The June issue of Extra! is out, and with it my article on how coverage of state budget battles back in the spring swept under the rug the question of how much of the budget crises were caused by past … Continue reading
Next up fo New York City after the defeat of a paid sick leave bill: a proposal to require decent wages for employees at development projects that get city subsidies. The battle lines are all too familiar: A worker-rights bill … Continue reading
The 1099 tax form mess continues, with both the House and Senate moving to pass repeal bills. Unfortunately, the Senate’s solution for filling the resulting revenue gap is to promise vaguely to find unneeded spending it can cut; the House’s … Continue reading
The Bloomberg Administration prides itself on basing its policies on hard data. But in the case of welfare policy, an analysis of new city documents (and conversations with city staffers) shows that it’s been picking and choosing which data to … Continue reading
You may have noticed the recent spate of articles on the Census Bureau’s decision to replace the old “poverty line” with a spate of different alternative measures of poverty, in hopes of eventually settling on one that makes sense. I’ve … Continue reading
A multi-year campaign to require that all employees in New York City receive paid sick time (which I first wrote about last fall) was quashed in October by city council speaker Christine Quinn. What happened, and what does it mean … Continue reading
As part of City Limits’ series on what New York is getting itself in for with its next governor, I look at Carl Paladino and Andrew Cuomo’s job-development plans (but mostly Cuomo’s, because Paladino had to leave the story early … Continue reading
I’m not sure exactly why NPR.org is running content from National Review Online, but if they’re all as unintentionally funny as this one, I’m all in favor of it. In today’s story, Michael Tanner of the arch-libertarian Cato Institute (one … Continue reading
More light, and murk, shed on the legality of Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed food-stamp soda ban: In this corner: Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to grant New York City a two-year waiver to ban the … Continue reading
Lots of ink spilled today about Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed ban on food stamps being used to buy soda, but few have asked: Can he legally do it, and should he? If you’ve been remotely awake today (or at least clicking … Continue reading