And Today’s Mass-Murdering Politico Award Goes To… Nick Lyon, Alleged Criminal Mastermind Behind Flint, Michigan’s Water Poisoning!

-by Noah

Way to go Nick Lyon! Who, you might ask, is Nick Lyon? Well, Nick isn’t a household name, at least not yet, but he is the head of Michigan’s "health” department." He has been charged by Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette with involuntary manslaughter for his part in the city of Flint’s water being poisoned with brain-damaging lead. Lyon is the highest-ranking official in his state to be charged, so far.

What amounted to willful introduction of lead into the Flint water system has resulted in untold cases of permanent brain damage among the children of Flint, along with numerous cases of the dreaded Legionnaires’ disease, a type of pneumonia caused by excessive amounts of bacteria in the Flint River water. Twelve people have died, hence the involuntary manslaughter charge.

In the case of Legionnaires’ disease, you can get it by inhaling the vapor from your building’s cooling system, which is apparently what happened. The state is disputing that and it is harder to show a connection as direct as the lead issue. To prevent the lead problem, all the government officials had to do was treat the water to reduce the leaching of lead from pipe corrosion into the water. They chose not to when they decided to switch Flint’s water supply to the polluted Flint River and the lead from the pipes in the water system was free to flow into the homes, offices, and schools of Flint.

With such notoriety has Nick Lyon now has, I won’t be surprised if President Trump choose him for a high position in the EPA, or maybe a brand new Department of Clean Water Cabinet slot that will oversee drinking water for the entire country. Senor Trumpanzee is probably looking over his resume right now. After all, Trump has already inflicted the country with another Michigan disaster named Betsy DeVos. All Nicky will have to do is kneel before the prez and tell him what beautiful hair he has.

The charges against Lyon were announced Wednesday. Predictably, Michigan’s Governor, Rick Snyder was not charged, so, it looks like Nick Lyon is at the top of the list of those taking the fall. Such is justice in these United States. Others have also been charged with involuntary manslaughter, though, including former Flint Emergency Director Darnell Earley, former Flint water manager Howard Croft, and Liane Shekter-Smith and Stephen Busch of the ironically named Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. I have to add that the word ‘involuntary’ in the charge seems misused to me.

In a separate move, Dr. Eden Wells, Michigan’s chief medical officer, has been charged with obstruction of justice and lying to a police officer. Take a few seconds to absorb the poetic meaning of the name Dr. Eden Wells, as it applies to a case where a water supply was poisoned, not just on the watch of a person named Eden Wells, but a doctor, no less. The Michigan Department of Health & Human Services website describes her position as one that “serves Michigan citizens by providing professional leadership”. Dr. Eden Wells formerly worked for the state Bureau of Epidemiology where her responsibilities included “preparedness planning for potential bioterrorism and pandemic influenza events.” Talk about irony. If what happened in Flint wasn’t some sort of bioterrorism, I don’t know what is. It certainly was preventable.

The events that lead to the Flint tragedy have their origins in republican-style governance. Yes, the Flint River has been polluted for over 100 years but that is precisely why it was not considered a viable source for human consumption until Rick Snyder and his people came along. It was they who brought in the republican version of “Emergency Management”; a legal move where by a democratically elected local government can be replaced by a hand-picked team of cronies.

The law actually has its roots in a 1990 law called the Local Government Fiscal Responsibility Act, which was passed when Democratic Governor James Blanchard was in office. Under Governor Snyder’s direction, the law was “fine-tuned” into the now infamous Emergency Manager Law. It was one of Snyder’s very first moves upon taking office. Initially, Michigan voters rejected the new version of the law when it was put before them in a referendum in 2012, only to see a further “fine-tuning” which included a stipulation that the public could not repeal it. And you thought Wisconsin’s Scott Walker was the worst fascist governor in the Midwest.

This amped up, steroid version of the original law is now championed by republicans who see it as a nifty way to subvert democracy, when, in their warped, agenda-packed view, the people of a town or city can’t govern themselves, or they think they can do things better by making dictator moves. The side perks of running things with your own team naturally enter into the concept.

The professed ideas of self-governance, self-determination, self-reliance, and whatever else you want to call it, that republicans always mouth on about is mightily contradicted by the truths and greed of their “Emergency Management” “we know best”, “we will decide for you” approach to local government. It’s one thing to label democrats in such a way, but it’s a whole other thing to say you stand for one way and do another.

