On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- McKee’s next round with the homeless
- The media’s turn toward advocacy
- Elorza’s red pill
- The Speaker’s admission of kingship
Featured image by Paulette Vautour on Unsplash.
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This tweet from local left-wing writer Phil Eil, quoting WPRO journalist Steve Klamkin, is some months old, but it’s still worth a head-shaking ponder:
Is it possible that progressives don’t recognize that their co-ideologues are the ones forbidding a counterculture from forming because they’re in power and don’t want alternative views to be heard? Is there any psychological mechanism that could get them to recognize that the Tea Party, MAGA, and so on are the counterculture for which they claim to pine?
As I near a half-century of life, it seems to me that what they want is what Boomers enjoyed for the entirety of my life, and then some: a safe, pop-culturalism counterculturalism in which the mainstream society is so secure and so competent that lifelong adolescents can rebel forever and never reap the damage of revolution.
Ah, well. Those days are gone. The damage cometh.
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Clearing out some links from the past year, I came across this abortion-related interview with URI student Antonia Simmons by The Public Radio’s Lynn Arditi. This part makes me wonder if maybe all that’s needed is more education about biology:
I am a 20 year old woman and I deserve the right to make my own choices about my own body and my own health and my own future.
So if I were to get pregnant, first of all I am in college, I have absolutely no desire, or really the ability right now to be a good mother to raise a child. So the first thing on my mind would be, how can I safely end this pregnancy. And as somebody who’s on the state health insurance, it would not be covered currently by state health insurance. And abortions can run between $500 and $1,500 for the procedure. So we would have to pay that out of pocket.
Maybe the problem is that young women just don’t know how it is that they can “get pregnant,” because then they could make informed choices about their health, bodies, and futures. If that’s not the problem, then it seems what women like Simmons want is an undo to make the choices they prefer easier at the expense of whoever is paying for the procedure and, of course, the children whose lives they would snuff out.
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A prolonged occupation outside the State House by homeless people and advocates urging that the state do more for homelessness has put the issue in headlines in recent weeks, with most of the commentary along the thought-free, almost panicked lines of “Do something! Do something! Do something!”. On Friday, a judge ruled in favor of Governor McKee’s “Notice to Vacate” and the encampment was cleared yesterday. But the issue itself, of course, has not gone away.
Let’s edge into the main point of this post with a few bigger picture items about homelessness that do not seem to have made it into the recent commentary. It’s important to note, first of all, that all public funds to address homelessness do not fall harmlessly from the sky but come out of the pockets of taxpayers, most of whom already have a lot to pay for.
This raises some questions. Are Rhode Island officials addressing some of the root causes within their purview – high property taxes, high cost of living, including energy costs, and business (un)friendliness – of homelessness? How much is enough for government to spend on affordable housing and alleviating homelessness? At what point does this burden, along with other things government deems taxpayers should fund, tip the balance of household budgets towards unaffordability and actually increase the number of those who are homeless? And the question that is the focus of this post: is government most efficiently using taxpayers’ dollars, both generally and to address the matter of homelessness? Because every dollar poorly spent, i.e. wasted, by state government takes resources away from valid public services and projects.
This brings us to the Industrial National Bank Building; a.k.a., the Superman Building in downtown Providence. This former office building has been vacant for years. The State of Rhode Island and the City of Providence have agreed to participate in the rehab and redevelopment of the building into mostly residential apartment units by partially funding this project with significant public subsidies, a.k.a. hard-earned tax dollars; local, state and federal. The Providence Journal puts total public participation dollars, including Providence’s thirty year tax stabilization (love the euphemism; can we all get a tax break … er, tax stabilization?) agreement for the property, at over $90,000,000.
Objections to the development have understandably been raised about its high rent rates. This is due in part to the very high cost of the project itself. Rehab construction is notoriously more expensive than new construction. A more extreme and, therefore, more expensive type of rehab conversion project is turning a century old office building to modern, code-compliant residential units, throwing into question the wisdom of any public dollar participation in what is arguably a boutique, or even vanity, project.
