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Like a forgotten downtown billboard, Detroit proclaims a warning about the rest of America for any who will stop and look. If ever an American city was a warning for the nation, it is Detroit. Its crumbling mansions, overgrown boulevards and abandoned factories drive a message home to those who will pay attention. We cannot afford to ignore Detroit any longer. Why? What killed Detroit is killing America. Detroit used to be synonymous with wealth and prosperity. It was a city humming with big-finned cars and Motown rhythms. Factories churned out products that ended up on store shelves around the...

Grief and anger, like clouds of a coming storm, moved back and forth across the landscape of Mayor Daley's face in public appearances last week. And why not? Michael Scott, his longtime, loyal friend, was dead. Suddenly. Violently. By his own hand, according to the Cook County medical examiner. When we lose someone we love, particularly like that, don't we ask ourselves what it was we failed to see? Or failed to do? Our own helplessness adds rage to sorrow. It's understandable. It's human. That's the best explanation I can come up with for what happened Wednesday at the mayor's...

The Denver Police Department announced today that they have made 32 arrests during a sweep to end a four-month spree of what police said were racially motivated assaults and robberies in downtown Denver, including the LoDo entertainment district. A task force comprised of the Denver Police, FBI and the Denver District Attorney's Office investigated 26 incidents in which groups of black males verbally harassed and then assaulted white or Hispanic males, according to Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman. Many of the victims were robbed after being assaulted. Three suspects, Allan Ford, Torrance McCall and one juvenile are still at large....

The abandoned corpses, in white body bags with number tags tied to each toe, lie one above the other on steel racks inside a giant freezer in Detroit’s central mortuary, like discarded shoes in the back of a wardrobe. Some have lain here for years, but in recent months the number of unclaimed bodies has reached a record high. For in this city that once symbolised the American Dream many cannot even afford to bury their dead. “I have not seen this many unclaimed bodies in 13 years on the job,” said Albert Samuels, chief investigator at the mortuary. “It...

Detroit (WWJ) -- A Detroit federal judge has sentenced a Detroit businesman and corruption figure to the maximum five years in jail for conspiracy to commit bribery. Rayford Jackson arranged the bribes for now-former city councilwoman Monica Conyers

( Atlanta has thrived in SPITE of it's useless, tax everything, do nothing, give perks to officials city government, NOT because of it!! It's the entreprenuers, transportation hub, and the climate that have Atlanta humming!) White candidate scrambles vote, attitudes in Atlanta race By Joseph Curl For decades as white residents fled to the suburbs, Atlanta's black political establishment, led by a string of strong mayors, revived the moribund economy and so revamped the city's image that it earned a national reputation as "Hotlanta." Ironically, that success - including a winning bid to host the 1996 Summer Olympics and a...

Steven MalangaFeral Detroit Nature is reclaiming the Motor City. Autumn 2009 We usually apply the word “feral,” which means “reverting to a wild state,” to domesticated animals that are abandoned and must survive on their own. But in rapidly shrinking Detroit, where tens of thousands of structures have sat empty for years, people are starting to describe houses and neighborhoods as feral—that is, as places where human activity ceased so long ago that nature has reclaimed them. Two Detroit residents writing for the blog Sweet Juniper describe these feral houses as places that “for a few beautiful months during...

Forbes Magazine, famed for its exhaustive lists, has a new one: America's safest cities. The unusual thing about this list is that the list-makers used more than just violent crime statistics to assess the relative safety. Also among the data collected are the number of workplace fatalities, deaths by traffic, and deaths by natural disaster. San Francisco ranks #25 in the list of 40 major metropolis regions,behind New York (#8), Detroit (#12), Chicago (#15), and Los Angeles (#19).

TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA--Larry Langford, Birmingham's mayor and a former Jefferson County commissioner, has been found guilty in his federal bribery trial. Langford was found guilty of taking about $236,000 in cash and gifts from Montgomery investment banker Bill Blount and lobbyist Al LaPierre. Both pleaded guilty in the case and testified they made cash payments to Langford while he was the president of the Jefferson County Commission to ensure business for Blount's investment bank, Blount Parrish & Co.

