Justin Katz
John DePetro and Justin Katz review the latest signs that Rhode Island’s bolts are loosening.
Note how progressive Democrats have framed the universe, as Sunny observes: As always, people who disagree with progressives are abusing power when they do anything to their own advantage, but progressives are never abusing power when they do whatever it takes to win. Keep an eye out for this dynamic especially when it comes to…
Gabrielle Caracciolo, of NBC 10, reports that the McKee administration is hiding behind its lawsuits to avoid releasing the “forensic analysis… to determinhe what went wrong and who is responsible for the failure of the Washington Bridge.” But she did do some investigating: An NBC 10 News investigation found when it comes to “quality control…
… to relieve their existential anxiety, people want a simple story in which the good guys and the bad guys are easy to identify. Genuinely bad people are willing to lie and tell that simplistic story, while good people acknowledge nuance and accept a share of blame. This imbalance tilts the community’s judgment scale against…
Mark Steyn raises the peculiarity of the mysterious deaths of two businessmen who actually managed to beat the U.S. Department of Justice’s process-is-the-punishment racket. Apparently, the statistics suggest that the DOJ way overcharges its targets in the hopes of pushing for a settlement: “95 percent of cases are won by prosecutors, 90 percent of those…
John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss the relevance of local, state, and national political news.
In the heat of the battle, political controversies over yard signs can become an almost comedic proxy for heated disagreements. I’ve seen people in the heat of a busy campaign drop everything to do battle with people stealing the yard signs of the other side or placing their own signs on property where they aren’t…
They may not be straightforward or easily articulated, though, so just read them through and absorb the awfulness. Here’s the background: Built in the 1980s and 1990s where Scituate Avenue meets Furnace Hill Brook, Alpine Estates was one of the first of what would become many modern subdivisions on what used to be western Cranston…
… by the discomfiting fascist, Orwellian tone of this campaign from supposed good-government-group Common Cause RI: It’s bad enough on its face, but it’s worse when you break down the manipulative message. First, Common Cause wants you to believe that you can instantly identify “disinformation about voting.” Next, the organization asserts that you have…
Although it feels as if genuine policy debates have receded into the background in Rhode Island, reviving them may help correct the corrosion spreading throughout our civic house. Corporate tax incentives, for example, are an area in which conservatives and progressives in Rhode Island tend to agree on the binary “yes/no” question, raising the possibility…