Repugs Still Trying to Kill Democracy in Michigan

Because honestly as long as black people and brown people and female people and gay people and non-christian people are allowed to vote, we have to have some way of preventing the people they elect from having any power to stop our corporate masters from looting the state.

 

Steve Benen at Maddowblog:

This month Michigan voters repealed the state's far-reaching emergency manager law, saying that struggling towns, cities and school boards should be allowed to keep their democracies despite being broke. Now a new round of legislation in Michigan would allow the state to take over struggling school districts and farm out education to private companies.

Eclectablog has the full roundup of who's saying what and when, including this call to action from the schools superintendent in Bloomfield Hills: 

• This bill will not directly affect our district, but disenfranchises voters, ends their local control, and unconstitutionally hands taxpayer-owned property over to for-profit companies. Characterized as parent-empowerment, this bill does little to develop deep, community-wide parent engagement and organization.

I've never considered myself a conspiracy theorist -- until now. This package of bills is the latest in a yearlong barrage of ideologically-driven bills designed to weaken and defund locally-controlled public education, handing scarce taxpayer dollars over to for-profit entities operating under a different set of rules. I believe this is fundamentally wrong.

You're not a conspiracy theorist, sir, because this is not a conspiracy.  It's a flat-out power grab, as obvious and blatant as a jewelry-store smash-and-grab.

And no different in intent and effect from the third-world dictators who simply declare invalid any election that threatens their power.