This has been lingering around my to-do list for a while, but the problem is only getting worse, so for the foreseeable future, it’s an evergreen topic in Rhode Island:
Yes, this is a massive problem permeating all of our society, and there’s only so much a small state like Rhode Island can do about global matters, but everything I can think of that Rhode Island does, or that its current political class would be willing to do, makes things worse for us.
In one bucket, put all of Rhode Island’s impositions. The state has high taxes, of course, which make it less attractive to have a high-earning job in this area. But we also impose all sorts of labor mandates, from a high minimum wage to mandates for paid time off to high insurance mandates that drive up costs. Then there are healthcare and insurance mandates, which add additional costs into healthcare, as well as burdens for providers, including documentation. Naturally, the artificially high price of our “green energy” requirements drive up the cost of living and doing business here.
Now turn to the sort of life young high-earners tend to want to live. Even East Greenwich can’t keep up its school system, and as we’ve just discovered with the Washington Bridge, we’re subject to bad roads and (now) the threat of not being able to get where you need to go elsewhere in the state.
But that’s not all! The growing influence of progressives in our state government and the labor unions that constitute our shadow government mean people who make a lot of money are constantly in the crosshairs… unless they work for the state, of course, or are in another protected insider group. If they’ve invested years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars in education and are working independently, they’re a target, at least for the insinuation that there must be something morally wrong about them.
Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to do a think-tank-style research report on what policies are truly affecting doctors and what reforms might help (Although, anybody interested funding one should contact me!), but you can bet policymakers in our state haven’t a clue and aren’t seriously interested in developing one. Indeed, they probably deep down suspect that too much investigation would turn the spotlight of culpability on them and their allies.
So, as written by Attorney General Neronha (who, by the way, gives no indication that he’d be any different among his government peers), “we’re all going to be in a world of hurt.”
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When a poll came out about a month ago finding 20% of young Americans (18-29) believe the Holocaust to be a made-up incident, with 28% stating that Jews have too much power in the United States, I had the same reaction as many. This is not a far-right phenomenon, but a far-left one. Our education system, from pre-school through grad-school is increasingly radical to its core, with scarcely an opposing view, so extremism is sure to grow, like black mold.
In recent weeks, however, with objectively pro-Hamas protests becoming the latest excuse of radical movement in the West to disrupt everybody else’s life, I’ve been wondering if the truth might not be even worse. One suspects that if this same movement required belief in the Holocaust to be moral demand, the numbers would shift, such that scarcely a young adult would doubt it.
It’s not that they don’t know the truth. It’s that they don’t care. They’ve been fully drawn into the worldview that the truth is whatever you need it be to serve your interests at the moment.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- McKee searches for something to call a success.
- More Heritage Hall of Fame board members show their (low) level of dedication.
- Bostom undermines his cause.
- Sanchez stumps for Hamas.
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 3 and Photoshop AI.
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First, many Democrats truly believe (or at least are happy to claim to believe) there’s a big racist contingency among Republicans that I simply have not seen, at least in several decades.
Second, progressive Democrats will happily take the conflicting position and insist that the Civil War actually had nothing to do with slavery when their purpose is to malign the United States as no different than it was in the antebellum period. In those contexts, they’ll claim the Civil War was exclusively about the economic or political interests of white people, with slavery as little more than an excuse, and I can’t remember ever seeing their fellow Democrats express disapproval.
Third, partisan activists in the mainstream media can still get their constituencies riled up to make minor bumbles from Republicans, which are understandably more common in a live setting, seem like major revelations about their true beliefs.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- The Heritage Hall of Fame finds its bridge too far.
- The state of Rhode Island’s bridges shows neglect.
- Ferry service shows McKee’s lack of consideration.
- The push for a new courthouse represents the Providence Plantation.
- Minimum wage increases harm Rhode Islanders.
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 3 and Photoshop
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As we watch progressive activists disrupt life in America, apparently with impunity, progressive attorneys general are happy to provide contrary examples dependent upon political viewpoint:
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell is suing an increasingly active neo-Nazi group and two of its leaders for an escalating pattern of harassing, intimidating, and confrontational conduct at anti-immigration protests and demonstrations against drag queen story-hours around the state.
