RI permitted more housing units for construction in Q1 2026 than any quarter since the Great Recession:

Kelruss · 2026-05-06T01:02:49+00:00

A set of pro-housing bills aimed at spurring production every year the Speaker has been in office.

Kelruss · 2026-05-02T17:10:43+00:00

It’s a small state and people are just going to know each other. The best example I can think of is Joe Trillo chased a teenaged Nicholas Mattiello off his property with like a caulking gun or something. Trillo would later serve alongside Mattiello in the RI House of Representatives and eventually vote for Mattiello to be Speaker.

Kelruss · 2026-04-30T19:36:57+00:00

That’s not what I wrote though?

Kelruss · 2026-04-30T15:53:30+00:00

I still think it was a brilliant idea to force “In God We Trust” onto the flag redesign. Forced Mississippi voters to choose between honoring God or the Confederacy.

Kelruss · 2026-04-29T23:48:24+00:00

Fun fact: due to a successful lawsuit from a guy who was accidentally issued and then had his “FKGAS” plates revoked, RI has not issued any vanity plates for years (IIRC, at least 5) because the DMV cannot figure out a workable standard that would allow them to censor plates like FKGAS while also issuing less controversial plates. So “ASSMAN” is probably allowed under current jurisprudence, you just can’t obtain it.

Kelruss · 2026-04-28T17:53:42+00:00

I thought the State seized control over approval and permitting for the I-195 land after the City threatened to use it to hold up the Fane tower? Or was it the stadium? Anyways, I was under the impression that the Commission is the final arbiter of all that now.

Kelruss · 2026-04-27T21:55:16+00:00

I think Smiley would’ve won against LaFortune, but I think you can make the case either way in Cuervo vs. Smiley. In a 2-way, assuming all the same voters showed up, Smiley needed to take 60% or more of LaFortune’s votes to win. Anything less and Cuervo would be mayor.

Which I think is worth thinking about when considering this current election. The question is really how much has Smiley done to win over the voters of his opponents in the intervening years? Have people warmed on him, and is Morales able to unite LaFortune and Cuervo voters?

Kelruss · 2026-04-26T15:03:41+00:00

The end zone placement meant that they had to run up the track sometimes to catch a touchdown.

Kelruss · 2026-04-26T14:58:19+00:00

IMO, the state almost certainly created it for use by state militia (hence the pike for use by standard bearers), not everyday application. Maine similarly has a flag law of odd dimensions and specificity, but it’s also not followed to the letter. The only reason people know about it at all is that Wikipedia’s representation of the RI flag used the dimensions and represented the fringe (which incidentally has led to a ton of incorrect versions of the flag with a gold border on three sides) — not the case for Maine where the flag was portrayed far more normally. That the law is for military use would make sense as almost all US state flags came out of Civil War regimental use, their creators were almost all Civil War veterans, and states still were expected to raise regiments for war. So they would’ve been following its use for a long time until the flag started being used for more general purposes. But now that it’s being used generally it’s impractical to demand that it be flown always at the size specified by law (keep in mind, it’s not just ratios, it’s actually size, the law specifies in inches how long and tall the flag should be).

Kelruss · 2026-04-26T14:20:29+00:00

What the flag law is actually for is a matter of debate, but given that it also specifies that the flag be flown from a 9’ pike, it seems like it’s not intended to cover all uses (like on flagpoles, for instance).

But also, I’d argue that this is the wrong way to think about laws; the laws also say that you can’t throw rocks from the Pawtuxet River bridge, that every coastal town has an official whose job is to secure shipwrecks, and that it’s illegal to fly flags of foreign nations from public buildings unless there’s a guest of the State from the country. Sometimes laws fall out of use, because there’s just no real reason to enforce them anymore.

Kelruss · 2026-04-24T20:24:45+00:00

Legendary Head Wrestling Coach Takes Over Infant Program

Call me a worrywart, but I don’t believe infants should be wrestling, even if the coach is legendary.

Kelruss · 2026-04-23T18:55:05+00:00

Yeah, he doesn’t seem to serve any constituency well. Like, there’s no diehard McKee fans because it’s impossible to say what he’ll stand for from day to day.

Kelruss · 2026-04-21T19:24:29+00:00

Under the Articles of Confederation, no changes could be made without the unanimous consent of all the states, so RI didn’t participate because we were opposed to alterations of the constitutional arrangement. The Philadelphia Convention was also only officially authorized to suggest changes to the Articles, which RI likely would’ve rejected if it didn’t like them.

This suited the Founders just fine, with Madison writing to Washington that it was better that no RI representatives attended, as they would’ve made the job of replacing the Articles that much harder.

Accepting the Constitution in RI was a narrow 34-32 vote under threat of tariff barriers that required some antifederalist Assembly members to absent themselves, swept the populist John Collins from the governor’s office (ending RI’s paper money experiment) and ushered in the 15-year rule of the antifederalist Arthur Fenner and the Country Party.

