Visitors Now:
Total Visits:
Total Stories:
Profile image
By Lonely Conservative (Reporter)
Contributor profile | More stories
Story Views

Now:
Last Hour:
Last 24 Hours:
Total:

How Not To Run A City (Hint: Don’t Elect Democrats Beholden To Unions)

Thursday, November 15, 2012 2:20
% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.

(Before It's News)

Originally published on LonelyConservative.com

San Bernardino, California is a case study in how not to run cities. The main takeaway from this story is not to elect Democrats (or any politicians) who are beholden to the unions. It would be funny if it weren’t so serious. The story is like one of those awful movies where you know what’s going to happen, and you wonder why they make the characters so stupid because anyone with half a brain could have seen it coming.

When this sun-drenched exurb east of Los Angeles filed for bankruptcy protection in August, the city attorney suggested fraudulent accounting was the root of the problem.

The mayor blamed a dysfunctional city council and greedy police and fire unions. The unions blamed the mayor. Even now, there is little agreement on how the city got into this crisis or how it can extricate itself.

“It’s total political chaos,” said John Husing, a former San Bernardino resident and regional economist. “There is no solution. They’ll never fix anything.”

Yet on close examination, the city’s decades-long journey from prosperous, middle-class community to bankrupt, crime-ridden, foreclosure-blighted basket case is straightforward — and alarmingly similar to the path traveled by many municipalities around America’s largest state. San Bernardino succumbed to a vicious circle of self-interests among city workers, local politicians and state pension overseers.

Little by little, over many years, the salaries and retirement benefits of San Bernardino’s city workers — and especially its police and firemen — grew richer and richer, even as the city lost its major employers and gradually got poorer and poorer.

Read the whole thing, and share it, if for no other reason than to try to prevent it from happening elsewhere. Oh wait, it already is, in cities all over the USA. The same cities that tilted the election to Obama.

Read more at LonelyConservative.com

Follow The Lonely Conservative on Twitter – twitter.com/lonelycon



Source:

Report abuse

Comments

Your Comments
Question   Razz  Sad   Evil  Exclaim  Smile  Redface  Biggrin  Surprised  Eek   Confused   Cool  LOL   Mad   Twisted  Rolleyes   Wink  Idea  Arrow  Neutral  Cry   Mr. Green

Top Stories
Recent Stories

Register

Newsletter

Email this story
Email this story

If you really want to ban this commenter, please write down the reason:

If you really want to disable all recommended stories, click on OK button. After that, you will be redirect to your options page.