Are People Charged With Felonies In Flint Water Crime Scapegoats, Too

Three people now face criminal charges for helping
cause Flint, Michigan's epic water crisis, but
will Gov. Rick Snyder face charges, too?
I hope an investigation into what he did or didn't
do stays aggressive.  

A lot of us heard the news yesterday that three people involved in the Flint water crisis has been charged with crimes.

This is part of the whole mess in which the entire city was poisoned by bad municipal water basically because the govenor of Michigan wanted to save money, to prove what a High and Mighty fiscal conservative he is.

You know, for future political gain. Maybe he could one day be president!!

Or not. Gov. Rick Snyder's political career is on the ropes because of all the negative publicity swirling around this fiasco.

The Flint Journal, and basically the rest of the national media said Michael Glasgow, a Flint municpal water employee and Steven Busch, and Michael Prysby, both Michigan Department of Environmental Quality employees, are charged with felonies.

They're accused of falsifying and tampering with water test results that downplayed the high levels of lead in the water. The high levels that permanently damaged many of Flint's children,

But Snyder saved money switching to the Flint River for the city's water, away from Detroit's system. The governor is fiscally conservative!  It's worth it to poison kids to save taxpayer's money, right?

I'm harping on the governor so much because I'm still convinced the three charged with crimes were under immense pressure from the highest levels of Michigant government to falsify data.

If the three charged with doing so actually did tamper with evidence and alter test results, they ought to be punished.

But the ones that ordered them to do so need even greater punishment.

The Flint Journal/MLive notes that Glasgow, the municipal water employee, tried to warn against switching Flint's drinking water source to the Flint River. He knew something bad was happening.

Just before the switch, Glasgow wrote in an email: "If water is distributed from this plant in the next couple weeks, it will be against my direction."

Sounds to me like someone in state government told Glasgow to change his direction or he will face some sort of awful hell from the governor's office. Or someone high up there.

For what it's worth, Marc Edwards, the Virginia Tech professor who uncovered how bad the Flint water situation really was says Glasgow "should not be put in the same category" as the two state employees who are facing criminal charges, the Flint Journal/MLive reported.

"He made mistakes, but I've see nothing in the evidence I've uncovered that puts him in the same league as the other instigators," Edwards said.

It seems Busch, too, tried to warn against using Flint River water, but someone made him change his tune, too.

Michigan's attorney general says the investigation is far from over and more criminal charges against other people might well be coming.

I just hope this goes to whoever was ordering the coverup that led to so much suffering in Flint.

If the governor indeed drove this, he deserves to be in prison too. For a lot longer time than the low level employees who are facing charges.

We'll see if justice is served. I have my doubts, but you never know.

This is important for all of us, not just Flint. Politicians and everyone need to understand if you hurt people, hurt them severely for political gain, you won't get away with it.

That seems like a minimum requirement for a public official, right?

Don't Send Bottled Water To Flint, Michigan

Filmmaker and Flint, Michigan native Michael
Moore is quite understandably calling for the arrest
of Michigan's governor for allowing the mass
poisoning of Flint through the municipal water system. 

I'd swear, the state government in Michigan really wants to send the city of Flint back to the age of the Flintstones.

They've caused the now notorious problem of causing lead and other pollutants to flow through city residents' tap water in a move to save money and show how conservative they are.

Go Austerity!

You'd think a modern society would ensure everybody gets safe drinking water. Not in Michigan.

So what if a few thousand kids get brain damage from lead? We're fiscally conservative, Yay!

As the crisis intensifies, the administration of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder still seems totally aloof. If poisoning an entire city and seeming not to care doesn't get every American's blood boiling, I don't know what does.

I love the irony in the slogan on Snyder's web site: "Getting it right. Getting it done."

Ooookay!

Now, I grant you the headline on this post sounds awfully mean. Don't send bottled water to Flint? Let them drink lead?

After all, the water in Flint is still unsafe, Snyder's administration is clearly not interested in really fixing the problem and Flint's kids face lifelong disabilities because of the lead in the water.

So shouldn't we be sending everybody in Flint clean, safer bottled water instead of forcing them to literally drink poison from their taps?

Well, yes, that's been an OK short term solution. But forcing a city to live on mountains of water bottles is no way to go.  We definitely DO need to give a huge shout out to all the individuals, corporations and celebrities who have sent, or encouraged us to sent lots and lots of bottled water to Flint.

