Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Texas blues guitarist and singer Roy Gaines. Enjoy!

"Becoming a radical critic of capitalism involves a process of disenchantment, the dying of surprise at the system’s depredations; but being one, a long-term witness to those depredations, is to repeatedly discover that we can be shocked by what no longer surprises us."

-- China Miéville

News and Opinion

Soapbox:

Putin may have poisoned someone; Rick Snyder has poisoned 100,000 people.

There has been a lot of brewhaha about a British court finding that Vladimir Putin may have poisoned a former citizen of Russia for creating propaganda that rankled the Russian state. While there is a lot of talk about how awful Putin is for (allegedly) assassinating people, there seems to be little mention of the fact that President Barack Obama maintains a "Kill List" of intended targets for assassinations. It should also be noted that Obama has assassinated one American citizen (out of the four us citizens he's admitted murdering) on the rationale that he was creating propaganda that rankled the American state. Then two weeks after murdering the propagandist, Obama murdered a sixteen year old kid for the crime of having the wrong parents. This is not to overlook the thousands of civilians that Mr. Obama and his predecessor have murdered.

So far no court has seen fit to examine Mr. Obama's many war crimes.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, however, makes Putin look like a piker in terms of malevolent dictators.

Snyder has abused the power of his office by replacing the elected governments of six cities with feudal lords hand picked by Snyder and accountable only to him.

Snyder has chosen to disenfranchise communities that are predominantly african-american and poor while not applying the draconian methods to white communities in similar circumstances. offering Americans another blatant example of institutional racism.

Snyder and his feudal lords care naught for the well-being of citizens of color or the poor and have used the power of their offices to impose a racist, classist reign of terror on those least capable of resisting their foul, ideologically driven campaign to deregulate, disenfranchise and steal the resources of a city to give to their rich crony friends.

The process works as described in this article:

In order to wrap your head around this, you have to understand the privatization model:

• defund public institutions that could be used to generate profits
• screech about how the public institutions are falling apart
• save the day with a call to privatize the public institutions so they can be run by Big Business for a profit and of course, increase spending to the Big Businesses back to the level it should have been kept to start with.

Otherwise known as:

• problem (create one)
• reaction (oh my goodness, WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN)
• solution ($$$$$)

This is the neoliberal model. Just look at what we do in all those countries we save with our humanitarian bombing campaigns. Look at what we are bombing in Syria. Public infrastructure. Public water systems. Electric grids. Pipelines.

Rick Snyder. A dictator worse than Putin. 10 dead so far, 100,000 poisoned, quite plausibly due to what can at best be described as criminal negligence. He's still walking around, collecting a big paycheck from the job he abuses and there's no accountability in sight.

Makes you proud to be an American, don't it?

Litvinenko 'probably murdered on personal orders of Putin'

The former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was probably murdered on the personal orders of Vladimir Putin, the UK public inquiry into his death has found.

Litvinenko, who died from radioactive poisoning in a London hospital in November 2006, was killed by two Russian agents, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, the inquiry report said. There was a “strong probability” they were acting on behalf of the Russian FSB secret service, the report added.

Sir Robert Owen, the inquiry chair, said that taken as a whole the open evidence that had been heard in court amounted to a “strong circumstantial case” that the Russian state was behind the assassination.

But when he took into account all the evidence available to him, including a “considerable quantity” of secret intelligence that was not aired in open court, he found “that the FSB operation to kill Mr Litvinenko was probably approved by [Nikolai] Patrushev [head of the security service in 2006] and also by President Putin”.

At the morning lobby briefing, Downing Street said the findings were “extremely disturbing” but added that the government would have to weigh up any further actions in light of the need to work with Russia on tackling Isis.

Flint water crisis: governor's brand of corporate politics set stage for disaster

Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan presents himself as a bipartisan, pragmatic accountant. His self-proclaimed nickname is “One Tough Nerd”. ... He talks about Michigan residents as his “customers” and tries to run the embattled state like a turnaround business. But Snyder is much more of a political animal than his rhetoric, or lack of it, would suggest.

He does not go as far as his Wisconsin neighbor Scott Walker has done, in policies concerning public sector workers, unions, gun control, gay marriage, welfare or abortion. ... But there is no doubt Snyder is a red-blooded Republican with free-market and socially conservative stripes – and a relish for power.

The governor’s poisoned “customers” in Flint are experiencing an unexpected side-effect of Snyder’s penchant for dispatching unelected state overseers to run struggling cities with sweeping executive powers.

