs and capital with the brilliant researchers, designers, and inventors in our universities and hospitals.

. . . . 

        Governor Carcieri on Question 3:

Rhode Island does not have a revenue problem; it has a spending problem. Despite having the seventh-highest tax burden of any state in the nation, all those taxes can’t keep up with our insatiable appetite for spending. We cannot tax ourselves to a healthy budget.
 
In the coming years, we must develop a sustainable budget that is not dependent on yearly tax increases or one-time gimmicks. We must decide what state services we can afford and which we can live without. As part of this process, we must have the courage to examine every area of state spending, from personnel costs to human services. Until we make this commitment, every future General Assembly session will be dominated by arguments about the state’s budget woes.

. . . .

Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian on Question 2:

Curtail all contract employees until you can decide if the positions are necessary. If the positions are deemed necessary, make them part of state system to save on the employment services for the outside vendors. Federalize any positions currently on the state payroll that could be paid for with federal funds. Limit department directors and division chiefs to only being able to spend 97 percent of approved budgets amount on discretionary spending — meaning that the additional three percent will revert back to the general fund. Regionalize and consolidate school governance to take advantage of the economies of scale that fewer administrators would mean. Create a stable long-range funding formula for state aid to education that allows communities to be able to do long-range forecasting and planning.

. . . .  

The Poverty Institute's Kate Brewster on Question 1:

The most adverse consequences of growing deficits are short-sighted program cuts that are harmful to low-wage working families and jeopardize the health and safety of our poorest seniors and people with disabilities. So long as the fastest growing jobs in RI pay low-wages, we must provide work supports, like subsidized health-care and child-care, so that parents can remain in the workforce and have their kids in quality, safe care. More than 1000 low-wage families are about to lose their child-care subsidies as a result of budget cuts. These families will likely find themselves in financial turmoil and potentially be forced to forego other basic needs, like health insurance, that will shift costs elsewhere in the budget.

Check out the whole package.

From today's New York Times:

Young Americans are more likely than the general public to favor a government-run universal health care insurance system, an open-door policy on immigration and the legalization of gay marriage, according to a New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll. The poll also found that they are more likely to say the war in Iraq is heading to a successful conclusion.

The poll offers a snapshot of a group whose energy and idealism have always been as alluring to politicians as its scattered focus and shifting interests have been frustrating. It found that substantially more Americans ages 17 to 29 than four years ago are paying attention to the presidential race. But they appeared to be really familiar with only two of the candidates, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, both Democrats.

They have continued a long-term drift away from the Republican Party. And although they are just as worried as the general population about the outlook for the country and think their generation is likely to be worse off than that of their parents, they retain a belief that their votes can make a difference, the poll found.

More than half of Americans ages 17 to 29 — 54 percent — say they intend to vote for a Democrat for president in 2008. They share with the public at large a negative view of President Bush, who has a 28 percent approval rating with this group, and of the Republican Party. They hold a markedly more positive view of Democrats than they do of Republicans.

Among this age group, Mr. Bush’s job approval rating after the attacks of Sept. 11 was more than 80 percent. Over the course of the next three years, it drifted downward leading into the presidential election of 2004, when 4 of 10 young Americans said they approved how Mr. Bush was handling his job.

At a time when Democrats have made gains after years in which Republicans have dominated Washington, young Americans appear to lean slightly more to the left than the general population: 28 percent described themselves as liberal, compared with 20 percent of the nation at large. And 27 percent called themselves conservative, compared with 32 percent of the general public.

Forty-four percent said they believed that same-sex couples should be permitted to get married, compared with 28 percent of the public at large. They are more likely than their elders to support the legalization of possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Take a gander at some of the favorite blogs of NYU journalism students (h/t Romenesko).

Playing to a military audience, as with the president's trip to Newport, spares him the likelihood of facing criticism over the war in Iraq. It's getting harder not to notice, though, when people like Senator Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and someone whom the New York Times calls "a steadfast supporter," parts company with the administration:

“In my judgment, the costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved,” Mr. Lugar said Monday during a 50-minute speech on the Senate floor, which was delivered after nearly everyone in the Capitol had retired for the evening. “Persisting indefinitely with the surge strategy will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our vital interests over the long term.”

