Quick Read
As I’ve thought about it, this morning’s post on New England governors’ poll results ended a bit short. I closed with a suggestion for Democrats, but what about Republicans? Considering the huge jump of New England’s three Democrats from the bottom of the national list in 2019 to the top now, two possibilities come to…
Right from the beginning, an op-ed in the Boston Globe by RI Political Co-Op progressive candidate Lenny Cioe gives off warning signals: In many neighborhoods near colleges like Providence College, Johnson and Wales, and Brown University, predatory real estate companies are jacking up rents and forcing out families in favor of high-paying students. And that’s…
During our weekly conversation on Monday, John DePetro and I had some mild disagreement about how one might explain the most recent results of Morning Consult’s regular ranking of U.S. governors’ popularity. The headline for Rhode Island is that Governor Dan McKee is the second-most-popular Democrat governor in the country (at thirteenth overall), behind Connecticut’s…
Gregory Booth, who works with the advocacy section of Rhode Island’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) makes a reasonable point when he suggests that it might not be in our state’s best interest to have National Grid sell its Ocean State electrical distribution business to another company that lacks its cross-state infrastructure, but that isn’t why…
Reacting to Joe Biden’s comments on the Waukesha Christmas parade massacre, Brown University political science professor Wendy Schiller linked the incident to domestic violence: Here’s an idea. Take domestic violence more seriously at every level of government. Biden should know as he authored the original Violence Against Women Act. Although the mainstream narrative doesn’t make…
A week ago, Anchor Rising reported on toys being given to children in school-based COVID vaccination clinics. A spokesperson for the state said that it was only one clinic, and it was done to distract children while getting the shot. Elizabeth McNamara reports for East Greenwich News that children in that town are going home with even…
I’ve been engaging in a back-and-forth discussion with a childhood acquaintance concerning the costs of public schools, trying to convey that the system is set up like a ratchet. When operating costs go up — for electricity, say — school districts insist that they cannot absorb the hit and pass it along to taxpayers. It’s…
Unfortunately, it’s a familiar sequence. A video hits social media showing a few seconds of some shocking incident. At first it is universally passed along with expressions of horror, but very quickly, browsing users can begin to see most posts groping for political relevance. Facts begin to emerge, and if they serve a progressive narrative…
It adds up, of course, but when government is trillions of dollars in debt, a hundred million here and there seems hardly to count. That may be part of the reason that news of grants like the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Hiring Program doesn’t typically question where the…
In the course of my inquiries about the Equity Institute’s activities in the Portsmouth school system, I received this statement from Superintendent Thomas Kenworthy: The Portsmouth School Department contracted with the Equity Institute last spring to conduct a third-party analysis that we can use to inform our work around equity. We have a Strategic Plan…