(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
Recently Naomi Klein, the author of the “Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capital Management”, has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now discussing Anti-Union Bills and Disaster Capital Management American-Style:
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, I just found out about this last night, and like I said, there’s so much going on that these extraordinary measures are just getting lost in the shuffle. But in Michigan, there is a bill that’s already passed the House. It’s on the verge of passing the Senate. And I’ll just read you some excerpts from it. It says that in the case of an economic crisis, that the governor has the authority to authorize the emergency manager-this is somebody who would be appointed-to reject, modify or terminate the terms of an existing contract or collective bargaining agreement, authorize the emergency manager for a municipal government-OK, so we’re not-we’re talking about towns, municipalities across the state-to disincorporate. So, an appointed official with the ability to dissolve an elected body, when they want to.
AMY GOODMAN: A municipal government.
NAOMI KLEIN: A municipal government. And it says specifically, “or dissolve the municipal government.” So we’ve seen this happening with school boards, saying, “OK, this is a failing school board. We’re taking over. We’re dissolving it. We’re canceling the contracts.” You know, what this reminds me of is New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, when the teachers were fired en masse and then it became a laboratory for charter schools. You know, people in New Orleans-and you know this, Amy-warned us. They said, “What’s happening to us is going to happen to you.” And I included in the book a quote saying, “Every city has their Lower Ninth Ward.” And what we’re seeing with the pretext of the flood is going to be used with the pretext of an economic crisis. And this is precisely what’s happening. So it starts with the school boards, and then it’s whole towns, whole cities, that could be subject to just being dissolved because there’s an economic crisis breaking collective bargaining agreements. It also specifies that-this bill specifies that an emergency manager can be an individual or a firm. Or a firm. So, the person who would be put in charge of this so-called failing town or municipality could actually be a corporation.
We are now seeing the push to fulfill this agenda to make “harsher American less democratic”. Not only are they stripping the rights of workers but the Republican corporate agenda is now going after the one remedy that Americans have to stop them, voting rights. Currently there are bills under consideration in 32 states to make it harder to vote in 2012, by forcing people to ID that the poor, minorities and students that they have difficulty obtaining, eliminating same day registration and restricting the voting rights of people who have served time in prison.
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