In an interview with reporters on Tuesday, Mr. Lugar said President Bush had limited time to change the course of the war because of the 2008 presidential campaign.

“We’re heading into a very partisan era,” he said. “The president has the opportunity now to bring about a bipartisan foreign policy. I don’t think he’ll have that option very long.”

His remarks reverberated through Capitol Hill on Tuesday, picking up support from other Republican senators, even as the White House, which was not alerted about Mr. Lugar’s speech in advance, tried to minimize their significance.

. . . .

Senator George V. Voinovich, an Ohio Republican who also serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, echoed Mr. Lugar’s message in a letter to the president on Tuesday, a critique whose timing was coordinated to follow on the heels of Mr. Lugar’s.

“I am also concerned that we are running out of time,” Mr. Voinovich wrote in the letter.

Other Republicans also said their patience was waning.

“The one real disappointment is that the Iraqi government has not stepped up and fulfilled what we think is the role that they need to play,” said Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina. “If that doesn’t happen quickly, I’m sure more of us will come to the conclusion that Senator Lugar has.”

UPDATE: Here are the details on tomorrow's planned protest:

Peace activists from around the state are planning to hold an antiwar rally at 11:00 AM near the rotary on Connell Highway in Newport at Admiral Kalfbus Road. The rotary is close to the main entrance to the naval base where President Bush will be speaking that morning.

Demonstrators will be gathering near the Newport Towne Center shopping plaza at 11:00 AM and proceeding to the rally site. This is planned to be a peaceful and nonviolent protest. There are no plans for civil disobedience at this rally. 

 

If access to the shopping plaza/rotary area is blocked by the authorities, we will gather at the Gateway Visitors Center in downtown Newport and select another rally location. However, we view this development as very unlikely, because the rotary is close to a major shopping center, and the President will be speaking a few miles away in the midst of a heavily protected military base.

Speaking of President Bush, he's slated to visit the Naval War College in Newport tomorrow, in case you hadn't heard. Critics of the war plan to be in the area. While the Phoenix and ProJo, among other media, have reported on this, peace activist Mark Stahl says via e-mail that the White House is doing its best to keep things quiet:

Wondering why there hasn’t been any more media coverage since Saturday?

The answer:  the White House has a technique called “taking out the trash” where they hold up stories they want to bury and then release them during the late afternoon on Friday, with minimal details, so that the story will be buried in the Saturday editions with their low readership. Then they refuse to issue any more details!

Neither the Journal nor the Newport Daily News has received any further details from the White House since Friday evening.  However, the “speculation” that the NDN has heard from local sources is that the President will be on the navy base for the duration of his trip to RI and is not expected to attend the Tall Ships exhibit or the meeting of the Republican governors. The Projo reporter says that the White House has been very “tight-lipped” about the story and they have not been able to confirm any details.   They expect to receive more information tomorrow and have a story in the Thursday edition.

Of course, the WH press office staff know that if they continue to release information on the visit, this will feed the story and local media will continue to cover it, along with ‘tie-ins’ to related stories like antiwar protests.  By tamping down coverage of the President’s visit they also tamp down coverage of our protest plans.  A sophisticated strategy for an administration widely regarded as the most secretive in American history.

Blogger and labor activist Pat Crowley sends word that YouTube has banned a video he created because of objectionable content. The video is anti-war and anti-Bush. So much for free speech on YouTube.

The Phoenix reported earlier this year on how a statewide wireless network, the first in the nation, could be a boon for economic development in Rhode Island. Now, the ProJo's Tim Barmann has the details of how the progress of the network has stalled, at least for now.

A plan by the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation to build a statewide wireless computer network is now in question after the General Assembly chose not to back a $28.5-million loan that the EDC said it needed to finance the project.

The loan guarantee was contained in Governor Carcieri’s budget proposal, and would have allowed the EDC to borrow the money needed to build the Rhode Island Wireless Innovation Networks, or RI-WINs.

Legislators took out the loan-guarantee language when they passed the budget last week. The provision would have put state taxpayers on the hook for loan payments if the initiative failed to produce the revenue expected by the EDC.

Saul Kaplan, executive director of the EDC, said the agency was disappointed, but undeterred. His agency will continue to pursue the initiative based on feedback from the General Assembly, he said.

