People of Flint Getting Screwed Again - Hillary and Chelsea MIA
Yes, the politically poisoned environment in Michigan is ensuring the poisoned water of Flint will continue to flow through corrupted pipes, while corrupt politicians are doing their best to shut out the participation of the people of Flint in remedying the situation. Talk about your lack of transparency.
Residents of Flint, Michigan who traveled to Chicago were barred from attending a private meeting Tuesday between Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and other officials, who advocates say are rushing to declare the city's water supply safe.
Inside the summit, officials from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) and the Environment Protection Agency (EPA), as well as Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards, who is credited with exposing the lead contamination crisis, met with Snyder to discuss current sample data, ignoring testimony from residents.
"My eyes are still burning. I can't breathe when I get out of the shower...we're still melting here," Flint resident Tony Palladeno said in a recording aired on The Young Turks (TYT). Many residents have reported similar symptoms, particularly in regards to the city's shower water, which TYT host Cenk Uygur notes was not tested.
Hell, the people of Flint can't event sue the state or the crooked officials who poisoned them. By court order they are barred from suing anyone who wronged them under under the "Safe Drinking Water Act because Congress never intended that private damage claims could be made under those regulations."
And where are Flint's champions, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton now? Hillary at the convention took credit for putting the Flint water crisis on the map. Chelsea shamelessly promised in September, during the general election campaign, that her mother would continue to support Flint throughout this man-made, politically engineered crisis.
FLINT, MI - Chelsea Clinton spent Friday afternoon reassuring community members and Flint officials that her mother, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, will continue to support Flint through its ongoing water crisis.
Chelsea Clinton, along with Flint Mayor Karen Weaver and Congressman Dan Kildee, D-Flint Twp., addressed community members and media Friday, Sept. 23, during a visit to the Greater Holy Temple Church on Dort Highway in Flint.
"This is about our children, our families, our future and our values," Chelsea Clinton said. "My mother is ... personally committed to help Flint as long as Flint needs our help ... Flint knows what Flint families and Flint's children need. So, the rest of us need to listen and continue to respond and partner with Flint."
What exactly have the Clintons done to show that support or help the people of Flint? Have they made major speeches to keep this matter on the front pages of our newspapers and gone on Cable News shows to demand support for Flint? Have they shown up in Flint since Chelsea's September stop? Well, Bill Clinton made an unannounced campaign stop there on November 6, 2016 just before the election. Hillary's last stop in Flint was on March 6, 2016 for her debate on CNN with Bernie Sanders.
So far as I can tell, the last public mention of Flint's water crisis by Hillary Clinton occurred at the Democratic National Convention. Though she did use the water crisis in Flint, and the families victimized buy it, in to push a essentially showpiece initiative to obtain the Flint Mayor's endorsement.
In essence, Hillary got one of the top donors to her candidacy to come up with the money necessary to pay Mayor Weaver for her timely endorsement. [...]}
It should be noted that this Pritzker foundation's $500,000 grant was not contributed directly to the City of Flint but to an organization controlled by Mayor Weaver and Chelsea Clinton:
According to Weaver, the Flint WaterWorks initiative was developed in partnership with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, whose team helped the mayor establish the public-private partnership program.
The initiative is being started with a $500,000 contribution from J.B. and M.K. Pritzker to the Community Foundation of Greater Flint.
"For my mother and for me, this is not political," Chelsea Clinton said at a news conference. "It is deeply personal and I think it should be personal to every American. ... (We want) to see the children of Flint as our children and to see the youth in Flint, as the mayor says, as being a promising youth for Flint and really our country."
Unfortunately, not much has happened since for the people of Flint to improve the situation.
I should qualify “nothing.” In the past year, Flint has been the focus of national attention, as every major news outlet came to the city to cover the human-made environmental catastrophe. Celebrities from Cher to Russell Simmons dropped in or made goodwill donations of plastic bottles. Hillary Clinton visited. Bernie Sanders visited. It took a while, but even Donald Trump made the pilgrimage to Flint to talk about our water crisis. We hosted a prickly debate between the two Democratic contenders, and later, Obama followed up with a visit of his own.
The Michigan National Guard briefly made rounds of the city, dropping off tiny plastic bottles of water and filters, but that didn't last for long. After a few weeks, the Guard and its escorts were replaced by nine “point of distribution sites” where Flint residents made ritual trips to stock up on cases of 16.9-ounce bottles of water. This last Thanksgiving, one grim local joke involved residents taking pictures of the dozens of such bottles it took to cook a turkey. [...]
