Justin Katz

Lighthouse on Goat Island at sunset with Newport Bridge in the background.

Newport’s character and cost is a matter of choice.

By Justin Katz | April 28, 2023 |

Artsy people’s complaining about gauche wealth-culture is nothing new, but something about this complaint by progressive podcaster and musician Bill Bartholomew struck me as oblivious of the obvious: Working late on Friday to frame out a roof on Ocean Drive 15 years ago, while watching BMWs roll by, I had similar thoughts.  But I also…

A water drop and ripples

Maybe Stephen King started it with his approach to villain-picking.

By Justin Katz | April 27, 2023 |

As an undergrad, back when the Internet was still brand new, I decompressed by reading through Stephen King books borrowed from the Carnegie Mellon library and noticed something.  One of his recurring techniques was to imagine the familiar as the monster.  Cujo was a dog.  Christine was a cool car.  Firestarter was a little girl.  The title…

A dark classroom

Don’t miss the fact teachers unions want standardization… for themselves.

By Justin Katz | April 26, 2023 |

Sometimes the cognitive dissonance from special-interest ideologues’ commentary is so strong it’s difficult to know whether they’re brainwashing, trolling, or both. Consider this tweet from Rhode Island labor union executive and progressive activist Patrick Crowley: Before Crowley moved up the union-organizer ranks and was still specifically with the National Education Association of Rhode Island, I…

Man hiding money behind his back with his fingers crossed.

Politics This Week: Tales from the Everything’s Personal State

By Justin Katz | April 25, 2023 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss how personal relations, feelings, and drama pervade Rhode Island government in every aspect.

An indoor self-storage facility.

Think more deeply about self-storage bans.

By Justin Katz | April 21, 2023 |

Justin Roias — the Providence City Councilor for the ward covering the North End — doesn’t like self-storage facilities. That’s fine, but his response and reasoning raise crucial points of organization and problem solving: I came across Roias’s tweet via Rachel Miller, who is participating in “the effort to update our zoning laws to prohibit…

A wolf removes its sheep mask

What is the alternative to schools’ “outing kids to their parents”?

By Justin Katz | April 20, 2023 |

Vague policies with no safeguards and no accountability that imagine the ideal school personnel against the most monstrous parents are the giveaway that progressives and the state Department of Education aren’t actually putting the well-being of children first.

Young adults covering each other's mouths

Why are the “most educated” suddenly the most afraid of information liberty?

By Justin Katz | April 18, 2023 |

Observing that a significant majority of Americans now believe the COVID lab-leak theory despite the idea’s having recently been banned on “Big Tech platforms,” Glenn Greenwald recalls a 2021 Pew Research finding that over a mere three-year span the percentage of Democrats who support big-tech censorship had grown from 60% to 76%, and (worse, in…

1 plus 1 equals 3 with young man on smartphone in background.

Politics This Week: Education and Agendas

By Justin Katz | April 18, 2023 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz walk through how the effects of today’s education, or lack thereof, are trickling through all facets of society.

A masked figure shushes silence

Bud Light has provided a warning case for our culture.

By Justin Katz | April 14, 2023 |

If you pay attention to non-leftwing media and/or haven’t blocked or muted anybody who isn’t progressive on social media, you’re likely to have heard that Anheuser-Busch has taken a huge financial hit after a young marketing executive aligned the company fully with radical gender ideologues by partnering with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, a man whose…

A water drop and ripples

Another datapoint in the anti-Catholic shift of the federal government.

By Justin Katz | April 13, 2023 |

As I’ve said, it’s possible to make too much of such incidents (and politics often seems designed to make too much of them), but they’re worth noting as they happen, nonetheless: In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, [Republican Congressman from Ohio Jim] Jordan alleged the FBI “relied on at least one undercover agent to…