Hitler's Enabling Act & Michigan's Emergency Manager Law

Michigan voters repealed an Emergency Manager Law in November by referendum -- it had been passed by the legislature in 2011.

Barely one month later, TODAY, the legislature has passed another version, which is not subject to referendum by the people.

Here's what the old version did:

- Gave the Governor broad powers to declare a local government to be in "financial emergency" & appoint an Emergency Manager with dictatorial powers.

- Specified that the manager could be either an official of the government or "a private contractor working as an agent of the executive branch of state government."

(Got that, everyone? The Gov could appoint a corporate honcho to run your city.)

- Specified that "The emergency manager’s powers extend not only to financial policy and decision-making, but also to all other areas of local government."

- Specified that decisions of the unelected Emergency Manager were not subject to review by either "local elected officials or local voters."

- Gave the Emergency Manager powers greater than the state legislature's powers, specifically the power to:

a. Contravene, and thereby implicitly repeal, local laws such as city and village charters and ordinances; and

b. Explicitly repeal, amend, and enact local laws such as city and village ordinances.

- Gave the Emergency Manager the right to seize/dissolve school districts.

- Gave the EM power to "seize and sell assets owned by the city, such as buildings or parks, without the approval of voters or local elected officials"

- Gave the EM power to "add to local debt, by putting property tax hikes on the ballot with confusing wording that hides the real cost of the tax hike"

- Gave the EM power to "outsource to private and out of state companies, lay off public employees, change or terminate the contracts of public employees, suspend contracts and collective bargaining rights for up to five years"

- Gave the EM power to fire elected officials

- Gave the EM power to write the local government's budget and all its contracts "for two years AFTER they are gone. No input from local residents, no collective bargaining."

The law was unprecedented:

"Through its provisions, the Local Government and School District Fiscal
Accountability Act, Act No. 4, Public Acts of 2011, MCL §§ 141.1501 et. seq. (the Act)
establishes a new form of local government, previously unknown within the United States or the State of Michigan, where the people within local municipalities may be governed by an
unelected official who establishes local law by decree.

On its face and in practice, the Act flagrantly violates the Constitution of the State
of Michigan by:

a) Delegating legislative powers without limiting standards to emergency managers;
b) Granting unelected emergency managers the power to enact local law without the
constitutional restraints placed on state and local governments;
c) Usurping the vested rights of local electors to adopt and amend local charters
which govern cities and villages within Michigan;
d) Suspending the rights of local electors to a republican form of government and to
elect the officials of local government through democratic elections; and
e) Imposing substantial new costs upon local municipal corporations without
providing offsets or additional revenue streams to affected communities.

http://sugarlaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Sugar-Law-Complaint-Brown-v.-Snyder-PA41.pdf

http://standup4democracy.com/


The Enabling Act:

The Enabling Act was a 1933 law that made Hitler dictator of Nazi Germany. It was passed by Germany's Reichstag and signed by President Paul von Hindenburg on 23 March 1933. It was the second major step, after the Reichstag Fire Decree, through which Chancellor Adolf Hitler legally obtained plenary powers and established his dictatorship.

It received its name from its legal status as an enabling act granting the Cabinet the authority to enact laws without the participation of the Reichstag. The act stated that it was to last for four years unless renewed by the Reichstag, which occurred twice.

The formal name of the Enabling Act was Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich (English: "Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich").

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933

On March 23, 1933, the newly elected members of the German Parliament (the Reichstag) met in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin to consider passing Hitler's Enabling Act. It was officially called the 'Law for Removing the Distress of the People and the Reich.' If passed, it would effectively mean the end of democracy in Germany and establish the legal dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.

The 'distress' had been secretly caused by the Nazis themselves in order to create a crisis atmosphere that would make the law seem necessary to restore order...

On the day of the vote, Nazi storm troopers gathered in a show of force around the opera house...

Just before the vote, Hitler made a speech to the Reichstag in which he pledged to use restraint.

"The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures...The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is in itself a limited one." - Hitler told the Reichstag.

The vote was taken - 441 for, only 84, the Social Democrats, against. The Nazis leapt to their feet clapping, stamping and shouting, then broke into the Nazi anthem, the Hörst Wessel song.

They achieved what Hitler had wanted for years - to tear down the German Democratic Republic legally and end democracy, thus paving the way for a complete Nazi takeover of Germany.

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/enabling.htm