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A memo which was circulated within local government in Washington state, before being leaked to local TV station KOMO News, advised state workers that they should refrain from using such phrases in official business. According to the memo, the word ‘citizen’ is offensive to those Seattlelites who are residents in the city, but not US citizens. The phrase ‘brown bag’ is offensive for its having been used as a verb during racial segregation in the United States. When deciding whether or not a black person was light-skinned enough to enter a private residence, servants would ‘brown bag’ them: using a...

Anyone that can dredge up the guts to teach in Baltimore's public schools automatically becomes a... Dave Miceli doesn't know me from a hole in the ground, but he's my new hero. Anyone that can dredge up the guts to teach in Baltimore's public schools automatically becomes a candidate for hero status in my book, especially if said anyone has taught in these schools for 20 years, as Miceli has. But it was his bold, insightful, no-punches-pulled letter to the editors of the July 15 edition of the Baltimore Sun that put Miceli on my hero's list. I'm reprinting that...

SEATTLE - An internal memo at Seattle City Hall is causing quite a stir. It suggests government workers no longer use the terms "citizen," or "brown bag." According to the Office for Civil Rights, the terms are potentially offensive and other words should be used. "Luckily, we've got options," Elliott Bronstein of the Office for Civil Rights wrote in the memo. "For 'citizens,' how about 'residents?'" Bronstein wrote. The Office of Civil Rights says Seattle serves all residents, whether they're United States citizens or not. And while city leaders publicize "brown bag" lunch meetings as a way to designate a...

http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/neighborhoods/crime-rates/25-most-dangerous-neighborhoods/ Even the most dangerous cities in America can have relatively safe neighborhoods, as there is more variation in crime within most cities than between cities. But using exclusive data developed by NeighborhoodScout, and based on FBI data from all 17,000 local law enforcement agencies in America, we here report those specific neighborhoods in America that have the highest predicted rates of violent crime per 1,000 neighborhood residents of all. Violent crimes include murder, forcible rape, armed robbery, and aggravated assault. These neighborhoods are the epicenters of violence in America, where social issues are likely to ignite into violence and...

Inside Edition: Newport Beach Lifeguards Make $200,000 and Can Retire at Age 50 The popular TV show Inside Edition does an expose on lifeguard compensation in Newport Beach, California: (Video)

Take Oakland, which is Detroit's doppelganger on the West Coast. The run-down Bay Area city, which has the highest crime rate in California, recently laid off more than 100 police to fund retirement benefits and pension-obligation bonds. Murders and robberies shot up by nearly 25% last year. To avert steeper cuts, the city borrowed an additional $210 million to finance pensions. . . Philadelphia is spending about 20% of its budget on pensions to make up for years of short-changing the system.

More than a dozen people spread throughout north and south Arlington woke up Monday morning with slashed car tires, and the vandal had a pretty specific target. Someone punctured the tires of Priuses parked overnight on driveways, apartment parking lots and the street. Police found 15 Prius cars flat. They also got a Smart car. Police say they found fingerprints consistent with someone leaning on the car while cutting the tires.

Ingham County Circuit Court Judge Rosemarie Aquilina ordered on Friday that Detroit’s bankruptcy be withdrawn. Aquilina said the 2012 Michigan law that allowed Gov. Rick Snyder to approve the city’s bankruptcy filing, the largest municipal bankruptcy filing ever in the United States, violates the Michigan Constitution. Specifically, Article IX Section 24, which holds that pension plans and retirement systems “shall not be diminished or impaired.” Aquilina said that she will ensure that President Barack Obama gets a copy of her order. “It’s also not honoring the president, who took [Detroit’s auto companies] out of bankruptcy.” bilde “I know he’s watching...

Citing a $1 billion budget deficit, Chicago Public Schools will lay off more than 2,000 employees, more than a 1,000 of them teachers, the district said Thursday night. About half of the 1,036 teachers being let go are tenured. The latest layoffs, which also include 1,077 school staff, are in addition to 855 employees—420 of them teachers--who were laid off last month as a result of the district’s decision to close 49 elementary schools and a high school program. CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll said the district was “scraping the bottom” of reserves to provide financial relief and had made cuts...

Detroit: officially a man-made disaster It’s official; Detroit is now legally as well as morally bankrupt. “The city of Detroit filed the largest municipal bankruptcy case in U.S. history Thursday afternoon, culminating a decades-long slide that transformed the nation’s iconic industrial town into a model of urban decline crippled by population loss, a dwindling tax base and financial problems.” In short order there will be allegations of racist-fueled white flight and business abandonment of the city. Charges of unfair treatment will be leveled against “the system” that  led to the Motor City’s devolution. This will be followed immediately by...

