In City Journal, Steven Malanga recounts how two very different New York mayors – Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg – recognized how harnessing detailed data could dramatically improve the effectiveness of civic services ranging from fighting crime to locating storm-downed trees. New York’s past record of success offers lessons for Canadian cities – but only those with a mayor driven by an uncompromising sense of purpose.
Toppling a Communist Empire for $2.7 Million
Though widely thought of as focused on waterboarding terrorists or poisoning foreign potentates, it was by smuggling paper that the CIA achieved its most monumental triumph. R.M. Gerecht in a book review for The Washington Free Beacon charts how the late Cold War-era operation to flood Poland with Western books, magazines, printing supplies and audio recordings fatally weakened the country’s Communist dictatorship, setting the stage for the downfall of the entire Soviet empire. Total cost: US$2.7 million.
