This one is easy
Third in a series on the ballot proposals on Michigan’s November 6, 2012 ballot. Read them all HERE.
Regular readers of this website know very well that I abhor Public Act 4 — Michigan’s so-called Emergency Manager Law. It is the most outrageous government overreach in my lifetime, put in place by hypocritical Republicans who claim that they are for “smaller government”. The fact is, there is no larger government intrusion into the lives of Michiganders than PA 4. Period.
Rachel Maddow, whose staff has worked closely with me over the past 18 months on this issue, called PA 4 “the single most radical thing in American politics in this fairly radical year” in 2011. That’s not hyperbole.
The fact is, PA 4 has been a failure. The cities where it has been put in place are NOT better off than they were before Emergency Managers were put in place. The reason is obvious. The reasons cities in Michigan are facing financial emergencies is rarely because they were mismanaged. It’s because they are aging manufacturing cities with crumbling infrastructure and a tax base that can no longer support their citizens. They need to be built UP again.
Instead, we send in unelected dictators armed only with axes and chainsaws and other implements of destruction. There is no way to build with the tools they have.
It’s clear that Republicans fear municipal bankruptcies. But, as I have pointed out in the past, at least the bankruptcy process protects democracy and public assets. Repealing PA 4 is the first step in forcing our state government to begin dealing with the core problems that create financial emergencies in the first place.
We need a new wave of urban renewal in Michigan’s aging manufacturing cities. We begin by rejecting Public Act 4.
Here is the television ad being run to urge a NO vote on Proposal 1:
This Proposal requires a NO vote. NO to restoring Public Act 4. NO to Emergency Managers. NO to state government-appointed dictators. NO to abridging democracy in Michigan.
VOTE NO ON PROPOSAL 1.
