Seriously america: Do something for flint! Something! Ask jeb! For a solution?
Certainly you’ll get no argument from me, septimus.
Snyder has asked for federal aid. What took so long?
Maybe so, but you’ve been drinking the water. We can’t trust your opinion anymore. :eek:
That’s hardly surprising. Bernie Sanders has something to say about Snyder as well. I feel like laying this all at the governor’s feet is simple.
[ul]
[li]Take over city government[/li][li]Change water source to one which will leach lead from pipes (tearing up connection to the old source for good measure)[/li][li]Wait for effects to show up[/li][li]Whine to (otherwise evil) Federal government for disaster relief[/li][li]Distribute funds from previous step to campaign contributors and/or cronies[/li][li]Profit!!![/li][/ul]Granted, the foregoing has more than the traditional number of steps. It also runs afoul of the “Never ascribe to malice …” principle. But at the very least, steps 4-6 are just too tempting to pass up.
A lot of people? Doubt it. I doubt that many will at all :eek:
Can you say "cover up? :eek: It happens in every state of the union and in DC. Lies, corruption and conspiracies entertain and makes many others apathetic… just my opinion and once again I shall not provide citations! 
I live to the west of Flint-Saginaw area and get news but I had not heard much about water filters nor the emergency manager stuff.
I know water is being passed out to every member of the city but I cant imagine how they can get every last citizen. 
Snyder doesnt deserve all the blame? The statement really doesn’t say he deserves a good portion of it
A person he appointed and answers only to him made a stupid decision with disastrous consequences. Funny how Snyder thinks the EM is now done and the elected officials can take over. “Hey, we steered your boat into the reef. You can have the boat back now!”
Race most assuredly enters into it. I don’t think for a moment that the demographics and the electoral tendencies of the area entered into Snyder’s decision to try to pretend the problem doesn’t exist. So what if a bunch of black children get poisoned? They aren’t going to vote for me anyway!
Investigations are ongoing with a couple Legionaires’ outbreaks, which sickened more than 80 and killed 10 people. The outbreaks coincide with the water transfer.
Oh, there was a break-in at Flint city hall around Christmas, one office was ransacked, and that just happened to be the office where paperwork on the city’s water were being kept. The video cameras unsurprisingly didn’t capture anything. Sounds like Watergate with actual water.
It’s worth pointing out that the EM who ok’d the switch to Flint river water, Darnell Earley, is a black man.
You can point it out, but it’s irrelevant. That black man answered to one man: Rick Snyder, not the residents of Flint. He was the administrator doing exactly what the governor had told him to do. To focus solely on the bottom line as if this were a corporate takeover.
But he’s been gone for a while. The real heinousness in this situation has been the absolute inaction from the governor and his team after the residents started loudly complaining about the water and getting sick. And then the feet dragging and denial even after an independent scientist came in and confirmed there were insane amounts of lead in the water. That is on Snyder.
I’m assuming the legality of appointing an emergency financial manager of a city have already been settled legally, Flint has had a few for a while now.
No it isn’t. Allen West and Ben Carson have black skin, too, but they hate the inner cities as much as the whitest Republican. So there are some black toadies who suck up to evil Republicans. You can’t wave a wand and say “no racism here” if you get one black guy to sign off on it.
Particularly since the EPA knew about the problem a year ago.
Not exactly.
The provision of Emergency Manager was repealed by voters in 2012 after a successful petition drive put it on the ballot.
A new EM law was passed shortly afterwards by the MI legislature, this time with an appropriation provision in it. This would make it ineligible for it to be placed on a future ballot. So short of a court challenge, it’s pretty much here to stay. But that doesn’t mean the matter is settled, legally.
As for Flint’s water, it seems they actually put chemicals in that corrode pipes. if they had caught and corrected the issue back when residents brought it to their attention, it’s possible this could have been reversed. Now? Pretty much every pipe in Flint is flaking off lead. It will continue to do so until it’s replaced, which could happen either before or after the pipes break completely.
I mean…I guess maybe they could find a way to scrub the pipes clean and then flush the system with anti-rust chemical. I have no idea if that’s even feasible (probably not) or what the cost would be (a lot). But short of that, there’s no rectifying this. You replace the pipes or Flint becomes unlivable. Or both.
Terrorists wish that they could do this kind of damage.
Of course it’s relevant when accusations of that race played a role in switching water sources. The city council is mostly black and voted 7-1 to approve the switch. The public works director is also black. Are you saying Darnell Earley wasn’t brave to stand up Snyder to protect the children of Flint?
The big question is why no one discussed the consequences of changing the water source? Don’t they have engineers who would have raised some flags about this? Why
was lead in the pipes in the first place? If they knew lead was there, shouldn’t they have been vigilant? I’m not making excuses for Snyder’s slow response but there are a lot of
troubling aspects to this story.
I don’t think the claim (justified or not) is that race played a role in switching sources. I think the claim is that it played a role in the subsequent obfuscation and foot dragging that occurred once the problem was recognized.
Did it? Who knows? Racism can be a subtle thing. But I do have to wonder if they wouldn’t have acknowledged and tried to address the problem sooner if this had occurred in a wealthy suburb.
Remember when “don’t drink the water” was something you heard about Mexico/Caribbean/etc?
I see you quoted my first paragraph and ignored my second. Yes, it started with Darnell Earley, but it got REAL fucked up once it became evident that the state was ignoring the residents of Flint and blowing off their concerns. This is where race, or at least wealth and social standing, comes into play. Some might say Snyder’s State of the State last night was the first time he ever directly addressed poor people. They’re not what you’d call his “constituency.” But with the nation watching, he finally had to.