Tag: Ken Block

Thanks for stopping by for my weekly column. 1) Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza has a little less than four years left in his second term at City Hall. But now that he’s pulled the plug on his proposal to shore up Providence’s pension system by monetizing the city’s water supply, Elorza basically concedes he’s given up hope of resolving the pension issue during his time as mayor. He still believes that monetizing the city’s water supply is the key to chipping away at the pension crisis, but Elorza said it’s virtually impossible to build political support while a looming crisis remains off in the future. The big question is whether the House would take up an amended bill. In a statement this week, the Rhode Island Coalition For Reproductive Freedom said it was firmly opposed to any amendments in Senate Judiciary. Yet will it be worth the Globe’s growing investment to harvest more clicks from Rhode Island? Brown alum Te-Ping Chen (’07), who did some freelance work for me during Providence Phoenix days, and is now a Philadelphia-based reporter for The Wall Street Journal, is set to publish a novel and short-story collection …. Meanwhile, the Brown Daily Herald reports on how four people with Brown connections won Pulitzers this week, including Rebecca Ballhaus (’13) of the WSJ and Peter Kovacs (’78) of The [Baton Rouge] Advocate, for their contributions to journalism. That prompted Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to ask how the trademark office defines what is scandalous, shocking or offensive.