That Governor Snyder hasn’t also been charged with something in this case is a joke. The same can be said for all of the statehouse republicans that voted to ram through the aforementioned Emergency Management system that enabled this criminal fiasco. Flint had financial problems but at least their water was safe. Nick Lyon reportedly directly to Snyder. Are we supposed to believe Snyder had no idea what was going on with Flint’s water?

Snyder was called to Washington to testify before Congress but it was a classic insincere dog and pony show. Little has been done, even with a democratic president and EPA head; little that is except the distribution of water bottles and the supplying of some water filters that may or may not always work, depending on the concentration of lead in the water at a given place on a given day. At least, the Flint River is no longer being used as a water source for Flint. The state has switched them back to the Detroit River for their water.

Finally, last December, Congress approved at least $120 Million to fix Flint’s water situation. In March, the Trump administration cut that down to $100 Million. Don’t be shocked if further subtractions are made. After all, Senor Trumpanzee has a wall he wants to build.

Snyder, predictably, is defending his people, and, by proxy, himself, saying:

“Nick Lyon has been a strong leader at the Department of Health and Human Services for the past several years and remains completely committed to Flint’s recovery. Director Lyon and Dr. Eden Wells, like every other person who has been charged with a crime by Bill Schuette, are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Fair enough Rick. That is our system, even when you decided to remove the democratically elected local government of Flint. I guess you want things both ways. I especially love the part about him saying that Lyon is committed to Flint’s recovery from a disaster; a disaster that he could have prevented even after the installation of the governor’s Emergency Management team.

All in all, the Flint water catastrophe is yet another fine example of the Republican Party’s concept of healthcare and environmental protection, not to mention the protection impoverished Americans who just don’t matter to them. The attitude of Snyder and his people was: Let them drink lead. There’s no just penalty in our legal system for that.

If you want to see Governor Snyder doing his Sgt. Schultz “I know nothing. I don’t recall fest,” check this out. They don’t come much more contemptuous.

While Flint Kids Are Poisoned by Lead, Valeant Charges $27,000 for the Leading Treatment

Valeant, a predatory drug company hoping to profit from the growth market in lead poisoning. A name worth remembering (source).

by Gaius Publius

Another tale of price-gouging by the out-of-control andn predatory pharmaceutical industry. This time, the perp is a company called Valeant (get it? brave, strong, noble; princely) and the drug is the leading treatment (because almost no competition) for lead poisoning, a drug called Calcium EDTA.

The amount of gouging is huge. Valeant bought the drug though an acquisition (which means none of their money went into its development), then raised the price ... 2700 percent, from under $1,000 to over $27,000.

Here's the story, from STATnews, an industry publication (my emphasis):

Huge Valeant price hike on lead poisoning drug sparks anger

A drug used to treat lead poisoning is causing a toxic reaction among hospitals and poison control centers after Valeant Pharmaceuticals jacked up the price more than 2,700 percent in a single year.

At issue is a decades-old, intravenous treatment for severe and life-threatening cases of lead poisoning, which occur infrequently, but generally require supplies to be on hand. Known as Calcium EDTA, Valeant acquired the drug in 2013 as part of a $2.6 billion deal to buy another company called Medicis.

After resolving manufacturing problems that caused shortages, Valeant pursued the hallmark strategy that made it infamous — taking sky-high price hikes. Before Valeant took control, the list price for a package of vials had been stable at $950. But in January 2014, Valeant boosted the price to $7,116. By December 2014, several more increases took the price to $26,927, according to Truven Health Analytics.

Ever since, poison control specialists have been angry, especially since there are few viable options and a French company sells its version for less. Their reaction is a case study in the exasperation doctors and hospitals feel at the multitude of price hikes of all sizes that they see month after month, the vast majority of which never make headlines but create frustration and squeeze budgets behind the scenes.

“This is a drug that has long been a standard of care, and until recently it was widely accessible at an affordable price,” said Dr. Michael Kosnett, an associate clinical professor in the division of clinical pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine and a consultant to the California Poison Control System, who has contacted Congress. “There’s no justification for the astronomical price increases by Valeant, which limit availability of the drug to children with life-threatening lead poisoning.”

The article goes on to note: "For nearly two years, Valeant has been a poster child for pharmaceutical greed. ... [It] regularly bought companies and then boosted prices on some medicines to new heights. The plan, which largely eschewed investment in R&D, made the company a Wall Street darling."