The Nationalist Social Club, or NSC-131, and its leaders, Christopher Hood, of Newburyport, and Liam McNeil, of Waltham, repeatedly have showed up at public libraries hosting the story hours and hotels providing emergency shelter to new immigrants …
The group is distasteful, to be sure, but their rights are our rights. As we saw with the Harvard and MIT presidents, we’re not merely looking at a situation in which the law is a somewhat shifting the line between speech and action (harassment). The proposition is that the very same action would be speech by a politically favored group and harassment by a disfavored group. The ruling Party protects its own and persecutes those with whom it disagrees. This is not freedom. It’s not democracy. It’s not equality. It’s tyranny, and if we accept it to dispatch with people we don’t like, we’ll soon find ourselves disliked by the authorities and with nobody to stand up for us.
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It may be tempting, if you come across images of protest actions around the country during the Christmas holiday ,to believe the protesters are generally being honest about their motivation. In their minds, a horrific event is happening in Gaza, and they feel compelled to act in opposition in whatever way they can. Personally, I don’t believe them.
Horrific events happen all the time in the world without this sort of reaction, and in any event, the means of disruption — blocking highways to airports, attacking police officers, and protesting community Christmas events — are tuned to disrupt, but not to inspire sympathy and agreement. Moreover, the movement is the same as that to which Democrat State Representative Enrique Sanchez played on Thanksgiving: “I don’t celebrate holidays that are the result of genocide of our indigenous people.”
To progressives, our whole way of life is a genocidal affront. Disrupting our lives and undermining our civilization is the point, and while it’s easy to confuse passion with righteousness, a better world isn’t on the other side of capitulation to their demands. We’re diving into an era of reverse racism and permissible oppression, and it won’t correct anything, only damage more lives.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- McKee seizes the moment to define himself
- Where are all the RI pols?
- This is who runs the state?
- A ferry to nowhere
- Bought in legislative pensioners
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 3.
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Hardly a day goes by that doesn’t increase the skepticism I bring to recent Ivy League degrees. Do students at these schools have any appreciation of the practical world? If they have specific technical knowledge, to what extent is it buried beneath layers of cultish left-wing ideology?
If you, like me, have a strong feeling that America’s institutions of so-called higher education have opened a gateway to a separate reality, look no further than Brown University’s recent statement addressing recent campus protests:
Brown’s administration was widely criticized for having student protesters arrested. Not only were students opposed to the school’s response, but more than 200 faculty called on the school to drop the charges. When they were dropped, Brown released a lengthy, complex statement reflecting on Awartani’s injuries, a history of campus activism and the student body’s current divisions.
“We have rarely seen a moment like this across this country that pits members of campus communities against each other,” the school said. “These are extraordinary times, and we recognize that.”
Despite having directed the arrests to be made, Brown recognizes uprisings of the past, its library documenting them in detail. The university calls it “part of the multi-dimensional fabric” on campus, and says protests “exemplify the humanitarian spirit at the core of the Brown community.”
For those you’ve thought of colleges and universities as part of our shared society, a statement like “we have rarely seen a moment like this across this country that pits members of campus communities against each other” may be puzzling. What do they mean by that?
On the other hand, the statement is perfectly clear — a commonplace — if you recognize that the people who inhabit these institutions think of themselves as more enlightened than, distinct from, and above the common people. For decades, Brown University and its students have been “pitted against” other people. You. The policies and traditions you support. Students are supposed to be protesting against and hating you. You can call it “white supremacy,” “patriarchy,” “cis heteronormativity,” or whatever; those are all just meaningless synonyms for people who aren’t as morally deserving as those who pass through Brown University.
The challenge is that Hamas’s savage, Medieval brutality on October 7 and the shocking (surprisingly well-organized and well-funded) support of it across the West has put America’s self-presumed elites in an awkward position. The progressive identity group that has provided the symbolism for this year’s “no justice no peace” protests is in direct conflict with one of the original victim groups of actual white supremacy: Jews.
Let’s notice something in tangent, here, that goes directly to Brown’s problem: The defensive claim that it’s possible to oppose Israel while not opposing Jews is hollow, these days, in large part because the ideology of group identity prevents it. While not all citizens of Israel are Jews, the Jewish identity is intrinsic to the state. Traced back to scriptures thousands of years old, Israel is the land of Jews.
