That’s a deliberately provocative statement, but it points to a common error in our thinking. When aspects of our culture strike us as bad, or at least wrong, we tend to think of them as lingering shadows from our benighted past. We see more clearly these days, right?
But some of those things — maybe many or most — could have developed for a reason and evolved in subtle ways to provide multiple benefits that we cannot see because we take them for granted. Subjecting kids to a Lord of the Flies environment in which they resolve their own problems, for example, does teach them to… resolve problems. Naturally, they frequently do so in ways we don’t like, such as bullying, but we should arguably trust an evolved culture to have balanced the pros and cons better than we can reactively accomplish from within it.
I’ve thought about this as stories emerge of girls physically hurt during sporting competitions to which males have only recently been permitted. In the past, perhaps boys choosing to play those games would have been aware of the risk that harming girls would bring the unwelcome attention of boyfriends. Maybe they would have thought twice about playing, or maybe they’d have been more careful while doing so.
To be sure, the progressive always wishes to march on, so he or she will now object that this is tantamount to inviting bullying of transgenders. In addition to defining every conflict they don’t like as “bullying,” this only brings us to the next level of thinking we know all the consequences of the modern social innovations they support.
[Open full post]
We’re descending to a place, in the United States and Rhode Island, in which controversy is not permitted over certain subjects, as Erika Sanzi points out:
Of course, several trends probably all come together. Media outlets don’t have the business model to fund all that they used to, and most journalists don’t have the legal expertise to understand these issues, so they’re reluctant to use their limited time to step into a contentious issue, especially when their reportage could raise questions about a cause they support.
[Open full post]
It’s strange to note, but Providence Journal political reporter Kathy Gregg got some heat from others in the local media (specifically from the Boston Globe) for writing this:
The political flap erupted a week after Cicilline – a leader in the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump – told the Boston Globe and more recently a group of journalism fellows that the non-profit, tax-exempt charitable foundation he heads intends to invest in “local journalism.”
“Supporting local journalism in a community is not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” Cicilline told Globe columnist Dan McGowan during a one-on-one on what’s ahead for the R.I. Foundation. (The foundation has not yet responded to inquiries about the well-endowed organization’s intention in the R.I. media landscape.)
Gregg’s social media take was even stronger: “Why do former @RepCicilline and the members of the board of the @RIFoundation want to put their thumbs on the scale of local journalism in Rhode Island?”
Journalists who object to Kathy’s curiosity give the sense of protesting too much — as if they’re hoping to enjoy the benefits of some of that “investment.” The Foundation is arguably the most powerful non-governmental organization in the state, after the labor unions. If the goal of journalism is (as journalists still like to say) to discomfort the powerful, well, the Rhode Island Foundation is the voice of the powerful. A sitting U.S. Congressman just left his position early in order to take its reins! Yet, many journalists are surely anxious to find their own comfort under its wing.
Cicilline makes it sound as if the intent is pure, innocent, even-handed support for local journalism as a social safeguard, but ask yourself: would he and the foundation fund Anchor Rising. Not a chance.
This plain observation has much broader implications. Things have been thus for a long while. Graduate schools and professorships, fellowships, grants… if you’re supportive of progressives’ social movement, or at least reliably silent about the issues central to it, then you have a chance. Otherwise, you’re out. And if they’re providing the funding for or management of an industry, whether the news media or higher education, that industry will quickly become little more than an ideological vessel. This is how progressives have come to so dominate the discourse, to the point that professors are happy to call for genocide in the Jewish state.
Turning this around, if it is possible, will be the work of decades, and the first step is observing the obvious reality that we face.
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 3 and Photoshop AI.
[Open full post]
Ian Donnis tweeted, in October, some poll results from the University of Rhode Island that raise an perennially interesting point:
Note that “most respondents favor increased state-level spending on education, housing, infrastructure, and aid to the poor. 73% want government “investment” in “blue economy initiatives like offshore wind.” Yet, those with “a great deal” or “a lot” of trust in government range only from 10% for the feds to 14% for the locals, with state government at 11%.
Why do people want to give filter more money and power through a government that they don’t trust? I’d say it’s evidence that our education system is not teaching critical thinking, at the same time our culture is depriving people of the opportunity to develop common sense. Meanwhile, the news media won’t allow progressive policies to become the subject of scandal, so the public is simply misinformed.
[Open full post]
On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- Brown University discovers the serpent it has fed
- RI media recoils from hints minorities are able to shift parties
- Labor unions outwait wisdom on pensions
- McKee’s non-existent ethics vetting
- RIDOT’s infrastructure indifference
Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 3 and Photoshop with AI assist.
[Open full post]
You don’t have to be an old hand at data analysis to see what’s going on in this chart of Americans holding multiple jobs, from the St. Louis Federal Reserve:
From 1994 through 2020, the number oscillated around approximately 250,000 to 300,000. Now we’re rapidly approaching 500,000.
