Via Laura Conway, writing for Maddow Blog, I learned today that there is pushback from a reporter for the Kalamazoo Gazette regarding Maddow’s position on the events occurring in Benton Harbor. .
The reporter, Julie Mack, writes:
What's worse for Benton Harbor: A financial manager with dictatorial powers or an utterly dysfunctional city government? Are Benton Harbor residents better served by 90 acres of parkland, or 68 acres and a new source of revenue for cash-strapped city coffers? Is it insensitive to build an upscale development in a downtrodden community, as Maddow suggests? Or does it show that the business community hasn't turned its back on Benton Harbor?
Yes, Ms. Mack apparently thinks (or was told to write by her corporate bosses) that both the governor, and his wealthy cronies behind the golf club, are doing Benton Harbor a favor.
I strongly disagree. Here's why.
If we don't look at outcomes for localities that are taken over by emergency managers, we are left with the government takeover of a legal community heretofore run by ELECTED officials. Now, you might say that perhaps the people want the "help" of the government in turning their community around.
But it was not the people of Benton Harbor who reached out to the state government asking them to remove the individuals that the people themselves chose. No. It was the state government who determined that the people were better off with out their duly elected officials, and took action that turned Benton Harbor in to ........a department of the corporation known as Michigan.
HOW is that constitutional???
Meanwhile, Gov. Rick Snyder is training hundreds, yes, hundreds, of emergency managers, and he has pulled financial support from many Michigan municipalities.
Lansing, Michigan mayor, Virg Bernero, on the Maddow Show:
…….they‘ve cut revenue sharing for cities. So they‘re really cutting support for cities. In essence, shoot you in the foot and blaming you for limping.
We‘re struggling to survive in this economy, and the state is doing nothing to help us. In fact, they‘re hindering us. And the only thing they‘re doing then is threatening us with this privatization, this corporatization with a czar who‘s going to be appointed who is not going to work with the local authorities.
What does this mean? Can we expect that hundreds of localities will lose their right to govern themselves and become mere departments/cogs in the corporate wheel?
That's exactly what seems to be indicated. And, make no mistake, that is Snyder’s intention. See, if communities become simply departments in his corporation, he can hire, fire, allocate, dissolve, at will. His will. His rules. His corporation. And Michigan......Michigan will become the first state to be corporatized.
Recall is too good for Snyder and the filthy Republican corporatists who enacted this anti-Democratic legislation. They all need to be arrested and jailed for participation in a plot to rape corporatize a state. A STATE, damn it.
Adding.... Rachel Maddow: "Michigan is Ground Zero in American politics".
Watch:
RELATED POSTS:
~ Republican Gov. Rick Snyder Begins Rape of Michigan to Benefit Wealthy Cronies
~ Corporations Behind Michigan's Unconstitutional EFM Law, Including Amway and Koch Industries
~ Gov. Rick Snyder and Michigan Republicans Engaging in Disaster Capitalism
