ACHTUNG: This is not a “fair and balanced” story. It is an editorial by the editor.
Gov. Rick Snyder has been getting hammered a lot since the new year over the Flint water crisis, and much of the grief he has absorbed is deserved.
But I part company with those who want him to step down or be impeached for two huge reasons:
- The real guilty party, over and above Snyder, in this mess is privatizing public services, a philosophy the governor subscribes to, as well as a majority of those who hold power in Lansing.
- If Snyder was impeached or forced to resign, the result would be the elevation of Lt. Gov. Brian Calley to chief executive officer. Though Calley is a decent, honorable man personally, he holds views very similar to the now much-maligned governor and he’s much more religious.
I fear that the anger at Snyder needs to be channeled toward the political process that has been ruining our republic for too long. Too many people getting elected these days wrong headedly believe that government should be run just like a business.
Snyder is only one of many who fall into that category. He was elected governor with no experience in governing. Instead, he touted his track record as a CEO for Gateway Computers.
No less a conservative public figure than longtime Republican former Congressman Vern Ehlers maintained in a public meeting that running a business and governing people are very different things. Business and public policy indeed are very different.
We must stop collectively falling for the notion that a tough-minded private boss is the best tonic for what ails this state. At every turn, I see negative results in privatizing public services:
- Privatizing the food service in prison was ruined by Aramark.
- Privatizing custodial services at Wayland and other public schools may have been good only for the companies, not for the everyday lives of students.
- Privatizing public education has not improved it. A case could be made that it has harmed it.
- Privatizing management of Detroit Public Schools has not led to balancing the budget and the quality of those schools has deteriorated rather than improved.
- Most spectacularly and obviously, privatizing management of cities such as Flint has led to an unmitigated disaster with emergency managers who only take care of the bottom line.
If we really want to solve the problems now plaguing us in Michigan, we have to stop swallowing the constant political hogwash that is promoted like snake oil in every election for state offices, most notably in the worst state legislature we’ve ever had.
But as I’ve said here before, we keep electing them again and again, thereby extending the life of Walt Kelly’s immortal words in the Pogo comic strip, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
We, the people, have turned over the important business of governing to bean counters, nerds and businesspersons who don’t care as much about the lives of real people as they do about making money.
I believe it was Saul of Tarsus, aka the Apostle Paul, who was reported in the New Testament to have said that the love of money is at the root of all evil. Amen.
PHOTOS: Rick Snyder Brian Calley
