The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.

[Jamie B]

http://news.yahoo.com/stockton-california-town-housing-boom-broke-121026168.html

The Rise:

Then there were what one city official called the "Lamborghini" benefits for city workers: anyone who toiled for the city for as little as one month was eligible for retiree healthcare - for life. Their spouses got it, too.

Middle-class families, priced out of the Bay area housing market, snapped up the new homes, happily trading extreme commutes for the suburban niceties of four bedrooms and a yard.

The Fall:

Stockton faces a deficit of as much as $38 million on its budget of $165 million, and is in its third year of fiscal emergency. Its retiree healthcare liabilities alone total more than $400 million.

Last year, city officials discovered that they had made $15 million worth of math errors, including double-counting $500,000 in revenues from parking fines.

The rest of Stockton's housing stock tanked even more, falling 75 percent from the peak. Soon the Repo Home Bus Tours were rumbling through town.

The problems were extensive:
Over-calculation of revenues.
Excessive spending by the mayor and city council.
Mathematical errors
Budget mis-management
Extreme dependence upon the real estate price boom (market has dropped 75% in values).
City politicians devoid of any fiscal discipline
Increased crime rates
16% unemployment (compared to 10.6% in CA overall).

The city will probably be filing for bankruptcy protection within several months.

I see this same poor attitude at all levels in government today, and it scares me.

[RoadKingLarry]

anyone who toiled for the city for as little as one month was eligible for retiree healthcare - for life. Their spouses got it, too.

 

derp.

[longeyes]

Not a word about culture, ethny, immigration.   

[Perd Hapley]

ethny? Is that a thing?

[longeyes]

Try it, you'll like it.  If you want the Greek term, I can use that.

To write about the growing insolvency of Inner California without discussing the great cultural transformation of that area and the complicity of Our Great White Father in D.C. with it is not only bad journalism, it's mendacious journalism.  But what else is new?

[RevDisk]

Gee, fiscal responsibility is a good long term idea.  Who knew?

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

http://www.clrsearch.com/Stockton_Demographics/CA/Population-by-Race-and-Ethnicity


lets try it

[longeyes]

Stockton is "only" 42 per Hispanic.  Yeah, who knew?   Of course these are the official stats, aren't they?

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

those facts displease you? imagine

i thought you were the one that wanted the discussion?

[roo_ster]

those facts displease you? imagine

i thought you were the one that wanted the discussion?

VDH has detailed what has occurred to the interior of California in the last few decades, if not Stockton specifically.  It is quite the transformation...and not for the better if one considers criteria like:

rule of law
poverty
literacy
facility with English
gainful employment
equal treatment under the law
eschewing gov't handouts
etc.

better than their opposites.

Quite a bit of that transformation for the worse has been caused by the dramatic increase in illiterate, non-English-speaking, 19th century (skill and readiness level) workers from Mexico & points south.  A neighborhood/polity does not have to become majority underclass before the vital middle classes put out "for sale" signs, pack up, and get outta Dodge.  Given Stockton's demographic data you so kindly linked, it does not take a rocket scientist to see it is well on its way to mimicking a third-world country in its demographics: large underclass, tiny middle class, with an upper crust in its walled/gated enclaves.

[roo_ster]

Here is his book on the topic:
Mexifornia: A State of Becoming
http://www.amazon.com/Mexifornia-Becoming-Victor-Davis-Hanson/dp/1893554732

Classics professor Hanson is also, like generations of his family before him, a fruit farmer in California's central valley. He has employed immigrants, seen them flood his community during the last 30 years of mass flight from Mexico, and endured the crime associated with illegal immigrants. Hanson is immensely sympathetic to poor Mexicans, however, and the most powerful chapter here outlines the harried life of the illegal alien. But he hates to see the ordered culture in which he grew up drowned by an alien inundation whose undeserving beneficiaries are Mexico's kleptocratic rulers, for whom an open border is a safety valve expelling the potential for democratic change. The four solutions to the mess that Hanson enumerates include continuing de facto open borders but insisting on rapid acculturation; patrolling the border effectively and reducing legal immigration; imposing "sweeping restrictions on immigration" and ending Mexican chauvinism in the U.S.; and allowing present policies to make California increasingly mirror an unreformed Mexico. Hanson thinks that the U.S. "still need not do everything right" to prevent social collapse in the Southwest and that the totalitarian uniformity of valueless mass culture may soften that collapse. He also sees very clearly what has brought this crisis on: the American globalist ideology's lust for cheap labor and emphasis on "raw inclusiveness" instead of "standards and taste."

