6:05 AM Wed, Oct 21, 2009 | Permalink
Thomas J. Morgan  Email
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On the local front:
A year ago today:
Rhode Island's unemployment rate of 8.8 percent in September ranked highest in the country, nudging ahead of Michigan's, according to a federal report released today. Rhode Island has often recorded jobless levels near the top, but this marks the first time that it has ranked highest in the country since comparable data started being compiled 32 years ago, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Michigan's unemployment rate last month was 8.7 percent. The national unemployment rate remained unchanged at 6.1 percent. "Michigan is the poster child for recessionary conditions in the job market," said Jared Bernstein, labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute, in Washington. "It's amazing and disheartening that Rhode Island just took its place." The housing market's collapse here followed years of sluggish job growth which quickly turned to job losses once the national economy began to weaken. Even before the national credit markets collapsed, economists had said Rhode Island was in a recession. Rhode Island's 8.8 percent unemployment rate is the highest in 16 years, and the ranks of the jobless last month swelled to 50,200, the most on record, according to state labor officials.
5 years ago today:
State officials back away from federal suggestions about polling place security, including searches of voters on Election Day and the broad use of bomb-sniffing dogs, saying they are inappropriate or impossible. "We have no expectations that election officials are going to be doing bag inspections" at the polls, said Roger N. Begin, chairman of the state Board of Elections. The suggestion about voter searches drew the ire of the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, which denounced the idea as a "clear infringement on the privacy rights of voters . . . based on nothing but unsubstantiated fear."
25 years ago today:
An inmate escapes from the maximum security section of the Adult Correctional Institutions, but is captured minutes later in a stolen car in a nearby parking lot after he is seen by an off-duty guard jogging in front of the building. According to prison spokesman Anthony Ventetuolo Jr., inmates were about to be locked in cell blocks at 8:10 p.m. when Corrections Officer Larry Williams heard glass breaking at the front of the old prison. He saw one inmate going through the window and a second about to follow. Williams grabbed the second inmate and called for help, Ventetuolo said. The first inmate climbed a fence surrounding the prison, but encountered off-duty guard James Gallogy, who was jogging. The inmate stopped momentarily, then ran to the visitors' parking lot and jumped into a car, Ventetuolo said. Police later determined that the car had been stolen and left in the lot.
On the national front:
On this day in 1879, American inventor Thomas A. Edison demonstrates the first electric lamp.
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