That's not me saying that; it's the industry.

Banking on Profit from Flint and Other Lead-Struck Cities

Valeant has argued that the number of cases per year is small and the ingredients have a short shelf life. About that "purchase volume":

A Valeant spokesman maintains the current pricing is justified. “The list price increases over the past several years have enabled us to provide to the market consistent availability of a product with high carrying costs and very limited purchase volume of 200 to 300 units per year,” he wrote us.

But Valeant can read the news as well as you or I. In particular, the news in lead-poisoned Flint, Michigan, and other cities with similar problems. That story is widely reported. This is the Washington Post:

Untold cities across America have higher rates of lead poisoning than Flint

[Lead poisoning] has occurred not just in Flint but all over the country, for decades — and not from water, but (primarily) from the paint that colors old homes.

Data collected by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows that over 40 percent of the states that reported lead test results in 2014 have higher rates of lead poisoning among children than Flint.

To humans, that spells tragedy. To a pharmaceutical company, though, that spells profit. A commenter at the STATnews site notes (my emphasis):

Valeant doesn’t really care about its income from 50 cases of acute lead poisoning a year. What they really want to go after IMO is the huge market for kids and adults with subacute and chronic lead toxicity, for which chelating agents are also used depending on blood levels. Best example is lead contamination of the Flint, Michigan water supply with thousands of people exposed, some pretty sick. Moreover elevated lead levels have been found in the water supply of over 350 municipalities. Bottom line is that when you add all of these contamination sources together Valeant stands to make a killing, so to speak on EDTA.

Bernie Sanders is getting into the act:

While kids in Flint are poisoned by lead, Valeant charges $27,000 for the leading treatment. https://t.co/aHekRjp5A7

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) October 11, 2016

Sanders, of course, is the source of my headline.

Don't Play Whack-a-Mole with Companies; Whack Drug Prices Industry-Wide

A final note from me. Mitigating this behavior — getting them to soften the assault a little, or telling them to "cut it out" — is not the solution. So long as they have the power to do this, they will do this, because that's what they do, that's what they hire their CEOs to do. Using power, especially the power of the Executive Branch to force a cap on drug prices, and enforce that cap relentlessly as an industry-wide standard, is the only answer that won't leave the public constantly vulnerable to the next predator.

Any other solution is playing whack-a-mole with one drug company after the next, and then only if the press catches them at it.

It's not the government's job to protect any company's profit. That's the company's job. It's the government's job to protect its citizens in cases like this. Period. No one in office should triangulate between these goals.

GP
 

Astonishingly, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder Isn't In Prison Yet

You don't hear Snyder's name mentioned much any more as a plausible running mate for any like-minded Republicans-- he'd be perfect for Kasich-- but Michigan Governor Rick Snyder still isn't in prison or, as far as I know, even charged with a crime. And you know what that means: when they get away with it and there's no accountability, it grants permission for Republicans to just keep on poisoning the children of the poor and powerless. For Hillary, the criminal behavior in Flint was a quickly abandoned campaign issue. For Rubio it was an opportunity to try to deflect blame from the nature of conservative governance and spread the blame across all parties while continuing his agenda of denigrating the EPA's ability to protect the public from corporate transgressions. Republicans hate when anyone tries bringing up Flint as an inevitable consequence of the red state model.

The task force charged with investigating what happened in Flint, however, didn't pussy-foot around trying to spread the blame around. Rick Snyder and his ideological regime was clearly guilty and that's exactly what their report found. "State government is foremost to blame," summarized Mike Wilkinson for Bridge Magazine, "for failing to keep lead from poisoning Flint's water supply. And key decisions to switch the city's water supply to the Flint River, and stay there-- despite mounting public complaints about the taste, odor, color and health effects of the city's tap water-- were made by a succession of state-appointed emergency managers."

Those were the conclusions of a five-member task force assigned to investigate the public health emergency in this poor, predominantly African-American city. Its report, released Wednesday, called for a review of the state's emergency manager system, which the task force contends played a significant role in the government's sluggish response to the concerns and warnings of Flint residents.

"What was clearly evident was individual (emergency managers) made decisions and no one had checks and balances on those decisions," said task force member Chris Kolb, a former state representative and president of the Michigan Environmental Council. "Citizens had no ability to influence decision-making at the local level."

