Justin Katz

Kids Should Take a Year On

By Justin Katz | January 6, 2009 |

After two drop-out years selling fish off a truck, I returned to college much more motivated, and with a better sense of what I wanted to accomplish there. So I was inclined to approve when I came across a news story with a lede explaining that “more educators are advocating a year off between high…

Symptoms Ignored in Treatment of a Questionable Cause

By Justin Katz | January 6, 2009 |

Be sure to read Bjorn Lomborg’s op-ed suggesting that excessive and misdirected fervor over climate change is likely to harm many people in the present in order to help a few in the future. The following are a few points that I found particularly interesting: … implementing the Kyoto Protocol at a cost of $180…

More RI Comings and Goings

By Justin Katz | January 6, 2009 |

Don Roach presents an interesting finding in response to Tom Sgouros’s suggestion that “our population loss is as likely to be an affordable housing issue as it is anything else”: The New England Public Policy Center published a report in Jan 2007 noting the percentage of low income families spending more than 30 percent of…

Re: Tim Williamson

By Justin Katz | January 5, 2009 |

I missed part of the conversation, but according to Dan’s subsequent paraphrase, Williamson also mentioned draft legislation that would enable local school committees to modify contracts on the grounds that there is simply no money and that would centralize contract negotiation within the state government (the Department of Education, I believe). Does that strike anybody…

Discouraging the Birth of Business Entities

By Justin Katz | January 5, 2009 |

While returning, this weekend, to the long-standing question of what sort of official entity Anchor Rising should become, I whittled down my understanding of the relevant tax law to what I believe to be its basic statement: Once one creates an entity, in Rhode Island, that entity is subject to fees and taxation. An individual…

Who You Calling Angry!!!

By Justin Katz | January 5, 2009 |

I was disappointed to come across this musing from Providence Journal Opinion Page Editor Bob Whitcomb (via RI Future): Why do right-wing radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh do so well and liberal ones not so well? Consider that Colin McEnroe, a rude liberal, has just been fired by WTIC in Hartford and that national…

Taking Wealth Morally

By Justin Katz | January 5, 2009 |

By all means, let’s declare the immorality of gargantuan wealth. Every story of catastrophe and dire need must make the rightly ordered person marvel at the spiritual putrefaction of those who hoard their millions and billions. How could a man of clear conscience sift money idly through his fingers in such sums as could effect…

Reason Corrupted by Evil

By Justin Katz | January 4, 2009 |

I have to believe that the day will come when society at large will share my disgust with such phrasings as Owen M. Sullivan’s and be astonished that anybody would commit them to print, much less seek to publish them in major newspapers: The Israeli attack on the Gaza Ghetto, much like the Nazi attack…

A Quick Explanation for Pat

By Justin Katz | January 4, 2009 |

I haven’t had a chance to work through my Sunday paper, yet, so I’ll offer no comment on the bulk of that to which Pat is responding in this post, but he does construct a question in such a way as to merit correction. Arguing for increasing taxes and government-induced costs of doing business in…

Retiring England and New England, Alike

By Justin Katz | January 4, 2009 |

The editorial board of the Providence Journal notes a familiar problem in the old country: Last month, Britain’s biggest business group, CBI, released a report contending that the total liability for public pensions in the country had reached at least a staggering 900 million pounds — about $1.4 trillion. Some 5 million unionized public employees…