More than three decades after Maynard H. Jackson Jr. became the first African-American mayor of a major Southern city here, the era of uncontested black leadership in the cradle of the civil-rights movement is facing its first true test: A white city councilwoman leads the mayoral race by a wide margin just days before the Nov. 3 election. Recent polls show Mary Norwood, a fiscal conservative who lives in a heavily white, wealthy section of Atlanta, with support ranging from 39% to 46% of likely voters. That puts her potentially within striking distance of winning outright next week or heading...

Transit system workers in Philadelphia voted to authorize a union strike Sunday, less than a week before the Phillies play their first home game of the World Series, but a transit spokesman said he hopes a deal can be concluded before then. Willie Brown, president of the Transport Workers Union Local 234, said the 4,700 workers voted overwhelmingly to allow him to call a strike if negotiations with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority fail. Talks are slated to resume Monday. Brown said he hoped a walkout would not affect the series, but he said workers have been without a contract...

DETROIT – Like the rundown houses and shuttered storefronts in his Detroit neighborhood, bleakness abounds in LeRoy Taylor's future. He is among tens of thousands reaching adulthood in a city where the American Dream appears just outside their reach. Taylor, 20, spends empty hours on basketball courts, zoned out in front of a television or aimlessly pedaling through streets he desperately wants to leave, but doesn't have the work skills, education or money to do so. "I fill out applications. No one will call me back," said Taylor, stopping his bike long enough to hustle change for cigarettes near a...

Consider nature...as Tennyson saw it, "red in tooth and claw." To glimpse a state of nature as Hobbes imagined it, where human life is "nasty, brutish and short," visit the Whole Foods store on River Road in Bethesda...you will see proof of this social equation: Four Priuses + three parking spaces = angry anarchy. Anger is one of the seven deadly sins. Therefore advanced thinkers are agreed that conservatives are especially susceptible to it. As everyone knows, all liberals are advanced thinkers and all advanced thinkers are liberals. And yet... Recently Paul Schwartzman, a war correspondent for The Post, ventured...

What vexes me is CNN's constant drumbeat of reports on Chicago crime - and specifically two teen murders - in the very week before the vote and leading right up to the day of the IOC vote. It seemed like CNN was trying to influence the vote to me, even mentioning the Olympics in their segments on the Chicago crime problem. Moreover, CNN failed to mention the crime issue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Rio has a huge drug and crime problem called "critical" and puts it in direct competition if not worse than Chicago. With all this why no...

D.C. Council member David A. Catania will introduce legislation Tuesday to allow same-sex couples to marry - a bill virtually assured passage by the council and unlikely to generate enough opposition to be overturned by the Democrat-controlled Congress. The bill, which could be given final approval by the council as early as December, would expand current laws that recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions to allow such marriages to be performed in the District. Currently, four states perform same-sex marriages. New Hampshire is scheduled to begin performing same-sex marriages in 2010, and Maine voters will consider the issue in...

PICTURES OF HIROSHIMA CIRCA 1945 DETROIT IN THE LATE 40's and EARLY 50's ======================================================================================= HIROSHIMA TODAY ============================================================================ DETROIT TODAY ============================================================================ Who the hell won the war!

Four city health clinics in this fast-growing city are on the chopping block. So are some street-maintenance efforts, printed pay stubs and as many as 840 city paychecks -- including two for the guys who muck out mounted-police horse stalls. This North Texas city is struggling to close a $190 million gap in its $2.7 billion budget, joining major metropolises across the country that are reeling from the recession's impact on their tax revenue after years of expanding spending.

Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline... Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country. Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their...

Beneath its idyllic exterior, Martha's Vineyard – beloved holiday destination of America's well-heeled – is rife with depression, alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic violence. America's First Family will wave goodbye to Martha's Vineyard tomorrow after a week's holiday on an island whose name is rarely uttered without the epithet "idyllic". As President Obama flies his family back home to Washington, they will rapidly be followed by an armada of private jets from the tiny local airport. After next weekend's Labour Day holiday, the exodus of billionaire businessmen, media tycoons and Hollywood stars who summer on the island will be complete....

Chicago leads list for second year; housing woes weigh on nation.

It’s a spectacular day at Harmony Playground in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, with children swinging and running through sprinklers. An “icy man” with his pushcart of fruit ices stands near the jungle gym, as parents look toward the gated entrance. A second ices vendor enters, also setting up shop inside the playground’s cast-iron fence. Vicki Sell, mother of 3-year-old Katherine, tenses when the vendor starts ringing his little bell, over and over, hoping her daughter doesn’t have the typical Pavlovian response. Ever since Katherine had an inconsolable meltdown about not being able to have a treat, Ms. Sell has been trying...

