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EDITOR’s NOTE: Members and Candidates from the Parents United RI group in RI have been frequent guess on The Current’s popular In The Dugout with Mike Stenhouse video podcast. The editorial directly below was in response to a December 17 editorial further below that appeared in the Westerly Sun. *** To the Editor: After […]
The national coalition letter below, which was emailed yesterday to Rep. Jim Jordan, was co-signed by the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity along with 69 other national and state organizations. The letter requests that Report Language be added to the Department of Education Appropriations Bill that would bar the DOE from making proposed changes to […]
FAUCI, like RIDOH, cannot support mandates with SCIENCE…GINA RAIMONDO for President? Really? National transportation expert Marc Scribner from REASON Foundation discusses potentially disastrous RAIL-WORKERS STRIKE
The Ocean State Current has obtained a copy of a letter sent to RIDE Commissioner, Angelica Infante Green, from FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, requesting a response from the Department about changing its “Guidance for Rhode Island Schools on Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students” policies … which FAIR claims are unconstitutional. According to […]
NOTE: This commentary first appeared in the Providence Journal on October 8, 2022 **** IT’S TIME FOR R.I. TO ADOPT A PARENTS-FIRST EDUCATIONAL APPROACH If we learned anything from the harmful school lockdowns ordered by the RI Department of Health and the Governor at the onset of the pandemic, it is that parental rights were […]
Dr. Andrew Bostom is a medical and academic researcher the piece below is a summary of his finding on the recent and past history of transgenderism and Marxism in America.
In October 2020, the Michigan Supreme Court stripped Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of the unilateral powers she was using when she declared a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whitmer had been using a 1945 law – which was prompted by a three-day race riot in Detroit three years earlier – that had no sunset provision in it and didn’t require approval by the state legislature.
Tom Lewis knows what it takes to find success and happiness in life. He’s a living example. As founder of the T.W. Lewis Co., an Arizona-based real estate investment company known for its outstanding quality and customer service in the homebuilding industry, Lewis built a thriving business while being a devoted dad. Now, he’s sharing […]
In Honor of July 4 Independence Day and the Upcoming 250th Anniversary of America’s Birthright of Freedom, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity has joined the The Civics Alliance, a national coalition of organizations and individuals dedicated to improving America’s civics education: The Civics Alliance’s model K-12 social studies standards, American Birthright, was launched yesterday, […]
by J. William Middendorf / originally published on June 16, 2022 on The Daily Signal The RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity has over the years selected a number of winners for its J. William Middendorf Pillar of Freedom Award, named in honor of Ambassador J. William Middendorf, former Secretary of the Navy and current Heritage […]
About The Current Only on The Current! The Ocean State Current is Rhode Island’s fastest growing all-digital news and information source. In promoting common sense policies and opinions as the media arm of the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity, The Current has become the voice of parents and concerned citizens who seek alternatives to the […]
Do you want to stay up-to-date on the latest Rhode Island political news? Our web show, #InTheDugout with Mike Stenhouse and co-host Steve Laffey, provides in-depth analysis of the latest RI political news. You won’t find this level of detail anywhere else. Our show today is hosted by two of Rhode Island’s most well-respected conservative […]
Our state and its education system were far from stable when the pandemic hit, and we can create something good from our current predicament if make this a period of transition, rather than of making due until we can get back to the same old, dysfunctional thing.
For many Black people in this country over the age of forty, the fear of losing the progress we’ve gained keeps us tethered to the abuser we were forced to wed.
In a prior post, I had noted that the survival rate of COVID-19 in the United States is 94%. I was mistaken. In fact, the survival rate is 98.7%. From Health Affairs:
The IFR-S in the US was estimated to be 1.3% …. The overall IFR for COVID-19 should be lower when we account for cases that remain and recover without symptoms.
The emerging question when it comes to the daily data releases for COVID-19 in Rhode Island continues to be: which metric should we be watching? Today, the number of cases continued to outstrip my prediction as did, tragically, the number deaths. However, the number of hospitalizations, which is the focus of my model, went down one from yesterday and was, therefore, substantially lower than my prediction.
