Side of the Rhode: Who’s Hot and Who’s Not - August 20, 2015

HOT

Jack Reed

The senior and influential U.S. Senator from Rhode Island has come out in favor of the deal with Iran that President Obama has agreed upon with the Middle East power. Yes, the deal isn't perfect, but it does give the United States a better opportunity to make certain that Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon. (Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has also come out in support of the deal and therefore deserves some credit as well, but he normally defers to Reed on foreign policy issues, so Reed's decision was key.)
 

HOT

Viola Davis

The two-time Tony Award winner and two-time Oscar nominated actress from Central Falls who lived, along with the other 7 members of her family, in poverty as a child, but rose to prominence thanks to her terrific acting skills, has had her story featured in this months edition of AARP magazine. Davis has done so much charity for her hometown and deserves all the accolades and credit she garners. 
 

HOT

Seth Magaziner

The General Treasurer, along with Capital Good Fund, announced a new partnership this week that will allow people with poor credit to access car loans at affordable rates for low-income Rhode Islanders. The initiative is a necessary step to help lower income Rhode Islanders garner access to financial services for a basic necessity such as transportation. (Now let's improve public transportation and make biking safer and Rhode Island will really be onto something.)

HOT

Newport County

Since 1980, the median income in the seaside Newport county of Rhode Island has seen incomes spike by $23,460--about a 49 percent hike, according to a recent report from GoLocalProv and FindTheBest.com. That's decent growth over the last three decades, but as the report points out, costs have also risen significantly as well, which for the most part, has neutralized the gains.
 

HOT

Providence Children's Museum

The museum will display the 10th edition of the annual Heart Gallery. The Heart Gallery is a  a traveling exhibit of professional portraits of children who are in state care and waiting adoption. It's nice to see an art exhibit that highlights the importance of helping to find full-time homes for children who deserve to find loving families.
 

HOT

Warwick North Little League

The Little League Softball team played in their version of The World Series on Wednesday night on ESPN networks. The girls didn't win the game, but making it as far as they did was a terrific accomplishment. The feat is another in a string of good showings by Rhode Island based little league squads, including David Belisle's Cumberland team last year. 
 

NOT

Jorge Elorza

The mayor didn't have a good week in the news. First, a group of realtors complained about the crime wave currently taking place on the city's east side. Then the news broke that the city was forced to close down pools during a heat wave due to health concerns about the water, as some of it was found to be cloudy. What's worse is the fact that the city wasn't up front and transparent about their rationale for closing the pools.

Lastly, GoLocalProv reported that Elorza was in Guatemala meeting with Otto Perez Molina, the nation's President. The problem is, Molina is up to his eyeballs in corruption scandals. Molina's Vice President recently resigned due to being implicated in a kickback scheme, Molina's son-in-law was arrested in July for drug trafficking, and Molina is himself suspected of committing war crimes during the country's civil war. Why would Elorza want Providence to have diplomatic ties with such a tainted administration?
 

NOT

T.F. Green Airport

The airport has decided to take part in a Department of Homeland Security Program that will expand a behavior detection program that would attempt to determine travelers motives to do harm by monitoring mundane actions. The problem with the new program is that it has been found ineffective according to a 2013 report by the Government Accountability Office, and in 2012, the program, when initiated at Logan airport, was found to raise racial profiling issues.

NOT

96

That's the amount of break and entering situations that occurred during the months of April, May, and June of this year on the East Side of Providence, an increase of 47. In other words, that was almost double. The spike in breaking and entering occurrences has caused realtors to encourage their clients to take extra security measures and call for more attention from the city. Things aren't going so great in the wealthier part of town these days. 
 

NOT

National Grid

The state legislature eliminated the tax on electricity earlier this year, yet it was brought to the attention of Rhode Island State Senator James Sheehan (D-North Kingstown) that one of his constituents who owned a business was still charged the tax, even after it was repealed. The company has admitted to the mistake, called it an oversight, and has promised to refund any tax money that they collected as a result. But a massive company like National Grid should know better, and the mistake should've never happened to begin with.
 

NOT

Vaccine Mandate Opponents

Opponents of the HPV vaccination, which the Rhode Island Department of Health recently made mandatory for all 7th graders, held a rally against the new regulation earlier this week at the Cumberland Library. Vaccination opponents make some good points about individual choice and parental control, but they seem to ignore the fact that vaccinations have done so much for public health over the last century.
 

NOT

Patriots Fantasy Sports Lounge

By partnering up with DraftKings, and opening a lounge that's sponsored by the website that's basically legalized gambling, which may or may not put them in violation of the Massachusetts laws on gaming centers. The New England Patriots should have been more thoughtful before jumping head first into a website that, let's face it, encourages gambling much in the way backpage.com encourages prostitution.