Justin Katz
The budget passed at the last Tiverton School Committee meeting — largely reflecting the latest teacher contract proposed — included the loss of only one teaching position from the payrolls. Prior to that, the district had sent out thirty-four non-renewal notices. Apparently, three-quarters of the teachers are willing to accept the risk (and probable sacrifice)…
John Derbyshire’s “March Diary” has much with which Rhode Islanders might sympathize, and that makes one wonder whether forswearing the “island” in our name mightn’t be a step in the right direction. The following is from a reader’s letter: I see you’ve got the “New York Funk”. I was born and raised in NYC, and…
Providence Journal Deputy Editorial-Pages Editor Ed Achorn has dubbed me a “critics” (emphasis added): RHODE ISLAND is facing massive deficits. Rather than slash spending, large numbers of legislators last week proposed $340 million in new and increased taxes, under a bill that critics have aptly dubbed the 2008 Economic Death and Dismemberment Act. These pols…
The curious thing is that they don’t offer an “instead”: At least 250 people packed the Algonquin House on Broad Street for the 2 p.m. news conference, sponsored by Immigrants United, We Can Stop the Hate Rhode Island, Univocal Legislative Minority Advocacy and Hispanic Ministerial Association Miguel Sanchez-Hartwein, executive director of the Center for Hispanic…
The Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council (RIPEC) makes a point that ought to be raised every time the progressives put forward data purporting to illustrate the lack of effect of recent tax cuts: Estimating that taxpayers already are kicking in an average of 12.3 percent of their income to finance state and local government, the…
Anybody who missed it on Sunday should take a moment to read URI Business Administration Professor Edward Mazze’s “10 steps to right R.I.’s dire financial state“: Any optimism for job creation next month has disappeared as the state, region and national economy slide downward. For years, we have been dealing with a partial truth that…
I’ve been meaning to note — for its sheer shock power — a chart of Rhode Island’s state budget since 1950. Stunning. I’d say there’s room to trim, don’t you think?
We have to stop thinking of education in terms of time-delimited stages. In a world of advanced technology, specialization, and global competition, the old system of markers — with individuals tiered by the name of the highest degree achieved — is becoming both meaningless and expensive, as each degree level deflates and the education industry…
The ways in which communities congeal are comprehensible, and although we should lament the development unto primacy of identity politics, it is understandable that people get sucked into them. That said, I still have difficulty empathizing with this sort of thing, said (this time) in response to the governor’s recent moves against illegal immigration: “Are…