I remember, for instance, when University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus released a detailed, extensive study finding children of same-sex couples fare worse than children in intact traditional marriages.  In an article about a new analysis method that has “vindicated” Regnerus (contrary to the expectations of the the analysts), Paul Sullins calls the 2012 study “now infamous,” but from the public’s point of view, it would be more accurate to characterize it as “quickly brushed aside.”

By the time Regnerus released his findings, the factions who control academia, media, and most other cultural institutions had fully settled into the novel strategy of simply pretending there was nothing worth seeing in the opposition’s points.  The treatments ranged from assumptions of bigotry (there usually was none) to assertions that any plausible points had already been addressed (they often hadn’t) to just ignoring trickier statements.

I predicted, after the Supreme Court used the force of government to redefined marriage, that the effort would prove to be a first run of the method.  With progressives in near-full control of institutions that Americans had spent decades or centuries investing with credibility, they would obviously convince themselves to cash in on that credibility for causes they believed to be unassailable, unambiguously moral, and even predestined by the arc of history.  This is the impulse for many currently topical issues, from the mutilation of children in the name of trans to the blind eye turned to a deeply deteriorated U.S. President.

The only way forward that I can see is to build other channels, some direct replacements, where the truth can be said carried and then actively draw our friends and neighbors into forums in which the light can be seen.

RINewsToday fills out some of the details behind the illegal alien whose arrest Democrat Representative Enrique Sanchez called a “kidnapping of our neighbor”:

I’ve been noting for years how Rhode Island’s Democrat rulers have been edging out onto thin ice with their immigration policies.  In this case, we’ve got a fentanyl dealer whose product may very well have killed Rhode Islanders in a way we cannot track.  It’s only a matter of time until one of his fellow gang members, or somebody similar, massacres a family, drives through a children’s playground, or commits some other act so horrific that even Rhode Island’s sympathetic news media will not be able to soften it.  And if the White House remains occupied by a Republican at the time, state officials will not easily be able to weasel out of the blame they’ll clearly deserve.

It may be that What’s Up Newp is generous in its birthday wishes, but their marking Ron Machtley’s birthday with a brief biography seems like an interesting thing to do — almost like a statement about the change in Rhode Island from a time of genuine democracy and hope to… whatever we’re living through now.

Machtley, born in 1948, was the last Republican Rhode Island sent as a Representative to Congress.  He left Washington 30 years ago, in 1995.  Here’s hoping he will not hold that distinction forever.

If Rhode Island had a healthier balance between the political parties — meaning any balance at all — statements like this one about a gangster shooting in his city from Cranston’s Republican mayor, Kenneth Hopkins, would be much more common and would serve to keep both sides of the political aisle in check so as to not provide the other with ammunition:

Here is the problem. Stolen car, gang members, attempted murder in a crowded area, eluding police, chase on the highway to Providence Place Mall. Guns found, arrests made. They are released already by a liberal judge. Yes, RELEASED already. What’s wrong with this picture. How do law abiding citizens get protected?

Such statements are fine, but they have to be connected with some mechanism for changing things.  Otherwise, they simply represent politicians going through the motions.

In my casual reading, I’ve recently come across the theory that our brains evolved with tendencies like confirmation bias because we’re meant to debate for the good of the community.  You follow your intuition or preference and build a strong case for it; I do the same; and then we debate.  Together or with the input of other people, we determine whose model is better suited to achieve some shared objective.

This notion provides a helpful context for thinking about media bias.  For decades, professional journalists have insisted that they’re more like the third-parties who help society gather objective information and then provide a forum for the debate.  Increasingly, they’re making clear (with or without saying so) they think their role is to construct a strong case for their political party.

This came to mind when an article by Jim Puzzanghera appeared, for some reason, on the Rhode Island page of the Boston Globe, with the headline, “Consumers start to feel impact of Trump’s tariffs as businesses wrestle with prices: ‘A horrible decision by our government’.” The headline doesn’t match the story.  In truth, some specific producers are feeling the impact and think it might get worse.  How this is affecting consumers broadly and whether there might be counterbalancing effects we aren’t told.

