The longest golden age on Wall Street – which began in the 1980s with Reagan era deregulation and tax changes – may be closing for many financial-industry denizens.
As with other industries, computers and automation will wipe out many very high-paying jobs. Consider BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager. It’s shifting resources away from human stock pickers running funds and charging big fees to lower-cost quantitative stock funds run, in effect, by robots. These analyze data and automatically make predictions and adjust investments accordingly.
While some “actively managed’’ (by real humans) investment funds have done well, in general, “passive investments’’ – e.g., money in index funds that reflect the performance of the stock and bond markets as a whole or industry sectors of them – have generally done better and with lower fees.
What this means is that there will be fewer jobs for stock analysts, stockbrokers and so on. This will slam New York City and its suburbs particularly hard after decades of vast wealth accruing to people on Wall Street. Employment in the financial districts of Boston and some other big U.S. cities will also take a hit. Of course, the senior executives of the likes of BlackRock, etc., will continue to make a mint.
This recalls the hollowing out of parts of some other white-collar occupations, such as lawyering, where much of the routine work can now be done by low-paid legal assistants (some working in India) using computers.
Ultimately this computerization may also devastate the tax-prep business; many taxpayers already use such programs as TurboTax. But Congress keeps changing the tax laws in response to lobbying from special-interest groups slows the process. Many of us will continue to need to talk to a human to keep up with the relentless fiddling on Capitol Hill.
It being tax time, I’ll slide in here my annual tribute to the underfunded and understaffed Internal Revenue Service. Taxpayers are always blaming the IRS for their tax problems, including the impossibility of understanding much of the tax-law swamp, which grows every year. But citizens blame the wrong people: It’s Congress, sometimes acting on the recommendation of the president, that has produced our abomination of a tax code as legislators respond to interest groups and overuse the tax code for social, economic and political engineering. A prime example is how they create ever more tax credits instead of doing things in a straightforward way, such as directly appropriating federal money for desired programs.
Anyway, remember Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous line: “Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.’’
The Pawtucket Red Sox want the State of Rhode Island to cough up some money to help the Boston Red Sox farm team build a new stadium. Current talk focuses on keeping the team in Pawtucket, either as a rebuilt version of the current McCoy Stadium or somewhere else. Pawtucket is attractive because, among other things, it’s close to Massachusetts. (Actually, most of tiny Rhode Island is close to the Bay State. Indeed, many Rhode Islanders drive through parts of Massachusetts daily to get to parts of Rhode Island.)
The new -- and tough -- state Senate president, Dominick Ruggerio, who knows a lot about construction, likes the idea of a new stadium and having the state pay for some of this project, which will benefit some very rich people.
Would it be worth it? Years ago, when I worked in the newspaper business, the line was that while only about 25 percent of daily newspaper readers read the sports pages regularly, that 25 percent is intensely interested in their teams and apt to buy the products advertised in the sports pages (especially car stuff). Should the state spend a lot of money to please the minority of people who are baseball enthusiasts, and in a time when tax revenues are falling behind projections?
Of course there would be perhaps a couple of hundred temporary construction jobs to build a new stadium but only a few dozen permanent ones (if that) at a new stadium.
Still, having a shiny new stadium in a well-landscaped setting and access to public transit might raise some animal spirits in Greater Providence. I think it would be very dubious “economic development’’ from a macro viewpoint. But if it’s to be done, why not get a really exciting design for it and put it where many people could see it from some distance away. That might mean putting it along the water in East Providence.
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Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, M.D., is a rich former orthopedic surgeon who until recently at least was being investigated by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan for suspected insider trading in the stocks of medically related companies. President Trump recently fired that U.S. attorney, Preet Bharara, an expert in white-collar crime, after he had had refused to resign.
Dr. Price, a prominent right-wing Republican congressman until he joined President Trump’s Cabinet, was questioned extensively at his confirmation hearings about his stock purchases in pharmaceutical and medical-device companies while serving on the House health subcommittee and privy to much inside information about possible future changes in federal healthcare law that could benefit him. Dr. Price’s trades overlapped with his sponsorship of bills, advocacy or votes on issues related to those companies or their industries.
