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)
What OS said.
And apparently Maury wishes to neglect the fact that protectionism is the standard mode of operation in nations around the world – from the French with their wine and cheese producers to the Chinese and their high tariffs on anything not made in China. Free trade between nations only works when all nations involved are trading from an equal footing. Most every nation takes steps to protect their domestic manufactures and laborers. Only foolish ones do not. And even then “free trade” does not mean “unregulated trade”. Unregulated trade is how opium wars start.
Maury says: If you cant find work, then you need to move, why should others subsidize your stubbornness or lifestyle?
Maury says: They [free markets] function pretty well, look around the globe. The countries which have the freest markets are the ones with the best economies. I think we can extrapolate from there.
Alright, I will. Your view is by far the minority view in the USA, about 95% of us believe in some workplace regulation. So if you don’t like the level of taxation in this country and the level of government control, you should move. By your claim, there are plenty of other countries where you can be happy and productive and live your dream. Why should we be forced to put up with your discontent and resentment and attempts to rob us of what we think is your due? Leave all you have behind, and run off to one of these worker shitholes you admire.
India is a good place for you; I think. You can get used to the accent, and earn a dollar a day cleaning toilets to start. Or, try to rip off tourists, that’s a popular occupation; along with the ever popular unwashed beggar vibe. Go ahead, Maury. You’ve got a whole new, albeit short and brutal, life ahead of you.
That is just a fact; some people can be intimidated into taking lethal risks, especially when the strong have systematically removed all their other options, and their choice is losing everything they have or taking the risk. Tony C.
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Yup, it’s a Tango….
not my personal favorite…
Murray N. Rothbard is a free market economist and favorite of those who would take us back to the 1920s markets and banking models. Personally, I think he makes snake oil salesmen look respectable.
“The Smoot–Hawley Tariff
In mid-1930, another chicken born in 1929 came home to roost. One of Hoover’s first acts upon becoming President was to hold a special session on tariffs, beginning in the spring of 1929. Whereas we have seen that a policy of high tariffs cum foreign loans was bound to hurt the farmers’ export markets when the loans tapered off, Hoover’s answer was to raise tariffs still further, on agricultural and on manufactured products. A generation later, Hoover was still to maintain that a high tariff helps the farmer by building up his domestic market and lessening his “dependence” on export markets, which means, in fact, that it hurts him grievously by destroying his export markets.[4] Congress continued to work on a higher tariff, and finally reported a bill in mid-1930, which Hoover signed approvingly. In short, it was at a precarious time of depression that the Hoover administration chose to hobble international trade, injure the American consumer, and cripple the American farmers’ export markets by raising tariffs higher than their already high levels. Hoover was urged to veto the Smoot–Hawley Tariff by almost all the nation’s economists, in a remarkable display of consensus, by the leading bankers, and by many other leaders. The main proponents were the Progressive bloc, the three leading farm organizations, and the American Federation of Labor.
No one had advocated higher tariffs during the 1928 campaign, and Hoover originated the drive for a higher tariff in an effort to help the farmers by raising duties on agricultural products. When the bill came to the House, however, it added tariffs on many other products. The increased duties on agriculture were not very important, since farm products were generally export commodities, and little was imported. Duties were raised on sugar to “do something for” the Western beet-sugar farmer; on wheat to subsidize the marginal Northwestern wheat farmers at the expense of their Canadian neighbors; on flaxseed to protect the Northwest farmers against Argentina; on cotton to protect the marginal Imperial Valley farmer against Egypt; on cattle and dairy products to injure the Canadian border trade; on hides, leather, and shoes; on wool, wool rags, and woolen textiles; on agricultural chemicals; on meat to hamper imports from Argentina; on cotton textiles to relieve this “depressed industry”; on velvets and other silks; on decorated china, surgical instruments, and other glass instruments; on pocket knives and watch movements.[5] The tariff rates were now the highest in American history.
The stock market broke sharply on the day that Hoover agreed to sign the Smoot–Hawley Bill. This bill gave the signal for protectionism to proliferate all over the world. Markets, and the international division of labor, were hampered, and American consumers were further burdened, and farm as well as other export industries were hindered by the ensuing decline of international trade.”
From “Americas Great Depression” by Murray N. Rothbard
@Maury: Actually if you look around the globe, the countries where the people are happiest, and usually more free than we are in the USA, are Constitutional Monarchies with a heavily taxed market. I do not want a Monarchy, but those are the facts on the ground today.
