October 1, 2019

With State Takeover Looming, Providence Schools Face An Immediate Need: More Teachers

One of the biggest problems the state expects to face when it takes over the Providence School District this month is the chronic teacher shortage. It’s a national issue, and local education leaders say the problem here is getting worse.

Over the summer, the number of open teaching positions in Providence climbed to nearly 100. On the first day of school 170 classrooms weren’t staffed with a full-time teacher, 65 had no substitute.

Rhode Island’s new education commissioner Angelica Infante-Green will face this issue when she takes over the district later this fall.

“I mean we've all gone to school for the first time and not having a classroom teacher, that to me seems criminal and it's a big problem for us,” Infante-Green during an interview in September

Read more: https://thepublicsradio.org/article/as-state-prepares-to-takeover-the-providence-schools

October 1, 2019

Embattled Fall River Mayor Looks To Write-In Candidate To Sway Votes

The twice-arrested mayor says he won’t drop out of the race, even though he received just 21-percent of the vote during the last preliminary election. Correia’s opponent, school committee member Paul Coogan, received three times that amount.

Correia was indicted 11 days before the preliminary election for allegedly extorting marijuana vendors for cash and defrauding investors through an app he started before he became mayor.

Now, Correia is betting on a write-in candidate to possibly sway the outcome of the race in his favor.

"There are some people that will not be able to get over the fact that there have been two indictments launched against me," Correia says, which will lead residents to vote for Coogan by default. "What we're doing is saying, 'Look I hear you but I still want you to change your vote. What you should do is actually vote for myself or anyone else that represents core values that the city believes in.'"

Read more: https://thepublicsradio.org/article/embattled-fall-river-mayor-looks-to-write-in-candidate-to-sway-votes

October 1, 2019

Chafee discusses 2020 Libertarian presidential bid

A familiar face will be in the news again as the run-up to the 2020 presidential election begins to churn, as former Republican Senator, former Independent-turned-Democratic Rhode Island Governor and former Warwick mayor Lincoln Chafee is pursuing a bid – this time on the Libertarian ticket.

“The bottom line is I still do care about the direction of the country and I have some experience in getting elected to office, and this is an opportunity to continue expressing my opinions,” he said on Tuesday in a phone interview. “I still enjoy having the opportunity to make this country better for our children and our grandchildren.”

Chafee, who sought the Democratic nomination for president in 2016, further expounded upon his interest in another presidential run. He described being approached by members of the Libertarian Party after he registered as a Libertarian voter in Teton County, Wyoming, where he maintains a residence in Jackson.

Although he admitted that the interest he received from the party was “unexpected,” Chafee said that he was also “surprised” by how many of the core tenants and principles of the Libertarian he identified and agreed with – listing off a few, they include being anti-war, anti-death penalty, anti-torture, pro-gay rights, pro-choice (“Let people make their own personal decisions,” he said) and being “anti-deficit.”

Read more: http://www.warwickonline.com/stories/chafee-opens-up-on-libertarian-presidential-bid,145220

October 1, 2019

Candace Owens tells R.I. crowd that Democrats 'brainwash' blacks

I'm a bit late with this article, but didn't see a prior post about it so here goes:


Posted Sep 22, 2019 at 5:59 PM

PROVIDENCE — Candace Owens, a conservative political commentator, praised President Donald Trump and discussed her theories about what she called the Democratic Party’s “brainwashing” of black Americans during a talk at a Rhode Island Young Republicans event Saturday night.

“The key to saving America and saving Western civilization is waking up black America,” said Owens, sparking applause from the mostly white audience of about 150 people at the Rhode Island Convention Center. “There’s no group of people that has been more lied to, more abused and more used by the Democrat Party.”

Owens, who is black, said she believes that the Democratic Party pushes a narrative about racism in America to curry favor within the black community. Owens founded an organization called “Blexit” based on this premise, and says her goal is to show people of color that they are not victims of systemic racism.

?[Democrats] treat minorities like puppies that need rescuing,” she said. “They don’t know what to make of a black American who says, ‘Oh no, I’m not oppressed.’”

Read more: https://www.newportri.com/news/20190922/candace-owens-tells-ri-crowd-that-democrats-brainwash-blacks

October 1, 2019

Trump's hatred of windmills is a worry for booming industry

BLOCK ISLAND — The winds are blowing fair for America’s wind power industry, making it one of the fastest-growing U.S. energy sources.

