Rhode Islanders are losing faith in President Barack Obama’s leadership after 18 months of double-digit unemployment, according to the new WPRI 12 poll being released on air right now.

The survey of 500 likely voters by Fleming & Associates was conducted Sept. 22-26. The margin of error is 4.38%. Here are some favorable/unfavorable numbers:

• Barack Obama: 45%/54%
• Sheldon Whitehouse: 41%/53%
• Jack Reed: 56%/40%
• James Langevin: 46%/41%

And that wraps up our poll results. Click here for all our poll coverage, and here for complete results with crosstabs.

…but overall, Providence Mayor David Cicilline is still way ahead of state Rep. John Loughlin in the 1st Congressional District race, according to the new WPRI 12 poll being released on air right now. The survey of 250 likely voters by Fleming & Associates was conducted Sept. 22-26. The margin of error is 4.38%. Here are the numbers:

• Cicilline: 48%
• Loughlin: 29%
• Undecided: 22%

Much more, including the candidates’ reactions, in our complete story on WPRI.com.

You can also read our results for the governor’s race and how they compare with other polling, details on how the poll was done and voters’ opinions on 38 Studios, Deepwater Wind and pension reform.

Next up Thursday at 10 and 11 p.m., find out how Rhode Islanders feel about President Obama and U.S. Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse.

With September coming to a close today, Rhode Island’s polling drought has definitely come to an end. This month saw the release of three new surveys gauging the state of the gubernatorial race, with one each from Rasmussen (taken Sept. 16), WJAR/Quest Research (Sept. 15-17) [pdf] and WPRI pollster Joe Fleming (Sept. 22-26).

Of the three, the most controversial proved to be the WJAR/Quest poll done by retired RIC professor Victor Profughi, which gave Democrat Frank Caprio a huge 12-point lead over independent Lincoln Chafee. By contrast, the two men were separated by just three points in both Rasmussen’s and our poll – well within the margin of error. (In fact, the Rasmussen and WPRI polls both had the two at 33%-30%, with Chafee ahead in theirs and Caprio on top in ours.)

Here’s a comparison of how Caprio, Chafee and Republican John Robitaille fared in the three polls, along with the percentage of undecided voters:

As Profughi pointed out to me in an e-mail, all three polls tell the same story about Frank Caprio’s support being in the 30%-35% range. But there is a nine-point spread between Profughi’s and Rasmussen’s results for Chafee, 10 points for Robitaille, and a whopping 14 points for the share of voters undecided.

Our WPRI poll by Joe Fleming is much closer to Rasmussen’s results, and campaign aides told us it largely matched their internal surveys. One notable difference in the samples: Profughi’s was only 12% Republicans, compared with 17% in ours, and 50% independents, versus 39% in ours. (All this is a reminder of why the way a poll is conducted makes such a difference.)

In retrospect, Profughi told me he should have pushed harder to see if self-identified undecided voters were actually leaning toward one candidate or another. “[W]e didn’t do nearly enough to break those who told us they were undecided first time out,” he said.

(more…)

I don’t have much to add to Ed Fitzpatrick’s column today about Citizens for an Accountable Legislature, a new effort by former Carcieri aide Gary Sasse and Common Cause Rhode Island chief John Marion to improve the General Assembly, but I wanted to highlight it:

The 10-point plan calls for placing a moratorium on legislative and party fundraisers during the legislative session. That would help “to reduce the influence of money in politics and to not have a pay-to-play system,” Sasse said. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 28 states place prohibitions or restrictions on giving and receiving campaign contributions during the legislative session.

Marion said Rhode Island is the only state without online audio or video of its legislature. The 10-point plan calls for producing a record of Assembly committee meetings, including audio and/or video, and linking that record to legislation on the Assembly website. Records of committee and floor votes would accompany bills (along with fiscal notes and policy briefs), and an automated system would send e-mail updates to those who request them.

