Free Republic

Concerned that the City is an inhomogeneous hodgepodge with pockets of great wealth in some neighborhoods and squalor in others, newly appointed Housing Preservation and Development Commissar Vicki Been announced a plan to move 80,000 to 120,000 poorer families into middle class neighborhoods. “This way instead of having blight and filth in every direction they might look poorer families will be within easy walking distance of a better kept neighborhood,” Been boasted. “The crimes that plague poorer sections of our City would be more evenly dispersed throughout the whole City. Victims will come from a more broadly representative subset of...

Only one in five Chicago voters credit Mayor Rahm Emanuel with doing a better job of running the city than Richard M. Daley did, and only 29 percent would support him if the mayoral election were held today. Those are the results of a new poll conducted for Early & Often, the Chicago Sun-Times’ political portal. The telephone survey of 511 registered Chicago voters who said they were “very likely” to go to the polls on Feb. 24 was conducted Wednesday by the firm of McKeon & Associates. “Right now, Rahm is not connecting. If he doesn’t do that, he’s...

Kharkiv mayor Gennady Kernes shot in the back, remains in the hospital Kharkiv Mayor Gennady Kernes was shot in the back on April 28 and is in serious condition, the press service of the Kharkiv city council reported on its website. "The Kharkiv mayor received a gunshot wound in the back. Now he is in the hospital emergency room on the operating table. Doctors are fighting for his life," reads the statement. Kernes was an avid supporter of former President Viktor Yanukovych and spoke out against the EuroMaidan Revolution that forced the ex-head of state to flee the country. Since...

SEATTLE — Seattle Mayor Ed Murray has scheduled a news conference for Thursday to announce a plan to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. **SNIP** Committee members representing business and labor could not agree on issues like crediting tips and benefits against the $15 minimum. And council member Kshama Sawant revealed another hurdle -- she said there has been little talk of automatically increasing the minimum wage with inflation. “If going forward the new minimum wage does not have a cost of living increase attached to it every year of the phase in it's not going to...

Hayes remembered as pioneer who declared San Jose "feminist Capitol of the world"San Jose is remembering its first female mayor. Janet Gray Hayes died Monday at a retirement home in Saratoga. Her family says she suffered a stroke over the weekend. Hayes was elected mayor of San Jose in 1974, becoming the first woman in the United States to lead a city of more than 500,000 people. “She was a trailblazer who helped open the door for women to serve their communities in public office,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren said in a statement. “She was the one who declared San Jose...

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...

Less than six months on the job, the mayor of Charlotte was arrested Wednesday and accused of accepting more than $48,000 in bribes from undercover FBI agents posing as businessmen who wanted to do work with North Carolina's largest city. Mayor Patrick Cannon, a 47-year-old Democrat who rose from the city's public housing projects to become a successful businessman and politician, faces federal theft and bribery charges. Cannon accepted more than $48,000 in cash, airline tickets, a hotel room and the use of a luxury apartment as bribes and solicited more than $1 million more, according to a criminal complaint....

The heiress and the harpist are running for mayor of Paris. The race is intriguing only because both candidates are women. The race is all about image, and the voters know it. "Don't worry," says a passer-by overhearing the conversation. "It'll never happen."" What will never happen is the promise of the harpist, a former Sarkozy minister, to convert ghost metro stations into swimming pools for the homeless. Kosciusko-Morizet earned her nickname of the harpist ever since being photographed for Paris Match lounging in an evening gown in a forest next to a harp "like some posh wood nymph." Vying...

First-term Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel could face a challenge from the mentor of his old boss, President Barack Obama. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle may have her sights on the job, the Chicago Sun-Times reports, though she insists she is running only for re-election this year. […] Emanuel has alienated the black community, the Sun-Times’s Carol Marin notes, by closing neighborhood schools while opening charter schools. He also has angered police and firefighters in contract talks. …

Mayor de Blasio’s SUV was caught on camera speeding through Queens and blowing through two stop signs Thursday — just two days after he announced a sweeping street-safety plan. The mayor — who was riding shotgun on the way back to City Hall from a pothole-filling photo op — was twice clocked going 15 mph over the speed limit by a WCBS/Channel 2 news crew. The two-car caravan also ran past two stop signs without even tapping the brakes and changed highway lanes without signaling, the CBS video shows. De Blasio’s wild ride came after his pledge to personally abide...

Now he’s jaywalking! Mayor de Blasio and his security detail crossed a Brooklyn street against the light Friday on his way to his morning workout – just a day after his SUV blew through two stop signs and was speeding in Queens. Exclusive video taken by The Post caught the mayor — dressed in a “Brooklyn” sweatshirt, slacks and sneakers — chatting on his cellphone as he sauntered across 11th Street on 6th Avenue in Park Slope, ignoring the orange hand on the traffic signal that clearly warns pedestrians not to cross. In January, NYPD precincts launched an aggressive jaywalking...

