I listened to so much Billy Joel as a tween and teen that one could almost say he was something of a father figure for me (hey, don’t judge). One of his songs just came up on my shuffle, inspiring me to check in BillyJoel.com, which I haven’t visited in years. With a few exceptions, the photos reinforce an impression I’ve had since first watching the video of his millennium concert decades ago: he just never seems happy. With some exceptions, the smile never seems to reach his eyes, as the saying goes.
I say this believing myself still to be in tune with his professional persona. In interviews from the ’80s and ’90s, I completely got his somewhat cynical and sarcastic Tri-State Area sense of humor. But somewhere around the year 2000, the down-to-Earth-getting-what-a-lark-this-all-is star thing shifted to a guy-who-reached-the-top-and-didn’t-find-something thing.
Maybe that’s why he hasn’t really done any original work since his classical album in 2001.
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On the periodic occasions that one sees headlines in Rhode Island about improving education, the focus is almost invariably money, whether the topic is an adjustment to the state funding formula or about a “right to an education,” by which advocates ultimately mean a right to more tax dollars.
But take a look at the featured image of this post, which I came across on Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab. Each mark is a school, and the higher up they are on the chart, the better students do with standardized math and English scores and graduation rates. The farther right they are, the more they spend per student. The greener the mark, the wealthier the average student, and the redder, the poorer. Plus marks are charter schools.
If school spending made a difference, the marks would generally move from the bottom left of the chart to the upper right… but they don’t. There appears to be no correlation at all between spending per student and student success, even if we look only at the poorest districts, where presumably funding would make the biggest difference.
Across the country the story is the same. If anything, the correlation appears to be inverse. Schools seem to do worse when they get more funding. As much as I’d like tax cuts, though, that story isn’t quite complete. From a relatively cursory look at these charts, one suspects that the reason for this inverse relationship is that wealthier communities do better and spend less per student, while spending more per student makes no difference in poorer communities. Thus, there are simply fewer high-spending, high-success districts because spending doesn’t matter and districts in which students do well have less leverage to trick taxpayers into giving them more money.
Two factors obviously do matter, however. The first, as just indicated, is the wealth of the community. Unfortunately, however, simply transferring money to poorer people probably won’t make a difference. If raw money were the answer, one would expect school spending to make some difference. Rather, wealth is probably more important as an indicator of social and cultural factors.
This hypothesis holds up in light of the second relevant factor. Look at the Rhode Island chart a couple paragraphs up, which shows all RI districts in which at least half of the students are eligible for free or reduced lunch. Those plusses in the upper left, with low spending and high results, are charter schools attended by poorer children. Two possibilities come immediately to mind. Either there’s something about regular district schools that impedes student achievement, or poorer families with the same social and cultural attributes that help wealthier communities self-select into these schools.
If we were truly serious about improving education, especially for disadvantaged students, we’d focus on these possibilities. Rhode Island won’t do so, however, because a significant number of vocal people don’t like the ideological implications. Perhaps more significantly, our state is run for the benefit of special interests for whom collecting taxpayer money is the primary purpose of government schools, and that’s an area in which they excel.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- Langevin & Magaziner’s fearful press conference
- The Globe’s clarifying poll
- The RI GOP’s successful convention
- The Speaker’s hints about arson
- Lancia’s graceful exit
- McKee’s McMentum
- Whom to fear more when left-wing politicians decry clowns’ access to the First Amendment
Featured image by Joao Tzanno on Unsplash.
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Guests: Ret. Lt. Kenneth Bowman, RI State Police Museum Foundation,
Ret. Lt. James T. Beck, RI State Police Museum Foundation,
Host: Darlene D’Arezzo
Description: Guests are retired RI State Police and members of RI State Police Museum Foundation https://rispmuseum.org .
They talk about how the museum originated and the persons involved. They offered a video which provides an overview of its creation and another about Trooper O’Brien, who died while on duty during Hurricane Carol. They share not only their memories but also commentary on some favorite topics: Troopers in Uniforms on the Dave Letterman Show; Red Disk use; the unique Social Investigator Corp; the upcoming 100 year book and 2025 Centennial; the charity events hosted by the Museum Foundation; and more.
John Loughlin talks with Tony Lemonde of Senior’s Choice RI and Derrick Morgan of the Heritage Foundation.
Featured image by Zbynek Burival on Unsplash.
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From the beginning, the likelihood that Providence police officer Jeann Lugo would receive a fair hearing was vanishingly small. His political views conflict with those of the ruling class in Rhode Island, and he therefore does not enjoy basic rules of justice and due process.
