If We Are Truly a Democracy: Quotes from James Madison and Mickey Edwards

"We have, it is true, occasional fevers; but they are of the transient kind, flying off through the surface, without preying on vitals. A Government like ours has so many safety valves...that it carries within itself a relief against the infirmities from which the best of human Institutions can not be exempt."
-- James Madison in a 1830 Letter to Lafayette

Former Congressman Marvin Henry "Mickey" Edwards penned the following in an essay entitled "How to Turn Republicans and Democrats Into Americans":

"ANGRY AND FRUSTRATED, American voters went to the polls in November 2010 to 'take back' their country. Just as they had done in 2008. And 2006. And repeatedly for decades, whether it was Republicans or Democrats from whom they were taking the country back. No matter who was put in charge, things didn't get better. They won't this time, either; spending levels may go down, taxes may go up, budgets will change, but American government will go on the way it has, not as a collective enterprise but as a battle between warring tribes."

"If we are truly a democracy-if voters get to size up candidates for a public office and choose the one they want-why don't the elections seem to change anything? Because we elect our leaders, and they then govern, in a system that makes cooperation almost impossible and incivility nearly inevitable, a system in which the campaign season never ends and the struggle for party advantage trumps all other considerations. When Democrat Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House, the leader of the lawmaking branch of government, she said her priority was to ... elect more Democrats. After Republican victories in 2010, the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said his goal was to ... prevent the Democratic president's reelection. With the country at war and the economy in recession, our government leaders' first thoughts have been of party advantage."

"This is not an accident. Ours is a system focused not on collective problem-solving but on a struggle for power between two private organizations. Party activists control access to the ballot through closed party primaries and conventions; partisan leaders design congressional districts. Once elected to Congress, our representatives are divided into warring camps. Partisans decide what bills to take up, what witnesses to hear, what amendments to allow."

"Many Americans assume that's just how democracy works, that this is how it's always been, that it's the system the Founders created. But what we have today is a far cry from what the Founders intended.
George Washington and James Madison both warned of the dangers posed by political parties. Defenders of the party system argue that parties—including Madison’s own—arose almost immediately after the nation was founded. But those were not parties in the modern sense: they were factions uniting on a few major issues, not marching in lockstep on every issue, large and small.  And while some defend the party system as a necessary provider of cues to voters who otherwise might not know how to vote, the Internet and mass media now make it possible for voters to educate themselves about candidates for office."

"What we have today is not a legacy of 1789 but an outdated relic of the late 1800s and early 1900s, when Progressives pushed for the adoption of primary elections. By 1916, all but a handful of states had instituted the "direct primary" system, under which a party candidate was selected by a public vote, rather than by party leaders in backroom deals. But the primaries, and the nominating conventions, were open only to party members. This reform was supposed to give citizens a bigger role in the election process. Instead, the influence of party leaders has been supplanted by that of a subset of party activists who are often highly ideological and largely uninterested in finding common ground. In Delaware in 2010, a mere 30,000 of that state's nearly 1 million people kept Mike Castle, a popular congressman and former governor, off the general-election ballot. In Utah, 3,500 people meeting in a closed convention deprived the rest of the state's 3 million residents of an opportunity to consider reelecting their longtime senator Robert Bennett. For most of the voters who go to the polls in November, the names on the ballot have been reduced to only those candidates the political parties will allow them to choose between. Americans demand a multiplicity of options in almost every other aspect of our lives. And yet we allow small bands of activists to limit our choices of people to represent us in making the nation's laws."

"I am not calling for a magical political "center": many of the most important steps forward in our history have not come from the center at all, including women's suffrage and the civil-rights movement, and even our founding rebellion against the British crown. Nor am I pleading for consensus: consensus is not possible in a diverse nation of 300 million people (compromise is the essential ingredient in legislative decision-making).

And I’m not pushing for harmony: democracy depends on vigorous debate among competing views. The problem is not division but partisanship—advantage-seeking by private clubs whose central goal is to win political power. There are different ways to conduct elections and manage our government-and strengthen the democratic process."
(emphasis added)

Application:
In Michigan we have seen the extreme example of extreme Teapublican partisanship "advantage seeking by private clubs" that back these rude Teapartisans whose legislative attacks on certain select groups of individuals in Michigan illustrate that the fact that Teapublicans of Michigan are seeking to help these "private clubs" in pursuit of their central goal "to win political power." All other impacts of this highly-targeted legislation, many of which are punitive and damaging, are held as inconsequential and unimportant in the triumphalism of this Teapartisan march toward a highly profitable political homogeny.

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As former Congressman Mickey Edwards stated in regret: "the struggle for party advantage trumps all other considerations." The mess in Michigan is a prime example of this outrage under a TeaPublican domination of all branches of Michigan governance: Executive, legislative, judicial.

Democracy in Michigan as it once was is no more. Emergency Managers and A.L.E.C. / Corporatists plug-and-play bill writing have broken the long chain of democratic practice and compromise. A tradition that has been the custom of Lansing over the decades - "a collective enterprise" in service of the citizens of our state - has been deliberately shattered.

On the Reader:
Read the original essay "How to Turn Republicans and Democrats Into Americans: An insider’s six-step plan to fix Congress" by Mickey Edwards (The Atlantic, June 15, 2011) and other Essays by Edwards:

"Why I'm Not at CPAC"by Mickey Edwards (The Atlantic February 18, 2010) Quote:

"I'm not at CPAC (2010) because I believe in America. I believe in liberty. I believe that governments should be held in check. I believe people matter. I believe in the flag not because of its shape or color but because of the principles it stands for--the principles in the Constitution, the principles repeated and underlined and highlighted and boldfaced and italicized in the Bill of Rights. The George W. whose presidency and precedents I admire was the first president, not the 43d. It is James Madison I admire, not John Yoo. Thomas Paine, not Glenn Beck. Jefferson, not Limbaugh."

"Reagan wouldn't recognize this GOP: The Gipper may be the patron saint of Limbaugh and Coulter, but he'd be amazed at what's been done in his name" by Mickey Edward in the LA Times, January 24, 2009) Quote: 

"The Republican Party that is in such disrepute today is not the party of Reagan. It is the party of Rush Limbaugh, of Ann Coulter, of Newt Gingrich, of George W. Bush, of Karl Rove. It is not a conservative party, it is a party built on the blind and narrow pursuit of power. (Break) ...conservatives have turned themselves inside out: They have come to worship small government and have turned their backs on limited government. They have turned to a politics of exclusion, division and nastiness."

More on the Republican Right Wing and Conservatism on the Gazette.

Original.

Hillsdale's Gary Wolfram Elevates Andrew Breitbart - Dean of Defamation - to "Sainthood"

Response to Prof Gary Wolfram on the Detroit / Mackinac News Michigan View in "Ludwig von Breitbart" on March 13, 2012.

Hillsdale’s Dr. Gary must be high on chalk dust. Wolfram's eulogy for Andrew Breitbart was a cold rehash of his idol Ludwig pulled-reflexively from the prof's dusty achieves and yellowing scrapbooks. What exactly connected political hit-man and truth twister Andy Breitbart in Wolfram’s thinking with Dr. Gary's hero Ludwig von Mises?

It must have been a severe allergic reaction to accumulated chalk dust in Wolfram's stuffy cubical at the Rad Right's faint mockup of  a “Harvard”, Hillsdale College, a member of the Poison Ivy League.

Hillsdale College: Leaning right since right-wing Free Marketeers forced
the exit of the founding Free Baptists (Hillsdale Historical Society Archive)

Locked away from everyday reality, Professor Wolfram dwells at this quaint institutional anachronism, hidden away in a small bucolic southeastern Michigan town.

Hillsdale College is more an archetype of civic collapse and failure, retro-progression in quest of a giant need to be noticed in its attempts to pander to the greed of national and international corporatocracy, rather than be a crystalline beacon of higher culture.

Hillsdale exists, in large part, to supply the Too Far Right with pliant foot soldiers such as the murderous mercenary, billionaire scion- Eric Prince of Blackwater infamy.

A liberal arts education seeks to instill a higher sense of history and philosophy into a continuum and expansion of understanding about eternal truth and to build upon the vast achievements and ideals of the progressive human race propelled by the Enlightenment and an ongoing rediscovery of the classic cultures of yore as woven into the march of religion, philosophy, science and human understanding.

