It’s no wonder the GOP wants to defund wireless efforts across our country — then, we wouldn’t find out about and respond to their egregious acts on the local level as quickly as we do now. Here’s an item that somehow I let slip past my ever-watchful eye. Michigan’s new law that every sane person in this country should be concerned about — especially real Libertarians — its government over-reach at its worst and so much more.
This law allows the governor to end employee union contracts, fire local officials and even disband local governments and combine them with others. The new law also attacks seniors by authorizing the state government to fully tax pensions that before were exempt from Michigan’s 4.35 percent personal income tax.
What about Michigan’s legislature and judicial system; where do they come into play here? What about Democratic rule? And we all know how locked in step the GOP is; when one does something, they all scurry to copycat that person. This isn’t a plan for building up America, it’s a plan to destroy our Democratic process. Colorlines recently reported that:
Last week, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed the Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act. Now he can declare any city or district in financial emergency, appoint an emergency manager (at county, city, district or township level) and give that person the power to control budgets, sell off assets, bypass city councils and boards of education, take over school systems, de-certify public unions, and even to dissolve the city itself as an entity. This is corporate martial law—it won’t be the military taking over, but business interests that constitute an authoritarian regime.
The idea is that the state will punish localities where incompetent public officials and administrators are wasting money. This is the punishment angle on the master narrative that Republican governors across the country are taking up—“balancing the budget requires sacrifice.” Of course it only requires sacrifice from the people who have already cut to the bone. Simultaneously, Snyder, supposedly a moderate Republican, proposes a state budget that includes a 60 percent cut in corporate taxes, along with plans to tax pensions and kill the earned income tax credit.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s Financial Martial Law on Poor Cities – COLORLINES.
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