Free Republic

Yesterday's election showed many cracks developing in the alliance that put the Democrats into power just one year ago. Independent voters were the most obvious but there were others, while still voting democratic young and urban voters were not motivated to come out for Obama's candidates, especially in New Jersey the state where the POTUS invested the most time and political capital. The other group shifting away from the Obama coalition is suburbia. Already facing growing property taxes, they see a federal government with no inclination to curb spending and the higher taxes the deficits will bring. According to Karl...

Cal Professor John Ogbu thinks he knows why rich black kids are failing in school. Nobody wants to hear it. The black parents wanted an explanation. Doctors, lawyers, judges, and insurance brokers, many had come to the upscale Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights specifically because of its stellar school district. They expected their children to succeed academically, but most were performing poorly. African-American students were lagging far behind their white classmates in every measure of academic success: grade-point average, standardized test scores, and enrollment in advanced-placement courses. On average, black students earned a 1.9 GPA while their white counterparts held...

The downturn accomplished what a generation of designers and planners could not: it has turned back the tide of suburban sprawl. In the wake of the foreclosure crisis many new subdivisions are left half built and more established suburbs face abandonment. Cul-de-sac neighborhoods once filled with the sound of backyard barbecues and playing children are falling silent. Communities like Elk Grove, Calif., and Windy Ridge, N.C., are slowly turning into ghost towns with overgrown lawns, vacant strip malls and squatters camping in empty homes. In Cleveland alone, one of every 13 houses is now vacant, according to an article published...

The downturn has accomplished what a generation of designers and planners could not: it has turned back the tide of suburban sprawl. In the wake of the foreclosure crisis many new subdivisions are left half built and more established suburbs face abandonment. Cul-de-sac neighborhoods once filled with the sound of backyard barbecues and playing children are falling silent. Communities like Elk Grove, Calif., and Windy Ridge, N.C., are slowly turning into ghost towns with overgrown lawns, vacant strip malls and squatters camping in empty homes.

Rent car in suburbs, pay Chicago? 8% TAX | Enterprise sues city over attempt to force collection February 24, 2009 BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter How would you like to rent a car in Waukegan or St. Charles, only to be slapped with the 8 percent "transaction tax" that applies to Chicago car rentals? Brace yourself. With a burgeoning $50.5 million budget gap, Chicago is reaching into suburban pockets. And Enterprise Rent-a-Car has filed a lawsuit challenging the Daley administration's effort to collect the tax from drivers who rent cars in the suburbs. » Click to enlarge image Enterprise...

Poor Kate Winslet she’s had to appear in two films this year which portray her as living in a concentration camp. In one it was literal–in The Reader she was a concentration camp guard, although we don’t see her locking women and children into a burning church so as to “keep order”; we only see her after the war in prison, learning that reading is fun! (see my further thoughts about “The Worst Holocaust Movie Ever Made” [1] here. But in Revolutionary Road her husband Sam Mendes, the British director, portrays her as the prisoner of what Mendes clearly views...

The Suburbs -- Hollywood Image and Mission Reality Posted: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 at 4:34 am ET America is a nation transformed by demographics. Flash back just over a century and a majority of Americans live on farms and in rural settings. Today, a clear majority of Americans live in metropolitan settings. Cities are now surrounded by vast rings of settlements and clusters known as suburbs -- and Hollywood doesn't like it. Something significant is represented in Hollywood's depiction of the suburbs as soul-killing enclaves of those unwilling to brave the "authentic" culture of the city itself. A current example...

"Revolutionary Road," based on Richard Yates's 1961 novel of the same name, is the latest entry in a long stream of art that portrays the American suburbs as the physical correlative to spiritual and mental death.

Head Strong: Ignoring suburbs doomed the GOP To win Pa., it must appeal to moderates. By Michael Smerconish - Inquirer Inquirer Currents Columnist If retail politicking alone determined the election outcome in Pennsylvania, McCain-Palin would have won in a landslide. Speaking on MSNBC election night, Gov. Rendell joked that the GOP ticket had spent so much time in the state that he was thinking of assessing them with a state income tax.