How egregiously brazen this injustice can be is shocking, nonetheless. Here’s how Providence Police Chief Hugh Clements describes Lugo’s actions on the night of the recent pro-abortion rally at the State House:
On June 24th, 2022 protesters were gathered at the Rhode Island State House demonstrating the U.S. Supreme Court decision on abortion rights. You, while off duty, were involved in a disturbance in which you were observed on video striking a female identified as Jennifer Rourke, age 40, on the left side of her face with your right hand. You then struck Jennifer Rourke a second time in the area of her face with your left hand and then walked away.
Walked away? As plainly visible in video from Tommy Quinlan to which Monique linked the other day, after Lugo freed himself from Rourke, who was grabbing him from behind to prevent his protecting a counter-protester from unprovoked violence, he was tackled to the ground and pummeled until two State Police managed to get his multiple assailants off of him (before allowing them to “walk away”).
FULL VIDEO. @wpro @GeneValicenti https://t.co/AqMN5ToQYw
— Tommy (@TommyQuinlan_IV) June 27, 2022
The chief can certainly have concerns about the challenges that Lugo’s involvement present for his department in our present environment, but either he is willing to issue official documents condemning an officer under his command based on no evidence other than a doctored video from a dishonest activist or he’s willing to brazenly lie to serve the interests of his political masters.
Either way, no officer in the Providence force should be confident that he will treat them fairly or with justice. Indeed, anybody who may come into conflict with the ruling ideology of the Ocean State should have no confidence that the capital city’s law enforcement is capable of safeguarding their rights or their safety.
Featured image screen captured from Tommy Quinlan on Twitter.
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The politicians and activists proclaim their value and the news media echoes those claims, but that doesn’t mean legal mandates for “renewable energy” are anything other than a scam to take money from Rhode Islanders and give it to special interests. (Same old same old in Rhode Island, I know.). And so, we get headlines like, “Rhode Island sets ambitious target for 100% renewable energy.”
We can debate whether forcing people to hand their money off to one’s political allies is “ambitious,” but what they’re selling is not what you’re getting. Note the key phrase, which I’ve bolded, italicized, and underlined in the following:
The renewable energy legislation was championed in the state Senate by Senate President Dominick Ruggerio, a North Providence Democrat.
It states that all of the energy provided to Rhode Island by 2033 would come from renewable energy, either directly from renewable energy resources or through offsets in the regional market.
An offset is when a distributor or organization buys credits from an energy producer certifying that they’ve produced “renewable energy.” That is, the non-renewable energy that the distributor or organization is using is “offset” by paying extra for the renewable energy that somebody else is using. One hundred percent of their energy could be produced by burning the dirtiest fuel they could find in an open bonfire, but if they give money to special interests that produce energy by a politically preferred process, they can be certified as clean and moral.
It’s a scam. You pay, and they take a bow (and by means direct and indirect, collect a portion of your money).
One might think that in the era of information technology the paying public would be able to see right through the con, but the additional risk of exposure only means that the con artists have to cut in those who could expose them, including as a payoff to go after and discredit those who attempt to do so anyway.
Featured image by Nicholas Doherty on Unsplash.
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Oddly, that’s a question Melanie DaSilva doesn’t manage to answer in her WPRI article about the plans of local police to put license plate recognition cameras on both sides of the bridge that connects Portsmouth and Bristol. It’s almost as if a paragraph is missing:
[Investigating criminal activity is] not what [the cameras will] be used for on the bridge, according to Bristol Police Lt. Steven St. Pierre.
St. Pierre said the license plate recognition cameras will alert police when those people drive over the bridge, giving them an opportunity to intervene before its too late.
Who are “those people”? DaSilva doesn’t say. At the very end of the article, St. Pierre insists that the cameras “will solely be used to identify the license plates of people known to be in crisis.” Readers can believe that or not (and we shouldn’t), but the lieutenant’s promise continues to raise the question: Who are “those people”?
When people tell their therapists that they’re not feeling great, do the therapists put them on a list that tracks their license plates? Or is there a sort of “red flag law” (whereby family members and others can get the police to confiscate people’s guns by telling them they’re worried they’ll use them) for unhappy people?
And if such a system is in place, how many of the people whom officers stop from jumping (or who do jump) would have triggered it? DaSilva reports that officers are called to the Mount Hope Bridge an average of 200 times per year. (Actually, she reports the five-year total, making the numbers seem much more significant.) Of those, about a dozen are “to assist people in crisis.” So, the next relevant question is how many suicidal people police are too late to save. How many times have they been called to the bridge to help somebody and just missed their plunge to death? If that has never happened, or if examples are vanishingly rare, why do we need to take another step toward a total surveillance state?
