Charges Filed In Flint Water Poisoning

Michigan's Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette today announced that three mid-level officials have been charged with a variety of misdemeanors and felonies regarding the Flint, Michigan water poisoning. The officials, one the former Flint Utilities Commissioner and two officials with the State's Department of Environmental Quality, face lengthy prison terms and big fines for their roles in concealing data that showed Flint's water supply contained high quantities of lead. Schuette said that the investigation will proceed, and that "no one is off the table," presumably including elected or appointed officials in his own Party.  Riiiight.  (For what a pile of sewage Schuette is, see here.)

It remains to be seen whether Michigan Gov. and e-coli Republican Rick "Get Sick" Snyder will be one of those on the table, since his mania to pinch pennies and cut corners caused his appointed "emergency manager" for Flint to decide to use water from the Flint River without treating it for corrosion control. Subsequently, the water from the river caused corrosion in the aging lead pipes that serve the city.  Get Sick Snyder sat on the information that the city's water was unsafe until last fall, while the city's residents -- especially the vulnerable children under 12 -- continued to drink and bathe in the tainted water.  Long-term health effects from lead consumption, including developmental problems and tumors, are particularly acute for young children.

Report On Flint Water Crisis Blames Republican State Officials

Forget the Republican posturing and attempts at blame- shifting at the recent Congressional hearings on the Flint, MI, water contamination crisis.  Republican Gov. Rick "You Make Me Sick"Snyder's own appointed task force has issued its report on responsibility for the debacle:

A task force appointed by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to investigate the water-contamination crisis in Flint issued a blistering report Wednesday, laying blame squarely on state officials in what it called “a story of government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction and environmental injustice.”

The 116-page report details a widespread lack of responsibility and leadership that contributed to the catastrophe, which potentially exposed more than 95,000 residents in the beleaguered city — including about 9,000 children under age 6 — to water tainted with lead.

The Flint Water Advisory Task Force said the state Department of Environmental Quality “failed in its fundamental responsibility” to enforce drinking-water regulations and assured the governor’s office that Flint’s water was safe when it wasn’t. The independent group faulted Snyder and his administration for failing to act even after “suggestions to do so by senior staff members in the Governor’s office.”

As we've noted in the past, this sorry episode is just one example of the social Darwinist philosophy of "e coli" (a.k.a., "bridge collapse") conservatives playing out in the real world, where the ultimate goal is the shrinking of government to the point it can be drowned in a bathtub (h/t Grover Norquist), public health and safety be damned.

The other part of this story is the inattention of the media.  Once the lights go off and the cameras are gone, the story gets bottom- of- the- fold, page 16 treatment (as this article did in the print once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle today).   That's been the "story" from the earliest days of this human catastrophe - that is, it isn't a story.  Shame on our puerile, shiny- object obsessed media for coming late to Flint, then opting to bury its lessons on the back pages.

Flint And The Failure Of Conservative Governance

Last night's vigorous, substantive debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in Flint, Michigan stands in stark contrast to last week's disastrous, embarrassing Republican monkey house poo-fling.

But beyond the adult way in which the issues were discussed, there was strong symbolism of holding the Democratic debate in Flint, which has had its water poisoned by callous and irresponsible Republican ideologues running Michigan's government.  Both Clinton and Sanders called for the resignation of Michigan's tea party-backed Rethug Gov. Rick Snyder, who screwed the low-income minority population of Flint out of clean water to save some money.  We recall the column that Charles P. Pierce ran in January, where he had this to say about the origins of the poisoning of the Flint water supply:

The crisis has its roots in something fundamental to modern conservative government—the deregulated state. In 2011, under a controversial state law that he signed shortly after taking office, Governor Rick Snyder removed Walling, Benjamin's friend, and replaced him with an emergency manager. It was under this regime that the decision was made to change Flint's water supply from the Detroit water district to the Flint River, which required the water to go through the antiquated lead-lined pipes that have now poisoned a generation of the city's children. Everything else—including the alleged cover-up and the calls for Snyder's resignation that have come from everyone from Michael Moore to Bernie Sanders—has, well, flowed from that. 

It is an actual issue affecting actual people, an issue that nonetheless has tributaries bleeding into all the vague conceptual issues that only get talked about. The crumbling infrastructure. The deplorable lack of a coherent national plan to revitalize our cities. The hundreds of environmental crises that sit like little Hiroshimas in the poor places all over the country. Deregulation in its many guises. Class. And, of course, race, even though this cannot be About Race because nothing in America ever is About Race. Issues like this bubble up from the bottom until, suddenly, they explode, and all the political pros scramble to catch up. (emphasis added)

Repeated calls by the Republican candidates for spending cuts for public infrastructure and for cutting or eliminating safe air and water environmental regulations are clear signs that the Rethugs are fostering the conditions for more Flints. They have to be called out for the failure of their philosophy of government, and they have to be stopped.