The lawmakers told him they wanted to see more private-sector participation in the program and suggested that other financing mechanisms be found, Kaplan said in an interview yesterday.

“So that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We’re having conversations with several private-sector players,” he said.

Just kidding. Still, as Rupert (who already owns MySpace -- how funny/weird is that?) seemingly closes in on his acquisition of the Wall Street Journal, it's a good time to watch (or rewatch) Epic 2014, aka Googelzon, an imagined future media history and one of the best dissections of our present media moment.

So says Anchor's Rising's Andrew Morse:

I Don’t Suppose We Can Blame This On a Lack of Local Ownership

From an unsigned editorial in today’s Projo…

It is time to consider consolidating many more town and city services regionally. To that end, it might be time to revive Rhode Island’s four counties — Providence, Kent, Bristol and Washington (aka South County) to provide local services.

Um, what happened to Newport County?

Green design has become the rage in a lot of places, and for good reason: it helps to cut contributors to global warming and reduces the need for expensive energy resources. But as Marisa Angell Brown wrote last week in the Phoenix, it's not easy being green in Rhode Island:

Rhode Island remains far behind many of our neighbors in the Northeast, where there has been either more proactive legislation or greater local support from institutions and corporations, when it comes to promoting green design.
 
There are only 13 buildings, in various stages of completion, in Rhode Island that hope to attain LEED certification. Seven of these are in Providence, putting the city well behind New Haven, Connecticut, and Burlington, Vermont. In Massachusetts, by contrast, there are more than 140 green buildings which have or hope to achieve green status.
 
Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline has signaled his support for a handful of measures that will make the capital a “green city,” including a zoning regulation to create incentives for developments such as Dynamo House, and mandate green design for city-owned projects. Governor Donald L. Carcieri has already taken a significant step forward; thanks to an August 2005 executive order, all new state-owned construction and renovation projects must be built to the silver standard of the LEED certification, which ensures a high level of energy- and water-efficiency.
 
Still, Rhode Island’s elected officials won’t be the subject of photo spreads in Vanity Fair’s green issue any time soon.
 
The green design requirements in place or under consideration here are inherently limited in scope, since they relate only to state- and city-owned buildings — which account for a very small percentage of structures in the state.
 
Although Cicilline asserts that it “won’t be cool to be part of a city that’s not green,” Providence is unlikely to follow the lead of 10 other cities — including Boston and Washington, DC, and such towns such as Babylon, New York, and Normal, Illinois – which require much new private construction to attain certain green design standards.
 
In Baltimore, Struever Brothers has benefited from the availability of significant green tax credits — which paid for a sophisticated system that recycles storm water into water used for washing dishes, laundry, and bathing at one complex. Here, by contrast, the ambitious 40-panel solar installation originally proposed for Dynamo House has been drastically scaled back due to the state’s limited subsidies for solar power.
 
In conversations with more than 20 local practitioners and policy-makers in the field of green design, one point of view was expressed again and again. As Wilbur Yoder, a professor in the Department of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design, puts it, “The atmosphere exists, and the interest exists, but we need leadership at the state and local levels to push this.” 
 
Or, as Struever Brothers’ Seth Handy says, in his characteristic understated manner, “We thought there’d be more incentives out there when we began.”

Maybe the curse of the AG's office in Rhode Island is over. Having served as the state's top prosecutor didn't hurt Sheldon Whitehouse last year, and Patrick Lynch very much remains in play for the 2010 gubernatorial race even while dealing with the contentious issues usually faced by AGs here.

Still, it was no secret that the General Assembly was planning to use tobacco money to plug a big hole in the budget.

"How can you separate this from his bid to run for governor?" wonders John DePetro this morning. " . . . I don't see any other way to interpret this."

Lynch's move injects more last-minute drama into budget process -- and there are plenty of reasons to oppose using the tobacco dough to close the deficit. RI's Future says the move could help to differentiate Lynch from other gubernatorial hopefuls, yet there's no guarantee that this will work to the AG's political benefit.

