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HOUSTON -- Note: The following story is a verbatim transcript of an Investigators story that aired on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2008, on KPRC Local 2 at 10 p.m. Local 2 investigates dead voters. The push to register voters for this year's presidential election is breaking records. More than 1.9 million people are registered to vote in Harris County alone. But how many of the people listed on the voter roll are actually eligible to cast a ballot? Investigative reporter Amy Davis shows you how hundreds of voters could sway this year's election -- voters who are not even alive. "All-in-all,...

While the state has seen demographic shifts in suburban school districts, the isolation and intense concentration of minority students in the 31 Abbott school districts is worse today than it was 20 years ago.  That's the basis for a "friend of the court" brief filed jointly by the New Jersey Black Issues Convention and the Hispanic Directors Association, two influential umbrella organizations. They are among nine groups challenging the state's overhaul of the school funding formula that guaranteed additional aid to the state's neediest districts. Locally, Paterson, Passaic and Garfield are classified as Abbott districts.   The court is scheduled...

PHILADELPHIA — A state court ruled Friday that Philadelphia was not entitled to set its own gun laws, invalidating five measures passed by the City Council last year and striking a blow against the city’s efforts to strengthen gun control. The Commonwealth Court dismissed a petition by two City Council members, Darrell L. Clarke and Donna Reed Miller, who filed suit last year arguing that the state’s Uniform Firearms Act did not pre-empt Philadelphia’s gun laws. The two council members had also argued that the state legislature had created a “state of danger” for Philadelphia residents by their continued refusal...

SANTA FE — The New Mexico Secretary of State's Office plans to print nearly 2.5 million paper ballots for the Nov. 4 general election, although the state has only slightly more than 1.1 million voters. The reason? With a highly anticipated election less than seven weeks away that includes voting for president, an open U.S. Senate seat and three open congressional positions, the Secretary of State's Office wants to make sure each of the 1,550 precincts statewide is ready for an onslaught of voters who might or might not vote at their assigned polling places. "If we're going to err,...

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Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was in southern California last night, attending a pair of fundraisers in Beverly Hills. In attendance was the usual crop of Hollywood political activists, but also former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan. He told KPCC’s Special Correspondent Kitty Felde why he’s not supporting fellow Republican John McCain. Richard Riordan: “We want the best person to be president of the United States, whether they’re Republican or Democrat, and now I think clearly Obama is the best candidate. But I’m still basically a Republican, I’m supporting Republicans in the Senate and Assembly, everywhere else.” Kitty Felde: “Well, it...

With his visceral, award-winning writing and television shows such as The Wire, David Simon has brought to the world's attention the challenge of policing America's drug-ridden cities - something he says is doomed to failure. Behind his avuncular exterior, Burns holds tenacious opinions about the destruction of community in Baltimore. There is something odd about hearing a former cop speaking in language that is close to revolutionary. He argues that one half of America has abandoned the other, most deprived half, except, perhaps, as a source of job creation. 'If you look at poverty in America,' Burns argues, 'it is...

Total Is About Double The Death Toll In Iraq CHICAGO (CBS) ― An estimated 123 people were shot and killed over the summer. That's nearly double the number of soldiers killed in Iraq over the same time period. In May, cbs2chicago.com began tracking city shootings and posting them on Google maps. Information compiled from our reporters, wire service reports and the Chicago Police Major Incidents log indicated that 123 people were shot and killed throughout the city between the start of Memorial Day weekend on May 26, and the end of Labor Day on Sept. 1. According to the Defense...

Barack Obama's campaign plans to relaunch his "urban agenda" Monday in what people close to the strategy say is an effort to assure urban leaders and voters of the Democratic nominee's commitment to cities and minorities without alienating skeptical white voters. The plan features an increase in the minimum hourly wage, a new White House office focused on metropolitan areas and $60 billion to establish a national bank to finance public-works projects. The campaign didn't give a total cost for the plan, but the 32-page blueprint that will be released during a meeting of the Democratic Party's African-American caucus includes...

