John Nichols | The Nation

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker speaks at an inauguration ceremony at the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, on January 3, 2011. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is an exceptionally ambitious career politician who loves the sound of cheering crowds in the presidential primary states where he hopes to be a 2016 contender.

But he’s does not care for the sound of dissent.

In fact, dissident voices bother the conservative Republican governor so much that he has ordered state police forces to begin arresting Wisconsinites—from 85-year-olds to young moms with kids—who dare to join a long-established noontime “Solidarity Sing Along” at the state capitol in Madison. In this summer of protest, crowds have gathered at state capitols nationwide—from women’s rights activists in Austin to “Stand Your Ground” foes in Tallahassee to voting rights champions in Raleigh. There have been mass arrests, especially during the “Moral Monday” protests in North Carolina.

But Walker has distinguished himself by targeting tunes.

The singing, which traces its roots to the mass protests against Walker’s anti-labor initiatives of February and March 2011, has been a steady presence in the capitol for two years. But, this summer, the governor’s cracking down. So far, seventy-nine Wisconsinites have been arrested and ticketed, and dozens more are likely to face charges for singing songs like “Which Side Are You On?” and “On Wisconsin” without following a new set of permitting rules developed by the governor to limit the right to assemble.

It is hard to understand why the governor is so perturbed.

He’s not often in a position to hear what’s going on in the capitol.

Unless, of course, the voices of the singers are loud enough to carry to states like Alabama.

The governor, who makes little secret of his 2016 presidential enthusiasm, is spending this summer traveling to states that are likely to play a role in naming the Republican nominee who will pick up where Mitt Romney left off. He’s already been to Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Nevada, New York, Tennessee and Texas. And he’ll be back in many of those state this fall to hawk his upcoming book, Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s Challenge (Sentinel/Penguin), which he’s written with Marc Thiessen, who previously served as chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush. The conservative Washington Examiner says that “according to those familiar with it, might as well come with a ‘Walker for America’ bumper sticker.”

But before he distributes the bumper stickers, Walker is spending his off-year summer vacation on the partisan dinner circuit.

When seventeen singers were arrested Friday at the state capitol, Walker was in Denver keynoting the fourth annual Western Conservative Summit.

Soon he’ll be off to Alabama for the annual Republican Party summer dinner.

He’s already been to the first primary state of New Hampshire and the first caucus state of Iowa.

Walker’s certainly seems to be running.

But he’s not getting much traction.

Against prospective Republican contenders, according to a new TheRun2016 poll, Walker finished eighth with 2.1 percent support among possible Iowa Republican Caucus participants.

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There are a lot of explanations for why Governor Walker, despite a very high national profile, attracts so little support. But some of the burden the governor carries undoubtedly has to do with his image as a “divide and conquer” politician who is determined to crack down on teachers, public employees, conservationists, local officials and anyone else who isn’t using his songbook—even going so far as to have grandmothers, veterans, teachers and mothers with children arrested for carrying a tune in the capitol—but who is not very good when it comes to managing his state, maintaining great schools, building a strong infrastructure or creating a climate that encourages job creation.

John Nichols and Bob McChesney are the authors of Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America (Nation Books). Thomas E. Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press, Harvard University, says, “As Nichols and McChesney’s new book shows, the robber barons of the late 19th century were pikers compared with today’s moneyed interests. They have hijacked our elections at all levels, and nothing short of the sweeping reforms called for in Dollarocracy can fix the problem. The book is a must read for anyone who cares about the integrity of our democratic system.”

Congressman Darrell Issa has a plan to end the US Postal Service. Can the American Postal Workers Union stop him?

Hezbollah supporters fire weapons as they celebrate the fall of the Syrian town of Qusair to forces loyal to President Bashar Assad and Hezbollah fighters, in Bazzalieh village, Lebanon, near the Lebanese-Syrian border, Wednesday, June 5, 2013. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner are agreed on one thing: they both want to get the United States more actively engaged in the fighting in Syria.

Obama announced last month that he hopes to ship arms to the Syrian opposition forces that are fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad. Boehner said this week that the president’s Syrian gambit “is in our nation’s best interest.”

Boehner’s endorsement of the move came as House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, announced, “After much discussion and review, we got a consensus that we could move forward with what the administration’s plans and intentions are in Syria consistent with committee reservations.”

