Side of the Rhode: Who’s Hot and Who’s Not? - March 4, 2022

HOT

Give Credit Where Credit Is Due 

Dan McKee gets a tip of the hat on this one

With over 2 million total vaccines administered in Rhode Island, the state is #1 in the nation for percent of population fully vaccinated.

It is also #3 in the nation for percent of population with a booster shot, according to the New York Times COVID-19 data tracker.

HOT

Looking to Understand Reparations

GoLocal MINDSETTER™ Raymond Two Hawks Watson has a must-read column on the issue of reparations this week.

READ HERE

HOT

Ed Cooley

The PC Friars finished the regular season 24-4. The Friars played in the third-best league in college basketball according to the RPI rankings.

Ed Cooley could win the award for coach of the year.

Bring on the Big East tourney and the Big Dance. 

HOT

Joe Biden's State of the State

It has been decades since Democrats and Republicans stood and applauded the ideas presented by a U.S. President.

NOT

Magaziner's Overblown Claims on Divesting From Russian Investments 

RI General Treasurer -- and U.S. Congressional candidate -- Seth Magaziner is claiming that he is leading the state's effort to divest its retirement fund from Russian investments.

Magaziner's press release states, "Treasurer Magaziner called for an emergency meeting of the State Investment Commission earlier this week to approve his plan to liquidate all financial holdings connected to Russian assets as the United States and allied nations imposed a series of economic sanctions meant to have both immediate and long-term effects on the Russian economy."

Top Wall Street whistleblower Ted Siedle, however, says Magaziner's claims are hyped -- at best.

Siedle writes:

Across the nation, politicians are naïvely calling for state pensions to dump their Russian investments to punish the country for its invasion of Ukraine. Since state pensions have in recent years agreed to let Wall Street fund managers keep secret their investment holdings, states don’t even know the Russian assets they hold.  

Yesterday, state Attorney General Dave Yost publicly called upon Ohio’s five public employee retirement funds to divest themselves of Russian financial holdings to further punish the country over its invasion of Ukraine. Yost naively directed the five state funds to identify Russian equities and divest as quickly as possible.

Good luck with that.

Also yesterday, Rhode Island General Treasurer Seth Magaziner and the State Investment Commission voted to pull state pension assets from Russia. Magaziner's office claims the market value of its Russian investments prior to the invasion was no more than $30 million. Don’t count on it.

Magaziner is almost certainly not including Russian assets held in secretive private funds offshore.

READ THE REST HERE

NOT

Legal Fees to Keep Government Secret

A GoLocal exclusive uncovered the growing cost of litigation over the battle to open up the Joint Committee on Legislative Services.

The effort by Speaker of the House Joe Shekarchi and Senate President Dominick Ruggerio to block legal efforts to force the legislative leaders to conduct public meetings of the Joint JCLS is costing Rhode Island taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

According to hundreds of pages of documents secured by GoLocal from the Rhode Island Attorney General and General Treasurer’s offices, the costs to date exceed $200,000 -- and some billing documents appear to be missing.

On February 15, GoLocal filed under the Access to Public Records Act seeking the billing documents for the more than a half dozen attorneys hired by the state of Rhode Island to fight efforts by House Minority Leader Blake Filippi to force the JCLS to meet and conduct legislative business in public.

NOT

Voting No and Abstained

The U.N. resolution condemning Russia passed overwhelmingly by a vote of 141 to 5 with 35 abstentions.

The five countries that voted against it were Russia, Belarus, Syria, North Korea and Eritrea.

India and China were two of the countries that abstained.

Here is the full list of countries that abstained:

Algeria
Angola
Armenia
Bangladesh
Bolivia
Burundi
Central African Republic
China
Congo
Cuba
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
India
Iran
Iraq
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Madagascar
Mali
Mongolia
Mozambique
Namibia
Nicaragua
Pakistan
Senegal
South Africa
South Sudan
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Uganda
Vietnam
Zimbabwe

NOT

Guns, Guns, Guns

The man arrested this week by state and federal authorities with over 200 firearms was a former Republican candidate for Rhode Island General Assembly. 

In 2018, campaign finance records show that Ronald Andruchuk, residing at the time at 68 Mica Avenue in Cranston, filed a notice of organization to run as a Republican for the Rhode Island General Assembly in District 14. 

Records show he ran as a write-in candidate, as he did not collect or submit the necessary signatures for placement on the ballot.

He filed two required campaign reports — 28 days before the election and 7 days before the election — before voting records show that Democratic Rep. Charlene Lima won the district with 2,572 votes, and “write-in” candidates garnered 102. 

Andruchuk subsequently dissolved his campaign account following the election, and has not run since. 

As GoLocal reported last Friday:

A Burrillville man was arrested on Thursday following an investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive (ATF) and the Burrillville Police Department that resulted in the overnight seizure of 211 firearms and rounds of ammunition during a court-authorized search of his home, according to the United States Attorney Zachary A. Cunha.