Free Republic

RUSH: Here’s another great piece, another Limbaugh echo. There’s so many Limbaugh echoes out there today that I’m reveling in it here, folks. By the way, from TheHill.com, headline: “Left Says Democrats Caved on Shutdown — Progressives are hammering [Chuck You] Schumer for his agreement … to end the government shutdown on Monday. Even House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has spoken out against the deal, saying there was no reason to support it. ‘I don’t see that there’s any reason — I’m speaking personally and hearing from my members — to support what was put forth,’ Pelosi said…” Pelosi is...

Welcome to my home State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.Rhode Island lawmakers are undergoing anti-sexual harassment training after a female lawmaker alleged she was told she could get legislations passed if she slept with the right people. The training seemed to go well, with one exception.One of the male Democrat lawmakers is accused of making sexually harassing comments during the training. He says he was misunderstood because of his heavy accent.News 10 reports: Instead of satisfying concerns about sexual harassment, a training session for Rhode Island lawmakers may have raised more controversy.The training on Wednesday was the same that...

Connecticut continues to be dogged by messy finances. The budget legislators and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy adopted in late October for fiscal year 2017-18 is in deficit. Gov. Malloy’s Office of Policy and Management estimated a $202.8 million hole Nov. 20, while state Comptroller Kevin P. Lembo concluded Dec. 1 that the hole is $207.8 million. Before these forecasts were issued, the state was expected to contend with a $4 billion deficit in the 2019-21 biennium. ... “between 2015 and 2016, Connecticut saw a net loss of 2,050 tax filers who earn more than $200,000 per year.” This amounted to...

R.I. (WPRI) – Rhode Island is now just 157 residents away from losing one of its two seats in the U.S. House, which would give the state a single vote there for the first time since George Washington was president, according to an analysis of newly released population data. Kimball Brace, the reapportionment expert who has been involved in drawing legislative and congressional districts in Rhode Island since the early 1980s, ran the numbers Wednesday after the U.S. Census Bureau announced Rhode Island had added about 2,000 residents between July 2016 and July 2017.

Now, don’t tell me that welfare recipients aren’t innovative! No reason to stand on your feet waiting to get your check. Just put your flip-flops next in line and go back and sit on your ass. What a great country! Related Article Corporate Welfare Statistics That Will Make You Sick With all the talk about unemployment benefits and welfare, it’s important to understand just how much money we’re talking about. In 35 states, welfare, housing assistance and other benefits pays more than a minimum wage job, according to a new study by the Cato Institute. The study also found...

Email evidence shows US Department of Transportation grant program inspired an illegal ticket quota system in Rhode Island. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) last month warned Rhode Island police chiefs against the use of ticket quotas that are illegal under state law. The civil rights group began working on the issue after a WJAR television investigative report found evidence that police were ordered to issue a specified number of tickets in response to a federal grant program known in the state as Operation Blue Riptide. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration sends funds for this program to the Rhode...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Joseph A. Trillo, the former Republican state lawmaker who became the leading Rhode Island advocate for President Donald Trump, said Tuesday he will run for governor as an independent, shocking many in the party he is leaving and adding a new wrinkle to the developing 2018 race. “To win with my message in Rhode Island I will need Democratic support. I feel this can only be accomplished by shedding party politics and running as an independent,” Trillo said as he formally launched his campaign on radio station WPRO Tuesday afternoon. “I feel that my message is more...

Dive Brief: The Florida Turnpike broke ground earlier this month on a new test track where it will experiment with high-speed toll technology as well as systems for vehicle-to-infrastructure and vehicle-to-vehicle communications, according to FleetOwner. The 400-acre SunTrax site, in Auburndale, FL, will test toll equipment and interoperable tolling systems, as well as smartphone-based payment methods. Other technologies to be tested include high-speed connected platooning trucks, moveable barrier systems and machine vision and materials testing for new pavement types, lane markings and signage. Construction on the site's oval track is expected to be complete in spring 2019 with the first...

Dive Brief: The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has awarded Jacobs Engineering Group a 10-year, multimillion dollar contract to design an active traffic management (ATM) system for Interstate 76 through Philadelphia, according to Traffic Technology Today. Jacobs' services for the Schuylkill Expressway will include preliminary and system engineering, design, analysis of alternatives, right-of-way acquisition and construction consultancy.The final ATM system could include occasional use of the shoulder, connected vehicle technology, variable speed limit signage and traffic jam detection and alerts. PennDOT could also implement features like ramp metering, junction control, dynamic lane assignments, and multimodal strategies in tandem with shoulder use....

To promote “racial reconciliation” after the deadly clashes between white nationalists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville last month, Brown University plans to offer segregated events to its black students and female Muslim students.