The race for governor remains a statistical dead heat, according to the new WPRI 12 poll being released on air right now. The survey of 500 likely voters by Fleming & Associates was conducted Sept. 22 to 26. The margin of error is 4.38%. Here are the numbers:

• Frank Caprio (D): 33%
• Lincoln Chafee (I): 30%
• John Robitaille (R): 19%
• Undecided: 15%
• Ken Block (M): 4%

Much more, including who’s winning independents and how Rhode Islanders feel about the state’s direction, over in our complete story on WPRI.com. You can also read details on how the poll was done and voters’ opinions on pension reform.

Next up at 10 on Fox and 11 on WPRI, find out how Rhode Islanders feel about the 38 Studios and Deepwater Wind deals.

This was news to me: Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Jeremy Kapstein, a top Red Sox executive, played a key role in baseball’s modern labor relations history, The Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo reported Sunday:

No-trade clauses are starting to annoy the teams who have given them out like jelly beans. You reach the point in every long-term contract where it’s bad enough you have to keep paying an aging player, then you have to ask for his permission to trade him after you’ve paid him millions. …

You can blame Red Sox senior adviser Jeremy Kapstein, who was the first agent to negotiate no-trade clauses into player contracts, for the likes of Don Gullett, Bobby Grich, Don Baylor, and Joe Rudi in the mid-’70s. But when Kapstein switched over to management as CEO of the Padres in 1989, he fought hard to eliminate them from negotiations.

We live, we learn, we switch to management.

For The Providence Journal, like nearly all daily newspapers in the U.S., good news is all relative in these days of shrinking readership and plunging advertising revenue.

So here’s today’s good news: The Journal’s ad revenue shrank at the slowest pace in more than two years during the second quarter, which ended June 30. It was also the fourth quarter in a row that saw the rate of decline slow.

Here’s a chart showing the annual change in ProJo ad sales since the start of 2007, based on regulatory filings by The Journal’s parent company, Dallas-based A.H. Belo:

The bad news: The Journal’s second-quarter ad sales were down 17.3% compared with 2009. And although higher newsstand and home-delivery prices are adding to its take from circulation, advertising still made up two-thirds of the paper’s annual revenue last year.

Remember, too, these figures are all comparisons with the year before – so this was a 17.3% drop from ad sales during 2009’s second quarter. Those in turn had dropped 32.5% from 2008’s second quarter, which had dropped 20.5% from 2007’s second quarter, which had dropped 7.1% from 2006’s second quarter.

Put another way, for every $10 of advertising The Journal sold in the second quarter of 2006, it sold $9.29 in 2007; $7.39 in 2008; $4.98 in 2009; and $4.12 in 2010. More than half its advertising revenue has disappeared in just five years. (The actual total last year was $71 million, down from $135 million in 2006.)

That helps explain why The Journal (and its sister paper, The Dallas Morning News) are considering raising their prices yet again, as I reported this week:

The Providence Journal is exploring whether to raise the newspaper’s price again following a double-digit increase last year, a top executive at its parent company said Monday.

The Journal’s sister paper, The Dallas Morning News, “is evaluating potential circulation pricing strategies for the remainder of 2010,” and The Journal “is also reviewing further potential options,” Alison Engel, chief financial officer of A.H. Belo Corp., told investors in a conference call Monday.

Last year, The Journal increased the cost of a home-delivery subscription by 14 percent, to $416 a year. The newsstand price of a weekday edition increased to $1. The Morning News also raised prices.

But let’s end on a happier note. A.H. Belo said this week that The Journal continues to post the best EBITDA – a business term meaning earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization – of its three papers, so the leaner ProJo doesn’t appear to be hemorrhaging money.

And after cutting about 150 employees in 2008-09, reducing the paper’s staff to 562 full- and part-time workers, Ian Donnis of WRNI (and WPRI’s “Newsmakers”) reported Tuesday that the paper is hiring to replace departing State House reporter Steve Peoples.

(Full disclosure: The Providence Journal and Eyewitness News are news partners.)

I spoke this afternoon with Keith Stokes, executive director of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, to get his side of the story on the Schilling deal. I also asked him about why his agency’s board voted to give Schilling 60 percent of the amount it is allowed to guarantee before the EDC had even finalized the rules that will govern the program. Here’s an excerpt from my story that was just posted:

Rhode Island signed away more than half of its brand-new loan program to Curt Schilling’s company before state officials had developed rules and regulations for it because it was too good a deal to pass up, a top official said Tuesday. …

The EDC had originally asked for the Job Creation Guaranty Program to have authorization for up to $50 million in loan guarantees, which would “provide a level of flexibility that our [existing] capital programs had not had,” Stokes said.