[longeyes]

those facts displease you? imagine

i thought you were the one that wanted the discussion?

I do, and the facts support what I said.  Stockton is not just a bedroom community for the Bay Area.  Investigate the gang situation there and the shadow population of illegals.

As Roo_ster has noted, Victor Davis Hanson has detailed--beyond the statistics--the real and manifest changes in Inner California in the last 20 years.  You cannot expect honesty from the press on these matters, and I'm sure you understand that.

[De Selby]

Hahaha, oh that's rich - its not the financial crisis that left the entire central valley under water on its mortgages, it's mainly those minimum wage earning illegals who control the property markets!

Victor Davis Hanson should stick to fruit farming and pronouncing mundane words in a "classical" sounding accent - his historical and cultural analyses make the various [blank] studies people look like real scholars.

[RevDisk]

Hahaha, oh that's rich - its not the financial crisis that left the entire central valley under water on its mortgages, it's mainly those minimum wage earning illegals who control the property markets!

Victor Davis Hanson should stick to fruit farming and pronouncing mundane words in a "classical" sounding accent - his historical and cultural analyses make the various [blank] studies people look like real scholars.

De Selby is very much correct. 

[longeyes]

He lives there, you don't.   

And he wasn't just talking about the mortgage problem, he was talking about the change in, and decline of, the culture in the area.

[De Selby]

He lives there, you don't.   

And he wasn't just talking about the mortgage problem, he was talking about the change in, and decline of, the culture in the area.

How has the culture declined, apart from involving historically low crime levels?

Stockton isn't the most exciting city (wasn't when I grew up either) , but it's still better than when I was a kid.

[MicroBalrog]

Here is his book on the topic:
Mexifornia: A State of Becoming
http://www.amazon.com/Mexifornia-Becoming-Victor-Davis-Hanson/dp/1893554732

"I taught classics for one year as a visiting professor" now makes you "classics professor" for life?

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

"I taught classics for one year as a visiting professor" now makes you "classics professor" for life?

he'll be emeritus in a couple years

[MicroBalrog]

he'll be emeritus in a couple years

Apparently already.

a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University

[RevDisk]

"I taught classics for one year as a visiting professor" now makes you "classics professor" for life?

In fairness, he's probably as professional as over a third of the professors I had at the university.




(That is not a compliment.)

[Angel Eyes]

How has the culture declined, apart from involving historically low crime levels?

From http://www.areavibes.com/stockton-ca/crime/

•The Stockton, CA violent crime rate is 262% greater than the California average and 341% greater than the national average.

•The Stockton, CA property crime rate is 90% greater than the California average and 93% greater than the national average.

•Overall, the Stockton, CA crime index is 110% greater than the California average and 117% greater than the national average.


Also, Stockton is #11 on Forbes' 2012 list of America's Most Miserable Cities:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2012/02/02/americas-most-miserable-cities/

(although, to be fair, they were #1 on Forbes' 2011 list, so maybe things are looking up.  Or Miami, Detroit, et al got worse ...)

[roo_ster]

Y'all can make pissant comments about VDH all you want, but he writes about changes that I have seen my own self, in the southwest, even though his stomping grounds are 1000+ miles from mine.

Angel Eyes, how dare you introduce data into the discussion when folks are belittling their betters?

[MicroBalrog]

That doesn't contradict what De Selby said.

[Angel Eyes]

That doesn't contradict what De Selby said.

" . . . historically low crime levels."

Since some remain unconvinced:

http://www.cityrating.com/crime-statistics/california/stockton.html

Stockton crime statistics report an overall upward trend in crime based on data from 11 years with violent crime increasing and property crime increasing. Based on this trend, the crime rate in Stockton for 2012 is expected to be higher than in 2009

[roo_ster]

" . . . historically low crime levels."

Since some remain unconvinced:

http://www.cityrating.com/crime-statistics/california/stockton.html

I am sure DS was comparing 2012 Stockton, California, to Germany during the 30 Years War.  It is the obvious comparison in some social circles, second only to comparing Stockton to the trench warfare of WWI.