Free Republic

The Seattle City Council voted unanimously Monday to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, equaling the highest minimum wage in the nation. The law will phase in the higher wages over a three- to seven-year window, depending on the size of a company. Corporations that employ more than 500 workers will have to pay $15 an hour by 2017 if their employees don’t receive company-paid health care. Smaller businesses can wait until 2019 to reach the higher rate. All workers will receive the highest wage by 2021. “The people who work for a living have basically seen no...

After Minnesota became one of the first states in the Midwest to legalize same-sex marriage, it became a new travel ‘hot-spot.’ According to the New York Times, Minneapolis is now on the list of “up and coming LGBT” places to visit, especially with the Pride celebration coming up. New York Times completed the survey after talking with gay and lesbian travel experts. It estimates the annual economic impact of LGBT travelers to be about $70 billion a year in the United States. Other cities on the hot spot list include Eureka Springs, Arkansas, the Big Island on Hawaii, and Pittsburgh.

Starting August 1, the left-wing Ohio newspaper, The Toledo Blade, intends to lay off about 130 of its unionized employees due to a permanent shutdown of its Toledo production center that handles printing and inserting. ... In 2013, The Blade lost $8.5 million and has been losing millions for years. As of now there are no plans that will affect the advertising and news-gathering departments. In 2012, The Toledo Blade urged it readers to re-elect President Obama, arguing in part that "He has dealt effectively with economic recession at home

* The Facebook founder pledged $100million to Newark schools in 2010 to bring sweeping educational reforms * However, most of the money has been spent on labor contracts and consulting fees * The money has had little impact on student performance so far In his first major show of philanthropy, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made a splash by announcing his plan to give $100 million to help turn around Newark, New Jersey's public schools in an appearance on Oprah in 2010. But nearly four years later, Zuckerberg's money has run out, having been spent mostly on labor contracts and consulting...

Detroit women are turning to abortion at a staggering rate as poverty and crime grip the city, with more than one-third of pregnancies being terminated. According to 2012 figures, the most recent year for which data are available, 31 percent of pregnancies among Detroit residents ended in abortion — compared to about 14 percent for all of Michigan, The Detroit News reported. (Snip) Dr. Susan Schooley, chairwoman of the Department of Family Medicine at Henry Ford Hospital, said the statistics make Detroit look “more like some Third-World country than someplace in the United States.”

HOUSTON – The Houston City Council is currently considering an ‘equal rights’ ordinance which would allow men and women to use restrooms and shower rooms designated for the opposite sex, as long as they identify with the opposite gender. Houston Mayor Annise Parker, an open lesbian, is promoting an “Equal Rights Ordinance” designed to quell any discrimination in America’s fourth largest city—including any discrimination on the basis of “gender identity.” “Gender identity means an individual’s innate identification, appearance, expression or behavior as either male or female,” the most recent ordinance draft states, “although the same may not correspond to the...

--snip-- A plan to honor a Harlem cop killed by Nation of Islam radicals is drowning under a flood of racial tensions created more than four decades ago, but no one wants to throw it a lifeline — not even the NYPD’s new top cop. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton is distancing himself from the controversial push to get the street in front of the 28th Precinct renamed in honor of Officer Phillip Cardillo, who was shot and killed inside a mosque run by Louis Farrakhan in 1972 — noting that the community should make the final decision.

In the small town of Lake Station, Ind., the news that the mayor, his wife and stepdaughter have been indicted on federal corruption charges this week came as little surprise. Residents in Lake Station, one of many working-class towns that fringe the northwest Indiana industrial centers of Gary and Hammond, have seen FBI agents leaving the town hall several times in recent years. On Thursday, Keith Soderquist and his wife and personal secretary, Deborah, were in federal court in Hammond to face charges of wire fraud and filing false tax returns, after allegedly using money from Soderquist’s campaign fund and...

At least 35 people were shot in Chicago, four of them fatally, in 36 hours over the weekend, with more than half of the shootings occurring over a half-day period stretching into early Sunday. Officers responded to at least 26 incidents, starting at 3:30 p.m. Friday in the West Woodlawn neighborhood on the South Side involving an attack that left a 17-year-old girl dead and two other people wounded, police said. There were also fatal shootings in the South Shore neighborhood Friday night and the Washington Park neighborhood early Sunday, both on the South Side.