A new generation of shakedown artists hampers America’s urban revival.___ Barbara Bradley, an editor with the Memphis Commercial Appeal, moved into the River City’s reviving downtown about a year and a half ago, loving its “energy and enthusiasm.” But a horde of invading panhandlers has cooled her enjoyment of city life. Earlier this year, she recalled in a recent column, as she showed some visitors around the neighborhood, “a big panhandler blocked the entrance to our parking area and demanded his toll.” Now a nervous Bradley avoids certain downtown areas, locks her car when fueling up at local gas stations,...

Mayors from across the country are in Madison this week for the Mayors Innovation Project summer conference. They'll be sharing ideas about how to run progressive communities in tight economic times. But they will, as well, be wondering whether they are going to have a partner in the federal government. That's something cities have lacked for the past eight years.This week in an interview with MayorTV, an initiative of the Drum Major Institute think tank to focus on urban leaders and issues, Santa Fe Mayor David Coss argues that the Bush/Cheney administration's response has been characterized by "ignorance" as opposed...

<p>California should be conservatives' exhibit A of Liberals Gone Wild. This is what happens when clueless liberals (Yes, including Arnie) let the animals run the zoo.</p> <p>LOS ANGELES (AP) - One man got stabbed. Another got shot in the chest. A 6-year-old boy was temporarily blinded when he was spray-painted in the face.</p>

My Excerpt from multiple sources 200-300 teenagers were involved in a gang fight at Triangle Town Center mall in Raleigh last night. Multiple arrests, one kid stabbed in the butt. Thug culture invades mainstream USA.

Eugene, OR (AHN) - Eugene city officials fed up with crime are mulling an ordinance that will keep convicts and would-be criminals out of the downtown area for up to one year. Under the proposal, which is awaiting the council's vote pending the conclusion of a public hearing, a person charged with a crime such as robbery or assault would be banned from downtown Eugene for 90 days. Convicted criminals will not be allowed downtown for one year.The proposal from councilors Andrea Ortiz and Mike Clark drew mixed reactions from the police and merchants supporting the ban and human rights...

Some residents said Thursday they wish they could recall the mayor over comments he made about state Sen. Louise Lucas’ proposed hotel and conference center, while she said she is considering scaling back her project. Earlier this week, the City Council voted to deny Lucas the use of up to $50 million of federal enterprise zone bonds. The bank-backed bonds would have provided Lucas with lower-cost financing. During the meeting, Mayor James W. Holley called the Portsmouth Renaissance Hotel & Waterfront Conference Center a white hotel and said that Lucas’ project would have given the city a black hotel.

Hard Times at Douglass High," is an HBO documentary that aired last June. It captured much of the 2004-2005 school year at Baltimore's predominantly black Frederick Douglass High School. The tragedy is that what is seen in the documentary is typical of most predominantly black urban schools. Douglass' students are four to five years below grade level. Most of its ninth-graders read at the third-, fourth- or fifth-grade levels. In 2006, only 24 percent of its students tested proficient in reading, in math just 11 percent, and that's an improvement over previous years. Only one student managed to score above...

If there's one thing you have to give Philadelphia's leaders credit for achieving, it's consistency. Under the "leadership" of every mayor and city council going back decades, the city has seen its population plummet, and with it, our prospects for growth and world-class status. Consider these gems: Between 2000 and 2007, Philadelphia lost 4.5 percent of its residents, the largest percentage drop of any Top 25 city. As far as actual numbers, the only city which lost more people in that span was New Orleans, and I think the Big Easy had a weather-related incident which prompted that city's mass...

