[Sixstrings]

Sixstrings, the guy who politicises every comment and post he makes, accusing others of politicising things. That's rich, Six.

Wanna get political?

Republicans Who Cut and Tried To Defund EPA Now Attack It For Not Preventing Colorado Mine Spill
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/8/11 ... Mine-Spill

I can do this all night, but it makes me nauseous.

GHung -- have you not been following the news?

I could have made this thread a month ago. But I was holding off, then finally it got on my nerves today. Clinton is pounding the podium about Michigan, and Sanders is too -- and they both say the federal government should do something, but then they frame it that if THEY were president they would have, but nobody is mentioning the fact there actually is a president right now in the WH.

I'm just being objective here.. I'm hearing all these political speeches in Flint and about Flint, but I haven't heard anything from President Obama about it. Or what he is doing about it.

I just don't understand. Flint has become a national issue as of two months ago, but yet why doesn't the White House get on top of the problem? Do people just want to CAMPAIGN on this, for a year, without the current president and EPA doing anything?

You can't tell me it's not strange, that the EPA has been missing on this thing, and the White House not saying anything, and it's only Hillary and Bernie talking about it on the campaign trail.

Flint needs the CURRENT President to get involved, and the WH should have been on top of it months ago.

[Plantagenet]

Republicans Who Cut and Tried To Defund EPA Now Attack It For Not Preventing Colorado Mine Spill

Not only did the EPA "not prevent" the Colorado Mine Spill that polluted the entire Animas River Basin--the EPA CAUSED the mine spill. I'm glad the Rs are criticizing the EPA for that. Its just too bad the EPA employees who did didn't get fired---polluting an entire river basin is a DISGRACE! Who knows---maybe the EPA transferred them to FLINT where more EPA stupidity just occurred.


The EPA caused a mine spill that polluted the Animas River in Colorado

I don't know which bit of incompetence is stupider---the EPA people in Colorado who released mine waters and polluted the entire Animas Rier basin or the EPA people in Michigan who knew in April that the water supply in Flint was contaminated with lead, but never announced that fact and let those kids be poisoned for another 10 months.


The EPA knew but didn't tell the people of Flint Michigan their water was polluted with lead for TEN MONTHS!

Cheers!

[Sixstrings]

Do you guys get my point?

I'm just sayin' -- I watch msnbc, and I've been seeing them go on and on about Flint now for a solid two months.

But why don't they ever say what PRESIDENT OBAMA thinks about it?

Why is there no news of "EPA is on the ground in Flint, Michigan." And things like that. And it should have been FEMA getting water filters out to people.

There was a long time there, where people didn't even get water filters. And people were lining up for privately donated bottled water -- to drink, and SPONGE BATH with.

I just don't understand why there's been no news about the EPA, on msnbc, and no news from the white house about what they're doing.

And then the whole thing escalated to Hillary Clinton making special campaign stops in Flint, about the lead water. And then she opened a campaign office. And then Bernie had a rally about it, saying the federal government should do something.

And I'm sittin' here thinking, well he's a senator. And she's in constant contact with the WH. So where is Obama?

[Sixstrings]

With One Sentence Obama Explains Why The Flint Water Crisis Is A Republican Failure

Relating to how the parents in Flint must be feeling, Obama said, “I know that if I was a parent up there, I would be beside myself that my kids’ health could be at risk.”
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/01/20/sentence-obama-explains-flint-water-crisis-republican-failure.html

That's not what people want to hear -- rather, they want to hear the President say he's got it handled, and how he's handling it.

EPA head in charge of Flint resigns as Obama pledges $80 million for poisoned water crisis
https://www.rt.com/usa/329766-obama-flint-water-epa-resignation/

Those articles are from a month ago. But Clinton and Sanders keep pounding the podium, so is the thing being handled or not?

[PrestonSturges]

It sure is heartwarming to see some of the fuckwits who were trying to politicize Ebola here.

[KaiserJeep]

It's even more heartwarming to see people who are so out of touch with reality that they cannot understand why an EPA Administrator who is a Democrat appointed by Obama will not prosecute an elected official in Flint Michigan who is also a Democrat, for a problem whose root cause is decades of water infrastructure neglect by other Democrats. Instead they will try to attribute the problem to a city manager appointed by Snyder - now replaced by a new set of elected Democrats.

I mean really - if you have a brain, understand that the Democrats and the Republicans in Washington DC hang out in the same bars and laugh at the same dirty and racist jokes. Understand that "bipartisanship" is a dance that they both do to keep the attention of the public, and once in a while they change who is leading the dance, but without changing the tune or even missing a step.