If the point of having a free market is to maximize human misery and exploitation and oppression, then yes, it can succeed at that. If the point is to maximize human happiness, then you are dead wrong, literally, because that is what unregulated markets do: Kill people for profit, and primarily men.
Maury, et al,
“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.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
People’s inability to save has nothing to do with taxes, but has everything to do with the average American workers salaries being stagnant for the last few decades, while income for top 2% has increased:
“It’s well known that the typical American household has essentially been running in place or falling behind financially for some time. Sapped by greater outlays for everything from energy and health care to transportation and education, workers’ wages have failed to keep up with the cost of living.
What is news, however, is that stagnant wages have been a problem for far longer than anyone heretofore supposed, according to a new report released last week by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank focused on the poor and middle class.”
http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/careers/people-work-the-sorry-state-of-americas-wage-earners/19884045/
Real incomes are stagnating and even falling.
•
Between 2001 and 2007, the real income of the median working-age household decreased by 1.9%, a loss of $1,107, despite productivity increasing by 18.5% over that time.1 The real median income for all households rose by a meager 1.6%.2
•
Wages for workers with a college degree increased by just 0.4% between 2001 and 2007.3
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Between 2001 and 2007, the average income of the lowest quintile is down 2.7%, while the middle quintile is up a mere 0.1%.4
Income inequality is increasing.
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Between 1979 and 2006, the average income of the richest 0.1% of Americans rose a staggering 364%, or nearly 25 times more than the growth of the median household income.5
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More recently, between 2001 and 2006 the average income of the top 1% increased by 33%,6 or 165 times more than the growth of the median household income.
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The top 10% of households received 46% of the nation’s income in 2006, equal to the highest share since 1932. The top 1% received 20% of the nation’s income in 2006, the highest amount since 1928.7
http://www.epipolicycenter.org/blm-stagnant_wages_and_rising_inequality.pdf
How sad that you take pride in being a dumbass.
Maury,
I’ll bet my J.D. against your manifest incompetence that I know a helluva lot more about the Constitution than you do.
Now answer the question:
Why do you hate America, Maury?
And your base stupidity in insisting black is white is most unbecoming, Maury.
It was a lack of regulation that contributed to the severity of the crash. The study of the root causes of the crash carried out by the Senate’s Pecora Commission determined that lax banking rules fostered the improper and over valued speculation and this resulted in the implementation of the Glass-Steagall Act – regulations that fostered prosperity and kept banks under control for over 50 years, including our unprecedented post-WWII prosperity – until that fascist graft corrupted clown Clinton drove its repeal. Thus inviting another series of market bubbles based on improper speculation just like we are currently experiencing.
Yeah. Regulation contributed to the 1929 Market Crash alright. But it was not enough regulation that was the culprit (then as it is now), not too much regulation.
So . . . BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! Wrong answer once again, Maury.
OOPS, posted link to the search function rather than to the PP presentation. Here is the slide show from Villanova. I am posting the link to Google Quick View for those who may not have PP installed.
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:CUFFLrWCF7EJ:www41.homepage.villanova.edu/klaus.volpert/teaching/financial_math/Papers_and_Presentations/stock%2520market%2520crash.ppt+causes+of+great+depression+powerpoint&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESi9UEoQKAaH4_keWYGLwC7tuPHXJ9WD6YqJe2Q1R63gcMDOYgMbshDVgE2AaHESQ6k7qq6b_v7zswiU0L4xh8pJSSikNaBw-mooyhguprDu2qEEZmdsZPe_Y_5LcEcvFVqOBMCk&sig=AHIEtbSQgQ8lr2IkHZxuo-7u3ZvEVtsusg
Buddha is Laughing:
now that was a real funny post, if you actually believe what you just wrote you do not understand our Constitution. Your dribble tells me all I need to know about where you are coming from Lil’ Caesar or Seizure in your case.
Dr. Scribe:
It contributed to the severity.
Your shrill ramblings are unbecoming.
Call me a dumbass again, Maury.
It makes me giggle.
Because trade restrictions were not the cause of the 1929 market crash. It was caused by an unregulated stock market over selling and over valuing margin selling that resulted in a bubble of artificially inflated stock values. As these values were artificially high, when the market corrected, it resulted in a crash.
So, in summary, you’ve displayed 1) poor language skills and 2) a second graders understanding of economics.
Is there anything you are competent at, Maury? Other than regurgitating self-serving selfishness and the venal religion of greed is good?
Don’t bother to respond to that question.