But, enough.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's administration
expected people to drink water that looked like this
in Flint. Maybe we should force him to drink that water? 

I have to agree with none other than Flint, Michigan native Michael Moore who also says it's time to stop sending bottled water.

Moore, the famous guerilla filmmaker, is not being mean to his home town either.

Moore, instead says Michigan needs to dig deep. And fast. The first step is getting that idiot Snyder and his administration out of the way.

Moore compares the Snyder administration to terrorists. To be honest, I think Moore is being rather fair.  Read his words and decide for yourself:

"There's not a terrorist organization on Earth that has yet to figure out how to poison 100,000 people every day for two years - and get away with it. That took a Governor who subscribes to an American political ideology hell-bent on widening the income inequality gap and conducting various versions of voter and electoral suppression against people of color and the poor."

Snyder had appointed "emergency managers" to several financially troubled Michigan communities., including Flint.

These managers reported to Snyder, so local residents and voters had very little say in what went on in their cities.

The many critics of these managers said it disenfranchised voters and the managers were insulated and indifferent to what residents were saying. (If elected officials were in charge, they'd presumably be voted out of office if they ignored voters. Especially ones up in arms about poisoned drinking water. )

And as the New York Times suggested, the worry is and was that "emergency managers are more concerned with fiscal discipline than public health."

Flint would be Example A of that.

Since the Snyder administration seemed so indifferent to the crisis in Flint, Moore wants Snyder kicked out of office and arrested.

I totally agree. Despite his denials and faux expressions of concern, what he did or more accurately, didn't do to Flint is criminal.

As Moore says:

"The perp who allowed the poisoning to continue once he knew something was wrong -- and his minions who cooked the evidence so the public and the feds wouldn't find out, must be removed from office ASAP."

Moore also notes that Snyder says the EPA has no legal authority to tell him what to do with Flint. Really?

Earlier this week, we got news that way back in last January - a year ago! -  Snyder was telling Flint residents the water there was hunky dory and drink up!.

Mother Jones reported Thursday on an email from the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget to employees in a state office building in Flint.

"While the city of Flint states that corrective actions are not necessary, DTMB is in the process of providing a water cooler on each occupied floor, positioned near the water fountain, so you can choose which water to drink. The coolers will arrive today and will be provided as long as the public water does not meet treatment requirements."

By the "City of Flint" the email pretty much meant the aloof emergency manager appointed by Snyder.

My guess is that the Snyder administration was worried the public employees union would sue if they found out employees were drinking bad water.

Meanwhile, the residents of Flint, mostly African American, and many of them poor, were left to drink the scary water. Brown water for brown people, Governor Snyder?

Moore goes on to say that Snyder, with all his fiscal conservatism, along with previous administrations, did help Michigan develop an  $800 million surplus and $600 million in a rainy day fund. Moore says Snyder should use that money to fix Flint.

Snyder is the face of the state of Michigan broke Flint so he oughta pay for it, goes the logic.

That said, practically nobody, Moore included, doesn't trust Snyder's administration to fix the problem. Like the feds or not, they've got to step in even more.

Other sensible ideas Moore lists are to move people who want to from Flint to nearby districts that have safe water, at government expense. For those who want to stay in Flint, FEMA should set up temporary water supplies at each home.

The rest of us in the United States who are presumably not drinking lead-laced municipal tap water ought to care about Flint a lot.

First of all,it's a national tragedy and a disaster. Second of all, it's a cautionary tale. Yep, we don't want to pay high taxes to fund the government, and we don't like seeing governments waste money.

That is absolutely reasonable.

You need to strike a balance, though, and balance is now seriously lacking in American politics. Some Republicans, in particular, seem to be in a contest to see how badly they can screw over people without a lot of power. For fun and profit, I guess. Especially profit.

You know, African-Americans, Hispanics, poor people. OK, don't give these groups free hand outs. But don't take your hand and slap them across the face either.

As Slate points out, there's a lot of municipalities out there with marginalized population with aging infrastructure. Flint probably won't be the last town in the country to find out it has been poisoned. There's no political will, no desire to fix old pipes and other fixtures before its too late for residents.

I guess turning America into a Third World country is now political palatable, which is another real tragedy here.

