That’s the only explanation for this sort of thing:
The activist-lawyers at the ACLU would have us believe that they are so blinkered by ideology that they can’t see a distinction between a children’s hospital removing unhealthy breast tissue to stop cancer and removing healthy breasts for cosmetic reasons under the assertion that it will help relieve a mental illness.
Pay attention, by the way, to the “full stop” language, which I’ve seen with increasing frequency from trans activists. We should be concerned that this petulant insistence that disagreeing is simply not acceptable has contributed to the increase in violent attacks from transgenders.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- Political establishment deteriorating with the Washington Bridge
- Safety falling through the gaps of immigration euphemism
- Media punts on journalism when it comes to people they hate
- Tidewater beneficiaries
- “Quiet campaigns”
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 3 and Photoshop AI.
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I mean, I know from experience it can still be sad and traumatic, but at the end of the day, few people exhaust the medical possibilities before concluding the cost is too high. That’s why this tweet is an example of the way in which political arguments can brush aside the most significant distinctions:
Kelsey calls such statements “stupid,” but it’s simply undeniable that euthanasia for human beings with the same standards as for pets would be a downgrade for humanity.
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Armand Domalewski asks an important question, when he observes a quick decrease in teen and young adult suicide after 1994, which held until about 2008 and in 2017 exceeded its previous high:
The more important question, though, is what has been happening since 2007/2008.
Having graduated high school in 1993, I’d speculate that the drop in the ’90s had to do, most profoundly, with the lightening of the existential dread of nuclear war after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 combined with young adults’ trimming their Baby Boomer parents’ greater social excesses and gaining a general optimism for the future based on economic growth with the rise of information technology.
Corresponding with the elevation of Obama, efforts to revive existential dread based on the environment and to erase progress toward racial harmony, not to mention attacks on the economic freedom, reversed those trends.
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Entirely apart from ideological battles, the push at the ABC6 news operation in Rhode Island is a bad sign for the station:
Over a quarter century of living in Rhode Island, I’ve seen no movement from ABC6 toward a greater competitive position against WJAR (10) and WPRI (12). The perennial third-place laggard from a struggling industry in a deteriorating small-market state needs flexibility and an entrepreneurial spirit across the organization, not the what’s-in-it-for-me sclerosis of a workplace model more suitable to a factory, where workers are interchangeable.
Of course, in this state, nobody will question the move, and it will likely be the final, fatal albatross for ABC6.
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The Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity has called for the removal of Rhode Island Education Commissioner Angelica Infante-Green. They make their case here.
I echo their call.
During her tenure, Education Commissioner Angelica Infante-Green has failed to implement successful education reforms. She has instead prioritized questionable, experimental, non-education initiatives in Rhode Island’s K-12 schools
She introduced the neo-racism of critical race theory (while she and RIDE denied this was happening) which falsely teaches innocent, strong children of color that they are impuissant victims and innocent white children that they are oppressors and victimizers.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, she supported mask mandates on students despite extensive data and evidence that they were unnecessary for the public health and actually harmful to students and their learning, especially in the area of speech.
It is important to note that Ms. Infante-Green’s execution as Education Commissioner has been in sharp contrast to her original, stated goals upon taking the position in 2019.
This is about solutions, about moving forward and providing the best education possible. …
“Students in other states perform well,” she told reporters. “But our goal is to out-perform those students.
It would be interesting to know how much of RIDE’s turn away from education has been at the direction of Governor Dan McKee or if it was largely at Ms. Infante-Green’s initiative. Either way, she has failed to provide “the best education possible”. And the results are clear in Rhode Island’s student (non)achievement.
The focus of RIDE needs to return to education and advancing the best interests of children. It is clear that this cannot happen under the current leadership. For the sake of our children and K-12 education achievement in Rhode Island, Ms. Infante-Green needs to step down or be removed as Education Commissioner as the first step of RIDE returning to its core, critical mission of education.
If the concerns that the Center and/or I have outlined strike a chord with you, please consider adding your name to this call.
Featured Image by Element5 Digital via Unsplash
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I’m a little slow with this, but I still want to chime in on how telling this is:
It’s never a good sign when politicians find themselves explaining to constituents why they (the People) are exaggerating the difficulties they (the politicians) are causing them with unarguably incompetence, but it’s so, so emblematic of RI government.