No one put lead in Flint’s water deliberately. But the cost-cutting imperatives and imperious manner that laid the groundwork for the crisis were typical of Snyder’s administration. ...

Not long after the enacting of right to work laws in late 2012, Snyder began beefing up the state’s powers to take control of struggling cities. The elected governments of the most financially imperiled, Flint and Detroit, were overridden by state-appointed emergency executives preaching budget cuts. ...

Criticized as an oligarch by some and a technocrat by others, in national Republican circles his name began cropping up as a possible presidential contender.

All that is academic now. A Snyder candidacy could not have survived the Flint water catastrophe, which developed under his brand of corporate-culture politics while, at best, he stood by.

Pentagon: New Mosul Strike Destroyed More Cash, Killed ‘Acceptable’ Number of Civilians

Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren has confirmed that on Monday, the US launched its second attack on an ISIS “cash collection point” in as many weeks, destroying another pile of unspecified cash in the middle of the large city of Mosul.

As with the previous incident, there were reports of civilian casualties in the attack, though Col. Warren insisted the Pentagon was willing to accept some civilian deaths in the attack, and that the initial estimates were that they only killed “in the single digits.”

Pentagon officials had similarly indicated that in the previous attack they were “comfortable” with civilian casualties in the scores, but that they believed they’d only killed between 7-9. ...

Of course, launching strikes that they know will kill civilian bystanders is widely held to be illegal under international law, and officials made a big deal with the previous attack about launching the strike late at night to limit the number of people around the area. In this case, no such assurances were given.

Civilians killed by Saudi airstrikes in Yemen: "civilians are paying a heavy toll in this war"

Report: Turkish Troops Enter Syria to Stop Kurdish Advance

According to Turkish media reports, a “large number” of Turkish troops have crossed the border into neighboring Syria, moving into ISIS-held Jarabulus uncontested by ISIS forces, and were said to be preparing to fight against Kurdish YPG forces advancing against the town.

The report comes just a day after Turkish forces bombed a YPG headquarters in Tel Abyad, and Turkish officials have repeatedly vowed to prevent the Kurds from crossing the Euphrates River at Jarabulus at all costs. ...

YPG spokesman Habun Osman accused Turkey of attacking YPG forces in Tel Abyad specifically to help ISIS, saying they’d never made any direct operations until the Kurdish militia neared Jarabulus. Turkey has repeatedly warned the US against helping the Kurds in taking the city from ISIS.

Turkey bringing Syria peace talks on point of collapse over Kurdish participation

Proposed Syrian peace talks set for next week in Geneva are likely to be cancelled over a row about whether Kurdish groups will be represented among rebel ranks.

Russia is demanding that the PYD, the political arm of the main Kurdish militia fighting in the north-east of the country, be invited to the talks as part of the rebel delegation.

However, that is being adamantly opposed by the opposition and the Turks who say their presence is a “red line”.

“The PYD is not real opposition,” Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish prime minister, said in an interview. He said it would be a “mistake” for the international community to insist they sit with rebels in the talks.

US Joint Chiefs Chair: Russian Airstrikes ‘Stabilized’ Assad in Syria

In new comments echoing those of other Pentagon officials, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford said Russian airstrikes since September have “stabilized” the Assad government in Syria, and have put them in a stronger negotiating position for next week’s Geneva talks.

Oddly, Gen. Dunford did not suggest that US airstrikes against the same targets in the same areas had done anything to help the Assad government, and accused Russia’s involvement of being a threat to the peace talks.

Sales Skyrocket: UK missile exports to Saudis hit 11,000% amid Yemen campaign

UN Rights Experts Say France's State of Emergency Imposes 'Excessive Restrictions'

A group of United Nations human rights experts have challenged the French government over a series of "exceptional measures" introduced by the state in the wake of the November 13 terror attacks that killed 130 people in Paris. In a statement published on Tuesday, they criticized France for imposing "excessive and disproportionate restrictions on fundamental freedoms" as part of the state of emergency that was declared following the assault.
The day after the attacks, the government declared a temporary state of emergency, resurrecting emergency legislation from 1955 that gives sweeping powers to the police and other authorities. On November 19, French lawmakers approved extending the state of emergency through February 26, 2016.

