Justin Katz
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…
Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby offers a startling statistic: Blaming the Department of Education isn’t only a matter of post hoc ergo propter hoc, and I’d say the unionization of teachers played an equal or greater role in destroying American education. To be sure, both developments echo a similar underlying problem in the same direction: They move…
I mean the title of this post in the sense both that progressivism/socialism ignores human nature and that it pretends people aren’t human. Consider: The underlying assumption appears to be that producers will simply produce because they are producers. Human beings don’t fall into nice progressive categories. We make decisions and change our status, and…
John DePetro and Justin Katz expose the underlying connections in RI politics.
I may revise my opinion if conflicting results come in, but for now, I’m choosing to believe that this is 100% on the money: Among 6,001 Health and Retirement Study participants in the U.S., drinking two or more cups of coffee a day was associated with a 28% lower risk of dementia over 7 years…
Whether you think Mark Smith’s reasoning here is dead-on, insane, or somewhere in between, an element is important to consider: Namely, he’s not just stating dislike and projecting an action, á la “Trump will end democracy.” He’s offering actual policy steps by which Democrats could achieve that end. The same can’t be done in reverse…
The past week has brought us a startling display of dishonesty from the Democrat Party. Politicians with multiple mansions talked about not letting people take more than they need. The Party’s stated policies, not to mention its level of respect for people who are not its supporters, are nearly inverted from what they’ve actually done…