"The unfolding bankruptcy in the Northern California city of Stockton is revealing the lengths to which public officials are going to protect government union members from even the most modest cuts in their outsized pay and benefit packages.... Assured Guaranty -- which insures the pension-obligation bonds that creditors issued to Stockton in 2007, when it was first unable to make ends meet -- argues that the city is not actually bankrupt. Instead, [Assured says,] '[T]he city hopes to use the Chapter 9 plan process to cram down a non-consensual plan on capital market creditors in order to free up cash to fund above-market labor and pension costs, while refusing to consider -- much less implement -- additional sources of revenue and much-needed expenditure reductions.'"  MORE >>