Hard economic times have devastated households, ravaged neighborhoods and drained your municipal budget. (Never mind that three of your last seven mayors have done prison time for corruption.) Your city, if it's to survive, has to cut 25% of its employees -- including a third of the fire department and half the police force.
Oh, by the way -- you live in "The Most Dangerous City in America." FBI statistics show violent crime occurring at more than five times the national rate, and now you're down 70 firefighters and 170 cops.
Unfortunately, there's no need to imagine such a worst-case scenario. Because unless unions representing city workers make some drastic 11th-hour concessions, that bad dream will become reality today in Camden, New Jersey USA.
Think it couldn't be worse? Think again.
For Camden's law-abiding residents, folks with good reason to be prepared to defend themselves, here's another nightmare: Brady ranks New Jersey's gun laws second-toughest in the nation.(The People's Republic of California, of course, tops Brady's latest list. I'm glad to say that Ohio scores only 11 out of a possible 100 points, earning a one-star rating. The state of Arizona, it's worth noting, scores a near-perfect two points and zero stars.)
This city's crisis represents not failed government but a failure of the People. The citizens of Camden and New Jersey voted affinity over competence, for entitlements, in favor of nanny-knows-best public safety. Now that the money's run out, Camden has the government it asked for -- the government it deserves.
It's what happens when independence withers; when We, the People abdicate the duties of our citizenship.
It's safe to assume that Camden is only the most recent example. There will be more.
