Michigan’s Corporate Dictatorship Impacts California

Latest

San Francisco protest against big chemical companies turned agribusiness, and their efforts to monopolize seed (food and commodity) production through the control and sale of GMO’s. PHOTO/BPITTENGER, 2014
San Francisco protest against big chemical companies turned agribusiness, and their efforts to monopolize seed (food and commodity) production through the control and sale of GMO’s.
PHOTO/BPITTENGER, 2014

OAKLAND, CA — Corporate dictatorship is naked in Michigan, but California Governor Jerry Brown is keeping his pants on. Corporate forces are already enforcing their will in the state through the collaboration of state and local government. California must learn from Michigan before it is too late.
The ongoing Detroit Bankruptcy is having a seismic impact on California. One corporate goal is to bring down the largest sector of public workers in the country by going after their pensions.
The Detroit judge held that private bankruptcy law trumped the state constitutional guarantee of public worker pensions. They are contracts, he said, the same as any other debt. This was the first legal precedent.
When Stockton, California went bankrupt in 2012, pensions were ruled untouchable. But last month the judge ruled that cities can use bankruptcy to wipe out pension responsibilities. This was legal precedent number two.
Cities all over the country are teetering on bankruptcy. Every municipal government body, from cities to water departments, pays millions a month directly to Wall Street. This is because they were suckered into predatory hedge fund deals that are similar to predatory mortgages on homeowners. The latter is the dispossession of families; the former is the collective dispossession of the public. Aspects of these contracts have been found illegal.
This is a form of blackmail! If pensions are contracts, why are judges ruling that these contracts can be broken, while the criminal ones with the financial industry are untouchable? Governments claim that their job is to improve the lives of the people, to extend the public interest, and, as Thomas Jefferson said, create public happiness.
This pension scam shows that the system is rigged. Government that is of, by and for the corporations is one that organizes massive displacement and gentrification.
The Detroit bankruptcy judge gave his opinion that people do not have an inherent right to water. This was a direct challenge to the UN, which is investigating water shutoffs to over 300,000 families in Detroit. This opinion has vast implications.
Water wars have gone national this year with massive shutoffs in West Virginia, Toledo, Ohio and elsewhere. Most of Detroit’s water debt is owed by corporations, but they are not being cut off. Fracking destroys millions of gallons with every well.
Nestle pumps 65 million gallons a year out of the Colorado River, which no longer reaches the sea. Drought-stricken California depends on this river for water to drink.
Agribusiness corporations get 80% of California’s water. Water is distributed in the state by private water contractors who get it for next to nothing and sell it for a profit. Corporate water is highly subsidized by charging the people high rates. Gov. Brown’s Proposition One doesn’t create one drop of new water; instead it diverts billions of dollars to corporations to escalate the private control over water for profit.
The legal precedent that people have priority over corporations for water was eliminated in California in1994. Their next step will be to follow Detroit and establish the legal principle that people have no right to water at all. We must hold government accountable and demand it reverse the corporate dispossession of the public’s water.

+ Articles by this author
Steven Miller taught science in Oakland's impoverished Flatland schools for 25 years. Steven says it was hard to survive if you were not a revolutionary.

Free to republish but please credit the People's Tribune. Visit us at www.peoplestribune.org, email peoplestribune@gmail.com, or call 773-486-3551.

The People’s Tribune brings you articles written by individuals or organizations, along with our own reporting. Bylined articles reflect the views of the authors. Unsigned articles reflect the views of the editorial board. Please credit the source when sharing: ©2024 peoplestribune.org. Please donate to help us keep bringing you voices of the movement. Click here. We’re all volunteer, no paid staff.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Featured

Pushing People into a Really Bad System Will End Really Badly

President Trump's executive order fuses drug use and homelessness, ignoring that homelessness can cause or exacerbate substance use because people use drugs to cope with pain. Forced institutional settings rather than housing will not help the ill or unhoused.

Chicago Resistance Speaks: ‘Until All Are Free, None Are Free’

An uprising is growing as the government tries to impose a dictatorship. Chicago resistance leaders recently offered their thoughts in public remarks made at demonstrations and press conferences.

Los Angeles Continues to Rebuild and Resist

Angelinos, suffering from the profit over people economy, continue to rebuild after the fires and to protest immigration raids, while also experiencing joy in such difficult times.

Chicago Teachers Union Says: Trump, Stay Out of Our City

Chicago Teachers Union rejects any unlawful federal occupation of their city, while welcoming federal leadership that fully funds public education, restores SNAP, and expands Medicaid to healthcare for all.

Journalist Says Why ‘I Can No Longer Work With Reuters’

A photojournalist says why it is impossible for her to maintain a relationship with Reuters "given its role in justifying and enabling the systematic assassination of 245 journalists in Gaza."

More from the People's Tribune