Muriel Bowser won the District of Columbia’s Democratic mayoral primary Tuesday, defeating incumbent Vincent Gray in a race defined by a scandal involving Gray’s campaign four years ago. Bowser tapped into an electorate that tired of the allegations surrounding Gray. Five people who worked on the mayor’s 2010 campaign have pleaded guilty to felonies, and Bowser said the city needed a fresh start as the mayor faced potential criminal charges. Bowser, 41, is a D.C. councilmember and a protégé of former Mayor Adrian Fenty, whom Gray defeated in 2010. …

If you’re hoping to escape from big city crime, look elsewhere. These places actually defy the stereotype of smaller cities being safer. When you see small towns on TV and in movies, they’re almost always idyllic places where the American dream is thriving and neighbors all know each other. That, and unless you’re watching a whodunnit, no one’s ever the victim of a crime. In reality, small cities are surprisingly similar to all the others, meaning that there are good ones and bad. While the Movoto Real Estate Blog has been writing lately about America’s safest places, we thought we’d...

It´s a quiet crisis. In a city of plenty, a staggering number of people are struggling to feed themselves and their families. Nearly one in five New Yorkers, 1.4 million people, now rely on a patchwork network of 1,000 food pantries and soup kitchens across the city to eat. That represents an increase of 200,000 people in five years — straining the charities that are trying to help. The two biggest, City Harvest and the Food Bank for New York City, now provide nearly 110 million pounds of food to soup kitchens and food pantries a year. Yet those working

The LAPD Now Has a Lamborghini Cop Car, Because Charity Los Angeles is a town of dreams, of wonder, of authenticity, heart, and soul. Oh wait. No. It is none of those things. Which is why instead of getting a Morgan Three Wheeler like my constant letters have suggested, they went out and got a Lamborghini Gallardo. Figures. Just like Dubai. In all fairness, the LAPD Lamborghini isn't actually part of the force to show off, or just to keep up with the Emirati Joneses with their ridiculous Bugatti Veyron cop car, but was rather donated to them by a...

SEATTLE — Kshama Sawant said she needs to see progress on a $15 per hour minimum wage soon, or she and her supporters will move ahead without the help of her fellow city council members and the mayor. She said if there is not significant progress soon she will start collecting signatures to put a minimum wage measure on the ballot. Sawant said signatures are due June 10. The socialist council member is holding a rally this coming Saturday where she will lay out her latest plan of action moving forward.

In New York City, 80% of the babies killed by abortion in 2012 were minorities: Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Blacks. According to a “Pregnancy Outcomes” report published by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, there were a total 73,815 “induced terminations,” or abortions, in 2012 in the five boroughs that comprise New York City. (See Pregnancy Outcomes NYC 2012.)[PDF]Among those abortions, 58,738 were of babies of minority race or ethnicity. That’s 79.57% of the total, or approximately 80% of all the abortions that year.The abortions by race/ethnicity and number are listed below:Hispanic 22,917Asian & Pacific...

Bill de Blasio has added two Muslim holidays to the school calendar, but isn’t on board with adding the Hindu festival of Diwali. As usual, this isn’t about diversity, it’s about Muslim Privilege. A spokesman for the Indian community appealed to the mayor to recognize the Hindu holiday.“We are disappointed. We’ve been trying for a long time … It’s very important for the community,” said Dr. Shashi Shah of the Association of Indians in America.But he said he’d move forward with closing schools for Lunar New Year and for Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, Muslim holy days.“It is complicated in...

In another shameful reminder of how Americans care more about sports than the future of their own country, Seattle Seahawks fans reacted to their team’s Super Bowl victory by behaving like animals – lighting fires, damaging historic buildings and ripping down street signs during raucous scenes last night.

A 77-year-old man died after collapsing across the street from a fire station, where his daughter had asked for immediate assistance and was instead rebuffed by a firefighter who told her he couldn’t help unless dispatch instructed him to intervene.The man, Medric Cecil Mills, collapsed near the Engine 26 fire station in the Brookland area of Washington, D.C. at about 2:30 p.m. on Saturday. His daughter, Marie Mills, went to the station to beg for immediate medical assistance. But the firefighter she encountered there told her that she had to first call 911 so that dispatch could instruct him to...

It really is a tale of two cities — this time with the tony Upper East Side getting the shaft! Huge swaths of the UES had been not been plowed by early Tuesday evening, according to the city’s own map of snow-plower activity. “He is trying to get us back. He is very divisive and political,” said writer and life-long Upper East Side mom Molly Jong Fast of Mayor de Blasio. “By not plowing the Upper East Side, he is saying, ‘I’m not one of them.’ But we have everyone in this area on the Upper East Side. We have rich...

Gov. Cuomo has a message for conservative Republicans — you don’t belong in New York. Cuomo said Friday that members of the GOP with “extreme” views are creating an identity crisis for their party and represent a bigger worry than Democrats such as himself. “Their problem isn’t me and the Democrats; their problem is themselves,” the governor said on Albany’s The Capitol Pressroom radio show. “Who are they? Right to life, pro-assault weapons, anti-gay — if that’s who they are, they have no place in the state of New York because that’s not who New Yorkers are.” He added that...