A more-conspicuous question is also never raised:  Is there any downside to cheap goods from China?  To be sure, a producer of specialty socks will be adversely affected when she has no recourse to government-subsidized slave labor in Asia, but should her business define Americans’ perspective on a broad policy like tariffs?

No matter.  The Globe’s objective is to make people feel as if they must vote for Democrats, which is fine, provided we know what they’re about and disregard talk of objectivity.

This sentiment, expressed on page 170 of How Minds Change, by David McRaney, strikes me as a legacy truism that no longer applies, at least not with certainty:

… the unquestionable shared truths that secure our group identities have historically led to our deepest disagreements, our most intractable arguments, our most gridlocked politics, and our bloodiest wars.

Scientists, doctors, and academics are not immune. But lucky for them, in their tribes, openness to change and a willingness to question one’s beliefs or to pick apart those of others also signals one’s loyalty to the group. Their belonging goals are met by pursuing accuracy goals.

Such a notion might have once held more truth than pretense, but after the COVID epoch, the meter has clearly shifted to “pretense.” Indeed, that McRaney would state such a thing without qualification is an indication of how deeply within his group identity he lives.

For decades, progressive ideologues from the left have infiltrated academia, first in the humanities, then in the social sciences, and now reaching into the “hard” sciences, to ensure that “openness to change and willingness to question one’s beliefs” only applies in one direction.  It’s now “openness to change away from traditional or conservative beliefs” and “willingness to pick apart the beliefs of others who don’t agree with the approved ideology.”

Doubts in the public were already increasing, particularly in relation to big subjects like climate change, but the moment members of the “fact-based” tribe assured the public that mass political protests were perfectly fine at a time when churches were being closed and families were being harassed into their homes and forced to wear masks outside, the game was entirely up. Shame on the rest of us if we allow objectivity pretenders to continue holding the enhanced power we once gave them under the expectation that they had integrity.

The bad news is the law left residents’ access up to the states.  In Rhode Island, we’re at the mercy of elected officials who are controlled by the labor unions, most acutely represented by Senate President Valarie Lawson, who also happens to be President of the National Education Association of Rhode Island.

On the surface, state adoption would seem an obvious thing to do:

The program allocates up to $1,700 in federal tax credits for individuals who donate to organizations that provide private and religious school scholarships.

The state government has no involvement (other than permission), and the entire program is voluntary.  An individual donates money to an organization; the federal government gives him or her a credit on taxes; and the organization gives the money to families, who allocate it to help with tuition at a non-government school.  States that don’t give taxpayers and families access to the program are simply restricting their options.  It’s like the state government’s decision that Rhode Islanders shouldn’t be permitted to join a wine or beer of the month club.

Rhode Island isn’t big on giving people options that conflict with insiders’ special interests, and the teachers unions may be the biggest special interest of them all.  Sure, Rhode Island has a similar tax credit scholarship program, but it’s extremely limited, and it’s restricted to another special interest: businesses.  In the state government’s calculous, individuals and families aren’t “interests,” they’re subjects.

Much of the news I’m seeing today relates to the narrative battle in which ICE and the Department of Homeland Security report a raid in which they uncovered forced child labor on a marijuana farm in California and were assaulted, even shot at, by protesters, while Democrats try to portray the incident as an unprovoked Trump raid on innocent, peaceful people.  In short, it’s the perfect day for a Democrat PAC to leak its survey findings that their party has little credibility with Americans:

The Democratic Party’s credibility with voters has plummeted even further since the 2024 election, raising alarm bells as the party looks to rebuild ahead of the midterms and the next presidential election, according to a new poll obtained by The Hill.

The poll, which was conducted between May and June by Unite the Country, a Democratic super PAC, showed voters perceived the Democratic Party as “out of touch,” “woke” and “weak.”

True to form, the partisan experts quoted in the associated news story conclude their problem is that they are simply too nuanced for simplistic Americans and, further, what they really have to do is downplay the issues they really care about and promise Americans things as if they are special interests.  Then, they can drag those bought-off constituencies along for the woke/weak stuff.

