Republicans love emergency financial manager laws when those laws are being applied to places like Detroit, Flint, Ecorse, Benton Harbor and Pontiac — that is, predominantly black municipalities.
According to the good folks at Eclectablog, though, GOP legislators aren't quiet as enthused about the remedy when it comes to applying it to the financially troubled white communities that the right-wingers have fucked up. The site notes:
As majority African American communities in Michigan are forced to live under the rule of unelected dictators, formerly called Emergency Managers and, now, once again called Emergency Financial Managers, efforts by two Republicans in the heart of Republican Livingston County are hoping to avoid the same fate for their own, mostly white, communities. Fiscal troubles that can be laid largely at the door of state legislators Cindy Denby and Bill Rogers would be conveniently remedied by a new law that Rogers and Denby co-sponsored. Even though these communities are in trouble due to fiscal mismanagement on the part of their government leaders, they, unlike Benton Harbor, Flint, Pontiac and other Michigan communities, would receive a state bailout, not a takeover of their town by a state-appointed dictator.
The piece goes on to report that Cindy Denby was quoted as saying that PA 4 is "not intended for places like Livingston County." Now, perhaps Denby will deny ever making such a clearly stupid-ass remark -- and to be fair, maybe she didn't really say it all -- but that's irrelevant.
Her legislative actions were obviously about placing Livingston County above the same standards and repercussions to which she and other Republicans are more than happy to consign black cities and townships.
The hypocrisy, the two sets of rules, the blatant abuse of power and resources to create a different outcome for whites' communities than for blacks' — that is racism at its most elemental.
And that's why so many Detroiters didn't trust Robert Bobb (a Jennifer Granholm appointee, it should be noted) and don't trust Roy Roberts. It's why so many oppose Gov. Rick Snyder's consent decree and are suspicious of the state's efforts to run Belle Isle. It's why elected leaders in Benton Harbor and Flint and Pontiac want the Joe Harrises of the world chased out of their towns on a rail.
For hypocritical white Republicans who always want to impose their drastic remedies on black communities, the message appears to be clear and simple: You go first.
