Justin Katz
Pre-election restlessness; race, politics, and advancement; differing job estimates without optimism; situational social issue calculus; old media as the election’s big loser. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
“I had the sense that everybody around the table knew that we were part of the same team.” That’s how Tiverton School Committee member Carol Herrmann described negotiations with the teachers’ union this summer. On August 14, the committee passed the contract extension. It isn’t surprising that the negotiations would be “cordial,” as Herrmann put…
This Twitter compare and contrast, from an Ohio Romney rally, is too stark not to mark with commentary. The first comes from AP reporter Steve Peoples, formerly a journalist on the political beat for the Providence Journal: Steady stream of people leaving Romney rally in the middle of his speech. Maybe it’s the cold, but…
Today’s “employment situation” release from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) presents what might be termed a mixed-but-still-tepid picture best summarized with this quotation: Employment growth has averaged 157,000 per month thus far in 2012, about the same as the average monthly gain of 153,000 in 2011. That’s not much of an improvement, and…
Mainstream reporters chat; the unknown cost of economic development; improving higher education by dumbing it down; a lawless society. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
Campaign finance & incumbents; where the buck stops for the bad economy; Obama follows Chafee on a Commerce Czar; and the storm should be a warning. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
With the declaration of emergency for Rhode Island, Hurricane Sandy becomes the first instance in which a new law, passed by the Rhode Island General Assembly and signed by the governor this spring, goes into effect. H7409 (also S2606) outlaws price gouging during an emergency. In the heat of the experience, the adrenaline of survival…
Two multimedia pieces addressing Rhode Island ballot question number 7 — to borrow $25 million through bond sales for affordable housing — are starkly different. Both are essentially given over to advocates for the new debt, but in one case, the journalist does a reasonable job of raising possible objections, if not quite going so far…
4:04 p.m. With my second fortunate parking experience in Providence this week, having found a parking meter that was already almost at 2 hours time, I’ve settled in for a rousing discussion of municipal pensions at Brown University’s Salomen Center, hosted by the Taubman Center for Public Policy. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
Mainly on government’s bad incentives: bad housing spending in Providence, unlearnable spending lessons for the governor, stimulus corruption, and Medicaid reform. Continue reading the Ocean State Current…