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NEWS MADHYA PRADESH: Dharamveer Kamboj (left) an innovator, explains his aloe vera processor invention in a temple in the village of Lasukiya in the Sehore district of Madhya Pradesh, India. (Inset) Prof Anil Gupta walks towards a village during his Shodh Yatra (Journey for the Search of Knowledge) in the Sehore district of Madhya Pradesh. — AP Professor on quest for India hidden inventors SEHORE: It’s 43 degrees Celsius (110 F), and Prof Anil Gupta has been hiking the scorched plains of central India for hours. But he smiles widely as he enters a tiny village in search of another unsung genius. “If you have any new ideas or you have any new inventions, I’m here to promote you,” he tells farmers squatting beside a dusty roadside shrine to the Hindu god Shiva. For more than two decades, Gupta has scoured rural India for its hidden innovations, motivated by the belief that the most powerful ideas for fighting poverty and hardship won’t come from corporate research labs, but from ordinary people struggling to survive. Gupta and his aides have uncovered more than 25,000 inventions, from the bicycle-mounted crop sprayer to the electric paintbrush that never needs to be dipped in a paint can. Many of the cheap, simple ideas he spreads for free from one poor village to another with the inventor’s blessing. Some he is working to bring to market, ensuring the innovator gets the credit and the profit that will spur others to create as well. Many ideas are simply documented in his database waiting for some investor to spot their potential. He routinely dispenses tiny grants, either from a government fund or his own web of organizations, to help poor innovators finish their projects. The 59-year-old management professor with a thick graying beard reminiscent of an ascetic holy man says he gets no financial benefit from his finds, reveling instead, with almost childlike joy, in the process of discovery itself. “Every time we walk in a place we discover a solution that we would not have imagined, and we find that eagerness,” he said. Many finds focus on agriculture: a more productive strain of peppers, a makeshift seat that lets coconut harvesters rest high up in trees, a hollow spear that pierces a hole in a field and drops in a seed. There are traditional herbal medicines for cracked heels and sore muscles, stoves and engines modified to be more efficient, and a rice cleaner designed by a 13-year-old after he watched his mother wearily picking pebbles from yet another sack of grain. And there are the eyebrow-raisers: the washing machine mounted on the back of a scooter and powered by its engine, the bulletproof vest packed with herbs that absorb the concussive force of the bullet, the amphibious bicycle. Gupta has received the Padma Shri, one of the Indian government’s top honors. He works with India’s president to fete the innovators. He helped found the government-sponsored National Innovation Foundation, routinely addresses top business conferences and recently linked up with one of India’s largest retailers, Future Group, to bring some of the most promising finds to market. Consumers will be attracted to the products - everything from all-natural cookies to a toothbrush that adds its own toothpaste - because the profits go to a good cause and because of the subtle simplicity of the inventions, said Ashni Biyani, a top Future Group exec- Continued from Page 1 Netanyahu yesterday. Haaretz said Donilon had told Netanyahu the Pentagon was planning for a possible decision to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, and had shown him some of the plans. The failure of talks between Iran and six world powers to secure a breakthrough in curbing what the West fears is a drive to develop nuclear weapons has raised international concerns that Israel, widely assumed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed state, may opt for a go-it-alone military strike. utive. “These are ideas that are rooted within the context of India,” she said. Gupta’s explorations have boosted inventors throughout rural India who, much like the “mad” uncles tinkering away in garages around the world, are dismissed as nuts by their neighbors until he arrives and declares them geniuses. Take Nattubhai Vader, a farmer from the state of Gujarat, who watched women and children harvesting an especially troublesome variety of cotton and figured there had to be a better way. Vader designed and then obsessively tweaked a massive apparatus of spinning rubber hoses and vacuums that fits over a tractor and can pick as much cotton in one hour as 10 people can in two days, he said. He sank more than $20,000 into the harvester before his wife threatened to divorce him if he didn’t save the family’s remaining money for their kids’ education. A few years later, Gupta found Vader, gave him the funding to restart and now plans to bring in a team of engineering students to refine it. At the heart of Gupta’s mission are his grueling weeklong Shodh Yatras, consisting of 20 kilometer daily hikes in the searing summer and frigid winter, nights spent sleeping in school courtyards, meals of watery lentils. The idea is to scare off uncommitted “tourists” and give participants a taste of