Corporate take-over of American cities and Republican led authoritarianism (Rachel Maddow)

Last night Rachel Maddow's show led off with a powerful piece using Benton Harbor Michigan as an example of authoritarian big government Republicans trampling on local government and overturning Democracy. The issue is a recent law passed by the Michigan state legislature giving their Governor the power to dissolve local governments that are in financial crisis, and replace the local government with a corporate-run management team.

While many such as myself has been pointing at corporatism as an abstract danger, this is a concrete example of corporate power replacing government power.

Her piece asks us to recall the Biblical phrase, "By their fruits ye shall know them". The Republicans have an ideological bias towards small non-intrusive government and personal freedom, but when they have official power they tend to become overbearing authoritarian neo-fascists.

There is an existing industry of Emergency Financial Managers who step in to governments in financial crisis. For that matter this has an analogue in corporate governance where there are people and organizations who specialize in corporate turnaround or dissolving corporations in the final throes of bankruptcy. Some people specialize as being the CEO of flailing companies. So, if there's a city who is in a similar near-failure case it would be useful to have people and organizations that specialize in assisting the financial turnaround of a flailing government.

But this is a little different. Taking cue from the "By their fruits ye shall know them" line, their first action under the emergency financial managers law is a doozy. Benton Harbor is a relatively poor predominantly black city neighboring a relatively rich predominantly white city, both straddling a river along the Lake Michigan shore across the lake from Chicago. Benton Harbor is slated to be the site of an exclusive Golf Course and high priced home development targeted at rich persons. The development is meant to encompass Benton Harbor's shore-side city park. The golf course enclave is obviously not going to benefit the citizens of Benton Harbor, and with their city government out of the way there's almost certainly zero defense against the planned development slated to take over land currently owned by the city.

In other words - the first official use of this law is to negate a local city government to make it easier to build an exclusive rich persons enclave and deny public access to yet another stretch of beach.

By their fruits ye shall know them.

What do you think? Let me know in the comment boxes below.

An earlier corporate take-over piece with video from Maddow's show: Corporations are not human, that's why we have government (Rachel Maddow)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Summary of the Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act Process

http://www.michigan.gov/treasury/0,1607,7-121-1751_51556-198770--,00.html

Step One: If one or more conditions indicative of probable financial stress in a local government exist, the State Financial Authority (State Treasurer or Superintendent of Public Instruction) may conduct a preliminary review, after providing the unit of local government with specific written notification of the review.

Step Two: The State Financial Authority must inform the Governor within 30 days of commencement of the preliminary review whether or not probable financial stress exists.

Step Three: The Governor must appoint a review team if the State Financial Authority informs the Governor that a preliminary review has been conducted and a finding of probable financial stress was made.

A review team consists of the State Treasurer (or his or her designee), the Director of the Department of Technology, Management, and Budget (or his or her designee), a nominee of the Senate Majority Leader, a nominee of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and any other State officials, or other persons with relevant professional experience selected by the Governor. The Superintendent of Public Instruction (or his or her designee) also is a member if a school district is involved.

Step Four: Unless the Governor specifies an earlier date, or grants a 30-day extension, a review team must report to the Governor within 60 days of its appointment and indicate whether specific statutory conditions exist or are likely to occur which constitute no or mild financial stress, severe financial stress, or financial emergency:

• (a) No or mild financial stress exists in the unit of local government if any of the following occur:
• -- The review team reports that none of the specified statutory conditions exist or are likely to occur.
• -- The conditions may occur, but will not threaten the capability of the unit of local government to provide necessary governmental services.
• (b) Severe financial stress exists in the unit of local government if any of the following occur:
• -- The review team reports that one or more of the specified statutory conditions exist or are likely to occur.
• -- The chief administrative officer of the unit of local government recommends that the unit of local government be considered in severe financial stress.
• (c) A financial emergency exists in the unit of local government if:
• -- The review team reports that two or more of the specified statutory conditions exist or are likely to occur within the current fiscal year that threaten the future capability of the unit of local government to provide necessary governmental services.
• -- The unit of local government failed to provide timely and accurate in-formation to the review team.
• -- The unit of local government failed to comply with one or more financial plans.
• -- The unit of local government materially breached the terms of a consent agreement.
• -- The unit of local government is in a condition of severe financial stress and a consent agreement was not adopted.
• -- The chief administrative officer of the unit of local government recommends a financial emergency be declared and the State Treasurer concurs.

