Free Republic

With each passing day, more compromising of national security, self-serving and self-enriching behaviors, frauds, scams and general malfeasance on the part of Hillary Clinton come to light via new Wikileaks data dumps. But the news media’s obsession with things Donald Trump has said consistently overshadows things Hillary Clinton has actually done. Revelations have now surfaced that Clinton backed the Puerto Rico Debt Relief Bill, a plan to help the financially struggling U.S. commonwealth deal with a $70 billion debt it managed to rack up, after a top Clinton fundraiser –who just happens to be a lobbyist for the Puerto Rican...

Leading House Republicans declared their opposition Wednesday to allowing debt-ridden Puerto Rico access to Chapter 9 bankruptcy protections, raising new uncertainty about how the island can emerge from its financial crisis. A statement from House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia said members of his committee share a concern that “to provide Puerto Rico’s municipalities access to chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code would not, by itself, solve Puerto Rico’s difficulties, which are associated with underlying, structural economic problems.” …

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has said that he supports Puerto Rico filing for bankruptcy in the face of the massive debt the Caribbean island is facing. When Bush visited Puerto Rico, which is a U.S. territory, on a campaign stop in April, he told a crowd that the public agencies in Puerto Rico should be able to seek bankruptcy under Chapter 9, according to the Puerto Rico Report.

First in Detroit, then in Stockton, Calif., and now in New Jersey, judges and other top officials are challenging the widespread belief that public pensions are untouchable. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey delivered the latest blow on Tuesday, when he proposed to freeze that state’s public pension plans and move workers into new ones intended not to overwhelm future budgets or impose open-ended demands on taxpayers. The first crack came in Detroit, where a judge ruled that public pensions could, in fact, be reduced, at least in bankruptcy. Then, just a few weeks ago, an opinion by the bankruptcy...

In what will be a devastating blow to California public employee unions, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein ruled in the Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy of the City of Stockton that pensions managed by the California Public Employee Retirement System, known as CalPERS, can be cut in bankruptcy “like any other garden variety” unsecured debt. He rejected the unions’ argument that the world’s largest pension fund is an “arm of the state” and that public employee pensions are protected by federal and state laws. Stockton city employees and city council members, who are all CalPERS pension beneficiaries, received retirement benefit enhancements...

Desert Hot Springs, the resort town near Palm Springs, may become the first city since Detroit to seek bankruptcy protection from creditors ... Chapter 9, it would be the fourth California city since June last year to do so.

Thousands of Detroit streetlights are dark. Many more residents have fled. Donors are replacing ambulances that limped around for 200,000 miles. Millions in debt payments have been skipped. Is there really any doubt the city is broke? A judge starts exploring that question Wednesday in an unusual trial to determine whether Detroit indeed is eligible to scrub its books in the largest public bankruptcy in U.S. history. Unions and pension funds are claiming the city failed to negotiate in good faith before filing for Chapter 9 protection in July. …

...So $140 million is the cost of 3.3 miles of light rail in the city of Detroit, which by April was already well on its way to bankruptcy. In fairness, the project will mostly be privately funded. But why are federal taxpayers being put on the hook for even a single dime?...

Passengers on a Detroit bus were recently witness to a shocking no holds barred fight between the driver and a belligerent member of the public. According to one witness, the incident happened after the unnamed passenger lost her cool when her ticket got stuck in the machine as she attempted to transfer. The unruly passenger then started to argue with the driver, demanding her ticket back and even spat at the driver. That proved to be the final straw for the driver who, dressed in her white work shirt, got up from her seat and lunged at the passenger. Video...

Public labor unions took aim at Detroit's historic bankruptcy filing on Monday, asking a U.S. court to toss the city's bid for protection from its creditors because it is constitutionally flawed on both the state and federal levels. A union that represents public-sector workers even took the unusual step of arguing that Chapter 9 of the federal bankruptcy code, under which municipalities seek protection from their creditors, violates the U.S. Constitution. But as a midnight deadline for filing objections to the bankruptcy passed, Detroit's bondholders were conspicuously absent from the long list of unions, pension funds and individual creditors lining...

DETROIT (AP) — Individual creditors who fear losing their pensions and paying more for health care were among those who began filing objections on Monday to Detroit's request for bankruptcy protection, the largest municipal filing in U.S. history and a move aimed at wiping away billions of dollars in debt. Federal Judge Steven Rhodes set Monday as the eligibility objection deadline in the bankruptcy petition by Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr. Attorneys for creditors — including bond holders, insurers, banks, employee pension funds, individuals and companies that provided services — have until just before midnight to file objections electronically. City...

