jmcdaid's blog

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse floor speech.

In a Senate floor speech this afternoon, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) criticized the IRS for targeting conservative nonprofit groups for extra scrutiny, but also called on his colleagues to pay attention to a second, less visible "scandal" of tax-exempt organizations filing false statements "with impunity."

In the first scandal, the Treasury Inspector General report found the IRS unit tasked with evaluating applications for 501(c)4 tax-exempt status improperly targeted groups with names like "tea party." While the IG's report specifically notes that only "first-line management" in a Cincinnati office were responsible for developing the screening criteria, late today, the fallout cost the acting IRS Commissioner his job.

But that's not what brought Whitehouse to the floor today. In a 14-minute speech (YouTube, text), the senator chided both the IRS and the Department of Justice for failing to adequately enforce rules governing activities permitted tax-exempt social welfare groups under 501(c)4 status.

Part of the problem, Whitehouse said, lies with the IRS, who "decided that an organization is organized 'exclusively' for the promotion of social welfare if it is 'primarily' engaged in social welfare activities, that 'primarily' means 51%, and that the other 49% can be purely political." That slim majority, Whitehouse said, often comprises "educational" or "legislative" activities "that are really just the same political ads given another name."

Making it even worse — and what clearly got under this former prosecutor's skin — is that these same organizations sometimes filed conflicting reports with the Federal Elections Commission.

Citing data from ProPublica, the Pulitzer-winning nonpartisan investigative news site, Whitehouse noted that in almost a third of the cases reviewed, there were discrepancies. "[ProPublica] looked at 104 organizations that had reported electioneering activity to the Federal Election Commission or state equivalents, saying 'here is what we spent on elections.'  ProPublica cross-checked; 32 of them had told the IRS they spent no money to influence elections, either directly or indirectly.  Both statements cannot be true."

One group, he said, "declared to the IRS it had spent $5 million on political activities, but told the FEC it had spent $19 million on political ads.  Another pledged its political spending would be 'limited in amount and will not constitute the organization's primary purpose,' and then went out and spent $70 million on ads and robocalls in one election season."

"Making a material false statement to a federal agency is not just bad behavior, it's a crime," said Whitehouse. "It is a statutory offense under 18 U.S. Code Section 1001."

However, said Whitehouse, unless the IRS specifically refers a case to the Department of Justice, there's no attempt to hold groups accountable. And those referrals, he said, just aren't happening. "Apparently, no matter how flagrant the false statement, no matter how great the discrepancy between the statements filed at the IRS and the statements filed at the election agencies, no matter how baldly the organization in practice contradicts how it answered IRS questions about political activity, the IRS never makes a referral to the Department of Justice."

"Right now, organizations lie with impunity, and in large numbers," said Whitehouse.

Prudence Island school.

Rhode Island's last one-room schoolhouse, the Prudence Island school in Portsmouth, just received a $2,500 grant from the Rhode Island Foundation's Newport County fund, according to a posting on their site.

A big thanks to the RI Foundation on behalf of the kids of Prudence!

You can learn more about this unique school here.

Portsmouth school Supt. Lynn Krizic sent a note late this morning to parents describing what happened at Portsmouth High School last night and the administration and police response. From the AlertNow e-mail:

Dear Portsmouth Parents,

I am writing to share with you information regarding an incident that occurred very late last evening at Portsmouth High School. A handwritten note was discovered on a bathroom wall that contained a reference to an explosive device. At this time the details of this note cannot be fully revealed so as not to interfere with our ability to investigate who may have written it.

Police Chief Jeff Furtado contacted me to share that upon receiving a call from PHS night shift personnel, they immediately contacted the Rhode Island State Police K-9 team to request a search of the school. We made the shared decision to have the entire school searched as we place student safety as one of our highest priorities. In the very early morning hours of the day, we received a report that there was no evidence of any explosive device or explosive material in any part of the school. Based on that report, we made the decision to have school in session; and we requested to have a Portsmouth Police Officer on site at PHS today.

The administration and local law enforcement agencies are taking this event very seriously. If anyone has information regarding the person responsible for leaving the note, please contact PHS immediately at 683-2124. We will be conducting an internal investigation to try to determine which student and/or students may have been involved in making this threat. The appropriate disciplinary action will be taken for any student or students who had responsibility for this incident.

