If the government of the State of Michigan is
anything, it is Republican. All three of
its branches are Republican and have been since 2010. Today, in 2016, the Governor, Rick Snyder, is
Republican. The 38-seat Senate has 27
Republicans, 11 Democrats. The 110-seat
House has 61 Republicans, 46 Democrats, and 3 vacancies. The 7-member Supreme Court has 5 Republicans,
2 Democrats. Most branches of government
were dominated by Republicans before then.
So Michigan’s legislation and administration are what Republicans have
enacted and directed for most of the twenty-first century.
For decades, Michigan’s larger industrial cities have
suffered from the decline of heavy manufacturing in the emerging global
economy. Corporations have collapsed or
relocated with tax benefits; employees have been left behind with little or no
assistance. Results include declining
population, increasing unemployment, declining housing values and state tax
revenues, deteriorating public services and schools, and increasing costs of social
services to aging and disproportionately minority populations.
Michigan’s Republican politicians have adopted
conservative Republican analyses to explain the decline and prescriptions to
prevent metropolitan bankruptcies.
Notably, it passed legislation (first PA 4 in 2011, then PA 436 in 2012)
empowering the Governor to appoint City Managers to replace local elected
officials for all practical purposes, with powers to dismiss elected officials,
appoint department officials, set budgets, impose new taxes, abolish labor
contracts, privatize services, and sell public assets—all ultimately intended
to balance budgets. Because of their
ideological blinders, Republicans do not recognize that balanced budgets do not
address the conditions necessary to revive the economies of the cities in dire
financial straits prompting this dictatorial legislation.
Given autocratic powers irrelevant to that purpose,
Republicans have enacted legislation to plunder already impoverished cities for
personal and political benefit. The
results have been predictable: cronyism and corruption, and budgets balanced,
urban life eroded, and local economies further deteriorated. One City Manager gave himself a
quarter-million-dollar-a year salary.
Other City Managers have awarded uncompetitive contracts or sold public
assets to friends or corporate supporters.
In short, Republican legislation and administration have further
impoverished the cities which they pretended to rescue but have enriched
appointees and their apparatchiks.
At present, six cities—Allen Park, Benton Harbor,
Detroit, Ecorse, Flint, and Pontiac—lack democratically elected leadership yet are
liable to higher per-unit costs or higher taxes without representation. Most of them are majority African-American, and
all of them encompass a majority of the state’s African-American
population. In short, over half of Michigan’s
minority population is disenfranchised in the cities in which they live and
work.
The consequences of autocratic Republican rule are
clear in the case of Flint, with its population of about 100,000. The Governor-appointed City Manager decided
to save money by shifting from treated water treated purchased from Detroit to
water pumped directly—that is, without treatment—from the Flint River. This raw river water contains toxic
contaminants which, when pumped through Flint’s lead pipes, have corroded them,
added lead to the other contaminants, and become poisonous water used for
drinking, cooking, bathing, and plumbing.
As is well known, lead in elevated levels has many irreversible damaging
effects on children, especially those under the age of seven. Flint has over 25,000 minors, about 9,000 in
this younger age group.
The sight and smell of this untreated Flint River
water immediately prompted concerns by residents. State officials assured residents that their
concerns were unwarranted and that the water was safe. Independent scientists tested the water and
reported elevated levels of lead two or three times higher that water-quality
standards. State officials dismissed
their reports and attempted to discredit scientists. Months later the state was forced to admit the
truth. For weeks thereafter, the state
did nothing. When the Republican Governor
apologized, he did not bother to visit Flint, an hour’s drive away. Only when the federal government launched a
criminal investigation, did he declare a state of emergency. However, in the week thereafter, the state did
almost nothing, did less than it needed to do, and did not ask for help from
FEMA. Michigan still refuses to declare
the water now coming from Detroit safe for use by residents. Whatever his press releases say to the
contrary, the Republican governor shows no evidence of caring about inadequate
supplies of safe water and the permanent effects of polluted water on residents.
