In an example of both racist contempt and ruthless, remorseless class warfare, the Republican Party rulers of the State of Michigan have been relentlessly poisoning the people of Flint, Michigan, with lead and bacteria-contaminated tap water.
Lead is a neurotoxin, which causes permanent brain damage, especially in children. Scores of children in Flint have been found with greatly elevated levels of lead in their blood. Lead has also harmed the health of adult residents in the city. And lead damages other organs of the body.
The victims of this violent assault are the mostly poor, mostly black (somehow it usually works out that way in America) residents of Flint, one of a number of cities and towns (all but one majority black) in Michigan that have been placed under Tsarist-like rule of appointed “emergency managers,” imposed by Republican Governor Rick Snyder. Under these arrangements, in which the residents and elected officials of the towns thus seized have no say, the local governments are stripped of their powers, and the “emergency manager,” the GOP local Tsar, has all power, including abrogating labor contracts.
In Flint, one of the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) hitmen was put in charge of the water system by the “emergency manger,” Darnell Earley. This assaulter, Howard Croft, figured that a great way to save money would be to stop paying for water from Detroit, and pump it directly from the Flint River, into people's homes. Only problem was, that water is highly corrosive and would leach lead and iron from the pipes and into the water and from there, into people's bodies. The iron contributed to the growth of bacteria, apparently leading to an outbreak of Legionnaires' Disease in Flint, which killed ten people. But the professional penny-pincher Croft figured he could save another $100 a day by not treating the water with chemicals that would prevent the corrosion of the water pipes. You know what they say: a penny saved is a pound (or dollar) earned -for “upscale” taxpayers. (Or in this case, a few billion from the Federal government to tear out the corroded pipes and replace them, if Michigan gets a bailout its Governor is asking for. Funny, Republicans hate bailouts for everyone but themselves and rich plutocrats.) [1]
Anyway, the most important thing in life is that bondholders get paid every dime they were promised,NOT that workers get the pensions they worked a lifetime for, or people get essential services, and not be deliberately poisoned.
The residents knew something was wrong right away, as the water was quite obviously noxious. Their GOP masters and overseers repeated lied through their teeth and said nothing was wrong, the water was fine. A resident instigated two tests of her water. They showed 100 and 400 ppb (parts per billion) lead in the tap water. The Federal “action level” is 15 ppb, meaning something should be done about it immediately. So this water was extremely dangerous. (There's actually no “safe” level of lead.)
These test results were taken to the local EPA office, and an EPA employee did his job, confirmed the lead contamination, and reported his findings to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, naively expecting they would do something about the “problem.” (The fundamental problem is the criminal behavior of the political bosses in the U.S., and the upper classes they represent. That's what causes the smaller “problems” that are focused on while ignoring their causes and contexts, applying either band-aid solutions, palliatives, or doing nothing at all. For example, the “over-incarceration” “problem” is dealt with by highly-publicized releases of small numbers of prisoners “early.” The accompanying hoopla is supposed to impress.)
For his trouble, the EPA employee was rebuked by his EPA superiors, reassigned, and a letter of apology was sent to the GOP-controlled state agency! So the “black” president's EPA aided and abetted the maiming of black children. Nice. [2]
The facts in the previous paragraphs are suppressed by the establishment media to pretty-up the picture. That enables them to pretend it was all a big “mistake,” or a series of errors, regrettable lapses in competence. Hey, to err is human! Maybe these guys are just very very human! The New York Times and others are so mendacious that they simply suppress or virtually ignore the fact that the state apparatchiks deliberately dropped high lead test readings from the official reports to cover up their ongoing criminal assault.
Thus the establishment media is falsely portraying this as a series of “mistakes” by the GOP bosses and their apparatchiks in Michigan. (Not to worry: the GOP state attorney general says he'll be “investigating” the matter. I'm sure he'll get to the bottom of things and clear them up.)
The facts clearly indicate deliberate, malicious intend. The way the New York Times and Michigan newspapers pull this off is by banning the most damning facts from their pages (and websites). [3]
Governor Snyder and his minions are now trying to toss the hot potato into the laps of the hitherto powerless local politicians. Good luck with that. [4]
For the information on the EPA quashing the uncovering of the high lead levels, and its malfeasance, and detailed information about the struggle to force the Snyder regime to admit that the water was contaminated at all, go to Democracy Now! Democracy Now! has given this story of an atrocity the coverage it deserves, on several days. Go to democracynow.org and search “Flint Michigan.” Or just click on the link I helpfully provided for the stories.
Also “Expert says Michigan officials changed a Flint lead report to avoid federal action,” michiganradio.org, November 5, 2015.