So, zero disdains suburban America like the msm types so often and readily do? This shouldn't surprise anyone as he is a product of the urban mindset. The one thing that zero and his campaign are missing is that they can't win this election with just the urban vote. And with Mac, with all of his flaws, will bring out suburban voters like crazy. And, with SarahPower, we draw rural voters out like no one has since Ronaldus Magnus.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Legal Newsline)-A Wall Street Journal opinion article that claimed California Attorney General Jerry Brown had waged "war on the suburbs" continues to reverberate around rural and suburban towns in California. Critics of Brown's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow urban sprawl have another target, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who rekindled the debate when he signed pro-environmental bills earlier this month. Editors at the Sun-Herald in rural Colusa, Calif., which lies 90 minutes north of Sacramento, became the latest to rebuke the Republican governor for acting too much like the Democratic attorney general. "In his zeal to battle...

"As of now, polls suggest McCain, who lagged in the suburbs into the summer, has pushed back some of the Democratic momentum. He now enjoys, according to the latest Wall Street Journal poll, a 10-point edge among suburban voters, not far from what Bush garnered in those parts of the swing states. If McCain can combine this suburban group with his rural and small-town base, he could be in striking distance of staging an upset." Suburbs will decide the election By: Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill Excerpts from: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/14082.html "Suburbs may not have cooked up the mortgage crisis, but they...

Reinventing America I am not known as an optimist. I am more than willing to point out that the glass is half-empty. So my friends were not surprised when, during the general euphoria over the collapse of the former Soviet Union in the early 90's, I said, “We are looking into our own future, 10 or 15 years from now.” Of course, the statement seemed absurd. The West had “won” the Cold War, and America was the world's only super-power. International hegemony was in sight, and there were no credible opponents. The economy was booming, and the internet revolution was...

Former Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown is waging war on California suburbs because of global warming, says Joel Kotkin, a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. Brown is concerned about the alleged environmental damage caused by the suburbs. He wants to compel residents to move to city centers or to high-density developments clustered near mass transit lines: • Brown has threatened to file suit against municipalities that shun high-density housing in favor of building new suburban single-family homes, on the grounds that they will pollute the environment. • He is also backing controversial legislation -- Senate bill 375 --...

The tenets of suburban life are the oxygen in the economic bloodstream, and the nation is suffering hypoxia. The reason a lot of folks think we're just getting warmed up on an economic swoon is that the global economy has neatly garroted all the drivers that make suburbs flourish. ...America in the early 2000s was a frothy brew of low inflation and cheap houses financed by what we'd later find out were mortgages handed out like those little dum-dum lollipops at the dentist; everybody got one no matter how bad their teeth. Nothing percolates GDP like the need to fill...

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...

LEESBURG, Virginia (Reuters) - Million-dollar fixer-upper for sale: five bedrooms, four baths, three-car garage, cavernous living room. Big holes above fireplace where flat-screen TV used to hang. The U.S. housing crisis has come to McMansion country. Just as the foreclosure crisis has hollowed out poorer neighborhoods, "for sale" signs are sprouting in upscale developments so new they don't show up on GPS navigation screens. Poor people weren't the only ones who took out risky, high-interest loans during the housing boom. The sharp increase in housing costs -- and the desire to live in brand-new, spacious houses with modern features --...

For the first time, the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation has adopted a policy in favor of high-density housing developments in rural areas to preserve farmland.But the state's largest organization of farmers, with 43,000 member families, also recommended that the current power of cities and villages to impose their zoning regulations three miles outside their borders be severely cut back. The policies, which set the farm bureau's legislative priorities for next year, were approved by 250 delegates representing members of the 61 county chapters around the state. Paul Zimmerman, executive director of public affairs for the farm bureau, said preservation of...