The City of Detroit filed for bankruptcy yesterday afternoon. It owes as much as $20 billion, and there is no conceivable way that debt will ever be paid. The city offered its debtors 10 cents on the dollar, but the debtors refused. A good deal of the blame -- rightly or wrongly -- will be placed at the feet of municipal workers -- sanitation, water, sewer, cops, firefighters and so on. The pressure of ever-rising wages for no additional work, leading to ever-rising pension costs, plus ever-increasing benefits and ever more closely defined work rules will likely be found at...

Job killing leftists have chalked up another victory. Wal-Mart was looking to build three stores in Washington, DC, but the prostitutes serving Big Labor, aka the DC City Council, voted 8-5 to chase them away. What this came in the form of was a "Living Wage Bill", which was actually specifically targeted toward Wal-Mart. The bill forces retailers with over $1 billion in sales and stores occupying over 75,000 feet of pave to pay $12.50 per hour, as opposed to the $8.25 Washington, DC minimum wage. The Washington Post reported “The question here is a living wage; it’s not whether Wal-Mart...

Shootings left at least 8 people on the South and West sides wounded overnight, according to police. Three of the shootings happened between 4:50 and 5:40 a.m., police said. A 60-year-old woman was shot in the chin about 4:50 a.m. in 4500 block of South Wolcott Avenue in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the South Side. Police said she wasn't the target and are investigating whether she was stuck in crossfire between two shooters. She was taken to John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, where her condition has stabilized. A 17-year-old boy was shot about 5:35...

“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Isaac Newton’s Law of Motion Washington DC Democrats passed a bill that would require retailers to pay workers at least $12.50 per hour. Within hours of the decision Wal-Mart announced it was canceling three store openings in the area. Nice work, Democrats. WTOP reported: The D.C. Council has passed a bill that would require large retailers like Wal-Mart to pay workers at least $12.50. The bill now goes to Mayor Vincent Gray for his consideration. The 8-5 vote was short of the votes needed to override a veto from the...

A couple lessons, here. First, businesses are not obligated to open in your city or your neighborhood, particularly when you incentivize them to locate elsewhere. Washington, D.C. is particularly susceptible to losing potential jobs (particularly in entry-level and working class retail positions, as opposed to lobbyist slots) to nearby jurisdictions because it doesn’t take much to simply cross the bridge to friendlier climes in, say, Virginia. Second, as Sonny Bunch reminds us of a lesson from Econ 101, hiking the minimum wage kills jobs.Here’s the haps. In Washington, Wal-Mart, the city council, the grocery store unions, and a thousand Wal-Mart...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel hopes to keep gunslingers away from public schools, buses and “safe passage” routes by creating a city ordinance with stiff fines for weapon offenses. The proposed ordinance comes on the heels of CPS’ closing of 49 elementary schools under a plan to tackle low enrollment. Most of the schools are on the West and South Sides.The closings have prompted CPS to expand the number of protected safe-passage routes that students take to school. Parents are concerned that their children will have to cross gang boundaries on their way to new schools. The ordinance, which the mayor intends...

Seven people were killed and at least 41 others were shot in violence that plagued Chicago over Father's Day weekend. Six of the fatalities and 13 other shootings occurred overnight Saturday leading into Father's Day, including the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old boy. On the Southwest Side, five people were shot, one fatally, in two shootings in the Little Village neighborhood.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to start reducing health insurance coverage next year for more than 30,000 retired city workers and begin shifting them to President Barack Obama's new federal system. The move is aimed at saving the city money Once the phaseout is complete, those retired workers would have to pay for their own health insurance or get subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. The city-subsidized coverage is particularly important to retired workers who aren't yet eligible for Medicare Henry Bayer, executive director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31, said the uncertainties of the...

My name -- No More Names: The Drive to Reduce Gun Violence Friday marks six months since the mass shooting in Newtown, CT. It also marks six months of inaction from Congress. That's why we're launching an ambitious, nationwide bus tour that will bring survivors and supporters directly to members of Congress across the country. No More Names: The Drive to Reduce Gun Violence will visit 25 states in 100 days. We will stand in front of the local offices of members of Congress and read the names of Americans murdered with guns since Newtown, who number more than 5,000...

Jean Stapleton, a born-and-bred New Yorker immortalized in pop culture as the iconic Edith Bunker, died Friday in her Manhattan home at the age of 90. snipToday’s Queens is arguably America’s most diverse county. snipBut what of “All in the Family” creator Norman Lear? Well, according to the ZIP code listed on his political contributions, Lear lives in the Brentwood hills of Los Angeles — ZIP code 90049, to be exact. That neighborhood’s population? It’s 84 percent white, 1.4 percent black, 8.7 percent Asian, with the remainder “other” and multiracial. That almost looks like Archie Bunker’s dream spot.