Dr. Price is a prime example of why U.S. health care is so expensive. American physicians make by far the most money of any in the world.
Insurance company executives make a pile, too. And despite the whining of some that their firms are losing money on some insurance exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act, in general managed-care health insurers have profited mightily under the ACA. As a sign of this profitability, health insurers’ stock prices are up about 300 percent since the ACA went into effect. That of the biggest such enterprise, UnitedHealth, which is being sued by the Feds and others for massive Medicare fraud, enjoyed a 480 percent increase.
The money made in the greed-driven health-care sector is astonishing. If only the medical outcomes, now among the worst in the Developed World, could justify the extreme profiteering. Think of how much more resources could be devoted directly to health care if we had a simple Medicare-for-all system.
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Perhaps memories are short, people are just sick of politics or it’s the effect of the failure of the schools to teach civics. Or maybe most citizens don’t want to worship recently departed politicians, even if they’re from a celebrity family.
I’m talking about the taxpayer-subsidized (through its tax exemption) Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, which is next door to another hagiographic temple --- the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum – on Columbia Point in Boston’s Dorchester section. Promoters of the monument to the long-serving U.S. senator had projected that the facility would draw up to 150,000 a year, but it has only been luring about 62,000.
That’s despite such over-the-top features as replicas of the Senate Chamber (!) and of the senator’s office in the Capitol.
Life speeds on and memories are short, even regarding someone who served in the Senate from 1962 until his death in 2009 and sponsored important legislation, some good and some bad. The Kennedy clan (with its retainers) has long been among the most self-promotional in American history but the number of those who remember and adore it from its glory days is falling fast. Perhaps its latest star, the bright, modest, congenial and hard-working Massachusetts Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy III, can revive the clan’s national fortunes.
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Population growth is slowing in Greater Boston, and expensive housing is said to be at least partly to blame. Housing analysts say that a big factor is the relatively low number of houses for sale in Boston’s inner suburbs. The fear is that this will send too many Millennials out the region, hurting economic growth.
I think that’s an exaggerated fear. Greater Boston’s huge and internationally prestigious higher-education complex and its quality of life will keep these younger adults coming. A bigger threat to the region’s prosperity may be President Trump’s anti-immigrant policies. Immigrants, most of them legal, have played a big role in eastern Massachusetts’s boom. Many of these immigrants are very well-educated and do a disproportionate percentage of the work in the Greater Boston’s powerful technology, engineering and health-care sectors.
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A book worth reading is The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic, by Ganesh Sitaraman, an associate professor of law at Vanderbilt University. The central topic is how an ever-richer top sliver of the population can take over the government, disenfranchise the majority of the population and accelerate the top sliver’s (“the 1 percent’’) self-enrichment (see Dr. Price above) through political power. Indeed, that’s what has happened in recent decades, with the help of an easily deluded middle class.
This elite is in an ever-stronger position to assure the wealth and power of their children and their children’s children, in the hereditary plutocracy that increasingly characterizes America. Campaign-finance reform to reduce the bribery for special favors and higher (though far from confiscatory!) estate taxes would help level the playing field a bit.
We need rich people for their capacity to invest in new and established businesses and technologies and we need to offer the prospect of making a fortune to encourage risk taking and innovation. But when their wealth reaches the level of controlling the government, as now, more must be done to preserve democracy. As Louis Brandeis, who served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939 famously warned: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.’’
President Trump’s rolling up of the Obama administration’s initiatives to slow global warming caused by burning fossil fuels will not only hurt the environment and public health. It will also harm the economy by slowing U.S. development of technology for clean energy – technology that our international trading partners are working on enthusiastically. A retreat toward more reliance on fossil fuel will make America less competitive. This technology development creates well-paying jobs. GE Chairman Jeff Immelt and other corporate leaders have been eloquent on this subject.