The 116-page report offered a rebuke to a signature tool of Gov. Rick Snyder and a legislature that has largely supported the emergency manager law. The law, resurrected by Republican lawmakers in 2012 weeks after state residents voted to drop it, was hailed in some quarters after its implementation in Detroit led to that city's swift transition through bankruptcy. But the law has also been the subject of lawsuits as well as accusations that it disenfranchises minorities, who note that the most cities and school districts placed under emergency management have been majority black.

Snyder said Wednesday he was open to adopting many of the recommendations made by a task force that he appointed, adding that his office has already begun implementing some of the suggestions. "There are a lot of excellent recommendations here," Snyder said at a news conference.

In Flint, the task force found, the emergency managers appointed by Snyder failed to consider, much less serve, the health interests of residents, a criticism the governor himself seemed to acknowledge in testimony last week before a congressional committee investigating the Flint crisis.

In essence, Wednesday's report said, Flint's emergency managers were too narrowly focused on the financial savings of switching the city's water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Flint River in 2014, and too reluctant to switch back to Detroit, also for financial reasons. As a result, the voices of local leaders and residents were marginalized. The report pointedly cited the economic and racial demographics of those residents.

"Flint residents, who are majority black or African-American and among the most impoverished of any metropolitan area in the United States, did not enjoy the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards as that provided to other communities," the report noted, leading "to the inescapable conclusion that this is a case of environmental injustice."

The task force recommended Lansing review the emergency manager law with an eye toward restoring "checks and balances" on decisions made by emergency managers. Such managers also should be given greater access to experts in areas like public health, and should ensure that local residents and officials have a voice in how policy is shaped, including the ability to appeal emergency manager decisions, the task force recommended.

...The governor, meanwhile, had the "ultimate accountability" for the emergency managers he assigned to Flint, the report said. Likewise, it was Snyder who appointed the heads of the state environmental, health and treasury agencies, which bore "differing degrees of responsibility" for Flint's health crisis.

Without mentioning Snyder by name, the task force derided his insistence that the Flint debacle was a local, state and federal failure of government. Such a statement "implies that blame is attributable equally to all three levels of government. Primary responsibility for the water contamination in Flint lies with MDEQ," the report concluded, while Flint was under the control of state-appointed emergency managers.

There's a reason why our forefathers fought and died for democracy, which apparently, no one ever explained to Michigan's self-styled One Tough Nerd. And there's a reason for accountability, which hopefully, Snyder-- and other right-wing tyrants like him-- will learn about first hand. Obama's Justice Department isn't going to put Snyder behind bars, and neither would a Hillary Justice Department. When push comes to shove, the Establishment sticks together. You want to ever see Snyder behind bars, you should support Bernie.

The Red State Model

Republican venture capital billionaire Bruce Rouner invested $26 million out of his own pocket and raised far more than that from 9 other right-wing oligarchs like sociopathic billionaire and Rahm Emanuel ally Ken Griffin, to buy the Illinois governorship in 2014. Democratic ineptitude and corruption-- with a little nudge from Rahm Emanuel-- helped Rauner, another close ally of Emanuel's, defeat Democratic reformer Pat Quinn. Within a month of taking over, Rauner had moved to defund unions and taken over $4 billion in state funding out of higher education, Medicaid, state employee pensions, public transit, and local government support, while starting work on cutbacks to end funding for infrastructure projects and programs that address GOP bugaboos like domestic violence, public transit service, Child Care Assistance, homeless youth, autism and immigrant integration.

Soon after, Rauner announced he wanted to put an emergency manager in charge of the Chicago Public Schools, a tactic commonly applied in neighboring Michigan by another multimillionaire Republican Governor, Rick Snyder. Unlike Snyder, however, Rauner has a Democratic legislature to contend with. The Illinois House has 71 Democrats and 47 Republicans and the Illinois Senate has 39 Democrats and 20 Republicans. It's served as a partial check on Rauner. In Michigan the story is very different. Although the state voted for Obama both times-- 57-41% in 2008 and 54-45% in 2012-- and reelected Democrat Debbie Stabenow 59-38% in 2012 and elected Democrat Gary Peters 55-41% in 2014, Republicans have effortlessly outmaneuvered corrupt and inept Democrats in gerrymandering up the state so that the legislature consists of a Republican-controlled House (61 GOPers to 45 Dems) and a Republican-controlled Senate (27 Republicans to 11 Democrats). In 2010 when Michigan Republicans elected "one tough nerd" governor, over a pathetically weak Democrat, the stage was set for Republican one-party rule in a pretty Democratic-leaning state.

