Monday, November 15, 2010  What's really to blame for the murder
spike?  From Reuters:  As crime plummeted in the 1990s, New York
rebranded itself as the safest big city in America, luring back
tourists and businesses that fled in the 1970s and 1980s, when
the city was associated with graffiti-splashed subway cars,
littered streets and a crack cocaine epidemic.  Now it is
looking at statistics that show murder and rape up more than 15
percent so far this year over the same period of 2009, which
could be a statistical regression to the mean or a slippage in
crime-fighting tactics.  "We are sliding back in the wrong
direction," said City Councilman Peter Vallone, chairman of the
council's Public Safety Committee.  Vallone attributes part of
the increase to the faltering economy -- a theory police and
some academics dismiss.  There were 450 murders from January 1
to October 31, up from 390 in the same period of 2009 and close
to the total of 471 recorded in all of last year.  Much of the
gun violence occurs far