The Flint Water Crisis (2014- ) is where Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan knowingly poisoned children, causing permanent brain damage in up to 8,000, two-thirds of them Black. The US government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) knew the water was unsafe – and did nothing.
Flint, a city 100 km north-west of Detroit, is the birthplace of General Motors. In the 1980s, GM started shutting down its factories there, throwing 75,000 people out of work. Flint lost 50% of its people and 75% of its tax base. Of those who remain, 40% live in poverty.
From 2003 to 2013, the state government cut nearly $55 million in revenue sharing with Flint.
By 2011, the city was broke. The governor, Rick Snyder, a White, Tea Party Republican, took over Flint, a Black-majority city, the tenth most liberal city in the nation (think Michael Moore, who is from Flint). Snyder put one of his cronies in charge, an “emergency manager”.
An emergency manager is not elected. He answers only to the governor. He has the power to override the democratically elected city government, its laws and contracts (except with banks). He can do pretty much anything except miss a bond payment.
From 2013 to 2014, 52% of Blacks in Michigan lived under Snyder’s emergency managers. Only 2% of Whites did.
In April 2014, to save $5 million a year, the emergency manager changed the city’s water from Detroit to the polluted Flint River. And, apparently to save $100 a day, he broke US law by not treating the water with phosphates.
Right away people noticed a difference:
- colours: brown, orange, yellow, blue.
- smells: like a sewer, an old pond, chlorine.
In private, the government dismissed this as a lack of “aesthetic values”. In public, it said the water was safe, aside from the occasional E. coli outbreak.
Those colours came from the water eating away at the pipes because it was not being treated with phosphates. That was bad news: many of those pipes were made of lead or lead parts. Lead poisoning can cause permanent brain damage in small children, leading to lower IQs and behavioural problems, like crime later in life.
By February 2015, at the latest, the state government knew there was high levels of lead in the water. It did nothing. Officials told the people of Flint to “relax”.
They did not relax.
In August, activists got scientists from Virginia Tech to thoroughly test the water. It had way more lead than the (very loose) US government limit. Some of it qualified as toxic waste. Officials dismissed Virginia Tech’s findings.
In September, Dr Mona Hanna-Attisha went back through hospital records and found that lead levels in children’s blood had doubled since 2013.
The state discounted the doctor’s findings as “data”. But she stood her ground.
In October, the state at last admitted what it had long known. It changed the city back to Detroit water. But the damage had already been done. The pipes will cost some $1.5 billion to make safe again. The children no amount of money will ever make right.
Thanks to Mary Burrell for suggesting this post.
– Abagond, 2016.
See also:
- White paternalism
- Republican bubble
- Tamir Rice
- Katrina
- The DOJ report on the Ferguson police
- Michael Moore
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Firstly blacks already have low IQ, so it doesnt matter. Secondly, its the blacks fault for taking care of their own damn city. What is wrong with you people? Too busy sagging your pants to fix your pipes? Finally, everything that happened is the fault of Big Government and blacks not taking personal responsibility. Had blacks taken personal responsibility, the city of Flint would not be the place the even Detroit residents fear to tread. Pull up your bootstraps people.
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@satanforce
Oh, so it’s our city now?!
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I hear you Satanforce!
No doubt racism is still alive (according to the WHITE racist frame) because silly Black people keep bringing hatred upon themselves by talking about it, like in this post. Apparently, Abagond (in the spirit of N Turner) keeps causing a lot of racism by his refusal to lay down and be silent!
Racism would simply fade away if we would only IGNORE white supremacists as they attempt to kill us at every opportunity. It’s time we stop noticing our oppression and marginalization. We must focus only upon WHITE wisdom, because they always know better than we do what’s best for us lowly negroes.
Our hope and salvation must always come from some WHITE person, like a President who cares about ordinary negro/coloured people.
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@satanforce
LMAO!!! You are a hilarious parody of a crazy Euro-Troll.
Love it, Love it, Love it!
(You are kidding, right?)
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When Snyder and company came up with that anti-democratic “Emergency Manager” law, the people of Michigan pushed back with a statewide referendum overturning the law.
Lame Duck Michigan legislators with nothing to lose overturned the will of the people by nullifying the results of the referendum. It’s been dictatorship and hard(er) times for the blackest and poorest Michiganders since. All to save millionaires and billionaires from paying a bit more in taxes.
Everyone who backed this travesty of a law should be arrested, tried and convicted of high crimes. Their sentence: drink Flint River water for a year.