A major American city has undergone big demographic changes overnight. Will others follow? ___ There is really only one way to put it: Atlanta is becoming whiter, and at a pace that outstrips the rest of the nation. The white share of the city's population, says Brookings Institution demographer William Frey, grew faster between 2000 and 2006 than that of any other U.S. city. It increased from 31 percent in 2000 to 35 percent in 2006, a numeric gain of 26,000, more than double the increase between 1990 and 2000. The trend seems to be gathering strength with each passing...

Decades of white flight transformed America's cities. That era is drawing to a close. In Washington, a historically black church is trying to attract white members to survive. Atlanta's next mayoral race is expected to feature the first competitive white candidate since the 1980s. San Francisco has lost so many African-Americans that Mayor Gavin Newsom created an "African-American Out-Migration Task Force and Advisory Committee" to help retain black residents. "The city is experiencing growth, yet we're losing African-American families disproportionately," Mr. Newsom says. When that happens, "we lose part of our soul." For much of the 20th century, the proportion...

Starbucks has identified 18 stores in the Chicago area among the 600 nationwide targeted to close through March 2009, including several in minority neighborhoods that had counted on the green-and-white medallion to signal rebirth. The Seattle-based coffee giant released Wednesday a full list of the 600 stores anticipated to be shut down resulting in the loss of about 12,000 jobs. Employees at those locations have been notified that their outlet will be closing, though specific dates aren't yet known for all of the stores. Starbucks is expecting to close 25 total cafes in Illinois. The company had already announced it...

NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN? | Gov offers to send state troopers and National Guard copters to fight gang violence Calling violence in Chicago "out of control," Gov. Blagojevich on Wednesday offered to lend state troopers and National Guard helicopters to the city to augment the Chicago Police. The governor is considering forming an "elite tactical team" to help the Chicago Police fight gang problems, a source said, adding that the unit could later be sent across the state to deal with gang problems at any city's request. It's fair to say that violent crime in Chicago is out of control....

Could growing fresh vegetables help save crumbling inner cities around the world and tackle hunger? ___ That is the ambitious aim of a charity called Urban Farming, which has its headquarters in Detroit, the capital of the US's wilting car industry. The idea is very simple: turn wasteland into free vegetable gardens and feed the poor people who live nearby. Motown has lost more than a million residents since its heyday in the 1950s and it is common to see downtown residential streets with just a few houses left standing. Taja Sevelle saw the hundreds of hectares of vacant land...

If you've seen HBO's "The Wire," you know why those of us who live in Baltimore are often asked whether our city really is the hellhole it is portrayed to be on TV. Our answer is, well, yes. Baltimore deserves the Third-World profile it has developed because it has expanses of crumbling, crime-riddled neighborhoods populated by low-income renters, an absent middle class, and just a few enclaves of high-income gentry near the Inner Harbor or in suburbs. This wasn't what Baltimore looked like in the 1950s. Then it was a prosperous, blue-collar city. [Snip] Today, the city has a population...

BUTLERVILLE, Ind., June 23, 2008 – The scene in Building 7 at Muscatatuck Urban Training Center here was chilling. Marines from Battalion Landing Team 2/6, 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, move between buildings during training, June 10, 2008, at Muscatatuck Urban Training Center, in Butlerville, Ind. The Marines were using the facility during the 26th MEU's realistic urban training exercise, part of the MEU's predeployment training period. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Aaron J. Rock  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Visitors were greeted by the sounds of a screaming man, covered in blood and missing his legs just...

The United States has a long and dishonorable history of dumping the least-qualified teachers into schools that serve poor and minority students....The picture has improved significantly, however, in New York City, where state law has abolished temporary licenses for uncertified teachers, raised standards in teacher preparation programs and spawned innovative strategies for recruiting better teachers. [snip]...The qualification index took into account several factors, including certification, experience, the teacher’s SAT scores and the rank of the undergraduate college the teacher attended....Higher salaries have clearly played a role in strengthening the city’s teacher corps. But the state kicked off the quality movement...

