Excerpt
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): And we turn to a major city in California once riding high in the boom years, now on the verge of bankruptcy, and joining other cities around the country forced to make serious cuts to stay afloat.
NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michels reports.
SPENCER MICHELS: The police department in Stockton, Calif., is getting a new chief, the fifth one in the last eight years. They retired, often early, with generous pensions, one reason, but certainly not the only one, that the city is in dire financial shape.
Stockton, 100 miles east of San Francisco in the agricultural Central Valley, is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. If that happens, this city of 300,000 would be the nation's largest bankrupt city. Increasingly, cities across the nation are in crisis because of pensions, health care costs, and overspending, all aggravated by the recession.
To prevent bankruptcy, Stockton officials have been slashing the budget. The police have taken the biggest hits. Through cuts and retirements, the force is down 27 percent since 2008. And that has had a big impact, according to public information officer Pete Smith.
COMMENT: Reminder to everyone, including the citizens of Stockton, the "market" (aka Wall Street and everything based on it) is nothing more than our nation's biggest gambling casino. And as any professional gambler will tell you, don't bet what you cannot afford to lose.
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