Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: How Would You Feel If Your Vote Didn’t Count Any More?

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

How Would You Feel If Your Vote Didn’t Count Any More?

Well that is happening in Michigan, the governor is replacing elected office by people that he is appointing. Throwing out budgets approved by the voters, taking over the mayor office, the school system, and voiding the wishes of the voters.

Benton Harbor emergency manager strips power from all elected officials
Michigan Messenger
By Todd A. Heywood
04.15.11

The Emergency Financial Manager of the city of Benton Harbor has issued an order stripping all city boards and commissions of all their authority to take any action.

The order, signed Thursday, limits the actions available to such bodies to calling a meeting to order, approving the minutes of meetings and adjourning a meeting. The bodies are prohibited under the act from taking any other action without the express authority of the Emergency Financial Manager, Joseph Harris.

The voters no longer have a say in how their city is to be run. Instead the city will be run by an edict.

UPDATE: Tempers flare at Benton Harbor commissioners meeting
WNDU
Posted: Apr 19, 2011
Reporter: Kevin Lewis

The opinions and accusations were in full swing at Monday night’s Benton Harbor City Commissioner’s meeting.

They came following a new state law that allowed Emergency Financial Manager Joseph Harris to revoke all power from every city employee and leader.
[…]
"He’s not even an elected official and he's going to fire the mayor? How are you going to fire a mayor,” another resident questioned over Joe Harris’ newly established power.

“Adolf Hitler was a dictator. Now we have a dictator in Joseph Harris. We have allowed this man to be too comfortable in our home, in our city,” one man screamed out loud.

The Republicans and Tea Partiers rammed this state law through the legislature, they now have absolute control over all local governments. Because the way the law is written, if a local government has a deficit, the governor can appoint an Emergency Financial Manager with no oversight; he can pick anyone he chooses.

2 comments:

Justine Valinotti4/21/11, 11:38 PM
What's particularly galling is that the Tea Partiers pushed this legislation, and Benton Harbor, the first city to see its residents lose their vote, is over 90 percent black and overwhelmingly poor.

That is what the Tea Party and their allies don't want you to know: Their agenda includes disenfranchising the poor.
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Justine Valinotti4/22/11, 1:05 AM
Diana: I've mentioned this post in one of my posts:

http://transwomantimes.blogspot.com/2011/04/diana-discovers-real-tea-party-agenda.html
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Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
Martin Luther King Jr.

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Albert Einstein

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Mahatma Gandhi

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― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its got to
Be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to
Be carefully
Taught
You've got to be taught
To be
Afraid
Of people
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade

South Pacific
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rogers