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.
ReplyDelete
Replies
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
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Quotes

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

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.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person… People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist
James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

"The point is that there are always obstacles, whether they seem insurmountable or merely bothersome. The question is not how difficult the path, but whether in your heart, you wish to undertake the journey."
Zandru's Forge

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
― 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