Imagine the headline, Tens of Thousands of People Poisoned by, {then insert name of bad dictator the US does not have any use for anymore}, and you have the same basic headline for the last 40 to 100 years. The call for a bombing campaign, if not all out war would be immense. Just think for a moment, when the people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to secede to Russia in 2014, we had TV pundits, a retired general on Tee Vee, calling to Kill more Russians.

"the only way the U.S can have any effect in this region and turn the tide is to start killing Russians."

Not a single shot was fired, but we have a retired general going on TV calling for the US government to start killing Russians, because the people of Crimea VOTED to decide their own self determination.

But when tens of thousands of our own people are poisoned, and I think up to ten people have died from disease, as a direct result for switching Flint's water supply. Where was the outcry to hold anyone accountable. Much less start calling for killing people responsible for this tragedy. Heck, where were the calls for even an investigation? How long did it take for someone to finally listen to the people of Flint?

Gee, remember Saddam Hussein and his WMD's? Now, think for a moment, we have over 2,000 water systems documented to be contaminated with lead and other toxic contaminates, are we not poisoning ourselves on a EPIC scale?

How many of our own people have to be poisoned, or die, to illicit a federal response to help the people, not only in Flint, but across this country with our crumbling infrastructure?

According to the Detroit Free Press:

State and local officials knew in 2013 that without proper treatment of water drawn from the Flint River, they risked subjecting the people of Flint to lead-contaminated drinking water.

But the next year, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality OK'd Flint's plan to pump water from the river, and into residents' homes, without adding an important chemical that would prevent contamination from lead in old pipes.

Both state and local officials KNEW in 2013. Just let that sink in. They knew, but made the switch anyway. That means they made the conscious CHOICE, not a fucking over sight, or mistake. (facepalm)

The city of Flint, MI commissioned a report back in 2011 to investigate using the Flint river as a source of water for the city. Sent to state officials in 2013, the report detailed the risks of lead leaching by the more corrosive Flint river water and emphasized the need for phosphate corrosion control to prevent lead from entering the drinking water of Flint residents,. Yet the plan put together by the state Department of Environmental Quality completely left out a plan for phosphate for corrosion control.

Why did they (DEQ) leave corrosion control out of the plan? Sorry, but how fucking stupid are we supposed to be, to accept such complete and utter non-sense? The report sent to city officials clearly detailed the NEED for corrosion control but those DETAILS were willfully IGNORED. Again by CHOICE.

Human life needs clean water to be able to survive. When our governments, local, state and federal willfully ignore this fact, they are engaging in systemic criminal behavior. Tens of thousands of people have been poisoned by the willful choice to ignore the the need to add a phosphate corrosion plan to prevent lead from leaching into Flint's drinking water supply.

Hey, they are only citizens right? I mean come on, why do anything positive for our own citizen, when we can make lot's of money from corporations, right?

According to DemocracyNow:

As Flint residents are forced to drink, cook with and even bathe in bottled water, while still paying some of the highest water bills in the county for their poisoned water, we turn to a little-known story about the bottled water industry in Michigan. In 2001 and 2002, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality issued permits to Nestlé, the largest water bottling company in the world, to pump up to 400 gallons of water per minute from aquifers that feed Lake Michigan. This sparked a decade-long legal battle between Nestlé and the residents of Mecosta County, Michigan, where Nestlé’s wells are located. One of the most surprising things about this story is that, in Mecosta County, Nestlé is not required to pay anything to extract the water, besides a small permitting fee to the state and the cost of leases to a private landowner. In fact, the company received $13 million in tax breaks from the state to locate the plant in Michigan. The spokesperson for Nestlé in Michigan is Deborah Muchmore. She’s the wife of Dennis Muchmore—Governor Rick Snyder’s chief of staff, who just retired and registered to be a lobbyist. We speak with Peggy Case, Terry Swier and Glenna Maneke of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation. Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on nearly 1,400 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream 8-9AM ET: http://democracynow.org

Think about that, Flint residents are paying some of the highest water rates in the country, for LEAD POISONED water, while Nestle is getting CLEAN water and 13 million in Tax breaks. Who picks up the tab for corporate tax breaks? The people, that's who. The people either pick up that corporate tab in the form of higher fees for water and other city, state and federal fees as well as higher city, state and federal taxes.