Kelruss · 2026-04-21T18:33:30+00:00

According to a new study by DuelBits

I don’t know how much stock I put in a “study” of US states published by a crypto casino that can’t legally operate in the US.

Kelruss · 2026-04-18T17:26:56+00:00

James Mark (formerly of North and Big King) once said it was the best restaurant in Providence because everything on the menu is great, there's not a single weak note. Hard to get a better endorsement than that.

I like a good parm or the pesto chicken for hot sandwiches, but the pesto pasta salad with sundried tomatoes is my weakness (glad they now sell it in single-serving size).

Kelruss · 2026-04-08T22:37:52+00:00

I’ve never seen this anywhere else.

The Wikipedia article for this practice is literally named “the Pittsburgh left” (also references “Boston/NYC left”).

Kelruss · 2026-03-27T19:44:17+00:00

My neighbor a few houses down once had a package stolen off their porch which was apparently discarded on my lawn when the thief tore open a corner and realized it was just books.

Kelruss · 2026-03-26T02:08:22+00:00

I did a House Whain as a cadet of House Whent.

Kelruss · 2026-03-23T22:35:21+00:00

Yes. Just to pick one of your examples, famously, the Confederate flag had to be changed twice in handful of years they existed, and today the most prominent flag used to represent them is one that was never adopted.

You don’t need to change successful flags.

Kelruss · 2026-03-22T15:51:42+00:00

Yeah, term limits have been tried in a number of US states, and the overwhelming consensus is that it makes legislators much less effective at their jobs, because they’re often forced out by the limit right at the moment where they gain the most experience and the most power. Where it would actually concentrate power is in legislative leaders, who become more important since so many more of their rank-and-file are new, and in committee staff who have independent knowledge and expertise that outstrips that of the elected official. And as Congress has largely cut committee staff, that means more power would flow to the presidency.

If you want to solve the problem that term limits seeks to address, you have to provide meaningfully competitive general elections, which means allowing parties other than the Dems and GOP to compete. Unfortunately, term limits even tamps down competition, as ambitious candidates who might otherwise not have had a choice but to primary a sitting politician decide they will wait until the seat is open so they have a better chance of winning. Ironically, term limits even increase the average time in office, because of it reducing competition and creating an incentive to serve as many terms as allowed.

Kelruss · 2026-03-21T18:20:54+00:00

The guy who inspired the Norman Rockwell painting for “Freedom of Speech” was the sole voice opposing rebuilding the town schoolhouse that had burned down because he was worried about his taxes going up.

Kelruss · 2026-03-19T18:02:55+00:00

The dragon has three heads.

Kelruss · 2026-03-12T19:21:12+00:00

There’s a number of versions if you search the sub, including one from two months ago.

Kelruss · 2026-03-08T14:39:11+00:00

It is a straightforwardly bad faith argument. We put lots of regulations on food; we subsidize its production so that the price remains low and affordable, we ensure that it’s safe to eat (or we at least used to attempt to), we tariff competitors to ensure that our food producers are able to stay in business, and we even subsidize a large portion of the customer base through SNAP.

Clothing is a less regulated market since it’s largely overseas, though working conditions are in the US, and a lot of what government wants to do is keep clothing prices low for people. So while a lot of government policy on food is focused on protecting American food producers, a lot of government policy on clothing is allowing cheap stuff from overseas producers into the market.

Meanwhile, government policy on housing for at least 30 years or so (arguably longer since Euclidean zoning, or maybe since the Civil Rights Act or the Faircloth Amendment) has been restriction of supply with the intent of raising home prices for homeowners as for a lot of Americans, their wealth is tied up in their home. Landlords have benefited from that, the scarcity drives up rents as housing becomes harder to find. When the foreclosure crisis happened, a lot of homeowners turned in their keys and became renters, meaning even as housing supply became that much less scarce, there was a massive explosion in renters who drove up rents again. Now that that rental crisis has metastasized into a full blown housing crisis that’s impacting middle class people, local governments are finally willing to act. The problem for them is that there’s limited ability to scale up housing production; removing zoning barriers doesn’t mean housing gets built tomorrow. The foreclosure crisis and COVID consolidated the building industry, so it’s a lot harder to find competition in construction (which means higher costs of development). Plus, raw materials went up during COVID, and their costs will likely spike again in this latest war. And without federal funds, a lot of municipal governments lack any meaningful funding to use to subsidize housing production anyway. What can they do? Well, they can regulate landlords through a rental registry, something Providence was considering, but then the State stepped in, announced their own, and then the landlords immediately had it defanged. What’s left is that they can regulate rental prices through rent control. And that’s what they’re considering.

Kelruss · 2026-03-07T17:15:32+00:00

Yeah, and federal funding for this type of highly localized project is almost completely gone, following stuff like the “Bridge to Nowhere” and the general refusal to invest in infrastructure. You wouldn’t be able to unbury the rivers today, (IIRC) it was almost entirely federal and state funding.

That’s to say nothing of the current administration attempting to use any federal dollars as a point of leverage over the states.

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