As another part of its elevated public advocacy, the Rhode Island Statewide Coalition (RISC) is today calling for the resignation of Peter McWalters, commissioner of the Rhode Island Department of Education:

In a letter addressed to all members of the Rhode Island Board of Regents, the officers and directors of RISC cited The Institute for a Competitive Workforce of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce report, entitled “Leaders and Laggards, a State-By-State Report Card on Educational Effectiveness”.  The nationally recognized study, in which Rhode Island’s educational performance is compared to that of the 49 other states and the District of Columbia, was a devastating indictment of Rhode Island’s educational effectiveness (The study is available at the RISC web site, www.risc-ri.org). 

Harry Staley, RISC President, notes that in the 15 years McWalters has occupied his position, school and student underachievement has worsened, despite public releases from RIDE that performance is improving.  Staley says, “Instead of the truth, what we hear are comparisons of student performance within Rhode Island that continually claim that student achievement is ‘improving’ and that a significant number of our schools are ‘high performing’.  By now, such claims must be dismissed as simply a self-promoting cover-up for McWalters’ failure to produce even mediocre results.  Mr. McWalters has painted a false picture of the quality of education our students are receiving.”

RISC’s letter to the Board of Regents emphasizes that, in the face of such a poor record of achievement, McWalters has failed to craft a plan of action that would change the direction of the State’s educational program.  “Rather than bold, innovative leadership for change,” it says, “we hear nothing but vague platitudes that ‘things are getting better’.  How long must we wait for the kind of results one would expect in a state where the taxpayers are paying the fifth highest property taxes in the United States?”

Staley further notes, “The future belongs to those who are prepared to compete for jobs in the world marketplace, not just the nation, and certainly not just in Rhode Island.  We are not preparing our children to compete in that world, and the time for excuses is over.”  RISC calls for the Board of Regents to identify and bring to Rhode Island a new Education Commissioner who will be capable of meeting the state’s enormous educational challenge.  “Nothing less,” Staley says, “will serve the needs of our children.”

As a freshman US Senator, Sheldon Whitehouse has largely made a mark in DC through his work on the controversy involving the White House and federal prosecutors. In particular, the Democrat's experience as a former US attorney and state attorney general has served him well in bird-dogging this issue.

So perhaps Rhode Island's newspaper of record might consider it news if Whitehouse, as part of a related inquiry into the possible suppression of voting of black Ohioans during the 2004 presidential election, sought details of a potentially related internal Justice Department investigation. One of these forms of suppression is known as "vote-caging."

As McClatchy Newspapers writes, in an article distributed for publication today:

Republicans' use of caging has been a contentious issue ever since Debevoise's ruling 26 years ago. In 1986, the judge found that Louisiana Republicans had violated the consent decree. In 1990, another consent decree was issued after the Republican Party of North Carolina and the re-election campaign of GOP Sen. Jesse Helms sent 125,000 postcards to mostly African American voters to compile a list of voters to challenge.

Last week, Democratic Sens. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island sought an internal Justice Department investigation into whether department officials knew about Tim Griffin's alleged caging before he was named interim U.S. attorney for Arkansas. Griffin, a former Republican National Committee and White House operative, had been dogged by allegations that he tried to cage mostly African American voters three years ago in Jacksonsville, Fla. He has denied any impropriety, and resigned the interim post earlier this month.

These two paragraphs didn't make it into the ProJo's publication of the story today on page A4. While some Democrats might see this omission as being unusual, N4N attributes it simply to the randomness of the news business, thin weekend staffing, and how a story was trimmed at the bottom to fill a hole in the Monday paper.

A debate over the waterfront land being made available in Providence by the relocation of I-195 has played out, mostly quietly, in recent years.

To some, like David Riley of the Friends of India Point Park, maximizing public access to the waterfront makes the most economic and civic sense. For its part, the Cicilline administration has seemingly wanted to keep its options open when it comes to the development of this area.

Now, Riley sends word that the Providence City Council's Committee on Ordinances will hold a public hearing at 6 PM tonight, in the council chambers at City Hall, on a proposed moratorium on waterfront development south of I-195, pending completion of the Comprehensive & Neighborhood Plans. According to supporters, "This moratorium will give the city a chance to plan carefully for the future of the strategically located waterfront between the Seekonk & Providence Rivers."

If you scroll to the second article, you can find a piece I wrote about the issue of this waterfront development in January 2005:

To a raft of proponents, the idea is a no-brainer: extending India Point Park to Fox’s Point, considering as a whole the land south of the new Interstate 195 between the Seekonk and Providence rivers, designating this area as public space, and making it into a park that will beautify the city and promote economic development. As David Riley, co-chair of Friends of India Point Park, puts it, "We think it’s critical that there be more public space on the waterfront, for significant and lasting economic and civic reasons."

