Rhode Island is the lone New England state that has no legal recognition of same-sex relationships. Now, legislation that would legalize gay marriage is being debated at the State House.
Various measures recognizing gay marriage have been introduced at the capitol for a decade. None of them have ever been approved.
In the neighborhood we call Rhode Island, every family comes from somewhere else. If any state can be said to be a laboratory of immigration, it is our tiny corner of New England.
The first white settler, Roger Williams, was a rebel and advocate of religious freedom who landed in Providence in 1636 because he was banished from the suffocating theocracy of Massachusetts.
Being a Rhode Islander, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him during temporary periods of joy. Followers of Irish poetry will recognize the reference to William Butler Yeats, who so famously wrote those words to describe his countrymen. In this winter of jobless discontent the daily drip of dour news in the Ocean State threatens to make us the biggest little state of depression.
From the Rhode Island General Assembly to the White House, the party is out of power. For the first time since the founding of the gop in the 1850s, the party holds not one U.S. House Seat from New England.
We know that politics in our state and region is both serious business and a grand spectator sport.
For months the talk at the State House has been about hard decisions and tough choices. From Governor Carcieri down to the newest legislator, the message has been that Rhode Island's economy is in the dumpster, tax revenues are falling and businesses are not creating new jobs. Then, abruptly that was all but forgotten.
Maureen McKenna Goldberg, an associate justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, appears headed for elevation to the chief justice position that has been vacant since the recent retirement of Chief Justice Frank Williams.
This recession is forcing Rhode Islanders to tighten THEIR belts for the common good. But the federal government’s bank bailout policies are widening the gap between elite Americans and the rest of us.
J.B. Poersch, longtime top aide to U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, has signed on for another election cycle as executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Poersch, a Providence College graduate, is in the unusual position of running the political arm of Senate Democrats for the third cycle in sucession.
Providence Journal management is seeking to delay payment of $1.2 million in retirement benefits to its employees, according to the Providence Newspaper Guild, the union representing the workers.
The request comes on the heels of buyouts and layoffs of more than 100 employees over the past 6 months.
The $1.2 million in retirement benefits are owed to people hired before July 1, 2004 and who were enrolled in the company's pension plan. In 2007, the Journal's pension plan was frozen so that no new pension benefits could be earned, according to the Guild.
The recession can provide opportunities for preserving our environment and building a new economy. If we have the political will to try to the best we can in the worst of times.
