Today, a liberal town in Michigan made the news, but not in a positive way. As exposed in the diary, Power Co. kills 93-year-old man., a poorly planned municipal power company policy ended in tragedy when a WWII veteran and retired union worker froze to death in his home when a power override was shut down, preventing the furnace from kicking in.
The initial response was horror, then blame. People couldn't believe that a city could be so negligent as to allow an old man to freeze to death. Why weren't there support services? Why did the muni power company have this policy? Why didn't the local government do something?
What people don't understand is that there is a much greater blame to be assigned here... and it goes much farther than any overburdened local government. More on the flip.
Bay City is a small manufacturing town in what is considered Northern Michigan... If Michigan is shaped like a hand, Bay City is located right on the fleshy part between the thumb and forefinger...
As you can see on the map, Bay City is near the end of what I call the I-75 corridor, which includes Midland, Flint, Saginaw and Detroit metropolitan area. This (along with Ann Arbor) is the liberal heart of Michigan. Not coincidentally, it is also the manufacturing center of the state and the union stronghold of the country. The two go hand in hand. When the Big 3 were at their peak, this whole area was a giant boomtown. Filled with not just auto manufacturing, but manufacturing of all types.
Bay City was known for its shipbuilding in addition to being an important port for the booming manufacturing corridor. Here is a satellite photo of the old shipyard which now lies in ruins:
Those who did not work in Bay City often worked in nearby Saginaw, where there were a multitude of GM facilites like this essentially abandoned one right off of Veterans Memorial Parkway...
There is a bridge over the road which connects this facility to another one... it really is quite magnificent when you drive past it, but it symbolized what has happened to this region over the last 40 years.
You see, Nothern Michigan is dead broke. When manufacturing jobs left, so did the economic vitality of this region. It didn't come all at once. It was slow and painful with occasional bursts of hope (i.e. the 90's) followed by depression. Bay City stoped making ships. Saginaw stoped making car parts. Saginaw based Delphi was spun off of GM and is now bankrupt. Midland Based DOW is nearing the same fate and is shedding jobs like crazy. Flint... well Flint has been tortured worse than anyone. It was once a fantastic place to live... a union paradise. People used ot ice skate downtown in the winter, now it is a ghetto with no capital and no hope. Buick City, the sprawling manufacturing center of the town, has now been leveled and sits as an empty parking lot to nowhere...
The fact is, Bay City is out of time and out of money. It's residents are broke. There is no money for social services. There is no money to fund municipal power. There is no money to pay utility bills. Young residents have no jobs and no future. Retirees are losing their union pensions. While there is certainly a great deal of blame for the regulators of Bay City's municipal power system, the fact is, there are thousands of Marvin E. Schurs there, who can't pay their bills... and there are going to be thousands more if things don't change... When people can't pay their bills, their taxes, how can local governments cope? More tragedies like this are sure to happen in the future, and the conservatives will blame "socialized" power or government or whatever to keep their sick ideology afloat.
But, how did we really get here? I think Rep. Clyburn summed it up nicely on Ed Shultz's radio show in December in regards to the Big 3 government loan:
ES: The Republicans, why are they so much against this? It's a commercial loan!
JC: I'm telling you, you know it's almost as if we are going to punish all of the consuming public, we are going to punish all of the folks who are dependent upon jobs, just because we are angry with the managers. But you know, Ed, I don't think that's what they are angry about. I think that for some strange reason they feel that because Michigan and Indiana and Ohio and Wisconsin - these states - ah, well three of them - turned blue. Two of them did. And two of them were blue before. But I really believe that all of this is about politics. They just can't really get beyond politics. They have politicized the justice department. They have politicized the department of agriculture, they have politicized consumer protection. They politicized Wall Street. And here we are with all of this stuff spinning out here, all these crises. And they are still locked in the political mode, rather than making some decisions that are good for this country.
ES: So you think this is a get-back on Michigan and Ohio and Indiana for going blue?
JC: That's exactly what I feel. I really feel that. And I think that the people of Ohio and Indiana ought to keep this in their minds as we go forward. Because this is what it's all about. These are political decisions being made by this White House rather than what's best for this country.
ES: House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, South Carolina, here on the Ed Schultz show.
Even though the last 8 years have been an economic freefall for Michigan, the punishment goes well beyond Bush. It starts all the way back to Nixon, accelerating under Reagan and beyond. To punish the unions, the rust belt needed to be "purged" of its livelihood... New trade pacts were signed. NAFTA was passed. China became our best friend. Tax dollars from blue states were funneled into non-union red states to create new jobs. Meanwhile, the American heartland bled from neglect... The rust belt died. The unions were weakened... their members lost their jobs, their benefits, and the American Dream, and paradise became an empty parking lot...
People have asked me why I so vociferously promoted the Big 3 government loan. I'm not union. I have no direct affiliation with the auto industry. I don't even live in Michigan, why should I care so much? I care 'cos of people like Marvin Schur. Even though he is hundreds of miles away, he still is my neighbor. We in the rust belt all share the same misery of Reaganomics' failure. I knew that GM failing would lead to thousands of more Marvin Schur's and the death of any hope for future recovery in this region.
Do not be so quick to blame Bay City government for this tragedy. The burden of fault lies with this entire nation's recent economic history. We must work harder than ever to change this course, or surely more Marvin Shur's will follow... and not just in Michigan, but everywhere in our beloved nation of ours.