Riley cites information indicating how the expansion of waterfront parks in numerous cities, ranging from Hartford, Connecticut, to Chattanooga, Tennessee, has fostered a range of positive impacts. "It’s a false dichotomy to assume that parks don’t help the bottom line," he says, and they should be considered just as important to the appeal of a community as such traditional infrastructure as highways and utilities.

Thomas E. Deller, director of the Providence Department of Planning and Development, however, says the situation is more complex. For starters, he says, the city can’t afford to earmark five acres of privately owned land near India Point as public space, because, according to a US Supreme Court precedent, the city would be on the hook for compensation payments in the neighborhood of $8 million to $10 million. And when it comes to remaking the contested waterfront land entirely as public space, Deller says, "There are people who do not agree that it is the best use of the land." He notes that the city’s existing comprehensive plan calls for mixed uses — shorthand, in the eyes of critics, for such uses as high-priced, high-rise residential properties — with an open space buffer along the waterfront.

Sheila Dormody from Clean Water Action reports that the medical waste bill that had raised the concern of environmentalists was referred back to committee on the House floor, effectively killing it for this year.

In related news, environmental advocates are praising the legislature for passing legislation that will govern implementation of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the regional program to restrict and reduce global warming emissions from power plants. From a news release:

“This legislation means less global warming pollution from power plants and that is a good thing for our coastline, our beaches and the Bay,” said Matt Auten, Advocate for Environment Rhode Island. “Not only does this bill cap global warming pollution from power plants, it also forces dirty power generators to buy pollution permits and allocates those funds for clean energy projects like improving energy efficiency and producing more renewable energy.”

“The General Assembly has proved it is serious about combating global warming, the defining environmental issue of our generation," said Cynthia Giles of the Conservation Law Foundation, one of the groups that has been pushing for Rhode Island's participation in RGGI.  "The bill sets a tough environmental standard, and will save consumers money by reducing overall demand for power."

The citizen group Cranston Citizens for Responsible Zoning & Development offers a good example of how the Web is changing activism. Members of SCC, which sends out a lot of e-mail, say they plan to present 2000 petitions to Mayor Napolitano outside of Cranston City Hall during a rally today from 4:30 to 5:30 PM.

Here's a look at the group's petition:

We the undersigned residents of Cranston adamantly oppose construction of the concrete batching facility by the Karleetor, LLC/Cullion Concrete Corporation at the location of Marine Drive in Cranston. This plant was illegally permitted and, presently, has neither a valid Cranston building permit nor a valid DEM permit. This plant is located in a FEMA designated floodplain and a DEM recognized wetlands. We believe operation of this facility would have a significant negative impact on this wetlands, the Pocasset and Pawtuxet Rivers, the surrounding watershed area, and ultimately, Narragansett Bay. The harmful noise and air pollution that can emit from such a facility and its trucking operations would negatively impact the health and safety of residents and families in the surrounding neighborhoods, adversely effect local small businesses, and will most certainly negatively impact property values within a significant radius of its operation.

We, therefore, call upon the City of Cranston to conduct an immediate investigation of the initial permitting process, conduct the Zoning Hearing as required in the appeal filed by the Cranston Citizens for Responsible Zoning & Development, and, finally, to revoke the building permit issued to Karleetor/Cullion. Lastly, we demand that the City issue a cease and desist order and require Karleetor/Cullion to remove all concrete production facilities, restoring the area to its prior state.

Pulitzer-winner Gareth Cook, a one-time news editor at the Boston Phoenix, has been named editor of the Boston Globe's Ideas section (h/t Romenesko).

There's sometimes a sense of inevitability about Hillary Clinton's pursuit of the Democratic presidential nomination, given the nexus between her success in raising money, the power of the Clinton machine, and the way in which Democratic elected officials are falling into step behind her. And everyone knows that she's "scary smart." Writing this week in the Phoenix, however, Steven Stark says there's good reason why two new Hillary biographies are inducing yawns: 

The main problem . . . is the subject itself. To continue the cliché metaphor, with Hillary, there is no forest. Or, as Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, “there’s no there there.”

