Political Thought
Amidst all the other happenings in Rhode Islanders’ lives, it’s worth a moment to consider that we’ve reached the point that the General Assembly is delving into such levels of micromanagement as housing setbacks and in-law apartments in local zoning. That’s a sign that we’re doing things wrong. In the mania of the day (or…
Reactionary responses to Nikki Haley’s comments about the Confederate flag show the irony of progressive ideology.
News that the Rhode Island Republican Party is struggling to hit the qualification requirements to place any presidential candidates on the primary ballot points to a deep problem in our state’s political landscape. This is true even if we put to the side (for now) rumors that some large number of signatures were inexplicably invalidated.…
Nobody on your political bench can do much better than what you’re seeing now. Democracy has produced the government you actually wanted for so long that the bill is coming due. I wrote about the “Four Horsemen of Rhode Island’s Apocalypse” 15 years ago, and the situation’s only gotten worse as people not in the…
Progressives set rhetorical trap after trap in a cynical bid for division and mutual disrespect. Adding barbs and traps from non-progressives is not the solution; truth and an insistence on a broader sense of community is.
People just don’t want to find ways to live together, do they? (We should try objective government.)
Silly and local as it is, this is one of those stories that makes me despair for the future: A few years ago, some folks petitioned for Tiverton to give some land next to the library to a group that wanted to put together a dog park. People using it are supposed to park across…
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…
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…
As Americans on both sides of the political aisle highlight how poorly situated our federal government is in a time of international volatility (albeit for different reasons), we can’t look only at events of the past few months. We also can’t assume we know the full answer fully from our own perspectives, so this is…
Social media provide a strange, unprecedented venue for public interactions. On one hand, these platforms promise the degree of connectivity and access that has characterized the Internet from its early popularization. On the other hand, a bit of space between our raw personalities and our in-print public personas is healthy. So, what to make of…