R-ISLANDER

DEMOCRATIC LEGISLATURE BACKS CARCIERI CUTS OF HUMAN SERVICES

The RI Legislature closed the budget deficit.  How did they do it?  As reported in the Projo, ..."cutting health-care and welfare benefits for thousands of children, and reducing retirement benefits for all state workers who retire after Sept. 30, not to mention cutting benefits in other human services programs. 

How cowardly is it for the Assembly to balance the budget on the backs of children and state workers?  CHILDREN...no health insurance for children.  A major cut in health insurance for the working class on a variety of fronts.

They cut needed benefits of poor children and save dollars...and then give it away with tax cuts for the rich and coporate entities.  I can understand the Republican Carcieri making such unconscionable choices, but a D_E_M_O_C_R_A_T_I_C legislature?  I thought Democrats supported those at the margins of our society.  What the hell happened?  When did they become Republican who gleefully cut programs for the poor and working classes?

SHAME, SHAME....time to check voting records and to "reward" those democrats who are so in name only!

RI LOSES JOBS UNDER CARCIERI

Under the Republicans, Rhode Island is going down the tubes economically.  Under the current Republican Governor, Don Carcieri, the state has lost more jobs under his stewardship than under any recent governor. 

Workers in RI are also in a panic over the Governor's fiscal policies, especially state employees.  He's recently given very high paying patronage jobs to his friends while at the same time telling those at the bottom of the economic ladder to essentially "Eat Cake!"

The Democratic legislature has done very little to help those in need, either.  Rep. Steve Costantino, the Leader of the House Finance Committee, has worked closely to help the Governor destroy the future of many working class Rhode Island families.  It must stop somewhere and only the Democratic legislature in Rhode Island can turn the state around.  Legislators like Costantino need to stop the cutting of taxes of the very rich, stop the patronage of the Carcieri Administration, and begin to focus on how to shore up the loss of jobs, especially those of the state workers.  They are Rhode Islanders, too, they make little in comparison to most workers, and it is time to give them their due instead of demonizing them as Carcieri and the Democratic legislature have done recently.

CARCIERI GIVES US UNEMPLOYMENT--WORST IN TEN YEARS!

This is what the Carcieri government and the Rhode Island Republicans have given us.  If you want more, unemployment and cuts in taxes for the rich, vote Republican whenever you can!

R.I. unemployment rate highest in more than a decade

February 29, 2008, PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Rhode Island’s unemployment rate climbed last month to 5.7 percent, the highest in more than a decade.

The state Department of Labor and Training says there are now 32,800 unemployed Rhode Islanders. The state lost 1,700 jobs in the last month alone and 7,200 jobs in the last 13 months.

Rhode Island ended last year with the first annual jobs decline since 2001.

The unemployment rate jumped .5 percent. It’s the highest it’s been since 1995

CARCIERI PONDERING SELLING THE STATE, LOL

The headlines in this morning's Providence Journal make it clear just how awful things have become because the state elected one of the worst if not the worst Governor ever.  Don Carcieri's stewardship of the state was really never rated as "good" or even "passable."  Now however, there is clear evidence that the Governor who touted his business experience as a manager for voting Republican in the last two elections for governor, has failed the state and its citizens miserably.  By any metrics you might choose, under Carcieri, the state, its economy, its quality of life for citizens is in a free fall. 

The proposed solution now is to sell the state's assessts to private investors thereby insuring not only that the present will be awful, but the future prospects of the state as well.  Time to dump Carcieri.  We can't stand another 3 years of this man.

What will he do next?  Sell off the University of Rhode Island?

Its time the democrats in the legislature stepped forward to stop Carcieri ... from destroying our present and our future.  One solution might be to sell off certain rights as other states have done to save their economies.  We should be looking in that direction.  There are ways to do it...I just don't trust Carcieri to make the right decision.  He doesn't have the best track record, lol. 

"Happy Holidays" from Gov. Carcieri

Well, the holidays are upon us, and Gov. Carcieri, hoping to make them happy for all his corporate fat cats, has just announced the firing of some 136 contract workers.

Not wishing the state workers to have a poor holiday, either, the kind, generous governor will be hacking their jobs by Nov. 15th.  This from the Projo:

"The move comes two weeks after Governor Carcieri outlined a broad plan to eliminate more than 1,000 positions from the state’s workforce, which also includes laying off 414 regular state employees and wiping 487 empty jobs off the state’s books.

He plans to announce detailed plans to cut the number of state employees on Nov. 15. Asked whether there may be more than 414, Neal responded: "Right now we’re still targeting 414.”

All the governor and the legislature need to do is raise taxes on those they gave huge tax cuts to recently and that would save these working class jobs.  But, no, the governor wants to make his friends in industry richer at the expense of the RI middle class and poor.

