Michigan suspends workers, restores Flint mayoral powers in water crisis

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

US | Fri Jan 22, 2016 6:49pm EST

Michigan suspends workers, restores Flint mayoral powers in water crisis

FLINT, MICH/WASHINGTON | BY SERENA MARIE DANIELS AND TIMOTHY GARDNER

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder on Friday suspended two state workers in connection with water testing failures in the Flint contamination crisis and the state restored some powers to Mayor Karen Weaver.

Snyder, who NBC news reported has hired a crisis PR firm, suspended two Michigan Department of Environmental Quality workers in an increasing national furor over elevated lead readings in tap water and the blood of some children.

Snyder apologized this week to Flint residents for the state's failures. Reports have pointed to errors at the city, state and federal level, but the bulk of the blame has been put on the DEQ, a state agency whose director resigned at the end of last year over Flint's water issues.

"Some DEQ actions lacked common sense and that resulted in this terrible tragedy in Flint," Snyder said in a statement.

Shortly before Snyder's announcement, the Michigan Treasurer said Mayor Weaver who was elected in November to lead the city that is in receivership, can now hire and fire the city administrator and department heads.

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-michigan-water-idUSKCN0V024X

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Synder is so clueless he needs a crisis PR firm to tell him the proper way to behave in a crisis?

Good god.

[Octafish]

3. Mercury LLC

They're in the water:

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/01/22/snyder-hires-pr-firm-ties-new-chief-staff/79189880/

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. "Snyder has a number of non-public funds, largely supported by corporate donors, "

WTF???????

[Octafish]

5. Among them, I imagine, are members of the Koch and DeVos families who love Michigan.

Dark Money, though, means we don't really know who pulls Rick's strings.

Meet the New Kochs: The DeVos Clan's Plan to Defund the Left

They beat Big Labor in its own backyard. Next up: your state?

—By Andy Kroll
Mother Jones | January/February 2014

EXCERPT...

The pressure came largely from one man present at that fundraiser: Richard "Dick" DeVos Jr. The 58-year-old scion of the Amway Corporation, DeVos had arm-twisted Richardville repeatedly to support right-to-work. After six years of biding their time, DeVos and his allies believed the 2012 lame duck was the time to strike. They had formulated a single, all-encompassing strategy: They had a fusillade of TV, radio, and internet ads in the works. They'd crafted 15 pages of talking points to circulate to Republican lawmakers. They had even reserved the lawn around the state capitol for a month to keep protesters at bay.

A week after Richardville's early morning call to Jackson, it was all over. With a stroke of his pen on December 11, Gov. Rick Snyder—who'd previously said right-to-work was not a priority of his—now made Michigan the 24th state to enact it. The governor marked the occasion by reciting, nearly verbatim, talking points that DeVos and his allies had distributed. "Freedom-to-work," he said, is "pro-worker and pro-Michigan."

THE DEVOSES sit alongside the Kochs, the Bradleys, and the Coorses as founding families of the modern conservative movement. Since 1970, DeVos family members have invested at least $200 million in a host of right-wing causes—think tanks, media outlets, political committees, evangelical outfits, and a string of advocacy groups. They have helped fund nearly every prominent Republican running for national office and underwritten a laundry list of conservative campaigns on issues ranging from charter schools and vouchers to anti-gay-marriage and anti-tax ballot measures. "There's not a Republican president or presidential candidate in the last 50 years who hasn't known the DeVoses," says Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.

Nowhere has the family made its presence felt as it has in Michigan, where it has given more than $44 million to the state party, GOP legislative committees, and Republican candidates since 1997. "It's been a generational commitment," Anuzis notes. "I can't start to even think of who would've filled the void without the DeVoses there."

The family fortune flows from 87-year-old Richard DeVos Sr. The son of poor Dutch immigrants, he cofounded the multilevel-marketing giant Amway with Jay Van Andel, a high school pal, in 1959. Five decades later, the company now sells $11 billion a year worth of cosmetics, vitamin supplements, kitchenware, air fresheners, and other household products. Amway has earned DeVos Sr. at least $6 billion; in 1991, he expanded his empire by buying the NBA's Orlando Magic. The Koch brothers can usually expect Richard and his wife, Helen, to attend their biannual donor meetings. He is a lifelong Christian conservative and crusader for free markets and small government, values he passed down to his four children.

CONTINUED...

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/01/devos-michigan-labor-politics-gop

It's not a pyramid scheme. It's a flower's petals.

[Octafish]

2. Fascist Cheapness

Snyder's appointed Emergency Manager poisoned a city to save a buck.

If they were sorry, they would have done something to stop people from drinking the water a year ago.

Instead, they told the papers all was well, despite the funny smell.

[ryan_cats]

6. Did

Did he hire the PR firm after he hired an engineering firm to fix the problem?