Last Dec. 13 I did a blog post titled "Has democracy turned into a yacht race?" In a yacht race, you can win by having the fastest boat, or the most skilled skipper and crew, or by manipulating the rules.
I pointed out that there seemed to be a lot of rule manipulation going on in politics and used Michigan as an example. If you recall, Michigan's governor announced at an 11 AM news conference that he was in favor of a right-to-work law for his state. A strange turn of events since during the election season he had said that he opposed such legislation as being too "divisive."
The Michigan right-to-work law was introduced in both houses of the legislature later that day and passed by 8 PM that evening with no hearings or real chance to debate the issue. And just to be certain that the people of Michigan couldn't overturn the law at the polls, the legislature attached it to the one type of law not subject to voter referendum: a budget bill.
And we thought that was breathtaking. But wait, it turns out that Michigan could do better!
Last November, Michigan voters turned thumbs down on a law which allowed the governor to appoint an "emergency manager" for any governmental unit (village, town, county, school district) within Michigan. This manager would wield absolute dictatorial power over the affairs of that unit. He could nullify contracts with workers, spend or not spend money, etc. all without the approval of the democratically-elected officials of that governmental unit.
Benton Harbor, Michigan was a good example. Think of Benton Harbor as a smaller version of Detroit. One of the actions of Benton Harbor's emergency manager was to sell a piece of land which had been deeded in perpetuity to the city as a park to a private developer to create a country club and golf course, even though there are not many golfers among the citizens of Benton Harbor and even fewer citizens who could afford country club dues.
The citizens of Michigan apparently did not like the idea of some appointed overseer substituting for their elected officials. So they collected signatures on petitions and got enough to put the law on the November ballot where it was defeated.
End of story? Hardly. The legislature passed what was essentially the same law--but this time attaching it to a budget bill so it would not be subject to referendum--and the governor signed it.
It's difficult to imagine a bigger middle-finger salute to the people of Michigan and to democracy!
There's a great example happening of politics as yacht racing on a national scale, but we'll leave that to another post. Here's a question to consider though: Since there are so many more people living in urban areas than rural areas, should we balance things out by giving urban voters only 3/5 of a vote per person in national elections?
No comments:
Post a Comment