On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- Neronha sees (but won’t fix) healthcare crisis
- Extras for a movie in RI
- Bureaucrats move up at the BOE
- Amore defends ballot harvesting
- Student walk-out
- A constituency for expensive Tidewater debt
- Union-organizing Marxist as the face of gun control
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 3.
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I used to spend time pointing out the problem with this sort of bean-counting racism (and sexism), but it hardly seems interesting anymore. The findings aren’t meant to indicate anything real; they’re simply intended to promote a simple-minded ideology. We can see this in the fact that the conclusions only ever point in one direction. If there are more white people than their portion of the population, that’s bad. On the other hand, if there are more women or minorities than the population would suggest, that’s good.
It’s heads we win, tails you lose.
In an intelligent, non-superstitious, egalitarian world bureaucrats would be embarrassed to publish such reports, and journalists would be embarrassed to promote them. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world, and I suppose as people like me tire of pointing out the obvious, younger generations will simply accept the propaganda as facts… until they realize they’ve been swindled.
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Yeah, officials will complain about the danger of uninspected residences, but as somebody who grew up in an era when fiction was filled with secret communities in society’s hidden corners, I have to admit these homeless caves are cool:*
I wonder if there’s anything comparable around here.
* I should specify that the coolness of the residents’ solution is distinct from the apparent necessity for it, which is a problem we should resolve.
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Yes, yes, words get thrown around in state-level politics, but there’s an important lesson in East Providence City Council President Bob Rodericks’s letter asking Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee to declare a state of emergency over the closure of the Washington Bridge between East Providence and Providence:
… East Providence is impacted more than any other community in Rhode Island. Our police and fire departments are stretched to their limits. The necessary repairs or possible bridge replacement will evidently take much more time than originally anticipated. Currently, I am not looking to assess blame, but I believe that the crisis has reached an emergency situation which calls for federal assistance. RIDOT is involved with several projects throughout the state and may be stretching resources beyond reasonable limits.
Accordingly, I respectfully request that you consider enacting a “State of Emergency” declaration. Possibly the US Army Corps of Engineers can expedite the bridge repairs alongside our RIDOT. The Rhode Island National Guard could also help with traffic control to assist with local East Providence Police efforts during peak hours of gridlock. …
Given the profound effect of these circumstances, it’s easy to lose sight of the obvious, and Rodericks hints in its direction. Declaring a state of emergency would be reasonable. Bringing military forces to bear might be extreme, but it’s not laughable. The key observation, however, is that this response isn’t to a natural disaster or enemy invasion. The state of Rhode Island is utterly failing at its most basic functions.
As much as Rodericks distrusts Rhode Island’s ability to resolve this problem on its own, his requests are typical of the Ocean State. He wants to call in the federal government for more resources to keep doing what Rhode Island does. That’s not going to work anymore.
In this Rodericks is nothing if not representative. The rot extends much beyond our government. For all the media coverage of the hours it took the DOT to inform the governor of a dire situation with the bridge, nobody is investigating the underlying problems. Why does Rhode Island not have more-regular bridge inspections? Why does it cost so much and take so long to repair its infrastructure?
Well, the government of our state serves special interests entirely, and the biggest special interest in Rhode Island is its collection of labor unions. Anybody truly serious about fixing things around here — or even just overcoming this one major obstacle — would be calling on the governor and legislature to waive regulations that have nothing to do with safety or a well-run government and everything to do with enabling DOT inspectors to sit in their cars for hours and road crews that can regularly be seen with more workers standing around watching than actually working.
But such problems are untouchable in Rhode Island. Every solution comes with a quiet footnote that the real problems cannot be considered.
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 3 and Photoshop AI.
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In recent years, a strange emphasis has been emerging on America’s political Left on the notion of treason. The accusation flies not only against hated political personages, but also retroactively in ways it didn’t used to be applied, like the Confederacy. It isn’t difficult to see where this is going:
According to this person, the governor of Texas is “a dangerous subversive” for disagreeing with the Dear Leader and issuing an official proclamation in accord with legal due process. (Yes, that’s what it is, even if it is subject to legal challenge.) These people will be happy to lock up their opponents… or worse.
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When one of our cars became unusable last year, my family had to buy another, which we did at a dealer in Massachusetts that a friend had recommended. We’ve bought cars in Massachusetts, before, but it appears that something has changed. Registering the car took about a month, during which time we were short a vehicle.
I’m happy to speculate that the State of Rhode Island made our experience so unpleasant deliberately, in order to encourage residents to shop only with special interests within the Ocean State, but at the moment what most interests me about this experience is the comparison to a recent initiative to allow same-day registration for voting. Advocates want people to be able to register to vote in Rhode Island and cast their votes that very day, in contrast to the 30-day delay currently in currently law.