Something has shifted in the past decade. Ten years ago, even Rhode Islanders would have raised some noise about the prospect of being tracked as they traversed a bridge that is central to East Bay life. Now the police just go ahead and start the program without anybody’s caring to explain how it works or what safeguards are (or aren’t) in place to protect the rights and privacy of the vast majority of people who have no thought of jumping off a bridge.
Featured image by Milan Malkomes on Unsplash.
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Justin Katz called it early. Bill Bartholomew’s extremely clipped video of Jeann Lugo striking Jennifer Rourke at the State House melee Friday night is a serious disservice to the truth.
Bartholomew’s clipped video doesn’t show what happened leading up to that moment.
So you don’t see Jennifer Rourke laying hands on Jeann Lugo. Without his consent, in a harmful and offensive manner.
You don’t see Rourke pulling on Lugo repeatedly, impeding him from protecting a victim of assault.
You don’t see that Lugo is faced away from Rourke most of the time, focused on protecting someone, so has no idea who is pulling on him and impeding him – has no idea their identity; their gender; their race.
You don’t see that he turns and “neutralizes” – strikes – whoever is stopping him from protecting the assault victim without noticing or caring about their identity; their gender; their race.
Now more video has surfaced – this one, for example, taken by WPRO’s Tom Quinlan – where we can see all of this for ourselves.
But it is way too late now. What quickly circulated nationally thanks to Bartholomew’s very clipped video is the completely false story that a man struck a woman; a white cop struck a black person; a male candidate for public office struck his female opponent – out of the blue, for no reason.
Bartholomew has repeatedly stated, by way of trying to exonerate himself from posting the very clipped, very inaccurate video, that he posted his own full video of the incident on his Twitter feed. Yeah, it’s there. If you spend the time to dig back far enough, you’ll find it.
Fascinating that Bartholomew chose to pin the extremely clipped rather than the full video to the top of his Twitter feed.
And far from exonerating him, the existence of his full video actually incriminates him. Because what he could have done is shared his full video with a comment along the lines, “At minute XX:XX, it appears @JeannCLugo strikes his Senate opponent @JenRourke29”.
That would have been honest and helpful. That would have permitted the world to see the whole incident, including what led up to Lugo striking Rourke.
Instead, Bartholomew created a video so short and so inaccurate, it is a lie. And the “lie” went viral, was picked up by every news outlet under the sun, was viewed millions of times and thereby created a false narrative of what happened.
Of course, Jeann Lugo should press assault charges against Jennifer Rourke. As should the man whom she is clearly seen shoving in the video.
But Jeann Lugo should also sue Bill Bartholomew for defamation. Bartholomew’s extremely clipped video has seriously endangered Lugo’s opportunity for justice. And it is clearly grounds for a defamation suit because it has harmed his reputation and cast him personally in a negative light by creating a completely false narrative of the incident that night.
I would further argue that Lugo actually has an obligation to file suit because such litigation is a righteous and powerful way of discouraging the future creation of such false, harmful videos, particularly by people who reach for stepped up credibility by conferring on themselves the title of Journalist – something that, remarkably, Bill Bartholomew does.
[Featured Image Credit: screenshot from Tom Quinlan’s video of the melee.]
The image used as the featured image of this post shows Rhode Island Democrat Governor Dan McKee signing gun control legislation recently at the State House, and even people who support the outcome should be concerned by it.
For the good of our states and our country, Americans used to have a clear, if undefined, expectation that elected officials would maintain a line between their roles as partisan actors and as representatives of the entirety of the people. Yes, legislation is inherently political, and signing it into law is the culmination of a political process, but it is still an official act of the governor. Making a ceremony of such an act is not wrong, but wearing an activist’s t-shirt and sitting behind a campaign-style banner while doing so is.
Even these days, Americans display a vague preference for legislation that can at least technically (even if misleadingly) be called “bipartisan.” By signing this legislation in this way — particularly in consideration of its implication for fundamental Constitutional rights — Governor McKee sends a signal that the people who wore yellow shirts to protest the proposals have zero standing with him as their governor. It’s a show of contempt, and those folks — we — might reasonably feel as much contempt for the governor as he displays for us.
Having a sizable portion of the population feeling despised by, and despising, the heads of our shared government is not a healthy development, and it will come back to hurt our society, although the connection may not be immediately obvious.
Most concerning of all is that nobody in our local mainstream is offering cautionary notes, which suggests that the Ocean State is not capable of self-correcting so as to avoid the worst of the possible consequences.
Featured image downloaded from Rhode Island Monthly, courtesy of the governor’s office.
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