Justin Katz

Moving Forward

By Justin Katz | January 8, 2009 |

Last night on the Matt Allen show, I mentioned our coverage of the governor’s speech and gave some general suggestions about the direction of Anchor Rising in the new year. Stream by clicking here, or download it. I have to say that the governor’s plan takes more ground (and concedes less) than I’d expected, giving…

Tasting the New Environment

By Justin Katz | January 7, 2009 |

I just heard on WPRO that the judge won’t decide whether to stop the East Providence School Committee’s unilateral employment change until the 23rd. It looks like union members will start to feel the pinch of not giving concessions. That’s a huge change for the better from an environment in which they expect to get…

Some Things to Expect?

By Justin Katz | January 7, 2009 |

Through email channels, I’ve been alerted to some items from the governor’s supplemental budget. I don’t have time to ponder them extensively, just now, but here they are: Article #7 suspends any General Revenue Sharing payments for the current fiscal year: loss of $55.1 million #17 freezes the tax rate applied for the Public Service…

A One-Way Street Across a Two-Way Border

By Justin Katz | January 7, 2009 |

I may be misunderstanding him, but it appears that Rhode Island elementary and secondary education commissioner Peter McWalters believes that Rhode Island should seek to attract illegal immigrants to our state in order to educate their children: In Rhode Island, McWalters said, “We’re not in agreement that these kids are worth it because we are…

The Governor, Us, and You

By Justin Katz | January 7, 2009 |

So you can plan your evening: We’ll be liveblogging the governor’s speech tonight at 7:00, and we’ll be doing so in an Engaged Citizen comments section that’ll go up around that time, so you can liveblog right along with us.

West Warwick Next in Line

By Justin Katz | January 7, 2009 |

The school committee in West Warwick appears mainly to be doing the bare minimum to support a Caruolo suit for more money from the town, but it may be headed down the road behind East Providence soon: The performance audit, commissioned by the town as a part of the Caruolo lawsuit proceedings from the last…

Night Is Still Night

By Justin Katz | January 7, 2009 |

Pat Crowley’s been working diligently to prove that, when it comes to taxation in Rhode Island, night is day. Yesterday, he stated his starting point thus: Maybe, just maybe, we are loosing population because we have a cash and carry tax structure that benefits the elite at the expense of the poor, not the other…

The Curse Heard ‘Round the World (“Rarely”)

By Justin Katz | January 6, 2009 |

Both the remark and the reporter’s presentation are worthy of note in this recent New York Times piece on Israel’s movement of ground troops into Gaza: Another woman found only half of the body of her 17-year-old daughter in the Shifa morgue. “May God exterminate Hamas!” she screamed, in a curse rarely heard these days.…

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…