But, make no mistake, an “in our nation’s best interest” quote from Boehner and an Intelligence Committee “consensus” ought not be read as congressional approval for a project that threatens to involve the United States in another war in another Middle Eastern country.

That’s a point made by a key Intelligence Committee member, California Democrat Adam Schiff, who announced this week, “I do not share that consensus, however, and wish to make my dissent clear. In my view, the modest chance for success of these plans does not warrant the risk of becoming entangled in yet another civil war.”

Schiff’s concerns are well-founded. And he is not alone. Polling shows that only 11 percent of Americans favor US moves to aid the rebels. And there are many in Congress—Republicans and Democrats, Obama critics and frequent Obama allies—who express profound reservations about the course chosen by the administration.

That ought to create a checking-and-balancing moment. After all, the Constitution clearly affords Congress the power to declare wars—and to define the scope and character of military interventions.

But, as Vermont Congressman Peter Welch asked this week, “Does Congress play a role?”

The answer, because of manipulations of the process by Boehner and his allies is basically “No.”

Congressman Welch, a Democrat who recently visited the Syrian border region, has emerged as an outspoken critic of moves to involve the United States in the conflict. Welch warns that “this is a significant military action. We are taking sides in a civil war.” It is this concern that led Welch and a number of Republican representatives to try and force Congress to engage in a serious debate about whether to get entangled in the Syria fight. Unfortunately, Boehner has manipulated the rules to aid Obama’s quest.

As part of the debate over the 2014 Pentagon spending bill, Welch and a bipartisan coalition he helped to assemble had hoped to get a vote on an amendment that would have barred the use of Department of Defense money to arm the rebels—or to otherwise pull the United States into the Syrian conflict.

But House leaders blocked consideration of the proposal. Boehner’s allies on the Rules Committee wanted to allow debate on only four narrowly drawn amendments to the broader spending bill. In addition to amendments that discuss limiting National Security Agency spying and aid to Egypt, a watered-down amendment on Syria was considered.

Sponsored by Republican Congressman Trey Radel, of Florida, the Syria amendment passed on a voice vote Wednesday. But it only prohibits the use of Pentagon funds for Syrian projects that are defined as “inconsistent” with the War Powers Resolution. The wording of Radel’s amendment makes it essentially symbolic, as it does little more than restate existing law.

It is important to remind the White House of the rules. Indeed, as Robert Naiman, the policy director for the group Just Foreign Policy, notes, “the Radel amendment can help achieve two things: it can be cited as Congressional opposition to deeper U.S. military involvement, and it specifically can be used to argue against continuation of the recent deployment of U.S. troops to Jordan, widely perceived as related to the threat of U.S. military intervention in Syria.”

But the Radel amendment does not achieve the sort of meaningful congressional action that the founders imagined as a necessary tool to check and balance military adventurism. It’s a facade of oversight rather than the real thing. Just as when Russian officials were accused of erecting fake “Potemkin villages” to fool foreign ambassadors into thinking impoverished regions were thriving, Boehner and his team are erecting Potemkin Checks and Balances.

“The Republican leadership ducked a real important debate when it comes to Syria,” complained Congressman James McGovern, D-Masachusetts.

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McGovern is right about that.

And he is right to worry about what Boehner’s failure might mean.

“I hope that…a few years down the road we don’t look back,” said McGovern, “and express regret that somehow we got sucked into this war without a real debate.”

John Nichols is the author, with Robert W. McChesney, of Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America (The Nation). Author Thomas Frank says: “This is the black book of politics-as-industry, an encyclopedic account of money’s crimes against democracy. The billionaires have hijacked our government, and anyone feeling complacent after the 2012 election should take sober note of Nichols’ and McChesney’s astonishing finding: It’s only going to get worse. Dollarocracy is an impressive achievement.”

Members of Congress aren’t alone in questioning US involvement in Syria—the top US general is doing it too.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder presents his third state budget before the state Legislature in Lansing, Michigan, Thursday, February 7, 2013. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Does anyone seriously doubt that, if Detroit were a “too big to fail” bank, it would have been bailed out long ago? Or that its pensioners, rather than facing the threat of cruel cuts as part of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s scheme to steer the city into brutal bankruptcy proceedings, would instead have pocketed hefty bonuses?

To ask the question is to answer it.

