San Berdo, California.
The name is as old as the Wild West.
San Bernardino.
In its Pioneer Cemetery rests the remains of the father and mother of Wyatt Earp, many of his brothers and sisters, as well.
The name is also as fast as the food it invented: McDonalds, Taco Bell and not a few others.
San Berdo, the home of the McDonald Brothers' billion dollar global business cannot pay its own bills and has declared bankrupcy.
And the reason?
Apparently because it remains the Wild West. It's been the home of fast and slimy solutions for decades.
In the 80's, my then-business partner Woody Wood and I called it "the San Bernardino Shuffle"; meaning that no one ever got "caught" for doing wrong things, among the elected and appointed officials. Until now, it seems.
Woody's business continues to run with integrity and honesty, despite being in the middle of this wild west town and its modern day desperadoes.
Good folks like Woody Wood are San Berdo's future, not the men and women who have run it into the ground.
Listen to another good man I knew many years ago when my bride and I lived in San Bernardino - City Attorney Jim Penman:
"On Tuesday night, City Attorney James Penman told the City Council that budget officials had presented falsified documents for 13 of the past 16 years, masking the city’s deficit.
He told reporters a day later that he believed an outside investigation was needed in February but had not realized the scope of the problem until this month."
It seems the spirit of Wyatt Earp, who once was a sherrif in San Berdo, is upon Mr. Penman.
And the crooks will be in deed found out and rounded up.
"Evidence of financial mismanagement had been given to “appropriate government agencies,” he said, declining to provide further details while citing the pending bankruptcy proceedings.
“The information was discovered in probably the last 60 days, and the elected officials became aware of it very recently,” Penman said.
San Bernardino County sheriff’s officials said Thursday they are working with police and the district attorney’s office to investigate possible criminal activity within the city’s government."
Not only is this a fascinating case study in corruption, but San Berdo is now the second (and largest) California to declare bankruptcy this month.
Watch and see... many more cities will tip the scales and CA may in fact BK itself as a state. Taxes to support such wild west spending (and fraud) portend to make CA no sanctuary to ANY of its citizens.
It will be a black Tuesday when and if a statewide BK happens.
Keep tuned in.
Den
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