peasant life. “Your eyes will open and you will see things you’ve never seen before,” Akash Badave, a 23-year-old preparing to be rural administrator, says Gupta told him before the first of his three Shodh Yatras. “And that was the case.” On one recent trek along parched hillsides in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, Gupta was accompanied by dozens of followers: young urbanites curious about rural poverty, an engineer who came to find herself, a team of inventors he collected from his previous journeys. He began the hike after arriving on an overnight flight from China, marched in rubber sandals, drank little water despite the heat and even fasted for a day. His arrival at a village rarely visited by outsiders was an event akin to the circus coming to town. He handed out colorful magazines and pamphlets showing farmers how to make natural pesticides out of local plants, to treat cattle diseases with spice mixtures, to prolong the life of their water pump by sticking an old tire under the handle. And he appealed to them to come up with ideas of their own. “Solutions to our problems are not so scarce,” he declared. As an example, he introduced Amrit Agrawat who more than two decades ago was watching women in his village struggle to pull heavy water buckets from a well. Agrawat made a pulley with an automatic brake so the women could rest without the bucket plunging back down. It costs $7. Wonderful, one man said, “now my wife can answer her cellphone while she gets water.” Agrawat has sold 5,000 of his pulleys, but donated one to each village along the way and encouraged the farmers to copy it for themselves. — AP Israel denies Iran war plan report Israel has warned the West it thinks it is only a matter of time before Iran’s nuclear program achieves a “zone of immunity” in which bombs will not be able to effectively strike uranium enrichment facilities buried deep underground. Iran says its program is solely for peaceful purposes. On a visit to Jerusalem this month, Clinton said Israel and Washington were “on the same page” with respect to Iran, calling Iran’s latest proposals to world power talks on the issue “non starters.” “Our own choice is clear, we will use all elements of American power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Clinton said. — Reuters Continued from Page 1 Others detained included Salem Al-Shehhi, a lawyer, Abdul-Raheem Al-Zarooni, who worked for a media organization, Musbah Al-Rumaithi, another Islah member, and Issa Al-Suwaidi, a former education official, activists and relatives said. Most of the men detained over the past months are from the more religiously conservative emirates such as Sharjah and Ras Al- Khaimah, which are also less affluent than the oil-rich capital Abu Dhabi and trade hub Dubai. Many are wellknown figures and include a ruling family member, under house arrest in Ras Al-Khaimah emirate. The arrests are the latest in what international rights groups and activists describe as a crackdown on political opposition in general, and Islamists in particular. On Friday, the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) said the UAE must end its crackdown on MONDAY, JULY 30, 2012 UAE widens crackdown; more Islamists... Continued from Page 1 do not move soon,” he said, adding that talks would start on forming a transitional government. Arab League head Nabil Elaraby said the battle in Aleppo amounted to “war crimes”, and perpetrators would eventually be punished, Egypt’s MENA state news agency reported. The Arab League has suspended Syria and lined up with the West and Turkey against Assad. Assad’s government blames Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar, for the revolt. Reuters reported on Friday that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey had set up a base in southeastern Turkey to aid the rebel Free Syrian Army. Asked about the base, a Saudi Foreign Ministry spokesman declined yesterday to comment directly but said Riyadh provided financial and humanitarian aid to the Syrian people. Hinting at more direct support for the rebels, he said countries should enable Syrians “to protect themselves at the very least, if the international community is not able to do so”. Assad’s ruling structure draws strongly on his Alawite minority sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, while his opposition is drawn largely from the Sunni Muslim majority, backed by Sunni leaders who rule nearly all other Arab states. That has raised fears that the 16-month-old conflict could spread across the wider Middle East, where a sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shiites has been at the root of violence in Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and elsewhere. Shiite Iran demonstrated its firm support for Assad by hosting his foreign minister. At a joint news conference with Moualem, Iran’s own Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi rebuked the West and Arab states for holding the “illusion” that Assad could be easily replaced from power in a managed transition. In Damascus, where Assad’s forces pushed back a rebel offensive following a deadly bomb attack on his Kuwaiti royal detained Continued from Page 1 Saudi Arabia where he met the governor of Riyadh. So