But after Schilling reached out to state officials in February, the General Assembly decided to increase the program’s size to $125 million, Stokes said. That way, $75 million would be available for 38 Studios and the original $50 million would remain for new and existing companies in Rhode Island.

Basically, Stokes said the General Assembly added $75m to the $50m program with the idea being it would almost certainly be used to aid 38 Studios – so that money would not have been there to help other companies, as has been argued by some critics.

The EDC sent over a fact sheet explaining the various rules governing the $75 million loan guarantee for Schilling’s 38 Studios, which was approved yesterday.

First, one thing that is important to understand is that Rhode Island did not write a check for $75 million to 38 Studios yesterday. The state is, basically, co-signing the company’s loans from private banks – like when your mom helps you get a car loan.

Here are some of the nuggets that stuck out to me from the EDC:

Jobs: 38 Studios is supposed to have 125 full-time employees here by a year after it closes on its first loan – that would be August 2011 under current projections. It is supposed to have the full 450 employees in place within three years, so by August 2013. It has to pay the state $7,500 per year for each job it doesn’t create – so if the company only has 100 jobs in August 2011, it would owe the state $187,500. (I’m not sure how much of a penalty that would really be – we’ll see. Massachusetts has run into some trouble getting companies to abide by things like that.)

Location: One question is, where in Providence is 38 Studios going to go? The EDC says the company is definitely going to be headquartered in the capital, and there is a lot of vacant office space in the city – more than 21% of it was empty at last count. I bet landlords would love to get this high-profile, well-funded firm as a tenant. It will be interesting to see how they go about wooing Schilling and co.

Cash: Although the state doesn’t control the money, the deal does not allow the bank to fork over the whole $75 million to 38 Studios all at once. The first $15 million will be provided by Aug. 31 (if the loan goes through on schedule), with another $10 million by Nov. 30, and on from there. The EDC expects 38 Studios to have received the full $75 million by the end of next year (a year and a half before the full 450 jobs are supposed to be created).

The EDC’s fact sheet about the loan is posted after the jump. (more…)

Neil Armstrong and President Barack Obama

I promise not to get too political here, but it will be hard not to do that.  One of my biggest passions is space and space exploration.  I feel like I was born about 1 thousand years too early because I would love to explore the universe.  There will be interstellar travel by then right? Well, the path to that day just hit a speed bump.  President Barack Obama will be bringing dreams of manned space exploration back down to Earth in an announcement on Thursday April 15.  He will be addressing workers at the Kennedy Space Center as well as former and current astronauts.

As you probably already know, the Space Shuttle Program will be coming to an end this year.   Nine thousand jobs will be lost at the KSC.  Great timing, right?  Obama will be creating 2500  jobs with his new vision of robotic deep sea exploration.  That’s a bonus.  However, he plans to axe the Constellation program which is NASA’s latest way to get to the moon.   One of my heroes, Neil Armstrong, is very outspoken about the President’s decision saying our space program would become 3rd rate.  Who would know better than Neil Armstrong, former Apollo commanders James Lovell and Eugene Cernan? They disagree with the President, and so do I. 

(more…)

Linc Chafee enters the race for governor with a 5 page speech and yet for most who covered his announcement, he buried the lead

Bottom of page 2 – a two tiered sales tax. One rate for what’s taxed now and a 1% levy on 9 billion dollars in untaxed items including food and medication. 

Don’t start hoarding bread and aspirin yet. Slipping that one past the General Assembly would be like sneaking a  pork chop past the wolves at the state house door. (more…)

One of the hottest days of this chilly summer season claimed the life of a Warwick boy in a tragic accident. This week, his father talks about the loss for the first time.

(more…)

I’ve heard the political turmoil in Iran referred to as  a rally. That choice of word reminded  me of a basketball ‘celebration’ at PC a few seasons ago.

The Friars had just won a tournament game. So, some of the overjoyed decided to burn a boat…break a few windows…hoot, holler, etc.  As a student rushed past our live truck, I asked him where he was going.

