No sane local official who has hung up an empty stocking over the municipal fireplace, is going to shoot Santa Claus just before a hard Christmas.
I know that a prime minister of Canada needs to be deeply respectful of the other levels of government - whether it be municipal, provincial, or even nation-to-nation relationships with aboriginal governments.
Municipal networks expand economic opportunities. We've got to open new doors, not slam them shut.
In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that minority set-aside programs in municipal contracts were unconstitutional. The court wondered if there were proof that people of color even want to receive municipal contracts.
In the United States, under 3 percent of municipal food waste - so that's the food scraps that goes into people's garbage cans - actually gets recycled. If you go to a place like South Korea, the exact reverse is the case. It's about 3 percent that doesn't get recycled.
Lebanon is restless, Syria got its walking papers, Egypt is scheduling elections with more than one candidate, and even Saudi Arabia, whose rulers are perhaps more terrified of women than rulers anywhere else in the world, allowed limited municipal elections.
Whenever anything extraordinary is done in American municipal politics, whether for good or for evil, you can trace it almost invariably to one man. The people do not do it. Neither do the 'gangs,' 'combines,' or political parties.
As it happens, Chicago is the nation's leader in municipal privatization efforts. That's right: The city that conservatives portray as the citadel of the power-grabbing, government-growing left has been selling itself off in pieces for years. It signed a 99-year lease for the Chicago Skyway, a toll road in the city's South Side, back in 2005.
My view is that good community management is like having good municipal government: You should be able to have dissenting opinions and so on, freedom of speech, but your grandmother should also be able to walk down the street at night without having to worry about getting mugged.
There are great municipal investments out there, but on a blanket basis you have to be really careful about knowing what cash flows are supporting your investments.