GREENWICH, Conn. -- You know you're in a different kind of town when the signs against drunk driving show a line drawn through a Martini glass to which the artist thoughtfully added a stirrer. Greenwich, Conn., is one such town. Greenwich is home to billionaire hedge-fund managers, private-equity kings and corporate chieftains, as well as ordinary multi-multimillionaires. Interviewing people here requires leaving phone messages with au pairs and catching folks between board meetings. You'd think that Greenwich would be solid Bush-loving turf -- what with all those tax cuts for the rich. It is not. The voters are roughly 40...

Finally the grass is greener on my side of the fence. I've spent the past year converting my lawn to organic care. After some early setbacks, my lawn looks pretty great, and the only herbicide I've used is an all-natural corn substance that's safe enough for my dog to eat. The same scene is playing out in yards around the country -- but it's not a peaceful transition. As the organic lawn movement grows, so are tensions in some communities. The latest front is over whether lawn-care methods are the horticultural equivalent of secondhand smoke: a choice that affects the...

Threat to Sarkozy as suburbs prepare to vote By Henry Samuel in Mantes-La-Jolie Last Updated: 1:11am BST 09/04/2007 Election fever is gripping the Val-Fourre housing estate in Mantes-la-Jolie, west of Paris, often listed as one of the most violent in France. Like many of the country's most troubled suburbs, locals here, who in the past might have failed to vote out of a sense of marginalisation, have been registering to vote in this month's presidential elections in record numbers. Since the banlieues - suburbs - exploded into riots in autumn 2005 over the death of two teenagers of immigrant origin...

Libertarians could stir fresh debate -------------------- Raymond J. Keating Too many Democrats and Republicans on Long Island are indistinguishable on too many issues, from education and the environment to housing and taxes. Call them Democrats and Republicans, or Depublicans and Republicrats; it doesn't matter. They're interchangeable. ... The big question is: Can Libertarians ever have a political impact around here? Last week, I spoke with Richard Cooper,...state party chairman... Regarding the ever-popular open-space preservation movement, Cooper labeled it "unspeakably arrogant."... Libertarians locally and across the nation also have fought for property rights by challenging eminent-domain abuses. On the related topic...

Talk of high property taxes and fraud in the administration probably cause you to think of issues on Capitol Hill. Well, not in this case. These are two major problems facing suburban school systems nationwide. According to a recent Yankee Institute of Public Policy study, the cost of suburban schools has risen far beyond the rate of inflation because of an opportunistic relationship between parents and the public educators they are supposed to be regulating. Parent PTA members and school board members can vote on issues that directly affect their families, such as: subsidized trips abroad, full paid sabbaticals for...

YAPHANK, N.Y., Sept. 1 — In the musical revue “Yip Yip Yaphank,” based on his time as an Army trainee here during World War I, Irving Berlin wrote with uncanny augury about what the repeated exposure to sudden loud noises can do to a person’s otherwise good nature. “I’ll amputate his reveille/and step upon it heavily,” Mr. Irving wrote about the Army bugler in “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning,” the most famous song from his revue. The Army’s training camp here, Camp Upton, is gone, as is Mr. Berlin, but the spirit of jangled nerves...

It's hardly news that the town-planning fashion called "new urbanism" -- with its emphasis on gracious, walkable boulevards and old-fashioned streetscapes -- is taking firm root in suburbs across North America. Of more interest, however, are the surprising things that happen when this philosophy hits the ground. Take Cathedraltown, a 2,000-unit residential project now under construction in the Toronto suburb of Markham. Like U.S. developments executed under the rubric of new urbanism, Cathedraltown intends to defy monotonous sprawl and feature a mix of homes and shops, live/work spaces and offices, all within walking distance of each other. It's to be...