WESTERLY, R.I. (CBS) – Workers finally dug up a beach mystery on the coast of Rhode Island on Thursday. For weeks, swimmers have been wondering about a strange object buried at East Beach. The beach association shared underwater pictures last month of the eight-pronged metallic object with a circular base. So what is it? For now, no one knows. “Not a clue. We haven’t solved anything here today,” East Beach Association President Peter Brockmann tells WPRI. “Hopefully, the experts in this field will take a look at it, now that we have it out, and be able to identify it.”...

Oops! Apparently, the state of Rhode Island had 150,000 people incorrectly placed on their voter rolls and nobody noticed. During the November election, the state had a total of 781,770 registered voters. That’s even after Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea purged the rolls of almost 65,000 names. Then she declared another 30,000 voters as “inactive.” Still, there were 150,000 more names of “fake” voters.

Full title: 'I am not a pervert': Rhode Island lawmaker who shared a screen shot with 'teen' and 'MILF' porn open in his web browser apologizes and claims it was a FRIEND who sent him the image Democratic Rep. Ramon Perez, of Providence, Rhode Island shared a screen grab of a Wikipedia page to the House Finance Committee last Wednesday But the screen shot, time stamped at 2:07am, showed multiple browser tabs with 'teen' 'young,' and 'MILF' in the titles. No pornographic images could be seen Perez claimed someone else who was helping him with research took screenshot He apologized...

Former United States Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) publicly apologized for not properly acknowledging the Armenian Genocide during her tenure under the administration of U.S. resident Barack Obama. Almost every Armenian-American family was touched in some way by the genocide. Ongoing Turkish denial makes the genocide an open wound… I am very sorry that, during our time in office, we in the Obama administration did not recognize the Armenian Genocide,” Power said in a series of tweets. .... Power has faced much criticism for her silence on Obama’s failure to recognize the Armenian Genocide, and had refused to publicly...

You'd be hard-pressed to find a more poorly designed program in the federal budget than Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income Americans. The costs are shared between the states and the feds, which means that the more money a state wastes under Medicaid, the bigger the check Washington writes to the state. No wonder the program costs keep spiraling out of control. Obamacare added nearly 20 million people to the Medicaid rolls, and the left considers that a policy victory. Federal and state budgets are swelling. Oh, to return to the days when taking people off of welfare --...

Freshman Representative Moira Walsh (D- Providence) joined Matt Allen on WPRO to talk about a wide range of issues - including minimum wage and women's issues. It was a comment at the end of the hour long interview, however, that has garnered attention. When asked by Allen what she found most surprising at the State House, Walsh said, "The drinking. It is the drinking that blows my mind. You can not operate a motor vehicle when you've had two beers but you can make laws that effect people's lives forever when you're half in the bag? That's outrageous!" [Audio player]

Households in New England paid electricity prices last month that were 47 percent higher than the national average.. Consumer energy information released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for its Boston region showed the area's households paid an average of 19.5 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity, compared to the national average of 13.3 cents. The region includes Hampden and Worcester counties as well as Greater Boston and parts of New Hampshire, Connecticut and Maine. The figures came out one day after energy utility Eversource proposed a 10 percent increase in its electricity distribution rates beginning early next year. The...

Lincoln Chafee is deeply unimpressed with the press. The former Rhode Island governor and U.S. senator said Tuesday that his experience running in the Democratic primary last year reinforced his belief that reporters are bad at their jobs . . . Chafee is not just unimpressed with how reporters covered the 2016 primaries and general election. He is also annoyed with how they're covering the current administration. "It's just a full onslaught against [Trump], and I think it's just kind of tiresome," he said in reference to the press' ongoing negative coverage of the Trump administration. "He won. I didn't...

One of the good aspects of federalism is that it allows states to go their own way. As Justice Louis Brandeis put it, they can be “laboratories of democracy.” Unfortunately, that often means that interest groups will capture state legislatures and have their political allies push through foolish legislation that will harm most of the state’s residents while benefiting just a few – mainly their members. (That, incidentally, was true in the case that inspired Brandeis’ observation, New State Ice v. Liebmann. Fortunately, the majority ruled against Oklahoma’s scheme for cartelizing the ice business.) Two states, New York and Rhode...

Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse received an earful from protesters on Sunday night following a community dinner at a Providence school, where they voiced their opposition to all of President Trump's Cabinet nominees and Whitehouse's support for Trump's CIA director, former Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.).Through social media mobilization, hundreds of protesters showed up on Sunday to voice their opposition to the Trump administration and hold Whitehouse accountable for supporting Pompeo's nomination. One of the protesters spoke out over a megaphone prior to the event and said that Whitehouse and other Democratic lawmakers had to vote the way any of the protesters would...