We must all sacrifice so King Donald can have his birthday parade

I wouldn't blame anyone who thinks this is true

RI Lifeguard Certification Tests Begin this Weekend

Lifeguard jobs pay up to $20 with up to $1000 in bonuses

The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) announces that state lifeguard certification testing begins this weekend. Those interested in working as a lifeguard at any open water facility in Rhode Island must be certified by DEM’s Division of Parks and Recreation as either a Surf or Non-Surf lifeguard. Surf state lifeguard certification testing begins at Scarborough North State Beach, Narragansett on Saturday, May 17 from 9 AM – 3 PM. Non-Surf state lifeguard certification testing begins on May 28 at Lincoln Woods State Park beach from 12 – 5 PM.

All lifeguard candidates must receive state certification and bring valid cards in lifeguard training, first aid, and CPR, including infant, child, and adult.

Full-time lifeguard positions are available at state swimming areas, including surf beaches such as Misquamicut and non-surf beaches such as Goddard Memorial State Park and Lincoln Woods State Park. Lifeguard pay ranges from $18.75 to $20.00 an hour based on location, experience, and position level. Those hired by June 27, 2025, can receive a one-time, $500 sign-on bonus. Staff who remain employed until Sept. 1, 2025 and meet certain conditions will also be eligible for a one-time, $500 retention bonus. 

Trump’s latest USDA cuts undermine his plan to ‘Make America Healthy Again’

Make American children hungry again

Ayurella Horn-Muller, Staff Writer for Grist

Early in the morning last Monday, a group of third graders huddled in the garden of Mendota Elementary School in Madison, Wisconsin. Of the dozen students present, a handful were busy filling up buckets of compost, others were readying soil beds for spring planting, while a number carefully watered freshly planted radishes and peas. 

The students were all busy with their assorted tasks until a gleeful shout rang across the space. Everything ground to a halt when a beaming boy triumphantly raised his gloved hand, displaying a gaggle of worms. The group of riveted eight- and nine-year-olds dropped everything to cluster around him and the writhing mass of invertebrates. 

“They’re mending the soil one week, and then the next week they’re going to start to see these little seedlings pop through the soil, because they’re healthy and they’re happy and they have sunshine, and they’ve watered them,” said Erica Krug, farm-to-school director at Rooted, a Wisconsin nonprofit community agricultural organization that helps oversee the garden. 

Krug stopped by the school that day to join the class, which her team runs together with AmeriCorps. Outdoor programming like this, said Krug, positions students to learn how to grow food — and take care of the planet that bears it. 

First established some 25 years ago, in a historically underserved area that has long struggled with access to healthy food, the small but thriving garden is now a mainstay in the Mendota curriculum. The produce grown there is routinely collected and taken to local food pantries. Later this spring, the third grade class plans to plant watermelon and pumpkin seeds. Come summer, the garden will open to the surrounding community to harvest crops like garlic, tomatoes, zucchini, collards, and squash, and take home what they need.

Farm-to-school work, said Krug, isn’t limited to partnering with farmers to get locally grown foods into school meals, but also includes supporting schools in lower-income neighborhoods with working gardens, and providing students with agricultural and health education they won’t get otherwise. That can take the shape of after-school gardening clubs, field trips to local farms, and cooking classes. “We want kids to understand where their food comes from. We want them to be able to have that experience of growing their own food,” she said. “It’s really, really powerful.” 

Back in January, the Rooted team applied for a $100,000 two-year grant through the Department of Agriculture’s Patrick Leahy Farm to School program, intended to provide public schools with locally produced fresh vegetables as well as food and agricultural education. Rooted had plans to “use a huge chunk of those funds” to continue supporting school garden activities and food programming at three local schools, including Mendota. 

Then, late last month, the United States Department of Agriculture, or USDA, sent them an email announcing the cancellation of funding for grants through the program. The email, shared with Grist, noted that the cancellation is “in alignment with President Donald Trump’s executive order ‘Ending Radical and Wasteful Government and DEI Programs and Preferencing.’” 

The loss of the funds is “so upsetting,” said Krug, and the reasoning provided, she continued, is “ridiculous.” 

Internal VA Emails Reveal How Trump Cuts Jeopardize Veterans’ Care, Including To “Life-Saving Cancer Trials”

More contempt from Trump toward American veterans

By Eric Umansky and Vernal Coleman for ProPublica

Earlier this year, doctors at Veterans Affairs hospitals in Pennsylvania sounded an alarm. Sweeping cuts imposed by the Trump administration, they told higher-ups in an email, were causing “severe and immediate impacts,” including to “life-saving cancer trials.”