The reason the model I developed shows what looks like an upward correction and the predicted decline spreading out has to do with the number of cases. The rate of growth is slowing, but not as quickly as it had been, which means there are more “active” cases than expected, and that’s the foundation of my hospitalization predictions. (By the way, here’s the original post of this series, with my methodology.)
The three key metrics now look as follows:
The level of power Governor Raimondo is claiming for herself is huge, and it is noticeable in subtle ways. For example, in an article on GoLocal about how she’s had her hair done even as Rhode Islanders are prevented from doing the same, the governor tells “hairdressers, barbers, gig economy workers” to file for unemployment “until I can find a way to get you open safely.”
Notice that it’s all up to her. She is going to find a way. She is going to tell you when you can work again. If she is going to do that, she should give Rhode Islanders detailed information and data about how she is making decisions so we can judge for ourselves whether what she is concluding is reasonable or ridiculous.
Advocates for school choice can feel like they’re getting stuck, but a lesson from the Second Amendment movement might help them find new support.
With the advocates for the Transportation & Climate Initiative (TCI) now revving up for their cause, and with Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo remaining intrepid in her desire to push Rhode Islanders out of their cars for the good of the planet, Ocean Staters might wonder where we stand already on the gas tax. Fortunately, the American Petroleum Institute has compiled information on all states’ gas taxes, and the Tax Foundation provides this useful map:
Taking note that none of these numbers includes $18.40 added per gallon by the federal government, we can say that Rhode Island is most definitely not in need of new taxes on this basic fuel. If the TCI tax were to be implemented at the 17-cent high that has been cited, the Ocean State would rocket to 4th highest.
As Brookings takes its “innovation industries” prescription national, Rhode Islanders might have questions about the organization’s effectiveness in their state.
A run-down of items in Rhode Island political news for the week.
A run-down of items in Rhode Island political news for the week.
In the past couple decades — especially the first decade of this century — Rhode Island’s public school districts have lost grades’ worth of students. In Newport, it is as if an entire high school were standing empty; Providence has fared better, losing between one and two grades’ worth of students. Yet, budgets have continued to climb.
Rhode Islanders should think of all of those empty classrooms when they hear somebody make the point that Democrat state Senator Ryan Pearson articulates here:
The reasons why costs are projected to soar are nuanced, but Pearson points to Cumberland where education expenses grow each time a student moves from a traditional school to a mayoral academy.
The per pupil price tag stays the same, he said, but because overhead costs at the traditional school – such as teachers and classroom expenses – don’t simultaneously disappear, the net cost to the town grows overall.
Yes, costs don’t necessarily disappear on a per pupil basis, but when 7-28% of students are no longer enrolled, surely there are savings to be found.
The more salient point from the Eli Sherman article linked above, however, is stated by a charter school advocate:
“If we’re talking about saving a district to enable them to operate in perpetuity – even if means generations of education are sacrificed in the process – we have our priorities wrong,” said Mary Sylvia Harrison, a longtime educator who most recently served as vice president for programs at the Nellie Mae Foundation.
Consider this chart from Sherman:
Over the time span in the chart, demand for charter schools has grown 25%, but the number of available seats has gone down. For the 2019-2020 school year, 8,494 students would like to attend a charter school but can’t. If they were all in Providence, that would be more than four whole grades. That’s a bigger number than all of Cumberland and Lincoln school districts combined. It’s almost a full grade’s worth of students across the entire state.
Numbers of that magnitude don’t indicate a small leak of students that doesn’t allow districts to reduce their costs. They indicate a mandate for a systemic change to the way we do education in Rhode Island.
Senator Whitehouse’s attack on the Supreme Court shows his cynicism and malleable legal principles.
A new form of government appears to be taking shape in Rhode Island before our very eyes.
Mayor Elorza’s performance on Newsmakers reinforced the notion that Rhode Island’s leaders understand the problem but aren’t really interested in solving it.
Better defining “missionary work” may offer some perspective on how to draw Rhode Island out of its current state of being.