Philadelphia's court system will face a "virtual shutdown" if the cash-strapped city does not get state approval for a sales tax increase and changes to how it makes its pension payments. That's according to Mayor Michael Nutter and court officials at a news conference Wednesday. Philadelphia is facing a $1.4 billion five-year budget deficit. The city has asked the state to approve a temporary sales tax increase in Philadelphia and allow changes to how the city makes its pension payments. Without those changes, Nutter says nearly 1,000 police officers and 200 firefighters would be cut. District Attorney Lynne Abraham says...

City Government Closed For Business On Monday The City of Chicago will basically be closed for business on Aug. 17, a reduced-service day in which most city employees are off without pay, according to a release from the Office of Budget and Management. City Hall, public libraries, health clinics and most city offices will be closed. Emergency service providers including police, firefighters and paramedics will be working at full strength, but most services not directly related to public safety, including street sweeping, will not be provided, the release said. That also includes garbage pickup. Residents who receive regular collection on...

DAYTON, Ohio -- Here's an idea for saving Rust Belt cities: Tell bloggers and radio stations to stop calling your town a basket case. That was one suggestion from representatives of eight of the 10 cities labeled last year as America's fastest dying. They met at the Dayton Convention Center last weekend to swap ideas about how to halt the long skid that's turned cities like Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo, N.Y., into shorthand for dystopia. The city representatives lunched on $6 sloppy Joes and commiserated through Power Point strategy sessions: Lure back former residents, entice entrepreneurs and artists, convert blighted...

DETROIT (CNNMoney.com) -- On a side street in an old industrial neighborhood, a delivery man stacks a dolly of goods outside a store. Ten feet away stands another man clad in military fatigues, combat boots and what appears to be a flak jacket. He looks straight out of Baghdad. But this isn't Iraq. It's southeast Detroit, and he's there to guard the groceries. In this recession-racked town, the lack of food is a serious problem. It's a theme that comes up again and again in conversations in Detroit. There isn't a single major chain supermarket in the city, forcing residents...

Poverty in Our Cities. City, State, % of People Below the Poverty Level 1. Detroit , MI 32.5% 2. Buffalo , NY 29.9% 3. Cincinnati , OH 27.8% 4. Cleveland , OH 27.0% 5. Miami , FL 26.9% 6. St. Louis , MO 26.8% 7. El Paso , TX 26.4% 8. Milwaukee , WI 26.2% 9. Philadelphia , PA 25.1% 10. Newark , NJ 24.2% U.S. Census Bureau, 2006 American Community Survey, August 2007 What do the top ten cities (over 250,000) with the highest poverty rate all have in common? Detroit , MI (1st on the poverty rate list)...

Gunman Still on the Loose; 5 Remain in Good Condition, 1 in Serious Reporting Suzanne Le Mignot CHICAGO (CBS) ― Six people were shot August 1 during a funeral service outside a West Side church. Police say the incident is gang-related. Gunfire erupts outside a funeral, police think they might know why. The service was just starting at a West Side church, when someone opened fire outside – shooting six people. The reverend was shocked to see his service interrupted by that kind of violence. "This is broad daylight and anybody could have been hurt. This is very unfortunate," said...

More Than 200 Shot In Chicago In July At Least 42 Killed And 183 Wounded In Spree Of Violence CBS News Interactive: Guns In America CHICAGO (CBS) ― The air wasn't sweltering and simmering in the unusually cool July of 2009, but a bloodbath still engulfed the streets of Chicago, CBS station WBBM-TV reports. As of July 30, at least 42 people had been shot and killed, and 183 more had been shot and wounded since July 1. Among the injured were a 9-year-old girl, an 8-year-old boy, a UPS driver who was on a break after making a delivery,...

The 10 metropolitan areas where the unemployment rate has risen the most in the past year, according to data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are all major manufacturing centers, many with ties to the automobile industry. CLICK ON ABOVE LINK FOR THE SLIDE SHOW

WASHINGTON — More than 90 percent of the nation's largest metropolitan areas saw their unemployment rates climb in June from the previous month. Some of the biggest increases hit college towns, where the annual summertime exodus of students causes bars, restaurants and other businesses to cut staff. The Detroit area, hit hard by manufacturing layoffs tied to the beleaguered auto industry, also got stung in June. Unemployment rates rose from May to June in 348 of more than 370 metro areas, according to an Associated Press analysis of Labor Department data released Wednesday. The figures aren't adjusted to account for...

