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Posted on 08/09/2011 12:13:16 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
The stock market plunged over 500 points last Thursday, but no one seemed very perturbed about it in this tiny factory town. Three days before, Central Falls had filed for a Chapter 9 bankruptcy. These working-class folk see bottoms fall out on a regular basis.
For people used to living one paycheck or unemployment check to another, the number that mattered this day was not the Dow Jones Industrial Average but the temperature, which that summer evening registered a balmy 75.
Thus, young people were joyfully playing soccer in a park near the picturesque Blackstone River waterfall that gave this city its name. Older residents gathered on the spacious porches of their ancient Victorians or wooden triple-deckers, drinking beer and conversing in Spanish, Portuguese and sometimes English.
If any U.S. city was destined to go bankrupt, it was this one -- though Vallejo, Calif., beat it by three years. Like Vallejo, ruinous public-employee contracts sent Central Falls over the edge. Unlike the San Francisco suburb, Central Falls has a smaller, less economically diverse tax base. (The median household income is under $33,520 a year.) Its local government at the time of the bankruptcy filing was far more corrupt than Vallejo's.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
I thought the houses were just empty, not torn down.
Those are my only two choices on Earth?
P-Town. Why? I have a CCW permit for MA, so if it comes down to it, I can legally defend myself.
Central Falls is G-D dangerous, period. They just had an 8 month pregnant woman gang raped in front of her 2 or 3 year old child.
Vallejo? A San Francisco suburb? ROFL! It’s 30 miles from San Francisco, on the Oakland side of the Bay, and it’s barely better than the Armpit of the Bay, Richmond, which is a bit closer to SF.
“Like troubled industrial cities in the Midwest and elsewhere, Central Falls has a proud past evident in grand public buildings ...”
While the retirement deals they promised are obscene, they should have had to sell ALL city property, before being allowed to default on contracts.
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