Quick Read
There has been a “Well I Swan” reaction this week in certain quarters to President-Elect Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of Defense. The big concerns seem to be that Pete Hegseth is a Fox News host; that he lacks defense policy experience or foreign policy chops that he has certain tattoos; and – oh, hey,…
There is a Presidential popular vote chart getting a lot of attention out there that seems to show a big drop in Democratic votes from 2020 to 2024. However, as pointed out by Dan McLaughlin, I think people are getting over their skis before all of the data is in. I thought a picture showing…
While developing plans for the future, I’ve been reading about the history of American journalism, and an observation from the post-Revolution period has been worth more than a few underlines. Political parties always want dedicated media outlets, but media outlets dedicated to partisan politics never pay for themselves. Jefferson had to give a no-show State Department job…
Following the determination in April that the Washington Bridge eastbound was becoming “considerably more sensitive” (gulp), RIDOT contracted to install a new, combined structural health monitoring and vehicle weigh-in-motion program on/between the Washington Bridge and the Iway (Providence River Bridge). In May, RIDOT entered into a five year “sole source” – i.e., no RFP –…
Democrats’ acceptance of violence from their own partisans, especially labor unions, is a major warning sign that they’ll turn away when it happens again in the future, but it’s especially disconcerting to see Attorney General Peter Neronha celebrating violence against police officers: If I seem to be exaggerating, it’s only because I’m not accepting as…
As I understand it, RealPage offers landlords software for renting out and managing their properties. Like other such software across industries, it uses automation and analytics to help its clients conceptualize their assets and their businesses and squeeze out inefficiencies. Among those services is an algorithm that uses local real estate data, including from its…
Not long ago, the ladies of The View displayed the number of associates of Donald Trump who have recently* gone to prison as evidence that “the system is working.” We’d be in better condition as a country if more people realized that the very same visual leads to opposite conclusions for different people, creating a dangerous…
Gene Valicenti’s weekly Tuesday conversation on WPRO with Brown University Professor Wendy Schiller took a slightly unexpected turn yesterday when Gene honored her request to comment on the handling of the Washington Bridge closure. (Starts at Minute 06:45.) Schiller: This is a significant, major problem that if something goes wrong with the eastbound side, for…
They may not be straightforward or easily articulated, though, so just read them through and absorb the awfulness. Here’s the background: Built in the 1980s and 1990s where Scituate Avenue meets Furnace Hill Brook, Alpine Estates was one of the first of what would become many modern subdivisions on what used to be western Cranston…
Although it feels as if genuine policy debates have receded into the background in Rhode Island, reviving them may help correct the corrosion spreading throughout our civic house. Corporate tax incentives, for example, are an area in which conservatives and progressives in Rhode Island tend to agree on the binary “yes/no” question, raising the possibility…