On March 22, 2010, James
Zogby posted on HuffPost (Huffington Post) Social News, Frightening GOP
Behavior.
In this post Mr. Zogby wrote
that time after time in the debate leading up to the final vote on the health
care reform bill, “A Republican talking point repeated ad nauseam during yesterday’s
debate pounded on the theme that they, and they alone, had the right to speak
for “the will of the American people”.”
This theme was repeated over and over, using different words and
phraseology, but, “All making the same point – that the GOP speaks for the
American people.”
This was written prior to
the 11/10 elections remember. The final paragraph reads:
“Listening to the
rhetorical excesses of last summer’s demonstrators, or those who mobilized to
chant slurs at Democrats over the weekend, or to the radio and TV personalities
who incite with hate and fear (“that we are losing our country”), or the GOP
Congressional leadership who charge much the same and incite in similar ways –
I hear echoes of last century’s history.
The behavior fits a frightening pattern and ought to be of concern.”
The shenanigans of the
Republicans in Congress have kept the focus on Washington as they continue with
the above behavior, but at the state level even worse behavior is taking place
and except for Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow and Laurence O’Donnell on MSNBC, there
has been little or nothing mentioned in the main stream media.
The Governor of the State
of Michigan, through Public Act 4, can remove duly elected officials from office
by declaring a financial state of emergency in the targeted jurisdiction. I have scanned the act, and frankly, it doesn’t
mean much in the way of protecting citizens of the four cities and one school
district that have already been taken over, and have had an emergency city manager
take over all of the administrative and financial functions for those cities
and district. There was a lot of
rhetoric about the fact that these are cities, and I presume the school
district, that are over 50% minority populations, and that this is basically a
racist move. These cities may have been
targeted by the white GOPers in the mistaken belief that the minority citizens
wouldn’t know how to fight back (a belief that is being proven wrong as I write),
but I rather think that if the GOP can get away with these tactics in Michigan,
the nose of totalitarianism is under the tent of our democracy.
Go back to the beginning of
this posting and read again Zogby’s final paragraph. This is the type of behavior that dictators
always use – some trumped up reason to seize control of governments
everywhere. What is being legally
questioned, and rightly so, is how can the duly elected representatives of the
people be summarily removed from office because one politician, in this case the
governor of Michigan, decides the jurisdiction which these officials represent
are in financial difficulties. As a
retired elected official, I find this action to be absolutely intolerable,
disgusting, un-American, anti-democratic, and treasonable. Other than that, I don’t have much of a
problem with it!
Go out and join the closest
Occupy demonstration you can find. Now.
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