If the 2008 bailout of the biggest players in the financial sector—and policy-making over the ensuing years—tells us anything, it is that Congress and the Federal Reserve take care of Wall Street.

America’s great cities? Not so much.

The political dynamic in Washington has been tough on America’s cities for a long time. And it is worse now, as austerity advocates seek to shred a safety net that is vital for urban America. But there are some in DC who recognize that the federal government has both a responsibility and an opportunity—as Pennsylvania Congressman Chaka Fattah, a leader of the Congressional Urban Caucus, suggested Friday— “to analyze Detroit’s fiscal situation and intervene on the city’s behalf.”

This does not mean that a bailout on par with what the bankers got is in the offering for struggling cities and counties across the country. Not on John Boehner’s watch.

Yet, Washington cannot avoid this issue and expect the United States to return to robust economic health. The link between the economic viability of American cities and the economic viability of America is too great for that.

To this end, President Obama and serious members of Congress must speak up about the vital importance of federal interventions not merely on behalf of cities but also on behalf of the people who live in major municipalities that cannot be allowed to fail. Cities and counties provide front-line services to tens of millions of America’s most-vulnerable citizens, and municipal employees and retirees use the checks they have earned providing those services to keep local economies functioning. Austerity cuts, whether they are imposed by appointed officials with no other options or bankruptcy courts, do real damage far beyond the cities where they are imposed.

The urgency of Detroit’s circumstance has highlighted the need for what one Congressman calls a “rethink” of Washington’s approach to cities that—for all their troubles—remain essential engines of the American economy. This rethink must, necessarily, recognize that the era in which Washington can neglect American cities and expect the American economy to survive unscathed is finished.

The headlines from Detroit tell us as much.

But it’s not just the Motor City.

Detroit is in the news because of Snyder’s move. But Detroit is not alone—not in a country where more than 80 percent of Americans now live in urban areas, and where communities from California to Alabama are wrestling with bankruptcy processes.

Michigan Governor Snyder has targeted Michigan cities outside Detroit for state-imposed austerity, using an “emergency manager” law that he reworked and reinstated even after Michigan voters scrapped a similar measure in a 2012 statewide referendum vote. Beyond Michigan, in states across the country, major cities teeter on the brink of insolvency.

No one suggests that officials in Detroit or Saginaw or Flint—or the other struggling American cities—did everything right.

But only the most deliberately disengaged commentator would imagine Washington to be blame-free in all this. America’s urban communities—and many not-so-urban communities—have for decades been battered by free-trade policies that foster deindustrialization, by tax policies that encourage offshoring, by all the missteps and misdeeds of Congress and successive presidents.

Washington did plenty to create the crisis. Yet, as Michigan Congressman Dan Kildee notes, “For too long lawmakers and regulators have stood aside as cities grapple with budget deficits, unfunded pensions and crumbling infrastructure.”

Kildee, a Democrat who served as Genesee County (Flint) Treasurer and CEO of the Genesee Land Bank before his election to Congress, is urging Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to work with Congress to address what the congressman warns—correctly—is “the systemic failure of U.S. cities.”

“I would ask if you would think about how you would advise Congress or how the Fed itself might pursue policy that would have the effect of potentially avoiding—but certainly mitigating—the economic effect of municipal financial failure,” Kildee told Bernanke at a House Financial Services Committee last week.

Since his election to Congress in 2012, Kildee has been warning Washington that the crisis faced by cities extends far beyond the headline-grabbing troubles faced by Detroit.

“In my work across the country, this is something much bigger than a failure of management, but a structural failure,” the congressman argues. “Cities failing will be a national problem, one way or another, and I suggest perhaps at a different juncture we might pursue some thought about how the federal government might intervene.”

The “rethink” that Kildee proposes is rooted in an understanding that failing cities undermine the states in which they are located—and the nation as a whole. And, he argues, there are ways to intervene.

“Our system of municipal finance is broken. States and the federal government need to rethink the way they support cities and metropolitan areas,” explains Kildee. “For example, community development block grant programs, which Republicans in Congress have proposed cutting by over 40 percent, is the wrong approach that would be damaging the vitality of many U.S. cities, in some cases even exacerbating their decline. It’s time that we start thinking about the long-term sustainability and funding mechanism for cities and suburban areas that are the powerhouse engines of our economy.”