What hasn't happened is a large-scale project to replace the corroded pipes.
According to the most recent estimates, 30,000 of Flint's corroded pipes need to be fixed. To date, only 600 have been replaced. After a year in the media spotlight, our pipes have been replaced at a rate of fewer than two per day. One can understand, perhaps, why many of us doubt that the remaining 29,400 will ever be replaced, and why we would swap bleak jokes with the construction workers tasked with replacing our more or less okay natural gas lines.
But I guess when politicians lose they forget the deeply felt commitments they once made so blithely. Cher, on the other hand is going to do a Lifetime movie about it. I'm sure that will do a hell of a lot to help the people of Flint. More than Hillary and Chelsea's silence on a subject that us clearly too personal for them to publicly comment upon, at least.
Comments
She is with them, but somewhere else at the moment....
repairing the Clinton machine now its wheels have come off takes precedent.
The peoples President...hahahahahahahaha
With them in a galaxy far, far away
no doubt.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
Chelsea I am your mother - use the forc... foundation!
Use the foundation, indeed!
It's supposed to be helping women and children in countries all over the world. How you ask?
I looked at their website to see exactly how it was helping them and was first asked to sign up with them so that I too could help people all over the world.
Then I looked under Our work and found out how they were helping girls and women and this is what they are doing.
Well that tells us what they are doing for them. Right? It's clearly spelled out for us to see where those millions of dollars are going. Right?
Next I looked at Health and Wellness and here's what it says.
Each category is as vague.
But the one about Haiti gets the prize. I thought that they would be spending money for housing, medical clinics and other things that would actually improve the Haitian's lives after the earthquake how many years ago? Nope.
I'm sure that the Haitians appreciate all the help that they are receiving from the Clinton's foundation, aren't you?
Maybe the people in Flint could use some help like that.
Sheesh!
Now I understand why so many people are still living in tents, while the hotels and casinos are up and running.
Oh well there is hope that once Obamas's foundation is up and running it will help them. Right?
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
Your behind.
The people in Flint ARE getting help like that. (That's the problem.) Just as soon as the Clinton Foundation finds a partner to collect the profits they'll move right along.
Remember, the Clinton Foundation is all about public private partnerships. And their finder's fees are really quite modest.
Where's the missing $10 BILLION?
Yep, the Clinton Foundation "charity" raised $10 billion for Haiti after the earthquake, but it never got to the Haitians and is frankly, missing. Could it have been misplaced, along with Hillary's laptop containing four years of State Dept. emails, which Bill sent in the mail and is also missing?
Speaking of Foundation uses,
(Editing to add what I replied to, as it seems to be too far up to be identifiable.)
Wed, 01/11/2017 - 6:08pm — snoopydawg
Speaking of Foundation uses, CB posted a link to this very interesting and informative piece, if you'll pardon a re-post of much of my reply:
http://www.hamptoninstitution.org/west-marches-east-part-one.html#.WHajC...
And this was prior to the 'legalization' of US government propaganda for the purpose of conning the American people. And, speaking of the Clintons (bolding mine):
Two 'political' parties with but a single pathology... no wonder that the two-party trade-off trap is so strictly enforced by TPTB against the American people.
So, what price Clinton Foundation involvement, considering what we've managed to learn, as far as I can see, mostly via whistleblowers leaking, WikiLeaks and the tellingly bizarre 'explanations' of various agency heads and other public officials for extremely corrupt-appearing transactions and communications between/regarding the Clinton Foundation and large donors who happened to be in, acting for or connected to various foreign governments and financial institutions shuffling 'secret' money around for the ultra-wealthy, a group I'd confidently expect to be voted most likely to produce those very few actually benefiting from the overthrow of democratic governments/any Heads of State working for the public good to any extent and of the installation of destructive puppet governments draining and industrially poisoning their people, ecologies and countries for ever-increasing corporate/billionaire profits?
Now that government propagandization of The People of America has been illegally and unconstitutionally 'legalized' by corrupt public officials, with investigations and charges against corrupt public officials illegally and unconstitutionally stymied by such illegal and unconstitutional 'laws' passed against the public interest by such corrupt public officials and Homeland Security has taken control over the long-rigged US elections, shutting out any shriveled hope of independent/citizen oversight/verification of accuracy in reported electoral results, will the American people continue to accept even this degree of blatancy employed by their selected government in their own ongoing dispossession and expendability and the extinction-for-profit of virtually all life on the planet in the near future in order to enable a relative few - however briefly - to claim totalitarian planetary power and control?
