Foreigner - Urgent

Can *I* Be an Emergency Manager? Please?

I wrote recently about Public Act 4, the emergency manager law put in place by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, and ended the post with a question: If you oppose the law, what do you propose instead?

I didn’t receive much of an answer.

Oh, people responded. They pointed out that it’s a b*llsh*t assault on representative democracy and it’s too bad the Recall Rick Snyder effort failed and it sucks and rich people ought to pay more of their fair share. But I didn’t receive a whole heck of a lot of actual proposals for dealing with municipalities in crisis.

Chris Savage at Eclectablog – who’s been following and writing about this issue like no other – responded that there is no simple answer; the problems were a long time in the making and the solutions will be too. He said honoring the sanctity of democracy ought to be our first consideration, and I agree.

Christine Barry at Blogging for Michigan and somebody calling himself or herself “The Muskegon Critic” did offer substantive alternatives that included reinvesting in public education, higher education and inner-city anti-poverty programs; amending the state constitution to allow for a progressive tax structure; launching a massive business attraction initiative; and shutting down portions of municipalities like they’re doing in Flint and the D to save resources.

I forwarded everything to my friend Tom Watkins, the consultant and former high-ranking state official who thinks Public Act 4 is getting a bum rap. He replied that he was still waiting to hear how we should address the failure of leadership by mayors, city councils and governors going back decades and if elected officials actually did their jobs, there would be no need for an emergency manager in the first place.

Doesn’t seem like we’re getting anywhere, does it?

In the meantime, I ran across a story yesterday pointing out that the same municipalities that are in such financial ruin that they need an outsider to swoop in and take over are being forced to fund the six-figure salaries their saviors are being paid. (Flint’s emergency manager, Michael Brown, is being paid $170,000/year. Managers in Ecorse and Benton Harbor are each making $132,000 and Pontiac’s manager ‘s raking in $150,000.) The state sets the salaries and the locals must cough up the cash.

One university professor and “government finance expert” justified this crap by saying that people should remember the manager’s doing the work of a city administrator, mayor and city council all at once. “It’s a pretty big job, really unusual in scope,” he insisted.

I wonder if this “expert” is related to anybody in the Snyder Administration.

Source: Mlive.com.

Congrats, Mitt!

Steppenwolf - Born to Be Wild

Heading Down the Highway

I drove for 13 hours yesterday to get from my home near Lansing, Michigan, to my parents’ spacious condo in what’s called a “golf cart community” 40 miles south of Atlanta, Georgia.

All the way down I tried to convince myself that the trip was a good thing (I’d get to see my parents and their two cool golden retrievers again) but I had started missing Anita and the kids before my car left our subdivision and my sadness only grew. I tried to distract myself by finding something on the radio that didn’t remind me of the kids but it was challenging (I never realized how prominent music is in my household). Then, driving through Kentucky and Tennessee, all I could find on the radio was classic rock, people praising Jesus and conservative commentators like Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin declaring that Barack Obama is un-American and bad for the soul and it’s urgent and essential that he be defeated in order to preserve all that is good and just and great about this country.

No wonder everything’s so messed up. If all I heard on the radio were promises that Jesus will help me achieve my weight loss goals and shrill declarations that Obama is Satan who wants to contaminate our water supply, run every last job creator out of town on a rail and give the keys to the White House to his Muslim overlords, I’d bring a skewed sense of reality into the voting booth too.

Santorum and Romney

I kept trying to find public radio stations so I could listen to Robert Siegel discuss yesterday’s Iowa caucus machinations as if they really mattered and tell listeners the same thing over and over again in that pleasant voice of his. Several hours into the drive I found a strong Atlanta station that was broadcasting the pompous CNN crew – Wolf Blitzer, James Carville, David Gergen, Candy Crowley, Anderson Cooper, Mary “I’m more arrogant than Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey and Donald Trump combined” Matalin, and others – discussing the Mitt Romney/Rick Santorum horse race as if it were actually news instead of a meaningless charade that doesn’t award actual convention delegates but simply gives meaningless “bragging rights” to the victor.

I never understood why Iowa, which has been first in picking presidential contenders since 1972, receives such respect and attention. Its largest city, Des Moines, is home to fewer than 204,000 residents; Atlanta has 420,000 and Detroit has 714,000. The Hawkeye State – which is 95 percent white, ranks 30th in population (Michigan’s population is 9.8 million; Iowa’s is just over three million) and is the birthplace of Herbert Hoover, the 31st president who presided over the Great Depression and is ranked by most historians near the bottom of the list of successful Oval Office occupants – is about as relevant to the world at large as Tom Arnold (Roseanne Barr’s buffoonish ex-husband) and Frodo Baggins (aka actor Elijah Wood), who were born there.

I know how they feel

I’ve also never understood why the Iowa caucuses are deemed so newsworthy by the talking heads. Mike Huckabee won the “bragging rights” in 2008; John McCain, who eventually became the GOP nominee, came in fourth. Tom Harkin won the Iowa causes in 1992 – the year that Bubba Clinton became president. About the only real result of last night’s dog and pony show is that Rick Perry’s heading back to Texas and Michele Bachmann’s returning to whatever mental institution she calls home. I am appreciative to Iowa Republicans for that.

I miss my family more than a salmon misses water and focusing on Mitt Romney’s eight-vote lead over Rick Santorum in yesterday’s meaningless political contest isn’t making me feel any better.

Sources: United States Census, Huffington Post.

Abba - Happy New Year

Sunday poetry

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

~ Thomas Hardy
December 30, 1900