Adventures in Town Government
Buzzwords flow through political and ideological debates — at the state level even more so than the federal — to the extent that one has to wonder whether the people using them really subscribe to the ideas that they represent. Consider Democrat Representative from Cranston Brandon Potter, tweeting about the city’s decision to permit construction…
John and Justin run through many of the ways in which RI’s civic system is just not functioning.
For seven weeks, East Providence sent warnings instead of tickets to drivers who went more than 11 miles per hour over the speed limit in school zones. The system issued 69,528 such warnings, in fact, which works out to about 1,420 per day. The cameras have only been snagging drivers for actual $50 tickets for…
Have you ever seen a mainstream news report that treated scary environmental projections with even an iota of skepticism? Consider Tolly Taylor’s report for WPRI, which bears the headline, “Parts of Barrington will be underwater by 2035, sea-level data shows.” The first paragraph of the story gives the impression that the headline is a bit…
Steve Ahlquist has a strange explainer on Uprise RI about how Barrington got away with implementing a minimum wage policy for municipal workers: State law passed during the regime of House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello prevents municipalities from raising the minimum wage within their borders. But the state cannot prevent individual cities and towns from establishing their…
I’m honestly baffled that a coalition of “open government organizations” would call on Democrat Governor Dan McKee to reinstate executive orders allowing government bodies to meet remotely again: We therefore once again strongly urge you to reinstate your earlier executive orders so as to permit public bodies to meet virtually and thereby allow the public…
This is exactly the sort of environment the education system in Rhode Island and other places around the country are inviting as they seek to impose ideological radicalism as guiding lights and institutionalize a system of lying to parents. At the link, Rod Dreher supplies video of the emotional testimony and accusations of Jessica Konen,…
Our system is set up to ensure that infrastructure, like school buildings, is left to rot. That dynamic is inevitable when (1) budgeting and negotiations are tilted so heavily in favor of labor and (2) taxpayers can be bullied or forced into spending the additional money to repair or replace buildings when they become bad…
John and Justin discuss local, state, and national stories with which the messaging is going all wrong.
Fining the contractor for Providence’s Small Business Saturday street closure seems like a cover-up.
This is just a little too neat and tidy a resolution to the story of government incompetence in Providence mentioned in this space yesterday: The construction company responsible for the closure of a Providence street lined with small businesses during one of the busiest shopping days of the year has been fined for working without…
