{"id":43874,"date":"2015-06-09T14:00:31","date_gmt":"2015-06-09T18:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/?p=43874"},"modified":"2015-06-09T14:00:31","modified_gmt":"2015-06-09T18:00:31","slug":"magical-mystery-tour-of-american-austerity-how-one-state-is-destroying-democracy-and-poisoning-its-people-alternet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/2015\/06\/magical-mystery-tour-of-american-austerity-how-one-state-is-destroying-democracy-and-poisoning-its-people-alternet\/","title":{"rendered":"Magical Mystery Tour of American Austerity: How One State Is Destroying Democracy and Poisoning Its People | Alternet"},"content":{"rendered":"

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One city neglected to inform its residents that its water supply was laced with cancerous chemicals. Another dissolved its public school district and replaced it with a charter school system, only to witness the for-profit management company it hired flee the scene after determining it couldn\u2019t turn a profit. Numerous cities and school districts in the state are now run by single, state-appointed technocrats, as permitted under an emergency financial manager law pushed through by Rick Snyder, Michigan\u2019s austerity-promoting governor. This legislation not only strips residents of their local voting rights, but gives Snyder\u2019s appointee the power to do just about anything, including dissolving the city itself — all (no matter how disastrous) in the name of \u201cfiscal responsibility.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you\u2019re thinking, “Who cares?” since what happens in Michigan stays in Michigan, think again. The state\u2019s aggressive balance-the-books style of governance has already spread beyond its borders. In January, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie appointed bankruptcy lawyer and former Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr to be a \u201clegal adviser\u201d to Atlantic City. The\u00a0Detroit Free Press\u00a0described\u00a0the move as \u201ca state takeover similar to Gov. Rick Snyder’s state intervention in the Motor City.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this spring, amid the hullabaloo of Republicans entering the 2016 presidential race, Governor Snyder launched his own national tour to\u00a0sell\u00a0\u201cthe Michigan story to the rest of the country.\u201d His trip was funded by a nonprofit (fed, naturally, by undisclosed donations) named \u201cMaking Government Accountable: The Michigan Story.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To many Michiganders, this sounded as ridiculous as Jeb Bush launching a super PAC dubbed “Making Iraq Free: The Bush Family Story.\u201d\u00a0 Except Snyder wasn\u2019t planning to enter the presidential rat race. Instead, he was attempting to mainstream Michigan\u2019s form of austerity politics and its signature emergency management legislation, which stripped\u00a0more than halfof the state\u2019s African American residents of their local voting rights in 2013 and 2014.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the governor jaunted around the country, Ann Arbor-based photographer Eduardo Garc\u00eda and I decided to set out on what we thought of as our own two-week Magical Michigan Tour. And while we weren\u2019t driving a specially outfitted psychedelic tour bus — we spent most of the trip in my grandmother\u2019s 2005 Prius — our journey was nevertheless remarkably surreal. From the southwest banks of Lake Michigan to the eastern tips of the peninsula, we crisscrossed the state visiting more than half a dozen cities to see if there was another side to the governor\u2019s story and whether Michigan really was, as one Detroit resident put it, \u201ca massive experiment in unraveling U.S. democracy.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Source: Magical Mystery Tour of American Austerity<\/a><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One city neglected to inform its residents that its water supply was laced with cancerous chemicals. Another dissolved its public school district and replaced it with a charter school system, only to witness the for-profit management company it hired flee the scene after determining it couldn\u2019t turn a profit. Numerous cities and school districts in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,1628,257,5,17,22,7],"tags":[183,165,83,611],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43874"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43874"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43879,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43874\/revisions\/43879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}