Mr. Trump has seemed quite obsessed with appealing to the dwindling number of people who mine coal or otherwise profit from this poisonous material, even as he also said he’d boost fracking for gas and oil, which would hurt the coal industry. Gas is providing an ever higher proportion of the energy to power electricity plants because it’s cheap and plentiful and far less polluting than coal.
But then, don’t look for coherence from Donald Trump or deep research by his followers. But it’s clear that what we can expect in his (first?) term is a modest increase in coal-mining, with more miners dying of black lung and cancer or in mine collapses, more environmental devastation of parts of Appalachia (poisoned streams, sheared-off mountaintops, etc.) and the continued transmission of mercury, sulfur dioxide and other poisons into the air from coal-fired plants.
But not for long. This filthy way of extracting and using energy is doomed, whatever Donald Trump’s appeals to the desperate and hidebound people of Coal Country.
In the not-too-distant future, most Americans will get their electricity from solar, wind and other nonpolluting energy generated close to where they live; the coal mines will all be shut and Appalachia will begin the long process of healing their ravaged land and building a diversified economy.
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The biggest threat to citizens from the new law allowing Internet Service Providers (principally AT&T, Comcast and Verizon) to avoid asking consumers’ permission to store, and then sell data from, their browsing histories to advertisers isn’t so much that these huge enterprises have access to this personal data. More dangerous is that hackers, probably including those working for President Trump’s pals in the Kremlin, will inevitably get into the vast ISP information banks and use it for blackmail or worse.
The Republican law overturns rules set under the Obama administration that would have required explicit consent from consumers if sensitive data — such as financial or health information, or general browsing history — were to be shared or sold by ISPs.
The ISP backers have complained that the rules wouldn't have applied to the likes of Google, Facebook or other big Internet companies, which are also massive collectors of personal data, which they use to sell ads. But you can easily quit those companies in favor of other sites, while switching Internet Service Providers is hard.
And remember that Facebook and Google (which have opt-out tools) can track only while you’re using their services – ISPs can track everything you do online.
Consider hiring an expert to set up your computers to protect your privacy from ISPs and whoever might hack them.
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WNPR, a Public Radio station in Connecticut, ran an intriguing little feature the other week headlined “Along Highways, Wildlife Appears to Be Breaking Evolutionary Speed Limit’.’ READ MORE
The story, which focuses on New England ecology, looks at “how roads, and the salts and chemicals we put on those roads, impact nearby nature. Some impacts are visible: think road kill and fragmented habitat.’’
Steven Brady, an evolutionary ecologist who has been working with a Dartmouth College-led research group, reports:
"Individual plants that are living right next to a road, in a couple different cases, have evolved the ability to deal with higher concentrations of things like lead, from fuel’’.
Mr. Brady has studied how roads affect amphibians in northeastern Connecticut. He notes that rapid evolution has a time element but also plays out in isolated pockets of space. Across ‘’just tens of meters, scientists are seeing differences in how one group of amphibians evolves compared to another nearby population,’’ the text with the broadcast says.
Colin Donihue, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University who studies how lizards evolve in human-dominated landscapes, said that species are evolving within human life spans makes conservation more of a moving target.
"That idea that ecology and evolution happen on commensurate time scales and can actually feed back and forth to affect each other is a really powerful new way of looking at the interplay of ecology and evolution," Mr. Donihue told WNPR.
"The things we do to the planet -- even when they seem minimal, like a road through a forest -- are not only causing this impact on how well a population does, but it's fundamentally changing the biology of the organisms that live there,’’ Mr. Brady said.
That evolution is happening fastest in places where global warming is fastest.
I ordered a ride on Uber the other day late at night in the middle of Brooklyn. It’s an area where you’d be very hard-pressed to get a taxi, in part because of the perception (more than the reality) that it’s a dangerous place. The car was very clean and comfortable and the driver, of Arab origin, was very polite, intelligent and interesting. I ordered an Uber ride the next night in Manhattan but the driver screwed up my location and never showed up.
Uber and its competitors fill a need in some places. But there have been Uber horror stories, too – including bad behavior by drivers and that they’re cheated by the company’s rapacious bosses. These services need to be overseen like the public utilities they are.