In the industrial midwest, the city government of Detroit went into bankruptcy in July. Out in California, the city governments of Stockton and San Bernardino entered bankruptcy proceedings in 2012. But the Detroit and California bankruptcies, like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, are not alike. They suffer from quite different ailments. You can see the difference by comparing their populations in the 1950 and 2010 censuses. In 1950, Detroit – then the nation’s fifth-largest city – had 1,849,568 people. In 2010, it had 713,777. Stockton and San Bernardino were not much more than small towns in 1950, with 70,853 and 63,058, respectively....

--snip-- Detroit is hardly the first city to think of having ObamaCare subsidize its retirees. Chicago, which is in financial difficulty but not bankruptcy, announced a similar plan even before Detroit. Other cities — some not even financially distressed — are contemplating doing the same thing. And why not? ObamaCare imposes no penalties on governments that offload their retirees — in contrast to large employers who offload their active employees.

“I’m proud of Detroit.” On the other end of the line was Sen. Tupac Hunter (D-Detroit), who is a member of the Mike Duggan inner circle. He was calling to remind everyone of what the senator said last week in the midst of a media story line that somehow his candidate for Mayor of Detroit could not win an uphill write-in campaign. So much for that story line. “You said you would save that tape,” he chuckled as he basked in a very impressive victory for his guy for mayor. Mr. Duggan defied the experts and finished fir - not...

After Detroit filed bankruptcy two weeks ago, the attention turned to America's other financially distraught cities. Think Motown is the only major U.S. city in a boatload of financial trouble? Think again. Detroit's bankruptcy filing sent shivers down the spine of municipal bondholders, government employees, and big-city urban residents all over the country. That's because many of the 61 largest U.S. cities are plagued with the same kinds of retirement legacy costs that sent Detroit into Chapter 9 bankruptcy this summer. These cities have amassed $118 billion in unfunded healthcare liabilities. These are legal promises to pay healthcare benefits...

Cities: Chicago appears to be following Detroit's lead to financial disaster, perhaps the latest victim of decades of one-party rule by Democrats eager to redistribute wealth while driving real wealth creators out of cities. Moody's Investors Service downgraded the Windy City's credit rating by three notches last week, partly the result of $19 billion in unfunded pension debt, leaving Chicago's lower than 90% of Moody's public finance ratings. Among the nation's five largest cities, Chicago has put aside the smallest portion of its looming pension obligations, according to a study issued this year by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The condition...

Soon after the city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy, many blogs and news sites began running "facts" about the city. One common "fact" repeated often was that "the size of the police force in Detroit has been cut by about 40 percent over the past decade." Although it makes for interesting reading, just how much the police department has been cut is not that simple to determine and is another example of the city's dysfunction. For example, the city's 2003 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report states there were 4,810 uniform police officers that year. However, the city's 2012 CAFR lists the...

Think Motown is the only major U.S. city in a boatload of financial trouble? Think again. Detroit’s bankruptcy filing sent shivers down the spine of municipal bondholders, government employees, and big-city urban residents all over the country. That’s because many of the 61 largest U.S. cities are plagued with the same kinds of retirement legacy costs that sent Detroit into Chapter 9 bankruptcy this summer. These cities have amassed $118 billion in unfunded healthcare liabilities. These are legal promises to pay healthcare benefits to municipal workers beyond the employee contributions to finance those funds. This is a giant fiscal sinkhole—and...

Detroit, you're not alone. Across the nation, cities and states are watching Detroit's largest-ever municipal bankruptcy filing with fear. Years of underfunded retirement promises to public sector workers, which helped lay Detroit low, could plunge them into a similar financial hole. A CNBC.com analysis of more than 120 of the nation's largest state and local pension plans finds they face a wide range of financial burdens as aging work forces near retirement. Thanks to a patchwork of accounting practices and rosy investment assumptions, it's not even clear just how big a financial hole many states and cities have dug for...

In conjunction with the observance of the 85th birthday of the late Martin Luther King, Jr. in January, the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights is organizing a community-wide conversation with the goal of ridding our justice system of racial and class bias. Representatives of police agencies and courts, together with clergy, interested citizens and community leaders, will be invited to address and find solutions to the troubling implications arising from the” not-guilty” verdict rendered in Florida’s People vs. Zimmerman case. The members of the jury seemed to believe they had little choice but to find Zimmerman not guilty, due to...