The Road To Sickville

The USA has set a lot of trends over the last century, and California was often the place where these trends started ...... sadly, these trends have changed over the last 30 years, and now Stockton in California, is part of a new trend: When it became the largest city in the US to go broke ..... yes it became part of a modern phenomena, of American cities that have gone broke and declared themselves bankrupt.

The affects of this are catastrophic, firstly Stockton has earned the title of "America's most miserable city", with an unemployment rate twice the national average, and a murder rate that allows it to be considered amongst the contenders for being declared "America's murder capital", with gangs battling it out for control of the cities streets.

This is in direct response to police numbers having been cut by one-third (along with their pay) ....with the city not even able to afford to prosecute many offences. Many of those who have been arrested have been let out of jail early .... in fact many US cities are on the verge of collapse, and another California town, 'Mammoth Lakes', has just filed for bankruptcy.

It'll Take More Than An Enema To Cure US Cities

A lot of this can be laid at the door of the (admittedly extremely expensive) health care, and decent pensions that public sector workers used to be able to expect as part of their conditions, for working in the public service. But the US mania for cutting taxes using such devices as Proposition 13, which swept across the US from California in the 1970's and 1980's, meant that the many cities and states in the US no longer pay for their public sector by the income from property taxes. The belief that decent affordable health care is 'socialism' is patently stupid, but many Republicans in the 'Tea Party' believe that 'freedom', is paying no taxes and having no government.

But the real result of this idea, once put into practice by bankruptcy, is crime, squalor, and violence, with dirty streets and no social cohesiveness. 'White flight' from cities and towns like Stockton is a reality ... The ideals represented by "Bedford Falls" and "Mayberry" in the media, weren't built on the Tea Party principles, but rather on Presidents Roosevelt's ideals of a public conscience, where each paid his due. The US seems a long way from the dream now ...

Wasn't it Kris Kristofferson who wrote: "Freedom is another word for having nothing else to lose"? Well there are a lot of people with freedom at the moment in towns like Stockton California.