That, unlike “Why do you hate America?”, was a rhetorical question, Maury.
Dr. Scribe:
I think you better learn how to use google or quit telling tales. A guy with a purported PhD (Dr. Harris actually has one which is verifiable, you can read his dissertation on line) should have been able to find the link since it was the first one that popped up when I just did it.
I post it here for your convenience. The example usage is apt as well, none of you have any teeth.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=yocal
Maury sez: “Do you know what exacerbated the great depression of the 1930′s? Trade restrictions or protection in other words.”
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Really? Ya gotta be kidding me. And all this time historians and economists have been proving that it was due to rampant and unregulated speculation on the part of investors. The top few percent of those on the economic ladder became obscenely rich while the bottom 75% of the population descended into abject poverty.
Here is a link to a PowerPoint presentation from the economics department at Villanova University that explains it at an undergraduate level of understanding. Note especially beginning at slide 15 how things began to unravel.
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=causes+of+great+depression+powerpoint&aq=2&aqi=g5&aql=f&oq=causes+of+great+depression&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=1fd3bc16a86a49f1
collectivism \kə-ˈlek-ti-ˌvi-zəm\
1: a political or economic theory advocating collective control especially over production and distribution; also : a system marked by such control
2: emphasis on collective rather than individual action or identity
Compare with . . .
democracy \di-ˈmä-krə-sē\
1a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
2: a political unit that has a democratic government
3 capitalized : the principles and policies of the Democratic party in the United States
4: the common people especially when constituting the source of political authority
5: the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges
You hate collectivism. This is clearly evidenced by your persistent attempts to use the word as a pejorative.
Democracy by definition is a collectivist form of governance as it has supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections and an absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges.
“We the People” is an inherently collectivist concept, Maury, as “We” is the first person plural pronoun of “I” and means “: I and the rest of a group that includes me : you and I : you and I and another or others : I and another or others not including you”. In other words, “We the People” is a collective by definition.
If you hate collectivism, you hate democracy, and by extension the Constitution and America, the country that holds the Constitution as the foundation of its legal system.
So my question to you is why do you hate America, Maury?
Tony C:
They function pretty well, look around the globe. The countries which have the freest markets are the ones with the best economies. I think we can extrapolate from there.
Anyway the US has never really had a true free market, but the time period it was the freest saw incredible growth in both the standard of living and technology.
Buddha is Laughing:
you really are a dumb ass, that McKinley quote is funny in light of the fact that John D. Rockefeller was able to develop and sell kerosene for pennies a gallon. He did it in an unprotected market.
Do you know what exacerbated the great depression of the 1930’s? Trade restrictions or protection in other words.
Do you actually believe the shit you write? Or do you just throw shit out there and hope you make it sound believable enough for stupid people to accept?
I will write slowly and pronounce the words distinctly as I type. For starters, Maury, you seem to be unable to distinguish between socialism, communism and fascism.
And it is “yokel” not”yocal.”
Yokel is defined as, “A naive or gullible inhabitant of a rural area or small town.”
I did a Google search and could not find a definition for “yocal.”
I do confess and admit that I enjoy living in a rural area in a medium small town, but I am trying to wrap my head around the ‘naive and gullible part.’ Coming from you, it is rather like being called ugly by a baboon.
@Muary: standard leftist answers, all of them.
Ha! How, precisely, does that make it a wrong answer, or an untrue answer?
If I tell a doctor I am interested in the taste of cyanide and would like his opinion on its safety, and he tells me, “That will kill you,” I don’t say, “pshaw, standard medical professional answer!”
You make no argument by calling me a leftist, so I assume I have won. You can’t answer so you resort to name-calling, that you think is an insult and I would regard as a compliment — If it were true.
But my answers are not trite quotations like yours are from the right; my answers are reasoned, logical, and comport with the truth of human nature. Your free market arguments require supernatural means to effect, and when they have been implemented they fail, or they end up outlawed due to their inhumane and destructive nature, to which over 90% of us are opposed.
Free markets don’t function; even theoretically they don’t function. The idea of competition is a good one, but the idea of free-for-all, anything goes competition is a very bad one, because it is far easier for the strong to oppress the weak than it is for them to compete fairly on product.
That is just a fact; some people can be intimidated into taking lethal risks, especially when the strong have systematically removed all their other options, and their choice is losing everything they have or taking the risk.
Your system, as has been proven in country after country including ours, leads to serfdom with a tiny elite set of self-protecting tyrants in complete control of the entire lives of workers.