Justin Katz
Perhaps it would not have been as deliberately un-gun-shy, but Jeanne Moos could have avoided the controversy with this skit and made it funnier, because more relevant: This morning’s e-blizzard of insults was prompted by a Moos piece on body language of the various candidates — particularly their strange, compulsive habit of pointing off into…
This week on our Wednesday stint on the Matt Allen Show, Don summarized his latest post addressing a turnaround in the Rhode Island economy, streamable by clicking here (or download).
This component of the RI House budget plan is nuts: he plan also includes funding for 100 of 400 slots slated to be eliminated from the early childhood education program, Head Start. In addition, the budget restores health care coverage for all but 1,000 of more than 7,000 adults slated to lose coverage under a…
The immorality of wealth is a notion that has been in the air lately, with the latest example being David Brooks’s lamentation of “The Great Seduction” in the New York Times: The United States has been an affluent nation since its founding. But the country was, by and large, not corrupted by wealth. For centuries,…
Add this to the list of lists that place Rhode Island on the wrong side: As of the most recent state report card issued by the National Association for Gifted Children, Rhode Island ranks at the bottom in nearly all categories, earning the state the dubious label of “most in need” with regard to critical…
The state of Rhode Island likes monopolists, it would seem: The other condition that Tufts needs to change is a state law that says only health plans that did business in Rhode Island in 2001 can take the health status of members into account in setting rates for small groups. As a result, only Blue…
This comment from Greg, in conversation with Old Time Liberal, is surprising in the degree to which he sets aside incisive surety for a conservative’s spin on the mushy milieu of liberal emotivism: I love to engage in raucous political debate with people from the other side of the fence. In person (Blogs I mostly…
An interesting passage from Steve Peoples’s second part to the Projo’s series on local unions: LABOR UNIONS and their allies walk a fine line when it comes to influencing elections. State and federal campaign finance laws have strict limits on what is, and isn’t, permissible. That may be why Ocean State Action is actually made…
It would seem that there’s something cultural about young-adult joblessness: Much of the spike in unemployment was caused by an unusually large surge of teenagers and people in their 20s into the labor force. And those young workers had little success finding work. The jobless rate among 16- to 19-year-olds rose to 18.7 percent from…
Much of the criticism (and all of the hatemail) related to my op-ed regarding Lt. Michael Morse and unionization in RI has only served to exacerbate my reservations. Namely, when I say “unionization,” they hear “firefighters.” When I say, “I’ve concluded that public-sector unionization is among the villains in Rhode Island,” they hear, “you get…