That’s actually a more-harsh summary than I’d expected to make before I’d read Alexa Gagosz’s Boston Globe article about women having routine care postponed due to Rhode Island’s horrid healthcare policy.  Here’s how it starts:

Brittany Spurgas’ mother died of breast cancer at age 39. Her grandmother suffered from cervical cancer, which can be detected by getting regular screenings. But weeks before Spurgas’ annual OB-GYN appointment, where she would get that screening, she received a call telling her it had been postponed.

“They said it was because of Rhode Island’s ongoing health care crises, but didn’t provide any other details,” said Spurgas.

Does Gagosz go on to question what Rhode Island government or massive federal reforms that have been around long enough for consequences to become tangible, like ObamaCare, have done to bring our healthcare system to this condition?  Ha!  Would you, reader, even expect that of a mainstream journalist?  No.  It would probably shock you if such an article intimated that Rhode Island’s jumping into ObamaCare with both feet might have had the effect of turning a gradually more-expensive, but stable system into an utter calamity.  On the other hand, I suspect this paragraph won’t surprise you at all:

Health care providers throughout New England will be affected by impending cuts to Medicaid through the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that was signed by President Trump on July 4 that could also translate into more expensive care, reduced services, and longer waits across the region.

Often the subcategories for state-comparison rankings are as telling as the overall scores.  Such is the case with CNBC’s latest Top States for Business ranking, which puts Rhode Island tied for 46/47 out of 50 with Louisiana:

• Economy: 45
• Infrastructure: 39
• Workforce: 21
• Cost of doing business: 46
• Business friendliness: 46
• Quality of life: 13
• Technology & innovation: 33
• Education: 33
• Access to capital: 37
• Cost of living: 36

To make the comparisons feel real, we all experience how bad our infrastructure is, but according to CNBC, it’s actually comparatively better than our economy, cost of business, and business friendliness!  Meanwhile, the high quality of life reinforces a point I made the other day: Rhode Island is a great place to live, and it could be an economic powerhouse, but we allow the insiders to soak up that premium with corruption.

Just for fun, I ran a regression analysis of the rankings for all states.  Education, access to capital, and cost of living don’t produce statistically significant effects on the overall ranking.  By far the most important category, in these terms, is technology and innovation.  Statists will say this means the government should invest in these things, but that’s wrong.  It means that we should reduce regulation so people can experiment and innovate.  This is why cost of doing business and business friendliness are the next-most-important variables; together these three variables explain 85% of the change in states’ ranks.

Writing in the Boston Globe, Steph Machado predictably tiptoes around the heart of the controversy over funding the Trump Administration has paused for education programs.  The story’s lede emphasizes the “thousands of students” affected, although the larger part of the money was for professional development and academic enrichment.  Oddly, for all the space she provides government officials to pontificate, Machado doesn’t explain these terms.  I’m not sure what “academic enrichment” means, in this context, but professional development is often a negotiated day of pay for teachers not teaching and invited speakers imparting some pre-approved line, whether related to social policy or the latest unproven pedagogies from politicized academics.

Another area on which Machado doesn’t elaborate is this:

While federal education officials did not explain their reasoning in its notice to states, the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement to the Globe that the funds were withheld after finding some were “grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda,” including “illegal immigrant advocacy.”

The statement gave examples in New York and Washington state.

Why would Machado, having been given direct, unique information from the administration to explain its decision not share even a hint of what those New York and Washington examples are?  Probably because she doesn’t want readers to consider that the Trump administration might have legitimate concerns.  If people began to ponder such possibilities, they might move on to conclude that educators who are concerned about students should stop politicizing their industry.

Instead, I guess we’ll have to wonder whether we can trust our journalists or should approach them like Soviet propagandists who deceive by the details they choose to provide or omit.

The other day, I mentioned that Rhode Island appears to approve more than 100% of all applications for SNAP benefits in the state. In keeping with that practice, consider the following story noted by Libs of TikTok (and nobody else, that I’ve seen):

The U.S. Attorney’s Office has more details.  The key takeaway, in my mind, is this:  When your state is notoriously anxious to give out welfare benefits, people planning to commit fraud will gravitate there.  And here’s a bonus thought:  Given that processing benefits has become the state government’s central business model, it is in the interest of the state and politicians to attract and reward such fraud.