Elect anybody else if you want the tune to change. Your dead Great Grandmother could do a better job of governing from her grave than will an establishment Democrat or a Republican, because both parties are in the pocket of a few wealthy individuals that own most things in the USA - and no establishment candidate will ever do anything for you, only for them. The only two remaining non-establishment candidates are Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. There used to be three until Senator Rand Paul suspended his campaign.

For <insert deity name here>'s sake, wake up and hear the music. The D vs. R, R vs. D show is for suckers. There is no important difference between a D and an R when it comes to things that actually matter to ordinary people.

[PrestonSturges]

Like the Nazis, Snyder passed a law that allowed him to take over municipalities and made himself responsible. But he didn't get the power to shoot people who complain, so he might be held accountable. It turns out things are more complicated than just privatizing and selling off assets.

As far as what actually happened after that, you guys aren't even curious about the timeline and are just babbling the usual Palinesque word salad.

It was only a couple years ago that it was thought this crop of GOP governors were on the fast track to the White House, and that a couple of them would be running in 2016. But they all seem to be idiots who are bogged down in scandal and investigations.

[KaiserJeep]

Yet amazingly, incredibly, and without conscious thoughts in your pointy little head, you still think somehow that there is some sort of qualitative difference between establishment Democrats and establishment Republicans.

If you are not independently wealthy, there is no difference worth mentioning. The Republicans are not the party that champions the White Middle Class, they work for the Oligarchs. The Democrats are not the party of Youth, Minority Groups, and Labor - they too work for the Oligarchs.

Both parties take money from nebulous wealthy figures and pass legislation that is bought, paid for, and delivered. Both parties shrilly attack one another and engage in a partisanship dance full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

You already know this, don't you? Do you ever think about what both Barack Obama and John McCain told us in so many words several times, first in 2007 and as late as Fall 2015?

"He's my close personal friend, and I like him a lot." (McCain, CBS 60 Minutes, 2007)
"He and I actually think a lot alike." (Obama, Huffington Post interview following State of the Union address, 2016)


THEY know they are dance partners, why don't you?

[dohboi]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... e-country/

Flint’s poisoned water was among the most expensive in the country

...during it all, Flint residents were paying more for their water than just about anyone else in the country...

"People [in Flint] were paying the highest rates in the country for water that was toxic," said Mary Grant, a lead author on the report. "It's an indictment of running water systems like a business instead of a public service."

Yes, it's political, and it's federal/EPA, and it's a state issue, and it's a local issue.

But most of all it's 100% ideological.

Repug sociopath zealots want to turn absolutely everything everywhere into for-profit private businesses, and this is just another example of how utterly and disasterously wrong that kind of rigid ideology can go.

Don't feel smug about your own situation--this kind of ideological insanity is coming soon to a water-tap near you!!

[dohboi]

More here on the general subject:

"Thirsty for Democracy: The Poisoning of an American City": Special Report on Flint's Water Crisis

In 2014, an unelected emergency manager appointed by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder switched the source of the city’s drinking water from the Detroit system, which they’d been using for half a century, to the corrosive Flint River.

Soon, residents were complaining about discolored and foul-smelling water, which was plagued by a host of problems. First, the water was infested with bacteria. Then it had cancerous chemicals called trihalomethanes, or TTHMs. A deadly outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, which is caused by a water-borne bacteria, spread throughout the city...

...quietly, underground, the Flint River water was corroding the city’s aging pipes, poisoning the drinking water with lead, which can cause permanent developmental delays and neurological impairment, especially in children.

...FBI has opened an investigation, and a special counsel for the Michigan Attorney General’s Office has announced top officials, including Governor Rick Snyder, could face criminal charges, including manslaughter...

Hmmm...FBI...Last time I checked, those guys are kinda FEDERAL, so it looks like, in spite of the whining and mewling and puking of various zealots around here, this has indeed and unquestionably become a federal issue.

And just so you don't miss the fact that this is all part of a completely out of control pathological privativize-abso-f'n-lutely-everything ideology:

In 2011, this governor, Governor Snyder, signed into law a law called the emergency manager law. It enabled the governor to send an emergency manager, under the guise of being fiscally responsible, to cities and school districts that they deemed financially in fiscal crisis.

It just so happened most of these places were majority African-American cities. Privatizing services and selling off assets, that’s their main purpose. Well, here in Flint, they’ve privatized our garbage collection. They’ve sold off our parks...

They even privatized Santa Clause!

And as we can see, the real root of the privatize-all ideology is clearly just a means to continue to wage war on the poorest and most vulnerable, and of course, on Blacks.

[Plantagenet]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/16/flints-poisoned-water-was-the-most-expensive-in-the-country/

Flint’s poisoned water was among the most expensive in the country

...during it all, Flint residents were paying more for their water than just about anyone else in the country...