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@Death the Kid
I’m not saying that all blacks are loafers. That would be racist. Let l me tell you a bit about myself. 20 years Army Special Forces, 5 tours in Afghanistan, was in OIF when the shit cooled down after the surge, been all over place since, just like befor OIF. So you can say this old 18D Master Sergeant knows something about responsibility. Actually , most recently was in AfriCom. Over in AfriOOM, I learnt a lot about black people that I wouldn’t have learnt stateside. In East Africa, even though those guys are poor as dirt, they take responsibility for whats theirs. They don’t go sagging their pants, paying knockout games with innocent citizens or any of that crap. All over East Africa ,I met polite people, who went to Church three times a week, hard workers, who actually dress like they want to be employed and respected by someone. So I know its not a race thing. Its just that from LBJ on,the Federal government has been doing its best to keep blacks sucking on its teat.
You wanna say that blacks in America don’t know whats up? Well listen to Obama’s Father’s Day speech. He basically tells you all to be more responsible. I guess he also needs to tell you that “All Lives Matter.” Bill Cosby also told you all to be more responsible. Same with Chris Rock. Your own movies have been saying this for years. ust look at Baby Boy, with the guy from Transformers , Tyrese. He doesn’t let his situation get him down. Instead, he mans up , and take oersonal responsibility.
That’s all it takes. Personal responsibility. You can blame GM, EPA or the Mayor for this. They have nothing tto do with it. Society doesn’t owe you anything.
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@satanforce: What is the point of your “blacks have low IQ” quip? How do you reconcile it with this claim that they need to take “personal responsibility”? Do you believe that Blacks are less intelligent? If so, how do you believe they are _capable_ of taking “personal responsibility”? How are your claims consistent?
Also, when you say that the Mayor, etc. have “nothing” to do with it — really? Are you saying that they should not be held accountable for violating the law?!
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
Cares? Then you must mean Hillary Clinton. She was the only person running for president who offered to help Flint.
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Your reply proves my point about low I.
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@satanforce: I am not Black. Can you actually provide an answer to the questions, though? If you think Blacks have “lower IQ”, then under that, how are they supposed to be _able_ to take this “responsibility”, in your view? That’s what I mean that it’s not consistent. Can you actually answer that?
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What I am saying about that is that if you claim Blacks have lower IQ, then that claim would imply a diminished capacity to take responsibility, not to mention diminished stuff to take responsibility for (how responsible are you for your intelligence level?). That’s why it seems problematic to claim both at the same time.
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Reblogged this on Raimanet and commented:
https://tinyurl.com/h4rjhyg
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Hillary Clinton cares !!!! That’s funny. It was her husband that helped destroy Michigan in the first place.
http://www.epi.org/blog/naftas-impact-workers/
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@Satan:
Amen brother!
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On a serious note:
http://www.occupydemocrats.com/travesty-leaked-emails-reveal-republican-officials-made-fun-of-poisoned-flint-residents/
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@Kiwi
That’s what I was wondering. Somehow it’s the responsibility lead poisoned children to run the city and not the fool elected to do it.
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Reblogged this on revealingartisticthoughts and commented:
They knew and said nothing, but if people say race is never a factor. This is why the Bible calls for us to protect and champion the cause of the poor. the way they are treated and disregarded as though they are not human is sad. Everyone involved in the coverup from high on down better be locked away for life. I don’t want to see any of these punk bastards going free. They are disgusting and should be made to drink that water pieces of trash.
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@Death the Kid
The ‘fool’ who ran Flint, MI was NOT ELECTED! He was appointed by that criminal governor, Snyder, under an unconstitutional “Emergency Manager” law rejected by the people of Michigan.
The purpose of the law was to take away local community control of municipalities and strip city assets to pay debts. Most of the financial distress was caused by the state ending sharing of tax monies and large auto manufacturers moving their operations overseas. The majority of people affected by this law are African American (no surprise there).
States ending tax sharing with municipalities is a reflection of the Federal government ending tax sharing with states. That is just one way that the American people pay for endless aggressive wars throughout the globe.
Satanforce is an acknowledged part of the war machine that sucks money needed for new water infrastructure (mains and pipes), schools, housing, healthcare, roads and bridges into bullets, bombs, drones and the pockets of arms manufacturers, lobbyists and boots on the ground (and sometimes in the mouth) who have the nerve to rail about “personal responsibility” in Black folk.
My Southern Black relatives had a pretty simple understanding about responsibility, both personal and collective: Take Care Of Home First!
