Justin Katz
Over the weekend, two people whose opinions I value disagreed — with disconcerting vociferousness — with my objection to the innovation that the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity is calling “dependency portals.” When that happens, there are two possibilities: either my gut aversion was wrong and my reasoning was mere rationalization, or I’m not…
Via Ted Nesi comes a Bloomberg column by Josh Barro. It’s one of those commentaries in which it isn’t quite clear whether the author is offering pure political advice or expressing his opinion, so I’ll assume the latter. In that context, here are Barro’s thoughts on the balance of the economy and government: If you…
Jim Taricani invited me and RIFuture.org owner/editor Bob Plain to sit in for 10 News Conference, this morning. The topics leaned more toward politics than policy, but we bloggers did manage to pull the conversation toward political philosophy a bit. Specifically, we discussed economic development, the RI economy, the Congressional district 1 race, and the…
Rhode Islanders, mainly from the East Bay, have organized a protest at Clements Market in Portsmouth, this afternoon, against tolls on the Sakonnet River Bridge. The hope is that the language that the General Assembly passed into law, this session, as Article 20 of the budget bill (7323Aaa) can be reversed. That article and the…
On the latest State of the State with John Carlevale, I discussed Rhode Island’s civic scene and how residents can begin to get involved and sort through the system along with Lisa Blais, of Ocean State Tea Party in Action, and Marina Peterson, of East Bay Patriots. Of particular note, related to my habitual role…
The RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity has posted a hub page to explain and trace the development of Rhode Island’s health benefits exchange into a full fledged “dependency portal,” drawing people into government programs. As much as I strove to explain the concept on that page, two of the five points that one advocacy…
Earlier today, Glenn Reynolds linked to an American Enterprise Institute post by James Pethokoukis, drawing on charts from economist John Taylor showing that the United States economy hasn’t been returning toward where it would have been without the crash, and that this is unusual for prior downturns. The reasons, I think, can be inferred…
9:13 a.m. I was running just a hair late, but the early risers at the Rhode Island Statewide Coalition (RISC) had already jumped right in with the program for its summer meeting. Robert Flanders just finished speaking. Some notable comments were that he believes, essentially, that there is nowhere to go but up, although “we’ve…
Fresh on the heals of more murders in one Providence neighborhood, residents in another provided an example of one way to cut down on crime: The suspects fled empty-handed from the house … and found a gathering crowd, said Randy Figueroa, 20, one of the neighbors. One of the suspects pulled out a gun and…
After months of hearing from various sources, notably URI economist Len Lardaro, that official jobs reports for Rhode Island were inaccurately gloomy, I was thrilled, yesterday, to see Governor Chafee authorize the state Department of Labor and Training (DLT) to release new estimates. Basically, there is a substantial lag before the federal Bureau of Labor…