Beginning of the End?

Over at National Review Online, there's an article by Michael Auslin on Michigan's Emergency Manager law.

According to the law, when the elected representatives of a school district or city government entity bankrupt their city or school, the state appoints an "Emergency Manager".  Once that happens, the Emergency Manager has fairly broad powers and (according to this article), can:

An emergency manager can:

• Hire/fire local government employees
• Renegotiate, terminate, modify labor contracts with state treasury approval
• Sell, lease, or privatize local assets with state treasury approval
• Revise contract obligations
• Change local budgets without local legislative approval
• Initiate municipal bankruptcy proceedings
• Hire support staff

He can't raise taxes, but he can do pretty much anything else without regard to the local taxpayers or citizens.  The only check is that his actions must be approved by officials at the state's treasury department - the same folks that appoint the Emergency Manager.  According to the same article, Emergency Managers of cities are appointed for as long as the state thinks they're needed but Emergency Managers of school districts have to be re-appointed every year.

This is not a good precedent, not at all.  Auslin's warnings are well founded.  It is, I think, the intention of Obama and the Alinskyites he surrounds himself with (Bill Ayers?) to intentionally make things sufficiently bad that we will be willing to accept these kinds of "Emergency Managers".  California, for instance, is going bankrupt.  There will be tremendous pressure to bail them out when it happens.  Congress and the President will want control if they're going to provide that bailout, the same way they took over GM and Chrysler, AIG, and other financial institutions a couple years ago.  Sure, it'll just be for an "emergency", but if the history of such "emergency" dictators is any indication, they seem to find a way to make the emergency last forever.  

This is precisely how Germany lost its freedom and ended up with National Socialism in 1933.  This is how Russia ended up with Lenin in 1917.  Remember Pinochet in Chile?  Same thing.  Chavez in Venezuela?  Yup, same thing.  Better to weather these storms on our own than to surrender our liberty, or as Ben Franklin reputedly said, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."