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Afrofem and everyone else who took Satanforce seriously… he is not serious
he is parodying Abagond’s usual white race realists, practically word-for-word
(who all must be vacation because I haven’t seen the usual suspects in quite awhile)
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Why didn’t municipal workers and the communities they serve go on strike and take other actions to disrupt the governor’s take over? Why are people so passive?
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The access to clean water is a basic human right. This is deplorable and unacceptable. It’s almost like a genocide of a town of black people. The Governor needs to be held accountable and all the other higher ups as well.
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Mary, I agree and hope to start seeing heads roll
the affects of lead toxicity on the human body, can be fatal and is irreversible… so the damage done to these children is forever
ironic enough, Freddie Gray of Baltimore, was poisoned by lead paint as a child and received a million dollar settlement from the city of Baltimore
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/freddie-grays-life-a-study-in-the-sad-effects-of-lead-paint-on-poor-blacks/2015/04/29/0be898e6-eea8-11e4-8abc-d6aa3bad79dd_story.html
and as we see, he was ruined because he had long-term mentation issues, which is common for people poisoned by lead… delayed brain development, inability to focus (moderate to severe ADHD), poor judgement skills, seizures
I hope the people of Flint bring the hammer down on the Governor for appointing this unnecessary “emergency manager”
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@Linda: It’s the poor who suffer in some way or another. Thanks for sharing the link about Freddy Gray.
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SatanForce: So you met a few east Africans when you were in Djibouti? Big deal. How does that relate to Black people stateside. Abagond wrote a post about people like you. You are simply justifying your racism against Black folks by comparing them to another–largely unrelated group of people. I guess next you’re going to say that you have black friends–and perhaps even a black wife and kids to back you up, right?
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@ Jabari Jones
As Linda pointed out, I think Satanforce’s comments are meant as parody.
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Abagond: Oh, okay. Upon looking at his blog, that appears to be the case. There ought to be sarcasm tags here…:)
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Please delete Linda’s and your comment about me. Its interefering with my LULZ.
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@Linda
Thanks for the clarification. I’m still a newbie to this site.
@satanforce
You can continue to enjoy your LULZ at my expense. Some of the articles on your blog are quite interesting. Shows how people are just people all over.
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@ Herneith
Thanks for the link re: emails. Sociopath is a mild word for the political hacks in Michigan….
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Every devil has his day.
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@King
“Every devil has his day.” And some have two. LOL!
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Dammit too late! You were much faster back in 2012…….
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So you see how this all becomes one big self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
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I hope Rick Snyder gets the life wronged out of him. This guy has gone way too far. There is no burden to bring safety upon the masses except for funding your yachts or maintaining your place as a greedy, heartless, bully who is in power solely to control others’ lives like you know what’s REALLY best for a multitude of people. How can anyone be so presumptious and vain? Nobody would’ve bit at him for NOT KILLING PEOPLE.
He has used up his right to be much of anything in this universe. It is time for him to become an object or eject from existence. Rick Snyder for graveyard 2016.
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This is one of the saddest news stories I’ve read in recent memory. Aside from the anger and disgust I feel towards the political aspects of this tragedy, I feel so much sympathy and love for those whose health has been affected. An entire generation of children will likely require ongoing treatment and may have problems forever. Little value was placed on their lives and livelihood. It is truly very sad how little respect these brothers and sisters were given.
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I saw a meme on Google+ feed Is Paris praying for Flint,Michigan?
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LULZ.
I triple that!
I saw a meme on Google+ feed Is Paris praying for Flint,Michigan?
Probably not. I have yet to see anything resembling empathy or sympathy from that side of the pond and I am not speaking of news outlets either. They are reporting on in this incident but not in the same vein as they did when europeans were killed
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“Is Paris praying for Flint,Michigan?”
.
Of course not.
In the Zero Sum Game of race WHITE people love to play, praying for Black people will somehow equate to hurting white people! No wonder why God, Jesus and all the inhabitants of Heaven are WHITE, according to white people’s imagery. And why they have little to no empathy toward Black people!
Zero Sum game – ANYTHING that is beneficial/uplifting to Black people must be harmful/disadvantageous to white people.
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Why do u give a damn about people who don’t give a damn about u? People in Paris have their own lives to live.
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Je suis Flinty?
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[…] Sourced through Scoop.it from: abagond.wordpress.com […]
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Why do u give a damn about people who don’t give a damn about u?
