Justin Katz
East Providence’s Silver Spring Elementary School parent teacher club ought to make its letters available to citizens for use in other municipalities: [Club president Tracy] McCaughey and others met with City Manager Richard Brown and Schools Supt. Jacqueline Forbes earlier this month. The city leaders allegedly confirmed one or more school closings is a “very…
Just to see what’s going on out there, I ran a Monster.com job search for the first time in years. I had forgotten how completely unqualified the ads can make you feel. That seems to be the result when corporate HR departments are given more twenty words to describe a job opening. A made-up example:…
As the budget clock ticks, the General Assembly has been taking its precious time figuring out how to resolve the mess. One imagines the legislators hiding in dark corners awaiting a miracle. What they need to be doing, at the very least, is making the sorts of noises that would show their comprehension of the…
Honestly, I’m not always looking to accentuate the negative, when it comes to Rhode Island. It’s just important for us to have a clear picture of what’s going on (going wrong) with our state. Consider Lynn Arditi’s coverage of the decreasing demand for building permits: Rhode Island’s new home construction slowed last year, with the…
.. it must be the glass that I’m chewing. It certainly couldn’t have anything to do with a song about dancing with one’s daughter before “the clock strikes midnight.” I pass this along because I’m not sure how many New Englanders allow their radio dials to pause on 91.1FM. It’s an “inspirational” station. [Whisper] That…
Amazingly, even as they stumble into understanding of that which is making it hard to breathe in Rhode Island, they continue to tighten the noose: In an effort to slow down the steep rise of health insurance costs in Rhode Island, Sen. Joshua Miller has introduced legislation that would prohibit health insurers in the state…
In a letter to the editor of the Sakonnet Times (not online), Tiverton High School physics and chemistry teacher Richard Bernardo offers general encouragement to everybody involved in the contract disputes to “roll[] up [their] sleeves and [get] the job done.” In light of news released since Mr. Bernardo penned his letter, this part sticks…
I’m disappointed to see that the Providence Journal is apparently not printing Kenneth Payne’s series on Rhode Island’s political history online. It’s worth a look, if you’ve access to Sunday’s paper. This paragraph, in particular, caught my attention: Rhode Island government in 1900 was still colored by the dark shadows of the Dorr War, the…
Ah the idyllic land of Northern Europe, to which the world’s eyes turn for a vision of society as it ought to be: Groups of youths torched schools and cars in a sixth consecutive night of violence across Denmark, mostly in immigrant neighborhoods, police said yesterday. Forty-three persons were arrested. The spate of vandalism started…
Filling in for Dan Yorke on 630WPRO, Matt Allen’s been talking about the ability of apparent prosperity to elevate men’s chances when it comes to wooing attractive women. I emailed him that the thought that money bought love used to really bother me. Recently, though, the amount that I work, the struggles to get by,…