Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Warning: You are about to enter the Twilight Zone.
Imagine, if you will, that you live in a state where a governor wields extraordinary power over its residents. Imagine, if you will, that your governor has the legal
authority to appoint an “Emergency Manager” to oversee the local government in the town where you reside. Imagine that the monetary compensation for the Emergency Manager of your community has no cap. Imagine that your Emergency Manager declares that there’s a financial emergency in your town and then takes over control of it. Imagine that the Emergency Manager can break contracts, seize and sell assets, eliminate services—and can also fire duly elected public officials who serve your community. Imagine, if you will, that the Emergency Manager empowered by your governor to run your town has the right to dissolve your school district and to disincorporate your town. AND imagine that you and your fellow residents have no say about what is going on! Just imagine how you might feel if you lived in a state where that kind of thing was going on. Well, the people who live in Michigan may not have to imagine much longer.
Who, you might ask, will be responsible for transforming the state of Michigan into a Rod Serlingesque otherworldly undemocratic Twilight Zone right here in the United States? Why, Governor Rick Snyder and his bold band of Republican state legislators–that’s who. In January, Governor Snyder called for “Emergency Manager” legislation—and the Republican state legislators were more than happy to comply with his request.
This all seems hard to believe, doesn’t it? I’m not making it up. Karen Bouffard of The Detroit News reported the following: Legislation that would allow emergency financial managers to throw out union contracts and overrule elected officials in financially distressed municipalities and school districts was approved Wednesday by the state Senate. Similar legislation passed in the House in February, and the two chambers are working on a final version to send to Gov. Rick Snyder.
In an article published in The Michigan Messenger, Eartha Jane Melzer wrote:
Under the law whole cities or school districts could be eliminated without any public participation or oversight, and amendments designed to provide minimal safeguards and public involvement were voted down.
An amendment to require Emergency Managers to hold monthly public meetings to let people know how they are governing was rejected by Senate Republicans, along with proposals to cap Emergency Manager compensation and require that those appointed to run school districts have some background in education.
Critics say that Republicans are manipulating concerns about budget problems in order to consolidate power by undermining unions.
According to E. D. Kain: Snyder’s law gives the state government the power not only to break up unions, but to dissolve entire local governments and place appointed “Emergency Managers” in their stead. But that’s not all – whole cities could be eliminated if Emergency Managers and the governor choose to do so. And Snyder can fire elected officials unilaterally, without any input from voters. It doesn’t get much more anti-Democratic than that.
Mark Gaffney, Michigan State President of the AFL-CIO said: This is a takeover by the right wing and it’s an assault on democracy like I’ve never seen.
Do you agree with Mark Gaffney? Do you think what’s going on in Michigan is an assault on democracy?
SOURCES
Rachel Maddow Exposes Michigan Republicans Secret War On Democracy (Politicus USA)
Michigan Governor Plays Fast and Loose with Democracy, Invokes Radical New Powers (Forbes)
Michigan Republicans Use Budget Crisis to make Outrageous Assault on Democracy (AFL-CIO)
Michigan Senate passes emergency manager bills (Daily Tribune)
Emergency managers bill sweeps toward final approval (The Michigan Messenger)
Conyers: Emergency Manager bill ‘raises serious constitutional concerns’ (The Michigan Messenger)
Financial manager bill passes Michigan Senate (The Detroit News)
Michigan bill would impose “financial martial law” (CBS News)
Annoy Yours:
Dystopian societies are typically socialist. The books on dystopian societies I have read are all collectivist in nature.
Hey Screw em maury,
Exactly what is a leftist? I am not sure I know what you mean….really…define a leftist…..
Screw em’ Maury,
And pray tell who can live on 8/10 and hour at a maximum of 30 hrs per week…..or if you want more…you work split shits….you are a fool in your beliefs…a true fool…a fool knows not its folly’s…
Tony C:
standard leftist answers, all of them.
When the economy was going well, the McDonalds in our local area was paying around $8-10/hour to attract workers.
A good economy prevents abuse. Savings prevent abuse.
But our economy is not set up that way, no one saves anymore mostly because of taxes. And the economy is always on the ropes because of the national debt and the abuses by the Federal Reserve.
If you cant find work, then you need to move, why should others subsidize your stubbornness or lifestyle?
Tocy C. et al….
I have found the word that the maury’s of the world project…..it is of antisemitic nature in scope and duality…. it is not just aimed at Jews….it is directed at everyone not like them…. similar to a Utopian society but the opposite….