Specifically, the proposal is to ask Rhode Islanders to change our state constitution to remove the provision that people must live in the state for 30 days prior to an election and register to vote in no less time. Given other realities of Rhode Island’s civic life, it’s hard not to see this as an invitation to fraud and as another step in the direction of a government plantation.
By that term, I mean the system that I first observed in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in which government becomes the central economic force in an area, much like the businesses that once ran “company towns.” Because it doesn’t produce anything, however, when government is central, the model is to increase the number of people in need of government services and then to find other people to fund them, whether local taxpayers or a higher-level government, like the United States. In this model, the sooner new people can vote for more services, and the more diluted taxpayers’ votes can be made, the better.
Now, put this in context of three other factors affecting Rhode Island government and elections:
- Unlimited ballot harvesting, whereby insiders with plenty of volunteers or paid staffers can simply go out and collect votes for the candidate.
- Unprecedented illegal immigration encouraged by a Democrat White House, with the migrants being shipped around the country.
- Driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants in Rhode Island that are “identical” to the licenses of citizens.
Government officials who stand to benefit from new voters who are likely to depend on government services — and who stand to benefit from election fraud among the same constituency — may insist on the innocence of each of these proposals, but taking them all together paints a convincing picture. For their own personal benefit and the advance of their political ideology, they are undermining the legitimacy of our elections.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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Economically illiterate activists are laying the groundwork to make housing harder to find, and make life worse, in Rhode Island:
This is how economics works. The rent goes up to reflect the real value of the property. Other property owners see the value of their space and reconsider their usage.
For example, instead of renovating or building to add a new storage unit (which progressives hate), the property owner renovates or builds apartments. When the supply increases, the value and the rent will stop climbing or go down. Cap rent, and you’ll get the reverse effect: less housing and higher prices.
Unfortunately, the same activists have been training each other for decades to dismiss such arguments as mumbo-jumbo from evil, greedy people. That’s a shame, and they’ll probably never question whether they, themselves, are contributing to the suffering as it increases. They’ll get angrier and angrier that others didn’t react as they’d expected them to, taking it as greater proof of evil.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- A (strategic?) delay informing the governor
- A (deliberate?) controversy over charging journalists for email
- East Providence small businesses over the edge
- The strange coincidences of Ella McKay
- Fungs in a row
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 3 and Photoshop AI.
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This is how appeals to the Ethics Commission often end, these days:
From personal experience, I can testify that the Ethics Commission combines the gradual accretion of ethical allowances with the possibility that the commission will completely disregard its precedence to suit its preferences of the moment. Thus, it tends toward increasing permissiveness with a constant danger of being embarrassed, as a complainant, when the commission decides to change its mind on a whim.
The entire exercise has become one of giving approval to manifestly unethical conduct. We should get rid of it and let voters decide what’s ethical without giving politicians recourse to a board of insiders who are happy to give them seals of approval.
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Following our first inquiry of Education Commissioner Angelica Infante-Green and the Council on Elementary and Secondary Education about Rhode Island transgender policy in K-12 schools and their non-response, Anchor Rising reached out a second time, this time asking,
… current RIDE policy permits schools to discuss transgender procedures with students. RIDE policy also permits schools to refrain from notifying the parents of students at the secondary level who may be considering or are undergoing gender transition.
However, thousands of transgender individuals have detransitioned: the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey alone references 2,242 individuals who have done so. The stories of an increasing number of detransitioners have been in the news recently.
In light of this, is RIDE considering changes to its transgender policies given that the effects of transitioning – sterility and non-functional organs – are permanent while a child’s impulses are changeable and ephemeral?
Both Education Commissioner Angelica Infante-Green and the Council on Elementary and Secondary Education also refused to respond to this second question.
Why?
A couple of common sense, foundational items.
1.) The vast majority of Rhode Island children in K-12 schools are minor and, therefore, legally and developmentally incapable of making a major decision about life-changing, permanent surgery and hormonal procedures.
2.) With the vast, overwhelming majority of families, parents care far more than anyone about their children. Therefore, it is obvious and crucial that they be informed if their child is considering something as monumental as transgender procedures. Add to this fundamental parental rights that include the pretty obvious right to be informed about everything to do with their children.
The Introduction to Rhode Island’s transgender policy for K-12 schools states that
All students need a safe and supportive school environment to progress academically and developmentally.
The purview to implement, perpetuate or lead change to the state’s K-12 transgender policy is vested in Rhode Island’s Education Commissioner and the Council on Elementary and Secondary Education via the authority of the governor. As currently written, this policy allows school officials to discuss transgender procedures with children and, in the case of students at the secondary level, to refrain from notifying their parents that they may be considering or are undergoing gender transition procedures.
If the policy does, indeed, foster a “safe” school environment and is what is best for Rhode Island’s children and families, why are the Education Commissioner and the Council studiously declining to answer questions about it?
Featured Image by Kristina Flour via Unsplash
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