The email said more than 1,000 veterans would lose access to treatment for diseases ranging from metastatic head and neck cancers, to kidney disease, to traumatic brain injuries.

“Enrollment in clinical trials is stopping,” the email warned, “meaning veterans lose access to therapies.”

The administration reversed some of its decisions, allowing some trials to continue for now. Still, other research, including the trials for treating head and neck cancer, has been stalled.

President Donald Trump has long promised to prioritize veterans.

“We love our veterans,” he said in February. “We are going to take good care of them.”

After the Department of Veterans Affairs began shedding employees and contracts, Trump’s pick to run the agency, Secretary Doug Collins, pledged, “Veterans are going to notice a change for the better.”

But dozens of internal emails obtained by ProPublica reveal a far different reality. Doctors and others at VA hospitals and clinics across the country have been sending often desperate messages to headquarters detailing how cuts will harm veterans’ care. The VA provides health care to roughly 9 million veterans.

New budget goes to Charlestown voters on June 2

CCA chimes in on Charlestown proposed budget

By Will Collette

Charlestown voters will have the final say on the town’s proposed $30 million+ budget. This new budget increases town expenditures by around 1.5%, compared to a 2.39% inflation rate for the past 12 months.

Under this budget, Charlestown’s tax rate is projected to increase from the current $5.78 per $1000 in assessed property value to $5.93. That’s an increase of 2.6%. Hopefully, this will be offset for permanent residents by a planned Homestead tax break if – fingers crossed – we get General Assembly approval and can swiftly pass a town ordinance. That might be overly optimistic, though.

Even at $5.93, Charlestown’s tax rate since the Charlestown Residents United won control of the Council continues to be lower than it was during any time in the past 50 years. Your actual tax is the tax rate times the assessed value of your property. Those assessments are also at an all-time high.

The all-day financial referendum will be held from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Monday, June 2, at Town Hall. Mail Ballot Applications are available on request at (401) 364-1200 or by e-mailing Town Clerk Amy Weinreich at arweinreich@charlestownri.gov.

I have been watching the reaction from the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA), Charlestown’s past rulers who were kicked to the curb by Charlestown Residents United in the last two elections. Their reaction was pretty muted compared to the kinds of rants we’ve seen from the CCA over the past 15 years.

They kvetched a little about plans to create a new home for the Parks and Recreation Department in Ninigret Park. What a concept! At its April 14 meeting, the Town Council set aside $75,000 as a contingency to pay for any needed design or engineering work. One plan is to convert the existing gatehouse into office space. If that is impractical (i.e. if repair work is too expensive), Plan B is to build a new building.

That plus improvements to existing facilities in the Park bother the CCA. Frankly, anything in the Park bothers the CCA who have fought against any and all projects, except of course, “Faith’s Folly,” their over-budget asphalt abomination of a bike path. If anyone other than CCA founding member Faith Labossiere had proposed laying down that much asphalt anywhere in town, CCA Leader and Planning Commissar Ruth Platner would light her hair on fire.

The CCA groused a little at the Town Council’s refusal to continue small grants to the Charlestown Land Trust and Community 2000. Both organizations are currently well-funded and well-endowed.

According to the Charlestown Land Trust’s most recent federal IRS-990 filing, they hold more than $2.76 million in assets, although I believe the true value is far higher, given that their acreage includes lots of prime property. The Land Trust has long and deep ties to the CCA.

More relevant to whether the town should contribute to them is another fact included in their IRS filing. The CLT only spends about 65% of what it raises. They reported an income of ~$80,000 but only spent ~$52,000.

Community 2000, a scholarship fund, reports similar data in its IRS filing. It has an endowment of $2.3 million. They only spend 60% of what they raise. In their most recent tax filing, they raised ~$228,000 but spent only ~$137,000.

While I have no quarrel with the mission of either of these two organizations, I think their own tax data show they don’t need Charlestown taxpayer money.

But here’s the kicker: The CCA makes the claim that “The Council also eliminated funds designated for the Charlestown Land Trust ($1,500) and for Community 2000 ($1,000).”