(more…)

There was another tea party on Smith Hill and red ink is flowing from North Providence to East Providence. And yet in East Greenwich, the town council was allowed to pass its budget without a public vote because there weren’t enough taxpayers for a quorum. Then again, EG froze salaries, is spending less on town operations and increased school spending by just over half a percent. Why would anyone vote ‘no’?

This week on Street Stories, John and I will take anyone who’s willing on the road to life.   The story begins with a high school wrestler who’s about to be pinned.

“Come on Andrew!” you hear someone from the crowd scream.

Moments later, Andrew Dunham does a reversal,  tossing his opponent on his back.  Andrew, now a state champion, was close to pinned in life only a few years ago.

(more…)

This week on Street Stories, John and I take you inside one of Rhode Island’s most notorious ‘industries’ through the lens of a pair of local filmmakers.

Their first feature length documentary, Happy Endings, captures all the angles of the massage parlour business and the loophole that allows indoor prostitution or what are known as ‘happy endings’.

It’s Not Easy Productions penned its name for a reason. Tracking down every voice and getting them on tape and into production is difficult but these two are part of a growing corp of local fillmmakers.

  (more…)

Now that I have your attention, did you see this story on 60 minutes?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/25/60minutes/main4752082.shtml

It’s a ‘re-run’ of a piece about a potential drug of the future called Resveratrol. The pill is drawn from the chemistry in red wine and turns on what the drug developers call your survival gene. You could drink red wine instead but as the headline indicates, you might not survive that particular treatment. The pills contain the healthy equivalent of a thousand bottles of wine. The pill version of that could be on the market within five years.

45 year old Gregg Berube is accused of a sixth DUI! Read that again. Sixth DUI!

http://www.wpri.com/dpp/news/local_news/local_wpri_plainville_man_charged_with_his_sixth_DUI_20090525_mla

The only time a defendant seems to do DUI jail time is when someone is killed. You’d think after two or three ‘potentially’ deadly mistakes, the law would allow a judge to lock someone up until they realized they have to stop.  Berube has recieved five chances and now, possibly a sixth.

RI ranks one notch worse than Mass when it comes to bad drivers and both are near the bottom. 46th and 45th.

http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/autos_content_landing_pages/993/where-the-worst-drivers-live/;_ylc=X3oDMTE5ZmdmcGVkBF9TAzI3MTYxNDkEc2VjA2ZwLXRvZGF5BHNsawN3b3JzdC1kcml2ZXJz

I think we all believe we’re better drivers than we really are.  Although, I do have a secret desire…not secret anymore…to ‘track down’ anyone who carelessly pulls out into traffic in front of me. Also –  no patience for drivers who ignore others’  blinkers and never use their own. But that’s only because I’m a better driver than everyone else. (Please check first sentence of this paragraph.)

A Rhode Island farmer who helps abandoned and even tortured animals, continues fighting red tape and foreclosure. John and I head back to North Scituate for this Street Story.

Dan MacKenzie’s foreclosure deadline ended without an extension, leaving Dan and more than a hundred ‘rescued’ animals on the edge of eviction or worse.

“A lot of them were old, crippled, abandoned. Abused. Diseased,” Dan tells us.

“Only one way I’m leaving,” he says to a couple of friends who stopped by the farm.

He says he paid his mortgage on Bonniedale for eight years but when the note was sold, the new bank didn’t get his payments. The foreclosure was underway and unstoppable.

“When the notification went out in the papers, people thought I was out of business.”

His western store that’s attached to the barn suffered. The horse stalls were suddenly empty.

“I can’t rent any stall out until I get it back in my name.”

“And you can’t pay your mortgage until you rent out the stalls?” I asked him.

“Correct.”

He says the only option to stop the spiraling, catch 22 is to buy back the farm that his attorneys claim he should’ve never lost the rights to in the first place.

“A lot of good people in Rhode Island are helping us out. And that’s why I’m doing this. To tell the people exactly what happened.”

He raised almost enough for a down payment on a re-finance but now he needs a new bank or an extension from his old bank.

“We need help. Plain and simple.”

