What you need to know about the complete “re-write” or “re-do” of Billions in Public School Funding in Michigan

From a leading national expert on Rick Snyder's Plan for Michigan Public Education:

"Governor Snyder’s plan for education in Michigan sounds just like Romney’s and Bobby Jindal’s. The money should follow the student anywhere and everywhere, to any vendor of education services, regardless of who owns it or manages it.

So, students may take their money to private schools, to hawkers of services, to online courses, whatever. Welcome to anyone who wants to start a school and collect public money.

That is a plan to undermine public education, and the right-wing knows it. That’s their goal."

Nationally and State-by-State, From Mitt Romney to Rick Snyder: "Follow the Student" funding is an attempt to end the long tradition of Public Education and Community Schools across America - Why? For Profit.

What is happening - what are the Facts?

LANSING – Michigan’s school finance system would be reshaped to allow money to more closely follow children and allow for a variety of choices for families under a plan being shaped by a panel assembled by Gov. Rick Snyder. (break) The group, headed by Richard McLellan, a former adviser to Gov. John Engler, promises a transparent process involving educators, lawmakers and union leaders with an eye toward a bill headed to Snyder in early 2013. (break) Speaking to reporters in a Monday conference call, McLellan said the goal is to create a plan replacing the 1979 School Aid Act….”

Source: “Gov. Rick Snyder assembles panel to plan for sweeping changes to school funding” MLive, July 16, 2012.

Back to Diane Ravitch, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education who is an historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, on Snyder's Education Plan:

"Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has his own plan to hack away at the foundations of universal, free public education.

He is vying to be one of the national leaders of the education reform movement. Like (Loisianna Governor) Bobby Jindal, his Southern counterpart in the far-right of the Republican Party, Snyder would love to offer vouchers but the Michigan state constitution doesn’t permit it (neither does the Louisiana state constitution, but who cares when you are a reformer?).

Leaving constitutional niceties aside, Snyder wants to promote, encourage, expand, and fund with taxpayer dollars anything that is not a public school.

Governor Snyder wants to reshape the state’s school finance system so that public money “follows the child,” instead of just automatically going to public schools. This is part of the right-wing agenda to defund public education, cloaked in alluring terminology.

The governor has created a panel to figure out how to make this happen."

(Emphasis Added)

Note: The terms "Follow the Child" or "Follow the Student" refer to what is also called "Student-weighted Funding" or other public funding and public education assets diversion schemes to replace voucher and "scholarship" strategies to support private and for-profit schools with both taxpayer financial support and facilities, was referenced to by Mitt Romney in the first Presidential Election Debate of 2012 on October 3, 2012.

What is the (Michigan) State School Aid Act of 1979?
Public Act 94 or the “School Aid Act” is the Michigan Law that controls the allocation and appropriation of all funding (payments, bonds, etc) for “public schools, the intermediate school districts, community colleges, and public universities.”  Under the State Constitution there are certain restrictions and requirements on how and where public funds (i.e. taxpayer dollars) are spent on “public education”, and Act 94 is most recent legislation that determines how those public funds and assets are paid for and maintained.  The School Aid Act also prescribes “the powers and duties of certain state departments, the state board of education, and certain other boards and officials” that control the funding/management of Michigan Public Education.

Education Funding in the Michigan (Snyder/Nixon) State Budget included over $900+ Million in cuts in 2011, and the State School Aid Act, the largest “strategic fund” in the state budget, allocated in HB 5376 ( 2012), is $14.1 Billion.

What is the Oxford Foundation Memo?
In a memorandum sent to “interested parities” entitled “Drafting a ‘Michigan Education Finance Act of 2013’ to Replace the School Aid Act of 1979” the Oxford Study Group provides a rationale to justify radical /revolutionary change is presented outlining a “Work Plan” with numerous goals and objectives to redefine and disenfranchise community public schools via the rewriting of the both the Strategic School Fund parameters and Michigan School Code.

Diane Ravitch has Flipped: a former Reagan education official, turned vocal anti-Privatization and informed defender of American Public Education

Ravitch's informed conclusion on Oxford Project - “it reforms public education by funding everything other than public education.”

What is the Oxford Foundation?
The Oxford Foundation was formed in 1991 by the then new Gov. John Engler to “to lessen the financial burdens of the Government of the State of Michigan”.  More than two dozen individuals have been identified as past and present officers of Oxford, which includes Richard McLellan, also a founder of the anti-union and anti-public education Mackinac Center for Public Policy.  When asked at townhall meeting on his “Public Education Finance Project” on July 18, 2012 about “who is Oxford” and what their funding and membership was, McLellan, a Lansing lawyer/lobbyist, refused to answer. The Oxford Foundation is an IRS 501(c) 3 “charity” and does not disclosure it’s membership or funding sources, donors or recipients. However, internal Oxford documents show that the foundation’s funding has exceeded $1 Million from year to year.

Who is the American Legislative Exchange Council?
ALEC is a corporate funded Heritage Foundation/Mackinac Center associated national organization that has been recently “exposed” as being the organization behind the drafting, lobbying and sponsoring or hundreds of bills or “model legislation” passed in multiple US States including Michigan.  ALEC has been identified as a key political organization behind: anti-union and collective bargaining campaigns and politicians, the support of for-profit education organizations and companies, and facilitator of legislation diverting billions in public education funding to its corporate members and for-profit education management organizations, including those operating in Michigan.

Sources: See the websites ALECexposed.org and VLTP.net for more on ALEC, or read the McGuffey piece "Rick Snyder & the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Corporatist “Disaster Capitalism” on the Prowl in Michigan"

Monied interests represented by funders of the Mackinac Center, Heritage and Oxford Foundations, and like-minded organizations (American Federation for Children (Betsy DeVos), Students First, Mosiaca, Education Connections, Heritage Academies, etc) seek to “reform” public education for profit state-by-state in FL, TX, NJ, LA, TN, IN, OH, WI and now they want Michigan too.

Michigan politico Tim Skubick on McLellan in FoxDetroit on July 30, 2012:

“Mr. (Dick) McLellan is now one of the governor's (Rick Snyder’s) go-to guys on a variety of issues from the bridge to a re-do of the state's school aid act for education”.

Bottomline:
The current Snyder/McLellan’s “Oxford Project” is part of a well-funded and nationally organized campaign working state-by-state to divert public funding for community schools to for-profit education management businesses and organizations (EMOs) led by ALEC and Koch Brothers supported organizations (i.e. the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and related foundations) to “reform” public education and replace public sector union (Teacher & Employee Unions) and influence on the national debate on public education funding and “reform” from public control to privatized profit.

On the Reader:
READ the Oxford Memo (Alternate LINK) and the ANALYSIS by Diane Ravitch in "Michigan Plan to Defund Public Education" July 18, 2012.

Related Slates:
More on Richard McLellan on the Gazette.

Michigan’s Carnival of Economic Carnality: Who Runs Rick Snyder?

The interlocking overlords of Michigan run the agenda presented by the Detroit News - their main newsprint outlet. The behind the scenes sponsors and originators, controllers of the flow of managed and contrived information and agenda opinion are those who are principals in both the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Business Leaders for Michigan (BLM) add in the untoward influence and direct access to Michigan law making via the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Michigan is a generator of ALEC models and has over 100 past or present legislators who are members (including the MI GOP's new national committee man Dave Agema) and you have the lockbox from which the TeaPublican/Snyder/Elites pull the plan that determines the future economy and the range of freedom for most Michiganians.

Take US Rep. Dave Agema, a robotic ALEC lackey:

"MI HB-4305 Sec. 4.1 (PDF) contains language that is pretty much, word for word, cribbed from ALEC model legislation 7K5, Sec. 2 (A) (PDF).  The Michigan legislation was "plug and played" directly into a bill-unedited or lightly amended) was sponsored by Rep. Dave Agema, an ALEC Member."

Brilliant hod-carrying for the corporatocracy statesman Dave!

Foreign Written Sharia Law is Bad, but Multinational Corporations (with foreign ownership) Writing 'Cut & Paste' Laws Good: Michigan US Rep Dave Agema presents his proposed HM 4769 American Laws for American Courts or ALAC bill in Lansing, MI on May 10, 2012 after being introduced by Alan Cropsey from Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette's office.

Most of the activity of the overlords is done in secret and sub-rosa. Little is known about who actually contributes to the Mackinac Center. This aggressive and anti-worker propaganda mill was set up by Richard McLellan esq. and John Mathias Engler along with others whose model was drawn from that of the Heritage Foundation which in turn was funded and boosted, early on, by both Richard (Rich) M. DeVos Sr. and Jay Van Andel of Amway.

The programs and opinions of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy have had carte blanche to hundreds of pages of local and regional news outlets, their videos, speakers bureau, publications (Capital Confidential, and anti-union Educational Journal sent to all of Michigan's public school teachers) has a wide sphere of influence. Slick brochures and brightly colored booklets promote a wide range of rational intended to promote and achieve their objectives. They have been successful beyond their wildest dreams; they have a complete control/homogeny over the political processes of Michigan.

MichiganVotes.org is Mackinac Center's tracking site on legislation. These business elites hold control over a supine Michigan State Supreme Court as the final rubber stamp/safeguard on their achievements.

Look at these examples of the interlocking roles of Michigan Corporations with the private political power machine that runs Michigan:

• Mackinac Donor: Chase Foundation = BLM Member: Sarah McClelland, President, Michigan Region/Chase Bank
• Mackinac Donor: Hanover Insurance Group Foundation =BLM Member: Frederick Eppinger, President and CEO, Hanover Insurance Group
• Mackinac Donor: Herbert and Grace Dow Foundation = BLM Member: Andrew Liveris, CEO, Dow Chemical
• Mackinac Donor: General Motors Foundation = BLM Member: Daniel Akerson, CEO/Chairman of the Board, General Motors
• Mackinac Donor: Jay and Betty Van Andel Institute = BLM Member: Steve Van Andel, Amway
• Mackinac Donors: Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation, Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation = BLM Member: Doug DeVos, Amway

The "Turnaround Plan for Michigan" produced by these principals and others included:

1. Reducing the compensation of state employees
2. Requiring state employees pay more for their health insurance...
3. Encouraging sharing of services between local governments
4. Eliminating binding arbitration for police officers and firefighter
5. Deregulating workplace safety standards
6. Reducing the Michigan Business Tax

This is only the tip of the iceberg of goals or targets included in the radical "reinvention" Snyder hid from the voters in his stealth campaign for governor in 2008.

What did the Holland Sentinel reveal of the nature of the BLM? Read the Holland Sentinel op-ed:

"One of the most influential civic groups that emerged in reaction to our state's tailspin last decade was Business Leaders for Michigan. Comprised of top executives at some of the state's largest companies (among them the locally based Haworth, Herman Miller and Perrigo), BLM took a broader outlook than most other business groups, issuing a wide-ranging Michigan Turnaround Plan in 2010, many elements of which were incorporated into Gov. Rick Snyder's agenda in 2011."

There are many, many other interlocking cronyisms in the engine powering the BLM/ALEC/Mackinac Center cabal:

"Because there's more apparent government tie-in to the BLM-and the Mackinac Policy Center-than just Rick Snyder's obvious channeling of their policies. John Nixon, the State Budget Director, has been a speaker at the BLM's Leadership Conference. So has William (Bill) Schuette... (Michigan's Attorney General) who also happens to be the Trustee of the Rollin M. Gerstaker Foundation-a major Mackinac Center contributor.

"Mark Murray, a BLM member and current president of Meijer, Inc., was formerly the Michigan State Treasurer, the Michigan State Budget Director, and the Director of the Department of Management and Budget."

"Andy Dillon, failed gubernatorial candidate, is "the former vice president of GE Capital and then president of Detroit Steel Company. As Speaker of the Michigan House, he endorsed the BLM turnaround plan. Now, he's Rick Snyder's State Treasurer."

"Doug Rothwell, (well identified cohort with John M. Engler’s long tenure) the current president and CEO of the Business Leaders for Michigan, was appointed in January by Rick Snyder to be Chairman of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. As Progress Michigan noted, "This gives BLM-a private organization-virtual control over an agency that makes decisions regarding tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and sets economic policy for the state."

(Emphasis Added)

These Princes of Corporate Prosperity Are Well-Rewarded for Their Activities
 
The combined income of the "81 members of BLM make $107.5 million a year in salary” (as of 2010), they are the elites that determine, as never before, the life and living conditions of Michigan's children, mentally ill, poor, labor, public employees and all others. Nothing escapes their ability to trump the vital interests of the Middle Class, they rule!

Residents of West Michigan will recognize a lot of these familiar names:

1.    Jim Hackett from Steelcase in office furniture,
2.    Richard Haworth from Haworth another furniture producer,
3.    Mark Bissell, the vacuum-cleaner king,
4.    Dan Gordon of Gordon Food Service, and
5.    Blake Krueger from Wolverine World Wide.

Rick Snyder's campaign outline (Snyder's 10 Point Plan) came directly from the previously published BLM objectives, who runs/controls whom?

If you are upset with the tremendous hit that Michigan families have taken in the last 10 years look to them, these powerful elites have the levers of power and decision-making. They rule, you can suffer.

Source: Quotes drawn from: The Kings of Michigan, from GRIID March 31, 2011.


On the Reader:
Watch US Rep. Dave Agema scaring the radical right and Teapublicans in Lansing concerning the "threat" of foreign Sharia Law, or read an article "Why Rep. Dave Agema wants to stop Sharia by banning 'foreign laws' in Michigan courts" or a little about mini-scandal surrounding a similar meeting in the City of Allegan.

Related Slates:
Nationally popular featured article "Rick Snyder & the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Corporatist “Disaster Capitalism” on the Prowl in Michigan" or more on ALEC and the BLM on the Gazette.

The Original Post was CENSORED and DELETED by the editorial staff at the Detroit News and Michigan View.

Rick Snyder & the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Corporatist “Disaster Capitalism” on the Prowl in Michigan

Behold the Nerd Snyder's brass knuckled attacks on public education and local democracy; they are more brazen and destructive than former Gov. Engler's legendary ham-fisted assaults. Über-Ugly is on the rise, again.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is utilizing the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) crib notes, a recall offense. The “Nerd” Governor can't make a move without employing ALEC models & policies and support from Michigan’s long history with ALEC and a long list of ALEC members.

Foremost in his attacks is his beefed up Emergency Manager Law and Emergency Managers in Michigan (EM) through Michigan Republican sponsored (led by the EM controlled Benton Harbor's own Phil Pavlov who championed the bill) EM dictatorial powers given Snyder appointed one-man rule set against the rights of local government under Michigan's long revered and respected "local control".

Also, TeaPublican Snyder continues to lead systemic Republican attacks on teachers and public schools (in all categories) and aggressively seeks to take down the very foundations of Michigan Public Education (rules, operations and imposition of privatization).

Lastly many, many areas of Michigan’s laws, rules and regulations are being “adjusted” at a furious pace to fit the whims of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, The Mackinac Center for Public Policy (spin-off of the national arch-conservative Heritage Foundation), and Americans for Prosperity (AFP) - heavily backed by the Koch Bros. and mega-wealthy families like Michigan's own DeVos & Van Andel clans.

It’s a virtual, spiral corporate feeding frenzy!

Corporate Coups d'état: How ALEC is creating Corporatocracy
across the Nation state-by-state, bill-by-bill, Legislator-by-Legislator

Michigan has become an infamous "Mean TeaPublican" Battleground State

Scott Hagerstrom, the Director of the Koch-funded Michigan Americans for Prosperity (AFP) makes it clear, that it is the Kochs, working directly through ALEC, that have provided the AFP plans to the Michigan Tea Party, to eliminate all organized resistance from the political sphere, and as Scott says, they are aiming to "take the unions out at the knees." This belligerence started in Wisconsin and now it's spreading across the country.

Snyder and crew have sought to make their attacks “below the radar” using methods that accomplish virtually the same things Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker (attempting to raise money in Michigan to fight his recall) has attempted, but doing so in a backhanded way.  Walker’s M.O. has been replacement legislation, Snyder has used "substitution" and "amendments" to settled legislation to accomplish his “re-invention.”

Snyder's in a world of trouble. Snyder's causing the kids of this state, our kids, to go into panic. Their schools, bus transportation, art & music, sports programs, band and field trips, advanced placement classes and/or ability to take a class at a near by college or university (while still in high school) - all this and more, much more is on the cutting table.

The concepts that are the core of the Snyder program (to reinvent by destroying what we have, to rebuild in the mode Rick dictates) use the metrics and formulas of ALEC as found in its fabricated playbook of data and theories in “Rich States, Poor States”.

The American Legislative Executive Council is a heretofore unknown far right, Koch Bros. et. al. think tank - controlled and funded by major corporations which have found a way to force feed the various state legislative bodies with legislation and resolutions championing and directly benefiting their specific needs.

The following is a partial list of ALEC's other corporate backers, those we know of, from Wikipedia:

• Amway
• American Nuclear Energy Council
• American Petroleum Institute
• Coors Brewing Company
• Exxon Mobil
• The National Rifle Association
• Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America
• Philip Morris
• R.J. Reynolds Tobacco
• Texaco
• VISA
• and others.

Groups critical of ALEC claim that the organization is controlled by the entities that fund it’s operations and confabs, subsequently promote these donors' agendas and goals, along with making carefully crafted attempts to advance legislation which favor and advantage their interests.

The American Legislative Exchange Council is a political/ideological powerhouse, second to none. It calls corporate-serving shots nationwide. Most recently the power of ALEC has been laid bare in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio, although ALEC subterfuge and "mainlining" of "just-fill-in-the-blanks" corporate written and approve legislation for states has been brought to the public's attention.

Little attention has been paid up until now as to the key early members were, those who set the tone and greased the skids for what has come to follow.

More than 30 years ago, a small group of state legislators and conservative policy advocates met in Chicago to implement a vision:

“A nonpartisan membership association for conservative state lawmakers who shared a common belief in limited government, free markets, federalism, and individual liberty. Their vision and initiative resulted in the creation of a voluntary membership association for people who believed that government closest to the people was fundamentally more effective, more just, and a better guarantor of freedom than the distant, bloated federal government in Washington, D.C.”

At that meeting, in September 1973, state legislators, including:

• then Illinois State Rep. Henry Hyde,
• conservative activist Paul Weyrich, leader of the New Traditionalist movement
• Lou Barnett, a veteran of then Gov. Ronald Reagan’s 1968 presidential campaign

“(These men) together with a handful of others, launched the American Legislative Exchange Council.”

Among those who were involved with ALEC in its formative years were:

• Robert Kasten and Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin
• John Engler of Michigan
• Terry Branstad of Iowa
• John Kasich of Ohio

“(A)ll of whom moved on to become governors or members of Congress.”

Congressional members who were active during this same period included:

• Senators John Buckley of New York,
• Jesse Helms of North Carolina, and
• Congressmen Phil Crane of Illinois
• Jack Kemp of New York.

Source: The American Legislative Exchange Council’s home site in “About ALEC”.

Anyone with a smidgen of knowledge about the power and thrust of the Far Right, or what Grand Rapids native former President Jerry Ford called the “Hard Right,” knows the power, impact and influence the above mentioned group of “reactionaries and revolutionaries” on the outer fringe of radical conservatism have had.  Observers also know the great and course-changing impact these men had, and continue to have, on today’s governance.

ALEC's activities are very widespread and endemic to the lawmaking processes of state legislatures across the country, and for that reason, their activities have been accepted through ignorance of the secret and underlying purposes and objectives they promote.  The public finds it hard to believe such a group exists. But they do. Consider: "ALEC has approximately 2,000 legislative members representing all 50 states, as well as more than 85 members of Congress and 14 sitting or former Governors who are considered 'ALEC alumni'" (Source: Wikipedia, CMD and VLTP who has reported on ALEC in most levels of US Courts as well).

The ALEC Koch Trade in Michigan
Thus, as Snyder attempts to roll out his jaundiced version of what's good for your child in Michigan's public schools it is only fair that we accelerate  the process of ferreting out who's underwriting these "re-inventive" concepts and in coughing up the statistics of the kind that Snyder uses to make his full-frontal, brutal raid on our neighborhood schools.

If you love outsiders dictating to Michigan (who, what, when and where about your child or grandchild's education) you will want to follow the revelations coming about Snyder's the sources behind Rick's snide attacks on schools and the teachers who teach.

As ALEC purposefully puts Michigan schools in the worst light possible, Snyder accepts that flawed data. His response, "It's a fact." No, governor, it's as filtered and reported by ALEC and staff doing the insidious work of the anti-public schools crowd.

The 2008 ALEC Education Report barked our Michigan public schools, placing them at the near bottom with the right-to-work paradises, the Gulf states, such as Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. These are states with significant minority student populations. ALEC reports highlights states on the boarder with/or closer to Canada to the north: Minnesota, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Montana, where minority students are far less concentrated; these states are ranked highest. No genus is needed to find an important factor in those findings.

ALEC employed ideological bully William Bennett to head up its annual education report.  (He's the harsh critic of public education, whom Reagan put into the Carter established Department of Education to obfuscate and destroy as much as possible of this far right-hated federal cabinet post). Bennett also runs a for-profit business. K-12 Inc is Bennett's idea of what he would like to do to profit from public education, especially through the means of privatizing as much of its functions as possible. Bennett covets a major economic windfall from the potential passage of Snyder’s radical "Cyber Schools" legislation (through his stake in K-12 Inc.) being interjected into Michigan’s education system.

K-12 Inc. also has had among its shareholders those well-known parochiaid/voucher mavens, Dick & Betsy DeVos.

See also: “The Truth About Cyber Schools” on Blogging for Michigan January 23, 2012 and long history of ALEC and Right-Wing orgs like Heritage involvement in education - “School Choice”, Charter Schools and Public School Privatization.

Michigan Pieces in Place: Snyder as the Pawn of the Kingpin
Koch Bros, Scaife, Olin and DeVos Family ALEC  Corporatocracy

Snyder's vision, informed and directed by The American Legislative Exchange Council and the Wealthy Elite, is another brazened attempt at an radical right-wing coup in Michigan, the same one all Americans are facing across the Nation. 

It isn't the re-invention ideal as Snyder proclaims: it's retro-pursuit of the long-standing disenfranchising goals designed to destroy America's great institution, free public education. In this process the harsh critics have found a willing pawn in Snyder. Combine this too, with the creation Snyder's Jim Crow EM Plantations in multiple Michigan cities, the latest target being Detroit, and the destruction of basic principals of democracy, representation of elected officials, perhaps the pawn, is really "castling" all Michiganders, king to rook.

ALEC's long march goes on, as the public will see
For the DeVos’ and in particular Betsy DeVos, the Koch Brothers (backers and funders of ALEC) and the mom & pop family-business-killers-the Waltons of Wal-Mart - public education is a target of great opportunity for quick profit and power lust.

The next major attack is already underway; again funded and cheered on by Betsy DeVos. It's her dismemberment and undermining of public universities and colleges.

Who would believe anyone, much less today’s radicalized Republicans, would literally stoop so low as to turn government and the taxpayers against our local schools so much a part of our state like in Ovid, White Pine, Monroe and Alpena, communities where and kids matter so much.  Republicans cannot hate teachers and professors and at the same time hold a dishonest honest claim to care about students.

The Michigan TeaPartisan's (Michigan Tea Party Republicans) radical and aggressive punishment attacks on educators are a clear indication of a very low-class mentality, festooned with haranguing diatribes, and the extremely rude conduct on the part of select TeaPartisans during education hearings in Michigan's legislature; all centered on crashing down on education and educators. Such is the sorriest of sights.

Snyder's ALEC centered education plan is a tragic loss - loss for Michigan's kids. And a tragic loss for taxpayers supporting neighborhood public schools. Killing local option and local government via the dictatorial EM regime is just plain evil and unacceptable.

Suppressing the right to vote and taking away the power of elected officials in units confiscated by Snyder can only be described as totalitarian in spirit.

The public must step up and fight back.  Not tomorrow, Today!

On the Reader:
Read a detailed SERIES on Betsy DeVos organizations attacking Public Education across the county by Rachel Tabachnick:
Part One: Voucher Advocate Betsy DeVos, Right-Wing Think Tanks Behind Koch-Style Attack on Public Schools 
Part Two: Pro-Voucher Astroturfing:  Campaigns Across Nation Coordinated by DeVos, Funded by a Few Mega-Donors 
Part Three: Betsy DeVos Announces PA Governor Tom Corbett Will Keynote Pro-Voucher National Policy Summit

Further reading on the American Legislative Exchange Council:
Investigate more about ALEC and read ALEC model legislation on the ALECexposed.org portal.
Read a Report on ALEC connections to Congress and the Federal Courts.
Read a early series of articles on ALEC in the Nation.
See how many ALEC bills and laws in US States identified so far.
Read a list of US and Multinational ALEC Corporate Members identified.
See what ALEC investigators and researchers have uncovered in State Reports on ALEC:
Arizona (Supplement) - Maine - Missouri - Michigan - New Hampshire - New Jersey - Ohio - Pennsylvania - Texas - Utah - Virginia - Wisconsin or find more information on your State.

Related Slates:
First piece focused on ALEC Disaster Capitalism on the Gazette:
Rick’s Re-Invention: A.L.E.C.’S Corporatist “Disaster Capitalism” on the Rise (April 2011)
Piece on Betsy Devos, ALEC and Education on the Gazette:
Betsy DeVos & The Amway Clan’s Abject Failure to Reach High Moral Ground via “Corporate Social Responsibility” (December 2011)

Best of ALEC posts on the American Legislative Exchange Council on the Gazette:
No Brainer Legislation & No Brain Legislators who slavishly deliver for the Corporatocracy (via ALEC) inside Michigan’s Legislature (July 2011)
Our Guides to the Bottomless Pit: Wolfram, Von Hayek, Lewis F. Powell, & A.L.E.C. (September 2011)
Smart A.L.E.C. in the Michigan: The secret is There is No Secret… But Oh Yes, There Is! (July 2011)
Who needs the Koch Brothers? We’ve Got Rick Snyder, ALEC and his “Buffo” Team of Privatizers! (July 2011)
Michigan ALEC State Chair Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker: A Cheery Face & A Fake Defense  promoting corporatist direct access to Michigan lawmaking (August 2011)

More on the American Legislative Exchange Council (tag) and the Emergency Management issue series in EM Plantation/Jim Crow on the Gazette.

Rick Snyder's 'Reinvention": Not the Answer, but Now the Growing Problem

Rick Snyder has exercised disturbing authoritarian means to get to control and inflict re-invention on all things Michigan.

We are now living in Michissippi.

Our great state has been taken down one fragment at a time by the Business Leaders for Michigan, The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the Michigan Chapter of the Koch Bros.' Americans for Prosperity, and the Michigan Chamber of Commerce.

Rick Snyder in a caricature by Henry Payne Editor of
the MichiganView.com (Detroit News March 2012)

"Nerd" Snyder has been especially adept at extensive use of procedural sleight of hand to ram through his über-corporatist agenda. The amount of shift to business gains over citizen loss has been unprecedented.

Certainly, the hamfisted and conniving John Mathias Engler never reached this level of "revolution," though God knows he tried. Yet it is the format of Englerism that laid the groundwork for this coupe de tat that Snyder has pulled.

Snyder and companies have rammed though a long list of A.L.E.C  (Corporate designed and perfected 'model' legislation in many fragments-backed in large part by the Koch Bros.) directly and swiftly into legislative tax changes, tax increases, deregulation, and give-backs that are already undermining Michigan.

Did anyone notice that tax revenues were reportedly down by $75 million in the most recent cycle...? Just as predicted by this commentator; the removal of over $2 billion in new taxes pension and annuities, the removal of "individual item" pricing at retailers (resulting in loss of jobs and consumer protection), and other reductions in services, salaries, and safety net supplements to children, etc. has broken down the vital chain of customer demand in Michigan.


Snyer's reinvention is not the cure, the answer, formula for deliverance for an ailing Michigan economy in a "one state depression." No, Rick Snyder Reinvention is the PROBLEM!

Snyder's reinventive, revolutionary unconstitutional Enhanced Emergency Manager scheme set up and run by crafty legal corporations and bean counters will show itself to be rife with unbelievable chicanery and potential for white collar corruption.

The central control of Snyder's new "We know best" socialist regime is enough to make even the New York Times' Thomas Friedman jealous.

Friedman has looked at the Red Chinese in the People's Republic and pined aloud. Quoth Hank, Friedman " has been openly jealous of Chinese Communist rule as a way of quickly imposing societal makeovers that force green technologies," or so writes Payne in his personal blog.

Payne sees the sliver in the eye of Friedman, and denies the existence of a rail tie in his own optic.

Michissippi is on the super highway to nowhere and Snyder Inc. has paved the way.

Related Slates:
Rick Snyder’s Relentless Positive Action (RPA) Has Devolved Into Pitiless Regressive Aggression & Trespass (PRAT) - "Tricky Rick & His 'Nerd Herd' Play Dangerous Economic Game in Michigan" - "Nerd Snyder: Nada Jobs "- "Discover Michissippi’s (Michigan's) Corporate Bosses: The Elites Who Now Run Snyder & the GOP Super Majority Legislature" - "The Free Fire Kill Zone: Snyder’s War on Michigan’s Real People"

More on Rick Snyder and Rick Snyder Policy and the term "Michissipi" 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.

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).

-----

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 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.



Original.