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This means only two officers will be added to patrol the streets. This is not even one officer per shift. They now have a chief, two assistant chiefs, two lieutenants and five or six sergeants to supervise about four or five patrol officers per shift. This is typical of Mayor Stan Schaeffer's administration, which continues to add employees to the public dole without benefiting the taxpayers. About that ticket I'm writing about the handicapped parking spaces. I am handicapped. Recently I was at a local tavern. There is a parking lot across the street with a handicapped parking space. We had to park on the street in a loading zone in front of a business that was closed because a car was parked in the handicapped space illegally. When we left the bar, we had a $5 parking ticket on our car.
Fred's Failure
I tend to trust Omar more than noted Iraq expert Robert Reich, who was confidently assuring everyone on Stephanopoulos's show today that the surge would fail. ... I'm not saying Reich won't turn out to be right. But I'll believe it when Omar sees it. He's not seeing it yet. ... [via Insta] **--This was unfortunately an operation led by Ahmed Chalabi, of whom Omar is appropriately skeptical. ..10:49 P.M. link Hillary is so not inevitable! Jon Chait and Jim Geraghty make the point. Chait's argument is especially relentless. Sample: The question is: Which candidate is more likely to benefit from endless hours of speechifying, hand-shaking, and town hall meetings? There's no reason to think the answer will be Clinton. While she may be just as smart as--and more experienced than--Edwards and Obama, she is an average orator, while Edwards is a very good one and Obama is a brilliant one.
Fed's rate cuts ignite a rush to refinance
A positive note in the chorus of bad economic news sounds loudly, like a call to arms. Or, as happened after the Federal Reserve dropped short-term interest rates three-quarters of a percentage point Tuesday, a race to refinance. The refinancing frenzy began right after the Fed's announcement, local brokers and bankers reported. The 10-year Treasury bond rates on which fixed mortgages are based also fell, and interest rates for 30-year loans plunged as far as 5.125 percent, the lowest level since spring 2004. On Jan. 1, the 30-year fixed rate averaged 6.07 percent; it has ranged between 6 percent and 6.5 percent for two years. Though the number of refinancing applications will not be available until Wednesday from the Mortgage Bankers Association, newspaper and television accounts from Bangor, Maine, to Los Angeles described a boom in activity.
Top Nuke Group to Meet in Cairo
While Egypt discusses the fall-out from Mubarak's announcement and what it means for the country's economic future, debate raged on at the United Nations over North Korea and Iran's nuclear activities. North Korea is still weathering a storm of criticism for its nuclear weapons test on October 9 that ultimately resulted in a set of strict sanctions from the United Nations. Iran, meanwhile, is not completely out of the woods — it faces the possibility of similar sanctions if it fails to co-operate with international nuclear inspectors. In light of these events, it seems the timing and location of the Pugwash conference couldn't be better. Pugwash council member Dr. Mohamed Kadry Said, a military and technology expert at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, lobbied hard for the conference to be held in Cairo, believing that the time is right.
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