When a high-cost commute reaches the point of no-return, home buyers will start finding houses closer to work. In fact, some already are. ---------- Rising fuel costs are being blamed for everything from soaring utility costs to lower retail sales and higher airline tickets. And now, experts say high gas prices could reshape U.S. cities. "Most analysts believe that crude oil prices in the $50s and $60s will be with us for some time," says Stuart Gabriel, director of the Lusk Center, a think tank at the University of Southern California devoted to studying real estate forces and trends. There's...

Rising fuel costs are being blamed for everything from soaring utility costs to lower retail sales and higher airline tickets. And now, experts say high gas prices could reshape U.S. cities. "Most analysts believe that crude oil prices in the $50s and $60s will be with us for some time," says Stuart Gabriel, director of the Lusk Center, a think tank at the University of Southern California devoted to studying real estate forces and trends. There's even talk of crude hitting $100 per barrel -- or 10 times what it sold for in the summer of 2005. Once the realization...

Laura Backe didn’t calculate that she was altering the political landscape of suburban Philadelphia when she switched her voter registration from Republican to independent. All she knew was that after growing up in "a very Republican household," after having joined the Young Republicans in college, she felt her party was drifting too far right. "The radical right is really turning me off," the mother of three said from her home in Wayne. Her switch, along with that of thousands of other Republicans in recent years, has helped to loosen the GOP grip on Philadelphia’s four suburban counties. Now, for the...

Sprawl wasn't always a dirty word. In the post-World War II period, the suburbs were considered the best of all worlds. They offered people the option of living close to the jobs and entertainment of the cities, while still owning a large house, on a quiet, clean street, with few neighbours, surrounded by green space. As incomes rose and car manufacturers produced affordable models, more people discovered the joys of driving in their own car, instead of waiting for a crowded bus. But the rosy glow of sprawling suburban life has been gone for quite a while. The more common...

I remember when I first drove through Collin County several years ago and thought, "Why do all these people live so far away?" It took me a while to realize that these crazy people out in the sticks didn't live far away – not far away from the things that mattered to them: their churches, their shopping centers, their favorite restaurants and even their jobs. Now that I live in East Dallas and work downtown, I run into the very kind of naïve, shallow thinking I was guilty of when I first experienced Collin County. Can you believe they are...

Police injured as violence flares in suburbs of Paris By Colin Randall in Paris (Filed: 31/05/2006) At least 100 youths, many brandishing baseball bats, clashed with police in a new outbreak of violence in the same Parisian suburbs in which nationwide rioting started last autumn. The disturbances, which were described as "violent and intense" and left several policemen injured, extended from late on Monday night into the early hours yesterday. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets after coming under attack, while Xavier Lemoine, the centre-Right mayor of Montfermeil, one of two affected suburbs, was left fearing for the lives...

Sprinklers, Scuddlers, Soccer Moms, & Sheriffs - by Gil Lackey Gil battles wits with urbanized members of family cervidae "Fat, fearless, and stupid. You could just sit on my back porch sipping a beer and score every time. Easy as a TV Guide crossword." No. I'm not giving you the skinny on my former girlfriends. It's the scouting report I commonly hear on urban whitetails. It seems like every time I'm bemoaning a hunt with no deer sightings, one of my buddies snickers at me because his back yard is crawling with cud-chewing critters. "Man, you must be a pitiful...

Anger remains in French suburbs By Paul Henley BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents Three months on from the riots which tore through the heart of France, Paul Henley hears worrying evidence that anger and resentment remain in the suburbs. October's violence spread quickly through the suburbs of Paris The task of meeting and interviewing young people from the Paris suburbs who had been involved in the infamous riots had struck me as a difficult one. I had imagined several days of hanging around grim housing estates trying to work my way into the confidence of defensive, jaded and probably monosyllabic...