So, when a survey asks respondents whether “Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors,” a generation of young adults now 18-24 years old who have been educated entirely under the dark cloud of identity politics says, “yes,” 67% of the time. It doesn’t resolve this problem that the other survey answers are confused, with 69% of these young respondents also believing Israel has “a right to exist as the homeland of the Jewish people.” To be frank, it isn’t clear that they have any understanding of actual reality. Fifty-eight percent of them believe “Hamas would like to commit genocide against the Jews,” but 60% believe “Israel is committing genocide against those in Gaza.” Despite it all, 76% think “Hamas is an organization that can be negotiated with to create peace.”
Two explanations exist for these results, and they can coincide. First, these kids have simply learned that the word “genocide” is anodyne activist-speak for “opposing.” Second, they think every identity group intrinsically wants to wipe out every other identity group, but that some can be labeled as “oppressor,” which makes them the default bad guys. An earlier question in the report finds 79% of these 18-24 year olds supporting an ideology that says “white people are oppressors and nonwhite people and people of certain groups have been oppressed and as a result should be favored today at universities and for employment.” They believe this despite the fact that only a narrow majority (51%) think the attitude is helpful to society.
In a delusional world in which every group wants to commit genocide against every other group, American campuses that once deserved the label of “elite” serve up “oppressors” as the Other against whom their communities should unite. Beyond being probably unemployable, their graduates should arguably be considered dangerous.
Featured image by Jose Clement-Orozco, “The Clowns of War Arguing in Hell,” from WikiArt.
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You may remember that truck-only tolls were passed with dire statements about the condition of Rhode Island bridges. “People will die if we don’t get this new revenue stream to repair Rhode Island’s poor bridges” was repeatedly stated or heavily implied during the debate about and passage of the proposed new, legally quizzical, unnecessary toll on large trucks requested by former Governor Gina Raimondo and current RIDOT Director Peter Alviti.
Wow, sounds serious. Okay, Gov Raimondo and RIDOT, here’s your dubious new revenue stream.
But if the bridges are that bad and their condition poses such a dire threat to public safety, you’re at least going to repair them from worst to first, right, RIDOT?
Sure, they can’t be repaired exactly worst to first for reasons of logistics. So you triage. And the repair of a bridge whose condition was rated as “Poor” by RIDOT at least as far back as July, 2020; over a body of water (which would exacerbate corrosion); and that contains critical structural components from 1968 should be high on the list, not get postponed with crossed fingers.
Minimally, that bridge gets prioritized ahead of a bridge with a sufficiency rating of 72% per RIDOT’s own inspection report – the Oxford Street Bridge – that happens (undoubtedly a total coincidence) to be in a strategically advantageous location to maximize your legally dubious new revenue stream.
But that’s not what happened. Repairs, necessary or not, to the Oxford Street Bridge were completed in December, 2019. Much needed repairs to the Washington Bridge had not yet commenced when it was suddenly closed Monday due to the imminent failure of a critical component.
Members of the public, who pay for all of this and some of whose lives and businesses are being seriously disrupted, are being scolded for asking questions rather than simply being grateful that a catastrophic collapse was avoided and people did not die.
But isn’t that kind of a baseline? Isn’t it reasonable to expect that, minimally, state government will deliver the public services and projects we fund with an absence of fatalities?
In fact, the public has the right to expect a little more; to expect, for example, that the state highway infrastructure for which we pay top dollar is functional.
In the aftermath of the abrupt closure of the westbound side of the Washington Bridge, the Director of RIDOT has widely stated in the media
What you’re seeing here is the system working
Umm, your “system” resulted in the necessity to close one side of an interstate. The daily flow of 96,000 vehicles was abruptly stopped. The resulting massive diversion of those vehicles has seriously disrupted lives, businesses, commerce and medical care. That’s not a system “working”.
As experts have commented, “It shouldn’t have come to this”. Those anchor pins needed attention far sooner than RIDOT had scheduled.
The closure of the Washington Bridge clearly calls for a change of direction and for RIDOT to adjust their “system”. Here’s one idea. How about we prioritize the repair of bridges in worse condition over those in better condition? Otherwise, as we were urgently told in 2016, people might die.
[Featured image credit: Snapshot from RIDOT’s July, 2020 inspection report of the Washington Bridge classifying its condition as “Poor”.]
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