Joseph Harris is Whirlpool Corporation's Perfect Stooge:
No Constitution Week allowed, and no complaints
allowed by well-established businesses
Harris, recipient of a taxpayer funded $131,000.00 yearly salary, has been more than willing to wield his EM power with the greatest of ease. Since the expansion of PA4, he can do absolutely anything he wants to do in Benton Harbor, and has been doing just that with an extreme show of arrogant authority. As if to say, I'm king of the playground and residents better look out.
Recently he cancelled Constitution Week with one brash statement in the city commission meeting minutes (caps are his):
"THE FOLLOWING ACTION TAKEN OR DECISION MADE BY THE CITY COMMISSION WAS NOT AUTHORIZED BY THE EMERGENCY MANAGER AND IS NULL AND VOID, AND OF NO FORCE OR EFFECT."
City officials can't hold a celebration of the constitution? We know all the other decisions they can no longer make, according to PA4, but no Constitution Week?
We suppose Harris doesn't want a celebration of something that no longer applies to the people living in this city. He's the man, after all. He's not only taken the Emergency Manager ball and run with it, he won't even stop to throw a pass now and then. Harris is the evil step-father in Benton Harbor.
Here's another action he took which will only attract negative attention his way:
Harris, also known as The Dictator, has been sparring with Benton Harbor's New Product's Corporation, one of the city's oldest businesses. CEO Cheryl Miller asserts that a Harbor Shores bike path under construction encroaches on New Product's property by about five feet for a length of 100 feet. Harris said Miller has no grounds to be complaining, that her complaining is the wrong thing to do, and that she will get an answer from him that she will not like.
Harris is not known for his diplomacy. And that's the way Whirlpool likes it.
Thanks to MSNBC for continuing to report on Benton Harbor, the bellwether for the rest of the country. Hopefully someday soon MSNBC will gather the courage to report on the elephant in this story's livingroom: Whirlpool Corporation, the true boss (in the worst sense of the word) of BH and Berrien County.
Recent MSNBC story:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/19/7839166-benton-harbor-emergency-manager-cancels-constitution-week
