The National Guard doesn’t consist of “Real Soldiers”?
We are no longer in a recession.
Regards,
Shodan
I think state governments have the right to set up local governments as they see fit, so it might be legal, although I hope that there may be something in the Michigan state constitution to stop this.
The sad thing is that are not simple issues. There are plenty of contributing factors for the financial problems in places like Michigan and Wisconsin. But a lot of people want to oversimplify the problems and solutions, whether it’s, “Raise taxes and everything will be OK.” or, “Destroy the unions and everything will be OK.”
Along with taxes and spending, there’s nothing wrong with looking at collective bargaining and local governments as well. But instead of doing any tweaking that might be necessary, it seems both governors are taking the “Using sledgehammer a to swat a fly” approach. And in Michigan, allowing a corporation to declare a financial emergency and take over? That is all kinds of wrong.
In my personal opinion this indicates to me that governor Snyder is making a power grab and has corporate buddies he wants to reward.
That’s basically the situation the city of Washington DC finds itself in, with the exception that it is congress rather than a governor pulling the strings. At least the people of a given county Michigan can vote against the governor. DC residents can’t even vote for any of the members of Congress.
But we have not yet recovered. Which means we have too little demand. Which means that businesses will sell off widget factories and permanently lower their capacity if the government doesn’t help the economy along. Cutting jobs would only lower demand even further.
I’m sure you’ve been told this before. But you keep repeating the same objection. Maybe you should write this down?
Oh, so you interpret the Second Amendment as meaning that only the National Guard (& Regular Military & maybe the Reserves) are allowed to bear arms?
Sounds good to me!
The emergency financial manager position existed before this. What this bill does is give greater powers to emergency financial managers. Here’s a summary of how an emergency financial manager gets appointed.
The TLDR version is, if it becomes clear that a local government can’t pay its bills, the State Treasurer tells the governor that a financial emergency exists. The governor then sets up a team to investigate. If they find out that a financial emergency does exist, and the local government doesn’t have a plan to fix it, the governor turns it over to the Local Emergency Financial Assistance Loan Board, which gives the local government a loan and appoints a financial manager to either turn the finances around or declare bankruptcy.
What this bill does is give the financial manager more powers, letting him cancel union contracts, repeal local laws, and dismiss school boards.
Because you didn’t understand it.
The concept that you’re probably thinking of is a limited federal government.
This isn’t derived from some generalized idea about local government over centralized government, but from a correct understanding of the dual sovereign system in this country. The federal government is supreme, but only in its limited, listed powers. What the Constitution says it can do, it can do. If the Constitution doesn’t grant it a power, it doesn’t have that power.
The state governments, in contrast, have plenary power as sovereigns. They can legislate in any area at all, but in areas where the Constitution gives power to the federal government, the states must yield.
For some reason, you seem to believe that the argument may be taken one step further down, as between state and local governments. That’s not true. Local governments derive their authority completely from the state constitution, and have only the power that the state constitution grants.
So the idea you decry as hypocritical bullshit is actually a strawman. You’ve created the argument and are now calling it bullshit.
Since local governments in a state derive their authority from the state constitution, I am having trouble understanding the basis of the legal challenges you envision.
In Virginia, to offer an example I know well, we have Dillon’s Rule, a principle that expressly limits local governments to whatever authority the state grants them. If, for example, a town wanted to require that dogs be registered and wear collar tags, they could not do so unless the state explictly pass a law permitting them to do so.
Not all states have this scheme, but all start with the state constitution as the sovereign source of legislative power.
So I guess I’m confused about how this law is violative of the Michigan constitution.
But they can vote for a mayor and they have a 13 member Council of the District of Columbia.
Yeah, sure…
From a legal point of view, you may be correct about the legal authority and divisions between federal-vs-state and state-vs-local
But, the usual common-man argument I’ve heard from conservatives over the year was not
“I don’t want the federal government to do X,Y,Z because while the federal government is supreme, that is only in its limited, listed powers”
but more like
“I don’t want the federal government to do X,Y,Z those bureaucrats in Washington are out of touch with the American heartland and don’t have a clue what is best for use here in Beaumont Texas”
*That *argument does carry to the state-vs-local level.
“I don’t want the state government to do X,Y,Z those bureaucrats in Austin are out of touch with the American heartland and don’t have a clue what is best for use here in Beaumont Texas”
That’s essentially what happens in a municipal bankruptcy, so it’s not unheard-of. This bill is establishing an alternative system for involuntary bankruptcy of local governments.
One argument might be that it infringes on Congress’s authority to create a uniform bankruptcy system. This isn’t my area of law, so I have no idea whether this is even remotely plausible.
The only place this action could be challenged successfully would be the Michigan Supreme Court, and only then if these actions violate the constitution of Michigan. As Bricker pointed out, there is no Federal constitutional protections for political subdivisions within a state, and the authority the fifty State governments have over the subdivisions within their territory varies tremendously from state to state.
While I don’t follow British politics much, it’s my understanding that at least prior to recent years when the Brits started giving Parliaments to all the former independent countries, Parliament in London essentially had unquestioned power in the country and the political subdivisions existed solely at its pleasure. While I am probably a bit off on the specifics there, my point is lots of countries have central governments that can and do wield more or less absolute power over their political subdivisions.
I’m a fan of Federalism, and small local governments as well, but the opposite of those things is not dictatorship.
Alabama takes things a further than Virginia does, in Alabama the State legislature actually has to more or less pass any local ordinance, because virtually no power exists in the localities. In an even weirder twist, I believe those local ordinances must actually be submitted as permanent amendments to the state constitution. I believe that’s the reason Alabama has the largest (in number of words) constitution on the planet.
