michigan


The state of Michigan has been dabbling with imposing dictatorial emergency managers… 1

The state of Michigan has been dabbling with imposing dictatorial emergency managers on struggling cities like Ecorse, Flint and Pontiac since the mid-1980s. The program of eliminating democracy and imposing radical financial austerity has been such a rousing failure everywhere it has been used that one of the first pieces of legislation passed after the election of Republicans in the house, senate and governors mansion in 2010 was to radically expand the emergency financial management system and allow Rick Snyder to impose them almost anywhere he felt like.

Why are Republicans so utterly opposed to democracy and ignorant of what it takes to revive a community from within rather than destroy it? More importantly, knowing how Republicans feel about them, why do voters keep casting ballots for them?
#politics #emergencyfinancialmanagers #michigan #democracy

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Michigan emergency managers undermine economic recovery as well as democracy
Video on msnbc.com: Rachel Maddow reviews the track record of governor-appointed "emergency managers" in Michigan and finds that towns that lost their democratically elected governments to emergency m…

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Republicans in Michigan don't believe in democracy and they aren't above…

Republicans in Michigan don't believe in democracy and they aren't above going to any lengths to prevent it. Last year the newly Republican-controlled legislature and the governor passed an emergency manager law. Under the law, the governor can dismiss locally elected governments and replace them with an appointed manager.

Needless to say, many of the voters of Michigan were not impressed and were more than willing to sign a petition that would put the law on the November ballot. After crates of petitions were delivered to the state board of canvassers, the signatures were checked and even after some were disallowed, there were 203,238 signatures, 40,000 more than required for a recall vote.

However, four member board deadlocked 2-2 along party lines about approving the ballot measure. It turns out that a group called Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility protested the petition on the grounds that the font was too small. Not the language of the ballot, or the validity of the signatures but the font size!

It turns out Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility happens to operate out of the law offices of Jeffrey Timmer, one of the two republicans on the board of canvassers. Despite the obvious conflict of interest Timmer did not recuse himself from the vote. What a farce!

#emergencymanager #michigan #recall

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EM referendum off November ballot, opponents vow appeal

The Board of State Canvassers deadlocked 2-2 along party lines today on whether Michiganians will get to vote in November on a repeal of the controversial emergency manager law – sparking angry shou…

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Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.