Why indeed, besides, French cooking is highly overrated.
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http://www.snail-world.com/wp-content/uploads/snail-front.jpg !!!!!
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@Fan
“Zero Sum game – ANYTHING that is beneficial/uplifting to Black people must be harmful/disadvantageous to white people.”
That’s some serious fear and insecurity going on. If one group of people simply feeling good about themselves or something in their lives makes another group of people angry, anxious and abusive, something is broken in the hearts and minds of the latter group.
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” If one group of people simply feeling good about themselves or something in their lives makes another group of people angry, anxious and abusive, something is broken in the hearts and minds of the latter group.”
.
AfroFem
Yep. That’s exactly how their ball bounces .. BROKEN.. with no indication of getting fixed anytime soon!
How bad is their zero-sum conditioning??
It’s terminal.
Just the thought of any government actually paying reparations to Blacks would cause most of them to spontaneously explode like WMD, thereby destroying themselves, and the rest of us if they could!
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Annoying way to present information but the timeline is worth the read:
http://www.freep.com/pages/interactives/flint-water-crisis-timeline/
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This is a disgrace. The government obviously doesn’t care about people. But it’s “somehow” easy to point a finger at all those “evil” countries for not caring about their people.
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@Open Minded Observer
You’re right. The format is annoying, but the information is devastating.
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This is what happens when you put a tea part candidate/republican in office! Lord knows what will happend if Ted Cruz or Donald Trump wins. I don’t want Hillary of Bernie in office but The choices are really pathetic.
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The crisis that elevated this issue to national attention is a direct result of the decision to use Flint River water to cover a 2-year gap between an expired Detroit Water contract and the new Karegnondi system coming online. Every single person and entity involved with that decision dropped the ball and made really really poor choices. That’s EVERYONE, from mayor & council to the EM that approved their choice to the DEQ and EPA and the people tasked with delivering healthy water from the river. Many have resigned already, more heads will roll, and hopefully (but doubtfully) some folks might be charged with criminal negligence. The sad fact is that it didn’t need to happen at all. Flint was alone in that decision. ALL of the other players in the KWA system reached agreements with DWSD to continue receiving water during that 2-year gap.
I mentioned to Mary earlier that I didn’t think this crisis was racially motivated. I stand by that if we’re talking about someone having advanced knowledge that the river water would poison people and made a deliberate decision to move forward because those people were Black. I don’t think that happened. Maybe I’m naive. However, I do believe that race played a significant role in the overall origins of the KWA in the 1st place. That setup began long ago, and had very little to do with State government at the time. The primary purpose of the KWA was to provide an alternative to DWSD. DWSD was/is the ONLY profitable entity bringing substantial income to the city from the suburbs. Without it, Detroit would NEVER emerge from bankruptcy. Flint may be 60/40 Black/White but the surrounding suburbs are more like 2/98 Black/White. So, White legislators pushing for a White-managed water system that benefits White counties while simultaneously cutting off a significant source of revenue for the Black-managed water system in Detroit. If you’re a White guy with significant racial bias, that’s too good to be true right? Then you bring in this administration to really get things moving and take over Flint and Detroit. Low and behold, KWA moving forward, AND DWSD re-tooled into “Great Lakes Water Authority” which is controlled by the counties… including the suburbs.
Wanna know what the Flint Emergency Manager’s doing now? Who’s lives he’s ruining now? C’mon, I know you wanna know… Read any news about Detroit Public Schools lately?
http://detroit.k12.mi.us/admin/emergency_manager/
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Apparently, not every black elected official in Flint is a fraud. If this news item is to be believed this man warned against this debacle at the start. (http://news.yahoo.com/meet-wantwaz-davis–the-ex-con-who-tried-to-save-flint-231549164.html)
How come this post didn’t reflect his struggle to be heard? The criminality of the Obama administration is in evidence here because they totally ignored him.
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@ gro jo
It is interesting that in all the reading I’ve done on the topic, this is the very first time I’ve run across Mr. Davis’ name. If you Google him along with the phrase “Flint water”, there’s plenty out there to lend credibility to the article you posted. He was clearly one with the foresight to oppose the Flint River switch from the beginning. So much so that he ran for and was elected to city council and he even ran for Mayor last year. Who knew?!? He wasn’t alone in his objections… I guess the mainstream media just prefers targeting those that “should have known better” rather than highlighting the stories of those that did in fact know better.