In fact, there was NO MONEY designated to be removed. Like so many of the CCA’s fiscal complaints, this is imaginary. While this is small potatoes compared to the CCA’s many other fiscal gaffs, it shows that the CCA just doesn’t seem to learn that you can’t make this shit up and get away with it.

The CCA’s sharpest critique was aimed at the Town Council’s decision to fund this year’s budget increase from the town’s bloated unrestricted fund balance.

During the CCA’s reign, increasing the size of the town’s fund balance became an obsession to the point where it seemed as if no amount of “rainy day” reserves was enough. The old Budget Commission Chair and controversial former town administrator Richard Sartor continually pushed to put more cash into reserves. Among other things, Sartor pushed for Charlestown to pay cash for capital projects, as if using bonds to fund capital projects was a mortal sin. Maybe Sartor never had a mortgage.

The CCA concedes that even after taking out this year’s budget increases, the unrestricted fund balance still meets the minimum levels (23-33%) they themselves forced on the town. Their complaint: if the town continues to tap the fund balance in the future, this might reduce the fund balance below their comfort level.

They also think the current Town Council doesn’t have adequate plans for future capital projects.

Deputy Dan Slattery

Again with the irony. Since at least 2012, the town Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) has been a CCA obsession, especially when their former President Deputy Dan Slattery served on the Town Council. I wrote about that obsession in detail HERE.

If you don’t want to read it, here are the Cliff Notes: State law and the Town Charter both mandate municipalities to have five-year capital improvement plans. For some reason in 2012, Deputy Dan wasn’t satisfied with the result and tried to make this a big deal even though CCA leader and Planning Commissar Ruth Platner denied the Planning Commission had no role to play. Her Planning posse only dealt with birds and bushes, not buildings and bridges.

After Deputy Dan left, the CCA seemed to lose all interest in the capital improvement plan. If anything, they seemed to see it as an impediment to spending money on shady land deals or any of a number of other crackpot schemes they came up with, often on the spur of the moment.

Prime among them is the 2019 CCA-controlled Council decision to spend a $3 million surplus on a a “community center” in Ninigret Park. This scheme came out of the blue with no plan, design or actual budget for a new building that no one either asked for or wanted. It wasn’t in the approved Ninigret Park Master Plan nor the existing town Capital Improvement Plan. For good reason, taxpayers voted it down.

The CCA makes no mention of the September 2024 Rhode Island Auditor General’s report that shows in hard numbers that the new CRU controlled Town Council has cleaned up the fiscal mess left behind by the CCA.

The contradictions and hypocritical comments from the CCA are par for the course, but I still wonder why they chose to make them. They had to know they would be fact-checked.

One thing did surprise me in the CCA’s remarks on the budget. This year’s town budget reflects a 2% drop in Charlestown’s share of the cost to run the Chariho School District. That’s a savings of ~$287,000.

The saving is entirely due to a drop in the number of students going to Chariho from Charlestown. Why doesn’t the CCA take credit for this? After all, the drop in students is due to the relentless 15-year campaign by the CCA and its founder and leader Ruth Platner to drive families with kids out of Charlestown while ensuring that new families don’t come in.

King Donald sez you must learn to do without

Monkey see....

Hurricane forecasts have been more accurate than ever

NOAA funding cuts could change that and cost lives and property loss

Chris Vagasky, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Radar shows a NOAA Hurricane Hunter flying through
Tropical Storm Idalia during a mission in 2023. Nick Underwood/NOAA

The National Hurricane Center’s forecasts in 2024 were its most accurate on record, from its one-day forecasts, as tropical cyclones neared the coast, to its forecasts five days into the future, when storms were only beginning to come together.

Thanks to federally funded research, forecasts of tropical cyclone tracks today are up to 75% more accurate than they were in 1990. A National Hurricane Center forecast three days out today is about as accurate as a one-day forecast in 2002, giving people in the storm’s path more time to prepare and reducing the size of evacuations.

Accuracy will be crucial again in 2025, as meteorologists predict another active Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

Yet, cuts in staffing and threats to funding at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – which includes the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service – are diminishing operations that forecasters rely on.

I am a meteorologist who studies lightning in hurricanes and helps train other meteorologists to monitor and forecast tropical cyclones. Here are three of the essential components of weather forecasting that have been targeted for cuts to funding and staff at NOAA.

Why Do Americans Pay More for Prescription Drugs?