SAN DIEGO — Republican City Councilman Kevin Faulconer defeated Democratic Councilman David Alvarez in the San Diego mayor’s race Tuesday night. Faulconer had 55.2 percent compared to Alvarez’s 44.8 percent with 86 percent of the city's precincts counted. A jubilant Faulconer gave a speech to his supporters about 10:40 p.m. but stopped short of declaring victory. “We know that this city has gone through a lot in the last year, but we knew that as San Diegans that we were better than that and that we were going to come together when we had the opportunity to do that and...

FULL TITLE: Rob Ford asks for Pride flag — just raised at City Hall to support gay rights at Sochi — be taken down Police investigating threat against Rob Ford, mayor's office says Mayor Rob Ford demanded on Friday that officials remove a rainbow-coloured flag raised at Toronto City Hall in solidarity with the gay community in Russia during the Olympics, prompting fresh accusations that he is homophobic. The mayor duct-taped a Canadian flag to his office window overlooking Nathan Phillips Square shortly after officials pulled down a City of Toronto flag from a “courtesy” flagpole on city hall’s roof...

Still littered with abandoned cars, Atlanta struggled to find its way back to normal Thursday while the mayor and governor struggled with the political fallout from a snowstorm that trapped some people in their cars more than 24 hours. Mayor Kasim Reed assured people on Tuesday, in a message on Twitter before the snow began to fall: “Atlanta, we are ready for the snow.” On Thursday, he acknowledged that authorities made a mistake by not staggering their orders for people to go home — schools first, then private businesses, then government employees. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people poured onto...

The mayor of Sochi told a reporter that there are no gay people in the city hosting the Winter Olympics — but the patrons of one bar didn't get the memo. The same BBC reporter had visited a gay tavern in the Black Sea resort town the night before he interviewed Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov, who said the whole city is straight. "We do not have them in our city," Pakhomov flatly told the BBC. Pressed further, the mayor backtracked a bit: "I am not sure, but I don't bloody know them."

One week ago today, Governor Cuomo railed against what he called “extreme conservatives” who are “pro-life, pro-assault weapons, anti-gay.” He said such persons “have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.” Yesterday, Mayor de Blasio said he agrees with Cuomo’s comments “100 percent.” He explained, “I interpret his [Cuomo's] remarks to say that an extremist attitude that continues the reality of violence in our communities or an extremist attitude that denies the rights of women, does not represent the views of the people of New York State.” deblasoThe spin won’t work. Who...

Warren Mayor Jim Fouts squirmed, acting uncomfortable, when he answered questions from WXYZ-TV's Jim Kiertzner about a video that is circulating online that appears to show Fouts walking in Chicago, holding hands with his executive assistant, Amanda Mika. The pair also appears to show the pair checking into the Drake Hotel, dining and visiting an Apple store. Fouts is 71. Mika is reportedly 25. The six-minute video, which carries a November 2012 time stamp, is posted to YouTube by someone with the screen name Warren DeepThroat, and suggests the mayor’s assistant received a pay raise at a time when health-care...

Mayoral Candidate Allegedly Beaten Up By Two Teenage Girls At Mall Of AmericaErin FuchsDec. 28, 2013, 10:50 AMLetajia Shapree Cutler-Cain A 63-year-old runner-up for mayor of Minneapolis was allegedly beaten up by two teenage girls at a Mall of America Starbucks this week, CBS Minnesota reports. The teen girls allegedly attacked Mark Andrew and said "we're going to kill you" after he tried to chase down a guy who snatched his phone. It's possible the girls were working with the thief. The girls, age 18 and 17, were arrested and are in police custody. The 18-year-old was identified as Letajia...

FULL TITLE: Houston Mayor Annise Parker calls Phil Robertson a 'redneck wingnut' whose views are 'completely irrelevant' “I have never watched ‘Duck Dynasty,’ so I don’t think about it much at all,” Parker responded. “I’ve been a gay community activist since the mid-70s.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Bob Filner has almost vanished from public view since a defiant resignation speech as San Diego mayor amid widespread allegations that he sexually harassed women. He returns to the spotlight at least once more. The former 10-term congressman will be sentenced Monday for one felony and two misdemeanors for placing a woman in a headlock, kissing another woman and grabbing the buttocks of a third. He pleaded guilty in October in an agreement with prosecutors, who will recommend that he get three months of home confinement and three years of probation.