Politicizing Flint, aka, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. (1 )
To tell the truth, the alternate title of this essay is a lie. I always choose laughter, even if, as here, it may seem inappropriate: It's how I've always survived.
Believe it or not, this essay of several parts began as a brief intro to an essay on a related, but lighter topic, namely the hypocrisy of certain Democrats in relation to the misery of Flint's situation. However, once begun, it took on a life of its own, which I've tried to respect. So here goes:
I won't bore you into agony with a comprehensive, detailed list of the few enumerable facts I know about Michigan. (Didn't Nod make MSNBC's Dr. Rachel Maddow for things like that?) Rather, I will get right to Republican Governor Rick Snyder, who succeeded Democratic Canadian-American Governor Jennifer Granholm. (As an aside, after leaving the Governor's Mansion, Granholm went on to, among other things, campaign surrogacy and the rejected respected Correct the Record.)
Winning his first term by 58%, Snyder boldly carpe-d him enough classic rightist diem, to make any "self-avowed" right Libertarian Koch proud. Among many other things, with the help of a Republican-majority legislature, Snyder instituted a flat tax, created additional hurdles for Michigan's abortion clinics, limited rights for gay partners and signed a union-busting, family-depriving right to work for meager wages law. Snyder even deprived many Michigan citizens of their right to elect those who decide how their local tax dollars are and are not spent, which borders on taxation without representation and arguably violates the Constitution of the United States (but not because of the taxation without representation bit).
On March 16, 2011, Snyder signed a controversial bill into law that gave increased powers to emergency managers of local municipalities to resolve financial matters.[48] The bill was repealed by voter initiative in November 2012. However, weeks later in December 2012 Snyder signed a revised version of the bill back into law.
Let that be a life lesson for you, boys and girls: If at first you don't succeed at being a total Rick, try, try again!
If you are by now expecting me to post that Snyder, acting alone or with the legislature, also poisoned the water supply of Flint, I must disappoint you. Like so many horrid outcomes in the US, this one can be attributed to pols of both of the nation's most viscerated venerated venerable political parties, which seems to work out very well for both of them. Cut to the former Democratic Mayor of Flint:
Dayne Walling was mayor of Flint, Michigan, for six years, but he is best remembered for a single day. On April 25, 2014, as news cameras rolled, Walling pushed the button that shut off the city’s connection to Detroit’s water system and switched it to the Flint River. Although Walling had not made the decision to draw water from the Flint River—that was decided by an emergency manager appointed by the state to usurp his mayoral powers—he executed the physical act that initiated the Flint water crisis. Once the switch was complete, he hoisted a glass of river water, toasting “Here’s to Flint!”
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/05/flint-water-crisis-da...
Although Democrat Walling treated the switch as his own photo op, praised it, toasted it and later defended it, in "buck stops anywhere but here" fashion, Walling blames the state of Michigan for not having done enough to correct the problems that he failed to avert--and he is not wrong about the state's failure. While it does not, in my mind, absolve Walling from failing to look out for his Flint constituents, others would say, as did politico, that the real power over Flint's water supply lay with Flint's emergency manager. But, did it? And, if so, which emergency manager?
More tomorrow!
And what song would embody phony buck passing better than one "by" Milli Vanilli?
Comments
Flint fortells the American Future.
If we choose to rely on the politicians.
In every shuttered factory, every broken spirit, every poisoned drop of water. It's the discarded wrapper of a cheap and unhealthy meal that Corporate America fully expects somebody else to clean up.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Actually it could be said
Flint, the new amerika
for the future is gone unless
the people rise up to the
challenges we face.
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
NSA, Homeland Security, US military, National Guard,
state militias, state and local militarized police forces, FBI, CIA, only heaven knows what else. And that's without private groups of armed people, like campus police in every college and university who, I'm guessing already have instructions from homeland security in case democracy breaks out anywhere near them.
Emails, phones, snail mail, etc. surveilled. On streets, Cameras and super sensitive microphones that can hear inside buildings. And that's not even counting security cameras in private and public buildings.
Good luck on figuring out how to plan a nationwide popular uprising in a country this size without being found out. And when it begins, good luck on staying alive. Kent State will look like a prom in comparison. And assuming we do, good luck on winning. And assuming we do, what happens the next day, or even the next hour?
And, btw, while all that is going on, guess who will be the one faction involved that has no weapons, especially guns and rifles, and no survival equipment or supplies. Hint: it won't be the government or the right.
Thank you for that post. It's poetry, as well as being
accurate (and therefore sad).
Wasn't it Michigan where some city managers were selling city property to private individuals for a pittance, allegedly to raise money for the city. I wonder if they even bothered to get appraisals before striking a bargain on the purchase price.
