DeVos-funded corporate front group compares those living under Emergency Managers to cancer
With the bombshell news yesterday that two former Flint Emergency Managers are being charged with felonies in their connection to the ongoing tragedy known as the Flint water crisis, the calls to repeal Michigan’s anti-democratic “financial martial law” are rising again from around the state. The corporatists that see Emergency Management as a key to accomplishing their dual goals of destroying public employee unions and privatizing as many government services as possible are beginning to freak at the thought that this valuable tool may finally be consigned to the rubbish bin of shameful history.
Top on the list of those defending this disgusting law and public policy is the corporate front group Mackinac Center for Public Policy. This group, heavily funded by millionaires and billionaires like David and Charles Koch and the Michigan-based DeVos family, has long promoted Emergency Management going back as far as 2005. In fact, the first Emergency Manager appointed by Rick Snyder – Louis Schimmel – was a Mackinac Center adjunct scholar. In another fact, the Mackinac Center helped craft the legislation that became Public Act 4, Michigan’s first Emergency Manager law.
Yesterday, two Mackinac Center staffers stepped up to say just exactly what they think of Emergency Management and the people living under Emergency Managers:
James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said Schuette’s investigation shows “a failure of government at all levels” and need for transparency, but it does not negate the need for the emergency manager law.
“We’ve been very supportive of emergency manager’s efforts in solvency, the state’s way of enforcing its own fiscal rules for governments,” he said, of a debate over the law since 2011.
John Mozena, vice president for marketing and communications for the Mackinac Center, likened the law to a form of “governmental chemotherapy” that can be painful and messy, but “sometimes it’s what you’ve got to do to solve the problem.”
Read more: http://www.eclectablog.com/2016/12/devos-funded-corporate-front-group-compares-those-living-under-emergency-managers-to-cancer.html
