Author Topic: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.  (Read 19408 times)

Jamie B

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The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« on: March 19, 2012, 01:19:18 PM »
http://news.yahoo.com/stockton-california-town-housing-boom-broke-121026168.html

The Rise:
Quote
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:
Quote
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.

Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength - Henry Ward Beecher

The Almighty tells me He can get me out of this mess, but He’s pretty sure you’re f**ked! - Stephen

RoadKingLarry

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #1 on: March 19, 2012, 06:13:31 PM »
Quote
anyone who toiled for the city for as little as one month was eligible for retiree healthcare - for life. Their spouses got it, too.

 :facepalm:

derp.
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

Samuel Adams

longeyes

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #2 on: March 19, 2012, 06:26:27 PM »
Not a word about culture, ethny, immigration.   =(
"Domari nolo."

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Walt Kowalski: Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn't have messed with? That's me.

Molon Labe.

Perd Hapley

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #3 on: March 19, 2012, 08:04:36 PM »
ethny? Is that a thing?
Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?
--Thomas Jefferson

longeyes

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #4 on: March 20, 2012, 01:29:02 PM »
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?
"Domari nolo."

Thug: What you lookin' at old man?
Walt Kowalski: Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn't have messed with? That's me.

Molon Labe.

RevDisk

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #5 on: March 20, 2012, 02:25:53 PM »

Gee, fiscal responsibility is a good long term idea.  Who knew?
"Rev, your picture is in my King James Bible, where Paul talks about "inventors of evil."  Yes, I know you'll take that as a compliment."  - Fistful, possibly highest compliment I've ever received.

cassandra and sara's daddy

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It is much more powerful to seek Truth for one's self.  Seeing and hearing that others seem to have found it can be a motivation.  With me, I was drawn because of much error and bad judgment on my part. Confronting one's own errors and bad judgment is a very life altering situation.  Confronting the errors and bad judgment of others is usually hypocrisy.


by someone older and wiser than I

longeyes

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #7 on: March 20, 2012, 10:03:28 PM »
Stockton is "only" 42 per Hispanic.  Yeah, who knew?   Of course these are the official stats, aren't they?
"Domari nolo."

Thug: What you lookin' at old man?
Walt Kowalski: Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn't have messed with? That's me.

Molon Labe.

cassandra and sara's daddy

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #8 on: March 21, 2012, 11:58:30 AM »
those facts displease you? imagine

i thought you were the one that wanted the discussion?
It is much more powerful to seek Truth for one's self.  Seeing and hearing that others seem to have found it can be a motivation.  With me, I was drawn because of much error and bad judgment on my part. Confronting one's own errors and bad judgment is a very life altering situation.  Confronting the errors and bad judgment of others is usually hypocrisy.


by someone older and wiser than I

roo_ster

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #9 on: March 21, 2012, 12:25:59 PM »
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.

Regards,

roo_ster

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
----G.K. Chesterton

roo_ster

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #10 on: March 21, 2012, 12:30:10 PM »
Here is his book on the topic:
Mexifornia: A State of Becoming
http://www.amazon.com/Mexifornia-Becoming-Victor-Davis-Hanson/dp/1893554732

Quote
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."
Regards,

roo_ster

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
----G.K. Chesterton

longeyes

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #11 on: March 21, 2012, 03:01:23 PM »
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.
"Domari nolo."

Thug: What you lookin' at old man?
Walt Kowalski: Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn't have messed with? That's me.

Molon Labe.

De Selby

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #12 on: March 23, 2012, 08:31:57 AM »
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.
"Human existence being an hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucinations of day and night (the latter an insanitary condition of the atmosphere due to accretions of black air) it ill becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death."

RevDisk

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #13 on: March 23, 2012, 11:21:44 AM »
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. 
"Rev, your picture is in my King James Bible, where Paul talks about "inventors of evil."  Yes, I know you'll take that as a compliment."  - Fistful, possibly highest compliment I've ever received.

longeyes

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #14 on: March 23, 2012, 12:51:45 PM »
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.
"Domari nolo."

Thug: What you lookin' at old man?
Walt Kowalski: Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn't have messed with? That's me.

Molon Labe.

De Selby

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #15 on: March 23, 2012, 10:42:42 PM »
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.
"Human existence being an hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucinations of day and night (the latter an insanitary condition of the atmosphere due to accretions of black air) it ill becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death."

MicroBalrog

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #16 on: March 23, 2012, 10:53:20 PM »
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?
Destroy The Enemy in Hand-to-Hand Combat.

"...tradition and custom becomes intertwined and are a strong coercion which directs the society upon fixed lines, and strangles liberty. " ~ William Graham Sumner

cassandra and sara's daddy

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #17 on: March 23, 2012, 10:57:12 PM »
"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
It is much more powerful to seek Truth for one's self.  Seeing and hearing that others seem to have found it can be a motivation.  With me, I was drawn because of much error and bad judgment on my part. Confronting one's own errors and bad judgment is a very life altering situation.  Confronting the errors and bad judgment of others is usually hypocrisy.


by someone older and wiser than I

MicroBalrog

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #18 on: March 23, 2012, 11:05:43 PM »
he'll be emeritus in a couple years

Apparently already.

Quote
a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University
Destroy The Enemy in Hand-to-Hand Combat.

"...tradition and custom becomes intertwined and are a strong coercion which directs the society upon fixed lines, and strangles liberty. " ~ William Graham Sumner

RevDisk

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #19 on: March 23, 2012, 11:43:33 PM »
"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.)
"Rev, your picture is in my King James Bible, where Paul talks about "inventors of evil."  Yes, I know you'll take that as a compliment."  - Fistful, possibly highest compliment I've ever received.

Angel Eyes

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #20 on: March 24, 2012, 12:20:58 AM »
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 ...)
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roo_ster

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #21 on: March 24, 2012, 12:22:56 AM »
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?

Regards,

roo_ster

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
----G.K. Chesterton

MicroBalrog

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #22 on: March 24, 2012, 12:58:32 AM »
That doesn't contradict what De Selby said.
Destroy The Enemy in Hand-to-Hand Combat.

"...tradition and custom becomes intertwined and are a strong coercion which directs the society upon fixed lines, and strangles liberty. " ~ William Graham Sumner

Angel Eyes

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #23 on: March 24, 2012, 01:17:30 AM »
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

Quote
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

"... and now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine who has as much courage as he has determination.  Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin."
                          - Joe Biden, July 11, 2024

roo_ster

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Re: The Rise and Fall of Stockton, CA.
« Reply #24 on: March 24, 2012, 09:04:34 AM »
" . . . 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.
Regards,

roo_ster

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
----G.K. Chesterton