John Engler presided over the beginnings of the Mississippiafication of Michigan

Recently, John Mathias Engler has become a subject of renewed interest in Michigan media. Ousted one term U.S. Senator, Spencer Abraham made reference to his buddy Engler ("The Michigan Experience: Why Scott Walker and Wisconsin Republicans shouldn’t sweat their dip in the polls" in Weekly Standard Op-Ed on March 17, 2011- a better title might be "Former Gov. John Engler proved that Republican governors shouldn't sweat early, negative polls") recently as a way to encourage Snyder and company to hang tough in their hostile attacks on the public servants and ordinary citizens, both young and old, of a struggling Michigan.

Engler has been taken to task by state industrialists and regional editors as being vindictive, obstructionist and anti-Michigan manufacturing:

"Like a recurring case of Montezuma's Revenge, Michigan can't rid itself of John Engler. Gone "but unfortunately not forgotten" from state government for four years, Engler is now a lobbyist for the nation's major manufacturers and pops up frequently clinging to the coattails of Republican power brokers in Washington.

"After wreaking havoc on the state's budget, environment, human services and open government as governor for 12 years, Engler finally left Lansing, thankfully concluding his career on the public payroll, his only previous source of employment throughout his adult life.

"Known best for his vindictive meanspiritedness and bullying fear tactics, Engler did more to politicize public affairs at all levels in Michigan than any other politician in recent memory. Even members of his own Republican Party bitterly complained "privately, of course" about Big John. Many were not unhappy in the slightest when he packed his bags for private sector paychecks and corporate boardrooms.

"His scowling specter, though, returned on two fronts in recent days, sadly reminding us of the bad old days when Engler ran roughshod over anyone and everyone who had the temerity to oppose him."

Crain's Detroit Business reported that tooling companies in Michigan have had it with Engler's perceived coziness with the Chinese government on outsourcing and currency valuation.

The companies' trade group is distancing itself from Engler's National Association of Manufacturers, contending Engler and the NAM have "betrayed" domestic manufacturers in U.S. dealings with the Chinese.

"'Our own former governor has been completely blinded by the larger business interests that are running the NAM,'" Herb Trute, a downstate tool and die executive told Crain's.

"'And it's patently obvious to me that they (Engler and NAM) have done very little to help the plight of the small manufacturer'"

This editorial was chased by a follow-up letter from Joyce Braithwaite Brickley, who served as a long-time top aide to former governor William Milliken. She made this observation about the record and character of John Engler:

"No two people on the face of the earth are more familiar with the machinations and childishness of former Gov. John Engler. We put up with his small tricks, dishonesty and continuous negativity over our 15 years in the governor's office when Engler was in the state Legislature."

In 1994 Time Magazine referred to Engler as "something of a Republican hatchet man in the state legislature."

Sadly, it is former governor John Engler who presided over the beginnings of the future Mississippiafication of Michigan. It was a time when government was used against government to push agendas which harmed our state. With the help of radical tax haters like Patrick Anderson, Richard Headlee, et al, and the Senators Welborn and DiNello. These individuals with their wild libertarian rantings supported and abetted Engler in his cold-hearted revolt.

Using a surprise defeat of James Blanchard, who was seeking a third term as Michigan's governor, John immediately began his first term as governor with extremely harsh measures.

Voters, Engler declared, "are tired of the same old crap going on in Lansing." His mantra, Cut taxes! Throw the deadbeats off welfare! Take control of the schools! All this and more ... He became known as the Beal City Butcher. His campaign theme had been "cut and cap" state spending, but he went far, far beyond that even though he had not even won a majority of the votes cast in 1990 and had no clear mandate.

Engler chained the Lafayette clinic and closed mental health facilities around the state. Adolescents with mental problems literally had to be transshipped out of state for mental health care. Common Cause's Peter Overby described Engler's Revolution in the following manner:

"While Washington is busy reinventing government, Engler is intent on de-inventing it. His administration (was) like a radical expression of the free market he so admires:

Specifically, an outside takeover, like a leveraged-buyout buccaneer, he parlayed his thin victory into an unprecedented shake-out of state government, its budget and mission. He whacked away at two departments; shuttered a third; froze civil service pay; closed what he considered a costly, unproductive line (General Assistance); and announced plans to contract out or simply sell some other government operations."

Engler put nearly 90,000 welfare singles on "General Assistance, a state program that sent checks ($160 a month at the end) to childless, 'able-bodied' adults who were unemployed or working in low-wage jobs " out on the streets.

Engler never bothered to investigate, one quarter of those on GA were mentally ill and another quarter unemployable. Many of these went on the street scrounging for returnable bottles, many were made homeless. Engler wasn't afraid to play off stereotypes of welfare recipients as lazy inner-city residents--GA "subsidized (were) people who had simply chosen not to work.." 