With environmental concerns tied to overpopulation, human life has become very cheap. It's not for nothing that Kissinger's advice from the 1970s is referred to in terms of "useless eaters. If anything, they'd rather have us dead than adding to global warming while on the rolls of Security, SSI, Medicare Medicaid, unemployment, what's left of welfare after Bill Clinton, what's left of fuel subsidies and SNAP after Obama and Trump, etc. Billionaires like the late Pete Peterson resent "entitlements: so much because they have to contribute toward the "general welfare" of the people who made them rich. And their bought and paid for politicians agree with them.
Since they got so vocal about this crap, I've developed the mirror image: I now resent having to pay for the infrastructure and its maintenance that supports their businesses and lavish lifestyles. Private planes at public airports, docking slips for yachts, etc. Roads and bridges and railroads and railroad tracks to transport whatever their businesses need. Larger police forces, etc.
In my town, a relatively small public waterfront park was redone. Original cost estimate was under two million and I don't have to tell you it eventually got closer to six. Park was out of commission, all dug up for two or three years, in an area that has numerous public housing for the elderly units with zero outdoor space, not even a tiny balcony. So, good luck in those tiny apartments with no air conditioning, unless you can afford a window unit or two, poorish old folks.
When the park was finished, for the life of me, I could not see any difference, so I inquired. The answer?
They made it smaller.
Why?
So more boats could dock, including at a large, very high-priced condo/hotel/dining combination and on the opposite side of the park, a smaller hotel that caters mostly to people who pull up in their vessels, large and small. The two hotels are on either side of the park, the water is on the third side and the rest of the city is on the fourth. Guess which side got royally screwed. The fourth side of the park is lucky if its garbage gets picked up often enough.
Then there are oil spill clean ups and irreparable damage to oceans and ocean life. Health hazards in rivers, streams and lakes. Land rendered forever "uncleanable" and unhealthy because businesses polluted it. Ever hear a Pete Peterson--or anyone--complain about things like that?
Years after I and others started complaining about that crap. Warren mentioned it in passing, claiming she invented the concept and OWS copied from her, or some such; and Obama bungled it, intentionally or otherwise, n his re-election campaign against Mitt and got it thrown back in his face. ("You didn't build that." Oh, yes we did build that." Obama drops it like it's a loose turd dripping on his "comfortable shoes.")
But is it an ongoing refrain like "entitlements", "The left just wants free stuff" and the like? Will it ever be? And if it ever gets to be, will everyone, from media minions to the POTUS ignore it, as they ignored OWS and Bernie, except for negative stories?
Makes me so angry. From Neanderthals forward, the ruled have always vastly outnumbered the rulers, yet, most of them always allowed themselves to be ruled--and in ways far worse than the US today. Do you know that tenant farmers in England got no rent relief if their homes burned to the ground because they were considered to be renting land? And they put up with it? Now, the rulers are so entrenched, I don't see a way out of this mess for the ruled.
If anything, it will, as you say, keep getting worse, precisely because they know they have us in the crosshairs 24/7.
I think it's more like the present
Why do I remember reading that something like 4,000 American towns have unsafe drinking water and in some cases worse than Flint?
If I am remembering that correctly, we are already living in the Dystopian neoliberal future you are worried about.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
(sound of imaginary coin clinking as it falls into “tip jar”)
@#0
Speaking of “tip jars,” wonder whatever happened to the historian and fellow piece of TOPiary in days of yore who called himself Unitary Moonbat? He always referred to the “tip jar” as his feeding bowl . . .
Hey, the comment by the OP that I was trying to reply to, with no title, just disappeared!
Thank you. (HenryWallace never posted at KOS
long enough to figure out what the hell the tip jar was about. Sounds like something positive though. Hence my "thank you.")
Politicizing Flint, aka, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. (1 )
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Submitted by HenryAWallace on Mon, 04/01/2019 - 10:43am
To tell the truth, the alternate title of this essay is a lie. I always choose laughter, even if, as here, it may seem inappropriate: It's how I've always survived.
Believe it or not, this essay of several parts began as a brief intro to an essay on a related, but lighter topic, namely the hypocrisy of certain Democrats in relation to the misery of Flint's situation. However, once begun, it took on a life of its own, which I've tried to respect. So here goes:
I won't bore you into agony with a comprehensive, detailed list of the few enumerable facts I know about Michigan. (Didn't Nod make MSNBC's Dr. Rachel Maddow for things like that?) Rather, I will get right to Republican Governor Rick Snyder, who succeeded Democratic Canadian-American Governor Jennifer Granholm. (As an aside, after leaving the Governor's Mansion, Granholm went on to, among other things, campaign surrogacy and the rejected respected Correct the Record.)
