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you're parroting Gov. Snyder's rationale. it might not be supported by the record and we might never find out, if Michigan continues to stonewall.
to save money (while disserving a majority-black, majority-poor city)
Personal injury lawyers are probably already all over this, preparing class action suit(s), which will make the Repugs' defense look uglier, nastier than ever.
Of course, suing MI or local Repugs means taxpayers will foot the bill.
Will "yellow dog" Repug voters EVER learn, are they too stupid?, that Repugs screw them at every turn?
you're parroting Gov. Snyder's rationale. it might not be supported by the record and we might never find out, if Michigan continues to stonewall.
Because private industry has such a great track record of cleaning up their own pollution.
This leaves me shaking my head, yet again.
It's as if the collective party has some pathological need to point the gun at their foot and take the safety off...
no matter how bad they willfully misgovern, god/gays/guns/abortion and oligarchs will get them re-elected, assists from gerrymandering and voter suppression.
iow, America is ed and un able.
The Congressional Repugs will obstruct all progress for the 99%, will vote AGAINST what even a majority of Repug voters want: expanded b/g checks and money out of politics.
It's just shameless.
Militia Says It Will Take Up Arms To Defend Flint If Necessary
A group of vigilantes has vowed to take up arms to defend the city’s residents. During a rally in front of City Hall, an executive officer for the Genesee County Volunteer Militia announced the group is “not going to allow [the government] to step on the people of Flint any longer.”
“We’re here to defend this community,” said Matthew Krol, who was joined by approximately 30 supporters. The Detroit Free Press reported that the group carried “Don’t Tread On Me” signs and some of its members had pistols. “We’re not going to allow (the government) to step on the people of Flint any longer.”
So far, the group has passed out bottles of water alongside the Red Cross. But the militia has also promised to use armed defense if necessary.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...-if-necessary/
Cruz Campaign’s Flint Water Giveaway Focuses On Anti-Abortion Centers
over this past weekend, Cruz’s presidential campaign began distributing bottled water not to every Flint resident, but only to those who visited the city’s four crisis pregnancy centers. The campaign said the donation to these centers, which aim to persuade women not to have an abortion, demonstrates “the pro-life values of Senator Cruz.”
These centers — operated by conservative, anti-abortion groups — often provide pregnant women with misleading or incorrectinformation about their options. Pamphlets handed out at such centers have
claimed, falsely, that an abortion poses a grave threat to a woman’s life and
increases her risk of breast cancer.
Last year, California became the first state to attempt to regulate these centers. The “Reproductive FACT Act,” which anti-abortion groups are challenging in court, mandates that such centers inform visitors that
they do not have a medical license.
The centers also
need to inform women that they have a legal right to an abortion.
In the lead up to passing the law, women’s rights groups sent undercover investigators to crisis pregnancy clinics across the state, and found that
staff members often gave false information about the frequency of miscarriages, the results of an ultrasound exam, and the effectiveness of birth control.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/20...uz-flint-cpcs/
Krazy Kruz is bottom-feeding, low-life sack of , masquerading as Christian.
KK's only value is KK
^Aren't you happy Trump is going to beat him? It's delicious that he has turned this birther on Cruz. The irony is borderline erotic.
Why would they need to take up arms in a defensive mode?
Now I could see if they were going to round up that corrupt Governor. I support that.
like all militia assholes, they are delusional in their own fantasies, paranoia.
Who are they going to shoot? Why don't they go shoot the known culprits?
It's all bull bravado by less wannabe-macho wimps.
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and Mark Wahlberg Are Donating 1 Million Bottles of Water to Flint, Michigan Residents
A bottled water company owned in part by Sean “Diddy” Combs and Mark Wahlberg is pledging to donate 1 million bottles of water to the residents of Flint, Michigan.
AQUAhydrate says it’s sending 5,000 cases of water to Flint and will continue to provide bottles to residents until the city’s water problems are solved. The company says the water is expected to be delivered Wednesday.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1949548-sean-diddy-combs-and-mark-wahlberg-are-donating-1-million-bottles-of-water-to-flint-michigan-residents/
the city’s government continues to charge people for the poison water and then threatening to foreclose their home or take their children if they refuse to pay.
Michigan law states that parents are neglectful if they do not have running water in their home, and if they chose not to pay for water they can’t drink anyway, then they could be guilty of child endangerment.
Activists in Flint say that some residents have already received similar threats from the government if they refuse to pay their bills.
Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/fli...5dQdMCR8jQT.99
Rick Snyder Is Done. He's Toast.
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
t's really time for Governor Rick Snyder to go. It's impossible to imagine him continuing to do his job if the e-mails yet to come about the poisoning of the city of Flint reflect as badly on his administration as today's batch do. Therein we find negligence, incompetence, buck-passing ,and ass-covering in the extreme. It's plain that political considerations were paramount when the news of what had happened in Flint first reached Lansing.
In the e-mails, Muchmore wrote that U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township, was "engaged in his normal press hound routine" after the congressman issued a press release noting he'd asked the EPA to help the state deal with the crisis. Muchmore added that then-mayor Dayne Walling "went out on a CYA effort due to the election." They also show doubts about returning Flint to the Detroit system and even questioning if the reports of higher lead levels are accurate. "They can't reconnect to DWSD even if they wanted to as they sold the connector line," Muchmore wrote Sept. 26. "And, especially with the new rate increases in Detroit, their citizens would be less able to pay than they already are. Now we have the anti everything group turning to the lead content which is a concern for everyone, but DEQ and DHHS and EPA can't find evidence of a major change per Geralyn's memo below."
Later, of course, under the expanded emergency-manager law that was a pet project of Snyder's from the time he was inaugurated, Mayor Walling was replaced by an "emergency manager"—the city has had four of them since Snyder expanded the law—under whom the switch from the DWSD to the Flint River was completed. By the time the crisis was brewing underground, the elected local officials of the city of Flint had virtually no power at all. It's hard to imagine that this crisis would have come to the point to which it has come if the people responsible for it actually had to face the voters. At the very least, Snyder may have to have a chat with Congress about the whole thing.
However, for the moment, the emails get even worse.
A background memo sent to the governor on 1 February dismissed the pleas of Flint's then mayor Dayne Walling for state assistance, saying that the mayor had "seized on public panic … to ask the state for loan forgiveness and more money for infrastructure improvement". Flint's water supply was contaminated by lead, poisoning thousands of residents, after the source of the city's drinking water was switched from Detroit to the Flint River in April 2014. Water from the Flint River had for months corroded lead from the inside of water pipes in thousands of households across the city. The memo, which was among 274 pages of emails related to the city's crisis, also said that it was "clear that folks in Flint are concerned about other aspects of their water – taste, smell and color being among the top complaints", but said that the Safe Drinking Water Act "does not regulate aesthetic values of water". The words "does not" were underlined.
(We should never forget that the voters of Michigan overturned the expanded emergency-manager law in 2012, only to have a new Republican majority in the state legislature pass another bill slightly adjusting the parameters of the law that was defeated. Would you like a banana with your republic?)
A city in his state was poisoned on his watch.
How does Snyder have any credibility on anything going forward? (Yes, I know, he still has credibility with the plutocrats who helped put him and the legislators in office.) If this were a city in Japan, the responsible officials would have resigned honorably by now. People would have insisted.
People are insisting that Snyder resign, too, but they will be ignored because most of them are the same people he and his administration ignored when their water started coming out of the tap a fragrant shade of yellow.
There are people for whom democracy works and people against whom democracy works.
It is not supposed to be that way, dammit.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics...ichigan-water/
Read an interesting take on the underlying context.
Turns out that the drive to switch didn't actually save any money.
Instead it would have taken one of the largest customers away from the Detroit water utility, and make it easier for the Republican government force it to be sold/privatize to a private company.
Even worse, IMO.
Flint All Over Again? Lead Poisoning Scandal Strikes Ohio Town
Schools in Sebring, Ohio, were closed for a third day on Tuesday and pregnant women and children have been advised not to drink the water, after tests showed elevated levels of lead in the local water supply.
Though the village of about 4,300 in northeastern Ohio is much smaller than Flint, Michigan, the drinking water crises in the neighboring states share troubling aspects.
According to local news station WKBN: “Correspondence from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and the Village of Sebring show concerns with water testing, beginning in late September. Elevated lead levels were noted by the EPA in November, but customers didn’t learn of the issues until Thursday, meaning that some people could have been drinking water containing lead for months.” WKBN has a full timeline of events here.
Scores of Sebring residents turned out for a village council meeting on Monday night, “many frustrated, angry or looking for answers,” reports FOX8 Cleveland.
“A lot of us have kids at home, and we’re extremely afraid, and we need a mayor to stand up, be honest with us, hold people accountable and fix this problem,” said one man in attendance.