One of the most-obvious, yet infrequently discussed, characteristics of the progressive ideology is its tolerance for, even encouragement of, self-destructive behavior, combined with erosion of healthy traditional social priorities and topped off with a demand that government attempt to treat the symptoms with state control and tax dollars.  Think of the constant demands for more education dollars in Rhode Island and then look at this chart:

The chart comes from a report by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and National Center for Black Family Life at Hampton University, and the many charts are eye opening.  An intact family — what used to be acknowledged as the ideal nuclear family — improves outcomes and reduces the burden on public institutions.  (Interestingly, there’s some indication that girls need engaged fathers while boys just need dad to be around.)

A fair response from the other side would be that some of this is correlational, because the harms are difficult to tease apart.  An absent father likely correlates with a worse living situation, generally, and worse outcomes for kids, and some of those fathers may have been people the children were better off without (many are absent, for instance, because they’re in jail).

By the same token, however, causation of the benefits is difficult to tease apart.  A society that prioritizes men and women having children within the context of marriage provides a clear expectation for men that can improve their behavior, making marriage not just a benefit to the kids, but to the parents, as well.

That’s Nicole Solas’s good question, here:

It’s a multi-layered audience capture.  On the first layer, some of the teachers doubt their merit (often with good reason) and worry they’ll be found out absent the union’s backing.

The next layer are those drawn in by the grievance culture the teachers unions deliberately perpetuate.  Probably most workers of any kind sometimes find their jobs difficult, tedious, and/or underappreciated, and unions specialize in turning such emotions into aspects of the workers’ identity.  “You are besieged and beaten down,” is their constant message, “and without us you’d be ground into the dust.”

For most teachers, however, the union is just something they still see as part of the job because they were told it was mandatory for so long.  To make the decision to break even more difficult, the dynamic is a bit like a store’s extra warranty on expensive electronics.  It’s too easy to imagine all the things that could go wrong if you don’t buy in, and everybody not only teachers but school administrators are happy to maintain that impression.

Frank Prosnitz reports on What’s Up Newp that the under-18 population is dropping across Rhode Island, but especially in Newport:

While the nationwide under-18 population fell by 1.4 percent from 2010 to 2020, and in Rhode Island, it dropped by 6 percent, the numbers are dramatically higher for the Newport area, according to the recently released 2025 Rhode Island Kids Count Factbook.

Every community in the Newport area saw a dramatic loss in its under 18 population from a low of 14 percent in Tiverton to a high of 36 percent in Newport, according to the Kids Count Factbook, which looked at the under18 population from 1990 to 2020. The Annie E. Casey Foundation, which reported on national numbers, measured the decrease from 2010 to 2020.

As Anchor Rising’s interactive October Enrollment tool shows, this trend has been visible annually in schools, where the Newport district has lost about 15% of its student body since the 2003-2004 school year.  And as Prosnitz also highlights, the drop is more pronounced among white students.  In Newport, that student population has dropped 41% since 1999-2000.

The tendency to categorize everything as white versus non-white obscures the story, though.  Statewide, black students have decreased 9% since 2003-2004.  The only increases are among Hispanic and multi-race students.

This is why our elected officials are so keen to attract a replacement population.  Census figures show a continual drop in the under-18 population, a steady spike at college age, and then every other age group simply aging in place.  We’re a fading community, and as illustrated by the continuing demands for more education funds despite the smaller number of students, our elected officials don’t want people to begin wondering whether decline ought at least to come with tax savings.

Take a look at this anecdote from Wheeler Cowperthwaite’s report on Amazon’s new facility in Johnston and tell me what you think:

Before heading on a tour, House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi recalled when Amazon was eyeing the site off of Hartford Avenue, it was a solar farm, and the owner didn’t want to sell. The owner was Shekarchi’s client, in his private practice as a land use attorney.

