MichaelBloomberg

In a city with 24,000 restaurants -- one of them, featured in a popular YouTube clip, a Taco Bell infested with rats -- it's high time a transparent restaurant-cleanliness ratings system was put in place. Will the rest of the U.S. take its lead?

Soda is the latest target of sin taxes, and New York City is at the forefront, but a recent study says soda consumers there are more than twice as likely to be low-income and almost three times as likely to be minorities. A regressive soda tax falls more heavily on the heads of New York's poor.