Sam Bell

Someone who is demonstrably really good at repeating all your buzzwords back to you exactly the way you like to hear them is also going to be really good at repeating someone else’s buzzwords back to them, if they feel like it. Just a thought about candidate selection.

Once again Trump & MAGA Republicans have one set of rules for themselves, and another for the rest of us. Alex Bruesewitz gets a private jet while hundreds of Americans are left stranded amidst a war we didn't have to fight. 🇺🇸 #PeaceNow
thehill.com/blogs/in-the...

I’m not sure a long tweet thread is the best way to continue this conversation, but if you would like to do that, feel free to give me a call at 680-0725.

After sale to private equity owners, ratings show R.I. nursing home quality hasn’t improved - The Boston Globe Three years later, it's time to ask whether the state Department of Health’s conditions were met, writes Brown University master’s student.

Commentary by Anzhela Kalsynova -- After sale to private equity, nursing home quality falls in R.I.
www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/04/m...

McKee’s plan to exempt Social Security income from state taxation will do nothing to help those who need it most - The Boston Globe The proposal would primarily benefit higher-income filers, including millionaires who collect some income from Social Security.

Commentary by @alankrinsky.bsky.social of Economic Progress Institute -- McKee’s plan to exempt Social Security income from state taxation will do nothing to help those who need it most
www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/03/m...

A video still from Save the Bay. The transcript reads "Hey everybody it's Chris Dodge your Narragansett Baykeeper from Save the Bay." He is wearing a "Save the Bay"hoodie and holding a mic, clipped to a clam shell.

So this whole video from Save the Bay about the hazards of dumping snow directly into Narragansett Bay is worthwhile. But I need to highlight specifically: he clipped the mic to a clam shell!

Off-the-charts levels of Rhode Island excellence.

Full video: www.facebook.com/reel/1277209...

There’s still time for someone else to enter the race. And that’s why I tell the truth about both of them. Voters want an option. I hope someone swoops in. There must be some normal Democrat who can raise the money who wants to give it a go.

McKee is bad enough that I’d be willing to overlook her downright awful corporate past if she’d make assurances she’d be close to a normal Democrat. But she’s not even pretending to do that when it’s strongly in her personal interest. And that scares the hell out of me.

It’s quite hard to be worse than McKee. I’d support literally any of my Democratic colleagues in the Senate over McKee. But Helena Foulkes right now actually looks even worse. It’s very impressive that she’s managing that. But when you propose eviscerating affordable housing, that’s worse.

Calling AI "slop" has been one of the most effective instances of the public rebranding a product and it pisses them off.

The wild thing about Foulkes’s housing plan is that last time, she actually embraced my plan and called for dramatically expanding affordable housing. I don’t think she actually knows anything about it. She just hired a conservative policy person this time and a more progressive one last time.

But I know you care about affordable housing. And you’re better than defending a plan that would devastate something you care deeply about and have worked hard for. Even if most of the pain would fall in poorer parts of the state.

Eliminating bond funds and replacing them with a system with no dedicated affordable housing money would do that. It’s pretty black and white. And it’s important to me that people in wealthy suburbs care about the plight of the urban poor. I get why you wouldn’t like McKee.

Perhaps, but it’s there in her plan.

State-funded affordable housing mostly doesn’t come to EG for complicated reasons having to do with the byzantine federal affordable housing system. And because EG ks small, and there isn’t much state money.

She literally called for getting rid of public housing and replacing it with mixed income. Yes, she called for destroying it.

But her plan to severely cut the available funds wouldn’t cut the time down. It would make it longer.

That’s just not true. The state does fund affordable housing but has refused to fund low-income for years. If you’re interested, give me a call at some point this week (680-0725), and I’d be happy to explain how it works.

As you correctly note, EG does have low income housing. The EG Housing Authority manages some public low-income housing. And destroying it would be devastating for those families. These issues do affect EG as well.

But she’s not proposing that. What she’d fund is not even affordable housing, much less low-income. And bonds are hard to get because the funds are desperately needed, and we don’t have nearly enough.

The comp permit doesn’t apply to PVD, and it only funds a low level of affordability. Real affordability requires meaningful subsidy. And these public housing teardowns vacuum up LIHTC funds. That’s leaves much less LIHTC for the rest of the state.

I think it’s a pretty wild defense of eliminating the main state affordable housing funding mechanism to say that she didn’t *also* explicitly say she’d eliminate the comp permit. (Although she did hint she might want it gone.)

Yes, housing bond funds haven’t been easy to get. That’s because we don’t have nearly enough! (And they’re horribly mismanaged, but that’s another story.) Eliminating them would make it much harder.

Plus, these projects are another way to destroy affordable housing, since they vacuum up huge amounts of affordable housing funds, killing units elsewhere. That’s what happened when Carcieri allowed this evil plan to hit Newport.

Mixed-income housing can be a good thing, but it’s not a replacement for low-income housing. Some people are poor, and they deserve a home, too. The public housing residents I represent mostly cannot afford affordable housing.

EG built affordable housing, not true low-income housing. It’s just not the same. And Foulkes would dramatically slash affordable housing by eliminating housing bonds and replacing them with a revolving fund for corporate welfare for market-rate housing.

It’s true the pain would mostly fall in Providence, but EG residents would see more homeless people sleeping on the streets of Providence, and they wouldn’t enjoy that experience.

What would directly affect EG would be the END OF HOUSING BONDS and therefore most affordable housing.

Oh. My. God. Helena Foulkes finally released her housing plan, and she wants to tear down public housing and destroy the bond funds affordable housing relies on. It’s full fledged war on affordable and low-income housing.

This is insane. @waveelection.bsky.social reports that @helenabfoulkes.bsky.social’s housing plan doesn’t involve *any* affordable housing.

Affordable housing has always been the centerpiece of our housing policy. To exclude it is just wild, even for someone as right-wing as Foulkes.

I think our city should be talking about this more.