What to a Michigander is the 4th of July ?

                                                             

"What to The Slave is 4th of July? " Frederick Douglass asked in a speech in 1852

(   http://www.freemaninstitute.com/douglass.htm)

With all the Wall Street Robber Dictators ruling tyrannically over so many Michigan cities, what to a Michigander is the Fourth of July ?

What to a Detroiter ? What to the taxpayers and voters of Highland Park, Hamtramck, Pontiac, Flint, Benton Harbor, Ecorse , etc. ?

We taxpayers of these cities whose fundamental American liberties have been violated by the Emergency Dictators, are not slaves. We are mostly wage-slaves. As proletarians and Americans, most of us are so practical that if the dictators actually undertook seriously to renew urban areas by a fundamental anti-poverty program, we would suspend protest of  the violation of our basic American rights. " I don't care who fixes it , if it is just fixed."

 But Snake Snyder, the Thief's Emergency Manager tyrants are doing no such thing fixing it.  They are fascist accountants, Wall Street robbers, petty thieves ( as in Pontiac),  bureaucrats stealing other bureaucrats' jobs, wages, benefits ( and I consider myself a bureaucrat, so that is not a pejorative reference to bureaucrats). Urban and "Hood" grinding poverty, unemployment, abandoned homes, many lost to Wall Street foreclosures, not enough city workers to do the services needed, inadequate water ,on and on , _Les Miserables_ for real, Snake Snyder as "mayor" has done nothing to solve these problems

Cynthia A. Johnson with Elena Herrada, candidates for state representative give factual evidence in support of what I say: 
This is why our pensions, in part, are being attacked. EVIL IS EVIL!!
If there were 700 homes with a water bill of $200 a month, and that is a far reach, the cost per month would be $140,000 a month and if we multiplied that by 12 months, the cost would be $1,680,000. Still not as much as DMC was paying Duggan on bonuses.
Or let's put it like this, if 700,000 households were in need of help with water at $40 a month, which by the way was what the high end bills were ever 3 months, multiplied by 12 months would arrive at $33,600,000, still less than this ongoing running bill for this farce of a bankruptcy
Now bonuses are typically given when you've done something to help the company and or government. There are a lot of people who have received a lot of bonuses for shutting up and selling out.
*Total expenses and fees related to Detroit's Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing and how much of that has been paid so far:
Jones Day
• Total expenses and fees: $31,341,188.78
• Paid to date: $26,006,669.86
Ernst & Young LLP
• Total expenses and fees: $12,166,901
• Paid to date: $9,494,451
Conway MacKenzie Inc.
• Total expenses and fees: $10,364,365.12
• Paid to date: $7,125,639.60
Dentons
• Total expenses and fees: $8,863,665.57
• Paid to date: $7,748,639.50
Miller Buckfire & Co. LLC
• Total expenses and fees: $5,040,063.06
• Paid to date: $3,427,757.09
Segal Consulting
• Total expenses and fees: $2,384,317.58
• Paid to date: $2,051,062.87
Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone PLC
• Total expenses and fees: $2,553,050.71
• Paid to date: $2,059,808.57
Lazard Freres & Co. LLC
• Total expenses and fees: $1,656,118.00
• Paid to date: $931,327.79
Pepper Hamilton LLP
• Total expenses and fees: $1,563,295.99
• Paid to date: $1,331,083.06
Milliman Inc.
• Total expenses and fees: $1,246,152.61
• Paid to date: $934,588.84
Kurtzman Carson Consultants LLC
• Total expenses and fees: $1,159,243.11
• Paid to date: $758,069.81
Brooks Wilkins Sharkey & Turco PLLC
• Total expenses and fees: $555,788.10
• Paid to date: $475,099.02
Foley & Lardner LLP
• Total expenses and fees: $162,236.00
• Paid to date: $152,619.40
Kilpatrick & Associates PC
• Total expenses and fees: $79,323
• Paid to date: $78,235.22
Ottenwess, Taweel & Schenk PLC
• Total expenses and fees: $25,105.10
• Paid to date: $25,105.10
Dykema Gossett PLLC
• Total expenses and fees: $168,892.97
• Paid to date: $168,892.97
Shaw Fishman Glantz & Towbin LLC
• Gross expenses and fees: $490,342.10
• Paid to date: $416,628.68
Kapila & Co.
• Gross expenses and fees: $153,488.06
• Paid to date: $130,509.88
Barris, Sott, Denn & Driker PLLC
• Paid to date: $348,998.78
*Source: Crain's Detroit Business