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I agree with what you wrote, but a deeper question is why do blogs like this one do such poor job of highlighting people like him? Aren’t posts whining about what some racist idiot wrote or said a waste of time when real work could be done by finding people like him and giving them a platform?
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where is general motors in all of this
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“Even after the General Motors plant in Flint refused to use the water because it was rusting car parts, residents were not offered alternatives.” (http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-crisis-in-flint-goes-deeper-than-the-water)
does this answer your question?
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ok
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@gro jo
<blockquote?why do blogs like this one do such poor job of highlighting people like him?
Abagond can speak for himself, but my guess is that, like me, he never ran across the name in while looking into the crisis.
He was also probably not aware of the issues in Flint before it hit national media. That’s where the modern social media / blogosphere (or whatever) can really start to do a better job. Somehow, the stories of the Wantwaz Davis’ of the world need to be detected before it’s an “I told you so” story. Although, conspiracy theory websites abound (and fill my fb feed) so I’m honestly not sure how many people would take a story like his seriously… especially in the face of overwhelming DEQ and EPA and elected official “evidence” to the contrary. Perhaps that’s another side effect of this crisis… Even less of the general public and media willing to take government’s word when attempting to dismiss this kind of thing.
What we need is some sort of independent investigative organization that could pick up these stories, verify their validity and get the story to a broader audience. We could call it “The News”. I’m just spitballin’ ideas here though… probably never take off.
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“What we need is some sort of independent investigative organization that could pick up these stories, verify their validity and get the story to a broader audience. We could call it “The News”. I’m just spitballin’ ideas here though… probably never take off.”
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chasing_News
I can guess what you mean by “independent,” but I’m not sure what you mean by a “broader audience.”
Broader than what? The blogosphere? Social media? Youtube?
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@Fan
Sorry… was sarcasm. News already exists. It’s just not particularly independent and features very little actual journalism. It does, however, reach into most households on a daily basis.
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Well I’ll be damned….
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lead-crime_hypothesis
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http://www.progressmichigan.org/2016/01/document-snyder-admin-trucked-in-clean-water-for-state-building-in-january-2015/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%201/29/16&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All
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@satanforce
Thanks for that link.
While I’m wary of wiki’s with unnamed article authors and public edits, the writers make some good points. At the very least, they lead you into further research.
A good point of comparison to the lead exposure=crime assertion is whether other societies that experienced high exposure to lead, such as Rome in the late centuries of the Empire also saw spikes in violent crime.
Another thing to consider is the heavy use of pewter utensils in 1400s to 1800s England and America. Pewter is up to 20% lead. According to current science there is no safe level of lead, even minute amounts are toxic. Perhaps that would explain some of the extreme violence and criminality of the English both with their immediate neighbors (Welsh, Scots and Irish) and later with Indigenous Americans and Africans. It’s probably only one factor of many, but one that has been overlooked.
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Flint supposedly changed from Detroit water to save money – yet after the changeover people in Flint paid 3.5 times more for poisoned water than people in Detroit paid for clean water.
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@Open Minded Observer
I see this situation very differently. I think this crisis was racially motivated and quite deliberate…and I’m not the only one.
James Boyce, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst had this to say about the poisoning of Flint:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/01/flint-let-them-drink-pollution.html
Filmmaker, Michael Moore went further:
http://michaelmoore.com/DontSendBottledWater/
A Michigan native, Moore also had five suggestions for rectifying this outrage:
1. Demand the removal and arrest of Rick Snyder, the Governor of Michigan.
2. Make the State of Michigan pay for the disaster that the State of Michigan created.
3. The Federal Government must then be placed in charge. (listen to a former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator’s comments below for another take on the role of the Feds).
4. Evacuate any and all Flint residents who want to leave now.
5. For those who choose to stay in Flint, FEMA must create a temporary water system in each home
It has been several weeks since Moore wrote this and no action has been taken to significantly relieve the suffering of the citizens of Flint, Michigan. Instead, they have continued to be charged high prices for poisoned water.
Black Agenda Report editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, who was a senior-level whistleblower at the EPA, said she “can’t imagine” that EPA administrator Gina McCarthy did not send President Obama a memo that essentially warned, “There is a potential that a major American city my be poisoned.” Failure to warn the public of imminent environmental danger “is a criminal offense,” she said.
Dr. Coleman-Adebayo’s comments are in the first segment of the podcast: 1:02 to 18:12
http://www.blackagendareport.com/black_agenda_radio_20160215
How I see the Flint Water Assault——–Deliberate, yes. Racially motivated, yes. Due to a lack of democracy, heck yeah!