Like Rauner, if Michigan's Rick Snyder stands for one thing, it is running government like a business. Modeling himself on Koch/ALEC-owned Scott Walker next door, Snyder immediately went after unions and immediately started appointing emergency managers to override democratically-elected local governments-- entirely in black areas. Although Republicans in the House did all they could this week the help Snyder and Michigan Republicans shirk responsibility for the catastrophe in Flint, as early as January, the New York Times was already connecting the dots between Snyder's overthrow of democracy and what ensued in his state.

Public outrage over the tainted water in Flint and the decrepit schools in Detroit has led many people to question whether the state has overreached in imposing too many emergency managers in largely black jurisdictions.

In the cases of both Flint and the Detroit Public Schools, governance was under the jurisdiction of the governor, rather than local officials closer to the ground.

In Flint, emergency managers not only oversaw the city-- effectively seizing legal authority from the mayor and City Council-- but also pressed to switch the source of the financially troubled city’s water supply to save money.

In Detroit, the schools are on the brink of insolvency after a series of emergency managers dating to 2009 repeatedly failed to grapple with its financial troubles, while also falling short on maintaining school buildings and addressing academic deficiencies. The current emergency manager for the schools, Darnell Earley, previously served in that role in Flint.

Residents of majority-black cities have long cried foul over the practice. They argue that it disenfranchises voters and violates a deeply felt ethos of American democracy that allows for local representation. They also say emergency management gives influence to what is now a mostly white, Republican leadership in Lansing, the state capital. And they worry that in their decisions, emergency managers are more concerned with fiscal discipline than public health.

“Tell me what race dominates in those communities that get emergency managers?” said Hubert Yopp, the mayor of Highland Park, Mich., which is 93 percent black and in past years has had an emergency manager. “People have a very real reason to question what that’s about. It would be one thing if the emergency managers worked with the local governments to make things better. But it’s about having dictator power in the city. The locals have no say.”

...In 2011, when Mr. Snyder took office, he and the Legislature agreed to grant more sweeping powers to emergency managers, but opponents succeeded in repealing the law in a statewide referendum a year later. Mr. Snyder and lawmakers promptly passed another law, which allowed more options for cities and schools in fiscal distress-- including emergency managers.

“They’ve chosen this policy, and this is the outcome,” said Jim Ananich, a Democratic state senator whose district includes Flint. “We have poisonous water flowing through people’s faucets. In the Detroit Public Schools, they have overcrowded classrooms and rats. Unfortunately, the emergency managers in these communities have been failing.”

Mr. Ananich said the law allowing emergency managers should be “reviewed and repealed quickly.”

“It’s been a failed project,” he said. “There’s absolutely no accountability with the government. They are trying to circumvent local democracy and say, ‘This one individual knows best.’”

...Marcus Muhammad, the new mayor of Benton Harbor, Mich., whose population is 89 percent black and which had been under emergency management, said the managers had been a “horrific experiment” that left the city defending itself against lawsuits filed over actions they had taken.

“I have said that a different strategy and a different law should be put in place to help distressed cities,” he added. “Not to poison democracies, poison water, poison communities.”

There is no other outcome possible from conservative governance than what we've seen in Michigan. The nature of conservatism is authoritarian, anti-democratic, anti-human and above, corrupt. Friday, writing for New York, Eric Levitz castigated the GOP for what their ideological social experiments have done to Louisiana and Kansas, a topic we have discussed regularly here at DWT, most recently after a GOP debate in which Li'l Marco, not yet aware that he was a well-coiffed walking corpse, claimed, with a straight face, that "conservatism is about ideas." Rubio, another third-rate puffed up Republican hustler incapable of critical thinking, was wrong; conservatism is about looting. Levitz is calling for accountability, specifically in Kansas and Louisiana, and wonders why the presidential debates never veered towards questions about how doctrinaire and crackpot conservative governance has driven the two states towards bankruptcy. He suggests that voters "demand that Donald Trump, John Kasich, and Ted Cruz explain why their tax policies won’t fail America in the same way they’ve failed the people of Kansas."