Take Ten's Randa Morris has given us a timely reminder of the freedoms we celebrate on July 4th and those that are being stolen in Michigan and around the country via
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/07/04/celebrate-independence-day-when-democracy-is-dead-in-michigan/ 

Sister Morris says there:  


"Independence and freedom have not been gained, but lost – no, not lost, but STOLEN; taken from the people against their will… Open meetings acts have been violated, court systems corrupted, legal processes undermined and the people ham-strung. Michigan’s citizens are now living in a faux democracy, where some still pretend that elections have meaning, yet they must know deep down that regardless of is elected, the state’s dictator retains the right to laugh in their faces. Only the Governor now has the right to determine who will govern Michigan’s cities, towns and schools. Only HE has the right to appoint or remove any and all local officials.
"Michigan is the best example you can find of Republican lies and hypocrisy. The state is now ruled more by a king and his hired court, than by a democratic voting population. Still Republicans complain about the Federal government and the encroaching “nanny state”, even as the governor they elected pushes ahead, removing all political enemies from power, leaving a puppet government in place across the state. Even as they go to the polls and vote for more Republicans, pretending that it matters one way or another, now that their party has nullified the laws that once ensured the right of the people to duly elect their own representatives. Michigan’s elections are nothing more than symbolic gestures, a hat-tip to yesterday, when they were still a free people with rights guaranteed under the state’s constitution. Sure, they still have elections in Michigan, but what is the point, when all elected leaders are now subject to removal by the Governor, at his whim? There are manufactured “emergencies” in nearly all major democratic voting precincts, imagine that… More than 50 percent of Michigan’s minority population now lives under an oppressive dictatorship, while those in wealthier rural communities are able, for the moment, to go along pretending that they retain the right to democracy and freedom.


"Democracy is gone in Michigan. No city, town or community is excluded from Michigan’s Emergency Manager Law. For the moment the law is being used to further the political agenda of the Teaparty and GOP, hence the targeting of minority communities like Benton Harbor, Flint and Detroit. Once all of the dissenters are silenced and their voting rights removed, EM will advance itself to all communities, especially those with public assets which are desirable to private interests. Just as all 16 of Benton Harbor’s public parks have been seized, with little fanfare or media attention, rural communities will eventually find themselves raped and robbed in similar fashion. Just as municipal water supplies have been seized by the state and handed over to private investors, rural communities will find that (once the threat of minority and urban voters has been “handled” via EM) attention will turn to their own water supplies in short order. Those retirement communities that sat quietly by watching, even cheering, as the rights of others were removed in steady progression, will find all eyes focused on them, maybe even sooner than they realized. And as for the rest of the country, ignoring the demise of democracy in Michigan will leave you ill prepared for the assaults which are soon to come your way. Michigan is merely the testing ground, where the kinks are being worked out and the agenda is quickly being perfected."

Let Michigan Americans deliver some fireworks this November to blast the Snyderites out of Lansing.  

  “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”a speech given by Frederick Douglass in Rochester, NY on July 5, 1852, is read by Danny Glover.

Film clip. Frederick Douglass “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (1851) is read by Danny Glover. From “Voices of a People’s History of the United States.”

• Time Periods: Civil War Era: 1850 - 1864, 19th Century | Themes: African American, Democracy & Citizenship, Racism & Racial Identity | Resource Types: Films

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass: “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (July 5, 1852)

“
In this famous speech, Douglass says:

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.” Read full speech here.