In Michigan, Snyder's administration thought saving money was more important than protecting health and public safety. Maybe he thought if he caused brain damage to the voters of Flint, they'd be too stupid to vote against him in the next election.

But as Rachel Maddow's Town Meeting show in Flint demonstrated the other night, there are a lot of smart people in Flint.

Who won't take being victimized by some self serving politicians.

Are there others politicians like him across the nation?  If so, I hope we have the gumption to rise up against them, too.








 .

Michigan City, State Officials Thought Giving Children Lead Poisoning Is OK If It Saves Money

The nation's worst scandal, lead poisoning due
to Michigan government ineptitude or worse,
is not getting enough attention

UPDATE:

Under mounting pressure MIchigan Gov. Rick Snyder requested the Obama administration declare a federal state of emergency in Flint over the poisoned water crisis.

Obama quickly made that declaration Saturday.

Of course, it was the Snyder administration's actions that ultimately led to the mass lead poisoning of Flint's children because of the bad water, as Snyder and his minions were trying to save money.

Of course, "saving money" led to this tragic and expensive disaster.

The emergency declaration will free up $5 million to federal aid, which would go toward trucking clean water into town and distributing water filters in the hopes that will help.

Obama was forced to deny Snyder's request for a disaster declaration which would have freed up more money to rescue Flint from its bad water.

However, disaster declarations can only be made if there was a natural disaster. This was man made. Flint would have been better off, in one sense, had a big tornado trashed the city. Instead, conservative politics trashed the city, with Ma Nature havng nothing to do with it

I'm all for Obama's decision to declare a federal emergency in Flint, The people there need all the help they can get. But as a taxpayer, I resent the politicians who, in trying to demonstrate how "fiscally conservative " there are, ended up costing taxpayers like me and you all this money to help Fiint.

Meanwhile, Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders said Snyder should resign from his position as governor because of the Flint Water Crisis.

Said Sanders in a statement: "There are no excuses. The governor long ago knew about the lead in Flint's water. He did nothing. As a result, hundreds of children were poisoned. Thousands may have been exposed to potential brain damage from lead. Gov. Snyder should resign."

The nationwide anger at Snyder is really - finally - building now. This has become a national story, and the pressure on the Snyder administration is intensifying, which is great.

Saturday, when Sanders first Tweeted his desire for Snyder to resign, I retweeted and responded. "...or face criminal charges."

I don't think I've ever gotten so many retweets and likes from any comment I've ever made on Twitter.  This is out of about 17,500 Tweets I've posted since June, 2011.

I do think there will be a lot of investigations into Snyder and the managers he appointed to ruin run Flint.

I hope justice is served, and if there was indeed criminal wrongdoing by Snyder or anyone in his administration, they go to jail for a long, long time.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION FROM JAN. 7:

There's been an unfolding scandal in Flint, Michigan that I can't believe hasn't gotten more attention than it has.

An unknown number of children have suffered lead poisoning due to apparent incompetence and a potentional cover up by the ironically named Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.

This bad acting might go up all the way to the Michigan Governor's office.

Luckily, the media - and the nation - are finally paying more and more attention to this crisis and scandal, but still not enough is being done.

They were involved in what was to be a money saving move to stop buying expensive drinking water from Detroit and take the water from the Flint River instead.

The only problem is the Flint River is wicked polluted and those pollutants are corrosive. So the corrosive water wore down lead pipes in the Flint water system, and people were drinking water heavily laced with lead for months.

The basic questions are: Did politicians know that kids and families in Flint, Michigan were being poisoned by high levels of lead in drinking water? And did they do nothing because it would have cost money to fix the problem? And would spending money ruin their conservative bonafides? And were those conservative bonafides more important than the health of Flint's children?

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder finally apologized for the fiasco over the New Year's holiday, but was he culpable in this, too?

The U.S. Department of Justice has opened an investigation into this, and Dan Wyant, the head of the Michigan Department of Environment Quality (MDEQ) has resigned. The federal Environmental Protetion agency is also investigating.

The MDEQ continuously denied there was a problem for most of 2015 even as evidence mounted that there was a dangerous problem with Flint's drinking water.

None of this would have come to light had it not been for some dogged heroes. One was the Flint Journal and its parent media company, MLive, which pursued the story relentlessly. (Pulitzer Prize for them?)

