Justin Katz
Just a quick correction to letter to the Providence Journal refuting Crowley’s refutation of me: [Crowley] notes that cash handouts claim a small percentage of total state spending. This is among the Poverty Institute’s favorite talking points. He notes that such handouts are also a small percentage of our welfare system. That last sentence shouldn’t…
In attempting to match the Crowley/Poverty Institute/ITEP argument, I didn’t include 2005 data (in part, ahem, because its availability didn’t register in my whirlwind round of data collection). I’ve modified the charts in the previous post so that the scales match. The thing to note is how much more the columns grew for Massachusetts and…
Readers familiar with NEA Assistant Executive Director Patrick Crowley’s body of work are to be forgiven if they took the opening line of the letter to the editor that he’s been passing around to all the local papers — “repeat the lie, no matter how false it is” — as advice, not a complaint. Dan…
With the growing stack of tax-raising bills, it’s good to know that the General Assembly will at least have to address a different approach (emphasis added) In an effort to bring some much needed tax relief to Rhode Islanders, while generating revenue in this era of hundred million dollar budget deficits, Representative Victor Moffitt (R-Dist.…
Legend has it that, upon Napoleon’s crowning himself emperor, Beethoven tore or scratched Bonaparte’s name from his Eroica Symphony manuscript in a fury. The revolutionary inspiration had been perverted, but still, many followed the general even thereafter, some perhaps out of a nostalgic faith that the principles of liberté, egalité, and fraternité would win through…
It’s a minor thing, almost not worth mentioning, but pixels are cheap, and it won’t take but a moment to correct Crowley’s pitiful attempt to find contradiction where there is none. Jim Baron, of the Pawtucket Times paraphrased Jeff Neal, spokesman for Governor Carcieri, as follows: Neal deemed the claim that 90 percent of Rhode…
Yesterday, Ian Donnis suggested that my latest Providence Journal op-ed “oversteps in prescribing [ascribing?] an advocacy role to [WPRI’s Steve] Aveson, who like [himself] and other panelists, uses various rhetorical devices (the ever-popular devil’s advocate, for example) in the interest of posing questions and stimulating discussion.” Truth to tell, I didn’t see myself as ascribing…