Winning his first term by 58%, Snyder boldly carpe-d him enough classic rightist diem, to make any "self-avowed" right Libertarian Koch proud. Among many other things, with the help of a Republican-majority legislature, Snyder instituted a flat tax, created additional hurdles for Michigan's abortion clinics, limited rights for gay partners and signed a union-busting, family-depriving right to work for meager wages law. Snyder even deprived many Michigan citizens of their right to elect those who decide how their local tax dollars are and are not spent, which borders on taxation without representation and arguably violates the Constitution of the United States (but not because of the taxation without representation bit).
On March 16, 2011, Snyder signed a controversial bill into law that gave increased powers to emergency managers of local municipalities to resolve financial matters.[48] The bill was repealed by voter initiative in November 2012. However, weeks later in December 2012 Snyder signed a revised version of the bill back into law.
Let that be a life lesson for you, boys and girls: If at first you don't succeed at being a total Rick, try, try again!
If you are by now expecting me to post that Snyder, acting alone or with the legislature, also poisoned the water supply of Flint, I must disappoint you. Like so many horrid outcomes in the US, this one can be attributed to pols of both of the nation's most viscerated venerated venerable political parties, which seems to work out very well for both of them. Cut to the former Democratic Mayor of Flint:
Dayne Walling was mayor of Flint, Michigan, for six years, but he is best remembered for a single day. On April 25, 2014, as news cameras rolled, Walling pushed the button that shut off the city’s connection to Detroit’s water system and switched it to the Flint River. Although Walling had not made the decision to draw water from the Flint River—that was decided by an emergency manager appointed by the state to usurp his mayoral powers—he executed the physical act that initiated the Flint water crisis. Once the switch was complete, he hoisted a glass of river water, toasting “Here’s to Flint!”
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/05/flint-water-crisis-da...
Although Democrat Walling treated the switch as his own photo op, praised it, toasted it and later defended it, in "buck stops anywhere but here" fashion, Walling blames the state of Michigan for not having done enough to correct the problems that he failed to avert--and he is not wrong about the state's failure. While it does not, in my mind, absolve Walling from failing to look out for his Flint constituents, others would say, as did politico, that the real power over Flint's water supply lay with Flint's emergency manager. But, did it? And, if so, which emergency manager?
More tomorrow!
Credit: http://www.greenberg-art.com/.Illustrations/.Humorous/PassingTheBuck.html
And what song would embody phony buck passing better than one "by" Milli Vanilli?
Tags:
Flint water crisis Granholm Snyder Walling emergency city managers
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Submitted by detroitmechworks on Mon, 04/01/2019 - 10:56am
detroitmechworks's picture
Flint fortells the American Future.
If we choose to rely on the politicians.
In every shuttered factory, every broken spirit, every poisoned drop of water. It's the discarded wrapper of a cheap and unhealthy meal that Corporate America fully expects somebody else to clean up.
up
9 users have voted, including you.
—
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
reply
Submitted by ggersh on Mon, 04/01/2019 - 11:50am
ggersh's picture
Actually it could be said
@detroitmechworks Flint, the new amerika
for the future is gone unless
the people rise up to the
challenges we face.
up
4 users have voted.
—
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, CIA Director (first staff meeting, 1981)
WE ARE THERE
reply
Submitted by HenryAWallace on Mon, 04/01/2019 - 12:59pm
NSA, Homeland Security, US military, National Guard,
@ggersh
state militias, state and local militarized police forces, FBI, CIA, only heaven knows what else. And that's without private groups of armed people, like campus police in every college and university who, I'm guessing already have instructions from homeland security in case democracy breaks out anywhere near them.
Emails, phones, snail mail, etc. surveilled. On streets, Cameras and super sensitive microphones that can hear inside buildings. And that's not even counting security cameras in private and public buildings.
Good luck on figuring out how to plan a nationwide popular uprising in a country this size without being found out. And when it begins, good luck on staying alive. Kent State will look like a prom in comparison. And assuming we do, good luck on winning. And assuming we do, what happens the next day, or even the next hour?
And, btw, while all that is going on, guess who will be the one faction involved that has no weapons, especially guns and rifles, and no survival equipment or supplies. Hint: it won't be the government or the right.
up
2 users have voted.
edit reply
Submitted by HenryAWallace on Mon, 04/01/2019 - 12:55pm
Thank you for that post. It's poetry, as well as being
@detroitmechworks
accurate (and therefore sad).
Wasn't it Michigan where some city managers were selling city property to private individuals for a pittance, allegedly to raise money for the city. I wonder if they even bothered to get appraisals before striking a bargain on the purchase price.
