A joint Oversight hearing about the Washington Bridge will be held this Thursday at the State House. [Agenda.]
There will be no public testimony and only committee members will ask questions. There is so far only one witness: Rhode Island Department of Transportation Director Peter Alviti.
The Director will not be under oath when he testifies.
Is that an issue? Well, when it comes to accuracy and veracity, Director Alviti has a bit of a mixed record.
Two instances in the last week.
On Monday, in the course of answering follow up questions by WPRO’s Tara Granahan, Director Alviti stated that Aetna Bridge was the low bidder on the overall demolition project of the westbound Washington Bridge. (J.R. Vinagro is a sub-contractor to Aetna.) In fact, Aetna’s bid was higher by almost $2,000,000. That’s before the $3,000,000 “early completion” incentive.
This is a significant misstatement by the Director on a basic but important point of information.
Second instance. Earlier that Monday morning, Director Alviti had called in to the WPRO Morning News with Gene Valicenti to address public concerns raised by videos of the demolition of a section of the Washington Bridge that had circulated.
In speaking with Valicenti, Director Alviti stated repeatedly that the demolition had been carried out in accordance with the demolition plan.
… the result was exactly what the plan called for.
More specifically, with regard to the two barges that were placed below to catch the debris (emphasis added),
… they had a timber armor on the decks of them and they also had explosive cushions on the deck to kind of cushion the impact of the falling beams when they were demolished. It did exactly that. If you look at the pictures on the plans that were approved, it shows the structure coming down in exactly the way the videos that someone took from the shore adjacent to the demolition the day it fell, the video showed that it fell exactly the way the plans had called for.
Also,
The equipment that was specified was exactly in the positions and doing the job and the proper type of equipment in accordance with the approved plans …
In short,
The execution went exactly according to plan.
Okay, about those cushions. I see them on RIDOT’s demolition plans; obtained by NBC 10 WJAR and part of the featured image of this article.
I do not see them on the barges as the demolition happens, per the screenshot in the featured image. I see only the timbers laid across the barges as Director Alviti referenced.
It appears that, contrary to the director’s assertion, the blasting mats were not in place when the demolition was carried out.
In light of this track record, layered on the backdrop of Governor McKee’s refusal so far to carry out a full investigation of what went wrong from the beginning with the Washington Bridge, it is not at all clear what will be accomplished at Thursday’s joint Oversight hearing — or, more to the point, if the public can have any confidence in the accuracy of anything stated during the hearing if the main witness is not under oath.
[Open full post]Charlie Kirk has an interesting business model. He goes where young adults congregate (presumably college campuses), sets up a booth, and has debates with whoever approaches his microphone. Then he posts the videos for clicks and (again, presumably) collects advertising revenue.
In this video, he stumps a young woman on the issue of abortion. Kirk’s states the position that abortion is never medically necessary, to which she replies by asking if he’s a doctor. He cites ob-gyns who agree with him, and she asks whose decision it is to make between these two camps. His redirect is to ask if a mother can kill a two-year-old child. When she replies, “no,” he asks if she’s a doctor. If she can have a moral position on infanticide, why does the child’s presence in the womb matter?
To be sure, Kirk is bobbing and weaving through some helpful ambiguities, here; while we’ll avoid the slippery act of articulating them, one could imagine circumstances in which we might morally and/or legally excuse a mother who kills her child. But the video is a helpful reminder that people don’t think through the principles on which they act and vote as well as they should. The obvious answer to Kirk’s deeper point is that the implicit use of the mother’s body creates a distinction at birth. Indeed, that distinction underlies some pro-lifers’ allowable exception for instances of rape (if they’re being principled and not just making political concessions). The mother did not consent to the act that created the baby, and her rapists cannot conscribe her to the carrying and delivery of the child.
While that distinction may allow a rhetorical resting point sufficient for political compromise, it doesn’t supply an end point. Regardless of the child’s parentage, most people agree (and stories of this sort sometimes reach public awareness) that the mother can’t simply throw him or her in a dumpster to die or abandon an older child deep in the woods. She has to make some provision for the child. That, too, is a forced use of her body. Of course, one could reply that this hypothetical imposes only a reasonable amount of effort, but as a generic proposition, childbirth could be described the same way, and in any event, the comparison is applicable for binary questions of rights and principle. If the decisive factor is denial of the mother’s control of her body, the same applies to a requirement that she take action.
