The prize for the most abjectly wrong headline in American journalism this week goes, I grieve to say, to the Los Angeles Times. Atop an article analyzing how California cities are coping with horrific budget crunches—which ran one day after the working-class exurb of San Bernardino followed its fellow working-class exurb Stockton into municipal bankruptcy—the headline writer plunked the following line: “Rising costs push California cities to fiscal brink.”




In September, 2009 Atlantic Monthly named 