7 Victims In One Attack; Total Of 14 Hurt Over Four Hours ### At least 14 people were shot and wounded in Chicago overnight, seven of them in a single incident on the city's West Side. In that incident, police were called to the scene of a shooting at Walnut Street and Homan Boulevard at 10:43 p.m. Seven people were shot, according to Fire Media Affairs Dir. Larry Langford, who said six people were initially hospitalized in critical condition and one person, an adult man, was taken in stable condition after suffering a graze wound. One person was found shot...

I am a big fan of Madison Police Chief Noble Wray. The man must walk a tightrope between an ultra-liberal Common Council, an increasingly restive population of crime and quality of life victims, and — I suspect — the better instincts of his own uniformed officers. Nonetheless, the chief whacked a hornet's nest when he was quoted in Monday's Wisconsin State Journal thusly: In some cases, long-time residents of some neighborhoods are afraid of young blacks and Hispanics who are not breaking the law. In those cases, the newcomers to a neighborhood may need to adjust their behavior, and long-time...

Congressional plans to fund a massive health-care overhaul could have a job-killing effect on New York, creating a tax rate of nearly 60 percent for the state's top earners and possibly pressuring small-business owners to shed workers. New York's top income bracket could reach as high as 57 percent -- rates not seen in three decades -- to pay for the massive health coverage proposed by House Democrats this week. OPINION: SLEDGEHAMMER HIT TO CRUMBLING EMPIRE STATE EDITORIAL: HERE COMES OBAMACARE OPINION: THESE PLANS WILL REDUCE YOUR CHOICE The top rate in New York City, home to many of the...

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Three men were fatally shot. One man was fatally stabbed. Police shot one man and at least seven other people were wounded by gunfire -- including an 8-year-old boy sitting in his bedroom -- during an especially violent six hours late Wednesday and early Thursday mainly on the South and West Sides.

The social and economic costs of lost productivity and wasted fuel from traffic-choked streets are estimated to be $87 billion a year, according to the Texas Transportation Institute’s 2009 Urban Mobility Report. So far, federal, state and local efforts — focused mostly on expanding road capacity — have been largely unsuccessful at slowing the growing congestion on U.S. roads. Transportation experts now advocate a different approach, changing the emphasis from increasing supply to reducing demand. To reinforce smart growth policies, plug mounting transportation funding gaps and achieve immediate traffic relief, London, Stockholm, Singapore, Milan and three cities in Norway have...

S.F. mayor orders healthy food in cityPosted on: Thursday, 9 July 2009, 19:48 CDT All San Francisco city departments must audit unused land in the city to see if it can be turned into community gardens or farms, the mayor said. In addition, food vendors contracting with the city must offer healthful and sustainable food, all vending machines on city property must offer healthful food options and farmers' markets must begin accepting food stamps, Mayor Gavin Newsom said, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. There also will be no more doughnut shop runs before meetings and conferences held by city workers,...

The allegations in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by former Oakland City Administrator Deborah Edgerly threatens to become a courtroom drama focusing on the Oakland mayor's office - and who's really in charge. To some Oakland residents, Edgerly may represent the antithesis of political reform. She was accused of interfering with a police investigation, she hired her friends and family, and she underestimated the 2008-09 budget deficit by millions of dollars. But she is also a veteran political insider who knows - and can allegedly prove - how things really work in the mayor's office. Ever since Mayor Ron Dellums...

About 40% of registered voters citywide told a Los Angeles Times poll that in the last two years they had “seriously thought about moving out of Los Angeles.” As The Times previously reported, the most commonly cited reason, by a large margin, was the cost of housing, cited by 46% of those who said they had thought about going.

GARY – Gary officials are seeking nearly $25 million in federal money to tear down more than 900 abandoned houses and 200 empty commercial buildings.......

Shootings claimed the lives of six men in the city over the weekend. The first shooting happened around 8:20 p.m. Friday, when Tijuan Edwards, 18, was talking to a 25-year-old man in the street at 1916 S. Trumbull Ave. when multiple gunmen approached on foot and shot both men. Edwards was dead on the scene, and the 25-year-old was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital with gunshot wounds to the left arm, chin and thigh, police said.

