Side of the Rhode: Who's Hot and Who's Not?
Russell J. Moore, GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™
Side of the Rhode: Who's Hot and Who's Not?
This week, Moore looks at diversity in the Governor's office, an allegedly lying network anchor, a plan to give the Governor line item veto power, snow removal in the city of Providence, local college sports, a former broadcaster and columnist who's down on his luck, and more. Check out the full list of Who's Hot and Who's Not in Rhode Island this week in the slideshow below:
Side of the Rhode: Who's Hot and Who's Not? - February 6, 2015
HOT
Jim Vincent
The President of the NAACP’s Providence Branch has called on Governor Raimondo to appoint more people from the minority community to her cabinet. In a state where the minority community is just under 25 percent, there’s no reason why the Governor couldn’t have appointed a more diverse cabinet.
HOT
RIC Nursing Program
Rhode Island College’s “R.N. to B.S.N.” program, which allows registered nurses to earn Bachelor of Science degrees in nursing, has been recognized as having one of the top 10 of these programs in the country. That’s an excellent distinction and helps explain why Rhode Island has such excellent nurses in its hospitals.
HOT
Ken Block
The former candidate for Governor has launched a website to support the enactment of a line item veto. A line item veto would give the Governor the power to veto certain aspects of laws without vetoing the whole thing. That would prevent legislators from throwing controversial proposals into otherwise popular bills.
HOT
Ken Hopkins
The Community College of Rhode Island’s baseball coach will be honored with the Words Unlimited Amby Smith Lifetime Achievement Award on March 1, at the West Valley Inn. With a record of 354 wins and 164 losses and 4 regional division titles since he’s taken the job in 2001, the award is well-deserved.
HOT
Providence Friars Men’s Basketball
The New England Patriots are garnering all the attention right now, and rightfully so given their Super Bowl victory last week, but will the Providence College Men’s Basketball team be the next big sports story in Rhode Island? The Friars bested #24 Georgetown on Wednesday night and moved into second place in the Big East conference.
HOT
Newport
The world’s largest hotel site, trivago.com, has named Newport, Rhode Island’s “City by the Sea,” the nation’s 17th best city in the country for quality accommodations. It’s no secret to Rhode Islanders that Newport has some excellent hotels and attractions, but it’s nice to see it get some more outside love.
NOT
Providence Snow Plows
It just seems like if something can go wrong in Providence, it will. GoLocalProv’s Stephen Beale reported this week that the city bought faulty snow plows last year that had “glitches” that caused them to malfunction during the last two snowstorms. This helps (partially) explain the poor plowing job in Providence this year. This is not the current administration’s fault, but hopefully Mayor Elorza can get this problem fixed quickly.
NOT
Gina Raimondo
The Governor promised to make diversity a huge priority in her administration during her campaign last year. But minority community leaders are speaking out and saying they wish there had been more of an effort to include members of the minority community in Raimondo’s cabinet.
NOT
Rudy Cheeks
The former WHJY and WHJJ host and Providence Phoenix writer has apparently fallen on hard times since the demise of latter. Fortunately for Cheeks, his friends have taken up his cause and harnessed the power of the internet to help their friend by creating a GoFundMe link that has, as of Friday, raised more than $6,500.
NOT
Snowstorm Injuries
The Rhode Island Department of Health has reported that 2 deaths resulted and 274 injuries came as a result of the devastating Juno storm that happened just two weeks ago. Snow is a curse, not a blessing, but fortunately there are good volunteers that are involved with organizations like Serve RI, and anyone needing help during the storm should not be too proud to call on those groups.
NOT
Anti-Vaccine Movement
As Carol Anne Costa pointed out in her recent column, a portion of the American public has been scared into an anti-vaccination hysteria, and predictably enough, we now have a measles outbreak spreading across the country. Whenever people ignore the facts in favor of pseudo-science, the results are as predictable as they are horrible.
NOT
Brian Williams
Brian Williams, the NBC Evening News anchor, has claimed numerous times over the last 12 years that he was aboard a US helicopter in Iraq that was forced down after being hit by Iraqi fire back in 2003 while covering the war. On Wednesday, he came forward and admitted that he “misremembered” that event and was never on the helicopter in the first place. Yikes!