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@Abagond
You have to take that in context though. Flint was paying close to, if not the highest rates in the country for water from Detroit. Every “suburb” paid significantly more than Detroiters for water from Detroit Water & Sewer, but Flint had it the worst. So, there was an intersection of lowering water rates, screwing over Detroit, empowering the northern suburbs and even possibly even benefiting fracking friends that made the Karengondi system a win/win/win in the eyes of politicians.
It wasn’t until Flint called Detroit’s termination bluff and began working on switching to the Flint River that Detroit finally made an offer that was a 48% reduction in rates. THAT would have been slightly cheaper, AND WITHOUT A DOUBT SAFER, than proceeding with the Flint River while awaiting Karengondi coming online. Let that sink in… a 48% reduction in rates would still have been more than Detroiters were paying but less than Flint River water. Had they offered that 48% reduction somewhere in the 2009-2012 timeframe, the entire Karengondi project would have been irrelevant. Ironically, that whole exchange in 2013 paved the way for the “regional water authority” that is now in place and managing the former Detroit Water & Sewer Dept. and has normalized rates.
You’re right though. At some point, it absolutely became less about saving the residents money and more about “Sticking it to Detroit”. The same people responsible for that shortsightedness are the ones that continued to make bad decision after bad decision at every step of this mess. Individual pride and anti-Detroit sentiments are what ultimately poisoned the people of Flint.
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The live stream for the #JusticeForFlint concert:
http://www.maestro.io/revolt
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The #JusticeForFlint concert last night raised $145,000. Meanwhile at the Oscars, people spent $65,243 on Girl Scout cookies from Chris Rock’s daughters.
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At the congressional hearing, Matt Cartwright told Rick Snyder, “You were not in a medically induced coma for a year… there you are, dripping with guilt but drawing your paycheck, hiring lawyers at the expense of the people, and doing your dead level best to spread accountability to others… people who put dollars over the fundamental safety of the people do not belong in government.”
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@Paige
Thanks for sharing those quotes!
If this were a democratic and just society, Rick Snyder and his criminal cronies would all be in prison right now.
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Reminds me of the section of Marimba Ani’s book Yurugu where she talks about the European view of others. She mentioned that “others” are seen as garbage so it’s fine for Europeans to dump their garbage on them. She’s went on to give several examples of toxic waste being dumped on “non-whites”.
I don’t remember her exact examples but I know it has happened many times. During the 1950s-60s radioactive substances were dumped on predominantly black St. Louis neighborhoods by the US government. Also, in the 1940s, residents of Guatemala were deliberately infected with Syphillis and other STDs by the US government. Just a quick search produced a site with several more examples: http://www.alternet.org/environment/7-toxic-assaults-communities-color-besides-flint-dirty-racial-politics-pollution that I haven’t yet double-checked.
I’m not shocked by Flint because it fits the pattern.
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In case anyone was wondering if there would be criminal charges… The tally stands at 13 so far including former “emergency managers”.
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/12/20/schuette-flint-water-charges/95647818/
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@Open Minded Observer
+1000. Still waiting on charges to be filed against Governor Snyder.
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According to Democracy Now! headlines today:
Michigan to Pay Nearly $100 Million to Flint to Replace Water Lines
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/28/headlines/michigan_to_pay_nearly_100_million_to_flint_to_replace_water_lines
We shall see.
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http://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/a-deep-dive-into-the-source-of-flints-water-crisis/Content?oid=3399011
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From NPR:
“The director of Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services, Nick Lyon, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and misconduct in office over the Flint water crisis. Both are felonies in Michigan.
The state’s chief medical executive, Dr. Eden Wells, will be charged with obstruction of justice. Four other officials, including the former Flint emergency manager and former director of public works, were also charged with involuntary manslaughter.”
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@ Paige
They are scapegoats. The responsibility lay with the governor and his emergency manager who willfully and with criminal negligence poisoned the people of Flint to give tax breaks to Michigan millionaires and billionaires.
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@ Scribh
It is disgusting for low level functionaries to fall on their swords for the likes of Gov. Snyder.
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“Rick Snyder should be in jail, as Bernie said.”
https://blackagendareport.com/bernie_sanders_imperial_pig
It is what it is and he is whom he is.
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@ watchman777
Good point. Glen Ford has had a clear eyed view of the system for decades. I really resonated with this quote from the link you provided:
In that context, Sanders is not the left savior he seems to be at first glance.
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