Poisoning kids to cut costs

Flint once boasted 80,000 General Motors employees, but now only has a tenth of that. Unemployment is rampant. The racial composition of Flint is 56.6% African American. The US Census Bureau reported that Flint is the second most impoverished city for its size. Just over 40 percent of the municipality’s residents are living at or below the poverty line. Those in power find it easy to ignore the cries of poor people—especially if those poor people happen to be largely black. The people of Flint has consistently voted Democrat. In 2006, the Bay Area Center for Voting Research ranked Flint as the 10th most liberal city in the United States. Put bluntly, since the voters in Flint, Michigan, are a lost cause and of no use to the Republican Governor Rick Snyder and his Republican Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, and Attorney General who all had little incentive to respond to the complaints. As the citizens of the city lost hair and developed rashes, as  children drank water that was tainted with lead and E. Coli those with the power to help did nothing. Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) officials urged those people concerned about lead in Flint’s drinking water to “relax,” that there was no “broad problem” with contamination and described the whistleblower EPA official, Miguel Del Toral, whose draft report initially alerted lead-poisoned Flint residents to their great danger, as a “rogue employee.”  More >