Free Republic

I wrote here and here about the Obama administration’s proposed rule on “affirmatively furthering fair housing” (AFFH), an attempt to dictate how we shall live. In essence, President Obama seeks to use the power of the national government to create communities of a certain kind, each having what the federal government deems an appropriate mix of economic, racial, and ethnic diversity. The proposed AFFH rule, issued last July, was expected to be finalized by the end of last year. But the year ended with no further action. 2014 was supposed to be the year Obama’s “year of action” — the...

THE Colorado Republican party’s nightmare is coming true. Tom Tancredo, unfazed by the three so far ineffectual candidates running against him, is speeding toward victory in the GOP primary race for governor. Tancredo is a controversial national figure known mostly for his fiery, unswerving position on illegal immigration — which he sees as a plague that officeholders on every level of government must address as a top priority. Tancredo is an avuncular character with a hard edge. He is in the moment on the stump and in intreviews, quick with a joke, ready to spin out stories and asides that...

The Met Council, as it's known here, was founded in the 1960s to coordinate regional infrastructure—in essence, to make sure that sewers and roads meet up. Over the years, its power to allocate funds and control planning has expanded. Now, under Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton—who appointed all 17 current members—the council intends to play Sim City with residents' lives. Thrive MSP 2040 is part of a nationwide movement called "regionalism." Regional planning of infrastructure is important, of course. But regionalism, as an ideology, is about shifting power away from local elected officials and re-engineering society on behalf of "equity" and...

In the global luxury real-estate scene, is Lagos poised to be the next big thing? The Nigerian city is among a list of 12 up-and-coming luxury markets around the globe, according to the Candy Global Prime Sector Report from design firm Candy & Candy, in cooperation with Savills World Research and Deutsche Asset and Wealth Management. The other cities are Beirut, Cape Town, Chennai, Chicago, Dublin, Istanbul, Jakarta, Melbourne, Miami, Panama City and Tel Aviv.

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 spread....

London is the most important city in the world for the rich, according to the latest Wealth Report from real estate consulting firm Knight Frank. But it won't hold onto its title for long. According to the report, New York is set to overtake London as the top city for the wealthy in the next decade. And Asian cities like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai will also become more important over the next 10 years. Knight Frank determined its eighth-annual "global cities" ranking based on four factors: economic activity, political power, quality of life, and influence and power

According to Gallup, 70.5% of Americans surveyed in 2012 and 2013 said they felt safe walking alone at night. This is effectively unchanged from 2011, when 71% of respondents said they felt safe. In a number of metro areas, however, far fewer residents felt safe at night. In McAllen, Texas, where Americans were least likely to feel safe, less than half of all respondents were comfortable outside of their homes after dark. Based on data gathered by the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, these are the 10 cities where Americans felt the least safe.Seven of the 10 metro areas in which residents...

The U.S. population rose by just 0.72% in 2013, the lowest growth rate in more than 70 years. Not only has the country become less-attractive to immigrants than in years past, with net immigration down from nearly 1.2 million as of 2001 to 843,145 last year, but also the U.S.’s domestic birth rate has dropped to a multi-decade low. While the population of most of the country’s metro areas grew at a low pace in recent years, in a small number of metro areas the population actually shrank. Looking at the most recent years, the U.S. population rose by just...

That's the title of a Bloomberg op-ed by Francis Wilkinson, who examined statistics from a report by the National Urban League about income inequality between blacks and whites in America. Minneapolis-St. Paul. San Francisco. Chicago. Even Madison, Wisconsin. If you are politically liberal and value relatively high levels of income equality, you might live in one of these quintessentially liberal U.S. cities. Yet all four lurk in the bottom half of the 2014 National Urban League's State of Black America report on income inequality between blacks and whites. Among the many places where black-white income is less skewed are Phoenix,...

The U.S. population rose by just 0.72% in 2013, the lowest growth rate in more than 70 years. Not only has the country become less-attractive to immigrants than in years past, with net immigration down from nearly 1.2 million as of 2001 to 843,000 last year, but also the U.S.’s domestic birth rate has dropped to a multi-decade low. While population growth in most of the country’s metro areas has slowed in recent years, in a small number of metro areas it grew a great deal. Between April 2010 and July 2013, the U.S. population rose by just 2.4%, but...

