Abominable Monsters

The people that many Americans have turned their government over to.  Case in point today:  Detroit.  Here's a story that came out of this sad city in the last couple of days:

"Major Detroit Power Outage Stretches Into Second Day...- The power is still off in Detroit.  Parts of the city’s downtown and midtown districts were knocked offline Wednesday when the public lighting system experienced an overload due to excessive heat. 

“Some institutional public lighting customers are experiencing service interruption caused by extreme heat, cable failure, and routine maintenance — all combining causing system overload,” said Robert Warfield, a spokesman for the Detroit Mayor’s Office.  The outage is affecting Wayne State University’s main campus, the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice, the City-County building, the Detroit Historical Museum, and the People Mover — all of which are closed until further notice. 

Gary Brown, the city’s chief compliance officer, said officials are not sure when the power will be restored.  “DTE has been feverishly working with this problem all throughout the night. I’ve been talking to the supervisor that is literally in the hole, so we’re certainly hopeful that we’re going to get the situation involved by mid-afternoon,” Brown told WWJ Thursday morning."

Well, I'm certainly glad that the city's management, which was forced on the people of Detroit in a coup engineered by the State's Republican government, is on top of the problem.

Oh wait, we didn't quite get the whole story, did we:

"Detroit’s dictatorial administration intentionally cut power during heat wave...Last week on Wednesday, September 12th, during a 90+ degree heat wave and the day after an escaped prisoner terrorized the city, Detroit Chief Compliance Officer Gary Brown intentionally and without notice cut power to major buildings in downtown Detroit...According to Brown, seen in the video below gleefully and derisively recounting his decision, he had asked the buildings to reduce their energy consumption but, when they didn’t do so quickly enough, he cut power to “send a strong message”.

So the current Republican administration of Detroit, which seized power in an outrage as great as any that has ever happened in this country, now has licensed itself to cut power to large parts of the city during a heat wave, because its people were not doing what it wanted.  Brown was lying when he said “DTE has been feverishly working with this problem all throughout the night. I’ve been talking to the supervisor that is literally in the hole, so we’re certainly hopeful that we’re going to get the situation involved by mid-afternoon,”  They weren't working to resolve the problem at all.  Why, it wasn't even a problem, but a solution, imposed by themselves to punish the citizens of Detroit, who were not interested in complying with the orders of a dictatorial administration forced on them,  What's next if they refuse to comply with Republican demands?  Cutting off their water?  Shutting down hospitals?  Mass arrests?  Shooting people on sight?

What were the people doing in Detroit that was such a threat?  Were they rebelling, rioting in the streets, shooting government personnel, inviting terrorists to fight alongside of them?  No, they were not following orders to turn their air conditioners off.  Listen, we are so outraged by the use of poison gas on civilians in Syria, by a non-elected government, and yet this is only one step away from that.  Here is the reality of Koch brothers financed Republican rule, and is nothing but a brutal dictatorship.

And yet this horror and the its implications will go unnoticed by the American people and their mainstream press, while they pay microscopic attention to the latest phony Obama scandal cooked up by the right.

This behavior is a recipe for the descent of a once great country into disaster.  Everyone involved with this sordid incident should be removed from positions of responsibility, and this includes the State government officials who made it possible by seizing power from the democratically elected government.  But nothing will happen, and soon we will hear of worse outrages that will be ignored too, until finally the press gets the hint, and this sort of thing is allowed to continue unreported.  Because anyone who reports things like this will be, like Edward Snowdon and Julian Assange, a traitor.

Then, our government in places like Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida, can really get to work.

Comments

johninoregon said…
An article quoted in the Crooks & Liars report on this outrage includes this fascinating sidelight: "Many people believe that the deliberate power outage was carried out because Orr’s office has been pushing for the privatization of the city’s power supply."

So, "disaster capitalism" in action? Try to get people to focus on supposed flaws in their public power system, then use it as an excuse for replacement? If so, I hope it backfires big time.
Magpie said…
“send a strong message”….

useless cliché

If your mother keels over from heatstroke because some twerp with delusions of adequacy wants to act tough... what “message” are you possibly going to absorb from the air-con not working?
Green Eagle said…
And as I predicted, no one in the mainstream press is showing any interest in this grotesque abuse of people's rights. And people laugh when I say that a large part of the Republican party is dedicated to imposing fascism in this country.
Curt said…
Just a footnote to your post: A week after Detroit's city manager asked that the city declare bankruptcy, the governor announced that he was was all in favor of building a new stadium for the Red Wings for $640,000,000.00, half of which is to be paid for by the tax payers of Michigan. He claims that this will bring jobs to the area. We all know that whatever jobs are brought by the construction of this stadium will be nothing compared to what was lost when he pushed and backed the 'right to work' legislation that was passed earlier this year in the state that was once the poster child for organized labor. And you're right: No press coverage reflected the observation you have made, even here in Michigan.
isaac said…
For some reason, when I heard of this, I thought about Montgomery Burns erecting a giant moveable disc over Springfield to blot out the sun. So people would have to use more power from his nuclear plant.

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