Why perseverate? Why ramble on about "liberalism" defined in the enlightenment era as 'the importance of individual liberty and limited government' when what is being espoused at Hillsdale is regression and suppression of modernity and the 'maturing understanding' of the needs and abilities of science and human inventiveness via strangling government?

For chalk dusty Prof. Gary, Breitbart "was an inspiration to those who agree with Mises that 'the ultimate and most profound of the fundamental insights of liberal thought is that it is ideas that constitute the foundation on which the whole edifice of human social cooperation is constructed and sustained and that a lasting social structure cannot be built on the basis of false and mistaken ideas.' “ From this we may try to follow Dr. Gary into believing that Andrew Breitbart was the paragon of TRUTH and ACCURACY.

Here is where Breitbart's notoriety as a crusader in Wolfram’s mind and von Mises' liberalism is seen as versus or against "anti-liberalism," (by which Prof. Gary derides the 21st Century "Liberals"-meaning Democrats and Progressives) and thus becomes lost in that stale cloud of professorial chalk dust.

While Wolfram is perfectly at home seeing himself as a "Classic" Liberal, and not a 21st Century Democrat/Progressive [Boo Hiss] Liberal; the man-on-the-street cannot make the jump Prof. Gary demands. Liberal must always, only mean Democrats.

Prof. Gary Elevates Fellow Traveler, Andrew Breitbart - Dean of Defamation - to Wolfarm’s Constellation of All-Time Ideological ‘Saints’- How Quixotic!

Not to be defeated, Prof. Gary bravely soldiers on. Gary, obviously at grievous personal loss over the death of his grenade-throwing Too Far Right Radical brother, Breitbart) describes his ideological troublemaker and soul-mate as a man labeled by many as "an enemy of the people."  Breitbart earned that exact description by virtue of his relentless partisanship and determination to spin, distort, twist, and invent Breitbart "truth" to fit radical ideology-in the service of the moneyed masters of a growing fascist Corporatocracy.

Andy Breitbart: Lived Large in a Conservative Tub of Small Minds
(TIME posted Bryce Duffy Photo on Brietbart's 'BagNews' 2010)

Breitbart, A Hero to Classic Liberalism? Hardly.
"Governments must be forced into adopting liberalism by the power of the unanimous opinion of the people, claimed von Mises,” proclaims Prof. Gary, emitting a temporary democratic high tone. Then Wolfram goes on to list the areas where Breitbart bent the truth and altered facts to defend a true and genuine anti-classic liberalism-TeaPartisanship given to bottom feeding, dissimulation, and ideological subterfuge he leaves the path of credibility and public trust.

Perez Zagorin, a noted American historian in "The historical significance of lying and dissimilation - Truth-Telling, Lying and Self-Deception" (1996):

"...Since the appearance in 1978 of Sissela Bok's important and widely noticed book, Lying. Moral Choice in Private and Public Life, the concern with lying and deception has continually increased. Bok's work was actuated by worry over declining standards of truth-telling and for this reason apparently touched a nerve. It coincided with the growing skepticism and mistrust felt among Americans and in other western nations about the veracity of governments, officials, and politicians, as well as lawyers, the medical profession, and business corporations."

Just prior to Breitbart's demise, in Troy, Michigan  Michigan Tea Party Republicans (under the spell of and paid & played by the Koch Bros' Americans for Prosperity) hosted one of Breitbart's very last public appearances, shared by Wolfram. This event was at a Koch Brothers pay-to-play sponsored event for Goldman Sach's operative, Mitt Romney, who regaled the Troy/Koch-ish Tea Party elements with his pledges to be one of them.

On the dais was a co-conspirator with Brietbart, Michelle Malkin - a virtual vestal virgin of poisonous venom - in the pursuit of penultimate Rovian truth, skewed to serve FOX's Too Far Right Wingers and corporatist fat cats.

What did the late Breitbart and Malkin bring to the Troy Tea Party Gathering according to Detroit News' Hank Payne?  From his article "Payne in Troy: Tea Party Mitt" February 26, 2012:

"...perhaps most striking was Mitt Romney's extraordinarily detailed, right-wing message perhaps most striking was Romney's extraordinarily detailed, right-wing message specifically tailored for the grassroots conservatives assembled by Americans for Prosperity and warmed up by red meat pundits Michelle Malkin and Andrew Breitbart.”  

This lusty interpretation of the work of Breitbart is shared by non-other-than Sarah Palin:

"With the death of Breitbart, the conservative movement didn't just lose a General " we lost an entire Special Forces Division....But he didn't leave us without the tools and the knowledge we need to fight."

GOT THAT: Brietbart is lauded by Palin as a 'special forces' political/ideological, a high powered hit-man. A deceitful/unprincipled wonk-cum-celebrity in the hunt to bring down America's first Black president.

Is this the “classic liberalism” package that Dr.Gary presents to his nascent ideological apprentice warrior-types in laid back Hillsdale's Rad Right bootcamp?

Bottomline: The Wolfram veneration of Breitbart fails the high ethics and moral high ground test so vaunted by Hillsdale's über-moralizers. The following quote excerpted out of a synopsis in "Andrew Breitbart Dead: Conservative Blogger Dies Suddenly At 43", posted by Huffington Post:

1. "Republican gay rights group GOProud, of which Breitbart was a board member until recently, released a statement saying it was 'stunned and saddened,' and calling him an 'amazing friend and ally.'"
   
2. "Breitbart seldom showed restraint in his vitriol to his critics and seemed to relish in the negative attention his antics earned him. After Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts died in 2009, Breitbart tweeted, 'Rest in Chappaquiddick' and called him 'a special pile of human excrement.' When critics questioned (Breitbart's) tone, he tweeted they 'missed my best ones!'"
   
3. "Breitbart sponsored hidden camera, gottcha attacks on ACORN. Racial in nature, this tactic resulted in a firestorm of criticism. [The embarrassment it engendered stoked up such fierce partisan rants as were heard here in Michigan shrilly mouthed by former State Senator Michelle McManus while running for Michigan Secretary of State.] The edited Breitbart video featured 'some ACORN employees appearing willing to support illegal schemes involving tax advice, misuse of public funds and illegal trafficking in children.' Ultimately the Government Accountability Office cleared ACORN of criminal activities. None-the-less "public pressure led Congress to block previously approved funds from going to ACORN and to stop future payments. Roughly 10 percent of ACORN's funds came from federal grants and the group eventually disbanded."

Just another of Breitbart's tactical 'special forces' successes against Blacks and Obama? Of course.

Carry on Prof. Gary, elevate Brietbart and thereby lower the national bar for truth and civility. How "ill-liberal" in an anti-von Mises pro-Breitbart declination can Wolfram be?

On the Reader:
Read the Detroit / Mackinac News / Michigan View's "All Star" review of Brietbart's 'legacy' including the canonization by Rep. Thaddeus McCotter:

"There was no stopping Andrew Breitbart from fighting the good fight with every fiber of his soul. Good bye and God bless, Brother Andrew. You are loved and mourned and ever remembered."

Related Slates:
"Michigan View's Gary Wolfram Resurrects 18th Cent. Racial Bigotry in His Vision of Economic “Freedom” (ala Adam Smith)" - "Prof. Gary Wolfram of the Michigan View Let’s His Little Light Shine On Greed" - "Our Guides to the Bottomless Pit: Wolfram, Von Hayek, Lewis F. Powell, & A.L.E.C."

More responses to Gary Wolfram and other on the Michigan View on the Gazette.

Original.

Detroit: Behemoth 'Motor City' Whale Fights for Its Life as Snyder's EM & Scavengers Circle

As the sea of concern and support is siphoned away by Grover Norquist & the Michissippian TeaPublican  militant minions (Michigan Tea Party Republican) made up of many of Michigan's ideological scavengers, the large and once awesome form of the 'whale' metaphorically called the "Motor City Behemoth" becomes clearly visible: gasping for air, suffering in its darkest hour, it's thick hide filled with scars, spears, broken harpoons with long and tangled lines, and wounds to defy description.

Detroit Public Assets: Stripping and Scavenging anything and everything of Value
(16th Cent. Woodcut Royal Maritime Museum)

The Behemoth ‘Motor City’ Whale Fights for Its Life in Grover Norquist’s Drained & Drying ‘No Tax’ Clawfoot Tub

Deprived of the ocean of support it needed to prosper and survive, the 'whale' has been purposefully, more and more cut-off from normal human concern. Dry-docked by years of political neglect and blame-speaking by Too Far Right Republicans from out-state and confined by the noose of competing suburban elites, the gigantic 'whale' is now being carved up. Its great hulk is crushed by predators and scavengers, desecrated and purposefully neglected by a strong and very angry, repriseful,  TeaPartisan led lock-stepped Michigan's state government--all four branches of which have chosen to let it die, as it were.

