Word: civics
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When John Hickenlooper ran for mayor of Denver in 2003, the betting in local political circles was that he should keep his day job, brewing beer. A Democratic civic activist, Hickenlooper was best known for owning the Wynkoop Brewing Co., the city's first brewpub, which he had opened in 1988 and built into a successful restaurant business. He had never run for office, not even for student council of his high school or college, Wesleyan, at which he earned degrees in English and geology. He also seemed a bit eccentric. As a bachelor, he offered a $5,000 bounty...
Houston does have location restrictions on certain sex businesses under a 1983 city ordinance, but establishments that were in operation before the law was enacted escaped regulation, while others simply ignore it. Although civic protests, police actions and a more recent ordinance governing the operation of the sex arcades have produced some small victories over the porn merchants, police say that only a few arcades have closed. Mayor Kathy Whitmire, who promoted the antiarcade ordinance, is seeking re-election on Nov. 5, and her opponent, former Houston Mayor Louie Welch, has made the proliferating sex industry a major election issue...
Despite the increasingly vocal public concern, laissez-faire Houston does not appear to be at all ready to enact the sort of comprehensive zoning laws that have helped contain the porn industry in some other cities. After closing down one particularly offensive club, Civic Activist Frank Phelps, 65, said that even though many sex-prone businesses remained in his area, residents could "live with what we've got." The remaining joints, said Phelps, "don't have the hideous signs up, and they don't advertise, and they are down near the freeway, away from the residential area." Translation...
...other charm of The Making of a Public Man is the public man's unpretentious charm. The son of a Russian immigrant fruit dealer, Linowitz is among that dwindling priesthood of business executives who still believe they have a civic obligation far beyond the bottom line. "Those of us for whom the most extravagant promises of this land have become a reality are, I think, required to seek appropriate expressions of their gratitude," he says, with characteristic understatement. This book, like the life of quiet, diligent service it recounts, is an inspiring expression of that gratitude. --By Donald Morrison
John Street came into office in 2000 with an ambitious agenda to improve Philadelphia's worst neighborhoods, and even his critics agree he has made considerable progress. But, says Otis White, of the public-policy consulting firm Civic Strategies, "whatever his grand visions have been, he will not be remembered for them. He will be remembered for the corruption [around...