The statement was delivered by five UN special rapporteurs — independent experts working on behalf of the UN — who warned of "the lack of clarity and precision" of several of the emergency measures, which they feared might lead to "arbitrary procedures." ... France's state of emergency legislation allows the government and the police to search and detain people without a warrant, place suspects under house arrest without prior judicial clearance, block certain websites, and ban public gatherings.

Bill to Block Syrian and Iraqi Refugees Stalls in the Senate

The public debate about accepting refugees from the Middle East rages on. But legislative action has been stalled for now, after the U.S. Senate on Wednesday defeated a bill that would have made it effectively impossible for Syrian and Iraqi refugees to find safe haven in the United States.

H.R.4038, also known as the American SAFE Act, needed 60 votes to clear the Senate, but failed to proceed after receiving only 55 votes. The bill had passed the House of Representatives last November by a vote of 289 to 137, leading to fears among many that the gratuitously anti-refugee bill might become law.

Israel Plans to Seize Large Chunk of West Bank Farmland

In a move that seems determined to fuel more international backlash against them, the Israeli government is preparing to seize a large plot of Palestinian farmland near Jericho, allowing nearby settlements to access the land for themselves.

The 380 acres of farmland is in territory which was intended to be part of an eventual Palestinian state, but settlers objected to this, as they’ve been illegally farming the outskirts of the land for years. Since it is in Israeli military administered land, the Palestinian owners weren’t allowed to use it at any rate.

The 1% Economy: The World's Richest 62 People Now Have as Much as Poorest 3.6 Billion

Honk if you find anything here familiar:

The Seven Stages of Establishment Backlash: Corbyn/Sanders Edition

STAGE 1: Polite condescension toward what is perceived to be harmless (We think it’s really wonderful that your views are being aired).

STAGE 2: Light, casual mockery as the self-belief among supporters grows (No, dears, a left-wing extremist will not win, but it’s nice to see you excited).

STAGE 3: Self-pity and angry etiquette lectures directed at supporters upon realization that they are not performing their duty of meek surrender, flavored with heavy doses of concern trolling (nobody but nobody is as rude and gauche online to journalists as these crusaders, and it’s unfortunately hurting their candidate’s cause!).

STAGE 4: Smear the candidate and his supporters with innuendos of sexism and racism by falsely claiming only white men support them (you like this candidate because he’s white and male like you, not because of ideology or policy or contempt for the party establishment’s corporatist, pro-war approach).

STAGE 5: Brazen invocation of right-wing attacks to marginalize and demonize, as polls prove the candidate is a credible threat (he’s weak on terrorism, will surrender to ISIS, has crazy associations, and is a clone of Mao and Stalin).

STAGE 6: Issuance of grave and hysterical warnings about the pending apocalypse if the establishment candidate is rejected, as the possibility of losing becomes imminent (you are destined for decades, perhaps even generations, of powerlessness if you disobey our decrees about who to select).

STAGE 7: Full-scale and unrestrained meltdown, panic, lashing-out, threats, recriminations, self-important foot-stomping, overt union with the Right, complete fury (I can no longer in good conscience support this party of misfits, terrorist-lovers, communists, and heathens).

Skewed Courts Team Up with Debt Predators to Screw Nation's Poor

Courts across the United States are systematically failing poor and low-income individuals as predatory financial companies buy up large portfolios of past debt and then win profits by targeting vulnerable people who may or may not be responsible for the alleged delinquencies.

That's the key conclusion of an in-depth investigation conducted by Human Right Watch HRW), and published Thursday, which scrutinizes how courts handle hundreds of thousands of lawsuits brought every year by debt buyers – firms that specialize in purchasing bad debts which they then try to collect for themselves.

The report charges that courts are rubber-stamping lawsuits brought against people by these companies but that due-diligence is woefully lacking and too little is being done to protect the rights of those being sued. ...

Based on interviews with individuals sued by debt buyers as well as judges, lawyers, public officials, and debt buyer representatives across the country, the group's report—Rubber Stamp Justice: US Courts, Debt Buying Corporations, and the Poor (pdf)—provides abundant evidence of how the poor are being targeted and victimized largely because they find so little recourse or protections once they enter the U.S. court system. 

HRW says the scale of the debt buying industry would be hard to overstate, noting how the nation's leading debt buyer firm alone, Encore Capital, claims that one in every five US consumers either owes it money or has owed it money in the past. While a relative handful of large firms dominate the business in the U.S., the group says, there are hundreds and perhaps thousands of companies who buy up delinquent debts at any given time.