Philadelphia has one of the most backward and incompetent city governments in America. It suffers from a combination of failed civic institutions, a deeply embedded racial paranoia that undermines law enforcement, and a local culture that has come to shrug at the urban chaos this produces. In 2006, the one-or-two-a-day-and a-dozen-on-weekends murder spree that earned "Killadelphia" its rap as an urban abattoir resulted in 406 people dead. It's clearly not all about poverty. Miami, America's poorest major city, saw 79 homicides in all of 2006. In March 2006, more Americans died violently on the streests of Philadelphia than in Iraq...

Jimmy Carter signed The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) in 1977. The Act grew out of the complaint that urban banks were "redlining" inner-city neighborhoods, refusing to lend to their residents while using their deposits to finance suburban expansion. The Clinton administration has turned the Community Reinvestment Act into one of the most powerful mandates shaping American cities (snip) and it is a vast extortion scheme.

Americans migrate back to the cities By Tom Leonard in New York Last Updated: 2:23AM BST 19/06/2008 Americans are choosing to abandon the suburban sprawl in favour of a more comfortable, cheaper and greener life in the city centre. Americans flocked to the suburbs after the WWII. Soaring energy prices and the sub-prime crisis are driving them back to the cities The mass migration of America's middle classes from urban areas to the suburbs amounted to a demographic revolution in the years after the Second World War. But the so-called "driveable suburb" is becoming increasingly unfeasible as soaring fuel costs...

Motorists driving down Highway 40 under Tamm Avenue in the wee hours of July 19, 2007, reported seeing graffiti artists at work on the pristine white concrete of the overpass wall. Before fleeing the scene, the men left their trademarks, or tags, in big bubble letters. Taggers decorated a wall that's visible from Vandeventer Avenue, near Highway 40. St. Louis police later caught two suspects north of the highway, and they also found backpacks loaded with sixteen cans of spray paint. Both men were charged with felony property damage. The incident set off alarm bells for south St. Louis Alderwoman...

The Return of the Primitive Andrew Klavan, the author of True Crime, adopted by Clint Eastwood for the big screen, albeit in a slightly bowdlerized form, visits an inner city fourth grade class, and comes away noting: Beating poverty in America nowadays is largely a matter of personal behavior. Get a high school diploma, don’t have kids until you’re married, don’t get married until you’re 21, and you probably won’t be poor. It also helps if you work hard, show up on time, act courteously, and avoid anything felonious. But where are these kids going to learn such things? It’s...

WARREN, Mich. -- Police said 20 to 30 men who brutally attacked and robbed a motorist Saturday night may also be responsible for several other violent crimes that took place the same day. Four people were taken into custody for questioning after a motorist was beaten unconscious. Police said the incident took place when Andy Kauffman, 29, and his wife, Angelina, were driving on North River Road when more than two dozen men wearing ball caps and baggy shorts spread out across the street and blocked traffic. Kauffman tried to drive past them and someone threw a brick in his...

Prompted over the past few years by oil wars, global warming, ecological collapse, natural disasters and our psychotic federal government, we’ve made a few changes in the way we live. Now the day begins when Erik gets up to let the chickens out of their henhouse. It’s a structure so thoroughly secured against marauding raccoons that we’ve named it "Chicken Guantanamo." The hens have been patiently waiting for that door to swing open since first light. Next, while the coffee brews, Erik throws some flour and a cup of sourdough starter into the mixer. He bakes a loaf of artisanal...

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- When the police got a tip that Bonner Elementary was being hit for the second time in a week, they rushed three squad cars to the school. As they were cordoning off the grounds, the burglars emerged — dashing out a front door and across a field. Norm Kenaiou, a veteran cop, caught one burglar struggling to hop a chain-link fence. The shock came when he spun his suspect around and saw two, doe-like eyes blinking back at him: the eyes of a terrified, 8-year-old girl. Should he read the child her Miranda rights? Handcuff her?...

