Justin Katz

Trick-or-treating children distract an old woman to take her candy

Politics This Week: Trickery in RI Government

By Justin Katz | October 31, 2023 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz review many ways RI politicians are childish and misleading.

A girl walks through a haunted graveyard whistling

Politics This Week: Whistling Past a Changing Political Environment in RI

By Justin Katz | October 23, 2023 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz dig into important developments that the RI mainstream doesn’t want to address.

Jose Clemente Orozco, The Clowns of War Arguing in Hell

Hard not to conclude Councilor Miguel Sanchez will approve of political killings in the United States.

By Justin Katz | October 23, 2023 |

Providence Democrat City Councilor Miguel Sanchez has been catching some deserved flack for marching with the anti-Israel rally in Providence over the weekend (although the criticism is coming from people who don’t exist within the awareness of Rhode Island power): If local journalists weren’t so intent on not paying attention to the wrong people, they…

A water drop and ripples

Allow me to translate the “river to the sea” slogan for progressives.

By Justin Katz | October 21, 2023 |

When you chant “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea,” what those within Israel or externally supportive of the country hear is similar to what you would hear if a large group of conservatives marched in the street chanting: “White people will be free, from Bar Harbor to San D.” You would…

A water drop and ripples

We can observe a six-step process for capturing the political imaginations of the youth.

By Justin Katz | October 19, 2023 |

Step 1: Construct a simplistic narrative with obvious good guys and bad guys and a conclusion with which nobody reasonable could disagree. Step 2: Ensure that the “bad guys” can’t actually harm the people protesting. Step 3: Provide singsong, rhythmic slogans that sound innocuous, but that the intended opposition will understand as threatening. Step 4:…

A water drop and ripples

Here’s a logical ruler for assessing the likelihood between Hamas and Israel when it comes to the hospital bombing.

By Justin Katz | October 18, 2023 |

Hamas executed a brutal sneak attack with no declaration of war against innocent people in their homes and at a music festival.  The big complaint against Israel’s response, recently, has been that one day was not enough warning for people to evacuate an area they were planning to attack after a declaration of war. Which…

A water drop and ripples

Miserable RICAS scores won’t mean any response from Rhode Island.

By Justin Katz | October 18, 2023 |

Dan McGowan notes that new standardized test scores are out for Rhode Island public schools, and they’re not good. Elsewhere, he finds a silver lining in the fact that English-language learners do better at English and are nearly caught up in math, but it seems like an indication of how poorly the schools are doing…

A monster with many eyes eats a college professor

Politics This Week: Warning Signs of a Cultural Monster

By Justin Katz | October 16, 2023 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss Rhode Island politics and the unsettling reaction to atrocity.

A water drop and ripples

This is too little too late from the likes of Jha.

By Justin Katz | October 16, 2023 |

Nonetheless, it’s worth noting this mild corrective from Brown University’s Dr. Ashish Jha on Newsmakers, as summarized in a recent “Nesi’s Notes” column: “I think we all in public health could have done a better job of communicating with more humility about what we knew and didn’t know. There was a desire by some people to…

A water drop and ripples

Education is the place to start trying to fix what’s wrong in RI and America.

By Justin Katz | October 13, 2023 |

As people newly look up from their lives to wonder about the craziness with which we’re surrounded — from collegiate support for Hamas to economic ignorance to scientific illiteracy to an inability to grapple with logic — they should turn their gaze toward our schools. Consider this recent Boston Globe column from Dan McGowan: The state’s most…