Some random thoughts…
• If the 2004 legislative session had been a baseball
season, the General Assembly would not have made the playoffs. And had it been
a boxing match, it would have been stopped early.
• Diplomacy only goes so far. Sometimes, a little bit
of outrage is justified. That being said, Rhode Island’s elected and appointed
leaders – including our congressional delegation and economic development officials
– should have displayed more outrage in the wake of Bank of America’s layoffs
here.
• Each fall, the University of Rhode Island’s Honors Colloquium
highlights a major issue through a semester-long series of lectures, exhibits
and other events. This year the subject is “Food and Human Rights, Hunger and
Social Policy.” Kathleen Gorman, director of URI’s Feinstein Center for a Hunger
Free America, is heading up the activities. In last week’s issue of PBN, we
featured an interview with Gorman. She offered some startling statistics, among
them the fact that about 10 percent of Rhode Island’s population is “food insecure.”
These are people who fluctuate in and out of hunger and do not necessarily know
where their next meal is coming from. That’s about 90,000 to 100,000 people,
40,000 of them are children, according to Gorman. Those numbers just seem too
high in a state this small.
• You can add college textbooks to that growing list of
things that have gotten outrageously expensive.
• Someone ought to propose a campaign reform law that
requires candidates for public office to use photos of themselves in literature
and on signs that are not more than 5 years old. I’ve already seen a couple
of shots that have to be 20 years old.
• Did you see where the school buses in Seekonk will soon
be emblazoned with advertisements? What’s next – the kids’ backpacks?
• I remember thinking it was sort of odd when that Krispy Kreme opened on
Pontiac Avenue in Cranston and people camped out for hours to be the first in
line to get a hot, fresh Krispy Kreme doughnut. But it was a novelty, I guess,
and so from a marketing perspective, it made sense. In fact, Krispy Kreme’s
aggressive marketing worked wonders the last couple of years as the company
expanded into many new markets across the country. But now growth – at least
in terms of dollars – has slowed considerably. Sales at individual stores are
expected to be flat for the rest of the year, after a couple of years of double-digit
growth. The company’s stock price has declined steadily. So why the turn of
fortune? To me, it’s obvious. As part of its rapid expansion, Krispy Kreme not
only built new doughnut shops where you could watch the doughnuts being made
and buy them hot, they also delivered their product to supermarkets and gas
stations and retail outlets like Wal-Mart all over the country. With that, Krispy
Kremes weren’t special anymore. The company went too far, too fast and the novelty
has worn off.
• Downtown – not the areas surrounding it, but downtown
itself – could really use a good-sized grocery store with onsite parking.
• A new survey by Accountemps suggests that American workers
are starting to feel better about the economy, with 59 percent of respondents
saying they are optimistic not only about the economy in general, but also their
potential for job growth over the next year. High-income professionals earning
at least $75,000 per year are most confident about the economy. Workers 18 to
34 years of age were the most hopeful about their career prospects, with 62
percent saying that they are more optimistic than they were a year ago.
• That being said, there is still plenty of anecdotal
evidence out there that suggests that people aren’t spending money as confidently
as they have in the past. For example, I hear that memberships at area country
clubs are way down.
• The only thing worse than not being able to get Sox
tickets these days is watching the games on television and having to endure
those people who insist on waving to the camera – usually with a cell phone
in the other hand – when they know they are in the camera shot. Of course, if
we catch the Yankees, they can wave anything they want at those cameras.
• And speaking of baseball. Congratulations to Ben Mondor,
who wrapped up another season with the Pawtucket Red Sox earlier this month.
The team’s owner is said to be retiring, though it’s hard to imagine him not being at McCoy Stadium come next spring. Mondor is indeed a class act and is deserving of whatever rest and relaxation he can find. A few more Ben Mondors would serve us well.