A dystopia (from Ancient Greek: δυσ-, “bad, ill”, and Ancient Greek: τόπος, “place, landscape”; alternatively cacotopia,[1] or anti-utopia) is, in literature, an often futuristic society that has degraded into a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian. Dystopian literature has underlying cautionary tones, warning society that if we continue to live how we do, this will be the consequence. A dystopia, thus, is regarded as a sort of negative utopia and is often characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government. Dystopias usually feature different kinds of repressive social control systems, a lack or total absence of individual freedoms and expressions and constant states of warfare or violence. Dystopias often explore the concept of humans abusing technology and how humans individually and collectively cope with technology that has evolved too quickly. A dystopian society is also often characterized by widespread poverty and brutal political controls such as a large military-like police.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia
The real “Death Panels” emerge and it is not from the Democrats. If the so-called “Obamacare” is repealed, there will be consequences–patients will die. These are not just statistics, they are real living human beings whose lives will be snuffed out if they cannot get needed surgery and medications. The willingness of the right wing to let people die for lack of medical care has already been seen in Arizona where a heartless governor and legislature has killed funding for medical care. Other republican governors, lawmakers and judges are stampeding over each other to repeal health care legislation. Death panels? A Frank Luntz talking point that only came true when the right wing had its way.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/the-real-death-panel-if-obamacare-repealed-some-patients-cant-go-back.php?ref=fpa
@Maury:
I’ll take these out of order a bit.
If the company is as bad as you say, they should go look for another job. See how that works, in a good economy it would be possible but socialism doesn’t create good economies. Most are on the ropes and are going to need to be bailed out.
It has nothing to do with the economy; this is another free market myth and lie. The first part of this is the free marketeers insistence on only addressing the worker and the job and nothing else. The second part is assuming there is someplace else to go. The third part is assuming some employer out there treats employees better, AND has a job opening — By your own free market logic, the employers that treat employees best should be full up with lifers; all the openings (if any) will be with assholes that try to rip off employees.
Besides that, most real people over 25 or so have strings that attach them to their geography. I have an extended family of over two dozen people in my city; my wife has another dozen. I have business contacts, partners and charity contacts. My wife has been working at the same job for over 30 years, and will never leave. We have friends, homes, mechanics and repairmen and lawyers we trust. If I lost my job and had to work, I cannot just go find another job and take all that with me.
For low wage workers, the problem can be more than just family; the problem can be the expense of moving, or even the expense of transportation. If somebody takes the bus to work, or walks, the number of workplaces they can attend is limited.
Finally, the natural outcome of the free market is monopolies and duopolies (two major companies), locally, nationally, and globally. Some towns are founded on a company or industry tied to the geography: Oil, coal, plentiful water or arable land or useful climate, or the proximity of other businesses like rail, barges, ports or whatever. A dock working crane operator will not find an equivalent job in Oklahoma City, and there may not be another port he can work at within his travel distance.
If the job they have is the only employer in town, they need a way to address injustices without resorting to violence.
a union guy on strike should not be entitled to food stamps, if they are striking for their own benefit then let them pay for it.
The problem with this idea is that it endorses abuse by employers. This is blackmail, it says either accept being mis-treated or your family will starve.
I would not benefit so why should I pay?
Another myth, caused by focusing too tightly. Most people DO benefit if employers cannot get away with blackmailing their employees. If employers are allowed to abuse employees, their first choice of abuse is financial; ripping them off and cutting their pay. This makes their products cheaper, and their competition must respond in kind, abusing their employees too, in order to stay in business. In fact, the employer that abuses their employees the worst is the profit winner, and the people benefitting from that profit are the rich. That is what you endorse.
By letting the unions strike and demanding OSHA do its job, we help eliminate “employee abuse and endangerment” as a cost saving tactic across the board, including in your own job.
Talking about fairness, it doesn’t seem very fair to me.
Fair or not, it seems humane to me to feed people that are hungry, and prudent as well. As the saying goes, no country is more than three meals away from revolution: And that applies on the small scale as well as the national one. The hungrier a man gets, and his family gets, the more desperate they get, and the less law abiding they are likely to be. Giving somebody a choice between getting totally fucked on the job or feeding their children will give at least some of them the idea of just taking what they need to survive, by violence if need be, from anybody that has it.
What you promote is a lawless society, and only to benefit the rich.