I'd suggest (re-)reading this interesting refresher in full at source, ideally right after doing the same with CB's linked paper, if at all possible.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/foreign-governments-gave-million...
And the proof is in the pudding! Just look at how many tainted and ineffective AIDs drugs those billions bought and how many luxury hotels that 2 billion - presumably accumulated by 2013/2014, going by the date written and depending upon how recent the available data was at the time - had enabled for suffering people around the world stricken with disaster! Although administrative costs are, indeed, high...
Now the craze for 'charitable Foundations' amongst certain of the politically-connected super-wealthy can potentially be viewed with 20% more perspective!
Looks to me as though the corporate/billionaire terrorists have been partially 'charitably' funding themselves tax-free, as well as using the public money and resources of the people of various countries, en route to global corporate/military theft and destruction of the Earth itself and it all essentially rests on letting faked elections, appalling appointments to public service positions with the clear intent of abuse and unconstitutional 'law-making', as well as law-breaking, for the few and their lackeys, stand as a 'done deal to be fixed later', until it's too late.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFs-ycSo-14
Ellwood - Sunshine Garden
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Cher.
Well, I just read that Hollywood is advocating a full-on strike "until Trump resigns."
So she won't be much help, either.
i wonder whether they wonder just how all the
grips and best boys and and and are going to pay their mortgages and feed their kids while the gazillionaires hold their collective breath and turn blue.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I wish they would stay MIA forever
I would love to never hear a single word from any Clinton ever again.
This part actually made me laugh though:
Riiiiiiight! She lies like a Clinton, that's for sure!
It doesn't matter where, when, or in what context she said this - it's obviously a huge lie. For the Clintons, *everything* is political. They don't care in the least about anything unless they see it as a way to enrich themselves from it or a way to manipulate people for their own gain. They don't need to pretend to care about Flint anymore, so they don't.
How much can people of Flint pay Hillary and Chelsea?
The people of Flint will just have to sign up with Hillary and Chelsea's booking agent like everybody else.
You would think that the democratic party elders and bagmen would start repairing the democratic party in Michigan which was a key loss helping defeat Hillary. And doing the right thing in Flint is the first step to regaining a democratic majority.
But here is the effect of Putin. The democratic party is so obsessed with attacking Trump based on a Russian connection, they ignore issues like Flint's water supply. And this is what Michigan residents will see:
In Stunning Reversal, Ford Says It Won't Build New Plant In Mexico Criticized By Trump
http://www.forbes.com/sites/dalebuss/2017/01/03/in-stunning-reversal-for...
And there is another issue here--the perceived abandonment of African Americans by the democratic party. Mike Papintonio said on Thom Hartmann that the democrats won't be able to confront Trump as they have become the party of Martha's Vineyard--very much a Thomas Frank type of observation. While African Americans may not move to the gop and Trump, they may also vote less often for democrats.
Vote not cast
is still a vote lost. This is the thing that the Democratic party seems to ignore. It really does not matter if they lose votes to another party or to people not voting. They are still votes lost and they are lost because the Democratic party has failed its core constituencies.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Indeed. Lost votes a factor in Trump victory
Didn't keep a link, but one person who looked at the numbers noted that while Trump lost many obvious groups like African Americans, he did not lose them as badly as compared to Rommey--this was true across the board. But yes, the democrats are failing its core constituencies or groups which should have been core constituencies.
I see what the problem is.
You think she meant she was going to help them EVEN IF SHE LOST! Nope - no dice! Winning is the only way she helps - and only minimally at that! Geez, you guys - get a grip!
edited for infernal typos!
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
Personal Chelsea?
So you're showering using bottled water? Sure you are.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Awww, Mama Lion is teaching her cub how to hunt . . .
. . . political office.
And really, c99ers, you misconstrued Chelsea's meaning: The Flint water contamination is not personal; the gain Chelsea can make off the sufferings of others is what's personal.
So Mama Lion gets her chum Ms. Pritzker (a.k.a. Ms. 0.000001%) to pony up for an "initiative" that Chelsea can call her own (Mom and Dad are still playing with the Clinton Foundation, after all). Then twenty years from now, when Chelsea runs for Prez and some upstart lefty primaries her, Chelsea's bots can point to this ineffective initiative -- it doesn't have to accomplish anything to be credible, 'cuz "Flint knows what Flint families and Flint's children need. So, the rest of us need to listen and continue to respond and partner with Flint" -- and say, "See, Chelsea's been at the forefront of bettering AA lives since forevah!!!" Just like Mama with those church visits.