Incidents such as this, in light of the recent events in Boston, may cause your child to become upset. Counselors and/or social workers are available in each of our schools to meet with students if they need to talk about this incident as well as how this incident may be affecting them.

Sincerely,

Lynn S. Krizic, Ed.D.
Superintendent

Check out Train Day events across the country!

Saturday, May 11 is "National Train Day," and there will be events at stations across the country to celebrate the contributions of rail transportation. Here in Rhode Island, the Railroad Museum at the West Kingston station will have an open house from 9:30-12:30 where you can view displays of artifacts.

More info on the National Train Day site or their Facebook page or Twitter feed.

Thomas Pynchon (photo: a friend)

In case you've forgotten (and how easy it is to forget, eh, folks like us who spend all our time at the movies) tomorrow is the birthday of pre-eminent American author Thomas Pynchon, and many of like mind (though what it is that mind is "like," exactly, few can say) opt to celebrate by wearing their affection on their sleeves, slid out of bookbags, unearthed from under a scumble of desktop detritus, on t-shirts, pie crusts, animated gifs, stickers, post horns surreptitiously chalked on girders to be hoisted skyward, retro-hip dayglo posters, skin art, nanofabricated movies starring individual atoms of Carbon (heh-heh, 6 protons, 6 neutrons, 6 electrons, I guess we all know what that means, eh?), or, even, the transgressive act of carrying the Rainbow in public...

More info on the reclusive but erudite web site Pynchon in Public Day.

Now, everybody...

This afternoon, the RI House Judiciary committee will take up a series of proposals on gun regulation, including a package of bills that introduced by legislative leadership and the RI Attorney General. The agenda, with links to the bills, is available on the General Assembly web site.

If you would like to comment, but can't make it to the State House today, you can always send an e-mail to the committee clerk, Robert DiMezza, and indicate that it is for the committee.

Elyssa Baldassarri (Kayla) and Tony Amaral (Matt) in "Higher Methods" (photo: Daydream Theater)

If Antonin Artaud had written the screenplay for The Stunt Man, it might well have looked like "Higher Methods," the bracing, disorienting evening of dark drama offered by Providence's Daydream Theatre through Saturday, April 27. Written and directed by Rhode Island playwright Lenny Schwartz, this is an evening of in-your-face theatre that may not be for everyone, but those who can handle a bit of sjuzet with their fabula will not be disappointed. (A-and let me tell you, I don't crack out the narratology in the first graf of many theater reviews...)

The basic fabula is simple: 20-something Matt (Tony Amaral) arrives in Los Angeles in search of his sister, Katharine, who disappeared into fringes of the Hollywood machine some ten years earlier. He has caught a glimpse of her in the background of a film, and by retracing her steps (the clubs, the producers, the acting classes) he hopes to track her down.

Skewering the soulless anomie of Hollywood has been a perennial in fiction since Day of the Locust, but Schwartz manages to thread the needle of cliche with hard-edged dialog, a script that keeps us perpetually guessing, and strong performances from an ensemble cast

All the action is handled on a simple set: a blue backdrop, in front of which we see the back-lit letters of the Hollywood sign (from behind, of course, so we see the scaffolding that props them up). A couple of brick walls, a lamp, and a handful of chairs. As the scenes shift, the audience (and sometimes, Matt) may not know exactly where or when we are for a moment, but that's all part of the show. Schwartz wisely trusts his actors to just go there and take the audience with them.

The play opens with Matt landing at LAX, bantering with his seatmate, Kayla (Elissa Baldassari). Amaral delivers an appropriately muted, nuanced performance as Matt, who may be a naif, a tightly-wrapped obsessive with a secret, or, perhaps, a celluloid homunculus experiencing the entire action of the play in retrospect. Kayla is, in many ways, the axis of the show, as she accompanies Matt through a picaresque sequence of events where nothing is quite what it seems. Played with a delightful brash energy by Baldassari, Kayla is by turns a Tinseltown vamp, a cold-blooded killer, and a Beatrice in Matt's Purgatorio.

At what moment does Matt's journey go off the rails? Is it the first drink handed him by a Hollywood bartender/actor (played with just the right note of self-aware character-actor-ness by Daniel Lee White). Or is it getting high with Shannon, an actress who leads him to Katharine's acting class (Shannon Hartman, whose twisty repartee with Matt really crackles). By the time we find ourselves learning the Method from the "legendary" John Edward Marcus (who Aaron Andrade plays with extraordinary range, from whispering guru to menacing puppet master) we no longer know where to situate the reality of the action, as the first act ends with what is either a tortuous hallucination or a refreshingly simple mass stabbing.

