In great haste, because my lunch is about to end and I’m busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest: former Providence, Rhode Island mayor Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci Jr.
ProJo coverage. I expect I’ll have more to say later.
Archive for the ‘Rhode Island’ Category
Obit watch: January 28, 2016.
Thursday, January 28th, 2016TMQ Watch: November 11, 2014.
Thursday, November 13th, 2014This week’s TMQ, after the jump…
TMQ Watch: October 21, 2014.
Thursday, October 23rd, 2014Pete and Repeat walk into bar in this week’s TMQ, after the jump…
Phoenix, no ashes.
Thursday, October 16th, 2014Lawrence was kind enough to throw me a backlink for my SF Bay Guardian entry. So I thought I’d note here, just for the record, that the Providence Phoenix is also closing down. From what I can tell, the PP is part of the same media group that owned the Boston Phoenix, which shut down last year. (Also, this gives me an excuse to exercise the “Rhode Island” tag.)
I remember picking up a few issues of the PP back when I was going up to Rhode Island on a semi-regular basis, but I don’t recall much about it beyond it being a fairly generic alt weekly. Again, I’m sorry for the folks who are losing their jobs; no snark here. But it is hard to see what the PP had to offer that isn’t duplicated elsewhere.
Also, this gives me a chance to link to yesterday’s TechDirt article about SXSW: Populous, a consulting firm that’s been working with SXSW organizers, is proposing “clean zones” for SXSW:
According to the report, the “Clean Zone” would be a perimeter around some part of the city that:
“protects the brand equity of SXSW and its sponsors but would be made to work with existing businesses and their interests so as to uphold sponsor values and private property rights—in return this may involve a financial exchange linked to the permit process that provides the City with additional funding for security and safety personnel.”
Part of the “clean zone” proposal talks about doing “soft searches” for “forbidden items”. It isn’t clear what that means, though there’s speculation that “forbidden” = “doesn’t have an approved sponsor logo”.
A fair number of people seem to be reading this as part of SXSW’s ongoing struggle to get rid of “unofficial” SXSW events, and I kind of think it is hard to read in any other way.
I’ve felt for a while now that SXSW is too big, and I’ve expected a major disaster of some sort. But the funny thing is: we had our major disaster this year, and none of these proposals (or any other proposal I’ve heard) would have prevented it. As a matter of fact, the only thing I can think of that would have prevented it, is more substantial barriers on the closed-off streets.
Kind of seems like SXSW is becoming all the things the AusChron purports to dislike, doesn’t it?
Buddy watch.
Wednesday, August 27th, 2014I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, or if it is a well known fact, but former Providence mayor “Buddy” Cianci has his own line of marinara sauce, which is sold around the city. (At the time I was regularly in Rhode Island, he also had his own line of coffee, but I’m not sure if he still does.)
Profits from the Mayor’s Marinara go to a scholarship fund for kids.
The AP thought this story was so fantastic, they gave it a special award. I have some reservations about this:
Is it possible they weren’t making money because former Mayor Cianci was kind of out of the public eye during this period? (He got out of prison in 2007, and had some radio and television gigs, but I don’t know what kind of public visibility those brought him. At least one of the shows he hosted was the “weekend public affairs program” Four Leather Chairs Against a Blue Background On the Record with Buddy Cianci. What kind of ratings do those get?)
More:
This story, for some reason, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. To be fair, though, there’s a related story by the same author that’s a little more interesting. You know that scholarship fund mentioned earlier?
…
I hate to keep sounding like Buddy Cianci’s defender. But if this is a scam, it seems to be a very penny-ante scam. It sounds like something that started out as a PR opportunity and went a little off the rails.
(ETA: Forgot to give Romenesko credit.)
Best news I’ve had all week.
Thursday, July 3rd, 2014Somehow I missed this until today, but: Buddy Cianci is running for Mayor of Providence. Again.
Random notes: March 24, 2014.
Monday, March 24th, 2014What does the fox say?
“I resign.”
Rhode Island Speaker of the House Gordon D. Fox, enveloped by an apparent criminal investigation, announced Saturday that he has resigned his leadership post.
He fell in a lightning-quick series of events that began Friday with investigators, armed with search warrants in a probe of an undisclosed matter, taking boxes of evidence from his State House office and his East Side home.
The paper of record describes agents “carting out boxes and bags labeled ‘evidence.'” This raises some questions, at least for me: did they write “evidence” on the side with a Sharpie? Or do these boxes and bags come pre-labeled as “evidence”? Can you buy “evidence” boxes and bags from your local law enforcement supply store?
(Isn’t it kind of cartoonish when you think about it? Sort of like Scrooge McDuck carrying around a big bag with a “$” on it, only instead you’ve got a neatly attired IRS agent with a bag that says “Evidence”?)
So much for that. Looks like I owe Lawrence $5. See if I buy one of your damn t-shirts now, Gonzaga.