Shekarchi got a call from the former mayor, Joseph Polisena Sr. that Amazon was interested in the site and he should convince him to sell, so he called his client and tried to convince him.

“He didn’t want to sell,” Shekarchi said. “I said, ‘You don’t understand. This is Mayor Polisena. And you’re going to sell because let me tell you something. They have powers of eminent domain. And if you don’t do this, you’ll get into an adversarial situation, you’ll cost you a lot of money, you’ll lose the deal today. And they’re offering you a very shiny penny for this company in the project.'”

Polisena Sr. made the next call.

“And before you know it, there was a deal,” Shekarchi said. “And the mayor was very good at spending Amazon’s money, but he got the deal done.”

So, the state government creates laws increasing capacity for local eminent domain takings when the government thinks your land could be better used to make somebody else a profit. Then a former mayor, whose son is a current mayor, calls up his buddy, the Speaker of the House, who uses threats to pressure his own private client to take a brokered deal and then jokes about spending Amazon’s money.

These 1,500 jobs are great (although they seem highly likely to be automated, to me), but the reason that many jobs at once is a story is because this is so rare, and the reason it’s so rare is because of the corruption that Amazon was willing to endure.

Few will be surprised to learn that Rhode Island is in the bottom half of American metro areas by an educational measure, ranking 95 out 150 in a score that blends the education levels of adults in the area with the quality of education for children and young adults.  The Ocean State doesn’t do well by either measure, but it does worse for the kids.

Unfortunately, the WalletHub study is marred by the progressive ideology it promotes.  Most significantly, the score for the quality of education provided to students mixes in education gaps for minorities, which is a blunt and sloppy way to assess education.  WalletHub even goes so far as to give positive bonuses to metros where the gap is greater, as long as an identity group favored by progressives (minorities and women) is the one benefiting from the inequity.  Yes, discrimination against men and white people is a ticket for a better rank.

A more subtle error in thinking comes from the insinuation that the benefits that come from having a more-educated adult population will accrue to metros that educate children well.  That may occur in some places, but in others, like Rhode Island, where there’s limited opportunity for adults and a high cost of living, investing more in education tends to produce graduates who bring the benefits of their education to some other community.  If anything, the best approach to improving education results seems to be attracting educated adults, and advertising high-quality (or highly funded) schools doesn’t seem to do the trick.

WalletHub’s method of ranking actually provides evidence for this proposition.  Of the top 10 metros in adult educational attainment, not a single one is in the bottom half for the quality of education provided in that metro.  In contrast, half of the top 10 for quality education are in the bottom half for adult education attainment.  That is, the children of educated adults do well in school, but well-educated children don’t necessarily stay local.

Of course, these numbers represent moving targets, so some metros may be improving while others deteriorate, but the assumption some express, that Rhode Island needs to spend more on education to attract young professionals by promising quality education for their children, is (at a minimum) unproven.

… especially when housing is in short supply?  Obviously, they’ll increase rent and/or reduce perks and investment in their properties.  And yet:

The typical homeowner’s tax bill is projected to go up 6%, or about $250 on average, according to estimates provided by the Providence City Council.

But landlords who own duplexes, triple deckers, and small apartment buildings face a much higher tax hike of 13%, unless they live in the building themselves.

The historically large tax increase results from a lawsuit requiring an increase in local school funding, despite the lack of evidence that the lamentable academic and physical condition of Rhode Island’s schools results from a lack of funds rather than funds’ being poorly spent.  From the reportage, it appears only a few people are offering an alternative view:

Dave Talan and Angel Connell, co-chairs of the Providence Republican City Committee, encouraged city officials to find ways to reduce the school budget, despite the court settlement requiring higher funding.

Providence had a brief opportunity after a Johns Hopkins report made the district a shocking national symbol of failing urban schools.  The city and state blew that chance, though, and never allowed the public to shift the focus from the adults who make their livings from education and to the children who ought to be enjoying its benefits.

Some good news came with the end of the spring term at Rhode Island College, this year:  A variety of sparsely engaged programs will no longer be offered at the public university.  According to Gender and Women’s Studies Director Leslie Schuster:

There are 20 majors that are being eliminated primarily in arts and sciences, Gender and Women’s Studies, Global Studies, Art History major, and then there are some in the Feinstein School of Education, including technology, education, and some of the languages.

