Side of the Rhode: Who’s Hot and Who’s Not? - November 12, 2021

HOT

Haven Brothers

Haven Brothers — the iconic Providence diner — recently played host to Hollywood. 

The downtown fixture, situated next to City Hall, is a well-known destination for those seeking out burgers, fries, shakes, and more. 

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that folks from the film Johnny and Clyde — produced by Chad Verdi and directed by Tom DeNucci, both Rhode Island natives— sought out the location for filming. 

As GoLocal reported in September, Hollywood celebrity Megan Fox is headlining the movie along with Tyson Ritter, the lead vocalist for the band All-American Rejects, being produced in the Ocean State. 

HOT

Jamestown Arts Center

Michael Rose takes us for a tour of the newest exhibit at the Jamestown Arts Center.

Rhode Island enjoys the benefits of many community art organizations that show off local artists. The regular member exhibitions of such groups are a resource for those looking to learn more about art-makers in their community. They are also a great place to start supporting artists by purchasing featured artworks. The Jamestown Arts Center’s Members’ Exhibition, on view through December 15, is one such opportunity and it is stocked full of highlights.

JAC’s Members’ Exhibition was judged by Entang Wiharso, a multi-disciplinary artist and Guggenheim Fellow who lives and works in Rhode Island and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The top prize-winning works selected by Wiharso are distinguished and enjoyable. Best in Show went to Tracy Weisman’s inventive “Essential Workers’, which assembles blue collar name tags into an American flag, recalling the identities of the all-too-often anonymous individuals who kept the country running during pandemic chaos. Second Place is an enticing and textural mixed media work by Jemison Faust and Third Place is a small but hypnotic textile work by Paula Stebbins Becker.

READ MORE HERE

HOT

Return of the Comic Con

Comic Con RI was back at the Rhode Island Convention Center and the Dunk.

The three-day event brought tens of thousands of revelers to Providence to experience costumes, speakers and to buy collectibles.

It was a boon to Providence and great to see the event return.

HOT

The Best of RI Design

Providence-based Sproutel keeps developing interactive, smart stuffed toys to assist children with complex health challenges. And, the company keeps winning some of the highest-profile innovation awards in the country.

This year Sproutel’s new product was named to TIME’s Best Innovations of 2021 list.

Here is what TIME wrote about Sproutel's Purrble:

During the pandemic, countless children have been isolated at home and distressed as their lives and routines were abruptly disrupted. For some, Purrble ($49.99) came to the rescue.

An interactive plush toy equipped with seven sensors that respond to touch, Purrble’s haptic heartbeat speeds up to 135 b.p.m. when it senses somebody’s playing with it. Kids can then comfort their companion with gentle petting, slowing Purrble’s vibrational heartbeat to a purr—calming themselves as well in the process.

Developed using research from the Committee for Children, a nonprofit and global leader on social-emotional learning, the device aims to help children learn to regulate their emotions. Preliminary research shows that Purrble is doing just that: in a study with 20 families, 19 parents reported that the toy helped their kids calm down when they needed to. “I grew up with a chronic illness as a child and would have loved to have this,” says Aaron Horowitz, CEO of Sproutel, which designed the toy. 

HOT

Steve Griffin

If you are a parent of a young athlete you may want to listen to Stephen Griffin.

The former top-flight venture capitalist and business executive says he has seen firsthand the broken structure of youth sports.

He was the CEO of the parent company of Global Premier Soccer (GPS), one of the largest youth soccer organizations in the United States. 

The company he ran also oversaw youth sports programs in other sports including hockey and lacrosse, but it is soccer where the greatest abuse and fraud has been discovered.

And, he is warning parents that youth sports are almost entirely unregulated and reeks of exploitation. 

READ MORE HERE

HOT

Joe Biden

Passage of the Infrastructure bill was one of the most difficult legislative achievements for any President.

Trump was supposed to lead off his legislative agenda with a major infrastructure bill, but failed.

Biden deserves credit for the success and the GOP House members who supported the legislation 

HOT

RI Coalition of Business Service Organizations Receives First-Ever $1M SBA Community Navigator Grant

A coalition of RI’s Business Support Organizations (BSOs) with a track record of serving Women and BIPOC-led small businesses was awarded $1 million from the innovative Small Business Administration's (SBA) Community Navigator Pilot Program. 

This grant is one of only 51 awards from more than 700 applicants nationally and is the only Rhode Island-based award.

The grant is structured as a “Hub and Spoke” model in order to create supportive networks to assist historically underserved small businesses and entrepreneurs to effectively navigate the complex landscape of services required to launch, pivot, and recover from the impacts of the pandemic.

Social Enterprise Greenhouse (SEG) will serve as the grant’s administrative Hub with a number of Spoke organizations including the Center for Southeast Asians, the RI Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Hope & Main, the Multicultural Innovation Center, and the Rhode Island Black Business Association.

SEG has had a deep track record in Rhode Island of cultivating startup companies.

For the past 18 months, members of the Coalition have been on the front lines of the State’s effort to assist thousands of small and micro-business owners to maneuver through grant and loan applications and other programs released in urgent response to the devastating impacts of COVID-19.