'We will come to Athens and burn them': political protest returns to Greece

Farmers’ roadblocks, ferries immobilised in ports, pensioners taking to the streets: protest has returned to Greece in what many fear could be the beginning of the crisis-plagued country’s most confrontational winter yet.

From the Greek-Bulgarian frontier to the southern island of Crete, farmers are up in arms over the spectre of more internationally mandated austerity.

“It’s war,” says Dimitris Vergos, a corn grower speaking from the northern town of Naoussa. “If they [politicians] go on pushing us to the edge, if they want to dehumanise us further, we will come to Athens and burn them all.”

Six years into Athens’ economic crisis, even more Greeks claim they have been pushed to the point where they can no longer survive the rigours of austerity. With an unprecedented 1.2 million people unemployed – more than 25% of the population – many have been pauperised by the biting effects of keeping bankruptcy at bay.

Pensioners, whose incomes have been reduced 12 times at the behest the EU and International Monetary Zone, this week also upped the ante taking to the streets. ...

For farmers, the reforms will not only raise social security contributions from 6.5% to 27%, but double income tax payments from 13% to 26%, eradicating more than three quarters of their annual earnings. ...

With unions announcing a general strike on 4 February, the prospect of social upheaval has reignited concerns over Greece’s ability to remain in the single currency. Amid fears that lenders, led by the hardline International Monetary Fund (IMF), will ask for further retrenchment – following discovery of a €1.8bn fiscal gap in the budget this year – an iteration of the Grexit crisis cannot be ruled out. Negotiations between Athens and its creditors begin in the coming days.

Detroit Rocked by Teachers' "Sickout" Protesting Dire Conditions Under Emergency Management

As Obama Visits City, Teacher Sick-Outs Shutter Nearly All Detroit Public Schools

On the same day that President Barack Obama visited the city to laud its alleged renaissance, teacher "sick-outs" over horrifying conditions closed 88 schools in Detroit on Wednesday.

According to a post on the Detroit Public Schools Facebook page, only eight schools in the district were open as a result of the largest in a string of recent teacher protests calling attention to what they call deplorable conditions, overcrowded classrooms, and inadequate funding.

The mass protest took place as Obama was visiting the North American International Auto Show at Cobo Hall, "turning what was supposed to be a day to celebrate into one shining a harsh spotlight on one of Michigan's struggling cities," CNN wrote. 

Teachers were planning to leaflet outside the auto show, with a call-to-action reading: "As the city celebrates this 'ultra-luxury' automobile event, Detroit’s public schools are in a state of crisis. Children are struggling in schools with hazardous environmental and safety issues. Educators have made significant sacrifices for the good of students, including taking pay cuts and reductions in health benefits."

In response to the teachers' action, The Detroit News reported, Detroit Public Schools "has filed an emergency motion seeking a restraining order and a preliminary injunction against DPS teachers who engaged in alleged work strikes, ordering them to stop the sickouts."

Obama’s Justice Department Likes Criminally Prosecuting People, But Not Corporations

Fewer than one in eight federal agency criminal referrals of corporations led to actual criminal prosecutions between fiscal years 2010 and 2014, according to Justice Department data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

While criminal referrals of individuals resulted in prosecutions at an 82.1 percent clip, corporate prosecutions from referrals only happened at a 12.3 percent rate.

“This meant that for incoming referrals,” according to the TRAC report, “prosecution of individual defendants was, on average, nearly seven times more likely than it was for corporations.”

The report builds upon a previous TRAC analysis showing a 29 percent drop in corporate criminal prosecutions from 2004 to 2014, suggesting that corporate crime has become a lower priority in the Obama administration. Statistics showing a significant rejection of corporate referrals for white-collar crime — only 7.4 percent of those cases led to prosecutions — further the narrative that corporations have not suffered from aggressive law enforcement over the past several years.

Locals demand Oregon militia leave refuge: 'It's time for you to go home'

The armed militiamen occupying a wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon have faced the most intense opposition yet at a community meeting where local residents shouted down protest leader Ammon Bundy in person.

Bundy and several other high-profile militia members left the Malheur national wildlife refuge to attend a public forum in the small town of Burns, located 30 miles away from the occupation. At the emotional meeting, residents one by one demanded that Bundy and his armed followers end their siege of the wildlife sanctuary and immediately leave town.

“It is time for you to go home,” Harney County judge Steve Grasty, one of the most vocal critics of the militia, said directly to Bundy, who sat in the bleachers of a Burns high school gymnasium on Tuesday night and listened to a steady stream of angry comments.

