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April 30, 2023/ Francis Menton Readers here frequently express some combination of amazement or sympathy to me about my living in Manhattan. The news is filled with reports of spiking crime in our major cities, most especially in New York. Am I not in constant danger? How do I dare to go outside, particularly at night? It is true that there has been some substantial increase in crime in my area (Greenwich Village), particularly in shoplifting. This increase has followed some recent criminal justice “reforms,” notably limitations on the use of bail requirements to hold accused criminals pending trial. However,...

Conservative economists Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore are predicting a new mass exodus of wealth from New York and California because of the new tax law. But academics who have studied taxes and migration call the forecast "pure nonsense."In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal headlined "So Long, California. Sayonara, New York," Laffer and Moore (who have both advised President Donald Trump) say the new tax bill will cause a net 800,000 people to move out of California and New York over the next three years.The tax changes limit the deduction of state and local taxes to $10,000, so...

Posted on August 20, 2011 by Anthony Watts Urban areas with at least one million inhabitants in 2006. 3% of the world's population lived in cities. Image via WikipediaFrom Yale UniversityGrowth of cities endangers global environmentNew Haven, Conn.—The explosive growth of cities worldwide over the next two decades poses significant risks to people and the global environment, according to a meta-analysis published today in PlosOne.Researchers from Yale, Arizona State, Texas A&M and Stanford predict that by 2030 urban areas will expand by 590,000 square miles—nearly the size of Mongolia—to accommodate the needs of 1.47 billion more people living in urban...

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The Mayor has been jailed do to violating the terms of his bond. He went to Windsor without permission and the Judge Giles had him sent to jail

The face of New York City and its suburbs has changed profoundly since the start of the 21st century. According to census figures released yesterday, Manhattan was the only county in the city and nearby suburbs to register a significant increase of non-Hispanic white residents from April 1, 2000, to July 1, 2005. But the influx of young people priced out of Manhattan also helped produce a gain of whites in Brooklyn in the same period — a tiny number, yet apparently the first such mid-decade increase in years. Between 2000 and 2005, the number of white residents dropped by...

Voters in 3 major cities shut out Conservatives Updated Tue. Jan. 24 2006 5:46 PM ET CTV.ca News Staff With Stephen Harper prepared to become Canada's next prime minister, the political sun is assuredly rising in the West. "The West has wanted in; The West is in now," said the prime minister-designate in his victory speech after being awarded a slim minority Conservative government on Monday night. But Harper failed to win over any voters in the major urban centres of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, which has city officials concerned they will have no voice to address their concerns at...

WHICH American communities pay the highest price for the war in Iraq? A look at the demographics of soldiers killed reveals that Iraq is not the war of any one race or region. Rather, it is rural America's war. Altogether, a nearly equal percentage of Americans aged 18 to 54 live in counties with a million or more inhabitants as live in counties of 100,000 or fewer. And yet, of the soldiers who have died in Iraq, 342 came from densely populated counties while 536 came from smaller ones. Derived from Pentagon and census data, this chart shows the Iraqi...

The war to the death against big estates decreed by President Chávez in the Poliedro put paid to the illusions held by many who still believed that the government was going to act rationally and within the confines of the law. ... This Commission will have a “constitutional mandate” to incorporate the land it considers “idle, abandoned or underused” into “the productive process of the country,” according to the Decree on the Reorganization of the Ownership and Use of Land Suitable for Agricultural Use. The land so considered will be handed over to groups of the population and organized communities...

GOP on the Edge The Los Angeles Times notes an interesting trend in political demographics: In this month's election, President Bush carried 97 of the nation's 100 fastest-growing counties, most of them "exurban" communities that are rapidly transforming farmland into subdivisions and shopping malls on the periphery of major metropolitan areas. . . These growing areas, filled largely with younger families fleeing urban centers in search of affordable homes, are providing the GOP a foothold in blue Democratic-leaning states and solidifying the party's control over red Republican-leaning states. Many agree that in these high-growth communities, as in much of the...