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Kudos for the attractive blue and white signs in downtown Providence that point walkers and drivers to important sites in the city. Just a few years ago such signage was virtually nonexistent. This is the kind of little thing that brings in people and business.
Related Slideshow: See the Best of GoLocal LIVE - From Penguins to Governors to Rock Stars
Mixologist and Owner of Little Bitte Artisanal Cocktails, Willa Van Nostrand concocts green drinks without any chemicals.
Van Nostrand says the secret to creating a naturally green drink is the base green syrup she made up.
Van Nostrand says she was looking for a specific color and flavor while mixing her green coloring. She wanted to create a shandy flavor when mixed with beer.
Van Nostrand says the green mix is made of honey and water. It’s Spirulina and matcha powder that give it the green color.
To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, Van Nostrand makes The Emerald Isle, concocted with Whiskey, Ginger Beer, green syrup and garnish.
Van Nostrand says to make a green beer, light beer holds the color better than any other.
Green cocktails and green beer in honor of Saint Patrick's Day. For those of us expressing our Irish heritage, or those of us that wish we were more Irish.
The Emerald Isle
2 oz Jameson
1 oz green tea & spirulina honey syrup*
Top with your favorite ginger beer.
Willa uses locally made Farmer Willie's alcoholic ginger beer or non-alcoholic Reeds ginger beer.
Green tea & spirulina honey syrup. Pour 4 ounces of boiling water over 1 teaspoon of match green tea powder & 1 teaspoon of Spirulina and whisk together. Add 4 ounces of honey and dissolve into the solution.
Preparation: Fill your rock glass with ice, add Irish whiskey, honey syrup & top with ginger beer. Garnish with a clover leaf or fresh herbs of the season.
Green Beer: Naturally
The Shamrock
1 bottle of light beer.
Willa uses Narragansett lager for this application.
2 oz green tea & spirulina honey syrup. Willa says the more you add, the greener the drink.
Preparation:
Pour green tea honey syrup in the bottom of a beer glass & slowly top with beer. There you have it: green beer, naturally.
Add extra 1/2 ounce of honey syrup for more color. Willa is going for an easy sipping light green shandy-meets-Arnold-Palmer vibe.
Commerce Secretary Stefan Pryor talked with GoLocal about Commerce's role in facilitating development of the dormant Superman Building, how he feels about the ownership of the Pawtucket Red Sox looking for assistance with keeping the team in Pawtucket, and how Commerce increased its $1 million budget to $2 million to help businesses across the state with upkeep improvements.
West Warwick native, Johnny Gates was compared to Mick Jagger on this season’s The Voice. Gates says he couldn’t believe it really was his life.
Gates describes his audition while singing Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” while he appeared on GoLocal LIVE.
“As soon as Gwen turned around, I had this really calming feeling. I looked at my parents I could kind of seem them. I thought I’m going to finish this out like a regular show,” Gates says, “It was cool, I got to hug Gwen, I got to talk to Alicia Keys, Blake said he was a fan. It was probably the greatest night of my life.”
Gates heads back to Los Angeles for the competition, but he says he wanted to be at home with friends and family to see his Voice debut. Gates says he’s proud to represent Rhode Island and loves coming home when he can, especially to eat clam cakes and hang out at Narragansett Beach.
Audrey Finocchiaro and Sam Lancaster co-owners of The Nitro Cart say they haven’t spent a dollar on advertising. The two have grown their business of locally sourced nitro brewed coffee organically though word of mouth and the power of a post.
Finocchiaro says if they didn’t have social media, especially Instagram, The Nitro Cart wouldn’t be where it stands today.
Lancaster says businesses need to understand social media is an “awesome asset.”
He went on to say their success has grown from posting and reaching out to individuals and a lot of businesses don’t use social media as much as they should.
The power of their product, coffee infused with nitrogen gas, also helped gain followers.