The press’s assumption about Hillary has always been that she’s the power behind the throne: the smart, savvy one at Yale Law School, who got better grades but postponed her own political career for the benefit of her husband. David Brock wrote an earlier biography, The Education of Hillary Rodham, that advanced this thesis, making the claim that Hillary, not Bill, was the leading light of the twosome.

There’s only one problem with this theory: there isn’t evidence to support it. Love him or hate him, Bill is a political phenomenon.

Hillary’s real claim to fame is that she married a political star. And, because of that, any biography that tells the truth about her essentially amounts to hundreds of pages relaying, well, not that much of anything. You can’t write a good life story about a rather boring and unlikable personage who’s never done enough to merit a lengthy biography in her own right, even if she is married to someone as interesting as Bill.

. . . .

It’s also true that Hillary was an outstanding student at Yale Law School. But so was everyone else — that’s what Yale Law School attracts. (Okay, I’m bragging; I went there, too.) As with almost everyone else who went to Yale Law, she’s smart and quick on her feet, which is why she does well in debates. Again, that’s not a qualification for the presidency (or if it is, I have about 5000 classmates and alumni I’d like to recommend ahead of her).

Since then, Hillary has been one of Bill’s closest advisers. But if that, too, were a presidential qualification, we could elect Dick Morris or James Carville (no thanks).

Granted, she got elected to the Senate in 2000. But if her name were Hillary Rodham, with no connection to a certain “Bill,” how viable would that campaign have been?

The truth is that whenever Hillary has tried to do something important on her own — and it hasn’t been very often — she’s botched it rather spectacularly. The health-care “debacle” she managed during her husband’s first term was rightly named. And, not only did she get it wrong initially on Iraq — her most important vote in a fairly undistinguished Senate career to date — she refuses, to this day, to apologize for it, thereby confirming the suspicion that she is unpleasantly imperious.

Barack Obama doesn’t exactly have a lengthy résumé, either. But he differs from Hillary in two key ways. First, if you’ve read his book, you know he’s genuinely interesting, with a set of thoughtful and original political ideas, forged in a rather unconventional background. It’s fun to read his autobiography — though it remains to be seen if this intriguing persona translates into presidential material.

The medical waste bill described here yesterday was approved by the House Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, on a 7-4 vote.

Voting for the bill were Representatives Ginaitt, Gallison, Malik, McNamara, Sullivan, Vaudreuil, and Walsh. Reps. Story, Ehrhardt, Segal, and Handy voted in opposition.

Matt Auten of Environment Rhode Island calls the bill "a sweetheart deal for processors of out-of-state medical waste, but it's bad for the environment and consumers. As a result, we are urging the General Assembly to reject this legislation."

Auten says the bill is expected to face a contested vote in the House. A very similar bill was voted down, 35-33, two years ago on the House floor. The Senate last year approved a similar bill, although the outlook in that chamber remains unclear. Considering opposition from DEM, Resource Recovery, and Statewide Planning (Auten says the AG's offiice is also opposed), a gubernatorial veto seems reasonably likely should the measure advance, although it's hard to know if the General Assembly would pursue an overrride.

Stericycle, the Woonsocket-based company with perhaps the most to gain from this bill, has its corporate headquarters in Lake Forest, Illinois.

If you sometimes perceive a surfeit of Italian restaurants in Rhode Island, you're not alone. Don't get me wrong. I love Italian food. It would be nice, though, if we had something like one of N4N's all-time favorite restaurants, the East Coast Grill in Cambridge.

That said, there's a pleasant boomlet of French-inspired restaurants in the Capital City, including Bravo Brasserie, Red Stripe, and Mike Sears's new place, not to mention such venerable outposts as Chez Pascal, Rue de l'Espoir, and Pot Au Feu.

N4N was reminded of just how good Bravo is during a dinner this week, and Johnette Rodriguez happens to have a review of the same establishment in this week's Phoenix.

Laura Colella, the talented Providence-based independent filmmaker, reports that her second feature, Stay Until Tomorrow, is now available via Netflix. She has set up a Web site to sell copies (as well as pre-release copies of a DVD with her previous films, Tax Day and Statuary).

