Fixing Flint with Tough Love

[American_Jihad]

Oh My, I thought the left were pro environment...
Fixing Flint with Tough Love
The only people who can save Flint are already living there.
May 17, 2016
Daniel Greenfield

You’ve probably never heard of Sebring, Ohio. Despite tainted water, which the EPA knew about for months before the public did, shipments of water bottles for the angry residents, two EPA employees being put on leave, and all the other elements of a scandal, it was missing something.

Sebring is 98% white. Ohio governor John Kasich is a Republican, but currently favored by the media. So talk of Sebring being the next Flint remained just that.

St. Joseph, Louisiana might have been the other “next Flint,” but before long Louisiana had elected a Democratic governor. St Joe’s is mostly black and there are no Republicans in sight to blame for its water crisis. Plenty of villages, towns and cities have tainted water. The cause is usually local, but the media is only interested if it has the right victims and the right villain for its manufactured drama.

The closest counterpart to the media’s wildly dishonest coverage of Flint’s water troubles was its Katrina reporting. Even though New Orleans had an incompetent Democratic mayor, who would be sent to jail, and a Democratic governor, all the blame was directed at the Republican president. The crisis coverage was filled with hyperbolic exaggeration in which Brian Williams’ own lies garnered no attention. New Orleans was a post-apocalyptic hell on earth where the residents had devolved to cannibalism. All because of Bush. The Flint coverage is the old Katrina coverage with Snyder swapped out for Bush.

If Romney had won the last election, Flint would be his fault. But with Democrats in the White House and in Flint, the media chose the lone Republican in the middle. It had no interest in asking questions about the EPA’s slow response to the crisis or in investigating local Flint politicians.

These included Councilman Wantwaz Davis, a convicted killer, whom the media celebrated as the hero of the Flint crisis, while dismissing his time in jail for murder. Davis was expert at getting media attention by playing up his background and denouncing the tainted water as “genocide”.

But, like much of Flint, Davis wasn’t paying his water bills. The media is still playing up Flint’s high water rates. What it doesn’t mention is that they’re so high because Flint is full of water deadbeats.

Flint’s Democratic mayor, city council and emergency manager made the transition which caused the crisis. But the media chose to overlook all of them and blame Governor Snyder. It cheered the election of a new mayor, Karen Weaver, who, like Wantwaz, was an “activist” fighting for the people of Flint.

Mayor Weaver claimed that the crisis happened because, "The people weren't put first, the health of the people was not put before profit and money."

Now Mayor Weaver has been hit with a lawsuit accusing her of funneling donations for Flint’s water crisis into her own SuperPAC. Instead of going to help Flint residents get safer drinking water, the money was being redirected to a group named after Weaver’s cheesy campaign slogan. Karenabout Flint.

Weaver, not Snyder, had been allegedly putting profit and money ahead of the health of the people. Karen didn’t care about Flint. Like the city’s previous mayors, she only cared about Karen.

The media is treating the lawsuit as a Snyder conspiracy, even though former administrator Natasha Henderson, who filed the whistleblower lawsuit, had just as shaky a relationship with Governor Snyder as she did with Mayor Weaver.

...

A crisis is an opportunity for leadership. Flint’s problem isn’t clean water, it’s leadership.

The only people who can save Flint are already living there. If they can’t do it, no one else can.

Fixing Flint with Tough Love

 

[Searcher44]

But, like much of Flint, Davis wasn’t paying his water bills. The media is still playing up Flint’s high water rates. What it doesn’t mention is that they’re so high because Flint is full of water deadbeats.

Just Great! A little bit of "blame the victim" thrown in for good measure. This author is employed by a right wing think tank is he? Don't see any other reason he would ignore the conclusions reached by the panel put together by the Governor himself. I'm sure there's enough blame to go around, conjuring up an alternate reality scenario like this Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center. Whenever I see "Freedom" in the title of an organization it puts me on alert. I quickly ran across an article that saved me some research time. The author had already done my work, breaking down Greenfield's work on another "Alice in Wonderland" fantasy of his. Part of his (Patrick Andendall's) article;

"There is so much to consider in the above paragraph. But I will start with the description of the Journalist as a fellow of the Freedom Center. I must confess that I had automatically pegged this as being yet another Koch funded foundation whose goal is to achieve the exact reverse for the “Struggling class” of America. I was wrong, the Freedom society is funded by the likes of Sarah Scaife Foundation and run by David Horowitz."
............
"Please join me in entering the Intellectually Incestuous, Circular and Corrupted Universe of paid off hacks posing as Journalists and Authors. A Universe in which I accidentally stumble upon my idiotic twin. (Daniel Greenfield)
As one may have noticed I have a bit of a fascination with the term Freedom or Freedoms. [First clue I like this guy, he has the same intuitions about groups with "Freedom" employed to give an air of Patriotism, when usually they want to destroy America's Institutions] these nouns are often a red flag for shallow thinking or nefarious agenda’s. It is a noun that comes very easily to populist politicians looking to use misdirection to drive a false or Orwellian narrative. My book devotes an entire chapter on the subject – but yet that is not enough. I spend some time discussing the Koch agenda (i.e. Freedom = Economic Slavery for the Struggling class)
No critical thinking person wants to waste time trying to weigh the views of people deeply trapped in a disingenuous, yet somewhat imaginative Alice in Wonderland Universe."


