OCCUPY PROTEST AT SNYDER'S HOUSE?

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There is a lot being written about Detroit and its financial travails and many columnists, black and white, have been dancing around the issues of incompetence, corruption and race.

A recent headline caught my eye: CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS PLAN AN “OCCUPY” PROTEST AT SNYDER’S HOME.

Rick Snyder is the governor of Michigan and a very able businessman. He does not have a racist bone in his body and in fact racism per se is a foreign subject to him as he sees spreadsheets and numbers and not people’s skin color.

If a city is in financial distress and close to bankruptcy, the governor appoints an emergency manager (dictator if you will) that will make the decisions necessary to bring the city into financial health and I do mean “all steps necessary” which may include firing elected officials for incompetence, vacating union contracts as unsustainable, selling city assets to raise cash and privatizing city services that are not operated in a fiscally responsible manner.

Yes, these are dictatorial powers but they are also the “last” resort the state has in bringing the city under financial control and I think we all can understand that if we have a just a sliver of economic know-how.

It is true that the cities currently under an emergency manager (Flint, Benton Harbor, Pontiac & Detroit Public Schools) are predominantly black but the charge that the emergency manager law “unfairly” targets predominantly African-American communities is absurd.

If what triggers the emergency manager law for specific communities is solely based on financial reality as demonstrated by actual accounting ledgers, how can it be in any way “unfair”?

The so called Michigan civil rights leaders using race as a weapon against the emergency manager law are mostly Detroit church leaders with some connection to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Push Coalition.

These leaders attempt to somehow justify their protest  by charging that “democracy” is at stake in the state of Michigan and by that they mean that “democratically” elected officials may be fired and replaced by “competent” individuals that are “not democratically elected”, hence “democracy is denied” to the people of Detroit.

Again, technically they are correct, the law appoints a dictator of sorts and that dictator currently is installed in predominantly African-American communities.

Since there are no other options for financially saving these communities except to appoint a financial manager, why are these people protesting and why do they resort to playing the repugnant and unnecessary race card?

Here is where local columnists, especially the well respected black columnists like Rochelle Riley, et.al.,  should attempt to address what is going on and explain why and not be afraid to call it what it is; the use of racism for one’s own benefit.

The way the protest appears to many of us, I am sure, is that this group of so called community leaders has something to lose if and when an emergency manager is appointed to run the city. Since the financial hole the city is in was caused by incompetence and corruption, these same leaders and the people they lead, must have benefited somehow from that status and will lose something, once incompetence and corruption is eliminated from the city administration. That the city has been a gravy train for so many in Detroit is well documented and new revelations of corruption appear practically every day so the above premise is not so far fetched.

My question is why are Detroiters allowing these bozos to mislead the masses in this way and in so doing, harm the city and its residents and make Detroit look like a hopeless cause only fit to be bulldozed over?