"People [in Flint] were paying the highest rates in the country for water that was toxic," said Mary Grant, a lead author on the report. "It's an indictment of running water systems like a business instead of a public service."

But Flint's water system wasn't run like a business.

Flint's water system was run like part of the government.

In fact, it actually IS part of the government and it has been part of the government for decades.

[KaiserJeep]

Whether you like the R's or the D's, whether or not you understand that bipartisanship is a sham, one thing is certain.

Rusty yellow water coming out of steel pipes, is something that can be seen. Those lead water main pipes have been in the ground since before WW2, and have been slowly and invisibly poisoning the people of Flint for that long. Now at long last something will be done about a public health issue that has been present for at least eight generations.

Some would have you believe that Snyder is a villain. Whether you believe that or not, and without him having a plan one way or another, his substitution of river water for lake water will in the end result in this problem being addressed and fixed, which is something that those who had been plundering the city coffers for generations could not bring about, and in fact did not even care to address.

[Lore]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/16/flints-poisoned-water-was-the-most-expensive-in-the-country/

Flint’s poisoned water was among the most expensive in the country

...during it all, Flint residents were paying more for their water than just about anyone else in the country...

"People [in Flint] were paying the highest rates in the country for water that was toxic," said Mary Grant, a lead author on the report. "It's an indictment of running water systems like a business instead of a public service."

But Flint's water system wasn't run like business.

Flint's water system was run like part of the government, because it IS part of the government.

That's because the system was built for 200,000 people and not 100,000 poor people that live there now.

The "One Tough Nerd", Governor Rick Snyder, built his election around running Michigan like a business. That experiment didn't work out too well as we can see.

[dohboi]

For several years, Flint had been operating the water utility primarily as a financial entity, rather than a public health utility.

The situation there shows the consequences of "trying to run a utility like a business focused on the bottom line, instead of a public service for a public good," said Grant.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... e-country/

I'll take it from people on the ground there over someone living in Alaska (or are you now on one of your merry jet-setting adventures again?)

[Lore]

Some would have you believe that Snyder is a villain. Whether you believe that or not, and without him having a plan one way or another, his substitution of river water for lake water will in the end result in this problem being addressed and fixed, which is something that those who had been plundering the city coffers for generations could not bring about, and in fact did not even care to address.

Sorry, bad decisions have consequences.

[dohboi]

"Some would have you believe that Snyder is a villain."

LOL

The guy is facing multiple criminal charges, including possibly manslaughter.

Sounds like a pretty good candidate for 'villain' to me!

(And, as usual, Lore has it right again!)

[Plantagenet]

And just so you don't miss the fact that this is all part of a completely out of control pathological privativize-abso-f'n-lutely-everything ideology:.... Privatizing services and selling off assets, that’s their main purpose. Well, here in Flint, they’ve privatized our garbage collection. They’ve sold off our parks...

They even privatized Santa Clause!

And as we can see, the real root of the privatize-all ideology is clearly just a means to continue to wage war on the poorest and most vulnerable, and of course, on Blacks.

But the Flint Water System wasn't privatized. The Flint City Water System has always been part of the Flint City government.

Cheers!

[dohboi]

What part of 'run like a for-profit system' don't you seem to be able to understand?

As a local resident put it:

We don’t have just a water problem. We’ve got a democracy problem. We’ve got a dictatorship problem. We’ve got a problem of being stripped of our democracy

Not sure how to make it more clear for ya.

[KaiserJeep]

"Some would have you believe that Snyder is a villain."

LOL

The guy is facing multiple criminal charges, including possibly manslaughter.

Sounds like a pretty good candidate for 'villain' to me!

(And, as usual, Lore has it right again!)

Been smoking that wacky turbaccy again, I see.

Rick Snyder was just sworn in for his second and last term in 2015, is still in office, will be in office for years to come, and hasn't even been charged with anything anywhere, much less convicted. Since he is term limited by Michigan law, expect his second term to be even more controversial going forward, as he cleans up the nasty messes left all over the state by Democrats. Flint is just the warm-up for Detroit, after all.

Yes there is an ongoing effort to recall him during this his second term. Politics as usual. Even if he had been charged with something, he would also retain his constitutional right to a presumption of innocence, which all of you nasty left wing fascists would deny him. You can at least bother to make factual posts, rather than expressing mindless partisanship, can you not?

The rest of us would really appreciate it if you did.

[PrestonSturges]

Whether you like the R's or the D's, whether or not you understand that bipartisanship is a sham, one thing is certain.

When a problem lands at the doorstep off the Republicans, suddenly it's really nobody's fault, both parties are the same, so leave the poor Republican alone.

You don't mind if I quote you if you ever say anything political here again do you? Because you really need to spend the rest of your life eating those words.