Naturally, since this is The Public’s Radio, interviewer James Baumgartner’s purpose is clearly to help an affected professor and student lament the loss.  Some of the programs, like early childhood education, represent areas in which the lack of interest might be of concern, but that isn’t the focus of the interview, so apparently practical worries are relatively unimportant to the advocates.  Schuster’s thinking tells an important tale:

I mean, students may not want to come in being a Global Studies major or a Gender and Women’s Studies major, or an Art History major, but they want to be in a place where those issues and concepts are being discussed, where there’s a place for that to happen. Those programs should not be only for the elite institutions that can afford those. I think it’s very narrow-minded. It sort of assumes that our students shouldn’t have or don’t have the opportunity to expand their knowledge about the world.

How many terrible, divisive, country-destroying areas of study are funded (with taxpayer subsidies) on college campuses across America simply so progressive faculties can feel good about advancing the cause?

We have to scrap this idea that colleges are inherently supposed to offer young adults the opportunity for radical indoctrination.  We don’t see their faculties worrying about the lack of conservative or “taking religion seriously” programs, and the purpose of colleges, especially public colleges, should be to offer courses of study that align with students’ interests (both intellectual and financial), not that inject life into a deadly and hopefully dying ideology.

As we hear warnings of mass death thanks to slightly more-restrictive Medicaid policy, I thought this tidbit from the USDA worth noting:  Rhode Island regularly has more SNAP (i.e., food stamp) recipients than the federal agency estimates there should be eligible in the state.  In 2020, the rate was 109.1%, and in 2022, it was 101.2%.  And here’s another tidbit from the same report:  Repeatedly, around 20% of SNAP recipients in Rhode Island are should not be receiving them.

To be sure, there are quantitative and policy nuances that ought to be considered before reacting too strongly to these numbers.  Indeed, the USDA cautions that the numerator and denominator for the eligibility estimates come from different sources, which could mean the estimates over 100% are inaccurate.  Or it could not mean that.

Whatever adjustments have to be made, this counts as further evidence that Rhode Island gives out government benefits anywhere and everywhere it can get away with it.  (Observe that our participation rates are not only high by the numbers but compared with other states’,  as well.)  No similar estimates are available for Medicaid, but it would be fair to suspect we’d find similar results, and whatever the nuances, histrionics about people dying as a result of reining in overly generous policies are political guilt trips.  The people saying such things think we’re all ultimately to blame for any harm that befalls anybody to the extent we don’t let progressives have their way entirely.

The phrase in quotation marks is the subject line of an email she sent out to supporters.  One of two striking aspects of the mailing is the reminder that, to progressives, everything bad is because they didn’t get their way, while their policies never have any unintended consequences:

In addition to SNAP cuts, Medicaid is also going to see huge cuts. Currently, 1 in 3 Rhode Islanders are enrolled in Medicaid and rely on this coverage for their healthcare. Even if you have private insurance, these cuts will impact you. Without health insurance, the uninsured will rely heavily on emergency rooms for their care, exhausting resources and further straining staff in an already exhausted and strained emergency health system. These hospitals will not be able to fund this care, which will financially strain an already financially strained system, raise private insurance premiums, and increase medical debt. This is a recipe for Rhode Island, where we already have a doctor shortage, medical center closures, and high wait times for care.

We’re already having trouble finding doctors, keeping facilities open, and avoiding long waits for care, and to Mack, the solution is… to provide services to more people at no cost to them.  The more progressives destroy a system, the more they use its condition as evidence that their ideas are needed.

The other striking aspect of the email is Mack’s solicitation of donations to provide abortions:  “100% of the money we raise goes to fund an abortion for a Rhode Islander.”  While I’d still find it objectionable, I can imagine people funding a broad class of services that might include abortion.  But I can’t imagine giving money specifically intending that it be used to kill an unborn child.  Such people will be political dead-enders who can never change their mind because doing so would require their admitting their direct support for monstrosity.