Justin Katz
This has become a focus of the Providence Journal’s city reporter: What stories is Russo not covering because she’s spending so much time on this one? Why is a personnel matter at a private organization newsworthy? As for the content, it finally provides some explanation for a mythical cliché. I’ve never understood the rule that you…
With that perspective, I’d suggest that America works better when voters put the adults in charge but then laugh at them through media and entertainment. Once, adults could be of either party, but they became increasingly of the Republican variety. Unfortunately, voters’ frustration with the inability to return to adult policies is loosening that rule,…
That’s why, although I agree with Jordan, here, I think he’s a step away from the key point: We must reframe. A libertarian lean is correct, but valorizing success won’t work. The impulse to identify with the oppressed has to be changed to wanting to help people, to make THEM successful. It’s the principle at…
This exchange between CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr has made the rounds and received its share of commentary: To my mind, the most telling part is when Collins looks for a comparison among conservatives to progressive bureaucratic government impositions and points to a local library debate. What Barr should have…
John DePetro and Justin Katz highlight some of the ways the local media and political establishment distort the public message.
The concept of triangulation used to mean politicians looked at the political landscape and positioned themselves on the field to advance their policy goals. The worsening development, facilitated by mass media and social media, is the attempt to manipulate the landscape. That’s where we start to think of the Overton Window, shifting the range of…
And they’re both artificial thresholds created by interventionist policies. realEstateTrent makes a great point, here: Progressive policies, which shift decision-making to the blunt tool of government, create these unhealthy thresholds everywhere. People stay on the public dole because they’d have to earn so much money for a job to be worthwhile that no job…
One suspects mainstream journalists don’t see this as a problem because they can’t imagine reporting any differently just because the governments they support are directly paying them money: And realistically, we’re finding in Rhode Island that government PR is such a lucrative next step for journalists that it’s more a question of whether they work…
Catching up on email, I came across this October article from the American Stewards of Liberty about a federal push for conservation areas: The Service is planning to acquire 250,000 acres of private land in the new federally designated area by offering “voluntary” conservation easements in perpetuity to landowners. Those who do not want to…
The headline of a Alexa Gagosz’s recent Boston Globe article asks, “Will tenants unions make a difference in Rhode Island’s housing crisis?” The answer, we can be confident, is “yes,” although it will make a difference by making it worse. The state’s problem is insufficient housing, and the only durable, healthy way to give tenants,…