The project, especially the $90,000,000 in taxpayer participation, has been sold on the basis of hazy nostalgia for the building – nostalgia that is probably non-existent for the vast majority of Providence residents and Rhode Islanders footing this significant bill. Another selling point has been that 20%, or 57, of the residential apartments will be “affordable”; double the normally requested percentage for a new residential development in Rhode Island. But while this may have been done so that we would think better of public participation in this dubious project, it actually adds another level of very poor value for the public dollars earmarked for this costly development: the expensive creation of “affordable” apartments. And the natural follow up question: how many more affordable housing apartments could be created if those funds went towards newbuild units?
State leaders have indicated that addressing homelessness is a priority for them. It is difficult, however, to reconcile these statements with the action of directing public dollars towards hazy nostalgia and an expensive rehab development that is very poor value for the public dollar.
This is not to necessarily advocate for an increase in public resources for homelessness or to redirect some of that $90,000,000 from the Superman Building project towards newbuild affordable housing projects (though certainly, all public funds should be immediately withdrawn from the project). Rather, it is to highlight, lest state officials think it is going unnoticed, a sharp contradiction of nice-sounding words and profligate actions that will, in a double irony, not only result in fewer affordable units built for the money spent but perhaps nudge a few more people towards homelessness by adding to the financial burden of living in the state.
Featured image by Kostiantyn Li on Unsplash.
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Guest: Travis Rowley, Host of podcast Good Men https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCumvkUv8VEGz3lD1iy37I4g
To subscribe to Rowley’s newsletter, use this email address: travisrowley21@gmail.com
Host: Richard August Time: 60 minutes
Description: A broad range of topics are discussed including Donald Trump; social media; Universities; Silicon Valley; free speech; public education; private life and more and how these have been influenced by politics. The main political influences are particularly the far left liberal politics and conservative politics and their inability to reach common ground for the public good. In their tug of war over political influence, one side has become and remains dominant.
A peculiar aspect of the mental abuse promulgated by progressives in Rhode Island (and the labor union activists who control them and the state) is the predicament in which they forbid honest discussion about issues like school reform, thus condemning students to substandard education, while casting aspersions at those who seek better for their own children, as if the moral fault is theirs. The message is that you cannot fix the schools, and you’re compounding the harm if you seek to avoid them for your own family.
Outgoing Democrat Mayor Jorge Elorza is right to make other plans for his own son, and he’s bravely honest to acknowledge it. There was a reason, when I investigated in 2014, I found that more than twice the percentage of families in RI choose private, religious schools than is true for the average high-SAT-taking state.
They are relatively low-cost alternatives that perform much better than do public schools. And whereas RI public schools do worse than comparable schools in other states, private religious schools do as well as their out-of-state peers. Thus, they offer even more bang for the buck in the Ocean State.
Advocates can attack people for pointing this reality out, but by doing so, they’re only displaying their lack of concern for living, breathing students, whom they’re willing to sacrifice on their ideological altar.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- The homeless versus McKee
- Hiding the inauguration
- Providence teachers union follows its nature
- Claims of antisemitism
Featured image by Michael Matlon on Unsplash.
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John Loughlin interviews Dave McDonald of Smithfield Classic Cars and Auto Sales, RNC Chair Candidate Harmeet Dhillon, and General Robert Caslen, regarding Army Navy 2022.
Featured image by Theodor Vasile on Unsplash.
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I should probably start by acknowledging my naivete. Middle age had descended thoroughly before it even occurred to me that some of the strange responses I experienced from adults as a teen, particularly in sports, might have had something to do with physical abnormalities with which I was born. In my defense, the peculiarity of my psychology was so manifest that it could easily hide irrational responses to my physiology behind its explanatory power.