The growing stench is unbearable and Oh! the inhumanity of it all.

Republican Leadership Sees Advantage in Detroit City's Economic Implosion & Seeks to Lay the Blame on the role of Government and Democrats

Here's how Saul Anuzis seeks to dole out blame for the downfall of Detroit City. Unwilling to make his own personal statement of fact, Anuzis did so by forwarding to Republicans statewide this generic piece from a third source titled “Detroit Nears Bankruptcy.“:

"It's hard to think of many social experiments that have more disastrously failed. Now many of these once flourishing cities are hollowed out shells, while around them suburbs and increasingly exurbs flourish away from the deadening influence of urbanist politics. None of this affects the hold of progressive and urbanist ideology on true believers; if anything, they believe even more passionately in the cause."

“Obviously the problem is that we haven't spent enough on enough tenured teachers, haven't written enough new regulations and established enough new bureaus to enforce them, haven't published enough white papers by enough credentialed planners, haven't extracted enough taxes and provided enough services. If we could just tax the suburbs and exurbs more heavily and spend more of the money in the cities, all would be well." 

Source: "Detroit Nears Bankruptcy" in The American Interest, March 11, 2012.

So the downfall of the city falls on its current residents, both in Anuzis' ideological mindset and in terms of affected Detroiters, with an  inability to buck the system and rise above the withdrawal of elite support or to obtain  further financial commitment. Thus the crisis will be framed by harsh critics in terms of today's challenges. All relevant references to the lead-up, decades of systemic abandonment and Jim Crow shortcomings, will be dismissed as 'old history' or irrelevant. But such is NOT THE CASE.

The failure seen today is long-term failure, deliberate neglect, which has inhabited wrongful decisions made time and again by the powerful, not by the state’s  poor or the victims of cruel conservatism.  A working faction of opinion leaders and corporatists have for years opposed and undermined an effective collaboration and bi-partisan responsibility for such root causes of the great Detroit failures of industry, banking, real estate, religion, or state partisan politics.  As they allowed the core city Detroit to be undermined and eroded of its viability, things escalated to this danger point, made much worse by the G.W. Bush Great Recession. Yes, we may include the majority minority citizens, those who now dwell in the shell-shocked remnants of a once great and thriving city of commerce, the arts, and industry.  They do have a more minor role, but out of the negativity, unemployment, years of assistance and Jim Crow they were and are divided and confined to powerlessness. They have no status to pull the levers of intervention and lack the ability to tap the resources of investment and renewal other than their vote and personal efforts in community or houses of worship--wherever support can be gathered.

Just How Did Detroit's Supporting Tide Recede? It took years and in involved the deliberate abandonment of Detroit by key elements:

• The need for manual labor, as during the auto boom years and the great wars, receded. Automation and foreign competition for superior product and the ravishes of overseas outsourcing have taken down the tide that floats us all in Michigan's world of automaking. One important and outstanding impact of the loss of auto related jobs is the loss of these well-paid jobs to men and women of color!
• Businesses have fled the core city. Hudson's fled downtown in a final shoppers' collapse. GM retreated from its historic former headquarters to the more moated and in-crenelated waterfront - the former the Renaissance Center complex.
• Urban grocery stores are now limited-service, often over-priced. Fresh fruits and vegetables are in limited, or non-existent supply.
• Black and minority children are relegated to neglect and abandonment by a complex list of social and spiritual maladies.
• The lack of adequate transportation for people confined to an urban area without personal transportation is daunting and a virtual impediment to jobs and getting to and from jobs on time.
• The core of remaining corporations and heavy-hitter investors has marched retreat. Business Leaders for Michigan has gathered the shards of the former Detroit Renaissance into a very aggressive posture:  “We want the power and we are prepared to use state government to get that power and financial, physical control. There are assets we will take or remove from urban Detroit via our support and full participation in PA #4, the Emergency Manager scheme.” Two leading and important A list corporations illustrate the BLM's own internal instability: the exit of both Comerica and American Axle from Detroit.  And the B list is long.
• Religious and sectarian forces  focused for decades around Dick & Betsy DeVos and the American Federation for Children have moved against the Public Schools of Detroit. Dozens of neighborhood schools are closed and gone. A wildfire crop of for-our-own-profit private charters paid with public tax dollars has been franchised by the TeaPublican 2011 super majority and the take down of 'government' schools is moving ahead unabated. Hundreds of career minority teachers are gone.
• The Roman Catholic Diocese of Detroit has over the last decades slammed shut dozens of parish/neighborhood churches. Some of the many thousands of abandoned dwellings and structures which house crack dens and child rapists are properties the Church owns or controls.
• Republicans and Corportists' ham-fisted desire to achieve homogeneity over unions, especially public service unions, has led to a litany of anti-union legislative grab-backs, health care limitations, retirement reductions, tax on public sector pensioners, and all manner of other devices such as dues control, and other on-going legislative intimidation.
• Suburban/Urban political and governmental infighting rages on.
• The withdrawal of Michigan State Police from the urban freeways will become retrogressive and threatening.
• The Black Middle Class flight from Detroit is a strong tell-tell of the growing disillusionment of successful minorities in regard to a productive and sustainable quality of life in urban Detroit.
• The level of social and familial problems in the core city, while it actually mirrors the kinds of problems or concerns of the nation's entire population (e.g. unwed mothers, many juveniles themselves) would appear to undercut future enculturation and success for those locked in this urban ghetto.
• Drug use is rampant. The failure to stem the highly successful pipeline of drugs from origin to destination on Detroit's city streets, while alarming and sinister, with its many criminal off-shoots, does not take from the drug culture the fact that even larger numbers of white Americans are customers than are Blacks for these illegal substances.
• The number of felons arising out of Detroit's morass (unemployment, early drop-outs, drugs, and vagrancy)  bode horribly for its future. With unemployment in or near the mid-twenty percent range for these many youths, what can be the possibilities for them? Even if they serve their time, when released they're felons and are negatively 'marked for life,' frozen out of good pay jobs.
• The cut-off of revenue sharing from Lansing [around $4 BILLION cut from Detroit and other municipalities by Michigan’s legislature 2001-2010], while at the same time billions of taxpayer dollars are currently being poured into commercial coffers is part of a deliberate business 'bailout' system.
• Plus the clever political chicanery designed to present an appearance that Michissippian TeaPublicans are not Wisconsin Walkerites, while forcing governmental units to face EM management and throw out contracts,  belies TeaPublicans are disassembling Collective Bargaining by a insidious, forced mechanism.

The Truth is out. 

Central planners in the pro-business cabal of Michigan Chamber of Commerce, Michigan Insurance Lobbyists, The Business Leaders for Michigan, the National Heritage Foundation’s  spin-off-The Mackinac Center for Public Policy (Between 2002 and 2009, the Mackinac Center's donors included the Charles G. Koch Foundation with $69,151), and rogue elements best identified as anti-public schools/anti-unions Amway Corporation and Americans for Prosperity/Koch Bros.  whose out-state contributions funneled through the 2010 Snyder Campaign $900K] have chosen to make the historic downturn under the G.W.B. Great Recession  their moment to utilize economic emergency turning it into prized 'opportunity' for achieving long-sought goals via Disaster Capitalism.

The advent of the Emergency Manager-style fascism is especially onerous. Such subterfuge and dictatorial power, in the hands of a Corporatocracy and band of highly-skilled and ruthless corporate law and accounting firms,  means drastic, undemocratic cancer will ravish our state's governmental units--all in a blatant and ideological attempt to achieve a long lasting homogeneity over liberalism and Democrats and groups, such as unions, with political abilities and powers.

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And then there is this: a haunting and threatening history of extreme racism related to the history of Detroit. Former Appeals Court Judge, the late Glenn Allen put it on point.  To Wall Street the shadow of Detroit is  a metropolis with a strong history, of a "low threshold" for Jim Crow, racial unrest, and violence. That fact is never 'out of mind' with investors.

“Judge Allen "was a paragon of public service and personal integrity," said Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Maura D. Corrigan upon hearing of his passing. Glenn Allen had served, among many other things, as Special Counsel for Legal, Fiscal and Legislative Affairs under Bill Milliken from 1971-74.

