Justin Katz
While we’re in the midst of our first weekend content lull, it seems as good a time as any to republish a vlog post of mine from January 2003 (mostly so it’ll be in the archives here). In the surrounding weeks, I made a few short blog-like videos, but the time it took to make…
Commenting to a post by Marc, Rich from East Greenwich offers several specific questions that he might ask if mediating teacher contract disputes there. Among the considerations that he proposes is a comparison of teachers compensation with the median for the town. Although not addressing East Greenwich, Marc and I worked through some of these…
Pre–election day, Marc and I had a short cross-blog exchange that touched on the state ballot’s spending referenda. Marc did his homework and argued on behalf of some of the spending measures, including the URI biotech center. For my part, noting that I considered mine little more than a protest vote, I declared: “not a…
While I’m proud to see him touting New England’s Roman Catholics as a pivotal demographic, University of Connecticut and Catholic University professor William D’Antonio was a bit bold in his comments last week in the Boston Globe: For all the Bible Belt talk about family values, it is the people from Kerry’s home state, along…
Michelle Malkin color-coded a by-state generosity index to reflect the election outcomes. Wading through the eighteen blue states — not one of which broke the top twenty-five — I found a silver lining for Rhode Island: at least we beat Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Putting aside methodological questions, what could account for RI’s poor showing?…
Froma Harrop walks a strange line between liberal and conservative principles in a recent column about economic differences between the Red States and the Blue States, and the tax-cut implications thereof. It’s a thick topic, even when it isn’t encumbered by an underlying theme of pinning something undesirable to President Bush’s back. Consequently, I’m not…
U.S. Senator Lincoln Chafee (RINO, RI) has promised to remain a Republican, offering the supremely confidence-inspiring declaration: “Yes, at this stage, that is my intention.” In a sad echo of President Bush’s overused phrase in the first debate, Chafee says it is also his intention to “work hard to regain the support” of Republicans. Personally,…
A pre-election comment from the Edward Achorn piece linked in the previous post is worth a follow up: Now, Mayor Laffey and GOP candidate Jim Davey are working to send another powerful statewide message. They hope to defeat state Rep. Frank A. Montanaro (D.-Cranston) — Boss Montanaro’s son — on Nov. 2. A quick look…
Writing in the Providence Journal, Emily Harding of the Rhode Island Association of Health Underwriters lays out the general argument for some suggestions for improving the healthcare near-crisis in the state: What made [national health insurance carriers] leave the state had nothing to do with the inability to compete with Blue Cross (which they had…