Dan thinks the eviction could come any day and that most if not all the animals would go to slaughter.

You can email Dan directly at snakehill1007@aol.com if you have any questions or can help. Also, take a look at the video version of this story by clicking on this link.

http://www.wpri.com/subindex/on_air/street_stories

As always, comments and ideas are welcome.

Christopher Young’s often-tossed-hat is in the ring for mayor of Providence. His latest run more than likely puts him well into candidacy double digits. I was once criticized by one of his supporters for calling him a ‘perennial’ candidate. . .as if that was an insult. I still think perennial fits but at this rate he’s on his way to becoming an ‘annual’ candidate. Win or lose, he’ll help make the race interesting.

Assault with a dangerous weapon, eluding police, resisting arrest and more.  If he was informed about those crimes, you would think he would’ve been offered ‘back up’ of some sort.

One vital detail his chief says he didn’t know is that the hit and run Catalano was accused of, the collision that started the ordeal, involved a pedestrian who later died.

By the way, the state’s criminal data base is open to anyone. Take a look at the link above.

The recent ‘wrong site’ surgery at Hasbro reminded me of a case from a few years ago. The surgical team operated on the wrong side of a patient’s head. Several reporters’ questions included the phrase ‘botched surgery’. A hospital representative bristled at the wording.

“Let me make one thing clear,” he said to us. “The surgery was not botched. The operation went fine. It was just on the wrong side of the patient’s body.”

His expression was serious. Many of us did our best to keep the same composure.

They can’t or won’t live in homeless shelters and that’s one reason local tent cities are expanding. One even has its own government and this week John Villella and I will take you inside these local ‘communities’.

In Providence, it’s called Hope City which is somewhat sheltered under the Crawford Street Bridge.

“This was set up as 98% percent need and 2% protest,” Barbara Ferrara tells us.

She serves as the treasurer in Hope City’s fledgling ‘government’.

In the shadows of Woonsocket’s River United Methodist, it’s about protection.

“Tents have been set on fire while they’re actually sleeping in the tent,” the Reverend Brian Souza tells us.

He says the homeless were safer near his church.

“We’ve had several who have been beat up. We had one gentleman who’s no longer with us. He died on the streets 2 years ago but kids used to throw rocks at him.”

A Providence homeless advocate who did not want to talk on camera tells us many of the tent city homeless either won’t or can’t follow shelter rules.

“Sometimes yes,” Barbara tells us.  “And sometimes no.”

Shelter rules touch on criminal records, drug use, religion. . .

“And forcing religion on someone seems very wrong.”

But she admits rule number one in Hope City is that you must have been barred, not allowed to live in any local shelters.  That’s what sent some homeless to set up a second tent city across the Providence River. The people who live there could live in shelters but choose not to.

Barbara used to live in abandoned homes that she calls, ‘abandominiums’ 

“Abandomiums,” she repeats with a craggy laugh. “See. Homeless people can be funny.”

“It’s funny but it’s sad,” I tell her.

“It is. I lived literally two streets from the mayor. He never knew I was there”

About 20 live in Hope City now and during the last 3 months, about a dozen were helped by leaders of that community to move off the streets.

“Into homes. Into jobs. Into jobs and homes.”

I tell Barbara that Hope City sounds like a shelter without the shelter.

“We are. We are a shelter that runs without grants. Without funds.”

In Woonsocket, River United tried to keep the tents pitched.

“To work out whatever variances need to be done.”

“A variance for what?” I asked Reverend Souza, pointing out that the tents are on church property.

“I’m not sure,” he says.  “I never saw a citation.”

The church-side tents eventually came down and in Providence they know the rusty Crawford Street Bridge is coming down next year.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“We have a few places.”

Meanwhile, River United Methodist is handing out 50 or so more tents and there’s a waiting list for even more for people who will pitch them somewhere out there in Woonsocket.

Take a look at the video version of this story by clicking on this link.

 http://www.wpri.com/subindex/on_air/street_stories

Let us know what you think and please keep the ideas flowing.

Ryan Greenberg is about to plead nolo contendere in the death of Patrick Murphy two summers ago. I’ve been asked what nolo means in this case and while I’m clearly not a lawyer, I talk to a lot of them on TV. 