FINAL OBSERVATION:  Responding to crisis with "The Ghost Mayor,"  March 17, 2012,  Charlie LeDuff, Pulitzer Prize Winner, has sounded a clear alarm: Given the possibility that the validation of the anti-PA 4 Petition Drive suspends the EM operations until November's election, Gov. Rick Snyder's options are narrowed. "The governor might then use the only stick left in his bag. Let the city drown. According to LeDuff:

"Already vendors and contractors are not getting paid and the city will run out of cash in a month. That means cops,  paramedics and tax collectors won't get paid. Ambulances won't get fixed. Parks won't open.

Under that scenario, you can expect a long, hot, bloody summer." 
(emphasis added)

LISTEN UP ALL PARTIES: Financially taking down Detroit City is not ultimately about political winners and losers; it's about a city with hundreds of thousands of men, women, boys and girls and what is to become of their welfare.

What is done, the spirit with which it is done, and the potential of suspending and abandoning the provisions of the Civil Rights Act and the Voter Rights Act if Detroit is not financially made solvent for its necessary operations beyond April, will have far greater and more crippling, far-reaching negative impacts than this state and its present governmental mindset can bear or handle.

What then?  Game over?

Related Slate: "Michigan GOP's Power Grab Thievery: Patterson's 30 Year Jim Crow / EM Plot to Steal Detroit's Royal Jewels & Liquid Assets"

More on Detroit and Emergency Management on the Gazette.

Original.

A Fully Electrified Detroit News Jim Crow Campaign Lights the 'Dark Clouds of Fury' with Neon Intensity

The drumbeat of Jim Crowism published by Henry E. Payne IV and his cast of "All Stars" at the Detroit News is now the accompaniment to a massive neon display with serial blinding flashes. These folks want to take down Detroit, and they want it down now. Mayor David (Dave) Bing, having raised resistance, feels like a "token" caught in the machinery of the cog works prepared by planners at the Mackinac Center and by elites invited into the Business Leaders for Michigan corporate cabal, the new “Big Boss.”

Planner and elites alike are steamed and they want Bing out of the way! But how?

Do they really think Mayor Bing should simply take the humiliation of being handed a consent decree? Without adequate time to even read it? Much less to digest its extremely important content, and then frame his reactions and assessments concerning its ramifications?

Just sign the order, ‘Mister Mayor!’ caws Michigan View's Blog Prof Chris Kobus, who pounced on this new opportunity when he saw an opening: Detroit must be made to realize it is now totally under the jurisdiction of the government of the State of Michigan.

Says Kobus, the city government of Detroit, including Mayor Bing, must be put under the EM laws and the authority of Snyder/Dillon “when that body gets out of line." Why? Kobus says because "I point out that Detroit does not operate in a democracy but rather under hegemonic domination of a single party and has for over two generations now."

There it is. A vast exaggeration and accusation not met at all by facts. The rub for creators of the new Jim Crowism is that minorities, especially Blacks tend to support the Democratic Party in large percentages; therefore, their behaviors as elected officials of the City of Detroit and as Democrats do not "operate in a democracy”. They are “beguiled” and “incapable of self-rule” in Kobus's Jim Crow view.

Recycling the Racism Fight: Civil Rights Congress
anti-Jim Crow Button (Cira 1948) (Tamiment Library Collection NYC)

The new Jim Crow supposition: Blacks can't or don't act in a genuine democratic manner; therefore, the Emergency Manager (EM) takeover (forced bankruptcy) of the City of Detroit is perfectly proper, if not absolutely necessary, on the part of Snyder and the TeaPublicans--now so solidly in charge of Michissippian-style governance. Here again, the News's electrified Jim Crow editorial campaign in service of the EM flashes neon for the Planners: TeaPublicans, Mackinac Center, and the Business Leaders for Michigan.

Michigan View Editor Henry Payne, in his own Jim Crow-style added digs against Mayor Bing. In his tart tome, “A DETROIT LEADER” March 14, 2012 on the Michigan View, Hank toys with several racially charged Jim Crow putdowns and 'bat language.' Here’s the list: 

FIRST, Payne refers to Black ministers’ objections which express disapproval toward the Snyder/Dillon treatment of Mayor Bing and the underlying larger rights issues and calls the religious leaders' objections a "black cloud of fury that rained on Governor Snyder's proposal."

Rev. Charles Williams II, the Michigan chapter president of the National Action Network, a civil rights organization based in New York, said, “We are unequivocally calling Governor Snyder a liar…We are standing up (against) hypocrisy."

Protesting Ministers arose in support of Mayor Bing, seen in Jim Crowism terms as “insubordinate” & “uppity,” for defending the powers of his office. Is this a "dark cloud of fury" ? Just how threatening and dangerous are ministers of the gospel, even if they are African Americans?

SECOND, "’When somebody lies to you, you can't trust them,’ raged Bing,” the nettled Payne wrote. Here Hank raises the image of an "angry Black Man" with his accusation and condemnation.

THIRD, Payne claimed that Bing used "coded language that skates along the line of us vs.them racial demagoguery." Is it wrong in a democracy for a Black mayor (forced by specific revenue devices, a punishing TeaPartisan legislature, and long term anti-Black Detroit bigotry) to acknowledge that what is happening is an historical and unprecedented use by Snyder and his own of use of the Shock Doctrine to takeover and usurp the duly elected officials of a city. Thus Snyder is threatening and enabling the EM to liquidate and/or sell off to privatizers (Disaster Capitalism) whatever he wills or chooses? This is a clear case of racial demagoguery by white Republicans against Black Detroiters, Black Democrats, all of whom are perceived as impotent, hapless enemies, endangering the whole miserly anti-tax policies of the TeaPublican scheme for Michigan., Payne teammate Kobus in “Detroit activists protest activism” March 19, 2012, fuels the flames at the Michigan View belittling activist Black pastors:

“Detroit has problems, and as Jeremiah Wright famously said, the chickens have come home to roost. So the Snyder administration is giving Detroit a carrot in the form of $100 million in loans. But it comes with the caveat that the D will have to hand the steering wheel off to non-drunks (politically-speaking). Of course, some aren't taking the news sitting down: Detroit activists ratchet up opposition to state financial intervention.

‘...a group of pastors and other community activists is staging sneak protests to amplify their opposition to state intervention in what they are dubbing '12 Days of Action.' 'We vow to bring 12 days of action against the financial review team and Gov. Snyder so they understand they can't dismiss democracy,' the Rev. Charles Williams II said.

“So once again, there is this bogus assertion that Detroit's democracy overrides state democracy, even though state taxpayers are on the hook for Detroit's corruption and incompetence. Ten (sic) there's this “’Many Detroiters say any intervention is unconstitutional if it strips elected leaders of their authority and autonomy.’"

Bing defended his actions alluding to his sworn oath of office: "I'll work for the people of the city of Detroit because they voted me in to do this. I won't work for anybody else."

FOURTH, Payne continued his rant by asserting Mayor Bing must "not make veiled allusions to not working for The Man." In this context, “Working for "The Man" has derogatory connotations. Under Jim Crow, a Black, even a mayor of the state's largest city, has no right to resist the power of "The Man." In this case the power is welded by a more powerful man, the white Gov. Snyder, who is "The Man" with all good intentions.

The motive here is said to move toward “reinvention” as derived from TeaPublican ideology and directed toward Mayor Bing and his urban dwellers--the city's growing and desperate revenue shortfall not withstanding.

And so it is Hank Payne himself who in his own words "skates along the line" deeper into ugly, provocative Jim Crow dialogue.

Paul Robeson & Civil Rights Congress picketing the White House (August 1948)

Jim Crowism: Conscious or unconsciously is racism at issue.

An important publication reminds us:

"The problem of unconscious racism is not confined to one locality or one point in time. The problem is a national problem that may be responsible in large part for the continuing disparities in any number of categories including wealth and income, percentage of population with chronic diseases, and incarceration rates.”

"These disparities are not insignificant and impair the ability of the African descendant communities to thrive and flourish.”

"FAILURE TO EXPOSE AND DISCUSS ISSUES OF ONGOING, UNCONSCIOUS RACISM PREVENTS THE IMPOSITION OF A REMEDY to minimize if not eliminate these ongoing disparities and undermines the true equality of African descendants."
(emphasis added)

Source: This selection is from “CAN WE TALK: How Triggers For Unconscious Racism Strengthen the Importance of Dialogue”, Adjoa Artis Aiyetoro, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR) William H. Bowen School of Law, published by Columbia University (2009).


