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.

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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"

Original.

A Political Marrigage from Hell: The Blonde and the Political Godfather

Response and commentary on series of articles on Michigan's being declined for "Ract to the Top" funding in the Oakland Press in "Fingers point over failure of Race to the Top application" which included comments from Republican Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson and the MEA and and AP Story "Gov, Granholm ‘disappointed’ at Michigan being shut out in 'Race to the Top' education funds" on March 5, 2010.

A failed Governor and a gnarly power-grabber make one last attempt to achieve their legacy moment-Pin Blame on the State's Teachers.

Nothing short of desperation and the full realization that circumstances created by G.W. Bush's Great Job Killing Recession has forced the shotgun marriage of a marginalized governor (seeking a promising position in politics outside Michigan) and an old grumpy frump of a "public payroller," man with delusions of power and control over his fiefdom of Oakland County (replete with Brook's long history of "shot calling" as the GOP Godfather of Eastern Michigan) would have the power to produce this god-awful blames laying tag team: Brooks and Jenny.

Previously, here's how it was. " L. Brooks Patterson just wants to know: Is Gov. Jennifer Granholm trying to upstage him -- again?

"The 71-year-old Oakland County executive issued a press release Tuesday pointing out that, for the second year in a row, Granholm has scheduled her State of the State address on the same night of his State of the County speech." That highly annoyed Brooks. So what brings about this highly irregular, ugly marriage of pols?

THE GODFATHER’S SLAPDOWN: DEFEAT THE MICHIGAN EDUCATION ASSOCIATION'S RIGHT TO DEFEND TRADITIONAL PUBLIC EDUCATION
The teachers of Michigan, more exactly the Michigan Education Association, have so far succeeded in getting across the point to current "the powers that be" in Michigan and to the state legislature and also to the now-powerless, lame duck governor, that individuals, parents, local business people, and children are right to defend and protect the traditional public school in their community.

This is a desperate hour. The over-all long term decline of Michigan, first seen as a slight trickle in the earthen dam (Michigan's economic health) which held back the outsourcing and Chinese completion-a flood building behind it-expanded under John Engler indicated big trouble ahead. Engler ignored the distinct warning signs of that small fissure and now the dam is about to breech sweeping away what is left of Michigan's struggling economies.

THE BIG FIGHT: THE LOCAL ECONOMY VERSUS THE SELFISH INTRANSIGENCE OF BOTH  BISHOP AND DILLON
Agriculture now takes a high place as Michigan's economic engine. Tourism is far more than a pastime part of the state's income. The local economic engine in every community across this great state is the public school. Forget the wingnuttery of the past, ignore the meanness of the Engler Revolution and the selfish intransigence of the politically hopeful "pretty boys" Bishop and Dillon. We consistently gain from our investment and returns drawn from traditional public schools' operations and purpose. It's blind economic ignorance to claim otherwise.

Never forget: Traditional education moves the local economy and consumes local supplies, education provides stable and dependable jobs and generates local dollars of great importance to our state's survival,  while at the same time public school delivers the highest hopes we have for our children into a better tomorrow.   It's our present local economic engine and our entire future promise for children. MEA and parents, local businesses, and informed citizenry support this fact. Back in September 2009 the Associated Press survey of the state showed that Michigan supported INCREASED TAXES FOR EDUCATION BY A 2 TO 1 MARGIN.

The deceptive politics and the chicanery connected to Proposition A of 1994 took a big part of the local authority that is needed to sanely run those local neighborhood schools and shipped it on a ladle to a huckster-bound Lansing. In Lansing school operations funding became a shuttle cock for the peacocks of the legislature and a "goodie bag" for the lobby corps.

ENGLER MADE ANTI-PUBLIC SCHOOLS HARANGUES FASHIONABLE : ENGLERISM STUCK.
Under Engler, local control was sold off. Like that biblical birthright local control was traded for a cold bowl of insider pap. This fact and the spirit it spawned is attested to by long-time observer, Tim Skubick: "Beating up on the MEA is a popular in-door sport in this town (Lansing). It was former Gov. John Engler who made it fashionable and others have picked up where he left off." One of those carrying on is Patterson: (Patterson said last Friday. "Of course it (RTTT funding) went under because the MEA opposed it, and one of the things they look for in Washington is collaboration, and we didn't have it here in Michigan... I'm holding the MEA strictly responsible for the loss of that money.") Patterson is senile or well off-his game. "Collaboration?" When did Patterson call for across-the-aisle cooperation during the last round of state budget quarrels? Brook's sentiment and attitude as historically been in line with that of former GOP/U.S. Rep. Dick Armey, who once characterized bipartisanship as a form of "date rape."

Please note, as a commentator on this topic has reported elsewhere: "Those (possible RTTT) funds weren't going to cover the long term costs of the program. The state would have simply spent all the money it got, and then be left funding yet another program.

"Brooks Patterson has addressed this many times, and that's why Oakland County won't fund programs once federal money runs dry. It's hit and run federal spending. They entice states to start programs by giving a large sum of money to get it started.

"Once that money is spent, where does the funding to keep these programs come from? This idea of spending money in order to receive partial funding from D.C. is a joke. It isn't just education either. The light rail system wreaks (sic) of this sort of thing. Wait until fed money runs out on that project."

COMMUNITIES WERE ROBBED OF THEIR RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION
Communities, which would like to have the right to straight-line vote up or down on local operating millage to support and operate the traditional, historical schools in their jurisdiction, as they had for generations, possessed the privilege to decide, by voting, the future of their own schools. Now they stand like mendicants/ beggars, relegated to await the crumbs passed on to them by the panic-laced poppycockery of  Lansing's stupid "political dog and pony show"-late night sessions and shutdowns of the state government- (fueled by a ill-begotten restraint on democracy-term limits-which has stupefied and undermined our state's entire political system).

THE EDUCATION COMMUNITY'S SUCCESS IN RAISING SUPPORT IN DEFENSE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION HAS ANGERED THIS ODD COUPLE: BROOKS & JENNY
All this brings us to this moment. The MEA and other education groups have successfully kept the role and importance of traditional education before the people. This obviously has infuriated both Granholm and Brooks Patterson. In reprisal they are willing to come together in an arrangement that defies logic and all recent political standard practice-support of a new Democratic education program. Brooks would never normally commit support, much less advocate and champion, any Democratic device such as the so-called "Race-to-the-Top." RTTT is sponsored and created by Obama's Chicagoman, Erne Duncan. No right-minded Democratic governor would team up with the fire-breathing, super-partisan Patterson, knowing his cunning and ferocity in such MEA sentiments. Brooks is hopelessly addicted to spinning off political shenanigans and puffery-as he has for so long.

SO WHAT GIVES?

Both Brooks and Jenny are desperately needy. Thus all former partisan limitations or regard for former appearances or for either party's devices are canceled. If they can successfully project to the public that not they or theirs have created this funding crisis or hold any responsibility for it, they will succeed in protecting their own self-centered/fleeting ambitions, and those of that failed Lansing ring of duds.

THE "RACE TO THE TOP" IS A FRAUD & A MAJOR FEDERAL POWER GRAB
These two very different, very desperate individuals have married themselves into a relationship to attack one of the most important elements of local economy and an essential function in order to save some part of their own selfish interests. Jenny and Brooks are doing so in light of one of the greatest swindle/schemes of recent political history, the "Race-to-the-Top" lottery device. This Obama sponsored government program has coerced Michigan and other states into making major concessions and surrendering considerable state and local authority/powers of control to the federal government. What a queer arrangement!

There is no certainty in the "vague promise" of any real or "bail-out" cash. All these federally imposed demands (to which a harried Michigan legislature capitulated, which this highly panicked state legislature has rolled over for) are nothing other than a revenue "long shot" -indefinite, dangerous, and administratively garbled paperwork and red tape. As one common sense commenter has said, "Call it sabotage if you want, but I call it safe. It only makes sense to sign on to something if you know what it's going to be."

RTTT is an expensive gamble, hoping against hope. IT'S A PIDDLEY "FEDERAL BRIBE," ladled out arbitrarily as a "possible" source of funds in this time of the state's cash shortfall.

The budget imbroglio is a situation that was created and is already compounded and aggravated by Brooks Patterson's gang of fellow boneheads determined to prevent any new revenue sources.

Brooks will continue to "service starve" the state's richest county into compliance with his narrow idea of economic sanity, while having funded million dollar helicopters and doodads for his buddy Sheriff Bouchard.

So Brooks and Jenny: Do your voodoo dance over MEA's resistance to your political wills and watch your chances for self-aggrandizement and political prospects disappear.


Original Articles in the Oakland Press and AP.