“Stack up nicely”? “Excellent restaurants all over”? The Mission District alone — a neighborhood — has better Latino food than all of RI, and probably Boston too. Ditto the Richmond and Sunset for Asian food, which crushes Boston’s and wouldn’t bother dignifying RI’s smattering of mostly bland, substandard fare. RI has SF beat for seafood, and maybe Italian, but that’s about it.

I don’t know where you lived in SF or what you ate, but the two are miles apart culinarily. RI’s only real claim to fame is in comparison to other small cities, where it does punch above its weight. But it cannot go head to head with much bigger and more diverse metro areas, and having Johnson and Wales does not change that …

Depends on where else you’ve lived. Everybody here is somehow convinced the food is great, but if you’ve lived in NYC or SF (and probably LA — don’t know, never lived there), you know most food in RI is pretty second- and third-rate (at best). Sorry …

You go, Slav! or Czech, please!

Oder GDR? (CCCP?)

You're just showing your age, Tony Baloney ...

So Jennifer Rourke should have pulled out a gun and shot Lugo, who would have pulled his gun and shot her — with stray bullets and ricochets careening through a crowded space and wounding or killing bystanders — before everyone else pulled their guns and began firing.

Brilliant. Problem solved. Because more guns always leads to less death and injury …

You’ll be equally horrified to learn that millions and millions of dollars go to subsidize millionaires in state after state after state rather than fix potholes.

Name checks out. Was waiting for all of the Rhodents who say nobody watches soccer to come up with some MAGA-esque “fake news” claim to protect themselves from reality …

Yeah, that’s what this situation definitely needed — lots of guns …

… by making up the word “milepoint”?

Voting for McKee could end up resulting in a faster “two-fer”, in terms of the time between his getting elected and then having to resign after the FBI investigation implicates him in the contracting scandal. We would then get a special “do over” election to choose another governor.

Whereas If Kalus wins, she’d first have to commit a McKee-like crime (which probably won’t take too long), then have it uncovered — which is what could take a while, and then we’d still have to wait for the outcome of the investigation before she resigns.

So a vote for McKee could be a vote for faster gubernatorial turnover …

(If Magaziner pulls a Hillary and loses to Fung, he’d probably run to replace either McKee or Kalus in the aforementioned special election, so it’d be like Langevin never left — although we’d be stuck with Fung in Congress …)

Not details, just some sort of substance beyond ice and potatoes …

Can you elaborate slightly less metaphorically …?

Get used to people’s cynical acceptance (and even defense) of the status quo here — it’s very “on brand” for RI …

When did mafia nicknames get so lame — Edward “Eddie” Lato?

What happened to “Eddie the Knife” or “Eddie Big Shoes” or something like that …

Or, like most people in Providence, they figure the law doesn’t apply to them …

"The state police investigation found Conti and [known organized crime figure Raymond 'Scarface'] Jenkins were secret business associates in an illegal marijuana startup, called Organic Bees, which regulators shut down earlier this year in part because the venture failed to disclose everyone involved in the company, including the two men.

Conti on Wednesday denied any involvement in Organic Bees, despite a mountain of state police evidence suggesting otherwise.

'Mr. Conti had no role in the business organization, Organic Bees,' Conti’s attorney, Jimmy Burchfield Jr., said in a statement. 'Mr. Conti has been employed by the House of Representatives honorably serving under four speakers since first hired in December 2006.'

A spokesperson for House Speaker Joe Shekarchi said Wednesday he had no knowledge of Conti’s involvement in Organic Bees and gave no indication it would affect Conti’s $136,000-a-year job on his staff. On Thursday, however, Conti resigned from his State House job just hours before Target 12’s report.

While state police evidence shows Conti played an integral role in trying to get Organic Bees off the ground, he faced no direct penalties when the enterprise fell apart. But Jenkins and two others were arrested and charged in connection with the business.

...

Jenkins wasn’t the only mob figure linked to Conti. State police documents say Conti attended several events with members of the New England Mafia, including one where so-called 'loyalty payments' were paid up to mob leaders.

State police said the attendees included Edward 'Eddie' Lato, who they say was recently named 'underboss,' an underworld promotion that also has not been previously reported. He was previously identified as a capo.

Former State Police Col. Steven O’Donnell, who spent years investigating La Cosa Nostra in Rhode Island, described loyalty payments as 'almost like a political campaign contribution to a mob guy.'

The idea that an aide to the House speaker has been attending such events, O’Donnell said, is 'absolutely astounding'.”

A quick Google search for the 6-10 connector and "geiger" / "radioactive" yielded no results.

I think the NSA scrubbed the Internet of any reference to radioactive waste in the soil that was dumped in Olneyville, which was nasty enough without any geiger-triggering material ...

I'll look and see if I can find the post you're referring to. Let me know if you come across it in the meantime. Thanks!

Not sure — where was that posted?

This was about contaminated dirt from elsewhere being secretly dumped on the site of the 6-10 conector project in Olneyville …

Since some clown(s) will inevitably respond to this post by deliberately ignoring the substance of the article and just slagging off GoLocalProv in general — as if doing so were more important than the facts of the case itself — I will pre-empt the time-honored RI tradition of “killing the messenger” by noting that it was a federal investigation; GLP is just reporting on it. They are not the source of the story, the U.S. Attorney for RI is. You may not like GLP, but that doesn’t invalidate the story itself.

[EDIT — And we have a winner: https://www.reddit.com/r/RhodeIsland/comments/ycocod/610_contamination_barletta_to_pay_15_million_in/itpnr4d/]

>”But it's not here yet, so I have to decide whether I'd like to use my vote as a protest, or to try and elect the lesser of the evils being presented.”

Translation: “I’ll perpetuate a system that I know doesn’t work because its replacement hasn’t arrived yet — precisely because people like me keep perpetuating the existing system and preventing its replacement from arriving.”

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

> I was born and raised there

Central Valley? OC? San Diego?

>cost of living was too high and quality of life was too low.

Housing speculation in a lot of places in the U.S. has made a basic human necessity unaffordable for most people — we need to de-commodify it …

>They do have a booming economy but with the over regulation it's hard to survive.

Oxymoron? If it’s booming, how is it being over-regulated? And if those ‘oppressive’ regulations were removed, wouldn’t it “boom” even more and get even more expensive …?

>It also sucks to make a honest living to and ravaged by criminals whom get a slap on the wrist.

What kind of honest work did you do there, and what crimes were you “ravaged” by?

>I see that my opinion is unpopular however no one has any sort of rebuttal.

Not sure about that second part, but it’s hard to rebut generalities — hence my questions.

>I am not attacking any side

Didn’t you say the (Democrat-controlled) state government had driven California into the ground? They’re a side …

>I just don't get it is all

Fair point

>I hope you get the point

“Keep voting for failed politicians because they know all about local foods” …?

>John Anderson taught me (and I wish he'd taught Ralph Nader) that all a 3rd party candidate does in the current system is spoil the race.

You’re way too old to still think a two-party system is actually functional …

The California state government “drove it into the ground”? RI residents would kill for just a fraction of California’s economy. Why did you move there in the first place, and why did you leave?