There Is a Legitimate Objection/ Reason for Protest of the Snyder/Dillon Moves Against Detroit  

Andrew Paterson, an attorney defending the rights of Detroit citizens has stated unequivocally:

"The proposal (Snyder's drawn consent decree) reveals that they met and negotiated at least twice in secret, in violation of the judge's order... They met in violation not only of the Open Meetings Act, but of the judge's order and Public Act 4 (the emergency manager law).(break) "It's a lawless group that is running the state right now."

A spirit of lawlessness has always hovered over the tactics of Jim Crowism whenever and wherever it occurs. Should this usurpation of minority rights and voter's sovereign rights (now centered on Detroit) be taken lightly, strictly because it came rushing through a state legislature, giddy with its unlimited power of repression and aggression against its alleged political enemies?

The entire imbroglio, as it concerns Detroit's pending subservient economic freedom and status as an EM Apartheid Plantation, is near the tipping point. Twenty-three years ago, a ham-fisted curmudgeon hammered down a cut- off of General Assistance to nearly 90,000 welfare recipients who were declared able-bodied. A large number of these individuals were residents of urban Detroit. One quarter were mentally ill and another quarter were functionally unemployable. Yet despite a huge outcry from many quarters and many religious leaders, Engler soldiered on. The damage done to former Republican Governor John Engler was that he gained a reputation as a coldhearted radical, a tag he still wears.

Truth be told, Jim Crow was there, too, in Engler's decision and allowed him to float his political capital past the initial sting of public rejection and opened the way for Engler to mount further vicious attacks on the weak and defenseless, and on state government itself.

For those outcast by Engler's indifference, the Engleresque welfare program became: “Collect returnable containers" and "pick a deserted street corner or alley as your home.” What did Engler do with the money he saved by expelling the GA recipients? In part he subsequently raised the salaries of his top aides, to salaries totals greater than his own as governor.

Some of the GA savings were drilled in to a huge expansion of the state's prison system under Engler! Where are the 90,000 casts offs today?

John Mathias Engler froze government in the ice of cold, calculated indifference, thereby set up a harsh tone. That tone still rings in the ears of caregivers in Michigan. Once a threshold of heedless neglect of needs and human rights is breached by a governor, it is difficult to recover positive solutions from the reigning party leaders interested only in themselves and making money.

After the City of Detroit's resistance is taken down, EM becomes the rule of the day, what comes next?

Beyond that: What is the GOP/TeaPublican & Snyder/BLM Corporatocracy’s end game?

On the Reader:
Essay " CAN WE TALK: How Triggers For Unconscious Racism Strengthen the Importance of Dialogue" by Adjoa Artis Aiyetoro (Columbia 2009) (Read Abstract)

Related Slates:
More on Emergency Management issue in EM Plantation/Jim Crow Series in "Snyder’s Michissippi (Michigan) Revival of 21st Cent ‘Jim Crow’: Imposing ‘EM Plantations’ Across the State & Nation" - "A Shout Out to the Overlords of Michissippian EM Plantations (Michigan EM)" - "Jim Crow & Hank Payne Call for Detroit EM Martial Law: America’s First Urban Apartheid EM Plantation" - "High up in Jim Crow’s Nest: Constant Cawing Incites Civic Upheaval by the Detroit News - Michigan View" on the Gazette.

Original.

Snyder’s Michissippi (Michigan) Revival of 21st Cent ‘Jim Crow’: Imposing ‘EM Plantations’ Across the State & Nation

Pushed by elite big money controllers (Business Leaders for Michigan (BLM) & Mackinac Center for Public Policy), Rick Snyder's inventing 21st Century Jim Crow. Snyder has acted with vigorous, uncompromising and a self-aggrandizing false flag - "Relentless Positive Action"; utilizing the powerful punch of angry and irrational citizens-calling themselves "patriots." These malcontents sent to the state legislature are Know Nothing hotheads with a very narrow and targeted un-civic, anti-democratic agenda which is destroying Michigan as we once knew it.

Snyder is leading a precedent-breaking rampage of 'red neck' legislation designed to undercut and destroy local autonomy and the voter rights of citizens in targeted jurisdictions as well as passing legislation against labor, including receding many of the collective bargaining rights signed into law by Republican Gov. George Romney, 1965. Who benefits from this crusade? "Workers are over-paid" Betsy DeVos and the invitation only Business Leaders for Michigan who have been bailed out and enriched with other people's tax dollars and ridiculously over-generous pro-corporate legislation!

Snyder’s Michissippi Gives Rise to the Revival of 21st Century ‘Jim Crow’ via TeaPartisan Legislation Imposing ‘EM Plantations’ Across the State... and the Nation.

Ferris State University's Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia

A Strange Paradox: Historic Jim Crow Was Born First in the Cities of Northern States
"Jim Crow" developed in northern segregated cities BEFORE it moved south and regressed post-civil war reconstruction in the South. Now in a parallel universe, Snyder's EM Plantation reinvention of economic and racial repression heralds a Neo-Jim Crow method to enforce and implement repressive racial segregation and economic subjugation via quasi-legal and economic means.

Snyder & Dillon's usurpation of urban civil and citizens rights, the Rad Right's abolition of the voter's franchise, and the literal liquidation of the public's storehouse of taxpayer acquired and sustained assets, via the 2010 blitz of enabling legislation passed by the TeaPartisan Super Majority in Lansing is under way, Jim Crow is on the rise.

Snyder's invention of 21st Century Neo-Jim Crow bodes very negatively for the future of racial harmony and skews progress away from eventual positive outcomes. Is it any wonder Detroit's Black middle class/individuals have chosen to take their future hopes to another state, many choosing a new locale in the New South.

Segregation (complete separation of races) was developed and refined in Northern cities where small concentrations of people of color could be confined to certain areas. In the reactionary 1980's and '90's following the take down of Reconstruction by Republicans racists transplanted Jim Crow into the angry South.

The kind of segregation under the status quo ante bellum days of slavery was less of a rigid system of separation of the races than was the apartheid practiced in many northern cites. The model of physical separation into designated areas and/or ghettos the root of Jim Crow developed in northern cities. In slave days, the intermingling of races was much more nominative, whites and blacks were intermingled in everyday southern life, housemaids, nannies, workers, etc.

More casual and daily contact was involved in the culture and daily life in the South than was found in the rigorous and aggressive behaviors so often associated with the Northern Jim Crow urban segregation-as it developed and was practiced many areas and cities of the North. Following the failure of Reconstruction, the North's version of Jim Crow fit perfectly with the rise of the KKK and radical race hatred and fear that dominated the next decades of ugly race relations and regression in the Deep South and as Jim Crow continued in the northern cities where it was first practiced. Several southern states still have Jim Crow laws on the books. Some of these laws draw distinctions mirrored in the actions and legislation of Snyder and the TeaPartisans in Michissippi.


Fact: The Boston Tea Party Was A Criminal Act
The adoption of the Revolutionary incident of the Boston Tea Party as an archetype for this faction's modus operandi (means to overreach and grab excessive government power) has a strong erroneous message to deliver-civic crime is not virtue.

Original Occupy Boston? Warning flyer against the corporate interests
and monopoly of the East India Co. November 29, 1773

The Boston Tea Partiers disguised themselves as savage Indians (to throw off blame) and committed economic terrorism (against economic rivals, themselves 'bootleggers') by deliberate criminal acts-destroying highly valuable cargo. The subversive text running just below the banners ('Don't Trend on Me,' the 'Just leave us alone' howlings, and their banishing of sidearms at the ready) is that these astroturf cells have been ginned up and are entirely controlled by elements traced directly to the Koch Bros.' Americans for Prosperity, Grover Norquist, and finally a nasty religious fundamentalism which fuels the TP rabble. They did as they were trained/told, and the disunifing public outcome (in the service of such anti-government elites such as Amway, the Waltons of Walmart and the Koch's) has fallen us all to bear.

The operating myth of Norquist's severe tax limitation movement is carried on by elevating the vision of a vicious felony, the glorification of a violent criminal act. This vision involves starving Uncle Sam (by any and all means limiting taxes and revenues) into losing strength and vitality, until having become so emaciated, Uncle is subsequently unable to fend off being manhandled into a bathtub, now so shriveled and weak, as to be forcibly drown by these activists. This is again, the fanciful and ugly depiction of criminality that propels Norquistian radicals and the TeaPartisans of the sort Grover continuously fans into flames.