“Our Coalition came together to coordinate Statewide outreach and to reduce redundancy and confusion for our clients. A great example of collaboration is our work with Hope & Main to ensure that a number of our members were included in a grant program developed for restaurants seeking alternative revenue streams during the COVID lockdown called DishUp RI. Lisa Raiola, President of Hope & Main said, “Our partnership with the RI Hispanic Chamber helped us to reach many Hispanic food-preneurs who might not otherwise have accessed the technical assistance we provided to help restaurant owners to make consumer packaged products they could sell in grocery stores. Many of these restaurants were hit hard by COVID, and the DishUp RI  program helped them to find new pathways forward,” said Oscar Mejias, Founder and CEO of the Rhode Island Hispanic Chamber, 

Kelly Ramirez, CEO of SEG, said, “We plan to leverage the Community Navigator pilot learnings, capacity, and systems, to support the entire coalition whose additional members include the Center for Women and Enterprise, Fuerza Laboral, One Neighborhood Builders, and the Small Business Development Corporation. In fact, we are eager to welcome other business support organizations to join this collaborative effort.”

NOT

Foulkes Need to Answer Questions About Involvement in Opioid Crisis

Helena Foulkes, the corporate CEO who announced last month she is running as a Democrat for Rhode Island Governor, loves to tout her 25-year record at CVS. She says among her many accomplishments, she is responsible for creating the ExtraCare card for the retailer.

But she won’t answer questions about the charges made by Attorney Generals around the country, who claim that under Foulkes' leadership as President of CVS, the company profited off the opioid epidemic.

According to the CDC, the U.S. economic cost of opioid use disorder ($471 billion) and fatal opioid overdose ($550 billion) during 2017 totaled over one trillion dollars.

The Attorney General of Kentucky is one of many who have filed suit against CVS for the company’s role in the opioid epidemic.

Attorney General of Kentucky Daniel Cameron PHOTO: Governor's office

Attorney General Daniel Cameron filed a lawsuit in June against CVS Health for the company’s role in Kentucky’s opioid epidemic.  The lawsuit, filed in Franklin Circuit Court, alleges the company engaged in unlawful business practices and failed to guard against the diversion of opioids.  CVS is not alone. The suit against CVS is the latest action to hold companies accountable for their role in the Commonwealth’s opioid crisis, said Cameron.

“During the height of the opioid epidemic, CVS allowed millions of dosage units of opioids to flood Kentucky’s borders, fueling the crisis and devastating thousands of families and communities across the Commonwealth,” said Cameron.  “As both distributor and pharmacy, CVS was in a unique position to monitor and stop the peddling of these highly-addictive drugs from their stores, yet they ignored their own safeguard systems. By bringing this lawsuit on behalf of the people of Kentucky, we are holding CVS accountable for these decisions and for contributing to a man-made crisis that tragically led to the loss of life of thousands of Kentuckians.”

"CVS maintained over 100 separate license numbers in the Commonwealth as a 'wholesaler,' 'out-of-state pharmacy,' and 'retail pharmacy.'  Between 2006 and 2014, CVS pharmacies in Kentucky purchased more than 151 million dosage units of oxycodone and hydrocodone from its own distribution centers and third-party distributors, accounting for nearly 6.1 percent of the total dosage units in the Commonwealth during this time," according to Cameron.

During the time Cameron says CVS was most reckless, it was Foulkes who oversaw the pharmacy function — according to her bio, she served as executive vice president of CVS Health and President of CVS Pharmacy during those years.

“One CVS store, located in Perry County, purchased over 6.8 million dosage units of oxycodone and hydrocodone from 2006 to 2014, which was enough opioids for every man, woman, and child in the county to have over 26 pills every year during the same period.  A CVS in Crittenden County bought over 2.8 million dosage units of the drugs, enough to supply everyone in the county with over 34 pills every year,” according to Cameron.

In the federal lawsuit, Kentucky claims, “CVS played a dual role in creating, fueling, and maintaining the opioid epidemic within Kentucky’s borders — (1) through their retail pharmacies, as dispensers of opioids to the public, and (2) as a wholesale distributor, taking and shipping orders to and from their own pharmacies. Occupying two links in the opioid supply chain, CVS was in a unique and superior position of knowledge with regard to the gross amount of opioids pumped into their stores and poured out onto the streets of Kentucky.”

Foulkes campaign website states, “She held nearly every leadership position, including president of retail where she was responsible for 200,000 employees and eighty billion dollars in revenue.”

READ MORE HERE

NOT

Joe Biden

The United States consumer price index (CPI) rose 6.2% in October from the same time in 2020, with the increase in consumer prices marking the fastest annual pace since 1990. 

Data released by the U.S. Department of Labor statistics on Wednesday also showed the CPI rose .9%  from September, making it the largest gain in four months. 

The White House released an official statement from the President Wednesday morning. 

“Today’s report shows an increase over last month. Inflation hurts Americans' pocketbooks, and reversing this trend is a top priority for me. The largest share of the increase in prices in this report is due to rising energy costs—and in the few days since the data for this report were collected, the price of natural gas has fallen,” said Biden. 

NOT

So Where Did You Get the Money?

Transparency for you but not for me.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Seth Magaziner is calling on the other candidates running for office to be transparent and disclose their five previous years' taxes. But, he is refusing to disclose the source of $800,000 that he lent his own campaign account. 

Magaziner made the demand for the release of tax returns on Monday. Magaziner is one of five prominent Democrats running for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2022.

“Rhode Islanders deserve to have trust in their elected officials and we earn that trust by being transparent,” said Magaziner -- in talking about taxes.  “Candidates in Rhode Island should follow the long-accepted custom that President Trump broke when he refused to release his tax returns.  No one should ever have to guess who their elected officials are working for.”