Similarly, it wasn’t until I was fully embroiled in local politics that I started to pick up on the subtle origins of seemingly irrational insults and conspicuous curiosity about whether Jewishness follows the maternal or paternal line. If the former, you see, my Jewish last name could be disengaged from that portion of my heritage. By belief and conversion, I’m Catholic, so as long as my grandmother wasn’t the Jewish half of my grandparents’ marriage, antisemites could treat me normally on a technicality. (Those issuing insults weren’t as concerned about precision.)
I provide these personal details as context for my response to Boston Globe reporter Edward Fitzpatrick’s interview with Adam Greenman of the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island, about the “‘alarming’ rise in antisemitism.” Well-informed readers will probably suspect immediately that the impetus for the interview was commentary from the peculiar MAGA celebrity Kanye West and, if they share my general political stance, they will muse that similar statements from left-wing anti-Semites never seem to generate these ancillary materials. Of course, being local, Greenman and Fitzpatrick localize it with reference to a handful of pro-Kanye flyers appearing in Warwick. Here’s Greenman:
It tells us that white supremacists are feeling more emboldened in Rhode Island and more comfortable spreading their hate here. Earlier this year, we saw them demonstrating in Providence, and the leafleting in Warwick is the latest of several like-incidents in just the last few weeks. Their goal is to scare and intimidate, and we won’t let them. It’s critically important for the larger Rhode Island community to stand with us and send a message that this kind of hate is not welcome here.
Yeah… well… I’m not so sure a smattering of anonymous “flyers” is evidence that people are “comfortable” promoting a particular message. More importantly, I differ from Greenman in that I want them to be more comfortable expressing their views, not less. Contrary to Greenman, Fitzpatrick, Governor McKee, Providence Mayor Elorza, and others, including Rhode Island law enforcement officials, I don’t want people who believe such things to feel as if they risk criminal investigation if they are identified for their speech.
After my decades of apparent naivete, I’d much rather have people tell me what they think, so I can understand their behavior and explore the possibility of explaining to them why they’re wrong to feel as they do. I don’t buy the implication (which is either insecurity, inverted bigotry, or cynical posturing) that freely expressed bigotry will inevitably win converts. I believe in people and expect the opposite result.
Greenman worries that “social media has allowed [antisemitic] conspiracy theories to spread much further,” but I just can’t see how asserting the power to “stamp out” their speech (in contravention of an ostensible right guaranteed by the First Amendment) disproves, rather than reinforcing, such claims.
Of course, I don’t share Greenman’s financial interests. According to tax filings, his organization takes in and spends around $7-8 million each year, and he takes home about $200,000 in compensation from the alliance and “related organizations.”
Contrary to the inevitable complaints of Greenman’s allies in the Antidefamation League that I’m leaning on some antisemitic trope about money, this is simply first-pass journalism of the sort that Fitzpatrick would surely conduct were Greenman a paid advocate for a different cause. The key point is that he has an immediate financial interest in amplifying the concerns of his donors, as well as fostering the belief that the direct advocacy he provides can resolve their discomfort.
This applies across issues, whether they involve identity politics or social problems like homelessness. The advocates have incentive to promote the idea that there is something for which to advocate. Put differently, they have incentive to ensure that their chosen challenges are never actually resolved. Mainstream journalists like Fitzpatrick are in on the game, however, so they’ll do what they can to ensure that their readers never notice this counterintuitive dynamic.
Featured image by Jose Clemente Orozco on WikiArt.
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Something about a pair of tweets from Valley Breeze editor Ethan Shorey feels like inspiration for a short story (or maybe a poem):
The journalist is quietly sitting out there in the community, reporting to his 6,657 followers in a judgmental way about what somebody is saying to somebody else within his hearing. That person may never know he was the star of Shorey’s vilification tale.
And here’s the thematic twist of the story: Shorey may never know he was the star of my own vilification tale because, perhaps seeing me as yet another ranting antagonist, he appears to have muted me, condemning me to sit here in the Twitter coffee shop ranting about his ranting about somebody’s ranting.
At least the first guy is having a human conversation in person.
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