It’s been out for a few months, so readers who frequent this sort of Web site may have already come across WalletHub’s ranking of the “Best States to Retire,” which places Rhode Island 49th, better only than Kentucky. What does the Ocean State in is the combination of low affordability and low quality of life for seniors.
That latter point is what caught my eye this week in Adriana Belmonte’s summary of the ranking for Yahoo Finance:
Colorado and New Hampshire’s spots jumped out to [WalletHub analyst Jill Gonzalez], as well. New Hampshire has the lowest property crime rate, and is the fourth-best state overall.
“While they aren’t exactly the most affordable, these states ranked among the best to retire to,” Gonzalez said, noting both states’ high-quality health care and physicians per capita. “This is because they both have a low risk of social isolation, as well as a low share of the population aged 65+ in poverty.”
New Hampshire is 3rd for “quality of life,” which includes a variety of entertainment and leisure items (like “scenic byways” and “museums per capita”), as well as crime rates. The subcategory also includes “risk of social isolation,” measured as follows:
This metric considers the following six risk factors of social isolation in population aged 65 years and older: a) Divorced, separated or widowed; b) Never married; c) Poverty; d) Disability; e) Independent Living Difficulty and f) Living alone.
That’s a cultural thing, and it points to a traditional view of life. If you divorce or never get married, you have a higher risk of being alone. Likewise (although it doesn’t appear that WalletHub measured this) if you never had children or if your children had to move somewhere else in order to find work, your risk of isolation goes up.
We most certainly shouldn’t compound the tragic events in people’s lives with unnecessary ridicule and stigma, but we’ve tended to forget an important point: Traditional values are traditional for a reason. They were learned over the course of centuries, not (as the ideological scions of Marx would have it) because they served some patriarchy or ruling elite, but because they made people’s lives better. They also provided the foundation for freedom and for social advancement, which means losing our traditional values will actually bring us back toward rule by others.
In that regard, it is a telling coincidence that New Hampshire’s motto is “Live Free or Die.”
Well, this looks like good news:
Job creation among small businesses broke the 45-year record in February with a net addition of 0.52 workers per firm, according to NFIB’s monthly jobs report, released today. The previous record was in May 1998 at 0.51 workers per firm. The percent of owners citing labor costs as their most important problem also hit an all-time high, with 10 percent of owners reporting labor costs as their biggest problem. …
“With the government shutdown behind us, the labor markets will get back to normal,” said NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg. “However, it appears that the shortage of workers will continue to restrain Main Street growth. If businesses were fully staffed, more could be produced and sold. Owners are reporting increasing employment at their firms at the highest rates in survey history, now they just need workers to fill them.”
Unfortunately, the NFIB’s data doesn’t expand into state-level detail, but one suspects Rhode Island isn’t doing quite so well. This suspicion isn’t only because Rhode Island is doing so poorly in the employment and jobs market generally.
Available information has long laid bare Rhode Island’s difficulty with small businesses. One indicator is that the Ocean State tends to have much lower rates of entrepreneurial activity than one would expect in an economy that is worse off than the average. Similarly, evidence suggests that Rhode Islanders who start new establishments have difficulty keeping them going.
Newer data from the Kauffman Foundation reinforce my speculation in those other links. Overall, Rhode Island has the worst entrepreneurial activity in the country — and it isn’t even close. Notably, given my earlier theorizing, the Ocean State is also worst in the nation when it comes to entrepreneurs who start businesses because they have to do so in order to work, versus those who do so because they see opportunity.
Our bad economy forces Rhode Islanders to make their own work. Then, when self-starters begin having to really follow the government’s rules because they’re expanding and hiring, the state causes them to flounder. We can reasonably speculate, therefore, that the tides of record small-business job creation are thinner in the Ocean State.
As Progressives push for a dramatic abortion expansion in the Ocean State, the 46th annual March for Life showcased a movement to protect the unborn being led by young people, with recent polling from the Institute for Pro-Life Advancement showing seven of 10 Millennials support limits on abortion.
Single women in Rhode Island and across the country are about twice as likely as single men to own homes, and the reasons should concern us all.