Lancaster and Finocchiaro started the cart in 2016 and have grown to place The Nitro Cart coffee in eight locations so far. By the end of 2017 they hope to be in 30 locations and eventually spread into the Boston market.
Carey Richard from Mystic Aquarium says while a storm might close the doors to the public, Mystic Aquarium never shuts down.
Richard says many of the animals love the cold weather, especially Juno, “he’s right at home in these cold temperatures.”
Juno, a male Beluga Whale, weighs just over 1,800 pounds, and Richard says he’s still growing. Richard says they feed the soon-to-be 15 year old whale about 60 pounds of fish a day.
That’s more than his female tank mate Kela. She’s 35 years old and weighs about 1200 pounds. Richard says in the winter time Kela eats about 40-50 pounds of fish a day.
While the whales stayed in their Arctic Coast exhibit during the storm, the African penguins, as a warm climate species, who visited GoLocal LIVE in February, were moved inside to ensure their safety. Richard says the penguins were doing fine and working with their trainer.
The stingrays from the Ray Touch exhibit and Northern fur seal Ziggy Star were also moved indoors.
Niall MacCarthy joins GoLocal LIVE and discussed the new international flights to and from Cork, Ireland to Rhode Island. MacCarthy heads the Cork Airport.
Cork is one of the the six direct locations from Rhode Island that Norwegian Air announced in late February.
The new service is low cost and high quality and will be T.F. Green's first year-round international service.
Jim Fortier of Blueprint 5 says one of the most important thing in men’s fashion is fit.
While showing off some spring styles at GoLocal LIVE, Fortier says it doesn’t matter if your clothing is expensive, if it doesn’t fit right, it won’t look good.
Fortier encourages men to step out of their comfort zone and try different looks. He also says there is new technology in men’s fashion and fabric, so he encourages men to try on a new pair of pants.
Blueprint 5 is a high end men's store featuring clothing from Italy. Blueprint 5 is located in East Greenwich and is running a rare sale through March 31, offering items up to 78% off.
Former Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy spoke with GoLocal LIVE on Wednesday about efforts in Rhode Island once again to legalize marijuana - and what he said is the country’s crisis of addiction, and why he is opposed to marijuana legalization.
“We’re going though an epidemic of addiction and depression…and we’re in the midst of the rollback the biggest expansion of healthcare coverage that benefits people with mental illness [and] addiction, and this was the first time the ever got coverage,” Kennedy told GoLocal’s Kate Nagle on Wednesday.
“We ought to think do we want throw gasoline on the fire,” said Kennedy, of legalizing marijuana in Rhode Island. “We know what’s happened with other addictive substances where’s basically there’s no perception of ‘risk’ — alcohol is ubiquitous; tobacco, until the settlements, there was no appetite for addressing [the impact of that].”
“Going down this road of adding a new intoxicant is not a good thing,” said Kennedy.
Kennedy helped found Sensible Approaches to Marijuana after serving as United States Congressman for 16 years. According to his bio:
He has since founded the Kennedy Forum, which unites the community of mental health, and co-founded One Mind for Research, a global leader in open science collaboration in brain research. Kennedy is also the co-author of “A Common Struggle,” which outlines both his personal story and a bold plan for the future of mental health in America.
“Why would we support an intoxicant that effects cognition, motivation, and perception — why as Americans would we want something else to drag us down?" asked Kennedy.
Questioning Pro-Pot Motivations
In his interview with GoLocal, Kennedy addressed the arguments from legalization proponents — and called out who he said will serve to benefit from legalization.
“I think it’s popular to be ‘pro-pot,’ and be rebels and supporter legalization that sounds so attractive, like let’s end prob,” said Kennedy. “It’s not as innocent as it seems. [Legalization] is about supporting Wall Street, big private equity of folks who are already making big money off this.”
“So the people who are traditional supporters [of legalization], need to look at this is not decriminalization, but what we’re talking about is it’s about giving an industry the ability to advertise, market and target an audience of people who are already susceptible to addiction, and young people,” said Kennedy. “And the perception of risk will be lower, because it’s sanctioned by society.”
