Justin Katz
John Podhoretz, who has been playing the Stop Hillary tune since before it made the charts (and giving her candidacy the tone of inevitability from before the first notes), doesn’t get those enigmatic conservative religiosos: The conduct of Religious Right leaders has been entirely baffling. They’ve have several candidates they could have rallied around as…
I have to admit to being somewhat astonished, Michael, at your protestation that the American worker is at the rock bottom of exploitation. Perhaps I’ve been distracted by the sheer volume of consumer goods that workers are able to afford. By their lengthening life spans. By their expanding educations. It is true that I lean…
Readers who have never gained the insight that comes with wearing a blue collar more extensively than for part-time teenager jobs might benefit from some explanation of the way in which incentives work in that world — specifically in residential construction. The boss wishes to make money and expand his business, both of which require,…
I heard an eye witness account, last night, of the daily start-of-day ritual at Tiverton High School. Apparently, the teachers all sit in their cars until exactly the time at which they have to report to their classrooms, and then they all march in as a group. As anybody who has ever worked in a…
Here’s what the NEA’s man in Tiverton, Patrick Crowley, had to say when I suggested that a particular legal claim of his — that a failure of the administration to pay the teachers for their day of striking proved that they were not considered salaried and were therefore entitled to overtime — was, well, deceptively…
An apology may be in order for my having not been fast enough on my feet as I’ve attempted to keep track of Tiverton teacher union negotiations amidst all of the other things on my schedule. I should have caught the accounting trick in this, but the reporter’s and the union’s presentation left me merely…
Reading Thomas’s comments to my “What Profiteth a Community” post, I thought, at first, that we’d solved one area of disagreement. Consider: Isn’t there a real chicken-and-egg problem here? Justin’s right that, if we don’t have decent jobs in RI, our well-educated children will flee for greener pastures. On the other hand, what potential employers…
Sometimes I find myself shaking my head at how teachers — of all people — are willing to allow themselves to appear: Teachers changed their proposal from a three-year contract to a two-year contract, but deMedeiros said the percentage salary increases did not differ much from a previous proposal. Instead of asking for 3.75 percent…
Disagreements would arise later in the conversation, but Mark Shea makes a point that too often (nearly always) goes unexplored: Two-year-olds Zola and Veronica Kruschel waddled through Folsom Street Fair amidst strangers in fishnets and leather crotch pouches, semi and fully nude men. The twin girls who were also dressed for the event wore identical…
You might be interested in some of the events on the URI College Republicans’ schedule for the semester, especially during Islamo-Facism Awareness Week later this month. I’m going to try to make it to both Donna Hughes’s lecture on “Women’s Rights and Political Islam” (October 23) and Robert Spencer’s lecture the following evening (October 24).…
