URGENT: HHR readers in NYC, there is a Special election today. Please help send an urban conservative candidate ( Bob Turner) to Congress.

Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman argued for the modern concept of vouchers in the 1950s, stating that competition would improve schools and cost efficiency. In Maine, the geographic layout is such that, building public schools was not feasible. Instead they relied on the established parochial schools. Friedmans’s argument is the backbone of the conservative movement in favor of offering education choice to urban youth.

Looking at the data from the New Jersey Dept of Education we see Urban enrollment diminishing as children get older; when, however you look at suburban school district’s enrollment, it stays the same throughout. This is ample evidence that student retention is those areas are subpar. Some suburban areas actually enroll more students in 12th grade than they did in 1st and 2nd grade.

Wonder why Urban public schools don’t do so well? Well I do. I asked a few teachers, some from charter schools, others from public schools. Teacher pay was one of the biggest complaints. Individuals switched from public to charter schools for better pay, and because charter schools had more responsive administration, responsive in terms of the needs of the pupils.

I believe in low, flat taxes for all, and relative, general deregulation to encourage economic liberty, competition, and success. I view the far left fiscal ideologies of Socialism, Communism, and its supportive and practicing heads of state worldwide as the Devil really, and the very anti thesis of all that is free, good, and actually, really fair. I’ve seen the destruction the fiscally left policies of the Democrat Party (the same party of slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, Robert Byrd, DADT, and DOMA) cause.

I believe that inner city entrepreneurship, fostered by the fiscally right, GOP policies for mentioned, will help get my fellow, proud, minorities off this Jackass welfare dependency, get us outta the ghetto, and put them on the track to real, prosperous futures. Like may rap and R&B stars have done.

My foreign policy, formed after I was awakened on 9/11, consists of utterly destroying any and all hidden, growing, and festering threats to our great nation’s national security, and strategic interests worldwide, including through pre-emptive military action if such evidence deems it necessary. Yes I believe in diplomacy, but also believe that it’s really, only effective when backed up by powerful military force. My family has been U.S. military dating back to the Civil War, and I’m former Navy myself. I will always, strongly, proudly, and from the bottom of my heart support our heroes in uniform.

I’m quite familiar with Detroit. I’ve been there many times. I was born in Sandusky, Ohio, and I can see that many Detroiters are familiar with my hometown, too, as evidenced by the license plates of the cars snaking their way along the roads leading to Cedar Point.

Ohio has a Rust Belt problem, too. On two occasions (2002 and 2004) I was the Republican candidate for state representative in a portion of Ohio’s Rust Belt, encompassing Lorain, Oberlin, parts of Elyria, and the vicinity. I didn’t win the elections, as one would expect in such Democrat bastions, but I had a chance to think long and hard about remedies for Rust Belt decay as I drew up my own economic development plans for the district I hoped to represent.

It would take a book to detail each facet of what I envisioned, and even my own blog, to date, contains only a fraction of my proposals, so I don’t plan to elaborate much within this thread (it’s already a wall of text, as it is), but my approach to urban renewal differs from most other approaches I’ve come across. My approach is different because my assessment of the causes of the decay are different. While I readily agree that Detroit’s economy must be diversified to counter the prevailing trend, I do not think that the auto industry is at the root of the decay at all. Attitudes are at the root of the decay.

The problem with business subsidies is that while they may benefit the targeted business and entice it to locate its operations within the county, they harm existing business and other taxpayers. Such policies do not generate net benefits for a city. Instead they simply hurt some and help others.

Therefore, there’s no such thing as a free subsidy. When a city decides to use tax dollars to entice a new company to set up shop in a community, that money has to come from somewhere. Local businesses and their employees must pay more in taxes and other costs to support the subsidized industry. This is why such programs are referred to as corporate welfare. Since higher taxes are an added cost of doing business, these subsidies depress economic growth for those businesses not receiving the subsidy. In reality the subsidies end up being a mechanism for transferring wealth from existing businesses to the subsidized businesses and the people who work for them.

Conservative ideas are responsible for the two great urban-policy successes of the last quarter-century: the breathtaking drops in crime and in welfare dependency since the early 1990s.

Twenty years ago, the Manhattan Institute launched City Journal—the only quarterly to focus on cities and urban life—as an intellectual and journalistic response to New York City’s downward spiral and to the illness of the American city generally

In one brief note: I would like to state that this article is not intended to discourage anyone from impacting their communities, and I look forward to working with anyone that believes in achieving the annexation of dependency within our urban and surrounding communities. For those who may take offense, then this article may very well be a reflection of character; however for others, this article can and should serve as a challenge to be unique, not by titles, but by deeds. In the end, a Conservative can impact any structured society; however, an Urban Conservative can only limit his or herself to the urban community. One should not need to call himself “urban” to build up the urban community, but one cannot call himself “urban” and expect to transcend across all environments. This is not an attack, but a challenge!

With respect to my friends within the urban community who consider themselves “Urban-Conservatives,” I am writing this article in response to an unfair criticism that was directed against me and others, who reside in an urban community but refuse to identify ourselves as urban conservatives. Often, people who hyphenate a term, do so in the hopes to gain a distinction from the core in which their adjective is connected.

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve been fascinated with transportation. Airports, train stations, subway platforms, you name it, I’ve had a fascination with it.

Who killed Detroit? Why did this once-mighty city fall so much lower than Philadelphia, another capital of heavy industry? Why has it failed to recover from the loss of industry in the way that Pittsburgh and even to some extent Cleveland have done? I pondered these questions in this space a few months ago. A friend recommended Thomas Sugrue’s Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit as the answer to my questions.

The book arrived covered in admiring blurbs from academic reviewers, plus this from the Detroit Free Press’ review: “The most interesting, informative, and provocative book on modern Detroit.” It had won a string of prizes, culminating in the Bancroft prize in history in 1998.

Recently, a Conservative Police Officer came banging on my door asking me to drop the term “Urban” because it means “Black”—or else he’d lock me up!

Cleveland’s public schools are failing to prepare students for their futures and as a result, all parents who can afford to have been fleeing to the suburbs for decades.

Governor Palin is an ethnic escapist dream where simple rural girls best slick urban intellectuals.

Some master mind boggler wove a magic spell over Inner City America and took a culture that produced dignity against all odds and replaced it with what we see on a daily basis. If I could find him I’d give him an exorcism courtesy of my size 15 foot!

by Nadra Enzi Quick, name one community that has prospered by allowing its least intelligent, least moral segment to take control of its streets? Those who quickly came up with, “None!” have addressed where I feel inner city America is headed- at warp speed! The sub-culture that mass produces the twisted parodies of human functioning [...]