far, there has been no official comment on his arrest. Sheikh Meshaal is a member of the Al-Sabah family which has ruled the oil-rich emirate for the past 250 years without challenge. In tweets he wrote over the past few days, he said he will contest the next parliamentary election to become the first royal in Kuwait to lawyers and human rights defenders. “The recent crackdown...is part of a broad campaign of intimidation and harassment by UAE authorities that aims to silence any and all critical voices. This campaign must end immediately,” said Said Benarbia, Senior Legal Advisor for the ICJ Middle East and North Africa Program. UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville has said the crackdown looked like an excuse to silence legitimate demands. But the UAE authorities, like other Gulf monarchies, are concerned that the rise of Islamists in Egypt and other states in the wake of the Arab Spring could stir up Islamist groups and dissent on their turf. Last week, Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan warned of an “international plot” to overthrow the governments of Gulf Arab countries, saying the region needed to be prepared to counter any threat from Islamist dissidents as well as Syria and Iran. — Reuters Assad forces declare ‘victory’ in Damascus inner circle, many residents have fled fighting on the outskirts for relative safety in the heart of the capital. Even the centre has been shattered by the violence. Shops open only between 9 am and 3 pm, food prices have soared and no one dares walk outside after dusk, even in the holy month of Ramadan when streets are normally packed late into the night with people celebrating after a day of fasting. “To begin with I was with the regime, for sure,” said Ahmed, from one of the southern suburbs where the army, backed by helicopter and tanks, launched its fierce counter offensive. “But now, no, the regime must go. Take what they want with them, but they must go.” The battle for Alelppo, a city of 2.5 million people, is a decisive test of the government’s ability to retake its two main cities. It has committed huge military resources to the battle there after losing control of outlying rural areas and some border crossings with Turkey and Iraq. Fighters from the rebel Free Syrian Army were also in evidence on the approaches to Aleppo from the north, where many villagers were still shopping or tending their fields. One man in his 40s, carrying his family on a motorcycle, said he was fleeing the fighting in the city. “We are living in a war zone,” he told Reuters. “I and my relatives are just going back and forth, trying to stay away from the fighting. We left Aleppo when we saw smoke and helicopters firing.” The British-based Observatory, which compiles reports from anti-government activists, said 26 people were killed in Aleppo on Saturday and 190 total across Syria. It reported fighting in Deraa, the cradle of the revolution, Homs, the scene of some of the bloodiest combat, and Hama. There was no way to verify its figures. The fighting in Aleppo follows a July 18 bomb attack that killed four top security officials including Assad’s defense minister, intelligence chief and powerful brother-in-law. — Reuters do so, and also vowed that if he becomes an MP, he would expose corruption among top officials. He also complained that the Kuwaiti constitution entrusts power to only one branch of the Al-Sabah family—the descendants of Mubarak Al-Kabeer who ruled Kuwait from 1896 to 1915. Sheikh Meshaal, who is not descended from Mubarak Al-Kabeer, called for the constitution to be amended and the introduction of political reforms. — AFP
THE LEADING INDEPENDENT DAILY IN THE ARABIAN GULF ESTABLISHED 1961 Founder and Publisher YOUSUF S. AL-ALYAN Editor-in-Chief ABD AL-RAHMAN AL-ALYAN EDITORIAL : 24833199-24833358-24833432 ADVERTISING : 24835616/7 FAX : 24835620/1 CIRCULATION : 24833199 Extn. 163 ACCOUNTS : 24835619 COMMERCIAL : 24835618 P.O.Box 1301 Safat,13014 Kuwait. E MAIL :info@kuwaittimes.net Website: www.kuwaittimes.net US in major policy ‘shift’ in Rwanda W ashington Issues By Nicolas Revise is loosening its ties to Rwandan President Paul Kagame, long a favorite of the donor community, amid allegations his government is stirring violence in neighboring DR Congo, analysts say. Last week, in a statement slipped out without fanfare late Sunday, the United States said it was freezing its modest $200,000 in 2012 military aid to Rwandaa move experts say represents a major shift in long-held US policy. “As we have repeatedly said to the government of Rwanda, we have deep concerns about Rwanda’s support to the Congolese rebel group that goes by the name M23,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. The M23 are Tutsi ex-rebels from the Rwanda-backed National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP). They were integrated into the regular army of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2009 as part of a peace deal that followed their failed 2008 offensive on the Congo’s eastern city of Goma. But the ex-rebels mutinied in April, demanding better pay and the full implementation of a March 23, 2009 peace deal, and have been engaged in running battles with the Congolese army in the eastern Nord Kivu region. Kinshasa