In the Syracuse suburb of Manlius, police transparency carries a hefty price tag.
In June, the Manlius Police Department received an open-records request from MuckRock, a nonprofit news site. The request sought documents detailing any allegations of misconduct against current or former officers and any discipline the department imposed.
The department replied with a bill. For $47,504.
Six months ago, New York lawmakers and Gov. Andrew Cuomo repealed Section 50-a of the state Civil Rights Law, a once-obscure provision that had been used to shield police disciplinary records from public view for decades.
Cancel culture (or call-out culture) is a modern form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles - either online on social media, in the real world, or both. Those who are subject to this ostracism are said to be "canceled."
Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old NSA whistleblower who leaked a byzantine collection of classified documents, insists that the US government is building “an architecture of oppression.” While it has not yet become a reality, the capabilities of the security state are astounding, as Snowden notes.
This week, the Federal Trade Commission and 48 attorneys general unveiled blockbuster lawsuits accusing Facebook of crushing competition and calling for the tech giant to be broken up.
The twin complaints together run to nearly 200 pages documenting how Facebook became so powerful — and how, according to the government, it broke the law along the way.
In the South African House of Assembly, on 6 September 1966, Dimitri Tsafendas knifed to death Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd. Shortly after, Tsafendas was declared to be a schizophrenic who had no political motive for assassinating Verwoerd. Declared unfit to stand trial, Tsafendas went down in the history books as a deranged murderer. Harris Dousemetzis exposes one of the great lies in South African history and shows that Tsafendas was an extraordinary man, with deeply held communist and anti-racist politics.
A major cost of living in New York State is taxes. We have very high property taxes, but then again does much of New England. The median property tax bill in Albany County, NY is $4,200, while the median property tax bill in the mountain country of Webster County, WV is $268. In much of the south, especially away from the oceans and metropolitan areas, property taxes are much lower then in our area. You can understand why many people, especially seniors to choose to move to lower tax states.
Data Source: MORTGAGE STATUS BY AGGREGATE REAL ESTATE TAXES PAID (DOLLARS). Universe: Owner-occupied housing units, 2011-2015 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates. https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_15_5YR_B25090&prodType=table