How did some cities(Chicago, New York, Phili, St Louis, LA, SF) and some states (IL, NY, PA, CA) get so screwed up? I mean where did they start to go wrong? Just wondering.

Chicago has the dubious distinction of holding four places on a list of the 25 most dangerous neighborhoods in the nation.Using crime data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, NeighborhoodScout.com made a list of areas with the highest predicted rates of violent crime in the United States.The nation's worst neighborhood, according to the study, is in Cincinnati.The study's author, geographer Dr. Andrew Schiller, said the calculation gives people a better way to understand the "climate" of crime in particular in sections of cities."It's better to understand the climate rather than the weather. It's very important to have a sense...

A new nationwide study released by the nonpartisan Bay Area Center for Voting Research (BACVR) ranks the political leanings of every American city and finds that Detroit, Michigan is the most liberal and Provo, Utah the most conservative. In all, the BACVR researchers examined voting patterns of 237 American cities with populations of over 100,000 and ranked them each on liberal and conservative scales. The list of Americas most liberal cities is dominated by cities with large African American populations that are concentrated in the Northeast, Midwest and California. Conversely, the study found that the staunchest conservative cities are clustered...

San Francisco at Crossroads Over Immigration By JESSE McKINLEY Published: June 12, 2009 SAN FRANCISCO — In the debate over illegal immigration, San Francisco has proudly played the role of liberal enclave, a so-called sanctuary city where local officials have refused to cooperate with enforcement of federal immigration law and undocumented residents have mostly lived without fear of consequence. But over the last year, buffeted by several high-profile crimes by illegal immigrants and revelations of mismanagement of the city’s sanctuary policy, San Francisco has become less like its self-image and more like many other cities in the United States: deeply...

Not only does the City Council rake in nearly $180,000 a year, but they use taxpayer money for eight free cars per council member, and each of them employs a huge personal staff of 19 to 25 people. That's about 320 employees, costing Angelenos millions of dollars to support. Compare that figure to the White House Office Staff of 480. Yesterday, as City Hall squabbled over its groaning $530 million budget deficit, the City Council came under attack in the Daily News from Antonio Villaraigosa's spokesman Matt Szabo, who accused the 15 council members, even at a time like this,...

The law-abiding weren't the problem in the nation's capital About a year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down 30 years of social experimentation in Washington, D.C., by declaring that the district's de facto ban on gun ownership is unconstitutional. The city's gun laws were so strict that a security guard could not get the permission to own a gun, hence the lawsuit on the constitutionality of the district's statutes. Disarming the law-abiding populace left them at the mercy of criminals. Violence escalated, with homicides at one point more than doubling the pre-ban numbers. With the ban gone, Mayor Adrian...

It looks like more New Yorkers are thinking about leaving the state. A Siena College research poll says nearly a quarter of New Yorkers have thought about moving somewhere else.

From Speakupwny.com Press ReleasesWhy I'm Leaving New York By Tom Galisano May 22, 2009, 08:41 Why I'm Leaving New York (but continuing our efforts to change it) Friends, I love New York. But how much should it cost to call New York home? Decades of out of control budgets, spending increases and relentless borrowing have made New York simply too expensive. Politicians like to talk about incentives: incentives for businesses to relocate, incentives to buy local and incentives to make smart decisions. After reviewing the 2009 budget I have identified the most compelling incentive of all: a major tax...

Unemployment in April remained 20 percent higher in states won by Democratic candidate Barack Obama in last fall's presidential election than in states won by Republican candidate John McCain, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics released yesterday. Nationwide, the unemployment rate went from 8.5 percent in March to 8.9 percent in April. WND previously reported that if unemployment numbers in the states won by Obama do not begin improving soon, the Democratic Party may face the prospect of 2010 mid-term election losses in both governor races and in Congress. A national telephone survey conducted by Rasmussen Reports has found...

As he approaches 100 days in office, the President faces a grim reality check. Buddleia has taken over large parts of downtown Gary, Indiana. The city, once home to 300,000 people, is down to just a third of that. There are mile after mile of deserted, derelict and abandoned homes; sub-zero winds blow in off Lake Michigan. "Gary, Indiana is like an eagle poised to fly," mayor Rudy Clay tells me, "All we need is the air of the fiscal stimulus beneath our wings and we'll soar once again and make America proud." The mayor has applied for $400 million...