“Go, go, go, go, go,” the crowd shouted back, according to the Oregonian. “Get the hell out of my county,” one woman yelled. Another screamed at Bundy: “Go to jail where you deserve to be!” ...

Militia leaders, who typically travel with armed “security” guards, have had no trouble exiting and returning to the refuge.

Ammon, his brother Ryan Bundy and occupier Jon Ritzheimer all showed up to the Harney County meeting and left without facing any threats from law enforcement. They walked past multiple sheriff’s deputies on the way out to their trucks.

As Panic Grips Clinton Campaign, The Real Question: What's Wrong with Hillary?

Panic now grips the Clinton campaign. Polls show Bernie Sanders surging to a dramatic lead in New Hampshire and closing in Iowa. The Washington Post reports that Hillary's national numbers are dropping faster now than they did in 2008. The Clinton campaign has started throwing everything and the kitchen sink at Sanders, with the gutter award captured, thus far, by Senator Claire McCaskill who smeared him with the "hammer and sickle," transparently attributing the red-baiting to future Republican attacks of her own imagination.

But the question isn't what's wrong with Bernie -- he's soaring beyond all expectations. The question is what's wrong with Hillary? She has universal name recognition, unparalleled experience, the support of the big money and the political gatekeepers, the Hollywood glitz, the best political operatives, the pollsters, the ad makers, the establishment policy mavens, and political press coverage. Having learned from 2008, she's got the best ground operation in the history of Iowa caucuses that still may rescue her there. But she's sinking rapidly against a 73-year-old political maverick who is still just introducing himself to the American people. ...

When Clinton insists that her Wall Street reforms are far tougher than those of Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley, it rings false. She attacks Sanders for supporting Medicare for All which naturally is the bête noire of the private health insurance and drug companies.

When Sanders invoked the $600,000 Clinton received from Goldman Sachs alone in speaking fees (a bank that just agreed to pay $5 billion essentially for mortgage fraud) in the last debate, her only defense was to suggest that a similar criticism would apply to Barack Obama who also raised money from Wall Street. Democrats like President Obama, but the defense is pretty lame given that fact that he will leave office with the big banks bigger and more concentrated than they were when their excesses blew up the economy, and with no major banker going to jail for what the FBI describes as an "epidemic of fraud." ...

As Greg Sargent of the Washington Post notes, Hillary's credibility gulf also undermines her argument about "electability." Democrats have a natural majority among the electorate, but only if they turn out. Even the Clinton campaign has been worried about whether HRC can generate the excitement among the rising American electorate to get them to the polls. Now, they worry about whether Sanders will generate so much excitement that he will flood the Iowa caucuses and primaries with a wave of new voters.

Liberals No Longer Amused by Bernie Sanders’ Presidential Campaign

The objective of the week for liberals appears to be to make clear Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is some kind of pariah. Despite how his candidacy has transformed into a phenomenon over the past months, establishment liberals maintain the U.S. senator from Vermont should not be considered a “serious” candidate. They believe it would be a huge mistake if a Democrat with unapologetic socialist leanings won the nomination, especially over Hillary Clinton.

But these cases against Sanders are really arguments against citizens voting their conscience. The uncertainty and dismissiveness toward Sanders serves to silence any critics of the corporate-driven politics entrenched in the Democratic Party. It suggests a fear that Democrats might actually stand against corporate power for a change. ...

This rhetoric fits a playbook the American liberal class has followed for the past decades. As writer Chris Hedges argued, “The liberal class’ disposal of its most independent and courageous members has long been part of its pathology.” After World War I, and especially after World War II, corporations gradually sought more and more control of the state. Corporations now hold government completely captive and the liberal class, which “purged itself of the only members who had the fortitude and vision to save it from irrelevance,” bears some responsibility.

Those in power expect liberals to police others on the left who would threaten their supremacy. So, when a political elite such as Clinton is faced with a formidable opponent, liberal pundits wittingly or unwittingly devise arguments for why Americans should vote against their interests and support someone who would likely manage government in a manner suitable for the corporate state.

The 'Anti-Manning' Positions of Hillary Clinton on National Security and Surveillance

Marcy Wheeler, national security and civil liberties reporter at EmptyWheel.net, says Clinton supported secure communications for dissidents - except when it came to leaks from her own State Department to WikiLeaks

Canadians Are Suing to Stop the Killing of Wolves From Helicopters

Environment groups are taking their fight to stop British Columbia's wolf cull to court, arguing it violates proper wolf management techniques.