Big Pharma profit

By David Armstrong for ProPublica

Source: Public Citizen

In the U.S., the price of Revlimid, a brand-name cancer drug, has been increasing for two decades. It now sells for nearly $1,000 a pill. In Europe, the price has been consistently lower — in some countries by two-thirds.

I started reporting on Revlimid after I was prescribed the drug following a diagnosis of multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer. Stunned by the high price, I found that the drugmaker, Celgene, had used Revlimid as its own personal piggy bank for more than a decade, raising the price in the U.S. whenever it saw fit.

Even with lower prices in Europe, Celgene still made a profit there, a former executive told Congress. That added to the more than $21 billion in net earnings the company made after Revlimid was introduced in 2005.

Of course, Revlimid isn’t the only drug with a price disparity. Americans pay more in general for prescription drugs than people in other wealthy countries. And costs keep going up, saddling patients with crippling debt or forcing them to choose between filling prescriptions or buying groceries. So why do we pay so much more? And is anything being done about it?

In most other wealthy countries, governments set a single price for a drug that is usually based on analysis of the therapeutic benefit of the medicine and what other countries pay. In the U.S., drug companies determine what to charge for their products with few restraints. Insurance companies can refuse to cover a drug to try to negotiate a lower price, but for some diseases like cancer, that poses a risk of public backlash. 

R.I.’s bottle bill faces fierce industry opposition despite commission’s two-year effort

Spending big bucks to block needed legislation

By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current

It was supposed to be a compromise between environmental and business interests. Rhode Island’s beverage sale industry representatives agreed to help work on a solution two years ago when a legislative study commission formed to study the best way to craft a deposit-refund program for recyclable bottles and cans.

But at least two of the commission’s 20 members, both of whom work in the industry, remained firmly opposed to two of the “three bottle bills” receiving an initial vetting before the Senate Committee on Environment and Agriculture Wednesday.

Their displeasure was targeted toward a bill sponsored by Sen. Bridget Valverde, a North Kingstown Democrat, and another bill by Sen. Mark McKenney, a Warwick Democrat, calling for a 10-cent fee on individual beverage containers. Consumers could get their money back upon returning the containers to designated redemption sites run by a nonprofit contractor hired by beverage producers.

The point of a redemption program is twofold: to discourage littering and to reduce the waste accumulating in the state’s Central Landfill in Johnston. A report published last month by the commission notes roughly 1,000 tons of microplastic was detected by University of Rhode Island researchers within the sediment of Narragansett Bay — which ultimately end up being consumed by marine species that humans then eat.

Of the six New England states, only Rhode Island and New Hampshire do not have a bottle refund program.

But reaching a compromise with industry leaders was always going to be an uphill battle. Even before the final report was issued in April, five beverage industry members who sat on the commission issued a letter stating they supported none of the recommendations for a proposed bottle deposit program, citing concerns over cost, implementation, and balance issues in the region.

“The intention of this bill is definitely honorable,” Rhode Island Food Dealers Executive Director Scott Bromberg, who served on the commission, told lawmakers Wednesday. “But we beg the question: Is this the right time to propose additional fees to everyday, regular Rhode Islanders?”

He added that businesses would ultimately pass on the 10-cent fee to consumers — at a time when tariffs threaten to drive prices even higher.

“While 10 cents may not seem like a lot on one bottle, $2.40 for a case of $5 bottles of water is significant,” Bromberg said. “This can be recouped, but return is often unpredictable.”

Nicholas Fede Jr., executive director for the Rhode Island Liquor Operators Collaborative, also served on the commission, said the state should instead focus on updating existing curbside infrastructure to better sort out recyclable materials that may end up crushed in the landfill.

“People want to do the easiest thing possible, and that is curbside,” Fede told the committee. “The fact that we’re going to make people take their recyclables to a redemption center is a massive inconvenience.”

McKenney, commission co-chair, sees a bottle bill as an obligation to a cleaner future.

“We can kick the can down the road — it can be our children’s problem, it could be our grandchildren’s problem,” said McKenney, a Warwick Democrat. “But we do have to ask what kind of state we are leaving for them.”

Lack of consensus

Bottle bill supporters and opponents have tried to show the public is on their side. But the results of surveys on the subject favor whoever commissioned the poll.