Step Five: Within 10 days after receipt of the review team report, the Governor must make one of the following determinations:

• (a) The unit of local government is not in a condition of severe financial stress.
• (b) The unit of local government is in a condition of severe financial stress, but a consent agreement containing a plan to resolve the severe financial stress has been adopted.
• (c) A local government financial emergency exists and no satisfactory plan exists to resolve the emergency.
• (d) The unit of local government entered into a consent agreement containing a continuing operations plan or recovery plan to resolve a financial problem, but materially breached the consent agreement.

Step Six: If the Governor determines that a financial emergency exists, he or she must provide written notification to the chief administrative officer of the unit of lo-cal government who may request, within seven days after receiving notice, a hearing conducted by the State Financial Authority or his or her designee.

Step Seven: After the hearing or, if no hearing was requested, after expiration of the opportunity for a hearing, the Governor must either confirm or revoke the determination of a financial emergency.

Step Eight: A local government, with a two-thirds vote of its governing body, may appeal the Governor's determination to Ingham County circuit court. The determination may be set aside only if found to be either:

• (a) Not supported by competent, material, and substantial evidence on the whole record.
• (b) Arbitrary, capricious, or clearly an abuse or unwarranted exercise of discretion.

Step Nine: If the Governor confirms the determination of a financial emergency, the Governor is required to declare the unit of local government in receivership and appoint an Emergency Manager who serves at the pleasure of the Governor.

Step Ten: Upon being placed in receivership, the governing body and chief administrative officer of the unit of local government are prohibited from exercising any of their powers of offices without written approval of the Emergency Manager, and their compensation and benefits are eliminated.

Step Eleven: Within 45 days of appointment, an Emergency Manager must develop a written financial and operating plan.

In addition to other powers, an Emergency Manager may reject, modify, or terminate collective bargaining agreements, recommend consolidation or dissolution of units of local government, and recommend bankruptcy proceedings.

Step Twelve: A unit of local government is removed from receivership when the financial conditions which were the basis for the underlying financial emergency are corrected in a sustainable fashion as determined by the State Treasurer in accordance with the Act.

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

"It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps." The article details 10 steps to turn a free society into a dictatorship. These steps have been taken over and over in countries around the world and have been demonstrated to work. Most recently they were taken following the Coup in Thailand that overthrew the Democracy there.

Article Reference: 

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

How Hitler Became a Dictator

URL: 

How Hitler Became a Dictator

Description: 

Whenever U.S. officials wish to demonize someone, they inevitably compare him to Adolf Hitler. The message immediately resonates with people because everyone knows that Hitler was a brutal dictator.

But how many people know how Hitler actually became a dictator? My bet is, very few. I’d also bet that more than a few people would be surprised at how he pulled it off, especially given that after World War I Germany had become a democratic republic.

The story of how Hitler became a dictator is set forth in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer, on which this article is based.

What is Fascism, and where is it now?

"Fascism" is, at times, a popular label to throw around as a smearing technique in political stand-making. But, like I noted on the Conservatism page, the true meaning of the word "Fascism" has been lost in the process. Do you know what it means? I sure don't. I just know that Hitler's and Mussolini's regimes were said to be Fascist, but my High School History teacher didn't bother to tell me what it meant.

Let's first start with a Salon Book Review of "The Anatomy of Fascism" by Robert O. Paxton [April 19, 2004; Salon.COM; Laura Miller; http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/04/19/fascism/]. The book appears to be a scholarly study of Fascism, and the review attempts to be a short tutorial on what Fascism is drawing lessons from the book. At this moment I haven't read the book, only this review.

The review starts by noting that "even those who have devoted themselves to studying fascism can't quite agree on what it is", referring to the professional political scientists. So perhaps I should feel better about not knowing what Fascism is if even the professionals can't describe it very well. The book in question, "The Anatomy of Fascism", is Robert O. Paxton's attempt.

Another resource is Living Under Fascism by Davidson Loehr First UU Church of Austin (Unitarian Universalist).