And don't pay any attention to all that GOP screeching about the "job-killing" EPA, which they all vow to abolish. It's just another lapdog "regulatory" agency that is the captive and servant of the industries they purport to "regulate," like the FDA, USDA, SEC, et al.
I'll tell you what actually kills something: pollution. And it isn't jobs it kills. It's you and me.
1] But Flint City Tsar Earley has- surprise surprise!- landed on his feet with yet another unelected position of power, this time running the school system of Detroit. Hey, cream rises! (Or as the late Hunter S. Thompson once put it, in a takeoff on a famous literary title, “The Scum Also Rises.”) I mean, the man has proven he can Do The Job. Indeed. Calling him “incompetent” is to fail to understand what his assigned task was. Just as calling the “drug war” a “failure,” or mass incarceration a “failure,” or the “war on terror” one, fundamentally misunderstands their true purposes. (Too long to expand on that now. Read some of my other stuff and you'll find out.) Meanwhile, Flint has another GOP-Tsar imposed on it, Jerry Ambrose, who refuses to return to using the Detroit water system. Too expensive, he says.
Oh.
Oh.
Here, have a bottled water! Now it's free!
By the way, Earley blamed the powerless Flint city officials whose authority he and Snyder usurped, for the move to use Flint River water. The man, typically of hustlers, is shameless. [“Ex-emergency manager says he's not to blame for Flint River water switch,” mlive.com, October 27, 2015.]
2] “The EPA Also Knew Flint's Water Might Be Poisoned Last Year But Didn't Tell Anyone,” Slate, January 14, 2015. Also reported by DemocracyNow!
The mouthpiece for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, one Brad Wurfel, denied just on December 22 that the high lead levels found in children's blood in Flint had anything to do with the tremendous lead levels in the water. It's like comparing “apples and cars,” he said. (“'Gov. Snyder Should Be Arrested': Flint Residents Demand Justice over Water Poisoning,” Democracy Now!, January 8, 2016.
A particularly noxious piece of corporate media propaganda in defense of Snyder is on the website for the Michigan newspapers owned by Advance Publications, “Flint water probe may unleash flood of findings on mistakes,” The hack who wrote it combines an absurd portrayal of the “problem” as a series of Keystone Kops blunders, “mistakes” and “bungling,” not deliberate actions, and pretends Snyder was somehow unaware, and clearly takes a dim view of “critics,” which allows him to dismiss damning facts as mere allegation and opinion, By the way, that “probe” is the Governor's own, controlled gambit.
Not till almost the very end of the piece does this vile propagandist deign to mention this key element of this criminal saga:
“The critics contend the EM was more interested in saving money, and because the Flint water was less expensive, he shut off the Detroit pipeline.”
That's it, the entire reference to a key FACT. “Saving money” is also why the Governor's appointed henchmen refused to spend $100 per day to add chemicals to the system that would have prevented the leaching of lead and iron into the water.
The propagandist is Tim Skubick, “Politics Columnist for Mlive.com.” He's so talented that he has another job, as host of "Off The Record" on PBS. (That the U.S. government TV propaganda network, the Public Broadcasting System.) Since “Off The Record” is obviously on the record, I guess the idea is to trick you into thinking you're getting the “inside dope,” as you're being indoctrinated in their twisted way of thinking by being allowed to “listen in.”
Advance Publications is one of the biggest owners of newspapers across the entire U.S. It is owned by the Newhouse family, who also have a stable of slick, bourgeois magazines (the euphemism is “upscale”) collected in another family corporation, Conde Nast, which includes Vanity Fair (a sort of high-toned gossip mag about elite people with occasional investigative news articles) and “The” New Yorker. As with “The” New York Times, my habit is to omit the capital T, as it feels too much like genuflecting to royalty. They ain't so special.
Still, the website for the Newhouses' Michigan newspapers has numerous articles on the unfolding scandal, “STORIES TAGGED Flint-Water,” mlive.com. One article outrageously calls the Flint Water Department “embattled” in its headline. I think it is the people of Flint who have been besieged.
4] “Gov. Snyder calls for return of powers to Flint Mayor Karen Weaver,” January 15, 2016, mlive.com.
Earley scored lifetime health insurance for a 6-year stint as Saginaw, MI, city manager. The corrupt city council voted the benefit. There's how you belt-tighten! [click for source]
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| Earley with water hatchetman Howard Croft |
What better tools for a racist assault than people of the same race as the victims? It's perfect camouflage. [Cf. Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Jr., Loretta Lynch, Jeh Johnson, et al. To be fair, they oppress plenty of whites too. And Hispanics! But if you ever had any doubt that blacks can oppress blacks, you're not familiar with African governments.]
Oh you Devil, you!
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