Swiss Re, a global reinsurance company, has analyzed the disaster potential for 616 of the world’s largest cities (PDF). Each city is ranked according to its potential for earthquakes, storms, storm surges, tsunamis, and river floods. For each type of disaster, Swiss Re devised an extreme weather scenario in which defenses fail and the human and economic toll can be enormous. Further, each city was ranked based on the effect each scenario would have on its residents by combining population-distribution data and vulnerability estimates for each disaster. The scenarios consider fatalities, injuries, evacuations, those whose homes would be damaged or destroyed, and those who...

Detroit's looming bankruptcy is making news again, this time focusing on current restructuring plans aimed to wipe out $18 billion in debt by axing pension checks of city retirees, including police and fire. Massive long-term retirement and healthcare promises were by no means solely responsible for the city's fall, but these massive pensions coupled with a tax base weakened by high unemployment and housing vacancies caused the budget to bleed out quicker. The Michigan city may be the most recent victim of bankruptcy, but many of the 61 largest U.S. cities have adopted the same retirement legacy leading to $118...

Mark Levin has proposed a series of "Liberty Amendments" to the Constitution through an Article 5 state convention. I have my own set of amendments which I hope to share here and add to the proposed Liberty Amendments. The first involves the resurrection of the city-state. This plan would take our largest cities, governed primarily by socialist Democrats, and separate them out as independent, self-governing, self-funding political units, with no connection to the states, but within the exclusive oversight of the federal government, just as the states are. There is a huge separation in this country right now between the...

Germany, home of the high-speed autobahn, is perhaps one of the few countries that has had as intense a love affair with the automobile as the U.S. But in an effort to go green, the country's second-largest city is studying ways to eliminate cars by 2034. The northern city of Hamburg has laid out an initial concept, named the Green Network Plan, that would expand public transportation and add more routes for pedestrians and bicyclists. The most controversial aspect of the plan calls for a steady phase-out of automobiles in the center of the city over the next two decades....

Lost Angeles is the worst traffic city in America. 'Carmaggedon' is no joke. Drivers in the worst traffic city wasted an average of 63.3 hours in traffic over the last year. Congrats to Los Angeles, although worst traffic city might not be the most coveted of titles.

As a real estate agent in the struggling San Francisco Bay city of Richmond, Zina Hall is well acquainted with all ways of helping troubled homeowners. Hall spent months this autumn working with an elderly widow with a medical condition who was struggling to make payments. Her best option, Hall believed, was a short sale, and they began that laborious process. But after several weeks, the homeowner disappeared, then called Hall to say she wanted to pull out and use a new program by the city. "They have eminent domain and it's going to help me," Hall recalled her saying....

A federal judge granted Detroit’s Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing earlier this month, making it the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. Bankruptcy is frequently the product of a history of problems. The unrelenting decline in manufacturing and the more recent collapse of the housing market resulted in a shrinking population, rampant unemployment and high debt, which have devastated the city. Click here to see the Ten Best-Run States in AmericaClick here to see the Ten Worst-Run States in AmericaIn order to determine the performance of the nation’s largest cities, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 100 largest U.S. cities by population....

ABC This Week viewers were treated to a classic conservative versus liberal debate Sunday. When former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich tried to blame the increase in poverty in the past five years on Republicans, former Speaker of the House and current CNN host Newt Gingrich called it "baloney" firing back, "Every major city which is a center of poverty is run by Democrats" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary): Gingrich Schools Reich: 'Every Major City Which Is a Poverty Center Is Run By Democrats' JONATHAN KARL, SUBSTITUTE HOST: And let me ask you, Mr....

Many quotes have been attributed to Mark Twain over the test of time, such as this gem: "I saw a startling sight today, it was a politician with his hands in his own pockets." That bit of transcendent satire rings with truth because time and again, members of both major parties seemingly manage to extract more of what we earn. In the United States, taxes from such sources as state and local income taxes, sales and gross receipts taxes, motor fuel taxes, vehicle taxes and alcohol taxes all hit record peaks in the second quarter of 2013. In other words,...

Using Census data, we've figured out that half of the United States population is clustered in just the 146 biggest counties out of over 3000. Here's the map, with said counties shaded in. Below the map is the list of all the counties, so you can see if you live in one of them. See link for list of names.