accuses Kigali of sponsoring the rebellion-a complaint supported by a UN panel, which said in June that Rwanda was supplying the rebels with arms and soldiers. Nuland said the United States also has its own evidence of Rwandan involvement in the upheavals, but believed the UN report was “quite comprehensive and quite concerning.” US State Department war crimes investigator Stephen Rapp even told the British daily The Guardian this week that Kagame could one day find himself charged with war crimes. The Netherlands also cut its military aid to Rwanda. “It is really the first time we have heard strong words spoken against Paul Kagame in Rwanda by the US government. There is a real shift,” said Richard Downie, expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This is a real change in tone. Rwanda will find itself in a unusual and uncomfortable position right now,” he said. Since Kagame took up the reins of power of his African nation in 1994 ending a bloody genocide which left some 800,000, mainly Tutsis, dead, Rwanda “has been the darling of donors’ community for so long,” Downie said. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is a special advisor to Kagame, and has been a steadfast supporter of Rwanda’s development through his Africa Governance Initiative. But the winds began to change in June with the publication of the United Nations report. Even if the amount of aid was small “there are other signs of unhappiness by the United States,” Downie said. “I am told that the head of the Africom postponed a visit to Rwanda and also some people are making some noise that Rwanda wants to get a seat on the UN Security Council.” John Campbell, from the Council on Foreign Relations, said: “The report the UN experts produced provided a clear evidence of Rwandan meddling in Eastern Congo. It is a careful and credible report. “It has long been US policy to oppose outside intervention in Eastern Congo. In light of the UN report, the Obama administration had to respond.” Rwanda has categorically denied that it is interfering in the DR Congo, accusations which Kagame told CNN were “not true” and “actually ridiculous.” “You see, I hope people can just be fair. It’s not even very complicated. I’m really surprised people called experts can make a report this way.” There have long been tensions between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Rwanda has been accused on several occasions of aiding Tutsi forces in DR Congo to combat Hutu rebels on its western border. It charges the Hutu rebels with joining the 1994 genocide and says they remain a threat to their country. Kigali sent troops into the DR Congo from 1996-1997 and then between 1998 to 2002, before moving to act through proxy militias, experts say. Nuland insisted: “We are continuing to watch this case very carefully and to send public and private messages to the government of Rwanda.” French journalist and expert on the region, Pierre Pean said the US decision could mark a major shift in regional policy. It could “perhaps signal the beginning of the end for the soldier Kagame and his license to kill and pillage since 1994 as well as a revision of American policy in the Great Lakes region,” he said.— AFP All articles appearing on these pages are the personal opinion of the writers. Kuwait Times takes no responsibility for views expressed therein. Kuwait Times invites readers to voice their opinions. Please send submissions via email to: opinion@kuwaittimes.net or via snail mail to PO Box 1301 Safat, Kuwait. The editor reserves the right to edit any submission as necessary. By Steven C Johnson and Chris Francescani P harmacist Michael Nastro is full of admiration for how police responded to a deadly robbery in his suburban New York neighborhood in 2011. A gunman walked into a pharmacy near his own on Long Island, killed four people and fled with a stash of painkillers. Police in the area, which is part of wealthy Suffolk County, best known for the exclusive Hamptons beach towns, boosted patrols and gave advice on what to do if the robber hit again. They caught him three days after the shooting. But Nastro, 50, admits he’s torn about police officers’ pay and retirement benefits. “I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t conflicted,” he said. “I want good police work, but I’m a taxpayer too. There’s got to be a middle ground.” The average annual pension for Suffolk County cops who have retired since 2007 was $86,702, according to figures from the Manhattan Institute, a public policy think tank, against $37,270 for other county employees, excluding teachers. The county, facing a three-year deficit of $530 million, declared a fiscal emergency in March. Traditionally, US voters have backed generous pay and benefits for the cops and firefighters willing to risk their lives to keep citizens safe. That was especially so after the deaths of many emergency workers in the Sept 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center in New York. But as economic conditions have worsened and many local governments have run into severe fiscal problems, that attitude has started to change. Since the 2007 recession, some cities have tried to roll back pension benefits and pay, among the most rigid and, in some cases, highest