Across the United States, an unprecedented acceleration in suburban sprawl is prompting concerns about the environment, traffic, health and damage to rural communities, but opponents appear powerless to stop the process because of the economic development and profits it generates. Sprawl, defined as the unplanned, uncontrolled expansion of urban areas beyond their fringes, has greatly accelerated over the past 25 years, spurred by low mortgage interest rates and aggressive developers. According to the National Resources Inventory, about 34 million acres -- an area the size of Illinois -- were converted to developed uses between 1982 and 2001. Development in the...

A well-made, raised-relief map is a beautiful thing. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? It's a map mode of molded plastic, so that mountains protrude into your personal space. This is handy when you are riding your bicycle across America. You can see where the tough climbs will be. Avoid Gunnison, Colo. My map of the 48 states is made by Kistler Graphics Inc. in Denver. Not only the texture but also the colors are delightful: a rich mix of tans, greens and blues. The artist uses one other color, yellow, to mark urban areas. I think about...

Suburban families are really busy. They are working to support McMansions, impeccable yards, expensive and immaculately cleaned and polished automobiles, expensive social functions and clubs, gym memberships, day spa hair nail/pedicure, tanning, waxing, and massage expenses, housekeepers and landscapers, shopping excursions, and youth sports. They are wrapped up, so to speak, in image cults, which literally take every second of every day. Meanwhile, in the land of facts and truth, their nation dies off in hunks. Older citizens realize this. So do many citizens under the age of 25, but the 30 to mid-40-somethings are largely non-functioning citizens. They are...

FOR many New York City families, January is the cruelest month. It is a time to get seriously claustrophobic in an apartment stocked with young children and the vast plastic undergrowth in which they thrive. ...... But those plotting a hasty exit to the suburbs (the space! the schools! the space!) may want to consider the experience of others who went before them, only to double back within a year. ....... "I'm never leaving the city again; I'm terrified of leaving the city," said Anna Hillen, 42, summing up the prevailing sentiment among the repatriates interviewed for this article. Ms....

Mark Kirk is a worried Republican who represents a House district in the suburbs north of Chicago. In the 1960s, the seat was held by a young Republican named Donald Rumsfeld, now defense secretary. Once safely Republican, the district has been drifting Democratic for years. The last Republican presidential candidate to win the district was George Bush Senior in 1992. George W. Bush lost there by four percentage points in 2000, by six in 2004. In races for state and local offices as well, Democrats now dominate. Kirk, a 46--year--old moderate, has had little trouble holding his congressional seat. He...

Young, single people usually love the excitement of big cities, from the vibrant nightlife to the noisiness and frenzied pace of urban existence. They love it so much they're willing to pay a stiff price for cramped quarters and communal living. For some, the price is getting too steep. The draw of the bright lights and big cities is dimming now that housing costs have hit exorbitant heights. Some who grew up fantasizing about life in the "big city" are settling in less glamorous cities and even suburbs. "For a lot of young people, especially growing up in the Northeast,...

France calls in the CRS to garrison suburbs By Henry Samuel (Filed: 14/11/2005) France's feared riot police, the CRS, is to be garrisoned in riot-hit suburbs. The CRS: ‘It will be a ... police force to secure and patrol districts’ The announcement came yesterday as the regular police threatened action over the detention of an officer after a young man appeared to have been hit and kicked by two policemen in a Paris suburb. A third of France's 15,000 riot police, whose brutal reputation comes from its violent repression of student-worker protests in May 1968, will remain in the country's...

Rioting Spreads to 20 Towns Around Paris By JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press Writer Thu Nov 3, 2:55 PM ETAULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, France - Rampaging youths shot at police and firefighters Thursday after burning car dealerships and public buses and hurling rocks at commuter trains, as eight days of riots over poor conditions in Paris-area housing projects spread to 20 towns. Youths ignored an appeal for calm from President Jacques Chirac, whose government worked feverishly to fend off a political crisis amid criticism that it has ignored problems in neighborhoods heavily populated by first- and second-generation North African and Muslim immigrants.

