Confirmed: Governor Snyder’s Aides Knew Flint River Was Toxic 3 Years Prior to the Switch

[KamaAina]

http://usuncut.com/class-war/governor-snyder-aides-knew-flint-river-was-toxic-3-years-prior-to-the-switch/

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder may have known about the Flint River’s toxicity as early as December 2012, according to a new report.

Ed Kurtz, Gov. Snyder’s first appointed emergency manager (EM), was given authority to make all financial decisions on behalf of Flint’s elected officials (as part of the controversial EM law Snyder passed early in his administration) first considered switching the city’s municipal water supply to the Flint River at the end of 2012. However, as the Daily Beast reported, Kurtz dismissed the idea after floating the proposal to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ).

This detail wasn’t made public until the Beast‘s Curt Guyette discovered a taped deposition from Jerry Ambrose, the Chief Financial Officer of Flint’s EM committee, who would later become Flint’s fourth EM. Ambrose gave the statement under oath in 2014 as part of a separate civil lawsuit filed by municipal retirees fighting Gov. Snyder’s cuts to their health benefits:...

It’s still not confirmed if Ambrose and Kurtz told Snyder about the danger of using the Flint River as a source of municipal drinking water in December of 2012, since Snyder refuses to release any emails about Flint from late 2012 or 2013, when state officials were initially discussing the cancellation of Flint’s water contract with Detroit. But one Flint city administrator alleges that the decision to make the switch was made by Gov. Snyder himself. In the fall of 2015, former Flint public works director Howard Croft told the Michigan ACLU that the decision to officially make the Flint River the city’s interim water source was financial, and that it handed down from Snyder’s office.

[valerief]

1. Very, very rich people get to keep more of their money OR

not-rich people are poisoned into lower IQs, illness, or death.

Tough, tough choice that Snyder had to make.

[Octafish]

6. If lead's good enough for Flint, it's good enough for a lot of towns

For those very reasons.

And we wonder how anybody can be so dumb as to support uh Drumpf.

[valerief]

7. I don't see any difference between any GOP pol. They all have the same agenda, if not

Last edited Tue Jan 26, 2016, 07:08 PM - Edit history (1)

the same personal style. Sacrifice the not-rich for the rich. Period. There's nothing else of importance to them.

[Octafish]

9. Buy Partisan Greed is central to the Flint water and Michigan EM law stories.

Andy Dillon, then State Treasurer, who Snyder reports signed off on the water switch in the memos released last week.

Dillon said he thought Flint wouldn't be using the water to drink. Honest.

http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2016/01/former_michigan_state_treasure.html

Important for DUers and Democrats to know:

Back in 2010, after failing to win the Democratic nomination to oppose Snyder in the gubernatorial campaign, Dillon failed to support the Democratic nominee, Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero. So, Dillon was invited to serve as State Treasurer.

Democratic state treasurer played key role in Flint water disaster

By Shannon Jones
World Socialist Web Site, 25 January 2016

EXCERPT...

Before Snyder selected him for secretary of treasury in 2011, Dillon was a leading figure in the state Democratic Party and the speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives. A former investment banker, he served as president of Detroit Steel (formerly McLouth Steel) and vice president of GE Capital’s Commercial Financial Group. He was also a managing director of private equity firm Wynnchurch Capital Partners, a company notorious for buying up struggling businesses, imposing massive job cuts and pay cuts on workers, and then selling the stripped-down companies for a profit.

With close connections to various “turnaround firms,” Dillon played a key role in the conspiracy orchestrated by the Snyder administration, banks and wealthy bondholders to throw Detroit into bankruptcy. This included the installation of Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, who threw the city into bankruptcy on July 18, 2013. The bankruptcy was used to obtain an unprecedented federal court ruling stripping Detroit retirees of their constitutional protection against pension cuts and to slash city worker health benefits and sell off public assets.

As a result of the restructuring, Detroit’s Department of Water and Sewerage sharply increased rates both for customers and other municipalities in order to pay off the big bondholders that controlled the city and water department’s debt. This resulted in a wave of water shutoffs for tens of thousands of households behind on their exorbitant bills, and a sharp increase in the price of water pumped from Detroit to Flint. At the time, US bankruptcy judge Steven Rhodes declared that city residents had no “fundamental right” to water service.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/01/25/flin-j25.html

They say greed is good.

[valerief]

10. Did Dillon think people would drink blood instead of water? Geez. nt

[ghostsinthemachine]

2. And they will turn this into an anti gov't meme.....

Not an anti assholes in the Gov't meme.

[KamaAina]

5. Been there, done that.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027553780

[ghostsinthemachine]

8. Yep, the blame goes to the EPA

Too bad people don't see the truth.

[think]

3. K&R.

[Sherman A1]

4. K&R!

[Initech]

11. Rick Snyder needs to be thrown in jail. Along with most of his conspirators.

[roamer65]

12. If this had been done to Grosse Pointe or Birmingham, he'd be in jail by now.

But it was done to Flint so all the rightard scum in MI don't care.

I've already had to correct a few, saying how bout they poison YOUR kids and what will you say then?

They get quiet after that question.

[malaise]

13. Snyder will resign before he's indicted

and he will end up in prison.