Did Matt's sister Katharine become an acolyte of John Edward Marcus and his cult of murderous students (or is that all an acting exercise). Did she run into the big-time director Cameron Stark (played with grim intensity by John Campbell) and lose herself in one of the bags of the designer drug, "Midnight" that he tosses to aspiring actors? Certainly, once Matt has sampled the director's kindness, we can no longer trust what he's seeing or saying. Did Katharine have the twisted backstory Matt describes in his audition, or is that a fabulation? Does anyone in Hollywood even know the difference? (The reactions of Cameron's sycophantic assistants, played by Emma Fitzgerald and Christine Pavao, are spot-on and delightfully ghoulish.)

When Matt and Kayla break the fourth wall to watch a sunset -- prefiguring (or perhaps remembering) the final moments of the play where Matt appears in Stark's film -- all of nature itself has begun to look artificial to them. And in that last scene, does Matt finally meet his sister, or is that just an actress playing Katherine? "They thought they had us," she says, "But we fooled them."

Indeed. But Schwartz cleverly leaves us wondering whether that, or anything, can be taken at face value. This kind of theater is right in my wheelhouse: metafictional, irreducible to linear plot, and grimly sardonic. If you like this kind of stuff, I highly recommend catching the show this weekend.

But be aware: not for the kiddies. There are adult situations, extensive profanity, simulated drug use, multiple stabbings, and descriptions of sexual violence. As William Carlos Williams says in the introduction to Howl, "Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through hell." Or, in this case, just Los Angeles.

"Higher Methods," written and directed by Lenny Schwartz, produced by Daydream Theater at the Bell Street Chapel, 5 Bell Street, Providence RI through April 27. General admission, $10. More info on Facebook

In the middle of a day off, the unexpected buzz comes across the phone, then the news, then the images begin to unspool with grim, inconceivable facts. It's more than any city, than any people, than any parents and relatives should have to bear.

Our thoughts are with the lost and injured and their families tonight.

Rep. Ray Gallison (photo: GA)

The RI House today passed legislation sponsored by Portsmouth Rep. Ray Gallison (D-69) requiring banks and lenders to make a good-faith attempt to negotiate with homeowners before foreclosing on homes in Rhode Island, according to a release.

“It’s in everyone’s best interest to prevent foreclosure,” said Gallison. “Lenders are better off if they can continue receiving steady payments, even if they are a little lower, from the homeowner. Communities and our state obviously are hurt when houses are left empty and unattended. And of course, foreclosure is a huge loss for a family, who is then at risk for homelessness and has lost whatever investment they’ve made in their home. We need to ensure that lenders are doing their best to avoid foreclosing.”

Under the legislation (H 5335 Sub. Aaa), lenders would be required to attempt to engage a mortgager at risk of foreclosure in a conciliation conference to try to come to an agreement to modify the terms of the mortgage. If the effort is successful and an agreement is reached, the lender would not have to fulfill the requirement again if the mortgager fails to comply within the next nine months. The legislation, which would take effect 60 days after enactment, would apply only to owner-occupied residential properties of one to four housing units.

If the mortgager does not respond or cooperate with the effort to hold a conciliation conference with the lender, the lender may proceed with the foreclosure process.

Rhode Island’s unemployment rate of 9.4 percent is well above the national average, and many Rhode Islanders are struggling to avoid foreclosure. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, Rhode Island ranked first in New England and seventh in the nation for new foreclosures in the fourth quarter of 2012, although the number of foreclosures in the state did decline by 23 percent from the previous year.

The bill now moves to the Senate, where Sen. Donna M. Nesselbush is sponsoring similar legislation.

Editorial note: Written from a press release.

Landfill site worker power washing truck tires, 8:15am April 8, 2013.

Responding to "a Portsmouth resident," freshman Town Council member David Gleason filed a complaint on March 19 with the RI Dept. of Environmental Management (RIDEM) over activities at the Island Park landfill capping site where, he alleged, "contaminated dirt is blown around in a violent dust cloud," according to a copy of his e-mail posted on RIDEM's Portsmouth Town Dump Bulletin Board.