Think about that, a corporation gets clean water to make a profit, but our fellow citizens in Flint, MI get the highest water rates in the country for POISONED water, and if they don't pay for their poisoned water they get their water shut off. Which should be a crime, because clean water is essential to human life. But poisoning our own citizens, well that's okay because, well, because we were trying to save money, so that's makes everything ok, I mean right, gee their heart was in the right place, right? They were thinking of the poor people's pocket book right?

Should I have to say this, that saving money is not the foundation for a healthy society. We can't keep putting off required maintenance to our ailing infrastructure, people's LIVES are at serious risk. Our citizens are threaten with poisoning, all across this country. If that were happening in another country, the US and all the pundits would be clamoring to bomb the shit out of some country for poisoning their own people.

While democrats and republicans are busy playing the blame game, the people of Flint still don’t have clean drinking water, tens of thousands have been poisoned (which IS a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY), and no one knows where we are going to get the money to help the people of Flint. But we certainly have enough money to try and topple a regime we don’t like in Syria, so big oil can run their pipe lines to under cut Russian oil to Europe.

What is happening in Flint, is actually happening all across our country, RIGHT FUCKING NOW, most predominately in communities of POC.

From USAToday:

While a harsh national spotlight focuses on the drinking water crisis in Flint, Mich., a USA TODAY NETWORK investigation has identified almost 2,000 additional water systems spanning all 50 states where testing has shown excessive levels of lead contamination over the past four years.  

Snip

Many of the highest reported lead levels were found at schools and day cares. A water sample at a Maine elementary school was 42 times higher than the EPA limit of 15 parts per billion, while a Pennsylvania preschool was 14 times higher, records show. At an elementary school in Ithaca, N.Y., one sample tested this year at a stunning 5,000 ppb of lead, the EPA’s threshold for “hazardous waste.”

Got that, lead levels found at an elementary school were of a threshold for HAZARDOUS WASTE by the EPA's standards! Holy fucking cow, how is that not a national scandal? But it's only kids, children. Why bother with them, they don't contribute much money to political campaigns, amirite? Gee, who was Senator of New York? What did they do about any of these lead contaminated water systems, serving SCHOOLS!

Again from the USAToday Article:

Yet the fundamental risk factor in Flint – old lead service lines that deliver water to homes, plus interior plumbing containing lead – is a common problem for tens of millions of homes mostly built before 1986. Unlike other contaminants that can be filtered out at the water plant, lead usually gets into drinking water at the end of the system, as it comes onto individual properties and into homes.

At greatest risk, experts say, are an estimated 7.3 million homes connected to their utility's water mains by individual lead service lines -- the pipe carrying water from the main under the street onto your property and into your home. The water passes through what amounts to “a pure lead straw,” said Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech environmental engineering professor who has studied water contamination in Flint and a similar, earlier crisis in Washington, D.C.

Lead service lines were mostly installed before the 1930s, although some communities continued to lay lead pipes for decades longer.

Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins appears on The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann to discuss the terrifying water crisis that is plaguing the United States.

From the Washington Post :

Data collected by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows that over 40 percent of the states that reported lead test results in 2014 have higher rates of lead poisoning among children than Flint.

From the National Resource Defense Councilreport:

Many cities around the country rely on pre-World War I-era water delivery systems and treatment technology. Aging pipes can break, leach contaminants into the water they carry and breed bacteria -- all potential prescriptions for illness. And old-fashioned water treatment -- built to filter out particles in the water and kill some parasites and bacteria -- generally fails to remove 21st-century contaminants like pesticides, industrial chemicals and arsenic.
What's on Tap? found one overarching truth: If steps are not taken now, our drinking water will get worse.

The National Center for Healthy Housing Reports:

Although the health of most Americans has improved significantly over time, not all racial and ethnic groups have benefited equally. African-Americans and Hispanics, for example, are more likely than whites to suffer from poor health and to die prematurely. Minority and low-income families are more likely to live in substandard housing and polluted communities, increasing their risk of childhood lead poisoning, asthma, cancer, and other environmentally related diseases. In addition to being disproportionately affected by disease, minorities often lack adequate insurance and access to health care due to financial and cultural barriers.