MLive has a handy dandy chart that cuts through the complexity of this thing and gives you a flow chart of who were the good guys and who were the bad guys here.

There were major heroes to this story as well.  Michigan Public Radio kept at this, too.

A huge assist came from ACLU of Michigan, which kept hammering away to get documents proving the problem. Virginia Tech researcher Marc Edwards got involved and proved there was indeed a crisis with lead and contaminated water.

Other hereoes include Erin Brockovich, who used her fame to try to broadcast the problem to a larger audience. There were Flint residents like Melissa Mays who would talk about this to anyone who would listen.

Unfortunately, there were also a large number of villians here that covered up the problem as long as they could.

From 2011 to April, 2015, Flint city government was under the control of an emergency manager appointed by Snyder, rather than local government. This was because Flint's city budget had ballooned to $19 million.

No matter what the reason for the budget deficit - local incompetence, circumstances beyond anyone's control or a combination - the emergency managers were pretty undemocratic.

The managers reported directly to the governor, and not the people of Flint. The voters of Flint basically couldn't hold anybody accountable for their actions, since the mayor and city council were essentially just there for window dressing.

That lack of accountability helped lead to the debacle, many observers believe, since Flint residents had little ability to demand change or create change in leadership through the ballot box.

Potential villians, then, in this case include Snyder, who only belated came on board to say Flint's water was dangerous. There's Darnell Early, who advocated to switch the water source to the Flint River. He also says it's the Flint City Council's fault, but there's no record of that council deciding to take water fron the Flint River.

Then there's the guy who just resigned from his directorship at MDEQ, who kept saying for months Flint's water was safe, even as evidence mounted that it wasn't. The MDEQ spokesman, Bradley Wurfel, who also recently resigned, kept attacking the credibility of Edwards and his fellow Virginia Tech researchers, even though it turns out they were exactly right.

Were these potential villians just in denial, sticking to their original proposals because they made them and they "had" to be right?  Or was this an attempt at a coverup, trying to prevent word from getting out that the water was unsafe?  Preventing, that is, until they could come up with a Plan B, or figure out a way to shift blame to somebody else?

In any event, documents uncovered showed indications of high levels of lead in the drinking water by July. Yet, this information was suppressed until at least September, and people kept drinking the dangerous water.  Officials tried to poo-poo the situation as a harmless "seasonal change" whatever that is.

Was this situation a "missed opportunity" to release information as one state official said, or was it a coverup?

"Everyting they looked at, they found a problem, and they never told anyone," Edwards said of the MDEQ, according to MLive.

It's certainly not over for soe of Michigan's leaders who might be culpable in this fiasco.

Even celebrities have gotten involved. Filmmaker and Flint native Michael Moore is asking U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate Gov. Snyder. 

Cher actually Tweeted that Gov. Snyder should be executed over this, which definitely seems a little over the top.

What's way, WAY more over the top is how elected leaders could know something is wrong with the water, that children were being permanently damaged by lead and possibly other contaminants in the drinking water, and still drag their heels.

Again,  it smells like elected officials, including Snyder, might have made their political futures with a fiscal conservative brand more important than the children of Flint, Michigan.

Snyder is refusing to say what he knew and when he knew it in regards to Flint's water, says NBC News. 

If this isn't a scandal of immense proportions, I don't know what is.

Let's hope the Justice Department investigation actually gets some answers, and here's hoping that MLive, Michigan Public Radio and other media outlets- local, national and international - keep the pressure on to get completely to the bottom of this.

Even worse than all this, Flint's water is still dangerous and nobody is really doing anything about it.

True, they're not taking water from the Flint River. They've switched back to Detroit. But the corrosion in the pipes from the previous Flint River water is still very likely leaching lead into the drinking water supply.

You'd think with an emergency declared, you'd get something like big National Guard tankers full of water in Flint to distribute clean water, Red Cross and other big volunteer groups helping, and people going door to door making sure people were drinking safe water.

But, nope. Flint is full of people who are in and near poverty. The economy has been very rough on Flint. In this nation's political world, poor people don't matter, so the residents of Flint, and their children, are still drinking dangerous water that is injuring them.

It's not like they can afford to drive to a suburban Big Box store and buy cases of bottled water. They have no cars and no money to do this.

I guess Snyder's administration's message to Flint is go screw yourselves.