expenses in municipal budgets. From New York to California and points in between, cops and firefighters have been drawn into pitched battles over their pay and benefits. In San Diego and San Jose, California’s second and third biggest cities, voters in June overwhelmingly backed sweeping pension reforms. In San Jose, all employees will have to choose between reduced benefits or higher retirement contributions. In the mid-sized California cities of Stockton and San Bernardino, officials say public safety costs were among the factors that forced both to declare bankruptcy. In Vallejo, a former US Navy town near San Francisco that emerged from a threeyear bankruptcy last year, public safety pay and benefits were consuming three-quarters of the city’s general fund. Detroit, plagued with one of the highest crime rates in the country, nonetheless cut pay and healthcare benefits for city workers, including police, by 10 percent just over a week ago, a move the mayor says will save the cash-strapped city $102 million a year. A legal challenge by the Detroit Police Officers Association failed, even as union President Joe Duncan publicly complained of what the cuts would mean for Detroit’s ability to hire police, noting that the city is “already 50th on the list of pay for the biggest 50 cities in the United States.” St Louis this month approved an overhaul of the firefighter retirement system that rolls back decades of increases, while Miami officials trying to plug a $60 million budget gap this week declared “financial urgency,” which will let them alter employee contracts. Among the city’s proposals: limit overtime for firefighters and require higher health care contributions. According to an analysis by New York-area newspaper Newsday published last month, police and sheriff’s department employees in Nassau and Suffolk counties reached nearly two- 14 opinion thirds of each county’s payroll. “That is why a lot of municipalities are choosing bankruptcy, because it’s the only way - other than getting a state control board - of getting out of these salary and pension requirements,” said the former top official of Suffolk County, Steve Levy. SAVINGS AND SAFETY Striking the right balance between savings and safety is a touchy business, though. While it’s become almost routine for voters to rail against fat paychecks and generous benefits for teachers, transit workers and other public employees, cops and firefighters have in the past been largely spared such anger. For example, in Wisconsin, where most public workers were stripped of their collective bargaining rights and made to pay more to fund their pensions, firefighters, cops and other public safety workers were given an exemption. Still, Jim Carver, president of the Nassau County Police Benevolent Association, says politicians have started to target cops and firefighters. The state seized control of Nassau County’s finances after the county failed to balance its budget and had its credit rating cut last year. Carver bristles at the notion that police and firefighters don’t deserve what they earn. “After 9/11, you couldn’t find a politician that wasn’t rushing to put his arms around a cop or a firefighter,” he said. “Ten, 12 years later, we are to blame for everything. Politicians have made us the enemy. We didn’t put a gun to anybody’s head. These were fairly negotiated contracts.” EVERYBODY’S COMPLICIT To be sure, it took decades of bad decisions and poor management by local authorities to put many communities in fiscal dire straits. In countless cases, cities, counties and states over-promised benefits to retirees but neglected to set aside sufficient reserves to cover their liabilities. When the economy and stock market were booming, cities often sweetened pension benefits, confident the money would be there in the end. After 9/11, the cops and firefighters’ heroic status with the public meant that they were in a particularly strong bargaining position. But the 2007-2008 recession and the impact of the housing bust on real estate taxes hammered municipal revenues and badly hurt pension funds’ investment returns. The Pew Center on the States said the gap between states’ pension promises and liabilities was $757 billion in 2010. “Everybody’s complicit in this,” said Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the National Center on Suburban Studies at Hofstra University. Noel DiGerolamo, head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association in Suffolk County, has harsh words for the public officials, saying they should be bearing the blame for fiscal woes. “Rather than being responsible leaders of government and saying, ‘We have these pension obligations that we’re going to have to pay,’ and saving towards those obligations, they are being politicians,” DiGerolamo said. “And when the bill comes due, blaming employees who have worked towards and earned these pensions for 20 or 25 years.” BROKE IN CALIFORNIA Of course, scores of municipalities are managing to balance their budgets even as costs rise. Only a few of the 90,000 issuers in the municipal debt market are in true distress. Even many with escalating pension costs can meet their current obligations. It’s keeping up with promises to aging citizens who are living longer