Economy

A family walks through a deteriorating morgue

Politics This Week: The Constant Stench of Corruption

By Justin Katz | November 4, 2024 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz highlight the constant sense of political corruption in Rhode Island.

Hasbro's haunted headquarters

Politics This Week: Where Rhode Island Used to Be

By Justin Katz | October 30, 2024 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz review signs of things going wrong in the Ocean State.

A bored RI governor waits for the work day to end

Politics This Week: When “Public Service” Is the Day Job

By Justin Katz | October 7, 2024 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz wonder where the will for public service has gone.

Tow truck driver in a suit sleeps at the wheel by the side of the road

Politics This Week: Leadership Asleep at the Wheel

By Justin Katz | September 30, 2024 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz review some of the ways in which Rhode Island’s priorities are out of whack.

RIDOT Contract: Statewide Weigh-in-Motion Enforcement Program. RIDOT: Nah.

By Monique Chartier | September 24, 2024 |

Following the determination in April that the Washington Bridge eastbound was becoming “considerably more sensitive” (gulp), RIDOT contracted to install a new, combined structural health monitoring and vehicle weigh-in-motion program on/between the Washington Bridge and the Iway (Providence River Bridge). In May, RIDOT entered into a five year “sole source” – i.e., no RFP –…

Toys march out of the playroom

Politics This Week: Why Should They Stay?

By Justin Katz | September 23, 2024 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz check in on politics in RI.

A Providence neighborhood through a Statehouse window

The DOJ’s RealPage lawsuit shows the sloppy thinking behind progressive activism.

By Justin Katz | September 11, 2024 |

As I understand it, RealPage offers landlords software for renting out and managing their properties.  Like other such software across industries, it uses automation and analytics to help its clients conceptualize their assets and their businesses and squeeze out inefficiencies.  Among those services is an algorithm that uses local real estate data, including from its…

A donkey wants to paint over a moldy basement as a skeptical elephant looks on

Targeted tax incentives for businesses are like painting over mold.

By Justin Katz | August 27, 2024 |

Although it feels as if genuine policy debates have receded into the background in Rhode Island, reviving them may help correct the corrosion spreading throughout our civic house.  Corporate tax incentives, for example, are an area in which conservatives and progressives in Rhode Island tend to agree on the binary “yes/no” question, raising the possibility…

A water drop and ripples

Progressivism/socialism start with inhuman principles.

By Justin Katz | August 26, 2024 |

I mean the title of this post in the sense both that progressivism/socialism ignores human nature and that it pretends people aren’t human.  Consider: The underlying assumption appears to be that producers will simply produce because they are producers.  Human beings don’t fall into nice progressive categories.  We make decisions and change our status, and…

A water drop and ripples

Government subsidies are not “momentum.”

By Justin Katz | August 20, 2024 |

Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee tweets yet another area in which Democrats manipulate language to insinuate ideology: A grant from a government agency to another government agency is not “momentum.”  Momentum suggests that the entity or project is moving on its own.  Government subsidies are pushes… force.  Democrats’ language is (deliberately) manipulative and always to…