The Real Reason America’s Cities and Towns Are Broke

[Swede]

This is from March,but I'd never read it before. Sorry if this is a dupe.

From the article: How the nation's biggest banks are ripping off American cities with the same predatory deals that brought down Greece.

If you want to know what life in the Third World is like, just ask Lisa Pack, an administrative assistant who works in the roads and transportation department in Jefferson County, Alabama. Pack got rudely introduced to life in post-crisis America last August, when word came down that she and 1,000 of her fellow public employees would have to take a little unpaid vacation for a while. The county, it turned out, was more than $5 billion in debt — meaning that courthouses, jails and sheriff's precincts had to be closed so that Wall Street banks could be paid.

As public services in and around Birmingham were stripped to the bone, Pack struggled to support her family on a weekly unemployment check of $260. Nearly a fourth of that went to pay for her health insurance, which the county no longer covered. She also fielded calls from laid-off co-workers who had it even tougher. "I'd be on the phone sometimes until two in the morning," she says. "I had to talk more than one person out of suicide. For some of the men supporting families, it was so hard — foreclosure, bankruptcy. I'd go to bed at night, and I'd be in tears."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/12697/64833

[Ninga]

1. Great. Did Lisa Pack and others like her vote last week? We lost huge market share in voters

that stayed home, or protest voted.

Reasons don't matter if the reasons don't vote. If we can not get our voters to the polls this will happen again and again. Geez hate to pick on you, but the piece you posted is yesterday's news. Today's news is that people vote against their own interests time and time again.

[madrchsod]

2. i`ll disagree on the real reason and offer this

this city has around 40,000 and is a far suburb of chicago...

http://nationalpriorities.org/en/tools/tradeoffs/state/IL/city/elgin/program/13/tradeoff/0/




you can enter your state,city,or county...

http://www.costofwar.com/


do you realize what the future costs of these wars?


this is what ruined our cities,states,and country, the total costs of an unending war in iraq and afganistan.

i forgot--every dollar invested in the common good returns 5

[Swede]

3. Your comparing apples and oranges.

Federal debt is one thing,county and municipal debt is another. The county in the link owed $5 billion to the banks,when it laid off those workers.

[laughingliberal]

4. K & R nt

[nashville_brook]

5. big k and r.

wondering what the banks plan to do with the country now that they own it all.

[Swede]

6. I think all the rich folks on earth will fly to a haven in outer space.

No pollution,no poor peons,just endless days of idle ease.

[Liberal_in_LA]

7. I remember this story. K&R

[Hannah Bell]

8. kr

[BrklynLiberal]

9. and every job sent overseas is one job not gotten here...which is another person

not paying any taxes to support the services that need to be done at the local levels.

And it is not as if we can count on the corporate taxes to aid anything...since they have loopholes, subsidies, and man office in the Cayman Islands.

They are draining this country dry...literally and figuratively.

[leftstreet]

10. Long article, but well worth the read !!

some great phrases, too - lol on the sewer ripoffs:

"...a giant device that converted human shit into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street"

K&R

Thanks for posting this