From Mother Jones (3/23/2011)
Behind Michigan’s “Financial Martial Law”: Corporations and Right-Wing Billionaires
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/michigan-snyder-mackinac-center
Excerpt:
Last week, Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder signed into law a fiercely contested bill giving unelected “emergency financial managers” unprecedented power to shred union contracts, privatize city services, and consolidate or dissolve local governments, all in the name of saving struggling cities and school districts. Dubbed “financial martial law” by one approving state GOP lawmaker and “disaster capitalism” by critics, Snyder and his bill have become a target for Wisconsin-like protests. Several thousand demonstrators marched on the Michigan Capitol in the days before Snyder signed the bill. But gone unmentioned is a little-known Michigan think tank that for years has been pushing for the most controversial provisions in Snyder’s bill—and that’s bankrolled by some of the same right-wing millionaires and billionaires that backed Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his anti-union legislation.
Since 2005, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has urged reforms to Michigan law giving more power and protection to emergency financial managers, state-appointed officials who parachute into ailing cities or school districts and employ drastic measures to fix budgets on the brink of collapse. In January, the free-market-loving center published four recommendations, including granting emergency managers the power to override elected officials (such as a mayor or school board member) and toss out union contracts. All four ended up in Snyder’s legislation.
“The Mackinac Center has been tied at the hip with the Republican Party establishment for years,” says Doug Pratt, public affairs director at the Michigan Education Association. “It goes to their funding sources; it goes to their ideology.”
Mackinac is part of a network of state-based groups associated with the Heritage Foundation, the influential right-wing think tank in Washington. Its past and present board members include Robert Teeter, a GOP strategist and ’92 campaign manager for George H.W. Bush; Margaret Rieker, a former vice chairwoman of the Republican National Committee; and Joseph Lehman, a former vice president at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington.
The Mackinac Center does not disclose its donors. But a review of tax records shows that the group’s funders include the charitable foundations of the nation’s largest corporations and a host of wealthy conservative and libertarian benefactors. Between 2002 and 2009, the Mackinac Center’s donors included the Charles G. Koch Foundation ($69,151), founded by the chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, who, with his brother, David, is a major backer of conservative causes; the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation ($80,000), the charity tied to the son of the co-founder of Amway, the multibillion-dollar direct marketing company; the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, established by the parents of Blackwater founder Erik Prince, who serves as the foundation’s vice president ($195,000); and the Walton Family Foundation ($100,000), established by Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and his wife, Helen.
raff,
You could eat during your 1L exams?
All I could do was read and work a Braun coffee maker into an early grave.
R.I.P. Braun #2. You were a brave and steadfast companion. *sniff*sniff*HONK!*
_____
Brian,
“I am aware of the dirty trick of the adversarial legal system, which is, any statement made and not rebutted or refuted is, by definition true, regardless of any or every fact.”
That’s not a dirty trick of the adversarial system. That’s a primary tenet of logic; a rule of thought. A thing is what it is. A ≡ A. You cannot violate the law of identity without proving that something is not A via logic and/or empirical proof.
The statement of fact, “legal dispute resolution via adversarial due process is the alternative process to personal self-help adversarial dispute resolution which results in the tyranny of the strong over the weak and often violence”, is self-evident as in the absence of moderated dispute resolution the stronger human party will oppress, ignore or kill the weaker human party to get what they want. If a caveman thought another caveman stole his antelope, he would simply try to kill the other caveman to get it back.
This is inherent to human nature – a fundamental aspect of our psychology and biology in general as this is how animals resolve disputes – and the natural state of man absent the social compact and the resultant laws and dispute resolution mechanisms. Violence and oppression are the method in which barbarians solve disputes. Without social compact and the resultant rule of law, humans are naturally barbarians. This is a fact whether you like or not and whether you believe it or not. Without laws and dispute resolution, the strong with tyrannize the weak and do so without repercussion.
You would know this if you knew jack monkey squat about the law and the history of law.
But you don’t.
Just like you’d know that what Black’s means by “ignorantia facti excusat, ignorantia juris non excusat” means that ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking the law but an ignorance of a fact can be an excuse for breaking the law. For example: You can murder someone by suffocation if you bury them alive. Murder is a crime. Burying a box in your backyard is not a crime. If you buried a box in your backyard and someone was in it? If you didn’t know they were in the box and had no reasonable reason to know they were in the box, that would be an ignorance of a fact and a valid excuse for breaking the law. If your defense to the action was that you didn’t know murder was a crime? That would not be an valid excuse/defense for breaking the law.