Meanwhile, the Youngstown Vindicator reports that Village Manager Richard Giroux hasplaced (pdf) Sebring water treatment plant superintendent Jim Bates on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of a state investigation into the incident.
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA) says Bates was “not properly performing his duties to protect public health and may have falsified reports,” the Vindicator writes. Reached at home on Monday evening, Bates denied the charges.
And OEPA’s criticism stretches to other local officials, as well. “The games the Village of Sebring was playing by giving us incomplete data time and time again, and not submitting the required do ents, made it difficult for our field office to determine whether or not they had notified their customers,” said Heidi Griesmer, an agency representative.
To that end, OEPA director Craig Butler has asked the U.S. EPA to open a criminal investigation into what occurred in Sebring.
Last week, news reports indicated that lead exposure is a pervasive issue not just in Flint, but across the country.
“Flint is a microcosm,” Robert Glennon, author of the book, Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What To Do About It, told the Christian Science Monitor. “The maintenance of water systems and wastewater systems is not just an urban problem, or a problem for places with low-income residents. It’s a problem all over the nation that needs to be addressed.”
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/...+the+Headlines
Maybe Bill Gates, Unicef, etc should get involved in solving America's 3rd world problems?
The Poisoning of Flint Was Not an Accident - It Was a Crime
There have been allegations that Governor Snyder made the switch in order to undermine the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department so he could ultimately privatize it. Others suggest his motivation was founded in a desire to open up new areas for fracking. The governor has made no comment on these allegations. One thing seems clear: This decision appears to have little to do with "saving money."
If you tried to jump into the Flint River, you'd bounce off the surface. General Motors used the river as its personal dumping ground for decades; it is highly polluted, and more importantly is highly acidic. When Flint River water began flowing through Michigan's ancient water supply system, it stripped the lead right off the pipes and delivered it to thousands of homes.
The highest reading registered at 13,000 ppb. Five parts per billion of lead are a concern. 5,000 parts per billion is considered "toxic waste." From April 2014 until October 2015 (and later, and still) the people of Flint were drinking water with up to 13,000 parts per billion of lead in it.
Flint residents are still getting billed for water the Virginia Tech study described as toxic waste. Some are getting dunning letters for refusing to pay for water that could kill them or their children. In France long ago, it was "Let them eat cake." Today, in Flint, it's "Let them drink bottled water" ... except a whole lot of people in Flint can't afford bottled water, and they sure as can't bathe in it.
The story of Flint is the story of the United States, and it isn't pretty. Flint once boasted 80,000 General Motors employees, but thanks to outsourcing now only has a tenth of that. Unemployment is rampant. The river is disgusting after years of industrial pollution. Our national indifference toward our crumbling, sometimes century-old infrastructure left those pipes in the ground to deliver that lead to children thanks to the austerity policies of a right-wing governor and his national party.
Hovering over it all are the matters of race and poverty. This debacle began two years ago and should have been immediately addressed, but it wasn't, because the people affected have no voice in Gov. Rick Snyder's government.
The story of Flint is the story of the United States, of outsourcing, privatizing, rampant pollution, a stark lack of corporate accountability, poverty, joblessness, collapsing infrastructure, right-wing austerity politics and above all a crushing and pervasive racism that is literally and figuratively poisoning children.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/ite...it-was-a-crime
Rachel Maddow is holding town hall in Flint tonight.
Will be great to see the parents and kids, putting faces on the victims of racist Repug criminality.
Conflicts with Rox @ Spurs
Michigan Officials Quietly Gave Bottled Water To State Employees Months Before Flint Residents
The Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget decided to haul water coolers into the Flint state building in January of 2015 out of concern over the city’s water quality, a year before bottled water was being made available to residents, according to do ents obtained by Progress Michigan.
concerns raised over water quality were enough for officials in the state’s capitol of Lansing to decide to give state employees the option to drink bottled water from coolers, rather than from water fountains. Coolers were placed next to the fountains on each occupied floor, according to the do ents, and were to be provided “as long as the public water does not meet treatment requirements.”
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/01/28/3743987/flint-water-state-employees/
Goddam Repugs to .
Cruz Campaign Donates Water To Flint–But Only To People Who Qualify For Their ‘Generosity’
Ted Cruz 2016 donated an undisclosed amount of bottled water to residents of Flint, restricting their “generosity” to people with the “right” frame of mind. Cruz’s campaign staff took to the streets to get much-needed water to those working and visiting the fraudulent “pregnancy crisis centers” that dupe women into believing they’re going to receive medical advice and treatment but are instead cornered and fed anti-abortion rhetoric and religious indoctrination.