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The following sentiment, expressed here by a small-business owner being crushed by the Washington Bridge closure, has been expressed by people seeking to reform Rhode Island for decades, so it is encouraging to find it somewhere outside of our meetings and events:
“think of how successful we could be if we weren’t having to pick up the slack of other people”
Rhode Island could be the gem of the Northeast. Rhode Island could be the archetype of America’s promise. Rhode Island could be the hub of such dynamism as historians will talk about for centuries.
The problem is that its obvious potential has made the Ocean State vulnerable to rent-seeking toll collectors who stand in the way but promise we only have to pay them off a little. They’ve collected, though, and there are so many that the purpose of the state has shifted from a vision of thriving to the burden of supporting their slack.
A question that must concern us all is at what point they’ve utterly ruined even the possibility of that vision.
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The latest shiny news object in Rhode Island media is the revelation that the Tidewater soccer stadium will cost Rhode Island taxpayers $132 million in order to finance $27 million of the construction costs, or $4.4 million per year for 30 years. Grumbling is being heard from people with familiar names — “obviously these are not favorable terms,” said Democrat Speaker of the House Joseph Shekarchi — but that will fade, and nobody is putting forward ideas to protect Rhode Islanders from further increases on this deal or similar abuse in the future.
Tidewater reveals one of the great frauds of modern government. The labor unions that placed Dan McKee in office secured a massive project with his tie-breaking vote on a bad idea, and the investors get to demand high rates of return by pretending the debt is riskier than it is. That second point is more important than is usually acknowledged.
Heretofore, these “revenue,” or “moral obligation,” bonds have inspired what opposition they have in the Ocean State on the grounds that they end-run around voters. Government officials simply borrow the money based on the pretense that taxpayers won’t actually have to pay it, because the money will come from some future revenue stream, when everybody knows there’s no way elected officials will let investors take a hit if the revenue doesn’t materialize.
This mismatch between the risk everybody pretends exists and the actual risk creates a fraudulent gap in which insiders can profit. We should remember that Rhode Island voters (guided by partisans, special interests, and do-what-they’re-told union members) have reached the point of near 100% certainty for debt approval. In that light, the use of “moral obligation” bonds looks more like a means of making it more costly for taxpayers than simply a means of avoiding our vote. If government secures that vote, then nobody can pretend they might lose their money, and investor profits shrink.
With this observation in mind, I can’t help but think of a recent survey from the Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports that found 28.2% of mail ballot voters admitting “to committing at least one of… four types of fraud.” The study found that the presidential election would have flipped if even 4% of mail ballots were found fraudulent and therefore excluded. Even if the survey overstates fraud by seven times, it still changed the results.
Mammoth debt for Pawtucket’s minor-league soccer stadium is a drop in the bucket of the incentive for election fraud. If greedy insiders would maneuver to avoid public votes on debt because it will make that debt more expensive (which conservatives and progressives can probably agree they would do), and if politicians would play along for the promise of power (ditto), then they’d certainly look for ways to control votes when it serves their interests to hold them.
The solution for the Tidewater fiasco-in-the-making is the election of officials who will have the intelligence and fortitude to say, when the revenue to pay the bonds doesn’t materialize, “Sorry. You knew the risks and received a premium on your investment, and taxpayers shouldn’t be responsible for your bad investment decisions.”
Until recently, the election of such people was made unlikely by the many special interests who would be harmed by a reduction in government’s power. However, the election of Donald Trump over consummate insider, Hillary Clinton, scared the power brokers, and nobody should dismiss as conspiracy talk the possibility that they’ve taken steps to ensure that it never, ever happens again. And like the spurious prosecutions of the former president, we’d be insane to think they’ll treat him as a special case but otherwise leave the integrity of our government intact.
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 3.
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The signs of Rhode Island’s decline are piling up, but here’s a small one worth noting:
Once considered a pipe dream, a new $100 million Rhode Island state archives museum is closer than ever to being built. …
… McKee’s office has asked to investigate whether the land next door to the Providence Amtrak station might be a better option, Amore said in an interview. …
The little-used field next to the train station south of the State House has long been eyed as a place for development for everything from an Amazon corporate headquarters to, most recently, a bus hub. Among other things, the complexities of building around and above the Northeast Corridor rail line have squelched prior plans to use the train station land.
With our crumbling infrastructure, failing education system, deteriorating healthcare system, and struggling economy, perhaps the condition of old documents shouldn’t be a nine-figure priority just now. Even putting priorities aside, however, we should worry that Rhode Island can’t make that bit of prime real estate so valuable a developer would be willing to find a solution for the train track challenge.
We need to start thinking big picture, around here.
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