What the maxim does not mean, however, is that simply because you exist you are a legal expert.
You would know this if you knew jack monkey squat about the law and the history of law.
But you don’t.
Just like you’d know Jesus has no place in our secular legal system as a function of the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. So appealing to religion will not work yet again. However, if you want to be like Jesus and judge not lest ye be judged? How about you start by not judging a profession about which you know nothing? How about that? Because every time you denounce the judiciary, you are passing judgment on, wait for it . . . people. People who are doing a job (albeit imperfectly) of brining some measure of justice and equity to those people in this world who are wronged and damaged by evil or negligent men. A job that is necessary to preserve order and stability in large scale societies. A job that prevents tyranny and anarchy despite your groundless accusations to the contrary. A job you cannot and, by admission, will not do.
You’ve also managed to add “hypocrite” to the list of annoying things about you by claiming to want to live by the edicts of Bible yet you clearly violate the edict of Matthew 7:1, which is one of the few direct teachings of Jesus and states “Judge not lest ye be judged”. Some may take this to mean that we should never judge others for anything but that’s simple, childish and contrary to human nature. We judge people all the time. We judge who is and who isn’t our friend. We judge whether that dress really does make her ass look bigger. We judge whether so and so is a good cook. What Jesus was really saying was that we should not judge others unfairly – like you have unfairly and without logic or evidence judged the entire judiciary. If you judge others while failing to see your own shortcomings, you are being hypocritical. Your short coming is that you know noting about the legal system except your own petty vendetta against it and the delusion that you are an expert on legal systems simply by merit of existing.
Once again, you demonstrate that when it comes to law and legal systems, you do not know what you are talking about.
So how about you showing some honor and leaving this place where you have added nothing of value, passed judgment unfairly upon others and about topics you don’t know enough about to pass judgment upon, and where you have been a constant annoyance with your long winded off topic and often nonsensical when not insulting postings?
Leave voluntarily and retain some scrap of honor.
Because I have a sneaking feeling that a bunch of us have about had our fill of humoring your months and months of tedious trolling distractions. Had our fill to the point we may to join together and petition for your being banned by the Professor as a perpetual nuisance if you don’t leave voluntarily. So please, leave now before we are forced to take a more drastic measure.
Go someplace you have a willing audience. Like starting your own blog. Do so voluntarily.
Is that clear enough for you?
RE: J. Brian Harris, Ph.D., P.E., March 24, 2011 at 11:48 pm
Editing blunder on my part. Sorry.
Hence, I proceed with my work as a bioengineer who is been reverse-engineering the adversarial system of law and jurisprudence in order to find its intrinsic error of apparent pre-historic origin, doing so in the interest of public safety.
WAS INTENDED TO BE:
Hence, I proceed with my work as a bioengineer who is and has been reverse-engineering the adversarial system of law and jurisprudence in order to find its intrinsic error of apparent pre-historic origin, doing so in the interest of public safety.
Raff, I know some truly interesting people. I will have to tell you about our cannibal client sometime. Then whre was the guy who I asked how he killed the local pharmacist. Leaning over in a conspiritorial whisper, he replied, “Quickly.”
Sometimes the criminals can be more interesting than the geniuses.
RE: Buddha Is Laughing, March 24, 2011 at 8:03 pm
You are no more qualified to technically address the legal system with the authority of an expert than I am qualified to design a high rise office complex or a generator
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The law informs me otherwise, for I am considered cognizant of the law by the law itself.
From Black’s Ninth,
Ignorantia facti excusat, ignorantia juris non excusat. Ignorance of fact excuses; ignorance of law does not excuse. — Every person must be considered cognizant of the law; otherwise, there is not limit to the excuse of ignorance.
Because I am a person and every person must be considered cognizant of the law, it is my considered understanding as a professional engineer that I am cognizant of the law and am therefore, as a professional engineer who is a person and therefore is, by law, cognizant of the law, I am, by law, qualified to study and critique the law as a fact of law.
Whether you are or not qualified to design anything is something of which I have neither knowledge nor understanding, for I am without any valid information as to what, if any, qualifications you may have, because you post comments here under what i understand is a pseudonym, which I, being without deception, simply do not do.
Were the law only applicable to lawyers and not to their clients and to those not their clients, I would have no need to be cognizant of the law; the law, however, defines me as cognizant, doing so by law and therefore as fact of law.
