I’ve been watch­ing this unfold for a while, and oh boy, this is scary stuff, lemme me tell ya, Dave!

I live in Texas and I’m afraid it could be only a mat­ter of time before we could see the same B.S. unfold­ing here in the Lone Star State.

Take care now, and please, do keep us informed. =)

As a Michi­gan “expat” who was born & raised in Michi­gan, I’d just like to remind the Spit­firelist com­mu­nity of the latent fab­ric of fas­cism that has gained strength in Michi­gan since the 1960s:

(1) The mys­te­ri­ous death of labor leader Wal­ter Reuther (see FTR #18, The Death of Wal­ter Reuther), fol­lowed by the Latin American-style polit­i­cal “dis­ap­pear­ance” of Jimmy Hoffa.

(2) The home of Black­wa­ter founder & CEO Erik Prince. Although Prince no longer lives in Michi­gan, his fam­ily back­ground & fam­ily ties are con­nected to Michi­gan pol­i­tics, includ­ing in-laws Dick DeVos & the bil­lion­aire, ultra-right-wing DeVos fam­ily. Prince, it is often over­looked, interned for George H. W. Bush after drop­ping out of the Navy & attend­ing the ultra-right-wing Hills­dale Col­lege in Hills­dale, Michi­gan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_devos

(3) Other far-right nota­bles include Tom Mon­aghan, founder & owner of Domino’s Pizza. Mon­aghan is a fas­cist of the ultra­right Roman Catholic vari­ety. Dur­ing the past decade, Mon­aghan has poured mil­lions of dol­lars into cre­at­ing a Fan­tasy Reich “Catholic town” in Florida called “Ave Maria, Florida” where he attempted to estab­lish a “Catholic Bib­li­cal code of munic­i­pal law” that attempted to supercede Florida laws (what few there are), includ­ing build­ing codes. Mon­aghan main­tains polit­i­cal influ­ence in Michi­gan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_Maria,_Florida

(4) Michi­gan has a vibrant “mili­tia move­ment” that includes such note­wor­thy spawn as Tim­o­thy McVeigh & the more recent “Huta­ree Mili­tia” that was busted in 2009 in a half-assed plot to attack Michi­gan police: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutaree

(5) The Michi­gan State Police depart­ment has some fas­cist ideas of their own, includ­ing some Ashcroft-style ideas about the 4th Amend­ment, involv­ing cap­tur­ing motorists’ cell phone data with­out any arrest or prob­a­ble cause: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20055431–1.html

Michi­gan police have been put into a “siege men­tal­ity” dur­ing the past two years by var­i­ous con­tro­ver­sies pit­ting police against cit­i­zens & an ambush-style mass-shooting at a Detroit police precinct (not related to the Huta­ree Mili­tia plan noted above).

Dear­born, Michi­gan, it should also be noted, is home to the largest U.S. Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion & Mid­dle East­ern immi­grant pop­u­la­tion, attract­ing spe­cial FBI & “Home­land Secu­rity” atten­tion over the past decade.

All in all, a recipe for estab­lish­ing a beach­head for grass­roots munic­i­pal U.S. fas­cism, or paving the way for a 9/11/1973 Chilean-style mil­i­tary coup with local controls.

It’s also inter­est­ing that what amounts to the Michi­gan “Enabling Act” and “state seizure” of local com­mu­nity assets and “nul­li­fi­ca­tion of elec­tions” (which would seem to vio­late the Vot­ing Rights Act & other Civil Rights laws) have attracted NO ACTION or even ANY COMMENT from national-level Demo­c­ra­tic Party “lead­ers” — con­firm­ing my sus­pi­cion that a Vichy estab­lish­ment of many, many Dodd-style Tro­jan Horses (or box­ing “ringers” paid to throw fights) are help­ing to smooth the powergrab.

1919 Chicago Black Sox?

The semi-vigilant (albeit tainted by its CIA-connected founder) web­site Daily Kos has many con­trib­u­tors who are post­ing infor­ma­tive arti­cles per­tain­ing to the Michi­gan “Emer­gency Pow­ers Coup”:

“Michi­gan Gov­er­nor Seeks Emer­gency Pow­ers” cov­ers an overview of the omi­nous scope of GOP ambi­tion in their “Enabling Act”:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/08/954169/-Michigan-Governor-Seeks-Emergency-Powers

An April 20 arti­cle describes Detroit Police being used by Gov­er­nor Snyder’s “EFM” Hench­man to arrest school­teach­ers, par­ents & chil­dren in a har­bin­ger of a U.S. post-Obama future, where resis­tance to RapePub­li­can “eco­nomic solu­tions” will not be tolerated:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/08/954169/-Michigan-Governor-Seeks-Emergency-Powers

Cor­rec­tion:

Sorry, sec­ond link on post above should be this:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/19/968307/-EFM-Takeover-Of-Detroit-Schools:Teen-Mothers-Arrested,-Children-taken-Into-Temporary-Custody

@R.Wilson: you seem pretty knowl­edge­able of this case. I just won­der if, to your atten­tion, this coup d’état in dis­guise, or at the sec­ond degree, in Michi­gan has been planned or man­u­fac­tured in cohe­sion with the attack on the unions in Wis­con­sin. The two things are hap­pen­ing simul­ta­ne­ously and are going in the same direc­tion. It cer­tainly looks like it does. What is your take?