The lamestream media told you: Gun deaths and gun violence are a national scourge that must be met with strict common-sense gun laws, to prevent rampant violence in society. Everyone is affected, so everyone must be subject to controls. The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: In an effort to prove the “news” myth paraphrased above, The Baltimore Sun, which features standard anti-gun-rights bias in its reporting, published an interactive map of homicides in the Baltimore area. Unfortunately for its inventors, the map only confirms what rights advocates have been declaring for decades — it’s not a gun problem, it’s a...

Imagine living in a city with the country's highest violent-crime rate and second-highest unemployment rate. As an added kicker, you need more Superfund dollars allocated to your city to clean up toxic-waste sites than just about any other metropolitan area.

CLEVELAND (AP) — Even by tough, urban-crime standards it was a grisly attack: Up to 15 people chased a man, then kicked and beat him to death on the street. Before police arrived, one attacker urinated on the victim's head. When the crime-hardened neighborhood awoke later that morning, two people reported a man lying on the pavement, his clothes being dragged off by his assailants. "You got a male being assaulted by 15 other guys. He's laying on the street," one 911 caller said. The April 27 attack on Charles Gooden Jr. happened in the most murder-ridden neighborhood in one...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry wants to build a big highway through the Lone Star State. No, make that a really big highway, as in a monstrously big highway. The exact route hasn't been determined. The mega-highway would run roughly from Laredo on the Rio Grande River through the Hill Country and the Piney Woods and then through Texarkana in that tiny portion of the state that borders Arkansas. Imagine for a moment if that thoroughfare would be pointed in the other direction - from the Valley, through the South Plains and then through the heart of the Panhandle, right past...

ABOUT 90 percent of the people shot in the city last year were African-American. While figures are unavailable, it is assumed by most that close to 100 percent of the perpetrators of these shootings were African-American. Almost all the firearms used in these shootings were obtained, possessed and carried illegally by those who perpetrated the shootings. If, as is constantly claimed, we MUST DO SOMETHING to stop this violence, then why not ban African-American residents of the city from owning handguns? The answer is that that is patently unfair and discriminatory. To judge an entire group as a problem and...

One of the unwritten codes for white teachers teaching in public schools has been that when it comes time to discipline a black student, the task should be left to another black teacher or administrator. This is to avoid the possibility that the student might mistake the discipline for just another display of the Eurocentric-White-Power-That-Rules-the-World-and-Keeps-All-People-of-Color-Enslaved-Hegemony. Sometimes, however, a white teacher needs to make requests in the classroom, like telling a poor, disadvantaged student to turn off the blaring music on his iPod. There are classes and workshops for teachers on how to do this “sensitively.” While being interviewed on National...

Fifty-four shootings in two weekends. Shot-up bodies recovered in groups of three and five. Is this Ramadi? Basra? No. Welcome to Chicago. After a recent outbreak of gun-related violence, Mayor Richard Daley is now pushed into supporting a plan by new Police Superintendent Jody Weis to arm 13,000 Chicago police officers with assault rifles. Depending on how many weapons are eventually deployed, this may develop into the largest militarization of police patrol officers in United States history. If the department arms 10,000 of their officers with M4s, the police will have 9,900 more assault rifles in Chicago than the U.S....

WATERBURY -- The first thing that Hill Street brings to mind probably isn't farming, but in a small way, Sue Pronovost is hoping to change that image, one vacant lot at a time. "This is our crown jewel," said Pronovost, director of Brass City Harvest, a newly organized agency focusing on growing food in the inner city. Pronovost, whose specialty is grant writing, became a convert to urban agriculture several years ago and is now trying to bring the city up to speed on a movement that has been having a big impact in tough urban areas. With the Crownbrook...

