Maddow: Michigan's governor wants the power to auction off its towns to corporations

Rachel Maddow and Naomi Klein present the Billionaires' Coup in action: Take control of a state, then just auction it off.

Seriously:



The Teabag-enabled plan in Michigan: Use the budget to starve cities and towns, then put in an "emergency town manager" who could (1) kill any contract the town entered into AND (2) dismiss elected officials AND (3) "disincorporate" the town itself. Oh, and the emergency manager can be a corporation. (Imagine the bribing for that contract!)

In other words, this wave of "Teabag" governors (really Movement Conservatives with a Teabag cover story) is enacting before our eyes the entire Conservative cadre-revolution agenda.

Cadre revolution — Take control of an organization at the top. Destroy it from the inside by putting your people in key positions. Then either loot it mafia-style, or remake it for an entirely different purpose. Lenin's cadre of Bolsheviks did not topple the Czar; they toppled the Mensheviks, who toppled the Czar. The Bolsheviks were part of the Menshevik coalition.

This is the Movement Conservative project. It's about the revolutionary take-over of, well, the country. It's been operating since the Lewis Powell memorandum and similar documents (see David Brock's The Republican Noise Machine for all the goods).

You could even argue that that movement's been hijacked, by the plutocrats, the very very rich. Control has certainly been centralized into a few hands — hedge fund managers; CEOs as a class; and maybe a dozen billionaires, maybe less. The Billionaires' Coup, as Frank Rich so aptly calls it.

And now Movement's goals are out in the open. Hybris might sink them yet. Thanks to Maddow and Naomi Klein for this clear presentation.

GP