So when tax starvation leads to bold repression of minorities and the poor, public employees and teachers, especially those in despised inner cities such as Detroit; the rise of Neo-Jim Crow naturally and tragically follows.

Michigan's Public Act 4, 2011
The advent of regression under Snyder/Dillon led Jim Crow centers around the imposition of the newly stiffened and much more dictatorial PA 4 designed to literally change a democratically-run Detroit into a Jim Crow Plantation where the citizens of Detroit are disenfranchised, humiliated, limited and corralled and herded by the whims of highly compensated corporate attorneys trained in methods to dissolve systems, sell off valuable assets, and counterman the will of the citizens.

There's a clear distinction between civil liberties, which are the laws protecting citizens from unjust government power and control, and civil rights, in which government power is used to protect the rights of a marginalized or minority population from other citizen groups. Therefore, this is a case of rogue Corporatists ordering CEO Snyder and radical elements now in total charge of the Michigan Legislature via the insurgent TeaPartisans going on a racial rampage.

These ideological elements, who have full control of the entire four branches of the state, are recklessly acting against both civil liberties and voter rights; subjecting minorities to unjust governmental power and control.
The legislature of Michissippi has been the sponsor of a new 21st Century "Jim Crow" that will metastasize and spread to other areas, even re-infest the South-still under lingering bigotry and racism stoked by Republican strategists.

Snyder's Michissippian model, 21st Century Neo-Jim Crow/EM Plantation(s), constitutes a very evil and volatile lapse- capable of tearing the fabric of our nation with economic racism and bitter minority blowback...there already is talk of Snyder's EM/Jim Crow model spreading to other states.

On the Reader:
More on the history of Jim Crow imaginary visit the Ferris State University's "Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia".

And the real story of the Boston Tea Party by Thom Hartmann based on the only first-hand account by George R.T. Hewes (Video).

More on Emergency Management issue in EM Plantation/Jim Crow Series in "A Shout Out to the Overlords of Michissippian EM Plantations (Michigan EM)" - "Jim Crow & Hank Payne Call for Detroit EM Martial Law: America’s First Urban Apartheid EM Plantation" - "High up in Jim Crow’s Nest: Constant Cawing Incites Civic Upheaval by the Detroit News - Michigan View" on the Gazette.


Original.

Jim Crow & Hank Payne Call for Detroit EM Martial Law: America’s First Urban Apartheid EM “Plantation”

Response to a series of Henry Payne and Detroit News op-eds supporting Emergency Manager (EM) in Detroit in the Detroit / Mackinac News and Michigan View.

Hank Payne is on one of his fringe stretches, trying hard to make a case for confiscatory EM takeover of one of the nation's past great super cities.

The impetus for this Draconian move has long lingered in the dark side of the Jim Crow mentality allowed to metastasize in the psyche of many confused and desperate Michissippians. As their fortunes continue to diminish and their income and security are sucked away by the Great Bush Recession new life is given to latent civic poisons of prejudice, racism and bigotry.

"Detroit is pathologically abnormal..." Payne opines pseudo-philosophically, recommending "Nix the Detroit bailout. Send in the emergency manager - just like other Detroit cities have done." In this harsh demand, Hank Payne perfectly mirrors the Mackinac Center's many calls for Detroit's bankruptcy among them is the Mackinac Center's Paul Kersey, Oct. 15, 2009.:

"As long as the unions refuse to make concessions, there appears to be no certain remedy for the city short of bankruptcy court."

"The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality
in Postwar Detroit" by Thomas Sugrue (Princeton, 2005)

From a review of the book "The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit" by Thomas Sugrue:

"The Detroit metropolitan area today is arguably the most racially segregated region in the United States, with a primarily African-American, largely abandoned and dilapidated urban center surrounded by layers of primarily white, affluent suburbs." 

"Thomas Sugrue (author of The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, Princeton Studies in American Politics) provides a thoughtful, well-researched, and fascinating analysis of systematic racial inequality in Detroit during the post World War II automotive industry boom of the 1940s through deindustrialization and "white flight", and ending with the catastrophic race riots of 1967."

"Sugrue avoids the current, common oversimplifications of blaming Detroit's urban crisis on the '67 riots or Mayor Colman Young by weaving together a complex story of human behaviors, fears, and incentive structures backed by data, references, and personal accounts: 'By the time Young was inaugurated, the forces of economic decay and racial animosity were far too powerful for a single elected official to stem.'"

A Look Back on the Rude History of Jim Crow Racism in Detroit.
As Michalek summarizes - "(Thomas) Sugrue's analysis provides insight to understand major groups of stakeholders and their interactions" with the following observations:

• "Workers flocked from the southern states to Detroit seeking relatively high-paying automotive jobs.
• In the free market, resulting housing shortages allowed landlords to divide properties into tiny apartments and charge premium prices, protecting their investments by being selective in their choice of "low risk" white tenants.
• Bankers also preferred "low risk" clients, resulting in unequal access to funds.
• White home owners, wanting to protect their families and financial investment, resisted neighborhood integration to avoid declining property values and perceived dangers.
• Real estate agents capitalized on fears of mixed neighborhoods by buying property from fleeing whites at junk prices and selling immediately to blacks at premium prices.
• Labor unions protected seniority, which unequally benefited whites, and tended to compromise on racial issues in order to gain bargaining ground.
• Store owners avoided hiring black workers, wishing to avoid offending or frightening mostly white, mostly female, customers.
• Suburban tax incentives and new technology made large, flat assembly plants more efficient than the old multi-story plants. This drove automakers away from Detroit, where the rail and riverside real estate was largely developed, and contributed to unemployment and race and class polarization.
• Racial inequality in Detroit stems from complex social systems of incentives and categorical isolation caused by systematic inequality in access to employment, housing, networking and other resources.
• Recognizing the complexity of this social system helps the reader understand how individuals who fail to actively oppose racism actually support it, and why official 'race-blind' policies fail to stop the polarization caused by chain-reactions of systematic, historic, self-reinforcing racial inequalities and the ruthless self-interest of capitalist culture."

 Source: Jeremy Michalek in a January 2, 2004 Amazon Book Review of "The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit" by Thomas Sugrue (Princeton, 2004)

-----

The race hatred and the animosity that resides just behind the editorial facade of Gannett's Detroit News daily rants continues to roil up potential social and civic disaster for Detroit and fuels the same kind of fear and hatred that Rush Limbaugh has engendered for far too long. Limbaugh, his fawning 'dittoheads' chime, is but an "entertainer." What kind of "entertainer" is it who panders and incites the lowest of the low emotions/prejudices and repressed hatreds residing regretfully in a political party? Republicans were once the great GOP of Jerry Ford and Ike, now relegated to a bifurcated party which is now brought down, ham-fistedly hectored by mealy mouth gutter snipe-style rants and corrupting greedy corporate (Koch Bros.) influences?

Hank, walk away from racial prejudice and your own lack of positive vision. Throw off your dark despair. Use the Gannett Mission Statement as your new beginning: To enrich lives by informing and inspiring consumers, by providing the ease and accessibility to connect them with their communities of interest, and by being a catalyst for the conversations that are making a difference every day. Also include the Gannett Vision Statement:

"OUR VISION: To be the trusted, leading media and marketing solutions company at the forefront of a new era in human engagement."

To achieve these goals Hank, you will need to discover what is "a new era in human engagement" not the kind of snarky disengagement you've displayed in calling for the literal liquidation of Detroit, as a government and a city via bankruptcy and imposition of a EM dictator.

Hank, you will need to be tutored in how to make your contributions via the News more in the service of the greater civic good. Gannett ownership calls for journalism that is "trusted" and "at the forefront of a new era of human engagement" yielding a dialogue that is pro-positive "enriching lives" by "informing and inspiring" readers to become "catalysts for conversations that make a (proactive, positive) difference every day.

Gannett employees should be ever mindful of their journalistic responsibilities as outlined (highly accurate news and responsible/fair-minded balanced opines) in Gannett's corporate Vision and Mission Statements.

Now more History than Real News, the official Michigan Historical Marker at the Detroit News reads:

"On August 23, 1873 James E. Scripps began publishing The Evening News, one of the first popular, low-priced evening newspapers in Michigan. The News specialized in short, local, human interest stories. Resolutely independent, it continuously championed political and business reform. In 1917 the enterprise moved to this building designed by Albert Kahn. By its centenary, The Detroit News had attained the largest evening circulation in America."