This is how things are done in the 0.00001% circles. One stupid-rich person finances some other wannabe's ambitions, and that wannabe will be "grateful." And it's best if it sounds like it's for a noble cause, for the political points, but no actual betterment of anyone else's lives takes place, 'cuz the citizens of Flint aren't in that circle of mutual back-scratching, y'know.
It's personal, we hear ya, 'cuz after all, one always calls press conferences to explore one's personal beliefs.
more of a hyena than a lion
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Very accurately articulated, dym.
native
The cameras are gone
That's all that mattered.
The cameras are gone now.
The photo op was done, time to pack your bags and leave.
It's like European nobles who would wait until the battle was done. They would show up in their glistening, decorative armor (often useless in real battle) and then the painter would craft their image showing them in all their glory.
The people of Flint were used, abused, and tossed to the curb once the cameras were turned off. Typical politician style.
As I recall
As I recall, a day or two before the primary in Michigan the Pritzkers of Chicago, billionaire friends of Hillary, supplied a half million dollars to create a fund, supervised and controlled by the Mayor of Flint and Chelsea Clinton, to help the people of Flint. I'd be curious as to how the money was spent.
But you'd think that Chelsea, monitoring that half mil, would be down on the barricades fighting for the people of Flint.
A Half Million Dollars, Really?
This is a ridiculously tiny amount of money. Don't get me wrong, for me, finding a few coins under the floor mat is a big deal. But in the real world that half million doesn't buy you a chair at the "big boy's table". Trust me on that one, okay.
Enough to buy the Flint Mayor's endorsement for HRC
Did it do anything to help the people of Flint other than the mayor? Not likely.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
Yea, sorry, I forgot, Politicians are rank amateurs.
The price for a mayor of Flint
Mayors of bigger cities cost more.
I wish I had a roadmap of where that 26 million that the DNC laundered through state parties went. Anyone remember that story? I was wondering why a lobbyist for Sri Lanka was going heavy with Clinton. I mean, what was Hillary going to do for Sri Lanka?
Turns out that Sri Lankan leaders were being considered for war crimes in front of the World Court and apparently they thought that Hillary's power could be used to make any proceedings disappear. Now Sri Lanka's couriers are going to have to deal with Trump's bagman.
I'm sure Tillerson will accomodate them.
But billionaires cost more.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Yep
In the cited material from Detroit Free Press above. Good memory.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
I know! I know!
Black youths were temporarily "hired" to hand out "symbolic" bottles of water around Flint, right before the debate. Good photo-ops, no? Plus, the conflation of life-giving free water with jobs for disadvantaged youths, although ephemeral, gave the impression that the jobs and water might be permanent. Once the debate was over and the cameras stopped rolling, it was on to the next fundraiser for Hillary and more Clinton Foundation business for Chelsea. Another bullet point on both women's resumes.
AARRRRFFFFH!
Clinton-speak makes me crazy. This is why, exactly why, I say a pox upon all things Clinton. We expect the rethugs to destroy the country, and they're quite adept at it; but the Clintons should and do know better. These two rogues and their ilk hijacked the Democratic Party and turned it into their own personal cash cow, complete with for-profit prisons, welfare 'reform,' double the incarceration rate in 8 years, DOMA, Wall Street deregulation, media conglomeration, regime change, and monetizing (a lovely Clinton speak word, that) every fucking thing they could, all the while mouthing platitudes, 'partnering' with this one and the other, 'fighting for' women and children (when they weren't bombing then) and being 'personally invested' with any problem you could name. And how people fell for it!!!!! And they still fall for it-- go to TOP for all the proof in the world (they've finally go over the edge with this whole Russian thing). Horrified that Trump is president; rapturous that SHE isn't.
Semper ubi sub ubi
I was going to throw in a snotty remark
about how (In the debate with Bernie) she said that she was going to conduct a "5 year study" to see whether it would be politically better to let the Flint crisis go away or milk it a little more (until the end of her 2nd term or until Chelsea needs it as an issue) but I see I'm late for the party.
On to Biden since 1973
Of course they are, as are a few thousand other cities....
But it's not like Billary or her hellspawn give two fucks about those. We need massive infrastructure repair and no one (Save Bernie, Jill and a few others) seems willing or able to bring it forward because gods forbid the fuckin' coddled billionaires or Wall Street get a little less in tax breaks.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.