You can see the trailer for Stay Until Tomorrow on YouTube. Laura says that anyone who likes "Stay" and gives it high ratings on imdb.com and netflix.com will enjoy 100 years of good luck!

With the Democrat-controlled General Assembly having imposed its will on Governor Carcieri this week, Giovanni Cicione, chairman of the Rhode Island Republican Party, remains sanguine about the outlook for GOP legislative gains in the 2008 election. With some Rhode Islanders frustrated about Dems' handling of the budget issue, there's "a great chance to get independent thinkers engaged," Cicione says.

The GOP chairman, who has had a crash course in partisan warfare since ascending to his post in March, made the observation during a taping today of WPRI-WNAC's Newsmakers. The show will air Sunday, at 5:30 AM on Channel 12 (CBS), and at 10 AM on Fox Providence.

Earlier this week, Ed Achorn and Dan Yorke faulted Carcieri for not adequately taking his budget campaign to the public, and they called this a failure of leadership. Asked about this, Cicione says he's not sure whether a greater public campaign would have made any difference when Democrats, and related interest groups, so severely outnumber Republicans on Smith Hill.

The chairman says the "positive" Republican message next year will focus on the perils of the partisan imbalance and a desire to put more money in the pockets of Rhode Islanders. Of course, Governor Carcieri has come up short after pledging to bring more Republicans to the General Assembly, and it's fair to wonder whether Cicione will be able to foster a higher degree of success.

Also appearing on Newsmakers this week is Johnston Mayor Joseph Polisena, a former state senator. For his part, Polisena questioned the view among some that legislative Democrats have merely put the state's budget problems on hold for another year. Noting how 2008 is an election year, Polisena asserted that his former legislative colleagues wouldn't be likely to defer problems into an election year.

Legislation that would provide for the disposal of out-of-state medical waste at the Central Landfill in Johnston has died at the State House in recent years. The environmental community is today watching with concern, however, because the latest bill, H6375, introduced by Representative Tim Williamson, is slated for a 3:30 hearing by the House Committee on Environment and Natural Resources. That the bill is posted is seen as a sign that something will happen.

Johnston Mayor Joseph Polisena, who fought similar legislation as a state senator, tells N4N that he remains staunchly opposed.

In a June 5 letter to Representative Peter Ginaitt, chairman of the related House committee, Michael O'Connell, executive director of the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, Michael Sullivan, director of the state Department of Environmental Management, and Kevin Flynn, associate director of the RI Statewide Planning Program, also expressed their opposition, because the bill "undermines the Rhode Island Comprehensive Solid Waste Management Plan."

The trio noted that the bill "would allow all residues of regulated medical waste that have been properly treated and destroyed at a RI-based facility to be disposed of at the Central Landfill, regardless of the origin of the waste. Most of the medical waste treated at Stericycle [in Woonsocket], the one and only medical waste treatment facility in RI, comes from out-of-state. As such, the bill would allow for the disposal of a considerable amount of out-of-state waste at the Central Landfill, overriding the long-standing statutory ban on such practice."

Local environmental advocates, who have raised concern about a waste-to-energy plant being conceived for possible placement near the landfill, say that one of the main backers of that project, Richard W. Nicholson of Jefferson Renewable Energy, has in the past backed medical waste legislation. Nicholson, who missed a pre-scheduled telephone interview with the Phoenix earlier this week, could not be reached for comment.

You've got to give the Boston Globe's Dan Shaughnessy some credit. Two years ago, when I wrote about the close ties between the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Red Sox, Shaughnessy was more than willing to speak with me, candidly and on the record. (That's more than I can say for Tony Massarotti and Michael Holley, who didn't return my calls.)

As Shaughnessy told me at the time:

The [Globe's] link with the Sox through the Times Company "puts everyone in somewhat of an awkward position. All we can do is write what we believe, and think and trust that the readers will see that we’re independent of any financial conflicts or overlaps." Shaughnessy doesn’t perceive any benefit for the Globe from the connections, "but I understand that it does raise eyebrows. It would make me wonder if I was at the other paper."

Of course, as something of a Bigfoot at the Globe, Shaughnessy has more latitude than some in speaking out. And as Adam Reilly writes this week in the Boston Phoenix, the man widely known as the CHB (curly-haired boyfriend) has quite a share of haters: