Free Talk Live

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Smokers have just one message for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council members: butt out of our business.

“We’re outside. We should have freedom to smoke,” City Hall Park smoker Harvey Forbes told CBS 2’s Magee Hickey.

By a vote of 36 to 11 on Wednesday the City Council approved a bill to ban smoking in all city parks, beaches and pedestrian plazas.

If you're a smoker, you're not welcome in Santa Monica.

That's pretty much the message the city of Santa Monica sent to smokers Thursday as a new law went into effect making it illegal for people to light up within 25 feet of any apartment building, window or vent., the Santa Monica Daily Press reports. The law is intended to prevent people from smoking on patios and balconies of apartments.

It's a way for the gym chain to save money and cut down on fraud, but some customers are concerned about privacy. With gym memberships down across the fitness industry, the giant 24 Hour Fitness chain is taking a new cost-cutting approach to identifying its gym members — fingerprints.

New York City is the abortion capital of America. More than 40 percent of pregnancies in New York City end in abortion (excluding miscarriages), nearly twice the national rate. The abortion rate among the city’s black residents is a jaw-dropping 60 percent. In 2009, New York City saw more than 87,000 abortions—one roughly every six minutes.

Under the plan, which would take effect in January, license recipients would be heavily taxed and regulated. They would have to pay the city $211,000 in annual permit fees, carry $2 million in liability insurance and be prepared to devote up to 8 percent of gross sales to taxes.

The measure also would require bidders to meet certain labor, environmental and product safety standards.

However, there would be no size restrictions on the facilities.

It began with a 6-year-old city boy touching a girl in his class, and it ended up costing the city $50,000 in legal fees – plus thousands more in city insurance payouts totaling nearly a quarter-million dollars.
The elementary school student, accused of sexually harassing a classmate as a first-grader in 2006, will receive a total of about $160,000 in a legal settlement reached with the city. His parents received $20,000.

Authorities in Sacramento, Calif., say law-abiding citizens are hurting city revenues.
Let us explain: The people of Sacramento have been doing such a good job of avoiding parking tickets that city officials say it’s starting to affect revenues. Sacramento’s Parking Services Manager Howard Chan says the city had planned on collecting $10 million in fines from parking offenders. But people have done such a good job of parking legally and feeding the meter that the city is now looking at a $1.2 million budget deficit.

City officials announced new legislation on Wednesday that would outlaw smoking in parks, beaches, marinas, boardwalks and pedestrian plazas throughout the city.

I keep telling the "legalization" advocates it could be worse than what we already have in many states....

OAKLAND, Calif. – After weathering the fear of federal prosecution and competition from drug cartels, California's medical marijuana growers see a new threat to their tenuous existence: the "Wal-Marting" of weed.