Written

A water drop and ripples

Funny how political defenestrations only ever go one way.

By Justin Katz | October 21, 2021 |

Expressing a view on a political or social issue can be harmful to your career, if it isn’t of the progressive-approved variety: The CEO of an American video game developer stepped down after he issued a statement supportive of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of a law in Texas that bans abortions after…

Apartment buildings

The evicted mother’s story reveals much more that our society needs work on.

By Justin Katz | October 21, 2021 |

One difficulty with assessing sympathetic stories associated with public policy debates (and the reason advocates actively seek and promote them) is that they short circuit rational discussion about tradeoffs.  The position of seeming to lack sympathy is so uncomfortable that the public debate leaves important details unraised and, typically, the villain is assigned to be…

A water drop and ripples

We need to restore the sense of going out for adventure.

By Justin Katz | October 21, 2021 |

While he goes a bit far in framing ’80s dance parties as a path to God, Mark Judge makes a great point, here: Going out was a long ride uninterrupted by texts, which didn’t exist, or phone calls, because phone booths were hard to find. The experience formed a kind of meditation. The professional world…

A hoodie on a beaten school bus

Let’s have P-Tech-type innovation instead of critical race theory.

By Justin Katz | October 21, 2021 |

Providence schools don’t necessarily have to sign up with Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH), but doesn’t this seem like the level of innovation and drive that we ought to have seen after the dreadful John Hopkins report more than two years ago? Founded in 2011 by IBM and the Bloomberg administration in…

A blurry streetscape

Shouldn’t “epidemiologist” Bostom be better with numbers?

By Justin Katz | October 21, 2021 |

As a Rhode Island conservative, nothing would please me more than letting Andrew Bostom go off and do his thing.  Unfortunately, people with whom I generally agree and think of as allies keep citing him as a credentialed epidemiologist (which he’s not) and even utilizing him as an expert witness in court. Look, I agree…

A water drop and ripples

Take note of what the government thinks “working” means when it comes to mandates.

By Justin Katz | October 20, 2021 |

The title of this Barbara Morse piece on WJAR carries an important point of political philosophy: Health leaders say Rhode Island health care COVID-19 vaccine mandate is working By “working,” they mean that the percentage of healthcare workers who have been vaccinated has gone up to 95%, which is probably an increase of around 10…

What do you call it when the administration secretly transforms the country?

By Justin Katz | October 20, 2021 |

Nick Miroff (of the Washington Post, of all publications) reports that arrests along our southern border are occurring at record rates. Meanwhile, the New York Post has photos of illegal immigrants being flown into New York in the middle of the night, for distribution in nearby communities.  This recalls news items coming in from around the country,…

A water drop and ripples

Remember when it was the height of bigotry to worry about biological men in women’s private spaces?

By Justin Katz | October 20, 2021 |

The most infamous and egregious case, of course, is the reported rape by a boy in a skirt of a 15-year-old girl in the girls’ bathroom in a Loudon County, Virginia, school.  The school department lied about the case and tried to bury it, and the case wouldn’t be nearly as infamous if the news…

Image of COVID as planet Earth

UPDATED: Tiverton is last for vaccination but near-best for COVID hospitalizations?

By Justin Katz | October 20, 2021 |

Living in the town, of course it caught my eye that Dan McGowan of the Boston Globe outed Tiverton as the only town in Rhode Island with a vaccination rate below 50%: Tiverton is now the only city or town in Rhode Island with a COVID-19 vaccination rate below 50 percent, according to data from the…

A water drop and ripples

“Earthshine” fears show they’ll spin anything to support climate alarmism.

By Justin Katz | October 20, 2021 |

Here’s a headline on a Steve Matregrano article for WPRI that might very well make you say, “Oh, come on”: ‘Earthshine’ levels indicate the planet is dimming due to climate change, researchers say The key question the headline skips over is:  dimming from the perspective of whom?  No, the Earth isn’t getting darker.  It’s just…