Teresa Crean, with RI Sea Grant and the University of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Center, says the impact of rising sea level in Rhode Island is already being seen in communities like Newport, Wickford, Westerly and Oakland Beach.
URI Coastal Resources Center and Rhode Island Sea Grant have developed STORMTOOLS, where anyone can plug in an address and see your risk of coastal flooding now or in the future.
Based on research Crean says they are looking at one foot of sea level rise by 2035.
Crean says Rhode Island is already seeing those levels along the coastline during extreme high tides.
“We need to start planning for these higher water levels in the future, and acknowledge that if we get a coastal storm on top of a "moon tide", the inland reach of flood water could be greater than we have mapped in the past,” Crean says.
Business Innovation Factory's Saul Kaplan joins GoLocal LIVE and discusses the potential of recreating Rhode Island's economy through leveraging the potential of Rhode Island's higher education talent.
Potential new tenants, taxpayer subsidies, and public support are some of the issues that Bill Fischer spokesperson for the owners of the Superman Building discusses with GoLocal LIVE.
Cranston Mayor Allan Fung talks about the economic growth in Cranston - projects like Chapel View and Garden City -- all done without taxpayer subsidies.
Fung discusses how he helped to drive economic growth and stabilize the city's finances. In 2014, Fung was the GOP candidate for Governor and is rumored to be a candidate again in 2018.
With a strong desire for artisan crafts and vintage goods, Maria Tocco, founder of the Providence Flea says consumers in Rhode Island The Providence Flea want locally made items.
“I think the buy local movement is huge,” Tocco says.
With over 50 vendors, Tocco says there are one of a kind items at the Providence Flea.
“I think there is a big burgeoning maker movement,” Tocco says, “it seems that what’s old is new again. People really love vintage findings, they love turning toward their passion. There are so many people trying to make a living doing what they love.”
That’s part of the reason they expanded to winter and spring markets held indoors at Hope High School, on Hope Street in Providence.
Buying locally can help the environment and the economy as well.
“If you shift 10% of your spending, it could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars that remain in the local community,” Tocco says.
The Providence Flea is held on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of the month through April.
The Flea returns outdoors to South Water Street for their Fifth Season on June 4th.
History is alive at the Coggeshall Farm Museum in Bristol, RI and you can be a part of it. Interim Executive Director of Coggeshall Farm Casey Duckett says you can experience how families lived in the 18th century.
The Museum holds programs for families, schools and visitors including how to make maple syrup, candles and hearth cooking workshops.
“We are integral part of the nation’s history. There is so much that isn’t talked about. If you just focus on the George Washington and those who were in charge, you miss out on how it all happened,” Duckett says, “we can take what was good about the past and bring it back.”
Duckett says the museum relies heavily on charitable donations and currently they have a matching grant opportunity. Duckett says a donor will give $50,000 to the museum if they raise $50,000. They are currently at $13,000. MAKE A GIFT HERE
Duckett says without adequate funding they’ll have to cut programs, so it’s a constant battle to bring look for donors and bring people in the doors.
Shira Hirshberg, a Registered and Licensed Dietitian Nutritionist with All Foods Nutrition says carbohydrates are in a lot of foods, and they aren’t created equally.
Hirshberg says many foods contain carbs that you might not even think about.
She calls those “sneaky carbs” and an example is broccoli.
Hirshberg says one cup of cooked broccoli can contain 11 grams carbohydrates which is relatively low while one cup of black beans can contain 40 grams of carbohydrates, which is relatively high if you are looking to limit the amount of carbs you are consuming.
Hirshberg says most people need a reasonable amount of carbohydrates to continue healthy brain function, maintain energy and to stay full.
If you are trying to maintain or loose weight, Hirshberg says you should keep any eye out for the amount of carbs you are consuming.
“Is there such a thing as too many carbohydrates? Absolutely. Anything that we have too much of, protein, fats, carbohydrates will eventually get stored as fat,” Hirshberg says, “too much carbohydrates will eventually lead to weight gain.”