The evidence of the previous night's trouble is clear to see on the Bosquets estate. A burnt-out van in Clichy-sous-Bois Burnt-out vehicles and debris remain on Clichy's streets Among the cars parked outside one block of flats are two burnt-out vehicles and small piles of debris. Rocks and stones are strewn across the street. There is no sign of any security presence and people are shopping and chatting as on any normal day. It does not take long to get a sense of the hostility some feel towards the police. A driver pulls up in front of the market, his...

For years, school choice seemed stalled on a freeway at the edge of town. Urban voucher programs in Cleveland and Milwaukee were successful. But only the involvement of middle-class suburbs will trigger the market revolution that reformers seek, and the suburbs presented an unassailable front. Statewide ballot measures in favor of vouchers lost big in California and Michigan in 2000. Proposals to expand education tax credits in Minnesota and Arizona died, and Ohio's permanent "pilot" program remained strictly limited to the City of Cleveland. The cause seemed hopeless. Suburbanites found school choice -- like many city customs -- appealing from...

The white populations of the District, Arlington and Alexandria have grown this decade even as the region's outer counties have grown more diverse, according to new census estimates to be released today that underscore how the area's soaring housing prices and job sprawl are reshaping its racial and ethnic dynamics. The city and those close-in Virginia suburbs had higher percentages of non-Hispanic white residents in 2004 than in 2000, a reversal of past trends, the estimates say. Minority groups grew more slowly than in the past, or declined. In the District, Arlington and Alexandria, whites became a larger share of...

SIMSBURY, Conn. - A 300-pound male black bear caused a commotion when it ran near several businesses before being tranquilized and relocated by state officials. The bear darted between buildings and across parking lots along Route 44 and Simsbury Commons for three hours on Thursday afternoon, surprising shoppers who gathered behind police tape with cameras and cell phones to catch a glimpse. A team from the state Department of Environmental Protection tranquilized the animal and released it about 10 miles away in the Nepaug State Forest. Onlookers got a last peek at the bear when it popped in and out...

.....Mike Witkowski, 44, of Phoenix in Baltimore County, a businessman who responded to the poll, said city politicians have catered to their constituents for decades by focusing on what they can give to them. "It doesn't empower them," he said. "Less government is better than more government." City and suburban voters agree by wide margins that slot machine gambling should return to Maryland, to provide more revenue and to capture Maryland money going to gambling in nearby states. But that issue stands alone. The poll confirms what several elections have shown: Baltimore residents' views are often closer to those of...

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...

No one familiar with Iran’s record of broken promises on its hidden nuclear weapons program will be surprised by the allegations leveled against Tehran this week. On Wednesday, November 17, outgoing US secretary of state Colin Powell said to reporters during a South American tour: US has intelligence that Iran is working to adapt missiles for the delivery of nuclear weapons. “I have seen information that they not only have the missiles but are working hard to put the two together.” The highly classified, unverified information Powell referred to was described in more detail by the Washington Post the next...

Suburban counties that haven't swung Republican in more than two decades helped Dino Rossi finish ahead in Washington's suspenseful race for governor. He won by more than 6,000 votes in Snohomish County and more than 12,000 in Pierce County -- places Democratic gubernatorial candidates have dominated in every election since 1980. Democrat Christine Gregoire easily took populous King County by more than 150,000 votes, and led in left-leaning counties such as Thurston, Grays Harbor, Cowlitz and Whatcom. But Rossi's 31-county winning streak fell only eight short of a statewide sweep. That was no accident. Since being elected as state Republican...

The Tenth Dems knew they were gaining ground when a Republican spy showed up. The mole attended a March meet-up in Lake County of John Kerry supporters, sponsored by the Tenth Dems, a group of 10th Congressional District Democrats. On a conservative Illinois political Web site later that same night, the spy reported back. More than 40 "eager" volunteers attended, the mole wrote. They even collected checks written out to "John Kerry for President." "If we could only get something this effective ... going for our candidates," the writer mused. The Republicans were right to be worried, and a bit...