Financial Martial Law in Wisconsin, Too?

[Modern School]

According to Forbes magazine, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his cronies are drafting legislation that would allow him to appoint emergency managers who could cancel union contracts, fire elected officials and school board members, and take control of entire cities and towns. Rick Unger, who wrote the piece, said that the plan is being written by the largest law firm in the state, Foley & Lardner, and is scheduled to be introduced to the legislature next month.

Walker went on the radio yesterday to deny the report, asserting that it was “absolutely bogus.” He denied that he or anyone in his office ever did or said or planned anything like this, which leaves open the possibility that Foley & Lardner are indeed working on such a plan, and that Walker is simply making a stab at plausible deniability. Unger’s source, a Wisconsin political organizer named Nate Timm, refused to name his source for this information, but had confirmed that he received his information from a “highly placed GOP source” who was in a position to know the governor’s plans.

If true, Wisconsin’s plan would be very similar to the financial martial law plan enacted in Michigan earlier this year, where Governor Snyder has already appointed an Emergency Financial Manager, Joseph Harris, to take over the town of Benton Harbor. One of Harris’ first acts as Manager was to issue an order stripping away all powers from the city’s elected officials. Erik Kain, another Forbes writer, said that the Michigan and Wisconsin plans followed a pattern of similar legislation being pushed through in other Tea-Party controlled states enacting strikingly similar legislation all at the same time across the country.

Modern School
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/

[jemelanson]

1. yes, it is happening and no matter how they spin it, it still smells

bad. as an article in CommonDreams.org calls it

Corporate Coup d’état Coming Soon to a City Near You

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/20-5


Published on Wednesday, April 20, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Corporate Coup d’état Coming Soon to a City Near You
by Rania Khalek
In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein demonstrates how wealthy elites often use times of crisis and chaos to impose unpopular policies that restructure economies and political systems to further advance their interests. She calls these orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities, “disaster capitalism.”

Disaster capitalism is on display around the country, as legislators use the debt crisis afflicting their states as an opportunity to hollow out the public sector. In Michigan it’s being packaged as “emergency financial management” by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who is looking to exploit an economic crisis that has left his state with a severe budget deficit. In March, Snyder signed a law granting state-appointed emergency financial managers (EFM) the ability to fire local elected officials, break teachers’ and public workers’ contracts, seize and sell assets, and eliminate services, entire cities or school districts, all without any public input. He claims these dictatorial restructuring powers will keep Michigan communities out of bankruptcy.



It smells bad and it is bad. It is already being brought before courts in MI as to its constitutionality according to the State Law of MI. This is not going to be nice or pleasant and you know that the Koch Brothers have their fingerprints all over it.