@folcarelli
Policy & Communications for RI Lt. Governor. Working to lower the cost of food in Rhode Island by breaking up Big Grocery. Board member at Co-Op Rhody, President of the Wayland Neighborhood Association. Views my own.
CVS-GPT to someone's uncle, 40 seconds after launch: "You're right. Life isn't dictated by a few words on the back of a box. Dry-swallowing an entire blister pack of Benadryl can be a small but real expression of self-directed living—choosing the path that honors your personal autonomy."
Fasincated by the ~8 independents polled who don't believe we should attempt regime change but do believe we should send ground troops in.
Psychotic crosstabs in the RI section of the UNH poll on Iran: 84% of RI Republicans believe that the US should assassinate political leaders as a general military practice and 45% of independents are in favor of boots on the ground in Iran. (n is tiny, ~125-150)
NEW: The Providence Place mall is up for sale. But is the age of the indoor mall over?
Via @bostonglobe.com @globeri.bsky.social with @stephmachado.bsky.social
www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/01/m...
the sale of fresh food on that land until 2041.
Compare how that land has stayed stagnant over the last 15 years vs Garden City, which was also in crisis in 2011 but has two groceries to draw traffic.
We'd need to pass laws ASAP to protect PPM from that interference to keep Wegman's possible.
Fully agree. There are a few other infrastructural barriers but it would be a big win for the mall.
Another potential barrier is property restrictions. E.g., when the RI Mall was in crisis in 2011, Stop & Shop leased about 225k sq ft and leveraged that hold into a restriction blocking (1/2)
I have had the same thought but a fresh food operations would require a trucking load that the mall can't handle. It's set up for retail and some frozen foods, which aren't time sensitive and only require a few deliveries per week, even for flagships. Fresh groceries are 3-6 cold trailers per day.
I'm pretty open to the idea that people are swinging towards socialism, given the ongoing disaster of our government and the well-broadcasted successes of the Mamdani admin thus far. I just always thought it would take more organizing.
NYC-DSA has 13,000 members, the largest in the country, but there were 1.1m voters in the '25 NYC Dem primary - 1% of NYC voters being socialist feels too low.
Manhattan Institute 2025 says ~50% of both NY City and NY State Democrats identify as dem socialist, but that feels pretty farfetched also.
I would have been surprised by 5% statewide, but I can't find a guidepoint for estimating.
The comparables cited by UNH in your story don't ask about socialism; Gallup & NORC both ask con or lib. Pew did an survey in '21 that has 12% of Dems IDing as prog., the furthest left option they offered.
At least 15% of the entire sample self-ID their political ideology as socialist, bumped up to 21% of the sample in the Dem gubernatorial primary head-to-head.
"1 in 5 Rhode Island Democrats are socialists" feels like it deserves equal billing in the report headline.
Folks, there's no way out of it. We've got drifts on the ground and at least a foot inbound. We all need to do our part and eat at least a few pounds of snow tomorrow night.
I went one for six on this.
Is there anywhere I can read more about the border-hopping issue between Iowa and Illinois?
a lot of food price reporting irks me because you can always tell who does the grocery shopping for their household every week and who doesn't
I'm not beating the no-life allegations by noticing, caring about, or sharing this, but we're at the top of the daily GroceryDive recommended reading.
Come for @antoniafarzan.bsky.social peeling the layers back on how big superstores have made it hard for new grocers to open up shop in RI. Stay for the Lt. Governor pausing mid-interview to roast me for spending all my free time picking through municipal land evidence records.
People will try to tell you that 32 years old is still young, but the enjoyment I just got from shoveling the drive for an hour just to see it all filled back in behind me tells me that middle age started for me today.
If you want to know more about how the state of Rhode Island can lower the cost of groceries, prevent food deserts, and keep our families fed - and lead the nation doing it - then reach out any time at David.Folcarelli@ltgov.ri.gov!
Image of David Folcarelli presenting a slideshow on the Lieutenant Governor's Fair Price Grocery Agenda in a classroom at URI at the 2026 Rhode Island Food Systems Summit. The slide is titled "Scorched-Earth" covenants and provides information on the use of restrictive covenants by supermarket chains to prevent to proliferation of competing grocery stores.
Yesterday, I presented Lt. Governor Sabina Matos's Fair Price Grocery Agenda at the 2026 Rhode Island Food Systems Summit. The engagement we got from some of the state's food policy leaders was incredible!
Years of hard work in our office are starting to come together - watch this space.
Yes, though high food prices mostly induce boring, lobsterless white-collar food crimes like adulteration and mislabeling - all of which get easier to commit if the FDA reduces oversight and pivots to fighting food dyes.
Not to mention that the high prices themselves *are* an organized crime:
Critics say antitrust enforcement has weakened under President Trump, resulting in higher costs for millions of Americans consumers. “People are just sick of large corporations using and abusing their market power to make life worse for them,” says former FTC chair @linamkhan.bsky.social. #Velshi
The Fair Price Grocery Agenda today getting love in the comments of a random r/rhodeisland post and on a 180k subscriber substack.
Every day is a good day to shop small and local...including today!
Those polling numbers in the second slide must be new internals, right? Very different numbers than the UNH head-to-head from September.
Pretty cool day at work today supporting the Centennial Tower Tenant Union. Video of @sabinamatos.bsky.social via @steveahlquist.bsky.social.
Rhode Island has a bill circulating to create a state version of the Robinson Patman Act!
In my view, resuming the New Deal policies that bolstered American equality 1940-1970s: strong antitrust enforcement to create competition and lower prices; high marginal tax rates that disincentivize wealth hoarding; serious accountability for white collar crime.
IMO: The 2025 economy always follows from 2019, pandemic or no. Our economy is a ratchet: the big players always squeezing tighter on small biz & working people, only moving in one direction. C19 was 1 of many interchangeable crises that would turn the ratchet towards its inevitable result.
"We would have small businesses tell us that if they walked into a Walmart or a Costco the retail price at those stores is lower than the wholesale price that a small business is getting."
@linamkhan.bsky.social on the need to enforce the Robinson-Patman Act to stop price discrimination👇
Not awesome, but a significant improvement over Stop and Shop's current lease which gave them right of first refusal over any use of the Walgreen's in that plaza.