Anyway, to the point in Michigan, there is a very valid reason for the various State governments to do something like this.
In most states, because of the way the school systems, public employee retirement systems, and lots of other “stuff” is set up, it is very often the case that if the local governments become insolvent the State government is legally bound to step in and fund things. Additionally, unlike the Federal government the State governments cannot print money. A majority of the State governments also have constitutional provisions that mandate balance budgets, meaning State governments have much tighter restrictions on how they operate. They can’t just spend into the red and worry about paying it back later like the Feds can.
For this reason, it is highly logical and proper that States have the power to take action when local governments are being ran in a manner such that they are likely to become insolvent.
I actually believe there was an episode of the show Parks and Recreation that actually dealt with Indiana and specifically with some auditors from the State government coming in to take over parts of Pawnee’s government because it was insolvent (the show is set in Pawnee, Indiana.)
I can’t say I’ve heard that much, but I tend to read conservative-leaning legal blogs as opposed to … er… anything else.
In any event, I’ve now made you aware of a principled reason to resist federal accretion of power while at the same time beliving states should retain power at the statehouse level. So I trust that in the future, you’ll temper your absolute disdain with at least an acknowledgement that SOME conservatives approach the issue as I have described.
Nor mine, but I’d hazard a guess that this is not an area of preemption, since, so far as I know, extant Congressional language does not expressly cover this area. And I am also unaware of a bulwark of regulatoin so that Congress can be said to have “wrought by a manifestation of congressional intent to occupy an entire field such that, even without a federal rule on some particular matter within the field, state regulation on that matter is pre-empted, leaving it untouched by either state or federal law.” Gade v. National Solid Wastes Management Association.
But I welcome more detail on the matter.
And we all know how effective Republican administrations are at pro-active measures.
*"I know we will find weapons of massive default. Or do you want to wait until there is the mushroom cloud of bankruptcy? What are you, un-American? But don’t worry, we will won’t fire anyone except as a last resort.
Oh, they paid a bill late? Then massive default is just ahead. Call security and remove these people at once.
What’s that? The people are storming the governor’s mansion. Nonsense, they are just coming to deliver flowers." *
Sad, that they still consider the Bush Doctrine good policy.
I can just imagine the uproar if they tried this shit on the business community.
“Report losses for one quarter, and you have to submit to a state audit, and you do not comply with their recommendations we will place you into receivership. And all corporate officers are fired and cannot be rehired for six years.” Yeah, that would go over well.
But as long as it only effects those evil overpaid public employees, all is good.:rolleyes:
I never thought I would see a general strike in the US in my lifetime, but the Republicans are certainly doing their best to make it happen. “Elections have consequences” - so does screwing over your electorate, and expanding the reach of government beyond any mandate or common sense. [and just to nip this in the bud, but I know it will not, universal health care was not overreaching. The majority of this country wants universal health care, the debate is over single payer or employer-based coverage, and Obama was elected with a greater margin that these idiots, and he had UHC in his platform since the beginning.]
I swear the Republicans must think their party is dying, and they are throwing these last Hail Marys that the idiots think will actually lead to a winning touchdown. Complete failure. All they have done is re-energized the defense. I hope these governors enjoy their time in their mansions, because their party will not see the insides again. They did not succeed in starving the beast, they just pissed it off beyond belief. The Republicans are about to learn just how sharp its teeth and claws still are. (And I don’t care if I mixed metaphors :p)
When this country is still sitting at 8% unemployment or worse in two years, I will not be blaming the White House, but the governor mansions. (And who would have thought that Schwarzenegger was the most moderate Republican of the last decade.)
And Democrats are not going to come out smelling like roses either. They completely failed on GOTV efforts last fall and failed to support the president’s agenda when he had the majority. And Obama needs to learn to use the bully pulpit and energize his base. He should have been in Wisconsin and other states long ago. There is no point in being moderate when your opponents have no intention of doing likewise. They want partisanship - give it to them. So expect to see a lot of money going to independent groups that will get out the vote and a purge of DINOs. (Yes, I am looking at you Blue Dogs.) I would not be surprised to see a lot of Green candidates showing up either - and winning.
By the by, here is the Senate Fiscal Agency analysis on the Senate Bill 153. PDF. All sorts of win.
All these idiots are doing is sowing more chaos. Their measures will be repealed as soon as they are out of office, and all these contracts and budgets will have to be renegotiated at even more expense to the taxpayer - which will require tax increases. You think they would have learned from the health care debate that incremental change is the best you can hope for during any one administration.
AP
PS Major pet peeve. Journalists - if you are reporting on legislation, state the damn bill number. I hate having to search legislative sites.
For an angle to get this into the federal courts, how about the federal requirement that the states have a republican form of government? IIRC, that was used to quash efforts by states to give counties equal representation in the state legislature (similarly to how the federal Senate works).
You cannot be serious, can you? After 2 sec of Google search for “local government is best” I found this
There is no way that anyone with an IQ of above 75 who lives in this country for more than a couple of years has not noticed the above sort of rhetoric from conservatives.
It’s mostly not about the constitution (although of course that is also mentioned) but mainly about all those damn bureaucrats in Washington and their red tape and how out of touch they are with local people and how they want to be or should be governed.
Been to Beaumont. Pave it over.
Well, reading that kind of commentary does give me pause… especially given it’s Texas. I think the governor in Providence can be safely said to be close to his constituents. Austin? Not so much.