If birth isn’t a decisive moment for the claims that a child can place on his or her mother, then what is? We could cycle through the development of this or that organ and system on one side of the big day or the development of consciousness on the other, but then we’d drift from the important observation for this post — namely, that people aren’t generally taking their positions because they’ve thought the questions through, fully. If they did, the issue would be a lot less polarizing, and a lot less useful for those who profit from division.
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 40.
[Open full post]On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- McKee and the union game
- Shekarchi’s millions
- Legislation to requiring resistance on immigration
- The radical state of the Democrat Party
- Education enrollment and results in RI
- The waning credibility of the partisan status quo
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 40 and Photoshop AI.
[Open full post]This observation points to a useful exercise for all citizens:
A useful exercise is to keep a look out when news stories at the state or even local level mention some organization. Do a little research into their history and funding. Rhode Island has about a million people and a long-languishing economy, yet even on relatively niche issues you’ll find multiple advocacy organizations with the funding and compensation of a healthy small business.
[Open full post]This is, let’s just say, a reasonable thing to wonder:
It may have long been the case that federal grants were a major financing scheme for left-wing organizations, but the Obama administration amplified it, flooding the market and giving us much of the confusion and turmoil of the last decade.
Objectively, one can say that Democrats are the party of government and progressives place government centrally in their ideology. Therefor, the current state of affairs was probably inevitable — that accepting grant-making as a legitimate government function left up to bureaucrats to dole out would lead to a one-sided funding mechanism.
After all, even as far back as Thomas Jefferson’s time in office, the executive created no-show jobs for helpful allies (like newspaper men). At least back then, however, the feds couldn’t afford to hand out comfortable salaries by means of such corruption.
[Open full post]… I remind myself that Aaron Regunberg was very nearly governor. A lot has happened since this tweet, so as a reminder, Brian Thompson was the healthcare CEO murdered in cold blood in New York:
[Open full post]One sees people take positions of similar structure to Ken Block’s, here, on many issues, from immigration to finance to healthcare to science:
One of humanity’s great advantages is that we can divide the labor of understanding. One person figures something out, and others can build on his or her conclusions without necessarily repeating all the difficult cognitive work the discoverer has done. The problem is that people sometimes overstate the confidence and reach of their conclusions, especially when it comes to the law.
Going to court is expensive, time consuming, and risky, so wherever possible, people try to interpret past findings to understand make educated guesses about future ones. In this case, the precedent left a gray area between “children born of alien enemies during a hostile occupation” and children born to legal immigrants who haven’t yet become citizens. Many of us would tend to think mothers who knowingly enter our country in contravention if its laws are demonstrating that they do not consider themselves subject to its jurisdiction (which is the tricky phrase in the Constitution).
An administrative agency (to wit, the President) could therefore do as Donald Trump has done and put down a marker, and somebody with standing to sue can bring it to the courts if he or she disagrees. Unfortunately, our government has become such that this would end in the Supreme Court’s deciding the true meaning of the words and potentially thereby making new laws by amending what the drafters of the law intended. It would be healthier if the court found that the language did not provide sufficient grounds to decree a resolution definitively from the bench and left it to executive interpretation until such time as Congress and the People of the United States clarified the underlying law.
[Open full post]Here is Senator Bell’s response, back in November, to the CEO of Box.com, who offered a mild, moderate suggestion for Democrats after the election:
Bell exposes two important things, with this Tweet. First, a significant portion of Rhode Island’s Democrat power elite are happy to ride the state into utter, Venezuelan devastation for the sake of ideological purity. Most of us understand the idea of states as testing grounds for different ideas means that states that choose poorly will learn from those that choose well, but for fanatics like Bell, the drive is to control a state simply for the sake of imposing their ideology for the ideology’s sake.
Second, Bell’s ideology is about hurting people he doesn’t like. He excuses it for himself by insisting the reason he doesn’t like them is they harm others, but that’s a screen. The ego boost of power over others (probably out of envy) is the fundamental motivation.
[Open full post]On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- Did Trump freeze the Washington Bridge?
- Do the progressives own Providence and/or speak for the Democrats?
- Are Neronha and other RI officials really representing Rhode Islanders acting as partisan activists?
- Are ballooning expenses for emergency housing the very point of the government plantation approach?
- Should Sandra Cano have counted on the Democrats’ golden escalator into D.C.?
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 3.
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