Gun violence that swept through swaths of Chicago over the weekend pressed into midweek Wednesday when five people were found slain in a South Side home. The afternoon crackle of gunfire in the Chatham neighborhood boosted a grim statistic: In fewer than seven days, the city has seen at least 40 shootings resulting in more than a dozen deaths. Many of the recent shootings have been attributed to ongoing gang feuds on the South and West Sides, but Chicago police spokeswoman Monique Bond said Wednesday's quintuple homicide may have been committed by "some known affiliate of the victims." Chief of...

CHICAGO -- The weekend has gotten off to an especially violent start, with no fewer than 20 people shot on the streets of Chicago, three of them fatally, from Friday afternoon through early Saturday. About 12:50 p.m. Friday, a girl was wounded in the arm when she and another person were shot at 2714 W. 66th St. A Chicago Lawn police sergeant said two people were shot and "one of the victims,'' a girl, was shot in the arm. The sergeant would not disclose the girl's age. The girl was taken to Holy Cross Hospital. About 3:30 p.m., a 15-year-old...

The District has the fourth-highest incarceration rate in the nation, according to a report that says jails nationwide are bursting at the seams even though crime is nearly as low as it has been in 30 years. The report by the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington-based group that focuses on what it considers an over-reliance on incarceration... In the District, 3,214 inmates are under city control at the D.C. jail and contract facilities. That is 553 people per 100,000 residents. Only Philadelphia and two Tennessee counties, Davidson and Shelby, lock up residents at a higher rate. The numbers do not...

Recently, Collin Powell's new group, America's Promise Alliance, issued a report (the link to it is at the bottom center of their home page.) from the EPE Research Center listing the large cities in this country which had the worst graduation rates. Shockingly, many of our biggest cities have graduation rates of less than 50% with the worst, Detroit, graduating only 25% of it's high schoolers. Given the perception that most cities are liberal leaning at best, I decided to see if there was any correlation between a city's liberalism and the results from this graduation rate study. Yes, I...

A mother's love can go only so far. It's time some young people in Milwaukee started to realize that. Lisa is a hardworking African-American mother who wanted only the best for her 16-year-old son. Consequently, she gave him whatever he wanted, including the latest high-tech toys. "You look in his room, he's got cable TV, DVR, DVD, PlayStation...everything," Lisa told me. Living on the north side of Milwaukee, Lisa knew her son was surrounded by temptation, including friends who constantly tried to talk him into doing things outside the law. Consequently, she kept in regular phone contact with him even...

The trouble began, Jolita Berry said, when she asked a girl in one of her art classes at Reginald F. Lewis High School to sit down. The student did not obey, coming closer to confront the teacher. "She said she's gonna bang me," Berry said. "I said, 'Back up, you're in my space. If you hit me, I'm gonna defend myself.'" But Berry, who is 30 and started her job teaching art at the Northeast Baltimore school in December, did not defend herself. The girl caught the teacher off guard as other students cheered her on and screamed, "Hit her!"...

Six days after she was sucker punched and beaten in her own Baltimore classroom, high school art teacher Jolita Berry still finds it almost impossible to watch the MySpace video of the attack. And she can’t make herself go back to work.... The attack happened last Friday morning in Berry’s classroom in Reginald F. Lewis High School in Baltimore. One of the girls in the class approached the 30-year-old teacher and got nose-to-nose with her and threatened her. ...The video, recorded on a cell phone by another student, picks up with Berry on the floor trying to defend herself while...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Seventeen of the nation's 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50 percent, with the lowest graduation rates reported in Detroit, Indianapolis and Cleveland, according to a report released Tuesday.

WASHINGTON - Seventeen of the nation's 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50 percent, with the lowest graduation rates reported in Detroit, Indianapolis and Cleveland, according to a report released Tuesday. The report, issued by America's Promise Alliance, found that about half of the students served by public school systems in the nation's largest cities receive diplomas. Students in suburban and rural public high schools were more likely to graduate than their counterparts in urban public high schools, the researchers said. Nationally, about 70 percent of U.S. students graduate on time with a regular diploma and...