Are Republicans Really For Democracy When They Pass Bills Like The Emergency Manager Bill In Michigan?
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Time For An Uprising In Benton Harbor?
Jesse Jackson
Chicago Sun Times
Benton Harbor, Mich., is a town of nearly 11,000 people, about 90 percent of whom are African American. It is a catalogue of the misery of the industrial Midwest. It was the headquarters and manufacturing center of Whirlpool, but the last Whirlpool plant closed years ago. Now Benton Harbor has a per capita income of about $10,000 a year. And it is plagued by the ills that accompany poverty in today’s America: high unemployment, broke government, failing schools, crime, drugs and despair.
Everything has been stripped from Benton Harbor’s residents. The industrial jobs that used to provide a ladder into the middle class have been shipped abroad. The call center jobs that replaced them employ few at a poverty wage. The failing tax base means that public services are starved. The schools struggle to educate children from mean streets; these children are often hungry and without adequate health care or stable homes. The good teachers flee; the schools fail or are taken over, a shuffle that substitutes motion for real action on poverty.
But Benton Harbor may become to economic justice what the small town of Selma was to civil rights. For in Benton Harbor, the powers that be now are wreaking the final indignities on the town’s beleaguered residents — stripping them not only of their schools, but of their democracy, taking away not only their jobs, but their public parks.
Benton Harbor’s finances are a mess. How could they not be in a town stripped of jobs and hope? So, the state has stripped its residents of their democracy. In what is accurately termed “fiscal martial law,” the state has named a czar to run the city. That appointee, Joseph Harris, has issued an order essentially stripping the elected city council of all powers. No money can be spent, no taxes raised or lowered, no bonds issued, no regulations changed without his approval. Benton Harbor’s residents now live in a dictatorship imposed by a Republican governor famous for his belief that the poor should be punished and the rich rewarded.
This appointed dictator claims breathtaking powers. He can sell public assets, dismiss pension boards and take control of public pension funds and revoke labor contracts. What triggers this takeover? The law is remarkably vague. The governor may act if a payroll is missed, if there are complaints of late bill payment, if pensions are underfunded, if there is a significant budget deficit, a term that goes undefined.
This takeover is a recipe for the worst abuses of oppression, cronyism and corruption. And here, too, Benton Harbor is the example. One of the few citizen treasures in Benton Harbor is the Jean Klock Park, a half-mile of sandy dunes on the edge of Lake Michigan. It was bequeathed to the children of Benton Harbor by the Klock family in 1917 in memory of their daughter.
But developers backed by Whirlpool now want to appropriate a large portion of the park to turn it into a Harbor Shores golf resort with a 350-room hotel, two marinas, a 60,000-foot indoor water park (for members only), and a fancy golf course open to all who can afford a $5,000 entry fee and be approved by the club. The town’s citizens have resisted this development, which is under litigation.
But the new czar’s first act was to take over the Brownfield Redevelopment Authority, most likely as a way to proceed with the development and sidestep the lawsuits. Why be suspicious? Because the law that the new czar is operating under was introduced by Republican state Rep. Al Pscholka, former staff aide to U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, an heir to the Whirlpool fortune.
They’ve shut down the jobs, and taken over the schools. Now they want to shut down the democracy and turn the public parks into a rich man’s playground. But in Benton Harbor, as in Selma and Montgomery, they forget even the poorest people have a sense of dignity. Dr. King wrote, “the ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” In Benton Harbor, it is time for the good people to make themselves heard
Top Opinion
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Blancmange19 2011/05/22 17:24:14
My son's art was recently featured in the State's Congressional Art Competition. We were able to have the chance to bend the ear of our State Representative (D) Sandy Levin. He really didn't have much to say and sidestepped our questions with "I'm not in agreement with this government . . . etc., etc.
The economy here is so bad that I was commuting back and forth from NYC for 15 months (my former hometown). The real estate market deterioriated to the point where we'd have to actually come up with money at closing. I made the difficult decision to return. I was the primary breadwinner and my husband played Mr. Mom for a time. The commute was just too difficult for my kids and I came back for good. Lots of regret now. Had I known it would be this difficult to find a job here, I'd have never come back. Grrrrrrrr!
Our way or the highway is the Republican motto.
It is the cancellation of democracy. It is the cancellation of the right to a voice in governance and as such the single most unAmerican action possible. If any nation did this we would be first in line to protest it at the UN and rightly so.
Michigan republicans are the American Taliban.
Seriously, it happens everywhere where liberals show their total and complete failure to operate a community. And this happens more often than you think.
It's no different an act than the President throwing out a Governor and state legislature because they disagree on how to use assets. I'm sure you'd approve of that too wouldn't you? Hey, Michigan is broke so if it is legal for their governor to do this the President could do the same to him couldn't he? If the voting rights for a city can be suspended why not a state?
If the legislation backs it (and I bet it does in this case) it's justified.
You should extend your avarice to Germany as well, they have an active war crimes warrant for Rumsfelt, another moral scar the nation has to carry until he tries to travel outside the country and is brought to justice. I believe Spain has one for Rummy as well.
Too bad the UN and the EU don't use "renditions" the way we do so the trials can proceed.
Time For An Uprising in Benton Harbor? Yep.
Make that: Time for an Uprising Across the Country. This is part of the class warfare being played out throughout the country. And the GOP is the legislative arm of the KochArmeyWhirlpool Billionaire Boys Club that is making it all possible - in exchange for a whol' lotta money.
Will the poor and middle class masses wake up to this before it's too late? I think Wisconsin has gotten the wake up call. What about Michigan, and Ohio, and Indiana, and Pennsylvania? Texas....well, they're hopeless. But their electoral vote count should start shrinking soon, as Texans end up either fracked by natural gas wells, or shot dead - as carrying guns in elementary schools is signed into law.
Time For An Uprising in Benton Harbor? Yep.
Make that: Time for an Uprising Across the Country. This is part of the class warfare being played out throughout the country. And the GOP is the legislative arm of the KochArmeyWhirlpool Billionaire Boys Club that is making it all possible - in exchange for a whol' lotta money.
Will the poor and middle class masses wake up to this before it's too late? I think Wisconsin has gotten the wake up call. What about Michigan, and Ohio, and Indiana, and Pennsylvania? Texas....well, they're hopeless. But their electoral vote count should start shrinking soon, as Texans end up either fracked by natural gas wells, or shot dead - as carrying guns in elementary schools is signed into law.