Snip

Many of the highest reported lead levels were found at schools and day cares. A water sample at a Maine elementary school was 42 times higher than the EPA limit of 15 parts per billion, while a Pennsylvania preschool was 14 times higher, records show. At an elementary school in Ithaca, N.Y., one sample tested this year at a stunning 5,000 ppb of lead, the EPA’s threshold for “hazardous waste.”

Why do we accept this? This is the fucking status quo people! It has to change! Where is the massive mobilization effort to save our fellow citizens in Flint and other citizens across this nation? Gee, this situation is most predominately affects poor and POC communities, like they are not worth it, to save. They don’t make much money and don't have much to contribute to political campaigns to get someone's attention.

Both parties give lip service, but NO ONE is mobilizing any serious effort, but we do have a candidate that is “fighting for us” to have “affordable healthcare”, but not healthcare as a human right. I think / believe, for all Democrats, we should demand healthcare as a human right, not a incremental revenue stream in a mafia style, pay or die, system.

Well, according to TeleSurTV, Jessie Jackson, that would be a definite YES.

Civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson slammed the toxic water contamination in Flint, Michigan, on Tuesday as a crime against humanity.
….
Jackson’s characterization of the poisoned water as a crime against humanity also comes after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency admitted on Tuesday that it did not respond fast enough to the water contamination crisis.
The poisoned tap water in Flint has led to dangerously elevated levels of lead in children and is suspected of being linked to the outbreak of legionnaires disease that has killed ten people.
A report released last September revealed that blood lead levels in children under five in Flint almost doubled compared to before the water source was switched.

Well, that former CIA wanna-be that runs TOS, say's that revolutions must start in POC communities. Well, from one perspective I can see why, because that is exactly where most of our poisoned water supplies happen to serve, predominately in minority dominated communities where poor whites and POC live. With the level of “white supremacist ideology”, baked into the very founding of our nation, I reckon I can understand his statement, not to mention the “neoliberal economic policies of the US since the 70's, are doing the very same thing to POC as the Israeli's are doing to Palestinians, a slow, methodical, painful genocide. Which they justify by looking at the US and our treatment of 1st Americans and POC.

Let's face it, 4 centuries of white supremacist ideology doesn't go away with the passing of the civil rights act.

What the heck do you think Climate Change is going to do to our water supplies? What’s going to happen if we let our government privatize our water systems?

From CorpWatch.Org

Around the world, neo-liberalism has been imposed by powerful financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. It is raging all over Latin America. The first clear example of neo-liberalism at work came in Chile (with thanks to University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman), after the CIA-supported coup against the popularly elected Allende regime in 1973. Other countries followed, with some of the worst effects in Mexico where wages declined 40 to 50% in the first year of NAFTA while the cost of living rose by 80%. Over 20,000 small and medium businesses have failed and more than 1,000 state-owned enterprises have been privatized in Mexico. As one scholar said, "Neoliberalism means the neo-colonization of Latin America."

In the United States neo-liberalism is destroying welfare programs; attacking the rights of labor (including all immigrant workers); and cutbacking social programs. The Republican "Contract" on America is pure neo-liberalism. Its supporters are working hard to deny protection to children, youth, women, the planet itself -- and trying to trick us into acceptance by saying this will "get government off my back." The beneficiaries of neo-liberalism are a minority of the world's people. For the vast majority it brings even more suffering than before: suffering without the small, hard-won gains of the last 60 years, suffering without end.

Got that, suffering without end. Sounds like hell to me.

The top ten reasons to oppose water privatization can be found here.
From the Mayo Clinic on Lead Poisoning, Treatment and Drugs.
From the EPA, How to Protect Your Family from Lead.

Just think for a moment, with all the over bloated terrorism fears circulating like buzzards over a dying carcass, about someone coming into our country and causing massive death, ya know, like poisoning water supply systems. Well, for the people of Flint, MI, they don't have to worry about terrorists, they have to worry about their own government poisoning them, because THEY DID POISON THEM, no terrorists required.