The Los Angeles Times: Democracy didn't fail -- it was stolen.

[kpete]

Democracy didn't fail -- it was stolen.


...............


The undermining of democracy began in 2011, when the Michigan Legislature adopted Public Law 4 to grant the governor the power to declare a financial crisis in local governments and appoint an emergency manager to make all financial decisions -- which are the underpinnings of everything a city does. Once the manager was appointed, the elected representatives -- council members and mayors -- lost pretty much all authority to make any decisions at all. And it empowered the manager to void contracts, including those with labor unions.

.............the elected representatives went directly against the expressed will of the people of the state of Michigan.


And it was the emergency manager appointed under that new law in 2013 who made the bad call in Flint that led to the lead poisoning of its water supply (the issue was brought to light by Curt Guyette, an investigative journalist working for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan).

Cause and effect between the emergency manager law and the Flint crisis? Not necessarily. But among the warning signs that all was not right with Flint’s water were complaints by residents that it tasted funny and was causing problems. Those kinds of complaints usually end up on a mayor’s desk, or in public comment sessions at city council meetings, where the people who make the decisions are accountable to those who are lodging the complaints.


In Flint, the decision-maker was accountable not to the people of Flint, but to the governor who appointed him.


So where is that emergency manager, Darnell Earley, now? Snyder placed him in charge of the Detroit Public Schools, where teachers have resorted to sickouts to draw attention to the appalling physical condition of buildings and classrooms, including mold infestations, vermin, broken or inadequate heating systems and other basic maintenance problems that have been ignored. Low pay and limited raises, plus more looming state-directed reforms, have led to resignations, early retirements and a teacher shortage.

As in Flint, under the emergency manager system there's no one to be held politically accountable. Democracy didn't fail -- it was stolen.


Much more:

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-flint-water-crisis-snyder-obama-20160121-story.html

[Octafish]

1. ''...the elected representatives went directly against the expressed will of the people...''

More from Martelle:

And it was the emergency manager appointed under that new law in 2013 who made the bad call in Flint that led to the lead poisoning of its water supply (the issue was brought to light by Curt Guyette, an investigative journalist working for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan).

Cause and effect between the emergency manager law and the Flint crisis? Not necessarily. But among the warning signs that all was not right with Flint’s water were complaints by residents that it tasted funny and was causing problems. Those kinds of complaints usually end up on a mayor’s desk, or in public comment sessions at city council meetings, where the people who make the decisions are accountable to those who are lodging the complaints.

In Flint, the decision-maker was accountable not to the people of Flint, but to the governor who appointed him.

[kpete]

2. Thanks Octafish

for posting MORE!!!!!


Peace & clean-water!
kp

[Octafish]

5. Michigan water is like printing money. Ask NESTLE'S.

A Brief History of Nestle’s Water Battles in Michigan

The PR firm of Deb Muchmore, wife of Gov. Rick Snyder's just-resigned chief of staff, has the account.

[Enthusiast]

13. This nation has aided in overthrowing democratically elected governments for a long time.

We used to do this around the world, still do. That was bad enough. But now TPTB have extended it to American cities. But first they sent the jobs overseas so they could blame the victims of outsourcing for being lazy useless eaters. This country is so fucked.

[Proserpina]

3. They passed the Emergency Manager bill, We Repealed it by referendum, and then

they passed it again attached to a spending bill that could not be repealed....


The entire GOP is culpable, and they should all go to jail.

I do not know why no one has taken the Emergency Manager bill to the Supreme Court, but they probably felt there wasn't a prayer against those fascists.

[Octafish]

6. Agree 100-percent: EM law is Fascism. I'd add Michigan's Democrats who worked with Republicans.

Specifically, Democrat Andy Dillon, then State Treasurer, who Snyder reports signed off on the water switch in the memos released Monday.

Dillon said he thought Flint wouldn't be using the water to drink. Honest.

http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2016/01/former_michigan_state_treasure.html

Important for DUers and Democrats to know:

After failing to win the Democratic nomination to oppose Snyder in the gubernatorial campaign of 2010, he failed to support the Democratic nominee, Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero. So, Dillon was invited to serve as State Treasurer.

Ex-rival Andy Dillon slights Virg Bernero

Mich. Democrat leaders: Party is unified

by Chris Christoff
Detroit Free Press,August 7, 2010

House Speaker Andy Dillon was drubbed in the Democratic gubernatorial primary by television ads that portrayed him as a greedy Wall Street raider who opposes a woman's right to choose abortion.

Then he was drubbed by rival Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero in Tuesday's election.