Kildee’s not alone in stepping up. He’s one of the newest members of Congress, but in the struggle to aid Detroit, he’s joined by one of the senior members: Congressman John Conyers, who has represented the Detroit area since the mid-1960s.

Conyers warned long ago that free-trade policies would devastate American cities, and he’s been a steady advocate for investment in urban America. But now, he says, Congress needs to recognize and respond to the risks that arise when municipalities are in crisis.

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While Kildee is prodding Bernanke to engage, Conyers wants the House Judiciary Committee to examine “the increasing use of Chapter 9 bankruptcy by municipalities and other jurisdictions facing financial distress and the ramifications such bankruptcy filings are having on impacted jurisdictions and the nation as a whole.”

In particular, Conyers is interested in examining the role that financial distress and bankruptcy pressures play in assaulting pension rights and in hastening the privatization of essential public services. As Conyers notes, the pressure to privatize is often at odds with the public interest in transparency and the long-term stability of communities.

There are already plenty of politicians stepping up to say what Washington can’t do in response not just to Detroit’s needs but also to those of hundreds of cities and counties nationwide. But that’s austerity talking, not common sense. Common sense says that the federal government, which has played a part in undermining the economic prospects of American cities, needs to start playing a useful role.

No matter what that role is, there will be those who call it a “bailout.” In reality, it’s a smart investment not just in cities but also in the American people. After all, as Congressman Kildee reminds us, “While you can dissolve a corporation through bankruptcy, you cannot simply ‘dissolve’ a place where hundreds of thousands of people live, work and raise their families.”

John Nichols and Bob McChesney are the authors of Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America (Nation Books). US Senator Bernie Sanders writes: “With this book, John Nichols and Bob McChesney invite Americans to examine the challenges facing America in new ways, and to fully recognize the threat that the combination of big money and big media poses to the promise of self-government. They paint a daunting picture, rich in detail based on intense reporting and groundbreaking research. But they do not offer us a pessimistic take. Rather, they call us, as Tom Paine did more than two centuries ago, to turn knowledge into power. And they tell us that we can and must respond to our contemporary challenges as a nation by rejecting the Dollarocracy and renewing our commitment to democracy.”

Are Governor Rick Snyder's actions in Detroit an "affront to democracy" or merely tough but necessary decisions?

A mother and child sit on the beach on Belle Isle in Detroit, Friday, Sept. 21, 2012. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Recalling the partial meltdown of a nearby nuclear power plant a decade earlier, and a book that revealed the extent of the crisis, Gil Scott Heron sang in 1977, “We Almost Lost Detroit.”

The city survived, and remains home to 700,000 Americans and the symbolic center of the nation’s auto industry. But after decades of neglect by federal and state officials, and a meltdown of American manufacturing, Detroit is facing exceptionally hard economic times.

Detroit is up against plenty of threats. But the most pressing political threat over the past several months has come from a Republican governor who seeks to impose his will on a city that did not choose him or his austerity agenda.

On Thursday afternoon, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder made his move.

And the notion that the people who live in America’s great cities must govern their own affairs took a huge hit.

Snyder, the Republican who led the charge for Michigan’s enactment of an anti-labor “right-to-work” law last year, announced that he had approved legal steps to steer the state’s largest city toward bankruptcy. He made no bones about who was in charge, declaring in a statement attached to the bankruptcy filing that “I’m making this tough decision…”

Earlier this year, the governor engineered a state-driven takeover of Detroit that disempowered the elected mayor and city council and gave authority over decisions about the city’s finances, service delivery and direction to an appointed “emergency manager.”

On Thursday afternoon, Snyder signed off on the filing of paperwork seeking Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. On Friday, a Michigan judge ordered Snyder's emergency manager to withdraw the federal bankruptcy petition. Ingham County Circuit Court Judge Rosemarie Aquilina's order declared the 2012 Michigan law that allowed Snyder to approve the city's bankruptcy filing violated the state Constitution. Michigan's Republican attorney general immediately announced that he would appeal the ruling, and analysts warned that federal bankruptcy law often trumps state protections.

The legal wrangling will go on for months, perhaps years.

If the bankruptcy court eventually accepts the argument presented by Snyder and his emergency manager, Detroit will become the largest American city to enter bankruptcy. It will, as well, be the largest American city in the recent history of the republic to take such a dramatic step without following the basic practices and procedures of democratic governance.