The Detroit News now, with it's current staff spewing all this 'stuff' into Detroit's toxic drainage ditch, the Michigan View, is just a shadow of its better self.

On the Reader:
"The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit" by Thomas Sugrue (Princeton, 2005)

Related Slates:
More on Jim Crow at the Detroit News in "High up in Jim Crow’s Nest: Constant Cawing Incites Civic Upheaval by the Detroit News - Michigan View" and on Emergency Manager policy in "A Shout Out to the Overlords of Michissippian EM Plantations (Michigan Emergency Managerment)".
 
More responses to Henry Payne and the Michigan View on the Gazette.

Original.

Michigan GOP's Power Grab Thievery: Patterson's 30 Year Jim Crow / EM Plot to Steal Detroit's Royal Jewels & Liquid Assets

Jim Crow Is Ready to Deliver: Detroit’s EM “Plantation Takeover” Is Poised to Reward L. Brooks Patterson In His 30 Year Battle With Detroit Over Control of Detroit's Water & Sewerage Department

It took 30 years, but with Rick Snyder's ink on TeaPublican EM legislation, L. Brooks Patterson hovers over his long-sought goal, ready to pounce: Control of Detroit's multi-billion dollar water works-a coming reality within the egis of Snyder's retro - Jim Crow EM Plantation regime. City residents and their elected officials are to be disenfranchised and shutout of power.

Tyrannical state-controlled bureaucracy and highly-paid corporate lawyers replace local sovereignty and are commissioned to do as they please, no public control or limits on their entitlement to carry out radical liquidation of assets, destroy or ignore labor contracts,hire and fire at will, obtain new bids or cancel others, etc. Gone are the civil servants of yesterday, like Detroit's 19th century benefactor Chauncy Hurlbut, whose dedication and generosity to the common good made the Water Works possible.

Detroit Water Works (Cira 1910) (Burton Collection Detroit Public Library/UofM)

Privatizing and cannibalizing of Detroit's waterworks is but one of a longer list of "crown jewels" long lusted for, coveted by special business and corporate interests. The list includes, privatizing Cobo Hall, seizing Detroit City's electric grid, and privatizing conversion of Detroit Metro Airport into the part of the (Business Leaders for Michigan) BLM's expanded Aerotropolis scheme. And wait there's more.

The Old Curmudgeon Triumphs in His Dotage
L. Brooks Patterson's decades long, bitter battle with Detroit Water & Sewerage Department is about to payoff super big time. Patterson's Snyder backed and immanent multi-billon dollar "asset grab" is just an EM maneuver or two away!

Before the Reign of EM begins in earnest, a bit of local history.

The Sunday Detroit News, January 29, 1995, ran an editorial debate between Kay Everett, a Detroit City council member and the brash and bodacious L. Brooks Patterson, Oakland County Executive; the topic: Liquid Assets, "Should Detroit's Water and Sewerage Department Be Regionalized?"

Councilwoman Everett's position:

"The system is not for sale." "...(W)e (Detroiters) must be prepared to fight. The attempt to take our precious jewel, our water system, is real...we will not accept a friendly or otherwise takeover of our company."

In this historic, published News debate, political powerhouse Patterson laid out his position and harked back to the über conservative Heartland Institute to frame Brooks' stated 1996 aim: privatization and take over of Detroit Water & Sewerage.

Patterson's position:

"The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department is operated by the city of Detroit and it is governed by a seven-member Board of Water Commissioners, all of whom are appointed by the mayor of Detroit. Four of the board's members must reside in the city of Detroit, and three others are chosen to represent Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties.

"The suburbs' lack of adequate representation on the board is ironic considering that the 120 communities, which contract with the Detroit department for wholesale service, account for 73 percent of the total water usage. The irony continues when one realizes the water system was built and expanded primarily with federal grants and user rates, not on the backs of Detroit taxpayers."

Patterson, is a wizard at casting canards to make his head-bashing claims, back in 1996 this was his choice of anti-Detroit put down:

"For more than 20 years, the suburban users have been treated to continual horror stories, including allegations of mismanagement, fraud, bad debt, no-bid contracts, exorbitant rate increases and hundreds of thousands of dollars in late penalties to Detroit Edison. Is it little wonder that the suburban users who are locked into a monopolistic system look for alternatives?"

To hone his boisterous negative zingers, Patterson's infamous trademark "gift", Brooks in 1996 harked back an additional 21 years to "April 1974 and May 1977," to cite certain past operations violations.

Has Patterson pursued an alternative to build newer and modern water and sewer system(s) for his Oakland County's municipal units and/or those total 120 communities which need service in the last 30 years? (Such a system Brooks could have controlled and managed at will.) No. Then, as now in 1995, Boss Patterson, ever the godfather of suburban politics and patronage, was looking for "privatization" or as it now stands and is altogether possible: The EM forced/outright sale of the Detroit Water & Sewerage to a private corporation or business combine.

Patterson's citing of the rad right Heartland Institute's proposal, September 1992, Brooks felt he had found a "convincing argument for privatization." Said Patterson then:

"In order to meet the growing needs laid out by the EPA....many communities across the nation have sold their waste-water plants to private firms, allowing private firms to build, run and operate new plants [along] with units of government, and contract with private firms to take over the management of government-owned facilities."

In Patterson's 1995 print debate, he cited again a litany of other Detroit based flaws and problems as proof of the need to take from Detroit city the control its Water and Sewerage department. Brooks laid down a challenge:

"[Detroit] prove to us, your suburban customers, that the water and sewer services are delivered in the most cost-effective manner possible. If not, then it's time to consider other options such as privatization or, absent that, the development of a new Southeast Michigan Regional Water and Sewer Authority..."

Stealing Detroit's Crown Jewels: Brooks Patterson's Big Grab - Detroit's Liquid Assets

As Detroit Councilwoman Kay Everett effectively pointed out in her rebuttal:

"Today (1995), we deliver water to 120 communities in eight counties. That's 43% of the state's population! The fine work of our 2,817 (1996 total employee count) dedicated employees should be applauded. We provide steady, quality, reliable sewerage treatment services for 75 communities, which is 35% of Michigan's population...note our (1995) rates are fair and reasonable. The rates charged our suburban customers are MARKED UP GREATLY BY THOSE DEPARTMENTS WHEN THEY SELL IT RETAIL TO THEIR CUSTOMERS-ant the hike is blamed on Detroit. In short, THE SUBURBAN GOVERNMENTS ARE MAKING MONEY ON OUR WATER!"
(emphasis added)

In 2012, nearly 20 years later, during the latest skirmish in this 30-Year War the battle continues with the same attackers, from the same trenches, with the same ammunition, but now supported by the Snyder shock doctrine of the Emergency Manager/Martial Law. The defense this time is manned by Michigan State Senate from Detroit Coleman Alexander Young II, in a well-crafted Op-Ed on the Huffington Post March 9, 2012 in "The Well is Running Dry":

"Efforts are under way to seize control of Detroit's Water and Sewerage Department, taking it away from the people and putting it into the hands of a private company. If this happens the people of Detroit will have no well at all.
(break)
The legislation introduced that would take control of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department out of the hands of the people of Detroit and into the hands of a governing board comes from the play book of the Mackinac Center (for Public Policy). This conservative, pro-big business group has a long history of supporting corporate interests over the needs of people. The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department is the third largest provider of water and waste water services in the United States. It currently runs as a non-profit basing its rates solely on the costs of providing services. If the Mackinac Center had its way, Detroit Water would be turned over to a private corporation, whose sole motivation would be profit. As water is an essential element for life, the people of Detroit would have little choice but to pay the increased rates charged by the new corporate owners of our well.

Water is a precious, life-giving resource, not a commodity to be exploited by greed. The only way to ensure it stays that way is to keep Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, our well, in the hands and control of the people."
(emphasis added)

Centuries Apart: Public Service vs. Private Profits from Public Services
Chauncy Hurlbut (Left) Civil Servant and Detroit Water Works benefactor (c.1855)
and L. Brooks Patterson (Right) Public Profiteer / Profitizer (c.1995)

Patterson's Back
Patterson is still around in 2012, 17 years later. He, as a gnarled fixture, is about to succeed in his decades-long power struggle with Detroit. As so clearly shown in the dictatorial tyranny surrounding the debacle of the current Pontiac EM regime located in Patterson's County, the Detroit Water Department will go on the block and with stunning speed. What could not be accomplished by Boss Patterson via compromise or regional cooperation will now be done via the extreme powers of a Jim Crow/Teapartisan assisted legislative super-majority, whose radical franchise of EM Plantations (metastasizing across Michigan) will make it "legal" for L. Brooks Patterson et. al. to "steal" one of the crown jewels of the Motor City. This action in no way improves life in urban Detroit, it acts recklessly, further impoverishing and humiliating a majority minority city.

This kind of maneuver is what clever race radicals can do, utilizing the power of legislation and the police powers of the state, to put/keep feared minorities under the thumb of the New EM "Jim Crow" régime and in their place-said to be in the "best interest of the general public" - total control under the repressive EM plantation scheme. EM includes fire and police protection, maintenance and upkeep of infrastructure (roads and bridges), tens of thousands of abandoned homes and buildings, and much more.

Detroit is learning what it means to be separate and legally unequal without franchise, without regress, without local control. These wrongful acts of Dillon & Snyder Inc. will serve to illustrate how eerily like indentured servitude, or life under slavery just surviving on a Dillon/Snyder EM plantation can be.

Detroit citizens' freedom and franchise, local control and autonomy, are not high priorities for L. Brooks. He's about to grab a coveted Detroit's Crown Jewel; delivered to him on a silver platter. If it weren't quasi-legal (to be challenged by ballot initiative and court action) under TeaPublican EM legislation, it would be a historic miscarriage of justice and miscarriage of equal rights strongly akin to the injustice enforced upon Dred Scott.

In point of fact, legal or not, EM will be condemned far into the future as a failure of democracy and basic human rights for all Michigan citizens. Gov Rick Snyder and the Republicans will soon own the future of the City of Detroit, something they are very ill-prepared to handle.

----- 

Dancing a Jig on the Grave of Mayor Bing's Administration
 Detroit News' Hank Payne jubilant ebullience over the immanent fall of Detroit's Mayor Dave Bing and the all encompassing imposition of "plantation style" Dillon/Snyder total Detroit Emergency Manager dictatorial control is evident in his recent opinion. What's so grand about all local rights of governance and voter sovereignty about to be indefinitely suspended/eliminated. Helpless Bing and Detroiter's will only be allowed to watch as municipal assets are put up for grabs via the Business Leaders for Michigan (Former Detroit Renaissance) game plan.

According to Payne in "Bing's failing franchise", March 9, 2012, shortfall finances have Detroit on the block for hostile takeover and conversion to an EM Plantation by as early as next month:

"Nearly three months ago, Treasurer Andy Dillon issued a preliminary state review of city finances detailing a bleak picture of a metropolis heading for April insolvency. With long-term debt at $12 billion, the city was paying out $597 million in debt payments. That is, more than its Big 3 revenue fund generators - income taxes, property taxes, and casinos - combined ($538 million)."

EM's Winners & Losers
The EM plantations include the same ideological spirit; the bare-knuckled and partisan attacks such as John Engler & Co. rolled out as prototypes of top down control back as far as 30 years ago. Now on steroids, via the TeaPublican takeover of the state legislature, statewide civic mayhem gains momentum with what appears to be unrelenting attacks and unlimited aggression against the autonomy of local units of governance, workers, the poor, the elderly, our children, and public servants by Snyder and Teapartisans, strongly supported by such big money as the Koch Bros.

L. Brooks Patterson is beside himself with greed and a filled with sense of vindication in his over-30 year struggle with Detroit centered on regional water and sewer service. The EM plantation will yield a multi- billion dollar bonanza for Patterson and Detroit's suburban rivals. The takedown of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department is but the first of several multi-billion dollar "legalized" swindles about to be extracted from Detroit citizens. Bad things will happen; forced to their knees by the repression mapped out by the Business Leaders for Michigan and their CEO-style head honchos: Andy Dillon and Rick Snyder, Detroit city will be less well off, less viable in the end. The corporate looting of Detroit under EM Plantation control is about to begin, the process is even now well under way. The direct consequences of this neo-Jim Crow action include strong blowback that will negatively mark our state for years to come.

Dictatorship by means of aggressive, radical Teapartisan legislation gives freewheeling "overseers" the full run of their repressive EM Plantation(s).

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Is there an Republican "exit strategy"? It's far too soon to even consider how the GOP gets out of the economical, social, racial and civic mess they are so deeply and undemocratically stuck in long term.

On the Reader:
Histories of the Detroit Water Works by Detroit Water & Sewage Department: The Firts 300 Years (DWSD, Michael Daisy 2002) - Detroit's Water Works Park a gateway to the past (DetNews Laurie J. Marzejka 2000) - Detroit’s Vast Water System: A Tangle of Regional Resentment (Michigan Land Use Institute Dave Dempsey 2006) and Water wars: A deep history runs beneath the battle for Detroit’s water department  (MetroTimes, Russ Bellant 2002)

Related Slates:
On Emergency Management issue in "A Shout Out to the Overlords of Michissippian EM Plantations (Michigan Emergency Managerment)" and "High up in Jim Crow’s Nest: Constant Cawing Incites Civic Upheaval by the Detroit News - Michigan View" and a previous piece on L. Brooks Patterson in "A Political Marriage from Hell: The Blonde and the Political Godfather"

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A Shout Out to the Overlords of Michissippian EM Plantations (Michigan Emergency Managerment)

In the New Order under the dictatorial hand of Rick Snyder and Andy Dillon Esq., the world of take-overs and liquidation of Michigan's struggling communities (under Lansing's Central Planning and the undemocratic imposition of Emergency Manager law) is well underway.

Snyder & Dillon have methodically begun their quasi-legal Foreclosure of many Michissippian units of government.

Their plan was to conduct all these discussions and decisions in secret out of the public's purview, without outside perspectives or the impacted peoples' permission, leaving the majority of Michigan's urban minorities to patiently and peacefully await their fate in silence.

Segregation and discrimination by Gubernatorial Decree

However the rights of citizens don't die by fiat - according to the Freep report "Detroit financial review team members to meet in private after all":

"The Detroit financial review team that was told it can no longer meet behind closed doors held its first public meeting Tuesday, and within minutes, it created a subcommittee that plans to hold private meetings."

"In the Detroit case, the financial review team, appointed in December by Gov. Rick Snyder, was ordered by an Ingham County judge earlier this month to halt its meetings after Robert Davis, an open government activist, sued on the grounds that the closed meetings violated the state's Open Meetings Act. On Tuesday, Davis promised to proceed with another legal challenge.

"'For them to try to establish a subcommittee so they can meet in private is ABSOLUTELY ABSURD and a slap in the face to every single Detroiter,' Davis said. 'This is the same group that said they aren't subject to the Open Meetings Act. Who are you going to believe?'"

"The subcommittee is expected to meet and assess the risks and benefits of the appointment of an emergency manager or the institution of a consent agreement, under which state officials and Mayor Dave Bing likely would privatize some services and wipe out union contracts in an attempt to right the city's finances. They are expected to complete a report by March 14 and report findings to the full review team."

The Business Leaders for Michigan (big wealth & corporations), the One Percenters, and the aggressive TeaPublicans who are the new plantation managers under EM; take heed of these immortal words from Sam Adams, founding liberator, warning the citizens of Michigan:

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

-- Samuel Adams, remarks on August 1, 1776 to the State House delegation Philadelphia.

Long live local freedom! Die now tyranny of the coercive, Jim Crow, and several EM Plantations!

UPDATE: According to the Freep and blogged by EM issue tracker Eclectablog, the judge was not amused by the formation of the Dillon/Snyder 'subcommittee' that is to continue meeting in secret:

"An Ingham County judge this afternoon ordered all 10 members of the Detroit emergency financial review team to appear in his courtroom March 12 to answer why they should not be held in contempt for attempting to evade his finding that the review team is subject to the Open Meetings Act by forming a smaller committee to meet in secret.

Judge William Collette issued the order at the request of attorneys for Robert Davis, the employee of AFSCME who filed open meetings lawsuits against financial review teams in both Detroit and the Highland Park school districts.

Davis said the five-member subcommittee created by the review team on Tuesday is clearly an attempt to circumvent Collette’s finding that review teams are public agencies subject to the open meeting law."

Note: New legislation to get around the repeal petition, and suspension of PA 4 (Emergency Manager Law) is also in the works, this story will continue.



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