Friday, a visibly relieved Dillon smiled and said he was ready to work for Democrats in the fall campaign.

But he caused a buzz by not endorsing Bernero in front of about 200 Democrats assembled in downtown Detroit for a post-election unity breakfast.

"I want to make certain some of the things I was fighting for are going to be embraced," he told reporters afterward. "Then we'll get there. We don't have to decide that today."

He added, "It's not a slap. We just got done with a campaign. I'm going to take a vacation. We'll sort it out when I come back."

It was another enigmatic move from a politician who has become an iconoclast to some fellow Democrats, scorned by some union leaders as too cozy with business and too frosty with organized labor, and criticized as a legislative leader.

CONTINUED...

http://archive.freep.com/article/20100807/NEWS15/8070314/Ex-rival-Andy-Dillon-slights-Virg-Bernero

From there, he got to be the water decider. Loyalty to the Almighty Dollar is Buy Partisan. Heckuva job, Andy.

[Kip Humphrey]

4. Why is Darnell Earley still working for the governor and not in jail???

[Proserpina]

7. Because it's okay if you are a republican?

Democracy is broken in Michigan, as is the rule of law.

[Hoppy]

8. N.J. is debating an emergency take-over of Atlantic City.

The city's finances are in fiasco status. City financial decisions include lifetime pensions for summer lifeguards. Anyone who has connections with the city officials gets a hand-out or benefit of some kind. Two + blocks away from the casinos and the boardwalk leaves an area that is either vacant lots, unattractive buildings, boarded up buildings and a few subsidized housing units.

They had 30 years of casino money to get their shit together. The money was squandered.

Now the city council and mayor are proposing bankruptcy. This would negatively affect the finances of every other N.J. city.

The city council's response to the emergency take-over is to play the race card. "This is a civil rights issue." The residents are being deprived of the results of their elections.

[First Speaker]

9. This was how the American Revolution started...

...the colonial legislatures were being systematically neutered by the Royal Governors, appointed from Londodn...and the people rose up. But that was then, and today's Americans are too cowed for that...

[RoccoR5955]

10. Democracy was stolen from us long ago

When Nixon got elected after his cronies broke into the Dem hotel.
When Raygun got elected because of the arms for hostages deal with Iran.
When Dubya got appointed by the Supreme Court.

The Flint water issue, though tragic, is just another nail in the coffin of our democracy.

[DFW]

15. Nixon's first win was 4 years before Watergate

The "Dirty Tricks Team (last alumnus, Roger Ailes, is now head of Fox Noise)" was at work in the 1968 election.

T.H. White wrote a famous book about the 1960 election called "The Making of the President." After the 1968 election, a young Joe McGinness wrote "The Selling of the President," and listed the cynical, calculating methods the Republicans used to get Nixon elected. A small player but big observer of the McCarthy witch hunt, Nixon learned his tactics at the feet of some of the most evil players in Washington in the 1950s.

After the 1968 election, my dad, who had read the McGinniss book, told me one of the guys involved in the 1968 Nixon campaign left the country with his family, saying that he didn't want to live in a country that rewarded the kind of thing he had been hired to do with success.

[Eric J in MN]

11. K & R (NT)

NT

[Jack Rabbit]

12. "Democracy didn't fail; it was stolen"

That is the whole point of the emergency manager act. The Republican governor, acting like a Roman Emperor, sends a proconsul to a community in order to set aside elected municipal officers, seize local government assets and auction them off to wealthy Republicans.

The voters of Michigan were right to repeal this tyrannical act. There is nothing to recommend it. On its face it is an assault on the principle of government by consent of the governed. In its substance it is an open invitation to crony capitalism. The decision of whether a municipal district should be placed in the hands of an emergency manager is the governor's alone and there is no way for the residents of the district to appeal the decision. Yet once the voters of the state repealed the anti-democratic statute, the Republicans in the state legislature simply passed it again and added a legislative trick to put the statute beyond the reach of voters through the referendum process.

[librechik]

14. THANKS for pointing out the obvious

after encouraging and accessorizing all the major criminals doing it to us. FOR GENERATIONS!

Fuck you, mainstream media. Nice try.

Come back when you have a solution which involves getting rid of these UNELECTED REPUBLICAN ASSHOLES

[Odin2005]

16. Dictator Snyder.

[TBF]

17. I just posted the NYTimes editorial from this morning

as well commenting specifically on the water. At least the major newspapers are all commenting. This really is an embarrassment. And as I said in my OP - if this were Grosse Point we wouldn't even be having this conversation because it would already be fixed.