To be sure, Detroit faces serious financial challenges. It has huge debts, high unemployment and tough prospects as a historic industrial city in an age of deindustrialization. It suffers from the broad neglect of urban America by federal officials who are so disengaged that, on Thursday, Congressman Dan Kildee, D-Michigan, complained in a stinging letter to Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, “For too long, lawmakers and regulators have stood aside as cities grapple with budget deficits, unfunded pensions and crumbling infrastructure.”

Detroit’s economic challenges are not unique.

What is distinct about Detroit is the denial of democracy.

No matter how tough things get, most American cities face their challenges under the direction of local officials who take their cues from voters. When officials fail to act, or act inappropriately, they are replaced by the ballot. Sometimes, in emergency situations, they are recalled and removed from office in order to make way for necessary changes.

But the voters still call the shots.

That’s how it is supposed to be in America.

There is an understanding at the federal level of American governance that the people who make essential decisions about federal policy should be elected.

There is an understanding at the state level of American governance that the people who make essential decisions about state policy should be elected.

In most of the country, there is an understanding at the municipal level of American governance that the people who make essential decisions about municipal policy should be elected.

But that’s not what’s happening in Detroit or other cities that have been targeted by Snyder for “emergency management.”

Under the authority that Snyder took upon himself to disempower local elected officials and replace them with his appointees, the governor and his “managers” are making the essential decisions. In Detroit, Snyder has pursued a bankruptcy designation that city officials, residents and representatives of current and retired public employees sought to avoid. And he used a concocted law that a judge has now rejected as unconstitutional.

Snyder's bankruptcy push provoked anger in Detroit, where the Rev. Charles Williams II of the city’s Historic King Solomon Baptist Church, declared, “The emergency manager and Governor Snyder failed. Emergency management was supposed to keep us from going into bankruptcy.”

The emergency manager, Washington, DC, bankruptcy lawyer Kevyn Orr, sought to develop a restructuring plan. But unions representing city workers and retirees objected that he did not make a serious effort to consult with stakeholders. “Governor Snyder’s plan to suspend democracy, drive one of America’s largest cities into bankruptcy and deprive workers of their hard-earned retirement security, moved dangerously closer to reality today when without a single negotiation with unions, workers or retirees, Snyder authorized Detroit’s financial manager to file for bankruptcy,” said American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees national president Lee Saunders.

If the bankruptcy process initiated by the governor and his appointee were to go forward, critics of Snyder's move warn that Detroit could face austerity cuts on public services, policies established by the voters and their elected representatives could be rejected and contracts with unions representing municipal employees could be torn up.

There is, as well, the real prospect of a widespread bartering of Detroit’s assets in a frenzy that could privatize waterfront recreation facilities and public utilities.

But protesters, hundreds of whom occupied Detroit’s city hall just last week, are most concerned about the impact of an imposed austerity agenda on retirees, the disabled and young people. “It’s an affront to democracy,” the Rev. David Bullock, who leads the Change Agent Consortium, a Detroit activist group, says of the process. “There’s got to be a better way to fix Detroit without [cutting aid and services for] the most vulnerable citizens.”

That affront to democracy has been deeply felt, and much discussed in Detroit.

When Snyder was in the process of naming his emergency manager, Detroit City Council member Ken Cockrel Jr. explained that “strong, independent-minded [citizens who] want to help the city” by seeking and holding local elected positions have every reason to ask, “Why should I run for public office in the city of Detroit if the only thing I’m going to have the authority to do is pass out resolutions and kiss babies because an [emergency manager] is the one calling all the shots?”

In April, Cockrel announced that he would not seek a new term.

Snyder has moved by fiat to do what he and his political allies could not do at the polls: take charge of local government in Michigan’s largest city. In the 2012 election, Democrat Barack Obama received 98 percent of the almost 300,000 votes cast in Detroit, while Republican Mitt Romney took just over 2 percent. No Republican contender for federal, state or local office won more than 6 percent of the vote in a city where African-Americans make up 83 percent of the population and Latinos account for roughly 7 percent.

Yet now, a Republican governor is setting the city’s agenda as part of a statewide power grab. After Snyder’s takeover of Detroit’s affairs, it was estimated that almost 50 percent of Michigan’s African-American population resides in communities that are run not be local elected officials but by gubernatorial appointees.

