1. According to the New York Post: “The NYPD is pulling detectives from homicides and other investigations to help deal with the endless barrage of anti-cop protests in the city, law-enforcement sources told The Post Monday.” 2. The anti-police protests are, in one way at least, rewarding the very police officers whom the protestors wish to punish, with nearly $23 . . .
The New York Fed recently released an interesting set of maps and charts on school financing in New York and New Jersey that demonstrate the effect of national fiscal policy on public-school students. Their findings:
School funding and school expenditures increased steadily through the 2000s, but have slowed in the past year or two. Federal funding swelled during the federal stimulus period, but has since begun to ebb. Recent patterns in state and local funding show signs of slowing down. While instructional expenditures remained on trend (or suffered only slightly) during the recession, there is evidence of sharper cuts in recent years. In spite of these broad patterns, there are considerable variations across states and districts.
I blogged yesterday about a Department of State (N.Y.) government website page that only accepts information during business hours. You offered several other similar examples (many of them government sites as well) and possible explanations. We also received, via comment and e-mail, an explanation from Edison Alban, press officer for the D.O.S. (BTW, his name could be considered a pretty good aptonym, since Albany is the capital of New York.)
He begins by objecting to the post, particularly the headline, which was “This Website Only Open During Business Hours”:
The New York Department of State’s Division of Corporation website is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The Division of Corporation does not shut down its website during non-business hours.
No comment.
If you happen to manage a Limited Liability Corp (LLC) in New York State and need to file your Biennial Statement, you might follow the directions sent to you in the mail and go to the state’s website for conducting such business: www.ebiennial.dos.ny.gov.
But if you try this on, say, a weekend, here is the message you’ll see:
Fascinating article in today’s Times, by Anne Barnard:
Starting next year, New York will become the first state to require lawyers to perform unpaid work before being licensed to practice, the state’s chief judge announced on Tuesday, describing the rule as a way to help the growing number of people who cannot afford legal services.
The approximately 10,000 lawyers who apply to the New York State Bar each year will have to demonstrate that they have performed 50 hours of pro bono work to be admitted, Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman said. He said the move was intended to provide about a half-million hours of badly needed legal services to those with urgent problems, like foreclosure and domestic violence.
These days, many Americans — including Mike Bloomberg and Chuck Schumer — fear the answer to that question will soon be “no,” if it isn’t already; London is poised to take over. An article [gated] in today’s Wall Street Journal about the credit crunch’s effect on the U.K. economy offers this sobering fact: The financial sector accounts for more than . . .
Just as blog comments are often more interesting than blog posts, I have long thought that some of the best stories in newspapers and magazines are published in the letters-to-the-editor section. The Dec. 3, 2007, edition of BusinessWeek contains one of the most fascinating letters I’ve ever seen. (Click here and then scroll down to “Big MAC and the Chicago . . .
Have you all played around with Zipskinny? It’s a site that takes data from the 2000 census and lets you search by ZIP code to see demographic information in your area, and compare it to others: income levels, racial breakdown, unemployment, education level, marital status, etc. It’s pretty basic information, little more than a snapshot, but it’s a good snapshot . . .
On the first day of class, I tell my undergraduates that if they only learn one thing in my course, I hope that it will be to recognize and appreciate the difference between correlation and causality. Most of the students laugh smugly, thinking they already know the difference. It never ceases to amaze me, however, when a cleverly designed exam . . .
I hardly ever drive anymore since I moved close to where I work. So whenever I do, the incivility on the roads leaps out at me. People do things in cars they would never do in other settings. Honking. Swearing. Cutting to the front of the line. And that is just my wife. The other drivers are far meaner. One . . .