With environmental concerns tied to overpopulation, human life has become very cheap. It's not for nothing that Kissinger's advice from the 1970s is referred to in terms of "useless eaters. If anything, they'd rather have us dead than adding to global warming while on the rolls of Security, SSI, Medicare Medicaid, unemployment, what's left of welfare after Bill Clinton, what's left of fuel subsidies and SNAP after Obama and Trump, etc. Billionaires like the late Pete Peterson resent "entitlements: so much because they have to contribute toward the "general welfare" of the people who made them rich. And their bought and paid for politicians agree with them.
Since they got so vocal about this crap, I've developed the mirror image: I now resent having to pay for the infrastructure and its maintenance that supports their businesses and lavish lifestyles. Private planes at public airports, docking slips for yachts, etc. Roads and bridges and railroads and railroad tracks to transport whatever their businesses need. Larger police forces, etc.
In my town, a relatively small public waterfront park was redone. Original cost estimate was under two million and I don't have to tell you it eventually got closer to six. Park was out of commission, all dug up for two or three years, in an area that has numerous public housing for the elderly units with zero outdoor space, not even a tiny balcony. So, good luck in those tiny apartments with no air conditioning, unless you can afford a window unit or two, poorish old folks.
When the park was finished, for the life of me, I could not see any difference, so I inquired. The answer?
They made it smaller.
Why?
So more boats could dock, including at a large, very high-priced condo/hotel/dining combination and on the opposite side of the park, a smaller hotel that caters mostly to people who pull up in their vessels, large and small. The two hotels are on either side of the park, the water is on the third side and the rest of the city is on the fourth. Guess which side got royally screwed. The fourth side of the park is lucky if its garbage gets picked up often enough.
Then there are oil spill clean ups and irreparable damage to oceans and ocean life. Health hazards in rivers, streams and lakes. Land rendered forever "uncleanable" and unhealthy because businesses polluted it. Ever hear a Pete Peterson--or anyone--complain about things like that?
Years after I and others started complaining about that crap. Warren mentioned it in passing, claiming she invented the concept and OWS copied from her, or some such; and Obama bungled it, intentionally or otherwise, n his re-election campaign against Mitt and got it thrown back in his face. ("You didn't build that." Oh, yes we did build that." Obama drops it like it's a loose turd dripping on his "comfortable shoes.")
But is it an ongoing refrain like "entitlements", "The left just wants free stuff" and the like? Will it ever be? And if it ever gets to be, will everyone, from media minions to the POTUS ignore it, as they ignored OWS and Bernie, except for negative stories?
Makes me so angry. From Neanderthals forward, the ruled have always vastly outnumbered the rulers, yet, most of them always allowed themselves to be ruled--and in ways far worse than the US today. Do you know that tenant farmers in England got no rent relief if their homes burned to the ground because they were considered to be renting land? And they put up with it? Now, the rulers are so entrenched, I don't see a way out of this mess for the ruled.
If anything, it will, as you say, keep getting worse, precisely because they know they have us in the crosshairs 24/7.
up
4 users have voted.
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New Submitted by lotlizard on Mon, 04/01/2019 - 1:22pm
lotlizard's picture
(sound of imaginary coin clinking as it falls into “tip jar”)
. . .
No clue.
It may have been posted in error. I've done that more than once, including something I wrote as a draft, just to save it with no intent to post it ever and also with a private message to a poster, also never intended for public view.
"I hate it when that happens."
What Snyder and the one party GOP rule of Michigan
did to this state over the last 8 years ought to be illegal. In fact, it probably is, but then, so what? Nobody in the ruling class ever pays for anything.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Thanks, dkmich!
All the while I was drafting this, I was hoping that you would read it. I am almost obsessive about not leaving disinformation on the internet and knew you would be able to correct any mistake I may have made.
I do think the powers of the emergency city managers as to spending or withholding tax dollars and selling city property are at least arguably in violation of the US Constitution. I don't know what the Michigan state constitution says.
Hillary in Flint
Remember when Hillary used the suffering of Flint, Michigan as a photo op on the campaign trail, promising the good people in front of the camera that she'd take care of the problem? Yeah, me too.
So here's a question for Hillary, "Hey, when you're not too busy blaming everyone for losing to Der Pumpkinfuhrer, how's about you update us on your efforts in Flint, being that you're such a great champion of women and children?"
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Yes, I most certainly do remember and that is exactly why I
started this essay. Please see https://caucus99percent.com/comment/410132#comment-410132. But, as the OP said, once begun, the topic sort of ran away with itself despite me. So, the snarky post will now be (3) of this series, as opposed to a one off.