Justin Katz

How I Came to Believe in God, and Why I Shouldn’t Try to Be Steve Laffey

By Justin Katz | December 1, 2007 |

To a completely unrelated post, Theracapulas (who has commented under a variety of names over the past six months) explains the problem with Anchor Rising and the RIGOP: As to why someone like you would say that you agree with a socialist like that URI professor is flat out perplexing. Dan Yorke didn’t say that…

A Backwards Lesson in Government Structuring

By Justin Katz | November 28, 2007 |

A point of extended discussion at tonight’s Tiverton Charter Review Commission meeting was how citizens can be given some sort of budgetary power when 86% of the budget is untouchable by them because it is bound up in contracts. Looking at a flow chart of the budgetary process in Tiverton, commissioner Frank Marshall asked who…

Keeping the Blanket on the Parties

By Justin Katz | November 28, 2007 |

My suggestion to have the Charter Review Commission reconsider asking the voters whether they’d like to have partisan elections was just shot down. A commission member who wasn’t here for my spiel last time, Frank “Richard” Joslin (I’m almost positive), himself a member of the town Democrat committee, spoke against me, making two points to…

Governing the Empty Seats

By Justin Katz | November 28, 2007 |

Alright. I realize that a Charter Review Committee meeting is hardly likely to generate passions and intrigue, but the Tiverton town hall is mostly empty. The committee is currently discussing ways to market the meetings. The truth is that even the “big” meetings of town government types — the town council and the school committee…

Arguing from Opposite Sides of the Dollar

By Justin Katz | November 28, 2007 |

As an early-grave-working father of three children, whom my wife and I deliberately brought into the world at a relatively young age ourselves (by modern standards), with nowhere near the income nor savings that an accountant might require to balance out the cost of progeny, I find myself strangely split in my agreement with both…

Clarity for Safety’s Sake

By Justin Katz | November 27, 2007 |

I missed last night’s Tiverton Town Council meeting because, on top of dealing with some essential technology problems with my arsenal, we had a bit of toxic contamination in the home. Well, that’s probably exaggerating: we broke one of those energy efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs and, realizing that they contain mercury, the obsessive in…

Bakst’s Worthy Question

By Justin Katz | November 27, 2007 |

Charles Bakst presents a question that he thinks the governor ought to ask himself, and although my way of answering it mightn’t be what Bakst expects, I think it’s a worthy consideration: I said Carcieri would say he wasn’t calling them bad people, only that they’d made bad decisions. [URI Feinstein hunger center director Kathleen…

I, Mindless Taxpayer

By Justin Katz | November 25, 2007 |

There’s that learning curve again. Amidst all of the things that I’ve had to learn as a homeowner (not including carpentry, plumbing, electrical, and so on), it took me until today to realize an important part of my town’s tax structure: In addition to my annual property tax bill for the Town of Tiverton, I…

The Way Jerzyk’s World Works

By Justin Katz | November 25, 2007 |

I’d like to, if I may, correct a couple of misconceptions on Matt Jerzyk’s part without thereby lending credence to the parts of his post to which I don’t think response merited: … please provide me one woman in the entire state of Rhode Island who, when confronted with the reality of having a child…

Equal Like a Dream Versus a Song and a Dream

By Justin Katz | November 25, 2007 |

It would have been too much, I suppose, to hope that the New York Times would take the opportunity of the recent stem-cell breakthrough to correct a longstanding falsehood in its analysis spin of the issue to date. It is, nonetheless, disappointing that it persists: Early in the controversy, opponents, including Mr. Bush, often said…