Justin Katz
Here are two additional rankings across which I’ve recently come: Rhode Island is one of six states that spends more money from the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) on adults than on children But perhaps that’s because the states ranks 44th (that’s bad) on the Milken Institute’s Chronic Disease Index. How many horrifying rankings,…
Anthony DiBella’s column in yesterday’s Providence Journal has to be read to be believed: The immutable fact is that the bulk of a state’s revenue is based on scale or size. Unless we are going to merge with Massachusetts or Connecticut or become part of the United States of New England, we will always be…
I’ve got a piece in today’s Providence Journal explaining two realities that ought to be considered in tandem: that Rhode Island is toppling or driving away those who make enough to be net gains for the state to the benefit of those who are net drains, and that there are really much better opportunities for…
Such stories are terrible to hear: Gail Corvello figured that if she and her neighbors held out for about five years, they would be able to get out from under the nightmare of the soil contamination in the Bay Street neighborhood that has had a stranglehold on their lives since 2002. She was wrong. On…
Jay Nordlinger poses a series of questions that ought to be asked of the current crop of presidential candidates: Putin’s latest attacks on U.S. missile defense remind me of something: Do Democratic presidential candidates agree with those attacks? Sympathize with them? And, if one of them is elected president, are our efforts to defend ourselves,…
Even a week after I read the related piece, this biopsis (if I may coin a term for “biographic synopsis”) lingers on the mind: Guevara, a physician with no formal military training, was also something else, critics say: prolific executioner, dogmatic totalitarian and co-designer of the Cuban police state and indoctrination apparatus. The version in…
There would seem to be a lesson here for folks prone to the sort of ultra-decisive decision making that occurred on the University of Rhode Island campus between the time when I was impressed, as a high school student, with URI’s reputation as a party school and the time when I found myself there after…
Rhode Island, where the unbidden friendliness of a stranger is front page news: … neither motorists nor pedestrians could ignore the man in the pale blue shirt and bright white sneakers yesterday morning standing between the Providence Biltmore and The Westin Providence hotels. Why, he wasn’t asking for a thing; their befuddled faces finally began…
The following blurb (from page 12 of this PDF of the 10/11 Rhode Island Catholic) reminds us that stem-cell research can be moral and miraculous: Three year-old Andrew Mueting of Dodge City is a bright, happy-golucky, energetic little boy. But when he was four months old, doctors gave him a bleak prognosis. Born with malignant…
Knowledge of the approaching precipice in Rhode Island — or rather, the precipice that Rhode Island is approaching — has moved off the commentary pages in the Providence Journal. Here’s Lifebeat section columnist Mark Patinkin today: “Fascinating, Spock. It seems this planet has organized itself into the perfectly self-destructive organism.” “Indeed, sir. As one example,…