One conclusion about which I’d speculate, given other economic numbers and current political debate, is that America is splitting into a society with one segment that works twice as hard to support the other side, which works half as much… or not at all.
[Open full post]
Yes, of course, we’re decades into college radicals provoking tutting responses from the normies with events like “Sex Fest,” details of which Anthony De’Ellena shares here, and it’s getting boring and cliché:
A significant development, though, is that these events are now developed and promoted by official centers of the institution, which deliberately promote activities that are arguably harmful (like use of pornography) and unarguably subject to disagreement from many in the public.
Count this among the many distractions on which institutions of formerly-higher education are failing their students and society at large. They’re charging students, parents, and taxpayers exorbitant fees to house children on Pleasure Island from Pinocchio for a few years to see how many they can corrupt. It’s time to rein in the immaturity… and psychosis.
[Open full post]
Yes, there’s a language warning. Yes, Musk is an imperfect messenger, but when it comes to the concluding statement, his articulation of the point of this clip as it comes to its final words may prove to be an historical moment:
MUSK: “The judge is the public.”
SORKIN: “And you think that the public is going to say that Disney is making a mistake?”
MUSK: “Yes.”
SORKIN: “And they’re going to boycott Disney?”
MUSK: “They already are.”@elonmusk pic.twitter.com/3LDxuk8wDC
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) November 30, 2023
“What I care about is the reality of goodness, not the perception of it. And what I see all over the place is people who care about looking good while doing evil.”
[Open full post]
Accept no rationalizations. This is the result of the rising tide of typical Rhode Island bad governance finally reaching the state’s high points:
Classes have been canceled for students and staff again at East Greenwich High School.
The superintendent sent an email to parents Wednesday night with the announcement.
According to the superintendent, the school had been dealing with several issues over the last week.
I’ve heard that real estate agents helping high-income people from out of state find housing in RI take them straight to Barrington and East Greenwich. Folks should understand that it is a deliberate objective goal of “equity” progressives to leave them nowhere to go.
John DePetro suggests this will be a voting issue, which means it will be a test of how far progressives have gotten in their takeover.
[Open full post]
Don’t let things like this slip under your awareness or your commentary, because plenty of Rhode Islanders have no experience or intellectual foundation to question the reporting:
The R.I. Department of Health on Thursday ordered the owner of Roger Williams Medical Center and Our Lady of Fatima Hospital to take immediate steps to stabilize their finances after finding the two facilities are struggling to pay their bills.
The Health Department said its compliance order follows an extensive review that determined California-based Prospect Medical Holdings is underfunding both facilities, calling the infraction part of a larger pattern of noncompliance.
While reviewing such news, keep regulatory context in mind. When a government agency claims that a company is “underfunding” some operation or other, they mean that they aren’t funding it at the level at which government officials desire — or have artificially required based on mandates and regulations. The same government officials have every incentive to demand that other people always provide more funding, and they face no consequences if their demands destroy the industries they oversee. Indeed, the more harm they do to healthcare, the more leverage politicians and bureaucrats have. We’ve fallen into a trap of perverse incentives in democracy.
As if to amplify the point, the Department of Health’s order is for the healthcare company to spend more money on oversight:
The compliance order requires Prospect to hire an independent fiscal monitor to determine the operating costs of its Rhode Island hospitals, as well as an independent on-site operations manager who will report to the Health Department on the extent to which vendor non-payment has previously impacted patient care.
That is, a company that’s having trouble paying its bills now has to spend some hundreds of thousands of dollars more for government-mandated inhouse bureaucrats. The thinking is arguably inverted; government agencies hire independent managers and monitors because they are not generally run by people with the specialized skills the situation requires. Private companies don’t work the same way. Here’s the real indication of our problem, as citizens, though: Even if in some circumstances this might be rational, on its face it is counterintuitive, at best, and yet the diktats are not questioned by journalists or explained by the government agents.
One suspects the RI officials see themselves as attempting to use their power to force an out-of-state owner to increase funding for people in our state, but those parent organizations are not simply sitting on cash as their suppliers refuse to extend short-term credit and their customers find services disrupted. And to the extent the parent companies find themselves with a pool of cash that neither suppliers nor customers are able to demand through market mechanisms, the cause is sure to be government manipulation of the market giving the parent company that increased leverage. In that case, the solution is to find and ease those distortions, but how likely is it that a government-mandated monitor will turn around and tell government officials that they’re the problem?
After walking through the analysis, though, put aside the economic theory. If it ceases to be profitable for companies to run hospitals, then they won’t run them. We’re already hearing complaints (including from progressive journalists) that healthcare providers are becoming difficult to find in the Ocean State. Government cannot mandate industries into existence, at least not for long, and Rhode Islanders need to think that reality through quickly.
[Open full post]