@Claude: Cer­tainly, in my opin­ion, Michi­gan, Wis­con­sin & Ohio are pilot pro­grams for a local­ized sup­port struc­ture for a 1973-Chile-style mil­i­tary coup. I hope Dave does a show on the Great Lakes states’ coup (all 3 are Great Lakes states).

I believe there is plenty of evi­dence (much of which Dave has cov­ered, as well as other com­mon­place his­tory such as Grover Norquist’s “Starve-The-Beast” plans) for net­work­ing, col­lu­sion, and far-sighted sys­tem­atic dis­man­tling of demo­c­ra­tic insti­tu­tions & infra­struc­ture, and this is sim­ply the next phase: a roll­out of bottom-up grass­roots total­i­tar­i­an­ism which will sup­ple­ment the top-down coup.

If you haven’t read it, get Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doc­trine” & Naomi Wolf’s “The End of Amer­ica” to read what comes next in the total­i­tar­ian blue­print that is being fol­lowed very pre­dictably in Michi­gan, Wis­con­sin & Ohio.

The dif­fer­ences between those three states are merely tai­lored to suit the judi­cial (and extra­ju­di­cial) “needs” which would be required to exter­mi­nate unions & demo­c­ra­tic safe­guards in each respec­tive state ... OR, in addi­tion, to estab­lish three dif­fer­ent prece­dents & paths to total­i­tar­i­an­ism. But there’s noth­ing ad hoc about it; recall the case of Don Siegel­man, or the fir­ing of the U.S. fed­eral attor­neys (Carol Lam, et al). There’s prima facie evi­dence for a sys­tem­atic overthrow.

Hitler abol­ished unions on May 2, 1933, and the attack on unions is not lim­ited to Wis­con­sin, but is tak­ing place in other forms in Michi­gan & Ohio. Herr Sny­der in Michi­gan has sim­ply directed his “EFM“s (“Emer­gency Finan­cial Man­agers”) to sim­ply dis­re­gard & nul­lify any exist­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agreements.

I’m not sure if Dave has ever men­tioned the com­ments of Rep. Marcy Kap­tur (D-OH) made in Michael Moore’s film “Cap­i­tal­ism: A Love Story”, in which she alludes to a Deep State plot when she says that (para­phras­ing) ‘there was some­thing very strange in the pre­ci­sion tim­ing & orga­ni­za­tion of events’ of the 2008 eco­nomic melt­down. She lit­er­ally says that “it was like an intel­li­gence operation”.

I believe that a detailed study of the take­down of the Weimar Repub­lic would be well-supplemented by a detailed study of the 1973 Chilean coup, the 1977 Argen­tine coup, & the 1980 Boli­vian coup. There are par­al­lels espe­cially between 1970–73 Chile & the U.S. since 2008.

First, the Engi­neer Wrecks The Train. What comes next is cov­ered in “The Shock Doc­trine” & “End of Amer­ica”. And through­out “For The Record” & AFA.

Paul Krug­man (in the fore­word of his book “The Great Unrav­el­ling”) quotes Henry Kissinger:

“Those who warn against the dan­ger in time are con­sid­ered alarmists; those who coun­sel adap­ta­tion to cir­cum­stance are con­sid­ered bal­anced and sane. But it is the essence of a rev­o­lu­tion­ary power that it is will­ing, indeed eager, to push its prin­ci­ples to their ulti­mate conclusion.”

from a recent arti­cle in Forbes magazine...

A well known polit­i­cal player in Wis­con­sin, Ed Gar­vey, is report­ing that Scott Walker is now prepar­ing his next assault on the demo­c­ra­tic polit­i­cal process in the State of Wisconsin.

Fol­low­ing the lead of Michi­gan GOP Gov­er­nor Rick Sny­der, Walker is said to be prepar­ing a plan that would allow him to force local gov­ern­ments to sub­mit to a finan­cial stress test with an eye towards per­mit­ting the gov­er­nor to take over munic­i­pal­i­ties that fail to meet with Walker’s approval.

Accord­ing to the reports, should a locality’s finan­cial posi­tion come up short, the Walker leg­is­la­tion would empower the gov­er­nor to insert a finan­cial man­ager of his choos­ing into local gov­ern­ment with the abil­ity to can­cel union con­tracts, push aside duly elected local gov­ern­ment offi­cials and school board mem­bers and take con­trol of Wis­con­sin cities and towns when­ever he sees fit to do so.

Such a law would addi­tion­ally give Walker unchal­lenged power to end munic­i­pal ser­vices of which he dis­ap­proves, includ­ing safety net assis­tance to those in need.

Accord­ing to my sources, the plan is being writ­ten by the legal offices of Foley & Lard­ner, the largest law firm in the state, and is sched­uled to be intro­duced to the leg­is­la­ture in May of this
year.