This thread was originally about the an extraordinary piece of pending legislation in Michigan. Since I already had the thread, it morphed into a dumping ground of extraordinary legislation in other states. On the whole, the theme of the thread is "State governments abdicating responsibility over businesses or their economy, seizing power over private citizens or in disregard of expected legal statue, or just plain being unsavory, especially if hypocritical." It's a pretty general theme. Feel free to contribute, but note that I'd prefer any stories of pending legislation to be bills that have a realistic chance of being passed. And the hootenanny in Wisconsin
already has its own thread with a more knowledgeable OP.
The headliner was March 11th's passage of Michigan's endorsement of corporatocracy, as seen in huge paragraphs below and
expanded on here.
Michigan's Financial Martial Law reaches its logical conclusion. Read, and call me a maniac, please.As of March 9th,
Pennsylvania has abandoned any pretext of environmental regulation, and declared the Energy Secretary to be Supreme Chancellor of "Jobs" and Drilling Permits.
The Governor of Maine loves seeing teenagers in the workplace about as much as he detests crappy artwork of labor strikes, and
steals candy from children to take the edge off.
In Federal news, because it's my thread, Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) wants workers requesting food stamps who go strike to know they can
pound sand and forget about it.
Governor Rick Scott's bold plan to clean up Florida: 1) Start a company that performs drug tests. 2) Become governor. 3)
Drug test everybody.
Ohio's Man With The Plan says, lets combine the best of government money with the best of private investment knowhow, make sure nobody knows what we're doing, and
pay for it with booze.
There's a trend flowing through state politics right now, on the back of the big financial recession in the American economy. A whole bunch of people are out of work or making less, and the price of once inflated property has dropped considerably with rampant foreclosures. So the three big sources of state revenues - income tax, sales tax, and especially property tax - have crashed through the floor. Following the logic of
lower taxes on business and upper incomes >>>
more business and investment >>>
economic improvement for everyone a bunch of (Republican governed) states are cutting business taxes. But it's a little hard to justify massive reductions in state revenue when you're already in the red, so you have to make spending cuts somewhere. Florida will cut business and property taxes to an estimated tune of $1.5billion, to be paid for with
$1.5billion in public education cuts. Wisconsin is already infamous for passing a corporate tax cut about a month ago, to almost the exact same estimated-dollar-cost of the cuts in public employee benefits now being argued over. Wisconsin is also one of the states where the funding argument became a vehicle for political issues that don't have a specific dollar cost, if they cost anything; namely, public employee collective bargaining rights. Ohio is slashing both business tax and
public welfare and privatize some prisons, with a third-time's-the-charm ban on Gay Marriage attached to the budget for good measure.
Michigan is about to blow them all out of the water. In one of the rare places in the world where civilization is giving way to nature, Pripyat style, in the face of total economic oblivion, the Michigan legislature has created a new bill that only a wildeyed leftist dystopian author could have dreamed up. Known as
HB 4214-4218, Amendment to Public Act 72, would grant the governor's office significant new powers in dealing with financially-strapped townships. You can read some big chunks of description for the state financial offices
here and
here, but it kinda loses its impact in so many words.
Long story short - Michigan already has powers for the state government to looks at financial aid requests from local governments, and decide the locality is such dire straights that the state government must alter some of their financial practices. HB 4214-4218 would send that power into overdrive. The office of the governor, or any municipal-bond accrediting agency he consults with, can declare a recognized town (up to and including the city of Detroit, for comparison) to be in a state of "financial emergency", with
no rubric on what that actually means. Once declared to be in a "financial emergency", the governor or accrediting agency can appoint a Emergency Manager (or an accrediting firm acting as one) to oversee the town's finances and make some emergency decisions. Decisions including: abrogating contracts entered into by the town, voiding collective bargaining agreements with local employees, removing from office elected or appointed town officials, redrawing/merging/dissolving public school districts, returning township land to county ownership, or if all else fails totally disincorporating the township's legal recognition and charter.
TL;DR - Let me spell that out in harsher terms, to make sure it sinks in. The governor or a bank he likes can unilaterally declare any town or city in Michigan to be financially negligent at whim, unilaterally appoint a guy or bank to be Czar of the town, who would then be empowered to (say it with me) unilaterally void the town's legal and employee agreements, redraw the school districts to his heart's content, fire the Mayor or Chief of Police or anyone else he wants, or even literally wipe the town off the map right down to the postal directory. The only enumerated check on this power would be the appointing-will of the governor's office, which is unlikely to disagree with any decision since they appointed him in the first place. An Emergency Manager might be able impeachable like other appointees, but since he doesn't have to ask anyone for permission, he could totally redraw a town on day one with any problem. That
raises a lot of legal questions that are pretty sure to never actually be answered for in any court. All in the name of whatever the governor or his favorite bank wants to call a "financial emergency". The icing on the cake is the upcoming Michigan budget, already guaranteed to massively reduce local-government funding assistance.
You might be asking, "What lunatic scrawled this idea on a napkin?" Nobody's exactly sure, but it may have been State Treasurer Andy Dillion (former Democratic house member) appointed by new Republican Governor Rick Snyder. I actually have some prior experience with him - Snyder was formerly the CEO of Gateway Computers and an investment firm he founded, both of which he ran into the ground while pocketing millions, before he got a wild hair up his ass and ran for governor last year. The bill was introduced to the house on his behalf. Question, "How did anyone not hear of this before?" The bill was drafted and introduced sometime in the last week of February (y'know 15 days ago), while everyone was busy watching Wisconsin come apart at the seams. And question, "Surely nobody's stupid enough to actually vote for this, right?" Not only did the bill already pass the State House, they expanded it - the original draft only gave appointing and managing power to specific
humans, the House amendments included the language giving same authority to accrediting firms. As of a few hours after this original posting,
the bill has passed the Michigan Senate with ease.
I've always liked to think I'm a patient and reasonable man. No really. When I hear people saying the sky is falling, I always think, surely the details will explain how everything is barely different than it already was. The wheels of change grind incredibly fine, and we can all see far enough down the road to change course. Surely, I always think, whatever "it" is, it can't be
that bad. This time, yeah, it really is
that bad. Michigan is taking clearest step ever to the literal definition of corporatocracy, authorizing private financial agencies virtually unlimited power to unmake democratically-constructed local governments at their leisure. The 19th Century wished it was that straightforward.
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Topic: The Dissolution of State Government (Read 41333 times)