Being cognizant of law by law and as fact of law, I proceed with my work of understanding the biophysical ramifications of law with respect to time-corrupted learning trauma and its personal and social consequences; and I do this in full accord with my being licensed as a Wisconsin Registered Professional Engineer.
Sooner or later, some competent professional will properly “blow the whistle” on a purported legal system having unconstitutional properties such that all law is procedurally ex-post-facto because it is only possible to know what the law was when a violation of the law is possible when, at trial, the judge decides, long after the fact, and therefore inextricably ex-post-facto, what the law was or was not when it was, prior to trial, violated or not violated.
Sooner or later, some competent professional will properly “blow the whistle” on a purported legal system of such unfathomable complexity and with such disparity of contradictory decisions as to render every person effectively as though continuously in multiple jeopardy.
If some competent professional will do this sooner or later, I, as a competent professional, decided to do it sooner and not later.
Hence, I proceed with my work as a bioengineer who is been reverse-engineering the adversarial system of law and jurisprudence in order to find its intrinsic error of apparent pre-historic origin, doing so in the interest of public safety.
Boys, boys … it’s late at night and enough of the pi has been passed around … time to put out the fire and hit the sleeping bags …. tomorrow’s hunt starts early …
OS,
You are fire…but be careful! 🙂
I have a lifelong friend with an eidetic memory. He skated through college and never graduated. Went directly into medical school at the end of his junior year. They did their best to keep him busy in medical school, but could not, so he went to law school in his off hours and in the evenings. Two months after completeing his residency in psychiatry, he took and passed the bar exam.
I told his wife that when he dies, instead of burying him, they should have him stuffed and mounted for display in the Smithsonian.
…….she seemed to mumble something about being mounted was his favorite thing…… But I may have been hearing things.
I am aware of the dirty trick of the adversarial legal system, which is, any statement made and not rebutted or refuted is, by definition true, regardless of any or every fact.
Therefore, I herewith state, without deception, as a Wisconsin Professional Engineer having a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago, dissertation, “Mental Health and Mental Illness: Cause, Purpose, Cure, and Prevention; A Bioengineering Perspective (1998), that any and all statements to the effect that I am in any way misrepresenting my work and/or my professional competence are mistaken, and those persons who make statements are people who are mistaken; any allegation to the effect that I am in any way a fraud is categorically false, and it is a finding of my doctorate and subsequent research that no mistake made either could or should have been avoided, and thus those who confabulate falsehoods regarding me and my work are unable to know or understand better than they do because of the limitations of their personal circumstances, many of which limitations I apparently happen to not share with them. That they seemingly cannot yet understand my work or its significance is not anything other than evidence that I have work yet to accomplish before such folks will be able to understand my work well enough to have any useful clue as to what it actually is. though my work is of my understanding of the scientific meaning of the teachings of Jesus at the present time. I further state without deception that, at least since early infancy, it has been my conscious vocation to abide in the teachings of Jesus to the limit of my actual ability with no aspect of my life withheld from so abiding. I further state that I am unaware of being anything other than an ordinary person, neither more nor less “special” than anyone else and having neither more nor less worth than anyone else. I further state that I am familiar with John 12:47, in which it is reported in the King James Version that Jesus said, in effect, “And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” I further state that, as I understand Jesus came not to judge, but to save the world, I cannot abide in the teachings of Jesus if I ever judge any person in any way; hence, in my abiding in the teachings of Jesus, I judge no person and no event. I further state that it is my purpose to love whoever acts though to hate me or my work and to forgive whoever may hurt me that I may never reciprocate hurt done to me with hurt I do to another. I further state that deception is the most subtil aspect of existence of which I am yet aware, for deception deceives those who are deceived in such ways as to prevent their recognizing their being deceived, else those who are deceived would not be deceived.
raff,
Unfortunately…If I read it, I can see it….and recall from memory…nearly every aspect…its a good thing and a bad thing….I can assure you…
AY,
I can’t even remember which exam it was!
raff,
My First exam…well…I completed it in about 1 and a half hours….it was supposed to be a 3 hour exam….All essay…. I should have stayed longer but I had to go….ended up with a 3.5…..not to bad…
I understand OS….I made the error of judgment once opening my smart mouth….causing a fight with a wife…..
We were at a check out and the checker asked I needed a bag….. I said no thank…I am married….How the woman put up with me as long as she did…I don’t know….nearly 2 decades… I was going to say one score…but hey…we have 2 kids…. Now the first wife…. a different story….