Michigan’s citizens rejected Snyder’s approach last fall, voting in a statewide referendum to scrap the emergency-manager law. But Snyder and the Republican legislature turned around and wrote new legislation that gives the governor authority to—in the words of state Representative Rose Mary Robinson, a Detroit Democrat—make moves “without debate, without democratic involvement, without the people’s involvement.”

Detroit is not just Michigan’s largest city. It has, for more than a century, been one of America’s great urban centers. And the governor’s moves over the past several months have drawn national notice.

“In this particular case, you have to in some degree look at it as a hostile takeover,” David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political Studies, said earlier this year. A veteran scholar of urban affairs who has tracked the rise of African-American elected officials in America, Bositis argues that “Detroit is a very Democratic city and it’s being taken over by a very Republican and conservative state government.”

Snyder says his takeover is necessary because—like many great industrial cities that have lost the factories that provided employment and tax revenues—Detroit’s finances are in rough shape. Everyone understands the challenges Detroit faces. Everyone understands that, as in other municipalities across the country, it is possible to point to some of Detroit’s past leaders and say that they made ill-thought and self-serving choices that undermined the city and its finances. And everyone understands that current officials have had a very hard time grappling with the issues that arise when a debt-burdened city’s tax base is disappearing.

But what Snyder does not mention is that the state he runs has played a role in Detroit’s decline by withholding financial assistance that is due to the city. While the federal government has neglected the challenges faced by cities that are drowning in debt, Michigan government has refused to toss available lifelines. The Detroit News has noted the anger of the city’s elected representatives over the failure to provide more than $220 million in revenue-sharing payments.

The money was supposed to be paid to the city after it capped income tax rates. Yet, even as Detroit’s economic circumstance worsened, Snyder refused to provide the needed assistance.

“Why not give the city its revenue sharing?” asked State Representative Brian Banks, a Democrat whose district takes in a portion of Detroit’s northeast side. “Why not start giving a portion of it?”

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“The governor won’t admit that the state is culpable in why and how Detroit has got here,” State Senator Bert Johnson, a Detroit-area Democrat, told the News. “If you cut revenue sharing, you cut money for the Police Department that has to manage the 139 square miles that is Detroit.”

Disputes between Michigan and Detroit over state aid are nothing new. But the state’s hard line has left the city vulnerable. And there’s plenty of grumbling in Detroit about the prospect that, as is so often the case in austerity moments, valuable public assets will be sold off at bargain-basement prices to private interests.

For all the hits it takes in the media, Detroit is a city with significant properties, including Belle Isle, a 982-acre island park in the Detroit River, which is managed by the Detroit Recreation Department. It’s got public utilities, such as the Detroit Department of Water and Sewerage. As the Metropolitan AFL-CIO has noted, the governor has created a circumstance that could lead to a rapid selling off of assets that benefits buyers living outside Detroit while making the community “less livable.”

All of this, from the appointment of the emergency manager to the bankruptcy filing to the austerity agency that is now increasingly likely to be implemented, will happen without the approval of the voters or their elected representatives.

This is a fundamental issue.

In tough times, under pressure from lenders and taxpayers, cities often make cuts. They even privatize services and sell off public facilities.

But under Snyder’s emergency manager law, Detroit’s voters and their elected leaders aren’t making the choices that will determine Detroit's direction.

A Republican governor, and his appointed manager, are calling the shots.

This is not what the voters of Detroit asked for. Last fall, they had an opportunity to vote on whether the state should maintain the emergency manager law. 82 percent of Detroit residents voted “no.”

“When times are tough,” local union officials said in a statement released after the governor announced in March that he was appointing his emergency manager, “it is especially important that decisions are made democratically and locally.”

That’s a basic American principle that Governor Snyder has abandoned with a power grab that should unsettle Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. What’s been happening in Detroit is not what democracy looks like.

John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney are the authors of Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America (The Nation). Naomi Klein says, “John Nichols and Bob McChesney make a compelling, and terrifying, case that American democracy is becoming American dollarocracy. Even more compelling, and hopeful, is their case for a radical reform agenda to take power back from the corporations and give it to the people.”

As Congress decides whether or not to resurrect the heart of the Voting Rights Act, Republicans in North Carolina are pushing a harsh new voter ID law.