Last year, the province announced a five-year plan to cull nearly 200 wolves in its northern regions to protect the endangered mountain caribou population. There's an estimated 70 mountain caribou left in the area. Though development has been a leading cause for the decimation of the population over the years, provincial environment authorities blame the wolves for thwarting efforts to recover the species. CBC News reports that wolves killed one caribou and three calves after they were released from government captivity in July.

According to figures released by the province, 84 wolves were killed between January and April of 2015. In 2006, the government in Alberta carried out a mass wolf cull, which resulted in the death of nearly 1,000 animals.

The groups, Valhalla Wilderness Society and Pacific wild, have reportedly filed for a judicial review of the culling.

The Amount of Plastic in the Ocean Could Outweigh Fish by 2050

Water bottles, packing peanuts, and other types of plastic could outweigh fish in the ocean by 2050 if humans keep polluting the seas at current rates, according to a new Ellen MacArthur Foundation and World Economic Forum report.

Entitled "The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the future of plastics," the report contains plenty of sickening statistics about the amount of plastic polluting the ocean, like how 150 million tons of plastic are floating in areas like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where sea currents cause floating plastic to accumulate. ...

People use around 95 percent of plastic packaging once before they throw it away, the report found. That packaging is worth as much as $120 billion a year.

Almost a third never makes it to a landfill or recycling facility, meaning it's either littering the streets or wilderness or floating somewhere. The costs of dealing with plastic pollution, including damaged ecosystems, urban blight and the carbon emissions from making the plastic, are around $40 billion annually, according to the report.

Meanwhile, plastic packaging generates $26 to $39 billion a year in profits, the report found, meaning the industry earns less than the costs everyone bears from improperly disposing of the plastic that surrounds toys, food, medicines, and other products.

What Snyder Knew: Flint Email Dump Shows Attempts to Shift the Blame

Redacted emails released Wednesday by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder show that his administration was informed of problems with Flint's water almost a year ago, many months before the embattled governor or his staff begrudgingly admitted to bearing any responsibility for poisoning a city—or for fixing the problem. ...

Wednesday's document dump spans 274 pages and includes communications on Flint water issues, public safety, and lawsuits. However, according to MLive, "only seven emails sent by Snyder on the city's water system were included in the distribution."

But emails from his staffers outline concerns that the issue was being "politicized and that the state's responsibility for the crisis was being exaggerated," the Detroit Free Press reports, even as they show attempts to shift the blame.

"I can't figure out why the state is responsible except that [then-treasurer Andy] Dillon did make the ultimate decision so we're not able to avoid the subject," Snyder's chief of staff Dennis Muchmore, who retired on Tuesday, wrote to Snyder in a Sept. 25, 2015, e-mail.

"The DEQ [Department of Environmental Quality] and DCH [Department of Community Health] feel that some in Flint are taking the very sensitive issue of children's exposure to lead and trying to turn it into a political football claiming the departments are underestimating the impacts on the populations and particularly trying to shift responsibility to the state," said Muchmore.

"The real responsibility rests with the county, city and KWA," he wrote, referring to the Karegnondi Water Authority. "But since the issue here is the health of citizens and their children, we're taking a proactive approach."

As they continue, "[t]he messages detail a realization over three weeks that Dillon was not the administration’s only tie to the crisis," The Detroit News reports. "On Oct. 2 the state acknowledged that its test results failed to identify increasing lead levels in children; on Oct. 18 the Department of Environmental Quality chief told Snyder the agency mistakenly failed to require corrosion controls on Flint River water."

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

By every meaningful measure, today's elites are gods. This should make us angry

The White House Asked Social Media Companies to Look for Terrorists. Here’s Why They’d #Fail.

How a Young American Escaped the No-Fly List

A self-deprecating Bernie Sanders mixes wry humor with serious politics in Iowa

Stone-age massacre offers earliest evidence of human warfare

A Little Night Music

Roy Gaines - You're Right, I'm Left

Roy Gaines - Loud Mouth Lucy

Roy Gaines - Gainesville

Roy Gaines - Skippy Is A Sissy

Roy Gaines - Jump In My Cadillac

Roy Gaines - Isabella

Roy Gaines - Right Now Baby

Roy Gaines - Dee Dat Dee Dum Dum