Abraham Lincoln mourned the sacrifice of those who had given the last measure of devotion to ensure that a "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth." Now, without the clash of armies, government of the people is at risk of perishing in the state of Michigan.
There is nothing about an economic crisis that should allow a states' rights ideology to suspend democracy by stripping an elected mayor and city council of authority and then empowering an unaccountable and unelected czar to nullify worker contracts and sell off assets.
In Michigan, a state devastated by misguided corporate trade policies that undermined U.S. manufacturing, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder has made himself the tribune of a corporate shuttering of the democracy. Snyder passed a law -- Emergency Financial Manager Law Public Act 4 -- that added extensive powers for state-appointed emergency financial managers to rule over communities or school districts in financial distress.
In the wake of the Great Recession caused by Wall Street's excesses, many communities in Michigan -- as elsewhere -- are in difficult fiscal straits. Snyder has used this crisis to appoint managers who have, in the words of a civil suit filed challenging the law, "nearly unlimited, unilateral and unchecked authority" to make or change laws, to sell off public assets, to run up taxpayer debt, and to abrogate contracts of all sorts.
These are dictators neither elected by the people nor appointed by the city's authorities, but imposed by the governor to enforce what one of the legislation's sponsors called "fiscal martial law."
Pontiac, Mich., has had an EFM for years now. But the most recent appointee, Michael Stampfler, has used his powers to institute a reign of misery. The democratically elected city council has essentially been fired by Stampfler, whose first order was to cut off city council meetings and strip the council of its powers entirely.
Stampfler is paid $150,000 per year, and his assistant $135,000 per year. He unilaterally slashed the salaries of the elected city council and mayor to zero.
The Pontiac Silverdome, burdened with debts and decrepitude, had been budgeted for sale at $7 million; a previous EFM sold it off for $583,000.
According to Councilman Kermit Williams, Pontiac's EFM has laid off more than 200 city employees. He has outsourced the police department, the IT department, the building and safety department -- and, recently, the city's water treatment facility to a company under indictment by the Department of Justice for Clean Water Act violations.
Williams also notes that the EFM has run up more than $1 million in legal fees at taxpayer expense, while refusing to present the 2011-12 budget to the citizens of Pontiac. Now, it is reported that he has held talks about declaring bankruptcy and merging with Oakland County -- all without any check by the elected officials of the city or the people themselves.
Michigan faces harrowing economic troubles, but it is not broke. This is an expression of the governor's insistence on cutting taxes on the rich and the corporations, and forcing working families to bear the costs of the recession. And it is not surprising that these emergency financial managers are being foisted disproportionately on cities and school districts with the poorest people and the highest numbers of minorities. Democracy, the governor seems to suggest, is something they can't afford.
In her famous work, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein describes how dictators in Chile and elsewhere used national emergencies to impose policies that would never have been accepted by the public. They took advantage of the shock of emergency to impose policies that benefited the few, rewarded the corporations, savaged labor and rolled back everything from public education to retirement programs. Now Benton Harbor, Pontiac, Flint and the Detroit schools are victims of the shock doctrine.
Perhaps Gov. Snyder has forgotten the words of the Pledge of Allegiance that every schoolchild learns. We pledge our allegiance not to the corporate state, not to one party or one ideology, but to the republic, one nation, under God with liberty and justice for all. In the state of Michigan, Gov. Snyder -- now one of the most unpopular governors in the country -- has decided to use the economic crisis to trample that pledge.
This post originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times.
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1. He is incorrect in his assessment that the governor's actions--to "suspend democracy by stripping an elected mayor and city council of authority and then empowering an unaccountable and unelected czar to nullify worker contracts and sell off assets"--are unusual. All federal judges, for example, are "unaccountable and unelected," but they issue orders that might nullify contracts or require sale of assets; in fact, bankruptcy court judges do this all the time. These actions are necessary to correct peoples' bad decisions or to otherwise repair a bad situation. The highest value here is NOT sovereignty of local government. Exhibit A: Bell, California, whose city manager was paid a base salary of $787,638 per year, and the Bell City Council who paid themselves $96,000 each per year--when cities of similar size pay council members $4,800 per year. Sometimes things go wrong and remedial action is needed; no need to get excited about it.
2. Governor Snyder is not popular today in his state, but neither are other governors and politicians. A June 16-17 Michigan poll by the Perricone Group surveyed 600 registered voters who plan to vote in November 2012. 28% gave Governor Snyder high marks, 31% gave him medium marks, and 30% gave him low marks. The numbers that respondents gave to President Obama (38%, 27%, and 33%, respectively) and Senator Stabenow (34%, 28%, and 22%, respectively) did not vary appreciatively.
The base salary of a police officer in Suffolk County, Long Island is over $95,000 per year after five years on the force. They can retire after 20 years with 2/3 of their pay and medical benefits for themselves and their families for life.
I presume that you live in New York City and you are able to live a decent life on the 50k a year a rural school pays an experienced teacher. Since that is patently false (you may live in New York but, if you do it on 50k per year, you've either got family help, a very high-paying job or you are living in a condemned building and eating Ramen noodles 24-7), I have to ask again, "what is your point?"
The simple fact is that New York City is an expensive place to live and work. Housing, even today at the depths of a housing crash, costs several times what it costs in just about every other market in the country. Do you REALLY want the teachers and police officers and others who do miserable, crappy, dangerous and very, very, very critical jobs to live in tenements because it is cheaper to live in Kansas? Well, it doesn't matter what you want because Donald Trump and the multitude of New York plutocrats like him are the ones who decide such things in the United States and they WANT and they NEED police officers to be focused on protecting them and their city rather than worrying about whether their kids are getting enough to eat and/or are sleeping with cockroaches.
Not sure why we need Jess Jackson on the case, the way the folks are in government here and in many parts of the state he may do more harm than good. Actually saw him arriving at the airport the other day
Taxpayers who bankroll city councils like the ones suggested in Jacksons article should never bow to the pressure of unions or groups of profligate entitlement regardless of their financial position. This is just common sense. Mr Jackson abhors the idea that fiscal sanity has taken root in MIchigan because this makes it much more difficult for these groups to extort money from the taxpayer.
The idea that some name calling, race baiter like Jackson should have his opinion about municipal finances be given the slightest shred of credibility is laughable.
The Governor in Michigan is doing what he is SUPPOSED to do. Protecting the structural integrity of his state, cities and towns.
Just to add a further point on why Jesse Jackson is involved, it is because HE IS AN AMERICAN. When Michigan picks out the poorest jurisdictions in the state and puts them under what is essentially martial law, what they are really doing it taking away basic democratic rights from the poorest people in the state. Since Michigan is STILL an American state, those people losing their rights are AMERICANS. If you are an American... especially a few days from Independence Day... it should make you mad.
Yes, he will be recalled. Signatures can be collected starting 7/5.
Yes, he will be recalled.