Quick Read

A child with hands over face.

McKee’s Learn 365 RI education initiative may justify a response of Turn 180.

By Justin Katz | April 13, 2023 |

Whether it’s peculiar or not (given his governance style) the most-conspicuous thing about the Learn 365 RI initiative — for which Democrat Governor Dan McKee has sought (and received) a PR boost — is how undefined it is.  There’s some effort to get municipalities to commit to something, although what that may be isn’t clear. …

"Injustice Won't Be Postponed" sign

Seth Magaziner’s gun tweet is a scary symptom.

By Justin Katz | April 12, 2023 |

To solve problems without causing unexpected damage, you have to have some reasonable explanation for the circumstances.  This recent anti-gun tweet from Democrat Congressman Seth Magaziner illustrates how politicians are moving farther and farther away from problem-solving: If you’re accustomed to analyzing data visualizations, it might take you a moment to understand Magaziner’s point.  The…

Children at sunset

American kids’ life expectancy isn’t so bad, if all things are considered.

By Justin Katz | April 6, 2023 |

To what extent, do you think, is our current predicament caused by a feedback loop of blindness?  Perhaps the people investigating society’s questions are actually incapable of considering some possibilities for ideological reasons.  They therefore craft policies and advance cultural changes whose outcomes they cannot measure because of the blind spot with which they began.…

A house made of money

Too much single-family housing is not nearly a problem in Rhode Island.

By Justin Katz | April 3, 2023 |

Talk about housing has been all the rage in Rhode Island over the past year.  Unfortunately (and tellingly), it doesn’t seem to be a policy area in which activists, politicians, and journalists believe data ought to be front and center.  Sure, we get numbers about the effects of the problem — housing costs $X; Y…

Fane Tower rendering

Fane Tower Shows Rhode Island Has No Center to Hold

By Justin Katz | March 28, 2023 |

Now that it is no-longer-proposed, we are free to look at Fane Tower renderings in detail, beyond the gut reaction that it is odd and would be misplaced in Providence.  Structurally, the building would have been akin to a tree trunk that began to split near the ground.  The strength comes from the middle, providing…

Child being grabbed by monsters

Something more than hypocrisy is going on on the Left.

By Justin Katz | March 15, 2023 |

We’re probably all feeling the increasing (let’s say) incoherence of things over the past decade or more, but I’ve found it clarifying.  Distinctions and beliefs have reached cartoonish levels, which teaches lessons that may continue to apply in subtler degree when (if) life moves back toward sanity. One may long have suspected that progressives (once,…

A couple uses self-checkout.

Self-checkout laws are the sort of question civics education should address.

By Justin Katz | March 10, 2023 |

Americans really need to be able to step back a bit from the immediate issue addressed in legislation and think about how it relates to our understanding of society’s proper structure.  A Rhode Island bill going after self-checkout lanes in retail stores is an excellent case study.  Kathy Gregg writes in the Providence Journal: An army…

Adraien Van De Venne's Allegory of Poverty

How many weeks do you have to work?

By Justin Katz | March 9, 2023 |

Oren Cass’s analysis of the weeks required to support a middle-class lifestyle for American Compass raises some interesting points.  The study focuses on the income of men and shows that the combined cost of food, housing, health care, transportation, and education surpassed the median male income in the mid-’90s.  By 2022, that income was about…

A disintegrating apple in a child's hand

Education reforms are meaningless in RI unless they include accountability.

By Justin Katz | March 8, 2023 |

An omission in Asher Lehrer-Small’s recent article about reforms spearheaded by the state Department of Education puts a spotlight on the reason I’m skeptical and fear the changes are yet another cover-up of incompetence that will put Ocean State students even farther behind.  The reasonable hook is this head-scratching finding of a problem that should…

Meerkat tells a secret

Always ask how “good government” reforms affect access and influence.

By Justin Katz | March 7, 2023 |

Perhaps the most-challenging thing about good-government reforms is that, for the most part, we’re seeking to develop and implement them on the basis of a shallow political and organizational philosophy.  Consider legislation that would change Rhode Island’s Access to Public Records Act (APRA).  Some of the adjustments make sense, but I’m not so sure about…