Justin Katz
I’d finished an email exchange with Providence Journal reporter Philip Marcelo somewhat encouraged, on Friday night. He apparently had some questions about the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s RIVotes.org site; some legislators disputed that they’d missed as many votes as the site says. On my way out the door to a social function, I didn’t…
An inherent problem with price fixing identified in basic economics is that we tend to see the proximate results of forced changes on the system, but not the more systemic results. Moreover, fixing prices prevents us from addressing the underlying difficulties that drove them up or down in an undesirable way. The same is true…
This essay originally appeared in the Providence Journal on June 8, 2009. Given that periodical’s revamped Web site, the essay is no longer available online, so I’m reproducing it here. The preschooler’s question at the dinner table probably wasn’t as new to recent generations as a parent’s first reaction might suggest: Can a girl marry…
A lot of people who watch policy and politics relatively closely were very surprised, this morning, to hear that the unemployment rate had fallen to its lowest level during the Obama presidency — a level last seen in January 2009. As James Pethokoukis notes, of the seasonally adjusted 873,000 jump in employment from August to…
West Warwick for all; the essence of education reform; declines in people births; declines in business births; the easy street to dependency. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
Controlling prices across a continent; a look back at erroneous polls; Matthews in the echo chamber; excuse #2 for Benghazi. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
Economic development options, from all-government to government-dominated; the heartless-to-caring axis in politics; Southern New Englanders’ “independence”; solidarity between Romney and his garbage man; the media coup d’etat. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
For comment on the Rhode Island Public Expenditures Council (RIPEC) report on the Economic Development Corp. (EDC) in his Sunday Providence Journal article, Paul Grimaldi turned to the Massachusetts affiliate of the free-market RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity, the Pioneer Institute. While the general sentiment that CEO Jim Stergios expressed is apropos, it is…
Bob Plain’s petit four of class warfare; CA’s bid for more pension fund dollars; a martial metaphor for regionalization; a downturn for the never-recovered; Coulter v. View mention of RI. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
Of one thing, we can be reasonably confident: Coverage of proof and arguments against that sliver of papyrus purporting to prove that Jesus had a wife will have a far smaller profile than the initial boom of proclamations that it had been discovered. Not surprisingly, the Vatican has stated its opinion that the artifact is…