Accountability for endangering the health of an entire
city population and damaging the development of hundred or thousands of children
by the decisions and conduct of Republican officials and agents remains
uncertain. Government officials usually,
but citizens rarely, can escape indictment and prosecution for actions harmful
to others. Any parent who sought to save
money on water bills by substituting polluted river water for safe tap water
and exposing children to it would likely face a variety of criminal charges for
abuse, endangerment, or negligence. But
elected and appointed Republican officials who make and implement comparable
decisions, with health-destroying and life-impairing consequences, may get off
by pleading good intentions or governmental immunity. My non-lawyer’s opinion is that Michigan
Republicans have engaged in a conspiracy to advance their interests in reckless
disregard of dire consequences from using industrially polluted river water.
This disastrous record of health, economic, and
political abuse teaches important lessons about the nature of Republican rule
in Michigan. Despite their slogans about
small government, freedom, and opportunity, Republicans, given this chance, have
operated in disregard of traditional American democratic principles: the
consent of the governed and no taxation without representation. In Flint, they denied citizens the freedom
and opportunity to drink safe water; instead, they forced them to drink
poisoned water. They have exercised
exclusive power autocratically and irresponsibly, without consulting with or
accountability to the people whom they rule.
They have acted out of partisan ideological concerns like a balanced
budget, not basic, practical concerns like safe drinking water. Once again, they have shown a greater
interest in property than in people. Not
surprisingly, they have defied the facts which undermine their political decisions
and have attacked those who tell the truth.
Federal and state Republican officials know that
knowledge is power and that those with truth speak to power. Accordingly, they hinder or oppose government
agencies which, as a requirement of their work, collect information: among federal
departments or agencies, EPA, Education, Justice, FBI, and ATF. The information which such agencies collect
tends to support efforts contrary to Republican positions. They also serve as the basis for and
justification of regulations to mitigate or prevent problems of health and
safety. The Republican opposition to these
agencies means to prevent informed discussion of their purposes, policies, and
regulations; to weaken or eliminate them; and to make their regulations few,
unenforceable, or ineffective. The purpose
behind their attacks on “too many regulations” is to enable corporations to
operate without legal accountability or economic penalty for any harm done to
people’s health or wealth.
Like Michigan Governor Snyder, Republican politicians
(in my congressional district, “Freedom Caucus” member Steve Pearce) are
indifferent to the deleterious consequences of their ideology except to conceal
them with assurances to the contrary or by attacks on critics. When they speak of “job-killing regulations,”
they talk economic nonsense; they also advocate the “people-killing” absence of
regulations which minimize the risks of diseases, disorders, disabilities, and
deaths to thousands or millions. Their
opposition to regulations promoting clear air, clean water, and clean soil means
to encourage or enable profiteering by permitting corporations to put biological
and chemical poisons into what we breathe, drink, and eat. For Republicans, Flint is an embarrassment
about which they are silent. Otherwise,
they would be hard to put explain this disaster as anything other than a
failure of national Republican ideology, not of “freedom” and “opportunity,”
but of fraud and force.
Republican rule in Michigan is a portent of Republican
rule in the United States. For Republicans
nationally show the same tendencies to autocratic rule, ideological rigidity,
and fact-denial or fiction-creation to advance otherwise untenable
positions. Thus, in states under their monopolistic
control, Republicans are impeding voters or restricting the franchise by
reliance on fabricated claims of voter fraud.
At the federal level, Republicans are fabricating facts about immigrant
invasions when more Hispanics have been leaving the country than entering it; accepting
phony documentation and acting on its allegations to defund Planned Parenthood;
and denying science and attacking scientists about man-made pollution causing
climate change. Given their ideological
commitment to autocratic oligarchy, unfettered capitalism, political and
religious intolerance (xenophobia, homophobia), and anti-scientific ideologies,
Republicans are a clear and present danger to America’s survival as a
democracy. Michigan’s Republican
government is a warning example to Americans everywhere who believe in
democracy.
I might add that no elected city council with a majority from either party would do as this Governor-appointed City Manager did: direct the use of untreated city river water. Only an unaccountable autocrat would make such a decision. And only in Republican-dominated states do such autocrats exist. Welcome to Republican rule.
ReplyDeleteWill the people of Michigan vote out the republicans politicians who have created this mess? Or will they do what Kansas and Maine have done?
ReplyDeleteThank you for this question. I cannot answer it. Given the racial disparities between the cities placed in receivership and the general population, it is hard to know whether the majority of white citizens of Michigan will approve Republican abuses of concentrations of African-Americans or join them in seeking change.
ReplyDelete