Here's Gleason's complaint:

I received a call this morning from a Portsmouth resident concerning the proliferation of airborne contaminated soil on Park Ave and Boyd's Lane in Portsmouth, RI. from trucks leaving the site of the "old Portsmouth dump site" which is being filled by or for Palmer Industries. In seeing this for myself today, there was also a police officer there today that took several photos confirming the tracking of large amounts of mud on, what I think are state owned roads. In addition, another resident filmed the conditions there yesterday as the dry, contaminated dirt is blown around in a violent dust cloud. No resident of any part of RI should have this occurring in their neighborhood and with the only two people in DEM's compliance division unavailable to speak with today, I am sending this email.

While we in Portsmouth may not be able to change the situation that DEM is allowing here where contaminants are being brought in to cover this dump site, we can ask that the terms of the BUD(?) be adhered to. Allowing this much contaminated soil onto the roadways and into the air of our neighborhoods is unacceptable if not illegal. Please look into this matter at your earliest convenience! In passing on the citizen's observations, gravity feeding water from a tank into a puddle (of contaminated mud) to "clean" the truck tires leaving the site does not work. He suggested a gas powered pressure washer to clean the tires as a possible solution which I would agree with.

It has also been suggested to me that contaminated soil is being used as "cover" on contaminated fill. This too should be investigated by DEM. Perhaps we all have become too complacent at this site and it requires more oversight by DEM for our resident's safety and health. Thanks in advance for your remedies to this situation. David Gleason Portsmouth RI resident and Councilman (401-524-7660).

Let's just notice Gleason's language for a moment. "Proliferation of airborne contaminated soil," "contaminated dirt," "contaminants being brought in," "contaminated mud," and, finally, alleging that "contaminated soil is being used as 'cover' on contaminated fill."

And here's the RIDEM response:

A Department Engineer inspected the site on Friday March 22, 2013. In his inspection, he made note of two issues, a significant amount of mud on the road and the street sweeper was creating a dust issue when cleaning the road by not applying enough water during the process. The Site Operator who was present agreed to the following remedial measures:

Installing a power wash for vehicles prior to exit

Improving the street sweeping operation

Replacement of stone at the entrance.

On Tuesday, March 26, 2013 two DEM inspectors revisited the site. They found the three measure described had been implemented. They also observed that there was not a noticeable buildup of soil in the street. Trucks were not present at the time of inspection although earth moving equipment was operating at the site. At the time, the soil being managed was relatively wet and a dust problem was not observed.

Sampling results were requested and received for the soils that were being managed onsite. The Project Manager (David Peter) indicated that one of the sources met residential standards while the other two met commercial/industrial standards as required by the BUD. The Department has requested and is reviewing the sampling results.

Reached for comment by harddeadlines, Mark Dennen, RIDEM's Principal Environmental Scientist, noted that they had taken action as soon as the complaint was filed. "We made APE [Arthur Palmer Enterprise] aware of the complaint the day it was received (3/19/2013)," said Dennen. "A RIDEM inspector visited the site on 3/22/2013 and made suggestions to address the issue. On Monday (3/25/2013), APE sent us photographs to show that they had instituted the recommendations. On Tuesday 3/26/2013, a site inspection by the Department confirmed the issues had been addressed."

This morning, when this reporter passed the landfill (two blocks from my home) I snapped the picture above of a site worker washing mud off the tires of one of the soil delivery trucks, and personally observed from the condition of Park Avenue that the process seems pretty effective.

What about all that "contamination?" Said Dennen, "[T]he Department requested analytical data for the material involved. We received and posted over 500 pages of analytical data for this material. The sampling results show that the material involved all met the criteria in the BUD."

Dennen's laconic summary: "What we observed was a nuisance created by the mud on the road."

Took me a while to post this because I had to go through the entire 535 pages of soil analysis. And unless you believe that testing labs are faking results, that licensed professionals are signing off on fabricated documents, and that everyone is willing to risk their reputations and livelihood in an intricate, wide-spread coverup, then the collective weight of the evidence does not support the descriptions of contamination offered by Mr. Gleason. While no match for the RIDEM-bashing of prior Town Council President Joe Robicheau, newbie David Gleason, appears, to this reporter, willing to take up the cause of the anti-arsenic crusaders. The torch (and pitchfork) have been passed to a new generation.

Links: Sampling results (13mb pdf), March 28 RIDEM Field Investigation Report (687k PDF).

Full disclosure: I live in Island Park, two blocks from the landfill site.