“We have to love our food, and our food has to love us back,” Hirshberg says, “You have to have a positive relationship with food, you can’t only make choice for health benefits. That’s not realistic.”
To keep a positive relationship with food Hirshberg recommends the 80/20 rule.
“Eighty percent of your choices should be basic supporting your health, twenty percent should be for fun and enjoyment.”
Governor Gina Raimondo joins GoLocal News Editor Kate Nagle on LIVE on Wednesday and discussed the UHIP technology failure, economic development, the status of 38 Studios, and how she builds a lasting legacy for Rhode Island.
Trudy Coxe, CEO of the Newport Preservation Society, joins GoLocal LIVE to talk about the economic impact of the tourism generated by the organization on the region. Coxe, one of Rhode Island's 50 Greatest Living Rhode Islanders (see list below) outlines the future of the organization that is the keeper of the Newport Mansions and many other historical properties.
In 2016, the organization saw over 1 million visitors tour their properties - a new attendance record.
Coxe helped to build Save the Bay into Rhode Island's most influential environmental organization and now is driving the growth of Newport Preservation.
Mike Reppucci founder of Sons of Liberty Spirits Co. says he’s too neurotic to use other people’s beer to create his award winning whiskey. That’s why they brew their own. Reppucci stopped by GoLocal LIVE to talk all about how the company will be the first producer internationally that has the vertical integration of beer and whiskey products.
Reppucci talks about the distillery process, upcoming beer release and how quitting a job in finance has paid off to do what he loves.
Rhode Island jewelry designer Nicole Romano recently launched five new collections. Romano says the Walker Collection was inspired by architecture in New York.
While her show room is in New York, Romano says all of her jewelry is hand manufactured in Rhode Island.
“The brand itself is inspired by the history of Rhode Island, rich manufacturing industry, which was always inspiring to me,” Romano says.
Romano says she can get inspiration from just about anything, Italian candy, buildings, her mind is always processing. The Miramar Collection was inspired by Newport.
Dorian Murray inspired Rhode Island - and many around the world — with his brave fight against cancer. Nearly a year ago Murray lost his battle, but his mother Melissa is leading the charge to remember her son and raise awareness.
Murray talked about the effort on GoLocal LIVE with Lifestyle Editor Molly O’Brien. Learn what is next for the Foundation named in Dorian’s honor.
Former Assistant Attorney General joins GoLocal LIVE to discuss Governor Gina Raimondo's announcement that she is instructing the State Police to release their records. GoLocal sued Raimondo in October for the release of the documents. Hear Dickinson's update on the impact of the Governor's decision and how it impact's GoLocal's lawsuit against the Raimondo.
Lincoln Chafee, former Mayor, U.S. Senator and Governor, took Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo’s administration to task for promoting economic growth by funneling tax dollars to some of America’s richest corporations.
Appearing on GoLocal LIVE with GoLocal News Editor Kate Nagle, Chafee said the Raimondo’s transfer of taxpayers dollars to billion dollar companies such as General Electric and Johnson & Johnson was flawed.
“I have never liked corporate welfare. It's unfair to existing businesses…some out of state business comes in and you give them the candy store. I just don’t like it," said Chafee.
Chafee said the approach needs to be built on fundamentals. “I think a better way to build the economy is through investment and education and infrastructure. Then lower taxes -- under my approach, unemployment went from over 11 percent to under 6 percent. (And) we created more jobs than the candy store approach.”
Chafee said he was disappointed that millions of dollars “out the window to General Electric and J&J. I don’t like it.”
Eye to the Future
Chafee, when asked if he was interested in running for office again, said it was too early to speculate, but did not rule if out.
Chafee also spoke proudly of the success of attorney Max Wistow in recovering over $60 million in 38 Studios dollars. Chafee had developed the strategy and hired Wistow while he was Governor.
See the full interview with former Governor Chafee on GoLocal LIVE.
Five-time boxing champion Vinny Paz, who is featured in the movie “Bleed for This” joined Molly O’Brien to discuss a number of issues — from personal failures to Hollywood moviemaking.
