Written

A water drop and ripples

We have to stop rewarding incompetence with more money and power.

By Justin Katz | December 12, 2023 |

John is exactly right, here:

A pig with Communist branding smiles in the mud

Refuse to wrestle in the progressive mud.

By Justin Katz | December 12, 2023 |

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.

A water drop and ripples

Any analysis that forgets housing is a store of value is worse than useless.

By Justin Katz | December 11, 2023 |

Progressive state representative Enrique Sanchez is entirely wrong, here: Housing is a store of value.  People will put up their own money for their own homes and for investment properties.  If they’re not doing so — especially as the demonstrable value climbs and climbs — then government is doing something wrong to prevent it.  This…

A water drop and ripples

Our attitude toward college students (especially at Ivy League schools) puzzles me.

By Justin Katz | December 11, 2023 |

Maybe I’m getting old and crotchety, but these performances just seem so silly, lately: They’re basically elitists passing through on their way to lives of privilege and entitlement, yet we act simultaneously as if they’ve got some long-standing right to dictate the actions of the institutions and that those institutions’ highest purpose is to give…

Dogs debating in town hall

People just don’t want to find ways to live together, do they? (We should try objective government.)

By Justin Katz | December 8, 2023 |

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…

A water drop and ripples

Why do we have to relearn the lessons of recent history?

By Justin Katz | December 8, 2023 |

This will look familiar to anybody with even a passing familiarity with the history of the Twentieth Century: Leftists are constantly provoking and agitating the public in their lust for power, and eventually people rebel, sometimes while being driven into the arms of the Far Right in an enemy-of-my-enemy way.  Socialism is a divisive, Satanic…

A water drop and ripples

Could things we now think of as bullying have had positives?

By Justin Katz | December 6, 2023 |

That’s a deliberately provocative statement, but it points to a common error in our thinking.  When aspects of our culture strike us as bad, or at least wrong, we tend to think of them as lingering shadows from our benighted past.  We see more clearly these days, right? But some of those things — maybe…

A water drop and ripples

Does RI media not know how to process this… or not want to?

By Justin Katz | December 6, 2023 |

We’re descending to a place, in the United States and Rhode Island, in which controversy is not permitted over certain subjects, as Erika Sanzi points out: Of course, several trends probably all come together. Media outlets don’t have the business model to fund all that they used to, and most journalists don’t have the legal…

A dragon cradles three journalists

Yes, the Cicilline-run Rhode Island Foundation “investing” in journalism should be controversial.

By Justin Katz | December 5, 2023 |

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…

A water drop and ripples

URI polling shows a schizophrenic public.

By Justin Katz | December 5, 2023 |

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…