Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[hack]

How do you know Moore doesn't give a crap about Flint?

[Mike]

Liney is correct when he says Flint residents have a history of electing corrupt idiots to run their city. Flint has been in and out of state receivership since 2002 (mostly in).

Woodrow Stanley was recalled and thrown out of office and was replaced by city administrator Darnell Earley in 2002. You may recognize some of these names. After a special election was held to fill the vacant Mayor's office, Donald Williamson was elected in 2003. In a lot of ways he was a small-time Donald Trump. Very wealthy and brash which allowed himself to buy his way into office. The first time he ran in 1995 was a joke and he was trounced by Woodrow Stanley. Then he kept at it and eventually won. "The Don" made his money the old fashioned way. Illegally. As a convicted felon many times over, I'm not even sure he could vote for himself. He used to run mobbed-up chop shops and other scams. Not bad for a guy with only a 9th grade education. I am not making this up. He "owns" a gigantic car dealership that is in his wife's name because he is not legally allowed to own one given his past.

He won office in 2003 and was re-elected in 2007 when he beat an honest-to-goodness Rhodes Scholar, Dayne Walling. I've heard first hand stories of his cash-for-votes campaigns. He used to go up to the north end baptist churches and pass out "city grants" that were literally bags of cash. From his Wiki page (that I hadn't heard about): Williamson was accused of bribing citizens for votes by handing out more than $20,000 at the car dealership that his wife owns as part of a Customer Appreciation Day." Each recipient of the money was given campaign literature.

And this nugget that I was aware of:

In both elections, Williamson, a Democrat, was opposed by the state Democratic party for a variety of reasons, including his campaign donations both he and his wife made to George W. Bush. They contributed the maximum amount.

It's Don Williamson that illuminated for me that fact that to win elections you should not waste your time on the intelligent and informed. It is far easier to convince stupid people who's votes count exactly the same as a CEO's or a PhD's. A convicted felon with a 9th grade education beat a Rhodes Scholar with barley a 25% turnout at the polls. You need 50% + 1 to win an election. In this case, if you could get 1 in 8 registered Flint voters to vote for you, you'd win. And he did. Twice.

The Don ran his first campaign based on a big surplus the city had and that he was the best person to handle it given his business acumen. Turns out the city was upside down and he immediately fired 60 employees and closed the city jail. He made the city's debt much, much worse during his time in office. He used to run things without any regard to the city charter, union contracts, laws in general, or human decency.

Under his leadership the city racked up some $20 million in lawsuit judgments against. A couple times they fucked up the sewage plant and shit spilled into the Flint River and flooded homes in an affluent area that had nice houses on the river. A lot of them ended up with a few feet of raw sewage in their basements and after the 2nd time sued the city and won. The the Don created his own department within the FPD and promoted people based on race, not in accordance with police policy. The city lost another $4.5 million in that lawsuit.

I can't even remember what Stanley did but rest assured it was horrible. Walling was eventually elected in late 2009 and in 2011 his power was stripped by the state as the city plummeted back into receivership. He lost to Karen Weaver this past November who I have never heard of in my life. I wish her the best but it won't matter.

So that's a little primer on recent Flint history. There has been a rotating door of City Administrators and Emergency Financial Managers. Some of them twice each, Darnell Earley, Ed Kurtz, and Michael Brown.

Make no mistake, the city of Flint is in state receivership because they've had decades of just awful leadership. But the issue at hand, lead poisoning of the entire city, cannot be laid at the feet of the city's elected officials. I understand the need for them to trim expenses and give the Flint River a try (as crazy as drinking Flint River water sounds). The problem here isn't the initial decision to make the switch, it is the steadfast denials by the state that the water was fine. People were showing up to City Hall with water from their taps that looked like iced tea and smelled like rotten eggs. There was no way in hell that water was ever potable. It defies all explanation and human decency as to why this was allowed to continue for almost a year and a half. There were MANY independent tests conducted on that water and everyone came to the same conclusion: toxic levels of lead. One study said the lead in the water was 900 times the legal standard. Is it simply that nobody wanted to admit they were wrong? Maybe there was no other alternative so they just hoped it would work and if it didn't, the negative impact wouldn't be this bad? The motivation for insisting the water was fit for human consumption is truly mind-boggling to me.