that keeps officials up at night. In some cases, contracts that may once have seemed fair are helping to bankrupt cities and leading to severe cuts in services, including fire station closures and reductions in police forces. Eight municipalities have sought protection from their creditors so far this year, following 13 that filed in 2011, and many others are having to slash their budgets. San Bernardino, a city of 210,000 some 65 miles east of Los Angeles that has been hit hard by the collapse of the housing market, says public safety spending eats up 73 percent of its general fund budget, with overtime for firefighters especially onerous. Pension costs are expected to reach $25 million this year, double the 2006 level. The city imposed a temporary 10 percent pay cut, but the firefighters’ union successfully challenged it in court and is entitled to back pay. The city council voted last week to suspend debt payments and quit paying into a retiree health fund. Some 350 miles to the north, Stockton, the biggest US city ever to file for bankruptcy, allows police officers to retire at 50 with pensions based on 3 percent of final pay for each year in service. When he signed the bankruptcy filing in June, Stockton city manager Bob Deis said a 1996 decision to provide firefighters with free health care in retirement, later expanded to all city employees, was a “Ponzi scheme” that saddled the city with a $417 MONDAY, JULY 30, 2012 US loves cops and firefighters - but not their pensions COLORADO: Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates arrives for the funeral of Aurora, Colo, movie theater shooting victim Micayla Medek in Denver. — AP million liability. Because their jobs are dangerous and physically taxing, cops and firefighters typically retire after 20 or 30 years on the job, and that’s as it should be, said Michael Coleman, a policy adviser for the League of California Cities, an association of municipal officials from the state. But that’s why it’s important to keep pensions reasonable. “I don’t think anyone disagrees that these are dangerous jobs. But how much is enough? Unfortunately, I think it’s gone too far,” Coleman said. The contrast between benefits in the public and private sectors is stark. Only 26 percent of US companies offer retiree healthcare benefits, compared with 66 percent that did so in 1988, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Most private sector employees bear the brunt of providing for their retirement by saving money in funds known as 401(k) plans, with companies typically also making contributions. After the 2007 recession, some firms stopped making contributions altogether. It can all add to tensions as some taxpayers question why their services are being cut or property taxes raised so a city or county can find the money for generous retirement benefits. In New York, a 2010 investigation by then-attorney general Andrew Cuomo, now governor, found widespread incidence of “pension padding” - public employees working extra overtime in their last year on the job to boost pay and retirement income. That’s especially costly when it comes to well-paid public safety workers. The Manhattan Institute estimates nearly 10 percent of New York State cops and firefighters who retired in 2011 will receive six-figure pensions, from 2 percent in 2001. NO QUICK FIXES Quick fixes, however, are unlikely. Efforts to revamp public pension plans face stiff legal challenges. Each state has its own constitution, courts and case law that affect how it can go about changing retirement systems. Firefighters in San Bernardino have filed seven legal actions against attempts to scale back pay and benefits since 2007. In many municipalities, public salaries and pensions are pegged to those offered in comparably sized regional cities. In New York, pensions, once set by the state, cannot be negotiated through collective bargaining. At the same time, alternative ways to tackle deficits, such as raising taxes, are politically unpopular. In the small Southern California city of Stanton, voters recently rejected a proposed utility tax hike that would have raised $1.1 million. The city instead cut back on active police and fire staff, which account for 77 percent of its spending. “Will there be some impact on response time? There could be,” said city manager Carol Jacobs. “But this city is not going to go bankrupt.” In some cases, unions have preferred layoffs to reduced retirement benefits. Two troubled cities in New Jersey are cases in point. Camden, one of the state’s poorest and most crime-plagued cities, recently cut its police force by about half, and Newark cut its force by a third after unions declined concessions demanded by their city governments. In New York, former Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, a Long Island Democrat who has clashed with police unions, gave a stark assessment. “We’re facing a problem that will be faced by every town in America. “You can’t raise property taxes anymore - people won’t go for it. There’s no more money. So, do you cut services, which will result in the death of the suburbs, I think, or do you make these salaries and pensions more rational than they’ve been?”— Reuters
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