Justin Katz
My Projo piece from last Friday is now up. I mention it for those who haven’t read it, for those who wish to read it in Projo html, for those who’d like to help me create the illusion that I can drive readership, for those who have the time and inclination to play “find the…
According to 7 to 7, none of the teachers’ unions in the eight districts that are currently without (or soon to be without) contracts are planning to strike: With Rhode Island schools scheduled to start opening next week, teacher unions in eight districts have not signed new contracts — including Providence, the state’s largest district,…
Commenting to my initial mention of my latest Providence Journal op-ed, Michael writes: I wonder why you find satisfaction in the “non-union” designation. I’ve worked for years in the construction trades and for the most part found union carpenters and their non-union counterparts have equal skills and ethics, only the union guys are making a…
… but this sort of news is beginning to sound less and less like a series of flukes: Libertyville-based DMH Ingredients has filed a federal lawsuit against Changzhou Kelong Chemical Co. Ltd., saying DMH found metal shavings in 11,200 kilos of aspartame artificial sweetener the Chinese company shipped in 2005. What’s going on over there?
Whenever I read about arrangements such as Paul Edward Parker describes at the end of his Projo piece about state worker overtime, I wonder how polluted the public budget is with similar tricks and instances of advantage-taking: One area that [Department of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals Director Ellen R. Nelson] hopes to address is…
PROEM: First published in the August 17 edition of the Providence Journal. It’s a suspicious thing for a legislature’s press release to use the word “unscrupulous.” “Unscrupulous” is a word for activists and marketers. When a representative body uses it to describe some of its constituents — in this case, building contractors — one suspects…
Although programming problems (as I’ve been given to understand) have kept it in print-only limbo, I’ve got an op-ed in today’s Providence Journal about the ways in which, under the headline of protecting the “consumer” from “unscrupulous” free agents (including construction contractors), government generally (and the General Assembly in particular) creates a regulatory regime that…
One tires of the bad-faith rhetoric of modern feminists, social libertines, and vitriolic do-gooders: “We know there are some people out there who long for a return to the ‘idyllic’ 1950s when women knew their place was in the kitchen,” the groups wrote, “but we do not expect to hear echoes of it emanating from…
On the radio with the man himself, Ron St. Pierre just announced that Buddy Cianci will be joining WPRO. They didn’t mention whom he’ll be replacing, though; I imagine they’re leaving it to the host to tell his own audience. It may or may not be related, but I caught Dan Yorke making an odd…