This is What Carcieri Has Brought Us: Economic Crisis

A failing economy is projected for Rhode  Island.  The Governor, Carcieri,  who claims to know business, budgets, etc. has failed us  enormously!  This from the Projo:

An economic upturn involving substantial job growth, higher wages and lower energy prices would help close a 2008-09 budget deficit now projected at $211 million. More income would mean more income taxes, the state’s largest revenue stream. And more income also suggests Rhode Islanders would have more to spend, which would create more sales taxes, the state’s second-largest revenue stream.

But the economists concluded yesterday that job growth would be relatively flat in the coming fiscal year — up just 1 percent over this year and in line with expectations set last May. Wages and salaries increases across the state will not meet expectations, they said, projected at 3.7 percent instead of 4.1 percent.

“To think that there may be a slowdown in the Rhode Island economy … it’s the last thing we need,” said Ellen Frank, chief economist for the Poverty Institute at Rhode Island College. “A lot is going to hinge on what happens over the next week.”

CARCIERI BREAKING THE BACKS OF CHILDREN AS WELL AS THE POOR AND MIDDLE CLASS TO BALANCE HIS BUDGET

Law on Young Offenders Causes Rhode Island Furor

By KATIE ZEZIMA (NYT)

Since it took effect on July 1, a law that made 17-year-olds adults in the eyes of the law has ignited a firestorm of criticism. Carcieri wanted it to balance his budget.  Again, children, the poor, the middle class are balancing the Carcieri budget on their backs while Carcieri gives wealthy Rhode Islanders HUGE tax breaks and tax credits.  Where is the Democratic Legislature on this....Democrats don't do in children, the poor, and the middle class to give big bucks to the rich.  What's happened to them?

Republicans and Carcieri Want Big Raises

BUT NOT TO YOU...only his buddies.

 

Tell me this ok:  Carcieri cuts hundreds of working class positions and then suggests cumulative raises for his cabinet officers.  Again, Carcieri, and the Republicans:  Give to the rich and Steal from the Poor.

 

Two weeks before he first wielded his now-famous vow to eliminate 1,000 state jobs to head off a looming deficit, Governor Carcieri quietly sought four years of cumulative raises — ranging as high as $24,884 — for members of his cabinet.

In a previously undisclosed May 24, 2007, memorandum to the chairmen of the House and Senate finance committees, Carcieri’s Budget Director Rosemary Booth Gallogly recommended page after page of “final adjustments required to address the projected deficit.”

At the same time, the memo proposed the inclusion in this year’s big spending bill of a new law requiring the Department of Administration to automatically “provide cabinet directors cost of living increases that are comparable to those accorded other non-union state employees in the executive branch.”  PROJO

THE CURRENT SALARIES:  Administration Director Beverly Najarian, $110,321; Adjutant Gen. Robert T. Bray, $94,769; Business Regulation Director A. Michael Marques, $101,598; Children, Youth & Families Director Patricia Martinez, $127,501; Corrections Director A.T. Wall, $142,609; DOT Director Williams, $143,000; Elderly Affairs Director Russo, $95,387; DEM Director Sullivan, $130,152; Health Director David Gifford, $134,975; Human Services Director Gary Alexander, $115,837; Labor Director Adelita Orefice, $113,883; and Mental Health, Retardation & Hospitals Director Ellen Nelson, $126,582.

Thank God for Labor Unions

Rhode Island's Twelfth has a posting by Eileen Spillane that lays the Chair of the Republican Party in RI out for his continuing anti-worker, anti-union rhetoric.  Well worth the read. 

One only needs to read the paper every morning to see the brutal, inhumane, and unconscionable attacks by Gov. Carcieri, who leads the republicans in this state, on our working-class, the poor, and RI's labor unions. 

Carcieri doesn't remember that without labor unions, and how they integrated Irish, Italian, and other immigrants into the economy of this state, and this country, immigrants from the early 20th and late 19th century, our grandparents, would still be living in inner city walkups without heat, plumbing or security.  Thank god for labor unions.

CARCIERI PUSHING TAX BREAKS FOR THE RICH

Today and yesterday in the Providence Journal there have been several articles on Don Carcieri's idea of how to help RIsland taxpayers:  give tax cuts and tax credits to the richest among us while cutting health care benefits, entitlements of all kinds, including pensions to RIsland's middle classes and poorest. 

If the state could institute a tax system that asks the richest among us to pay their fair share, instead of getting HUGE tax breaks, the taxes on middle class RIslanders could be lowered and services to the poor among us could be kept.

Carcieri is an elitist.  He thinks the rich drive our society and deserve to be rewarded by cutting their taxes and their responsibilities to the state of RI.

Read Charlie Bakst's article in today's Projo to read a clear perspective of what Carcieri's attempts to cut workers jobs, their health care, increase their anxieties, etc. means and why he thinks Carcieri has failed as Governor.