Cruz’s Michigan state campaign director, Wendy Lynn Day, announced in a Facebook post begging for donations that the campaign had worked with anti-abortion group Flint Right to Life to coordinate this absolutely idiotic and ridiculously ignorant plan.
The water is for “expecting moms and moms of little ones.”
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2016/01...ir-generosity/
Kruz and his supporters are real hateful bags, just like Christ would do.
http://www.freep.com/story/news/loca...6d6084f9036371
Wow.
Amid denials, state workers in Flint got clean water
Paul Egan, Detroit Free Press5:46 p.m. EST January 28, 2016
LANSING -- In January of 2015, when state officials were telling worried Flint residents their water was safe to drink, they also were arranging for coolers of purified water in Flint's State Office Building so employees wouldn't have to drink from the taps, according to state government e-mails released Thursday by the liberal group Progress Michigan.
A Jan. 7, 2015, notice from the state Department of Technology, Management and Budget, which oversees state office buildings, references a notice about a violation of drinking water standards that had recently been sent out by the City of Flint.
"While the City of Flint states that corrective actions are not necessary, DTMB is in the process of providing a water cooler on each occupied floor, positioned near the water fountain, so you can choose which water to drink," said the notice.
"The coolers will arrive today and will be provided as long as the public water does not meet treatment requirements."
Caleb Buhs, a spokesman for DTMB, said the water coolers were provided in response to the city health notice in late December or early January, which he acknowledged was about a contamination issue the city said had already subsided. The state continued to provide the coolers of purified water, right up to today, because "there were more findings as we went along," Buhs said.
Buhs said his department never told state workers the tap water was unsafe to drink, but only provided an alternative, as a landlord would do for tenants.
Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan, said it appears the state was not as slow as initially thought in responding to the Flint drinking water crisis.
“Sadly, the only response was to protect the Snyder administration from future liability and not to protect the children of Flint,” Scott said. “While residents were being told to relax and not worry about the water, the Snyder administration was taking steps to limit exposure in its own building.”
After months of downplaying concerns, including warnings from researchers about high lead levels in both the drinking water and in the blood of Flint children, the administration of Gov. Rick Snyder acknowledged around Oct. 1 a problem that is now a full-blown public health crisis garnering international headlines. Michigan DEQ Director Dan Wyant resigned in December after acknowledging officials failed to require the city to use needed corrosion control chemicals when they switched the source of their supply to Lake Huron water treated by Detroit to Flint River water treated at the Flint water treatment plant.
The lack of corrosion controls caused lead to leach from pipes, joints and fixtures into an unknown number of Flint households beginning in April of 2014, when the city began using the Flint River as a temporary cost-cutting move while under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager. Flint customers were switched back to Detroit in October, but the potential danger persists because of damage to the water distribution infrastructure.
Snyder declared a state of emergency on Jan. 5 and a week later called out the Michigan National Guard to help distribute bottled water and water filters in Flint. The state of emergency, which was set to expire next week, was extended Thursday through April 14.
Included in the e-mail string obtained by Progress Michigan is an e-mail from Mike Prysby, a district engineer in the DEQ's drinking water division, whose name had surfaced earlier in connection with the Flint drinking water public health crisis.
Prysby, who had been forwarded an e-mail from other state officials asking whether he would know more about the safety of Flint's drinking water by March 1, forwarded the e-mail to Stephen Busch, the district supervisor, who on Jan. 22 of this year was suspended without pay for his role in the drinking water catastrophe.
"Appears certain state departments are concerned with Flint's WQ (water quality)," Prysby said in the e-mail to Busch. "I will return the call ..."
On Jan. 23, 2015, the Free Press ran a story, accompanied by a photo of Flint residents holding up jugs of brown water, that said concerns of city residents ranged from the taste, appearance and odor of the water to unexplained rashes and illnesses, even sick pets. Concerns about lead had not been raised then, though experts now say the color of the water -- and the fact GM had announced it stopped using it because it was too corrosive to metal parts -- should have been a tip-off that metals, including lead, were leaching into the water.
The January 2015 Free Press story noted that in August and September, the city issued three advisories to boil Flint water after detecting coliform bacteria.
Just before Christmas, residents received notices that state tests indicated higher-than-acceptable levels of trihalomethane (TTHM), a by-product of the chlorine disinfectants added to the water to kill the bacteria.
