Quick Read

A man sips espresso with a view

Conservative redistributionists consider something progressive redistributionists don’t: human nature.

By Justin Katz | September 17, 2021 |

When Ray Rickman mentioned his support for progressive wealth redistribution during his State of the State conversation with Mike Stenhouse, Sten didn’t want to redirect the conversation into that debate, only mentioning (because he couldn’t not say anything, of course) that the big question is who the angels are to decide when enough is enough.  If…

Parents have to stand up for their kids’ rights, as they’re doing in Rhode Island, but beware the judiciary and media.

By Justin Katz | September 17, 2021 |

It’s encouraging to see that some families in Rhode Island have had enough and are willing to take to court to defend their civil rights, as Kim Kalunian reports on WPRI: Sixteen parents and grandparents have filed a lawsuit against Gov. Dan McKee over his statewide school mask mandate. The complaint, filed in Providence Superior…

David Morales and Sam Bell with a socialist symbol

Representative David Morales and Senator Sam Bell are overt socialists.

By Justin Katz | September 16, 2021 |

Literally.  Here’s the headline of an interview they did with Jacobin, an explicitly socialist magazine: “Socialist Legislators Are Taking on Rhode Island’s Ultraconservative Democrats.” It shows you how frighteningly radical these people are that they say, apparently with a straight face, that Rhode Island’s leading Democrats are “ultraconservative.”  Naturally, this is standard language for Bell, who…

Ivan Vladimirov's Night Robbery of Humanitarian Aid

Here’s what you do if you’re angry at Anthony Silva’s $53,000 parting gift.

By Justin Katz | September 15, 2021 |

Departing Democrat Governor Dan McKee’s administration under the cloud of an influence peddling scandal, former Chief of Staff Anthony Silva is taking with him a $53,000 payout for unused time off, according to Eli Sherman on WPRI.  This benefit is always an issue when government employees leave office for some controversial reason, and the public is…

Racist Democrat Party poster from the Civil War era

A prime example of controlling the present to control the past to control the future.

By Justin Katz | September 15, 2021 |

Owing to the fact that a local union official and I have the same name, I’ve been peripherally following a controversy in Boca Raton, Florida, involving an unnamed teacher who was suspended for showing his high school history class Civil War–era political imagery, including the one used as the featured image for this post.  These…

A man and woman high five in an office

Is it really worth harming women in order to implement pay-equity laws?

By Justin Katz | September 14, 2021 |

Free-market purists err in that they disregard (or, at least, discount) the importance of factors that both they and the market have a hard time factoring into their equations.  Even relatively unadulterated free-marketers recognize the problem of externalities and the tragedy of the commons.  We should arguably go a little farther than that and recognize…

Luca Signorelli, The Preaching of the Antichrist

A new-media climate change propaganda video shows the direction of vaccine mandates.

By Justin Katz | September 14, 2021 |

Writing for Accuracy in Media, I note how similarly NowThis (an online video news source with deep Democrat ties) frames its climate-change alarmism to Biden’s vaccine mandate language on the same day: What makes this different from the typical cynical exploitation of disaster by climate alarmists is that NowThis released its video on the very same day…

Open safe deposit boxes

If Americans accept bank-account monitoring, it’s all over.

By Justin Katz | September 13, 2021 |

Hank Berrien sounds an alarm that ought to draw the attention of Americans across the political spectrum: “The proposal would require banks to report gross inflows and outflows to the IRS, including transactions from Venmo, PayPal, crypto exchanges and the like in an effort to fight tax evasion,” the Daily Mail noted, adding, “The IRS…

Dan McKee gets vaccinated

McKee needs to start inoculating his decisions against the symptoms of cronyism.

By Justin Katz | September 13, 2021 |

How Democrat Governor Dan McKee handled the awarding of a $5 million education-related contract to a group of his friends and allies has been a disaster, giving his opposition a wide-open window through which to pepper him with political arrows, but I’m withholding judgment on the action itself.  This paragraph from Patrick Anderson’s Providence Journal article on…

A drone overhead

We’ll all be “domestic terrorists” eventually.

By Justin Katz | September 10, 2021 |

The day after Joe Biden talked about “tens of millions of American citizens like they’re vermin” (as J.D. Vance put it), his Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, took to MSNBC to issue a dire warning: “The threat over the last 20 years has evolved,” Mayorkas said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “We were, of course, in…