Here's one of Time Magazines accounts of the tragedy;


"Michigan state agencies overseen by Gov. Rick Snyder and a series of emergency managers appointed by the governor are to blame for allowing contaminated water into Flint homes, according to a report released Wednesday. The findings—the most sweeping indictment to date of the role state officials played in creating the crisis—were released as part of the task force’s final report on Flint, where residents were exposed to lead in their drinking water for over a year even as officials were telling them it was safe to drink.
The task force, appointed by the governor to investigate the Flint crisis, found that the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), which did not require that Flint treat its water after switching from Detroit’s water system to the Flint River, “bears primary responsibility for the water contamination in Flint.” The report faults the agency for misinterpreting the federal lead and copper rule, which requires actions like corrosion control to minimize lead levels, and failing to investigate whether the Flint River was contributing to a high number of cases of Legionella, a respiratory disease that has led to 10 deaths in Flint but has not been fully linked to the water switch. Lead in children can be particularly devastating and cause developmental disabilities later in life.
The report also found that the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services “failed to adequately and promptly act to protect public health” and said that the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversaw MDEQ, delayed enforcement of federal laws that would’ve ensured safe drinking water. But the task force placed much of the blame for the crisis on emergency managers appointed by Gov. Snyder to help the city handle its finances and said the governor’s office repeatedly relied on incorrect information from state officials on the Flint water situation."

 

[waltky]

Criminal charges in Flint water scandal...

Former Flint emergency managers, others charged in water crisis
Tue Dec 20, 2016 | Michigan prosecutors on Tuesday charged four former government officials in Flint, including two city emergency managers, with conspiring to violate safety rules in connection with the city's water crisis that exposed residents to dangerous levels of lead.

Former state-appointed emergency managers Darnell Earley and Gerald Ambrose and former city employees Howard Croft, a public works superintendent, and Daugherty Johnson, a utilities manager, were the latest to be charged in the case, Attorney General Bill Schuette said. The defendants conspired to operate the city's water treatment plant when it was not safe to do so, he told a news conference in Flint. "Flint was a casualty of arrogance, disdain and failure of management, an absence of accountability," Schuette said. Michigan has been at the center of a public health crisis since last year, when tests found high amounts of lead in blood samples taken from children in Flint, a predominantly black city of about 100,000. Asked whether the investigation would lead to charges against higher-placed state officials, Schuette reiterated that no one was excluded.

Some critics have called for high-ranking state officials, including Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, to be charged. Snyder has said he believed he had not done anything criminally wrong. Snyder spokeswoman Anna Heaton said by email that the state remains committed to helping Flint recover. Johnson's attorney, Edward Zeineh, said his client pleaded not guilty in court on Tuesday. "We will vigorously defend these proceedings in court," Zeineh said. Court documents did not list attorneys for the other three men. An attorney who previously represented Earley could not be reached for comment. The accused face felony charges of false pretenses and conspiracy to commit false pretenses. Each charge can carry prison terms of up to 20 years and/or fines, officials said.

The Flint Water Plant tower is seen in Flint, Michigan​

Flint resident Gina Luster, whose 8-year-old daughter suffered lead poisoning, wants to see those charged pay a price for their roles in the crisis. "To see convictions and jail time is the ultimate goal for me," she said by text. Flint's water contamination was linked to an April 2014 decision by a state-appointed emergency manager to switch the city's water source to the Flint River from Lake Huron in an attempt to cut costs. The more corrosive river water caused lead to leach from city pipes into the drinking water. The city switched back to the previous water system in October 2015. "It's all about numbers over people, money over health," Schuette said. The initial change in the city's water source was made while Earley, 65, was emergency manager.

At hearings on the crisis in Washington last March, lawmakers criticized Earley for failing to ask enough questions about the safety protocols in place at the time of the switch. In his testimony, Earley blamed city and federal officials for the problems, and said the decision to switch was made before his tenure. "A broad net is certainly being cast," Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards, a water engineer who first raised the issue of Flint's lead contamination, said by email. Lead can be toxic, and children are especially vulnerable. The crisis has prompted lawsuits by parents who say their children have shown dangerously high levels of lead in their blood. Thirteen current and former state and local officials have been criminally charged in relation to the crisis. Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said the latest indictments also show the failure of the emergency manager system adopted by the state, as those not beholden to the city made decisions that endangered residents' lives. She called on the state to send more financial aid to the city.

Former Flint emergency managers, others charged in water crisis