Again Common Cause:

"(E)xtensive studies by universities, state and private agencies demolished the stereotype: The average age of GA recipients was 39. More than 40 percent were women. White men ages 26-40 outnumbered young black men 2 to 1. More than half had 'chronic or severe' health problems. Most had work histories. About 45 percent lived in Detroit, which lost some 44,300 manufacturing jobs in the previous decade.

"'There really just aren't options for these people,' says Sandra Danziger, a social work professor at the University of Michigan who co-authored one study. 'All the job growth is in high-skill or entry-level services.'

"Engler (had) no regrets about his incivility and inhumanity in regard to those on GA. 'I think we did the right thing,' he said, 'and the evidence is quite compelling that we did.'" But what actually was the impact of the cold-hearted GA cuts?"

"In its economic impact, the END OF GA HAS BEEN COMPARED TO THE LOSS OF TWO LARGE MANUFACTURING PLANTS. 'In spite of the facts that were coming forth, people didn't seem to care,' said social work professor Danny Thompson of Western Michigan University. 'Not just the politicians, but the public. It's a funny, spooky feeling.' Danziger wondered aloud why people sympathize with workers laid off by GM, but not with GA recipients who would have died for an assembly line job."

"The state budget was indeed balanced. But incalculable costs were shifted to local hospitals, jails and other facilities where homeless people might land.

"Other costs were quietly passed to federal taxpayers. One federal agency sent Michigan 194 percent more money for homeless shelters in 1992 while cutting funds nationally by 8 percent. Another shift occurred as former GA recipients applied for Supplemental Security Income (SSI), the federal-state payments to the disabled, aged and blind. SSI budgets rose everywhere in 1992 (mainly due to a Supreme Court decision that made more children eligible), but in Michigan the burden shifted dramatically. Federal SSI payments went up 24 percent nationwide, 29 percent in Michigan. The states' share increased 6 percent, but Michigan's actually dropped 11 percent,"

The impact of Engler's draconian actions even put a pale on the free market glee often heard from Engler's own Mackinac Center for Public Policy Director, Larry Reed:

 "...once described the (GA) cutoff as 'conservative compassion,' (saying later) : 'I have been bothered from the start by a lingering need to stimulate more private initiatives to meet these needs. I hope that in hindsight we'll look back and say that one of the benefits of the elimination of General Assistance was to heighten the concern of people in the private sector, to get them off their butts and out there creating new initiatives to meet the need.'

"As he was attacking GA, Engler also started to dismantle another welfare system: an extensive network of business subsidies and aids built up by his predecessor, Jim Blanchard. But corporate interests had more political clout than welfare recipients and stopped him."

Engler simplistically continued to repeat his chosen line as he bulldozed ahead:

"... Lansing should just lower taxes, stand back and let the entrepreneurs go full-throttle. Despite the state's big-labor, big-government reputation"

Engler was now in charge. His mindset became the adopted mindset of most Republican officeholders and appointed state functionaries. Clearly for them it was go along or be shut out.

Engler had in mind radical re-directions and other ham-fisted measures. Engler applied to his brand of ideology, backed and supported by his self-invented Tonto, the Mackinac Center, Midland. John doctored the Michigan economy during a time which came to include an era of unparalleled national prosperity during the Clinton years.

Even today, Engler continues to be a background player. As the President of NAM, The National Association of Manufactures, Engler aggressively promotes outsourcing and defends the role of China in the market including China's unfair currency policies. While Lou Dobbs of CNN reports on the root causes and impacts of our manufacturing crisis, off-shoring, and outsourcing, Engler run a hate Dobbs website with scathing denunciations of Dobbs' findings.

Brought before a congressional committee recently, lobbyist Engler defended the kinds of K Street "Corporations first" lobbying that is at the core of the federal trade and foreign currency troubles with which Michigan manufacturers have been assailed and with which they cannot fairly compete.

It is directly from this mindset comes the brutal Lansing takeover of cities, schools, and local units. The seeds of an economic shakedown and the collapse of Michigan's economic future were sown by this insensitive and power hungry de-constructionist who thought of himself as the author of a personal revolution.

Revolutionaries always carry out their agendas by tacking things from their enemies and giving them to their followers. So under Snyder, his top aides being old Englerites, we see the continuation of a Engler-inspired steep decline in the state's quality of life and increased uncertainty for the future of Michigan.

John Engler presided over the beginnings of the Mississippiafication of Michigan and his destructive efforts live on today in growing infamy. Rick Snyder appears to be a maven of Englerism, Snyder and his Teapublican legislative rabble are on a wildly destructive tare. Engler, by comparison, may end up looking like a flaming saint.


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