“This is nothing short of giving a governor the power to appoint local viceroys who rule by decree.”

[highplainsdem]

http://blogs.forbes.com/erikkain/2011/03/15/michigan-governor-to-cut-taxes-for-corporations-while-cutting-services-for-the-poor-and-middle-class/

E.D. Kain
Michigan Governor to Cut Taxes for Corporations While Cutting Services for the Poor and Middle Class
Mar. 15 2011 - 4:42 pm


-snip-

As Pat Garofolo notes, if you are a Michigan resident in the lowest income bracket (bottom 20%) you pay a tax rate of 8.9 percent. If you are in the top one percent, you pay a rate of 5.3 percent. This is a dramatically regressive tax system.

-snip-

If you are a Michigan resident you can vote for whoever you like to run your town or city – this is a democracy after all (at least for the moment, we will make references to democracy in the present tense).

But after Snyder’s dramatic cuts in support for local governments and schools, you may find that you don’t have the funds to run your city or school district effectively. This may trigger the governor’s office which could declare your city in a state of financial crisis. At this point, governor Snyder could, theoretically, appoint the CEO of General Motors or any other qualified private citizen to come into your town and take over everything from the public services, to the distribution of state and federal tax dollars. Meanwhile, this Emergency Manager is likely to come from the upper income bracket, and therefore pay a lower rate of income tax than you are. If he owns or works for a corporation – and I’d say this is very likely – Snyder’s tax code will benefit him even more.

I can only echo the words of Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings: this is not conservatism. “This is nothing short of giving a governor the power to appoint local viceroys who rule by decree.” And yet, there is no Tea Party protesting at the steps of the Michigan capitol in Lansing, no angry Fox pundits decrying the big government policies of the GOP in Michigan.

-snip-

Link to the Unqualified Offerings blog he's quoting:

http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2011/03/14/12674

[Aerows]

1. That's what they want

If we, the American people don't stand up for ourselves, that's what we will get, too.

[blm]

4. Today's GOP fascists are also 'royalists' at heart....

.

[pacalo]

2. I'm worried about what these governors ultimately want to achieve in creating a clause

that enables the takeover of city/state facilities. I'm thinking about the way the GOP has helped to orchestrate the conglomeration of almost all of the media & how the news is tightly controlled. (To any rightwing lurkers, if the message weren't so tightly guarded, the teabaggers wouldn't have gotten past first base with media attention. They would have been dismissed after the initial "warning" that they exist in the U.S.) Are these governors working in tandem for GOP-friendly companies to take over these assets for reasons unknown at this time?

[highplainsdem]

5. You ask, "Are these governors working in tandem for GOP-friendly companies to take over these assets

for reasons unknown at this time?"

Yes, they're working in tandem with those companies.

Please read about ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and its model legislation:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x591230

[Imagevision]

3. Well it does seem like the rich and powerful want to eliminate the middle class...