Land-based turbines are rising by the thousands across America, from the remote Texas plains to farm towns of Iowa. And the U.S. wind boom now is expanding offshore, with big corporations planning $70 billion in investment for the country’s first utility-scale offshore wind farms.

“We have been blessed to have it,” says Polly McMahon, a 13th-generation resident of Block Island, where a pioneering offshore wind farm replaced the island’s dirty and erratic diesel-fired power plant in 2016. “I hope other people are blessed too.”

But there’s an issue. And it’s a big one. President Donald Trump hates wind turbines.

Read more: https://www.newportri.com/news/20190930/trumps-hatred-of-windmills-is-worry-for-booming-industry/1

October 1, 2019

R. Kelly complains that only one girlfriend at a time can visit him in jail

Lawyers for R. Kelly have asked a federal judge in New York to reconsider his decision to hold the embattled R&B star without bond on sweeping racketeering charges filed there, arguing the case against him is weak and that he poses no danger to the community.

The 11-page motion filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn on Monday was the latest move in a long-shot bid for Kelly to be sprung from jail while he awaits trial in three different jurisdictions stemming from his alleged sexual abuse of underage girls.

The filing revealed for the first time that federal authorities searched Kelly’s home at Trump Tower in Chicago and seized his cellphone and computers after his arrest in July on separate federal indictments filed here and in New York.

In asking that Kelly be held without bond, prosecutors in Brooklyn told a federal magistrate judge in July that the singer directed others to send threatening letters to potential witnesses warning them that they could be “subjected to physical harm” if they cooperated against him.

Read more: https://www.newportri.com/zz/news/20190930/r-kelly-complains-that-only-one-girlfriend-at-time-can-visit-him-in-jail

October 1, 2019

Week in Veneers -- Looking Presi-Dental

Note: This OP is not intended to bash Joe Biden, but to provide a historical perspective on the evolution of politicians to also include vanity.


The 2020 presidential race has opened with such an oversaturated field of candidates that sometimes distinguishing between them all is like pulling teeth. During the September 12 Democratic presidential debate, former Vice President and frontrunner Joe Biden struggled to answer a tough question on the NRA. With Biden failing to ‘reach across the aisle’ and find a congressional majority post-Sandy Hook, journalist David Muir expressed doubts over the grinning ex-VP’s competency. But Biden’s response—relatively coherent compared to the rest of his performance that night—was quickly overshadowed. Viewers everywhere were overwhelmed by the strange mouthal calisthenics that accompanied his words. Was it gum? Or were those winning pearly whites—just like the notoriously plagiarized 1987 Iowa State Fair speech that imploded his 1988 presidential run—flashy, but not of his own creation?

This probable denture mishap gave fodder to existing claims that the 76 year old may be too long in the tooth for the job he aspires to. Talk of his age, speculated senility, and failure to win a primary since 1973, not to mention the substance of his policies and voting record, play second fiddle as the New York Post, alongside others, shriek, “Joe Biden struggles to keep his teeth in his mouth,” placing the very gleamers that make him popular in jeopardy.

But American presidential history is no stranger to those who lie through their teeth. At its root are the ivory shiners (mythologized as wood) behind George Washington’s stony smile. Washington, insecure about the puffy appearance of his denture-laden jowl, posed most often with a stern frown. An existing complete set of his choppers—fashioned from a smorgasbord of human, animal, and ivory teeth—can be viewed at his estate in Virginia. Another such gem can be found at the National Museum of Dentistry in Baltimore, where his lower jaw denture dated to 1795 grins in perpetuity. Biden’s own smile, an icon of the Obama years, may find its home alongside Washington’s someday. Indeed, his embodiment of silver-haired manhood recalls the dignified aged appearance of our founding fathers. That said, Biden would certainly flash his canines with more confidence were he crossing the Delaware.

Today’s televised debates are now criticized for their value as entertainment, and not as an opportunity to bite into ‘the issues.’ Commentators often recall the original televised presidential debates between a visibly anxious Nixon and infamously handsome Kennedy in 1960, an election theorized to have been won on visual charisma alone. Since the advent of televised debates, America has not elected a balding president, although nearly every candidate has been male and of typical balding age. (A balding Gerald Ford won neither his VP nor Presidential position through national election.) Biden has ensured that his own hairline creeps forward with what the Independent can only assume are state-of-the-art hair plugs. Cory Booker, in unconventional style, naively awaits his own surge in popularity once he perfects the sheen on his hairless crown.

Read more:
(College Hill Independent) Rhode Island

October 1, 2019

Hasan's Presidential Campaign -- Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj