Will The Obama Admin. Step Into Michigan's Emergency Manager Fight? Here's Why The NAACP Hopes So...

[Purveyor]

By Tim Skubick | Politics Columnist for MLive.com
on April 02, 2013 at 6:30 AM, updated April 02, 2013 at 6:31 AM


The NAACP is making its case with the legal-eagles in the Obama administration that something is rotten, not in Denmark, but right here in Michigan.

Check out where Gov. Rick Snyder and previous administrations have installed emergency managers. The NAACP contends they are in areas where minorities are the majority population.

Can you say civil rights violations?

The leaders are saying exactly that and asking the Justice Department to do something about it.

Perhaps at no other time in state history has there been so much intervention, some would say assault, on the democracy in both cities and schools.

MORE...

http://www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/04/tim_skubick_will_the_obama_adm.html#incart_river

[badtoworse]

1. Detroit needed adult supervision

The city government did nothing while Detroit went down the crapper.

Don't know about the other cities - were they going broke too?

[Cal Carpenter]

3. How fucking condescending

Learn the history of Detroit a little.

Learn something about how the corporations chewed Detroit up and spit it out when the wages and conditions were getting too good for the people (aka too expensive for the corporations whose purpose is to increase profits to obscene levels while exploiting their workers more and more).

How all those uppity working class folks who actually made a good fucking living got screwed when companies went off in search of greener pastures (aka places with low wages and no unions).

How fucking paternalistic and condescending can you be?

Is Detroit all kinds of fucked up? Sure. It's also an excellent fucking city.

And the LAST thing it needs is an EM who can't even pay his own taxes.

[Bay Boy]

9. Everything you said is true....

...but that doesn't change anything. Detroit city government needed to make changes as their population and tax base declined. They didn't and put themselves in the situation they are in.

[CatWoman]

11. what you said

[Starry Messenger]

25. Love your post.

You rock.

[badtoworse]

32. I agree; Detroit got screwed by the auto industry

That's irrelevant. The only important thing now is stabilizing the city's finances and redevelotheping the city economically. The city government was not doing that

The situation was getting worse and even the most basic services, police and fire, would have been in jeopardy. Would anarchy have been preferable? The state has an obligation to protect all its citizens and had to step in.

[JoeBlowToo]

4. Yes, black people are like children and need the Great White Father to guide them...

Do you really think that this takeover by corrupt and greedy Republicans will not lead to an exponentionally worse situation?

[badtoworse]

5. I believe the EM is a black person...

...and I doubt he could do a worse job than the existing city government. The only other optiuon would be bankruptcy with a judge doing the same things the EM will have to do.

[JoeBlowToo]

8. So, the Republicans have a black front man...he'll be taking orders from above...

The real objective is to break all unions and political support for Democrats.

[badtoworse]

10. OK. The city is broke - how would you fix the problem?

[neverforget]

14. Well you don't fix it by getting rid of democracy.

[badtoworse]

15. That didn't answer my question, but not to worry

I've asked this question a few times and no one has ever given me a better answer than an EM or banktruptcy.

[neverforget]

16. So how would you fix the economic problems?

[badtoworse]

18. If I were the EM...

In the short term, I'd shrink the city's footprint to a manageable size and hand out haircuts to bondholders, labor contracts, retirees and others to whom the city owes money. The city has to live within its ability to raise revenue which is quite limited at this time. These are the same things that the EM or a bankruptcy judget would do. BTW, I'm OK with an EM

Longer term, I would attempt to develop plans to redevlop the city economically, but that will take decades.

[Cal Carpenter]

17. How about community councils?

Geographical/neighborhood-based meetings and organizations for setting priorities, brainstorming ideas, making decisions, maybe to basically restructure the city gov't.

Elections to follow - without outside/corporate money. Old school campaigns. Face to face. Or however the community councils decide it should be done.

It's amazing what people can decide when propaganda and corruption are removed.

Building from the ground up based on the common good of the people who live there. What a thought.

A dysfunctional system cannot fix itself.

[badtoworse]

19. Detroit has no money, but owes billions of dollars

You're not addressing that. Unfortunately, there is no solution that I see that does not involve accross the board pain.

[notadmblnd]

30. I'll address it. A Federal Bailout

If banks are too big to fail, if auto companies are too big to fail- then so are our cities.

[badtoworse]

33. I have believe they asked and got shot down

If the feds bailed out Detroit, there would be steady parade of cities looking for a bailout. Stockton, California declared bankruptcy yesterday. I believe the fed's position would and should be it's a state and localmatter.

[Union Scribe]

21. It's the city's problem, you don't get to

remove people's elected leaders' powers. At all. I'd still oppose it if it were a Democratic governor, but it makes it worse that GOP Koch soldiers are the ones not only violating voters' wills in Detroit but across the state by enacting a law WE SHOT DOWN in November. That isn't government in America; that's a coup. That you don't get how that violates the entire premise of democracy would be laughable if it weren't so serious.

[badtoworse]

24. Cities are granted a charter by the state

In effect, the state grants the city power to govern, but it remains subordinate to the state. The state has the power to revoke the city charter and assume power if the city government becomes incompetent.

[CatWoman]

12. that worked out real good, didn't it?

ALMOST as well as black shit like Clarence Thomas replacing Thurgood Marshal.

[badtoworse]

13. Bringing race into this was not my idea.

[Union Scribe]

20. It was, whether you thought so or not

You sided with the white GOP taking over majority black cities, and called the former adults and implied the latter were children.

You should probably stop digging.

[badtoworse]

23. I sided with the state taking over for an incompetent city government.

The racial makeup of the city is irrelevant if its government isn't doing an effective job. The reference to children needing supervision was aimed at the city council.

[Cal Carpenter]

2. I doubt that will happen

I'd love to be wrong.

The political disenfranchisement is bad enough as it is around the country, but this EM shit is just unconscionable. Indefensible.

A sucker punch to the concept of democracy.

[demmiblue]

6. No.

But they should... the EM role makes a mockery of democracy.

[99Forever]

7. Good luck getting any support...

... out of the Obama crew for regular people. Perhaps if the citizens of Detroit incorporate!

[MineralMan]

22. Does anyone know if any cases have been brought to

federal court over these Emergency Manager things. It seems to me as though it's a judicial matter. The President probably has no real role in this. It's a state issue and a voting rights issue, really. I think this will have to work its way through the federal judicial maze.

Trouble is, many states have some similar provision that allows the state to take over local government in some circumstances.

[Purveyor]

28. Here are a couple that I found:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/28/michigan-emergency-manager-law-challenged/2029949/

http://www.michronicleonline.com/index.php/news-briefs-original/10354-new-lawsuit-challenges-emergency-manager-law

[MineralMan]

37. That is probably the best chance. nt

[Starry Messenger]

26. Emergency Managers don't fix things.

Has history forgotten already that Detroit already went through this song and dance with Robert Bobb? He left Detroit even deeper in debt after his stint as EM.

http://metrotimes.com/news/bobb-s-deep-debt-1.1047664

<snip>

Now, 18 months after Bobb took control of the district's finances, its fiscal house is in more disarray than ever, with critics saying that the public is deliberately being kept in the dark about just how bad the situation has grown while Bobb has been at the helm.

For starters, there is that cumulative budget deficit that precipitated the takeover. According to a deficit elimination plan released in July of this year, the district ended its 2008-09 fiscal year on June 30, 2009, with a cumulative deficit of $219 million.

At that time, Bobb, having taken credit for reducing the projected 2008-2009 deficit by $86 million through actions taken during his first few months on the job (a claim disputed by former School Board President Carla Scott, who says the elected board is responsible for keeping the 2008-2009 budget in check), declared that his cost-cutting measures would produce a budget surplus of $17 million by the time the 2009-2010 fiscal year came to an end.

Instead, that fiscal year — the first full year during which finances were completely under Bobb's control — concluded with an additional deficit of more than $113 million being added to the district's budget crisis, bringing the total cumulative deficit to $332 million. That's an increase of more than 51 percent over a 12-month period, and one of the largest single-year deficits in the history of the DPS.

"That was all Bobb's doing," former DPS budget director Walter Esau says of the $113 million deficit.

<snip>

What Detroit needs is a jobs program, something big, like the TVA back in the New Deal. The city that was the cradle of unionism and great progressive strides deserves better than these squalid economic hit-men.

[freckleface]

27. Obama Justice (?) Department intervening?? Surely you jest! n/t

[PDJane]

29. I am going to point out that the emergency managers haven't solved any of the problems.

They don't know the city, they don't understand the problems,and they tend to have a really republican bias. The country's economics are bent and broken by that republican bias. The cities under emergency management stay that way.

They have sold land that was granted as parkland for a golf course; land granted to the city for parks. They've tried to sell a public radio station on e-bay. They have been overturned by the citizens, and simply turned around and voted themselves the same powers again.

[hack89]

31. There is no real solution to Detroit

they have lost 60% of their population yet try to maintain the same infrastructure with a significantly smaller tax base. That is why they are billions in debt. Even if they were competently governed (which they were not) hard decisions would still have to be made concerning infrastructure, schools, city services and pensions. There is no evidence that the city government was willing to make such choices.

The Federal government could fund a program to buy up property and physically shrink the size of the city but it is foolish to think that Detroit will survive in its present form.

[PDJane]

34. That may be, but the emergency manager programme is going to take the city in the wrong direction,

The same way that it has in other places. The fact of the matter is that the men and women who are appointed to do this have no stake in turning the city around, and it is profoundly undemocratic.

[hack89]

36. Could be. I think the city will end up in the same place regardless

perhaps it is better, though, for the people to make the hard choices. Then there would be no one to blame.

[badtoworse]

35. You are correct, but many here don't want to accept it.