With the plea, Greenberg will not admit guilt but he’s also not offering a defense. In the court’s eyes, he’d be judged – guilty. Attornies will tell you nolo is a way to save face and avoid a trial.

Greenberg, who witnesses say was drinking on the day he aimed a speed boat at Murphy and ‘throttled up’, is charged with 2nd degree murder and wreckless boating, death resulting. He’s expected to enter the plea Monday and will be sentenced in late July,  2 years and 5 days since prosecutors say he caused Murphy’s death.

Greenberg continued to get into alcohol-related trouble after the deadly incident and now offers no defense for his actions.  The court of public opinion may wonder if the AG should force a trial and whether the sentence will fit the crime that ended a teenager’s life.

You won’t believe what some nasty debt collectors are up to now!    Some are hiring pretty girls to “friend” their debtors on facebook!   So, if you owe a debt and debt collectors are after you, don’t “accept” a friend unless you know who she is!  Even IF she is a knock-out!  What happens is, once you accept, then the debt collector has access to your profile and can find out where you work, etc!  By the way, it’s illegal!  Check out my story on www.wpri.com and click on Call 12 for Action.

An update on Bonniedale Farm in North Scituate where the owner is fighting to keep the farm and the hundred or so abandoned animals he rehabilitated. This is someone who paid his fixed rate mortgage on time but through a red-tape glitch, is still in danger of foreclosure. Here’s the link to the story.

http://www.wpri.com/dpp/on_air/local_wpri_street_stories_bonniedale_farm_20090501

Now the update; He is halfway to his fundraising goal of the down-payment for the property his lawyers say he already owns the rights to but the deadline is fast approaching. It’s Tuesday and he believes if he’s evicted, the animals will be slaughtered. There’s just too many of them. He needs a bank to step up. He can pay his bills, if they let him.

While we debated what to call H1N1, I still wonder why it is so mild here. Could it be our immunizations? Cleanliness? All around, decent health? The DOH has no answers. Maybe it was the awareness effort which involved following your mom’s advice about coughing and sneezing. No matter what it is, it’s great to know we didn’t even reach a dozen cases at this point and not one hospitalization.

A Providence woman, stunned when potential life saving surgery is denied, is waiting for relief. Walt Buteau and John Villella show you the details this week on Street Stories.

In February,  Stefanie Taylor was in the driver’s seat when her SUV caught fire. At the time, she was still dealing with the week old diagnosis that discovered a ping pong ball sized tumor in the middle of  her brain.

“I have pain here on the top of my head,” she shows us.  “Sometimes I have pain in the back of my head.”

After the week with the fire and the headaches, she was ready for surgery.  One prognosis came from doctors in Rhode Island.

“They told me I would have to learn to walk and talk and it would take six months.”

“It wasn’t good, was it?” I ask her.  

“No. It wasn’t one of those things where I was willing to take my chances.”

With her mom at her side, giving her plenty of hugs and encouragement, and with the initial approval of her healthcare provider, Neighborhood Health, she chased a second opinion. This time, at Brigham and Women’s Brain Tumor Center in Boston.

“Recovery time would be about six days.  And I would be able to come home and be with my family. “

“No rehab? “ I ask.

“No rehab,” she tells us with a big smile.

But only days before her surgery was scheduled, it was denied by Neighborhood Health. That was six weeks ago and she’s still waiting, gaining fifty pounds from pain medication and thinking about her mom and three children.

“You don’t know what could happen,” she says as I ask her if she worries about death every day.

“Yeah,” she says. “Waking up, not knowing if I’m going to have a seizure, an annuerism, a stroke.”

Stefanie emphasizes she has nothing against her local doctors or Neighborhood Health but she wants what offers her the best chance of survival and recovery.

I asked her how she can still smile through the pain and frustration.

“Because I’m alive,” she says, smiling again.  “Every day. Every day.”

She is filing an appeal with Neighborhood Health and hopes to have an answer within about two weeks.  Take a look at the video version of this and other Street Stories by clicking on this link: http://www.wpri.com/subindex/on_air/street_stories

And as always, let us know what you think.