Justin Katz
There’s something emblematic about states’ attempts to tweak homeland security programs in order to apply federal dollars to tangential matters: More openly than at any time since the Sept. 11 attacks, state and local authorities have begun to complain that the federal financing for domestic security is being too closely tied to combating potential terrorist…
The Projo headline should have been “Murder case could threaten ex-officers’ pensions,” because it shouldn’t take the manifest ability of killing another human being to correct this clear fleecing of the public: Gianquitti has been collecting an accidental disability pension since 1993, retiring at 24 after six months as a patrolman for the Providence Police…
The likelihood that Rhode Island will move in the right direction over the next few years will become increasingly apparent as the election season ramps up. If the right kinds of candidates run, and if they can get some traction, then perhaps (just perhaps) the worst can be avoided. One candidate to watch will be…
I was going to note that Colin Flaherty shows that there’s at least some truth to every paranoia: I am an ecophobe: I imagine environmentalists creating catastrophes all the time all over the world. I see great floods, famine, disease and death, and behind each is the same thing: a grinning environmentalist reveling in the…
It’s a small thing, to be sure, but a comment that Ian Donnis made to his own recent post on economic development in Rhode Island points to an increasingly sore spot: … hopefully the effort to promote “green jobs,” which I’ve written about previously in the Phoenix, will also yield dividends. It is not my…
So didja see the Providence Journal jobs section, today? Perhaps it might be more accurate to say, “the near-lack of a jobs section.” I have two words for the state of Rhode Island: cut taxes… now… drastically. (Well, hey, if the Projo can double the size of its job section by plugging in two full-page…
Julia Steiny is must-reading today: After collecting my thoughts and temper, I wrote back. It seemed to me that teaching a child to read was the principal mission of any school and was, therefore, funded. Rhode Island has one of the highest per-pupil expenditures in the nation. If not to teach reading, what is it…
I must say that I’m sympathetic to RI State Council on the Arts Director Randall Rosenbaum’s point regarding arts in the public square: Artists and advocates such as Rosenbaum emphasize that art is not just about being obviously beautiful; it’s also about opening the people’s eyes to new interpretations of beauty. I happen to think…
Timothy Williamson (D-West Warwick) — one of the two RI House members to vote against a legislator copay — let slip some of the behind-the-scenes politics: “Don’t start clapping yourself on the back too hard, you may break your hand,” Williamson said. “The Senate is already telling you they are not going to pass this.…
This factoid, coming out of the revolt in Tiverton, keeps ringing in my ears: … Mr. Cotta and other officials said that legally the school budget cannot be cut below what it was for this year… Is that true? If so, it’s insane! Efficiencies, need, and priorities can’t shift? I’ll have to look into that…