(Still hopeful for those Cubs, though.)
“Squandered Baseball”? Well, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that the Expos made unreasonable demands after the 1995 baseball strike and drove fans away.
The Island of Mayor Moreau.
Saturday, March 1st, 2014That would be Charles D. Moreau, the former mayor of the bankrupt city of Central Falls, RI.
Former mayor Moreau is out of prison now after serving one year. (Previously.)
What’s interesting about this is how his release went down. Mayor Moreau originally pled guilty to a charge of taking “illegal gratuities” from a “friend and political supporter” who was given a contract to board up abandoned buildings.
However, a federal appeals court apparently ruled sometime last year that “accepting gratuities” was not a crime. No, really, I’m not making this up:
So Moreau’s people moved to have his conviction thrown out, the prosecution said “Let’s make a deal”…and Moreau got the “accepting gratuities” conviction thrown out, and then pled gulity to a bribery charge.
Yep. You read that right. Why would he do that? Because the sentence on the bribery charge was basically “time served” (see below) so he got to walk away a more-or-less free man, and the prosecution got to chalk up a felony win.
I think the key takeaways here are: try the veal at Joe Marzilli’s Old Canteen, and remember to tip your government official.
Random notes: November 13, 2013.
Wednesday, November 13th, 2013According to the WP, “the silencers were designed for the ‘AK family of firearms'”. The people who are under investigation claim they were intended for DEVGRU.
In February, the silencers were delivered to a Naval Research Laboratory warehouse in Chesapeake Beach, Md. NCIS agents seized the silencers two months later.
The silencers were unmarked and untraceable, despite a federal law requiring all firearm manufacturers to imprint them with a serial number and the name of the maker.
Yes, there’s nothing better when you’re running clandestine ops than having a serial number and manufacturer’s name stamped on your gear. (That is, assuming these silencers were actually intended for clandestine ops. “Officials with SEAL Team Six told investigators that they were unaware of any such order for silencers, according to court documents.” But if they weren’t intended for DEVGRU, what was the plan for them? We’re through the looking glass here, people.)
Today’s NYT has an article on the Industrial Trust Building in Providence. The Industrial Trust is the tallest skyscraper in Rhode Island – and now it’s vacant. The current owners want to convert it into apartments, but they need tax credits and breaks to do it; and the state isn’t inclined to give out those after the Curt Schilling fiasco.
This has a little bit of special significance to me. I used to travel to Rhode Island, and I remember this skyscraper. I’ve even stayed in the Biltmore (which you can see in the corner of the second photo in the slideshow).
It is a nice building. I’m sad to see it vacant. But I bet you Buddy Cianci could get something done with it.
Obit watch: John Tavener, classical composer.
Some random stuff for the morning of September 20, 2012.
Thursday, September 20th, 2012There hasn’t been much in the news the past couple of days, and I’ve been depressed and upset for various reasons that the readers of this blog won’t care about.
I don’t have a lot to say about the DOJ report on “Fast and Furious”. I haven’t had time to go through the report myself, and I’m expecting that a lot of people who are smarter than I am will have smarter things to say than I do, once they’ve had a chance to go through it.
The Astros have crossed the 100 loss barrier, and are still on track for 110 losses. Woot.
Today’s NYT has two articles I found kind of interesting. One is about problems with the United Network for Organ Sharing and kidney allocation:
Story number two is about the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation in North Dakota:
And:
And the mayor of Central Falls, Rhode Island, resigned yesterday. He’s also agreed to plead guilty on federal charges that “he took illegal gratuities from a friend and political supporter who received lucrative work from the city boarding up abandoned buildings”.
“Some homes were boarded up even though people were still living there.” In completely unrelated news: gee, I really miss Buddy Cianci.
TMQ watch: December 6, 2011.
Tuesday, December 6th, 2011“What’s the secret of Packers’ success?”
Here at WCD, we believe the secret of the Packers’ success is…cheese. We are firm believers in the awesome power of cheese. No holiday for us is complete without a port wine cheese ball, one of the traditional foods of our people. It fills us with delight that our neighborhood grocer is selling gourmet cheese balls. A favorite quick and dirty appetizer in the circles we move in is: take a block of cream cheese, pour a nice sauce over it (something like this Raspberry Chipolte Sauce
Where were we? Oh, yeah. The Packers. And this week’s TMQ after the jump…
Today’s municipal bankruptcy…
Monday, August 1st, 2011…is brought to you by Central Falls, RI.
Receiver Robert G. Flanders announced the step at City Hall Monday.
(Simpsons mode ON)
Stupid Flanders.
(Simpsons mode OFF)
I used to spend a fair amount of time in Rhode Island. (There’s a reason this blog has a “Rhode Island” tag. Actually, two reasons, but Buddy Cianci’s been quiet recently.) I don’t recall ever going through Central Falls; looking on Google Maps, it appears to be to the north of my old stomping grounds, closer to Pawtucket than Providence.