A survey released Tuesday by a group calling itself Stop the Rhode Island Bottle Tax found that 60% of 600 respondents were opposed to the legislation. The group is backed by the American Beverage Association. EDITOR'S NOTE: I was one of those called for this poll. I said I supported the deposit bill. It was a "push" poll where the questions were designed to give them the answers they wanted, but not with me. - Will Collette

How Trump promotes a radical, unscientific theory about sex and gender in the name of opposing ‘gender ideology extremism’

Trump's actions are anti-nature

Ina Seethaler, Coastal Carolina University

As Pope Francis said, "Who are we to judge?"

The Trump administration claims to be rooting out “gender ideology extremism” and “restoring biological truth” in the United States.

In a January 2025 executive order, Donald Trump decreed that there are only two genders – male and female – and that anyone who believes differently denies “the biological reality of sex.”

Yet as a gender studies scholar, I know what the science really says about gender and sex.

Most researchers in my field, as well as those in other disciplines such as sociology and biology, agree that biological sex is vastly more complicated than solely the two variants of male and female. Sexual diversity has been documented among all animals, including humans.

Trump’s claim otherwise is itself a gender “ideology” – that is, a set of beliefs and values about gender.

Sex and gender are not the same thing

Experts in many disciplines have shown how gender is different from sex. Sex refers to bodily attributes such as genitals, hormones and chromosomes; gender is made up of the norms, roles, behaviors and expectations people are supposed to comply with based on the culture and society they live in.

As such, gender is socially constructed – that is, defined by a community’s beliefs and rituals. In other words, gender does not follow biology. Instead, people have what’s called a “gender identity” – an internal sense of themselves as masculine, feminine or somewhere in-between.

There are many ways in which gender and sex don’t necessarily line up.

Among humans, a conservative estimate by the United Nations suggests that up to 1.7% of the world’s population are intersex, meaning their bodies vary from what has been labeled typical combinations of chromosomes, hormones and genitals.

Intersex rights advocates have long pushed for medical treatment that reflects this fact, rather than common expectations of the human body. Recognition of gender and sex diversity can significantly reduce the stigma and trauma of being an intersex person.

In the animal kingdom, female spotted hyenas have a penis. Male seahorses get pregnant.

It took biologists a long time to figure out that some male animals do things that defy socially determined understandings of masculinity. But once they did, groundbreaking insights into the complexity of evolutionary processes have emerged.

By labeling the concept of gender identity as an “ideology,” the Trump administration has reduced all people – but especially transgender and nonbinary people – to a belief system, ignoring their complex human identities.

Incomprehensibly stupid

More proof that RFK Jr. is an idiot

 

In case you haven't noticed, the bribes Trump is taking are getting bigger and bigger.

Grifter-in-Chief Trump and the Grift That Keeps on Grifting

Robert Reich for Inequality Media

Trump is overplaying his hand.

Not just by usurping the powers of Congress and ignoring Supreme Court rulings. Not just abducting people who are legally in the United States but have put their name to opinion pieces Trump doesn’t like and trucking them off to “detention” facilities. 

Not just using the Justice Department for personal vengeance. Not just unilaterally deciding how much tariff tax American consumers will have to pay on almost everything they buy.

Polls show all these are tanking Trump’s popularity.

But one thing almost all Americans are firmly against — even many loyal Trumpers — is bribery. And Trump is taking bigger and bigger bribes.

It was reported that he’s accepting a luxury Boeing 747-8 plane worth at least $400 million from the Qatari royal family, for use during his presidency and for his personal use afterward.

Trump just can’t resist. He’s been salivating over the plane for months. It’s bigger and newer than Air Force One — and so opulently configured that it’s known as “a flying palace.” (No report on whether it contains a golden toilet.)

Apparently he’s been talking about the plane for months. In February, he toured it while it was parked at Palm Beach International Airport.

He’s tried to redecorate the White House into a palace but that’s not nearly as satisfying as flying around the world in one, especially once he’s left the White House (assuming he will).

Attorney General Pam Bondi said it’s perfectly legal for him to accept such a bribe, er, gift.

Hello?

The U.S. Constitution clearly forbids officers of the United States from taking gifts from foreign governments. It’s called the “emoluments clause.” (See Article I, Section 9, above left.)

Anyone viewing Bondi as a neutral judge of what’s legal and what’s not when it comes to Trump can’t be trusted to be a neutral judge of Bondi. Recall that she represented Trump in a criminal proceeding. Presumably he appointed her attorney general because he knew she’d do and say anything he wanted.

Oh, and she used to lobby for Qatar.

So, what does Qatar get in return for the $400 million plane? What’s the quid for the quo?