Justin Katz
What are Governor Lincoln Chafee’s three Ts of economic development, again? Is it talent, technocrats, and tolerance? Or is it technology, tolerance, and twee ideological fashion? It can be so difficult to keep these gimmicky strategies straight. This particular strategy is also turning out to be difficult to make work. In fact, it may just…
The message making the rounds on Rhode Island’s January employment numbers is that it represented a slight, if mixed, improvement, because the unemployment rate fell to 9.8%, the lowest it’s been since early 2009. A large reason for that fact, however, is that a methodological revision by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics made more…
Rules of procedure are a sore spot for me. For several years, now, I’ve been watching at the state and local levels (especially the local level) as laws and procedural rules have been distorted beyond recognition. On Monday, in fact, I presented a case in a four hour hearing before the Tiverton Town Council, making…
With Governor Lincoln Chafee planning a “media availability” at 2:30 this afternoon related to an analysis by Ken Block’s Simpatico Software to find waste, fraud, and abuse in Rhode Island’s social services programs, many residents are wondering whether he’s been hoping to hide something. Governor Chafee has excused his early decision not to release the…
In George Orwell’s 1984, the protagonist, Winston, begins to notice the import of the revisions that he makes to news and history as an employee of the Ministry of Truth. No fact is so set in stone that it can’t be made to look better through revisions of the past. In the real world, nationally,…
According to a news release from the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training (DLT), there are actually 800 fewer people employed in Rhode Island than previously thought. But that’s a good thing… because even more people gave up looking for work than we thought. Recovery! Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
Most Americans probably know very little about Rhode Island beyond the fact that it is at the wrong end of an awful lot of national economic and civic rankings. Residents of the state who’ve sought some explanation for its willful decline inevitably come across the concept of “Rhode-apathy.” Under the thralls of what force would…
Justin liveblogs from Brookings Institution VP Bruce Katz event with the RI Foundation.
An article not about what it’s about; sequester demagoguery; softening kids for “effort shock”; and the rise of grassroots fascism. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
Another economic development study presentation at the State House, liveblogged.