It sounds like the MDEQ failed by not requiring the water plant to use the additive that prevents toxins from leaching lead but what about the engineers at the water plant?? It seems that every organization involved failed at some level which is precisely what will keep people out of prison. Everyone can, and currently is, passing the buck. We have Kurtz who signed off on using the Flint River and the MDEQ who didn't require proper processing of the river water. That seems like a good place to start and work out from there. This kind of thing just simply cannot happen in a developed nation and the fact that it occurred in my old "hometown" (I'm a suburbanite but still care) makes me want to kick someone in the balls.

[Mike]

Oh, by the way... Cher donated like a 180,000 bottles of water to Flint.

[lineygoblue]

Oh, by the way... Cher donated like a 180,000 bottles of water to Flint.

I've carried loads of bottled water before.

If you take 24 bottles per case, and put 40 cases on each pallet, you can get about 70 pallets on a 53 ft truck ... so that's about 3 truck loads. Four truck loads, tops, depending on how tall the bottles are.

As far as the cost, .. if you take 180,000 bottles, and put them in 24 count cases, that's about 7500 cases. What does a case of water cost? About $4.00? That's about $30,000

Good for her, but her contribution is mostly symbolic.

[Ghengis Jon]

Mike, I'm only a 'couple' of years older than you. As a teenager I used to go steelhead and salmon fishing in the Flint River. That spillway/dam near the soup kitchen by Hurley. My how things have changed. The waterI mean, not the politics.

[Mike]

I've carried loads of bottled water before.

If you take 24 bottles per case, and put 40 cases on each pallet, you can get about 70 pallets on a 53 ft truck ... so that's about 3 truck loads. Four truck loads, tops, depending on how tall the bottles are.

As far as the cost, .. if you take 180,000 bottles, and put them in 24 count cases, that's about 7500 cases. What does a case of water cost? About $4.00? That's about $30,000

Good for her, but her contribution is mostly symbolic.

Yeah, it pissed me off too.

[hack]

Thanks for the history, Mike. I still don't see what the point is in insisting that these voters are any more or less stupid than any others, or what suburb Michael Moore is from. Now add in that Cher's donation wasn't a significant chunk of her personal wealth.

There are factors that are actually relevant.

[Mike]

Consider it background info. I was just pointing out that Flint is, and has been, a ward of the state for a while and for good reason. I think it's relevant to understand why the state has had to appoint an emergency financial manager several times. But, IMO, if the state is running things and things get royally fucked up, it's the state government's fault.

[hack]

Yeah. I've always known it's a mess worse than Detroit's, but that certainly helps explain.

[Mackenzie]

The conservative "fix" is estimated to be 1.5 billion dollars. This cost does not include one dime for the foreseeable costs dealing with approximately 6,000 children with potential developmental disorders caused by exposure to lead.

I gues I am wondering why the billion dollar cost. Can't they just divert back to the Detroit water system? Think someone else asked that upthread. Is the city/state immune from any lawsuits which might be contemplated by parent's of the children who might be effected by this?

[Ghengis Jon]

The billion+ figure comes from what it would cost to replace the infrastructure. It needs to be done. Some of the water piping is even older than what is in the news. Some of it is 1920's era. If you throw the humanitarian reasons out, it needs to be done so that the city is not under the economic thumb of Detroit's saintly government's whims, but 'only' that of upkeep and maintanence. It used to cost less for Detroit divert, treat and deliver than what Flint could do it for. Not any longer. Water is now not considered as an essential aspect for all humanity, its now a commodity product where it shall be priced to maximize profit. Flint is right in wanting to be independent of Detroit.

I think the political polarization bears a good part of the blame. Not on a left-right aspect but just plain intolerance or lack of sympathy for other views or needs. There seems to be a lot of "I command, you obey, or go eff yourself" between urban centers. If we thought a little more about humanity and a little less about maximizing profit, I don't think we'd face these types of catastrophies as frequently.

[UMStan White]

Great objective summary Mike.

[entropy]

As with most events, there was a series of decisions made by several people that led to the current state.. This is where the finger pointing seems to focus. What is sad is good leadership once this was known seems to be absent... from anyone. They're still stuck on the CYA.

[entropy]

Jon... The US's infrastructure in general is a looming problem. I'd much rather see $ spent on infrastructure and cut items like funding football stadiums or other nice to have projects cities seem to focus their time and energy. The infrastructure is the basic foundation of a city. Not sexy and sadly, doesn't get you elected. One of the issues with a true democracy, imo.

[hack]

I think as long as your economy is diversified there are two main things that really and truly determine economic fortunes -- a young labour force in which there isn't a bulge of older people, and fresh infrastructure. Forget policy and entrepreneurial spirit and all that. If you have those two things you'll have growth.