A crowd of hundreds chants outside the Michigan Capitol building, demanding the resignation of Governor Snyder as he steps up to the microphone to deliver his sixth state of the state address. In past years he has stood with some certainty amidst a hall of gerrymandered cronies, this year is different.
Flint Michigan has been poisoned. The past few months have seen an explosion of rage roll over Michigan, prompting petitions, protests, and backpedaling from the governor. After months of public denials, FOIA requests, and independent testing, Governor Rick Snyder has been dragged into the public eye. Now he stands before us: his jaw set, face blank, his voice tight with the quiet desperation of a sinking politician. Thousands of people, many of them children, will suffer with the results of his governance for the rest of their lives.
But the tragedy of Flint is not just that this tragedy was avoidable; it’s that this crisis was the predictable result of an ideology and a system that value private profitability more than the people of Michigan.
In 2009 Snyder, an Ann Arbor businessman, campaigned as a moderate Republican who would pursue common sense solutions to the huge problems facing Michigan. At the time this message certainly resonated with millions of Michiganders. Our shrinking state revenues, a declining jobs market, and struggling cities did not offer much in the way of hope.
And so, many of us put our trust in a man who promised to, “Run Michigan like a business,” through, “Relentless positive action.” Since his election he certainly has been relentless, though positive has been debatable. However, unlike many politicians, Governor Snyder has followed through on his campaign promises. He has run Michigan as though our state were a business.
For more than 60 years, but particularly since the start of the 1980’s, businesses and the free market have been held up as the keys to progress, while the wealthy have been honored as job creating leaders of our nation. While there are many flaws to this ideology (both theoretically and historically), its modern political expression can be found in Snyder’s promise of, “Running the state like a business.”
Businesses are concerned, above all else, with the maximization of profit. They generally focus on limiting costs, while offering the maximum utility to consumers, thereby trying to sell the most goods/services for the cheapest price. They are not concerned with fighting racism, sexism, or homophobia, in fact many businesses have profited for years by manipulating these tendencies within our white dominated society. Decision making power in a business is limited to owners or investors, generally based on how much money they invest; democracy is a limited and expensive commodity.
In many ways these are the values that Governor Snyder has brought to Michigan’s government. However this analogy isn’t perfect. As a rule businesses constantly seek to increase their bottom line, in contrast Snyder’s government has consistently cut state revenue. Slashing the tax burden of the rich, while certainly popular with political donors, seems antithetical both to the idea of “running the state like a business,” and the need for balanced budgets.
This contradiction reveals the true nature of Snyder and his ideology: Michigan’s government is not just being run “like” a business, it’s being run for businesses.
Or to be precise it’s being run in the interests of massive wealthy corporate and private entities. People like Dick Devos, Dan Gilbert, and the Illitch family, who want a safe profitable business environment, and if at all possible for the people of Michigan to subsidize their expanding profits.
From a business perspective, the government of Michigan is in competition with other states to offer the most attractive place for the wealthy to invest their money at the lowest cost/risk. As a result of this, investors, the individuals with the most weight in a market economy, are valued more than other citizens (not to mention they make slightly larger campaign contributions).The mission of the state becomes to reduce barriers to investment, offer tax breaks to businesses, and cut programs that spend tax revenue while not contributing directly to private sector profitability, all of which create a more profitable space for investors. This logic has been applied throughout the Snyder years, and has radically transformed Michigan to benefit a few wealthy individuals.
You’ll notice that nowhere in this is the wellbeing of the vast majority of the population considered. There is an implicit assumption in capitalism that greater investment and expanding profit margins will translate to improved living standards, but not only is this assumption frequently false, but popular concerns are repeatedly swept aside in the name of protecting a few individuals private wealth. The economy, rather than being a tool for human development becomes a justification for subjugation and oppression; an altar upon which Michigan’s health, education, and security are sacrificed.
One of the central campaigns of Snyder’s tenure has been a sustained attack on organized labor. The passage of Right to Work, attacks on public sector unions, and moves to outlaw local prevailing wage laws, have all put workers on the defensive. To potential investors this shows the government’s dedication to ensuring low labor costs and a willingness to place private profitability over Michigan residents’ well-being.
Michigan cities have long been a source of working class and black power, both of which have helped check corporate influence, and so we have seen a wave of state actions against urban centers. The Emergency Financial Managers’ reorganization of Detroit, Flint, Benton Harbor, and other Michigan cities along neoliberal lines has been a hallmark of the Snyder years. In the name of budgetary balance EFM’s have worked to break the power of residents in these black urban centers: through expulsion, degradation, or impoverishment. Pensions are lowered, services cut, and houses repossessed, not because this is in the best interests of the people of these cities, but to prepare the ground for a new wave of “development” free from the threat of collective resistance.
Democracy in general has been reduced to a thin veil in Michigan, to be pushed aside when it threatens the profitability of business interests. In addition to EFM’s at work in our cities, we have seen a wave of gerrymandering and laws to make voting more unnecessarily complicated and difficult. These measures disproportionally affect low income communities of color, driving turnout and access for some of the most progressive voters and traditionally marginalized communities. Statewide ballot initiatives and petitioning drives, have also been repeatedly subverted or ignored by the administration. Snyder’s government employs the language of democracy in a piecemeal fashion when it serves the wealthy, but otherwise seeks to limit popular participation.
All of this has been accompanied by ongoing cuts to state sponsored education, transportation, and services like municipal water treatment. Many of these collective issues are recast as private concerns: to be paid out of pocket by individuals. When they can’t be cut entirely, programs are often re-organized and “made more efficient”, as the Financial Manager of Flint did when he attempted to save the money by drawing water from their river. In either case the justifications are budgetary, but the beneficiaries are the wealthy taxpayers and business interests in Michigan.
However while the Snyder administration and its legislative supporters have slashed the budget, and cut services, there is still an important role for the state is supporting businesses. From the perspective of the wealthy it is not enough for the state to negate it’s social mission, it must also subsidize and provide services for the needs of private businesses. Large public costs like road infrastructure or prisons, that would be too expensive for businesses to fund privately must be supported. Furthermore the state becomes a tool for wealth redistribution, forcibly removing resources and property from the poor and redistributing them to wealthy private interests. The Detroit Bankruptcy while billed as a grand bargain functioned very much like this, protecting the investments of already wealthy companies and stripping many poor citizens of their pensions, homes and voice.
Flint’s water crisis stands out as a heinous crime and a botched attempted cover up. However, a crisis like this was always at the end of the road Snyder’s government put us on: when our government is run, “like a business,” and in the interests of the wealthy, the actual people of Michigan get sold out.
Today there are millions of poor and working people in our state who have suffered at the hands of Snyder’s government. For some it comes in the shape of declining wages, for others a stolen pension or home; in the form of a lost sense of security or in the long economic strain that can break apart families. Things just like the Flint crisis continue to happen now, in Detroit with the pollution of the Marathon Oil refinery, and a collapsing school system; or lay waiting in our future: like the 65 year oil pipeline under the Straits of Mackinaw.
Arresting Governor Snyder would be a step in the right direction, and certainly seems justified after all he has done to our state. However as long as his ideology persists, and our system continues to facilitate the domination of rich and corporate interests, we remain threatened.
If we’re going to fight back and win we need to mobilize and push for greater control over our state, both at the ballot box and in the streets. Our government needs leadership that sees their role as a servant to the people of Michigan, regardless of campaign donations, and uses our collective wealth to help everyone. We need to submit the economy and the wealth of our society to the needs of the people.
A Different Kind of Red State 