The article said that despite a recent alert about TTHM levels having exceeded federal guidelines in 2014, city officials maintained the water was safe. The article said that Michigan DEQ officials gave the same assurances at a meeting at Flint City Hall on Jan. 21.
Prysby represented the DEQ at that Flint City Hall meeting and told residents the chlorine did its job and cleaned the water of microbial pathogens that can cause disease within days, the article said. That meant the water was safe for healthy people to drink for a short time, Prysby was quoted as saying.
The trade-off, Prysby said, was TTHM, possibly a danger for the very young, the very old, or the very sick if they ingest it long-term, he added.
"But we're talking decades," he said, adding that those who are worried should talk to their doctors.
Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter pAulegan4.
"But we're talking decades,"
people working with 3 - 5 year old Flint kids with the worst poisoning are ALREADY seeing behavioral problems.
Why it will be very difficult for Flint residents to sue Michigan for money
So, let's first point out that there's already a lawsuit underway related to the Flint water crisis. Three, in fact. A group of Michigan lawyers are suing the state of Michigan, local governments and state and local officials seeking damages for health problems they claim are caused by lead-tainted water piped into Flint residents' homes for the past 18 months. Many state officials' emails and messages related to Flint, including Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's (R), have been subpoenaed.
But as Reuters' Brendan Pierson reported Monday, some of the nation's top environmental lawyers are hesitant to join in. And with good reason, says University of Michigan law professor Gil Seinfeld.
It basically comes down to this: In America, it is very difficult to sue the government and officials for money. In fact, the Supreme Court has (controversially) decided that the Cons ution prohibits suits of this sort against the states.
The reason why goes back to a theory present in the founding of our government — an idea that was passed onto our nation's founders from England's monarchy: that the king is immune from legal liability.
Over the centuries, that idea has evolved here in the U.S. into two immunity doctrines that largely protect the state government and state and local officials from having to pay money for wrongdoing.
These two immunity doctrines are called "sovereign immunity" (for the state) and "officer immunity" (for officials). (Sovereign immunity exists for the federal government as well, but to keep this as simple as possible, we're going to focus on the intricacies of immunity at the state and local level.)
The Fix took a crash course on cons utional law with Seinfeld to try to understand these two immunity rules and how they are going to make it very hard, if not impossible, for Flint residents to sue the state of Michigan for money. Here's what we learned:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...igan-for-money
Senate Democrats Seeking Federal Aid for Flint Crisis
Senate Democrats said Thursday they would seek $600 million in federal aid to help Michigan clean up the contaminated water emergency in the city of Flint, the most far-reaching financial solution proposed to manage the crisis.
Under the proposed legislation, the federal government would provide $600 million in federal emergency aid to the state, with as much as $400 million designated for drinking water infrastructure improvements and $200 million to deal with the health fallout from the lead exposure.
Michigan would be required to match the $400 million portion dollar for dollar. The state has estimated the cost of replacing Flint’s water supply infrastructure would be over $760 million.
Democrats said they would attach their measure — which may rankle Republicans, especially those who have resisted federal emergency disaster aid for other states in the past — to a sweeping energy bill now on the Senate floor.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/us...democrats.html
man-made crisis?
no, it's a Repug-made crisis.
Gov. Snyder lied: Flint water switch was not about saving money, records show
The Flint water crisis that led to thousands of people being poisoned began because state officials maintained it would save the cash-strapped city money by disconnecting from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) and using a different source.
But it turns out, DWSD offered the state-controlled city a deal that would have saved Flint more money by staying with Detroit.
An e-mail obtained by Motor City Muckraker shows the deal would have saved the city $800 million over 30 years, which was 20% more inexpensive than switching to the Karegnondi Water Authority.
A high-ranking DWSD official told us today that Detroit offered a 50% reduction over what Flint had been paying Detroit. In fact, do ents show that DWSD made at least six proposals to Flint, saying “the KWA pipeline can only be attributed to a ‘political’ objective that has nothing to do with the delivery – or the price – of water.”
“When compared over the 30 year horizon the DWSD proposal saves $800 million dollars or said differently – saves 20% over the KWA proposal,”
“If Snyder had accept this deal, the catastrophe would have been avoided,”
Now it seems clear why Snyder wouldn’t release the e-mails: They would have revealed that the switch was not about saving money.
http://motorcitymuckraker.com/2016/0...-records-show/
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