Skip to main content

Have no fear Erin Brokovich is here

By



Like a page taken from a Hollywood script, Erin Brokovich has arrived at the scene of the crime to sort out all the particulars in the Flint water crisis, or "poop water" as it has been dubbed.  Actually, it looks more like pee in the pictures, but no matter, it is a serious issue as 10 persons are reported dead since the city dropped the Detroit Water and Sewage Department and started drawing water out of its own river.  Serious mistake.

The city was trying to save money for its residents as the DWSD had jacked up the water rates in an effort to meet its ongoing budget crisis.  Flint's water department tried to use chlorine to clean the river water, but left higher than accepted levels of Trihalomethane, which pose serious health risks.  There are also higher than accepted levels of lead in the water supply.

Of course, the river shouldn't be so badly contaminated.  Governor Rick Snyder is taking the blame for this as it is state department of environmental quality that failed to require needed chemicals to make the water potable.  One of the things conservative governors have cut back on is enforcing costly environmental regulations, figuring enough chlorine will mask anything, but it seems the Flint River is beyond a few chlorine tablets.

Flint's native son, Michael Moore, took to twitter to address this crime against humanity, calling it genocide and demanding the arrest of Governor Rick Snyder, who he considers nothing less than a war criminal.  Moore's excess is well documenting.  Gross negligence is a far cry from a hate crime, which is what he likens it to.

Snyder is under attack from many sides.  He's angry that Hillary Clinton has politicized the water crisis.  Meanwhile, Republican congresspersons are sent a bill to Obama's desk blocking the new clean water rules he decreed last May, which obviously some governors chose to ignore.   To Snyder's credit, he is taking the blame for it.

Fresh drinking water is being flown from all quarters to alleviate the crisis, including a shipment from American Muslims, which no doubt galls conservatives.  It is the Katrina catastrophe all over again, which the Republicans would love to pin on Obama, who was left with no choice to declare a state of emergency.   Yet, it is the GOP that is fighting the clean water act on Capitol Hill, as they see the Environmental Protection Agency as Big Brother.

It has been a disaster movie in the making for quite some time, as state and city officials ignored warnings that the water had an excessive lead content.  Instead, they forced residents to accept the foul water at their own risk.   Here's where Erin comes in.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more