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Residents in Los Angeles with home-based business received letters from the Office of Finance that said, “The following amounts are due and payable immediately: $4,363.81.”

People who work as independent contractors and had failed to register their businesses with the city’s tax and permit division by Feb. 28 received the letters in March.  read more »

You could hear it in their voices – dejection, resignation and anger. Late last week, the National Weather Service announced a second crest of the Red River of the North, with predictions of a 75 percent chance the Red would crest at 41 feet and a 25 percent chance it will hit 42.8 feet in the second half of April. Not good for a community that through hard work and personal and community sacrifice averted a major disaster by continuing to sandbag, dike and fight an epic flood while not caving to a suggested mandatory evacuation of the community.  read more »

Our colleague and frequent NewGeography contributor Wendell Cox of Demographia.com recently released the latest edition of his World Urban Areas and Population Projections publication.

This 5th comprehensive edition includes:  read more »

Ranking of the largest world urban areas (over 2,000,000 population).

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The suburbs, generally a haven for luxury SUVs, regimented lawn sprinkling, and keep-up-with-the-Jones purchases, are not often considered the front-runner in environmentally friendly living.  read more »

The success of Treasury Secretary Geithner’s Public-Private Investment Partnership Program depends on getting private investors interested in buying junk bonds off the banks’ balance sheets. Now it seems that at least one hedge fund is giving the plan “two thumbs-down.”  read more »

The financial services sector (finance, insurance, real estate, management) lies at the heart of the economic crisis and recession. This is the sector that doubled in its share of the labor force over the last 30 years, creating vast but uneven wealth. It is instructive to see which American cities are most culpable in these excesses.  read more »

The national conversation in the wake of President Obama's introduction of a mortgage relief plan has centered on "fairness" and the conditions to qualify for a mortgage modification. This misses the point. The effects of "innovative" mortgage products were felt far more broadly than the relationship between a single buyer (responsible or not) and his particular mortgage broker (despicable or not). To illustrate the point, meet Mrs. Conservative And Responsible Mortgage Neighbor ("Carmen" for short).  read more »

I recently recieved this this link to a short essay and some stats titled "Texas on the Brink". I thought I'd share my response with you:  read more »

It's hard to find a quality of life ranking that satisfies the preferences and desires of everyone but Bizjournal's recent ranking of mid-sized metros does highlight and affirm the presence of colleges and universities as an increasingly common and important thread in quality of life analyses.  read more »

The Hadley Center in the UK has recently reported a “correlation between reduced prosperity and reduced greenhouse gas emissions associated with global warming.”

The report states that since 2000, as greenhouse gasses have risen 2 to 3 percent each year, the world gross domestic product has also risen. The current ½ percent reduction in GDP is therefore correlated with the ½ percent reduction in greenhouse gasses.

Paul Taylor, of the examiner.com, suggests that the “reductions in greenhouse gases will reduce GDP and punish economic prosperity.”  read more »