The working definition of Fascism, quoted from "The Anatomy of Fascism":

"... a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

Note that the definition doesn't include the specific acts of Hitler or Mussolini (such as building concentration camps). And it's interesting to think of the Bush family, whom some label as Fascist, yet they are the very epitome of the traditional elites. This says to me that when Hitler was receiving funding from Prescott Bush, that this was likely an example of the "uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites", and that the powerful people whom Prescott Bush represented were aiming to achieve some goal through using Hitler.

The review describes how Paxton believes Fascism, as a political system, has very high hurdles to jump in order to become the dominant system in a country. Witness the Ku Klux Klan type activities in the South and how they failed to become dominant. What allowed it to become dominant in Europe in the 1910's-1920's was this combination of events:

Take one nation demoralized and economically devastated by a massive war. Add two political forces that have failed to offer a solution to this mess: conservatism and liberalism. (Paxton uses the classic definition of "liberalism," meaning an outlook favoring a free-market economy and a vision of citizenship based on individual rights with minimal state interference in most aspects of life.) Add to that the threat of revolution from the left. "It is essential to recall how real the possibility of communist revolution seemed in Italy in 1921 and German in 1932," Paxton writes. The mostly liberal parliamentary governments running Europe at the time seemed impotent in the face of the Red Menace, and the conservatives, believers in old-fashioned hierarchies, didn't have the constituency to fight back.

Into this situation introduce a white-hot political party that can mobilize lots of people from all classes and that fiercely opposes communism. Fill it with young, angry men more than willing to show up and bust a few heads if necessary. Conservatives didn't like a lot of things about the coarse, violent, riffraffish fascists, but if teaming up with Hitler or Mussolini was the only way to protect their property and station in life from the Bolsheviks, they were willing to cut a deal or two. Plus, they believed they could control their wild-eyed new friends, who had so little savoir faire and experience in the subtle arts of governance. This, to put it mildly, was a big mistake.

This still doesn't tell us much about what Fascism is, but instead the strategy for getting into power. But then, later in the review they point out that Fascists tend to discard the rhetoric they use to get into power, and once into power concentrate on using that power. In any case, what we see here is how the traditional elites were scared by the rise of Communism, and allied with the Fascists to drive off the "Red Menace". Which is instructive into why Prescott Bush was involved with funding Hitler, then.

The book review then gets into some uses by Paxton of his definition as a yardstick to measure whether certain leaders or political movements were, or were not, Fascist. Speaking for myself, in some of his examples I think he's being too rigid in the definition.

Slobodan Milosevic: Even though his rule was brutal, involved cleansing of undesirables, nationalistic fervor and expansion of boundaries, Milosevic was the sitting President. As the sitting President he could not be a Fascist, and instead "'adopted expansionist nationalism as a device to consolidate an already existing personal rule'".

Islamist militancy: We have been told by our government leaders that the rise of militant fundamentalist Islam, with their screwy interpretation of the Koran, is Fascist. For what it's worth, Dave Emory says the same thing, pointing to historical connections between Hitlers regime and the Islamic factions some of whom are still in power today. However these groups fail to meet Paxton's yardstick because Fascist governments only rise to power in failed democracies. This is one place where I disagree, and feel he's using the definition too rigidly.

George W. Bush and his regime: Nope, not fascists, because America today doesn't resemble Germany of the 1920's. Hmm? Say what? Paxton points out that Bush's regime is encroaching on civil liberties and the like, but that doesn't complete the requirements to truly be Fascist. Sure, that's a good point. But Paxton has an example of just two governments he can call Fascist, and from that small an example he's going to define the totality of what Fascism is or can be? Where I would agree with him is that George W completely is an example of the traditional elite, and that George W cannot be a Fascist because of that, however in the campaign that elected George W as president he appealed directly to the "angry white male" voter in a way that's evocative of this observation in the review:

The first modern campaigners, fascists realized that for the less educated and attentive classes, politics was a matter of feeling not ideas. So, as Paxton writes, "Fascism was an affair of the gut more than the brain."

What does the word mean?

One avenue to understanding is to look at the word and where it comes from (from Living Under Fascism):

The word comes from the Latin word “Fasces,” denoting a bundle of sticks tied together. The individual sticks represented citizens, and the bundle represented the state. The message of this metaphor was that it was the bundle that was significant, not the individual sticks. If it sounds un-American, it’s worth knowing that the Roman Fasces appear on the wall behind the Speaker’s podium in the chamber of the US House of Representatives.