The Flint Disaster and Our Broken Media

There's a compelling article over at Media Matters by Joe Strupp that examines the failure of the major media to notice the disastrous poisoning of the residents of Flint, MI, until a state of emergency was declared by the Republican Governor and ultimate culprit for the problem Rick "You Made Me Sick" Snyder, whose cost cutting mania led to the use of the lead- and chemical-polluted Flint River being used for drinking water, despite warnings. While local media coverage was looking at the problem for some time despite cutbacks in their news budgets, the national media seemingly couldn't be bothered to cover this "local" problem (tell that to people in states whose well water is being polluted by fracking) since it didn't register on social media :

"'The Flint water crisis went under the media's radar. It was lost in what's trending on Twitter, who liked what on Facebook, and the next poppin pics on Instagram,' said Jiquanda Johnson, a reporter at The Flint Journal since Oct. 2014 and a Flint native. 'Journalists have become lazy. We wait for the obvious and jump on trends. Flint's water crisis didn't make the social media cut so it was missed. It didn't make headlines like the Charleston killings, Ferguson protests over Michael Brown's death or Ed Garner's choking. Is it racism? Is it classism? Is it both or neither? I don't know.'

'I do know that Flint's issues were not just neatly packaged and ready for media,' she added. 'They required work, digging, sifting and a lot of questioning. Things were not as blatant as a cop pulling out a gun, shooting it and killing a young black man. Or as clear as a white man walking into a church.'" (emphasis added)

As others have pointed out, if this had happened in a well-heeled suburb of Detroit, like Grosse Pointe or Bloomfield Hills, the likelihood of a story about lead-poisoned water being ignored for over a year by corporate media would have been slim to none.  As Common Cause President Miles Rappaport notes in the article: 

"When people's health and lives are the line -- especially threatened by something as essential as water -- no one can move fast enough. Local reporters did what they could in an era of slashed budgets, staffs, and loop-hole riddled Freedom of Information Laws. The national media was slow to realize the impact of the Flint Water Crisis. That it took an advocacy organization hiring an investigative journalist to get to the core of the story should be alarming to all of us." (emphasis added)

Alarming, but sadly not unexpected.

Today's Cartoon - A Lead Pipe Cinch

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(Tom Toles, once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle)

Dave Dayen has a great article about how the water crisis in Flint, MI, brought on by a bridge collapsin', plant explodin' right- wing Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, illustrates a larger problem. He launches from a comment by Sen. Marco "Glug Glug" Rubio (R-MIAmi), whose affinity for water is well known, saying he (Glug Glug) hadn't focused on or been briefed about the crisis.  It's worth an extended excerpt:

Let me give Senator Rubio a refresher course. Michigan officials, who commandeered control of Flint’s local government through a disenfranchising emergency-manager process that suspiciously lines up with the main concentrations of African-Americans in the state, decided to temporarily use water from the Flint River for residential consumption while awaiting a new pipeline to Lake Huron. This was done to save money—to balance Flint’s budget, much like the persistent calls from Rubio and his Republican allies with respect to the federal budget.

The water from the Flint River was dirty, unfit for drinking or washing, and it corroded the lead-based service lines distributing water to 99,000 citizens. Residents immediately complained about the foul-smelling, bad-tasting water. It turned out the entire city suffered lead poisoning, as research demonstrated, for well over a year, with toxicity levels 13,000 times above a safe reading. The emergency manager in Flint, state environmental officials (who failed to properly treat the water), and Governor Snyder ignored this as long as they could, even withholding information from the public.

None of this is worth knowing about, according to Marco Rubio. He can’t be bothered with the mass contamination of an American city—not when the public is potentially, hypothetically unsafe from ISIS! Never mind the fact that you’re more likely to be hit by lightning or crushed by furniture than killed in a terrorist attack.  [snip]

Indeed, as the Flint crisis shows, you are far more likely to be killed as a result of conservative austerity and deregulatory policies. Not only are they self-defeating when it comes to infrastructure—Michigan has already paid far more for the Flint disaster than it ever saved from temporarily re-routing the city’s water supply—but basing policy priorities on cost-cutting rather than human need inevitably leads to choosing winners and losers, and not in a benign way.  (our emphasis)

Of course, as Dayen points out, Glug Glug is right in the mainstream of his party's attachment to laissez faire (except when it comes to deregulation and tax cuts for corporations and plutocrats, and control over ladyparts) government.  It's in the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid/ Shooter's Party DNA.

Today's Tomorrow Cartoon - Republican Dystopia Comes To Michigan

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(Tom Tomorrow, via Daily Kos)

For anyone who hasn't been following this Republican- created disaster in Flint, Michigan, Charles P. Pierce has a little background:

The crisis has its roots in something fundamental to modern conservative government—the deregulated state. In 2011, under a controversial state law that he signed shortly after taking office, Governor Rick Snyder removed [Dayne] Walling, [Stephen] Benjamin's friend, and replaced him with an emergency manager. It was under this regime that the decision was made to change Flint's water supply from the Detroit water district to the Flint River, which required the water to go through the antiquated lead-lined pipes that have now poisoned a generation of the city's children. Everything else—including the alleged cover-up and the calls for Snyder's resignation that have come from everyone from Michael Moore to Bernie Sanders—has, well, flowed from that.  [snip]

"We have a governor who is a business exec, so he said he was going to run government like a business," said Congresswoman Brenda Lawrence, who represents Detroit. "This is a glaring example of decisions made on dollars and cents and on a budget and had a devastating effect on the people, especially the children, because the lead has a negative impact on the development of your brain. It's developmental. It's educational. Those children are going to need help for the next 15 years ... You cannot run a government without looking after the well-being of the people. On paper, he made a great decision, but look at the lives he impacted."

Yesterday, Kansas.  Today, Michigan.  Tomorrow, Kentucky.  And those are just three of the Republican- run states that are serving as "labs" for reactionary conservative "policies."  Enjoy the Freedumb!