Playing in traffic

Last week, the Sierra Club released a report by the Surface Transportation Policy Project, a national coalition it belongs to, that found that Providence has some of the most dangerous walking conditions in the nation. Not surprisingly, the report was quickly disputed by Providence police and state Department of Transportation officials, who tailored their responses in order to avoid dealing with the main issue at hand. And not surprisingly again, television news reports on the story nicely reflected their obfuscations.

Providence Police spokesperson Captain John Ryan did have a point when he complained about how the report lumped "Providence/Pawtucket/Fall River" into one area. But he also conveniently chose to ignore the "injuries" element of the report and instead focused on the low number of "fatalities." Of course, your superior correspondents wouldn't want to be the ones to tell someone bound to a wheelchair for the rest of their days that their accident doesn't count.

Ed Parker of DOT went to work by immediately coming up with confusing and beside-the-point counter-statistics to try and blunt the effect of the Sierra Club report. For instance, the apologists want you to believe that comparisons between Providence and cities like Miami or Los Angeles are inherently unfair. And they would be if not for the fact that the report adjusts the number of pedestrian injuries and fatalities to the amount of walking activity in a particular community.

In one Channel 12 report featuring the Sierra Club's Karina Lutz and the DOT's response, reporter Barry Kreiger referred to the controversy as a "he said/she said" squabble. While this was great packaging (Monica Lewinsky was testifying in Washington at that very moment, and this is fabulous -- Parker's a man and Lutz is a woman!), Barry might have risen above the cliché if he had actually taken the time to read and analyze the report. That way, he could have described it more accurately as a "she said/he dissembled" scenario.

Let's face it. Jorge is a real pedestrian. He's never driven an automobile in his life, and he has a pretty good grasp of the dangers of walking around in this and many other cities. The streets have been laid out with automobiles in mind, and the attitude those in the transportation industry have toward pedestrians is easily understood when you consider that, for decades, walkers were designated as "traffic flow interruptions" by the Highway Capacity Manual, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials' bible.

As in all matters of public policy, just follow the money -- check out transportation spending. The overwhelming bias is toward automobile issues, while pedestrians, bicyclists, mass transit users, etc., are all afterthoughts. Real change that would make a healthier and more community-friendly means of transportation viable and pleasant (not to mention environmentally sound) means a redirection of resources. And by and large, neither politicians nor corporations are interested in that shit -- unless we demand it.

ACLU puts wood to Pine

When your pubic hair's on fire, something's wrong.
When you think you're the Messiah, something's wrong.
You must take a plane to Venus, something's wrong.
When your girlfriend has a penis, something's wrong.

Yes, like the old song above might have explained, there is also something wrong with the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union going to bat for indicted racketeers Ed "Gerber Baby" DiPrete and his son, Dennis the Menace. But the person who is wrong in this case is not the Gerb, our disgraced former governor, but lame-duck Vo Dilun Attorney General Jeff Pine, the target of the ACLU's formal complaint for prosecutorial misconduct.

What got the ACLU's knickers in an unprecedented twist was Pine's refusal to acknowledge his office's highly suspect behavior in the DiPrete case, which, earlier this year, came within a Supreme Court reversal of being thrown out. And your superior correspondents can't imagine that the ACLU's resolve to nail Pine wasn't further hardened when the AG claimed to have been exonerated by an investigation into the matter by disciplinary counsel David Curtin.

Indeed, when the Urinal asked him about this, Curtin, in so many words, replied, "Bullshit." He went so far as to bring up the Billary/Blewinsky affair in adding, "For all I know, maybe there's a stained dress out there that hasn't been turned over [by Pine's prosecutors to the DiPrete defense team]."

It was just this sort of failure to disclose evidence by Pine's original Three Stooges prosecutorial team that led to the case's first being tossed out of Superior Court by Judge Dominic Cresto. Time to wake up and smell the Walt's Roast Beef, Jeff.

For the Fund

As regular readers know, your superior correspondents are keen supporters of the Fund for Community Progress, the grass-roots umbrella fund-raising group that serves agencies like Amos House, the Coalition for Consumer Justice, the Mental Health Association of Rhode Island, Greater Elmwood Neighborhood Services, and 15 other community groups. Well, the Fund has a fund-raiser coming up on Sunday, August 16 that should be of special interest to softball aficionados.

At 6:30 p.m., the King and His Court, the original four-man softball team with the legendary Eddie Feigner, will be featured in a benefit doubleheader for the Fund at Macomber Field in Central Falls. The first game pits the Fund's squad, featuring Hustlin' Henry Shelton, against the Central Falls city administration. (We hope they do softball better than they do education.) Then, at 8 p.m., the King and His Court will face a Rhode Island All-Star team. Feigner and company haven't played in the Biggest Little in years, and they are simply amazing. It's for a good cause, so if you enjoy softball, don't miss this one.

A good Point

A tip of the beret and sombrero with great gusto to Narragansett Electric and the Planning Board of North Kingstown. Together, they are working to save one of the most valuable and valued stretches of open space along Narragansett Bay-- that at Rome Point.

For those of you who don't know, years ago Rome Point was a target of developers who wanted to put a power plant there. (Wouldn't that have been special, and such a wonderful sight as you crossed the Jamestown Bridge?) Fortunately, neighbors and environmental groups put an end to that wrong-headedness.

Today, Rome Point, owned by Narragansett Electric, is one of the premier summer and winter strolling sites in the state, offering amazing views of the Bay, including that of the many seals that haul out on the rocks at the Hummocks. To keep it this way, North Kingstown's Planning Board has decided against declaring the area "open space," which would have had a considerably negative impact on Narragansett Electric and possibly could have prompted litigation by the company. Instead, the town wants first shot at buying the development rights to the site should the land go on the block.

This would guarantee Narragansett Electric's getting some return on the property, while it would allow North Kingstown to protect this beautiful stretch of coast. In a time of companies catering only to stockholders' greed and municipalities abandoning their community's unique natural features for money, this cooperative effort is as laudable as it is rare.

Disease carriers

Phillipe and Jorge were both heartbroken and livid over the recent bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, in which many innocent Kenyans and Tanzanians were killed. We have a number of friends in both countries, and know the shock they must feel at these atrocities.

What makes it worse is that the bombings have nothing to do with the politics of either country. Instead, they appear to be another corollary crime to the eternal Mideast conflict involving Israel, Arab nations, and the United States in that hideous struggle.

Terrorists of all stripes -- be it Israeli president and professional political agitator Benjamin Netanyahu, Iraq's murdering dictator Hussein, or the countless extreme religious sects, all of whom conveniently have Yahweh or Allah on their side -- are the ones guilty of carrying their disease abroad, with death ultimately resulting.

Phillipe and Jorge think it's perhaps time to turn the entire Mideast into a scorched-earth parking lot. To use the old Vietnam War line, let God sort 'em out, once and for all.

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