Unions

A child with hands over face.

McKee’s Learn 365 RI education initiative may justify a response of Turn 180.

By Justin Katz | April 13, 2023 |

Whether it’s peculiar or not (given his governance style) the most-conspicuous thing about the Learn 365 RI initiative — for which Democrat Governor Dan McKee has sought (and received) a PR boost — is how undefined it is.  There’s some effort to get municipalities to commit to something, although what that may be isn’t clear. …

Actors pose in front of a curtain

Politics This Week: Things Stated and Unstated in RI Politics

By Justin Katz | March 6, 2023 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss things RI insiders do and don’t want the public to think about.

A child with hands over face.

Funny, the difference in misinformation analysis of parents and labor unions.

By Justin Katz | March 6, 2023 |

If mainstream media analysts and college professors weren’t overwhelmingly true believers of the Left, they could find fertile ground for analysis and lessons in the interaction of media, labor unions, and parents when it comes to Rhode Island schools.  Case study 1 comes in the form of an article by Alexa Gagosz of the Boston Globe,…

Blue dragon of Roger Williams Park Carousel

Politics This Week with John DePetro: The Insider Job-Go-Round

By Justin Katz | February 20, 2023 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz check in on the insider operations of the RI State House, bureaucracy, and media.

Posters on a city wall

Politics This Week with John DePetro: Poster Children in RI Politics

By Justin Katz | February 15, 2023 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz go over the characters and controversies of state government in Rhode Island.

Crazy Eggs

Politics This Week with John DePetro: The Crazy Activists in Schools and the State House

By Justin Katz | February 5, 2023 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss the madness permeating our state.

A behind the back cash bribe

Rhode Island’s privileged class may begin getting more than half off its property taxes.

By Justin Katz | January 27, 2023 |

Once upon a time, the common wisdom was that government work couldn’t compete with the private sector for pay but made up for it in benefits and job security.  Whether that was ever true, I don’t know, but it has long been the case that government workers in Rhode Island get the best of all…

A toy school bus

The underlying problem in education is depressingly difficult to repair.

By Justin Katz | January 10, 2023 |

Perhaps my favorite moment in all of music ever comes in the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.  The music is a bouncy march, and in the libretto, the singers are proclaiming an intent to take paradise by storm, like “a victor.”  The mood changes suddenly, however, and I’ve always thought it a deliberate statement…

A person dressed as Darth Vader sits on stairs.

Politics This Week with John DePetro: The Establishment Back in Control

By Justin Katz | December 27, 2022 |

John DePetro and Justin Katz note the return of the RI establishment’s confidence and evidence that its underlying approach remains flawed.

A chart of RI students by school type compared with comparable other states.

Elorza is right to avoid Providence schools for his son.

By Justin Katz | December 17, 2022 |

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…