Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Michigan

Wisconsin is crazy enough right now, Ohio may be worse, but Michigan is really going all out for outrageous legislation. There is a bill making its way through the Michigan legislature that will let the state appoint someone to dissolve any local government. Under this law contracts can be voided, school districts taken over, police and fire departments reorganized, unions and contracts broken and city governments outright dissolved arbitrarily.

All the state has to do is declare a financial emergency and then a single person can be appointed to take over and even unincorporate a city.

There are very broad definitions of emergency. A single person appointed by the Governor can take over an entire city. There is no legislative oversight. There is no recourse. All power of the elected and appointed officers will reside with one person. The emergency isn’t over until this person says it’s over.

The Governor of Michigan wants to be able to take over cities whenever he wants to. We’re not talking one person one vote, this is one person controlling everything.

Doing this to public schools to hand them over to private corporations is bad enough, doing it to entire cities is just unbelievable.

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