In 2010, the tea-party wave put Sam Brownback into the Sunflower State’s governor’s mansion and Republican majorities in both houses of its legislature. Together, they implemented the conservative movement’s blueprint for Utopia: They passed massive tax breaks for the wealthy and repealed all income taxes on more than 100,000 businesses. They tightened welfare requirements, privatized the delivery of Medicaid, cut $200 million from the education budget, eliminated four state agencies and 2,000 government employees. In 2012, Brownback helped replace the few remaining moderate Republicans in the legislature with conservative true believers. The following January, after signing the largest tax cut in Kansas history, Brownback told the Wall Street Journal, “My focus is to create a red-state model that allows the Republican ticket to say, 'See, we've got a different way, and it works.'"

As you’ve probably guessed, that model collapsed. Like the budget plans of every Republican presidential candidate, Brownback’s “real live experiment” proceeded from the hypothesis that tax cuts for the wealthy are such a boon to economic growth, they actually end up paying for themselves (so long as you kick the undeserving poor out of their welfare hammocks). The Koch-backed Kansas Policy Institute predicted that Brownback’s 2013 tax plan would generate $323 million in new revenue. During its first full year in operation, the plan produced a $688 million loss. Meanwhile, Kansas’s job growth actually trailed that of its neighboring states. With that nearly $700 million deficit, the state had bought itself a 1.1 percent increase in jobs, just below Missouri’s 1.5 percent and Colorado’s 3.3.

Those numbers have hardly improved in the intervening years. In 2015, job growth in Kansas was a mere 0.1 percent, even as the nation’s economy grew 1.9 percent. Brownback pledged to bring 100,000 new jobs to the state in his second term; as of January, he has brought 700. What’s more, personal income growth slowed dramatically since the tax cuts went into effect. Between 2010 and 2012, Kansas saw income growth of 6.1 percent, good for 12th in the nation; from 2013 to 2015, that rate was 3.6 percent, good for 41st.

Meanwhile, revenue shortfalls have devastated the state’s public sector along with its most vulnerable citizens. Since Brownback’s inauguration, 1,414 Kansans with disabilities have been thrown off  Medicaid. In 2015, six school districts in the state were forced to end their years early for lack of funding. Cuts to health and human services are expected to cause 65 preventable deaths this year in Sedgwick County alone. In February, tax receipts came in $53 million below estimates; Brownback immediately cut $17 million from the state’s university system. This data is not lost on the people of Kansas-- as of November, Brownback’s approval rating was 26 percent, the lowest of any governor in the United States.

Louisiana has replicated these results. When Bobby Jindal moved into the governor’s mansion in 2008, he inherited a $1 billion surplus. When he moved out last year, Louisiana faced a $1.6 billion projected deficit. Part of that budgetary collapse can be put on the past year's plummeting oil prices. The rest should be placed on Jindal passing the largest tax cut in the state's history and then refusing to reverse course when the state's biggest industry started tanking. Jindal's giveaway to the wealthiest citizens in the country's second-poorest state cost Louisiana roughly $800 million every year. To make up that gap, Jindal slashed social services, raided the state’s rainy-day funds, and papered over the rest with reckless borrowing. Today, the state is scrambling to resolve a $940 million budget gap for this fiscal year, with a $2 billion shortfall projected for 2017 ...Louisiana can no longer afford to provide public defenders for all its criminal defendants. Its Department of Children and Family Services may soon be unable to investigate every reported instance of child abuse. Education funding is down 44 percent since Jindal took office. The state’s hospitals are likely to see at least $64 million in funding cuts this year.

What has happened to these states should be a national story; because we are one election away from it being our national story. Ted Cruz claims his tax plan will cost less than $1 trillion in lost revenue over the next ten years. Leaving aside the low bar the Texas senator sets for himself-- my giveaway to the one percent will cost a bit less than the Iraq War!-- Cruz only stays beneath $1 trillion when you employ the kind of “dynamic scoring” that has consistently underestimated the costs of tax cuts in Kansas. Under a conventional analysis, the bill runs well over $3 trillion, with 44 percent of that lost money accruing to the one percent. John Kasich’s tax plan includes cutting the top marginal rate by more than ten percent along with a similar cut to the rates on capital gains and business taxes. Even considering Kasich’s appetite for Social Security cuts, his plan must rely on the same supply-side voodoo that Kansas has so thoroughly discredited. As for the most likely GOP nominee, even with dynamic scoring, his tax cuts would cost $10 trillion over the next ten years, with 40 percent of that gargantuan sum filling the pockets of Trump’s economic peers.

If any of these men are elected president, they will almost certainly take office with a House and Senate eager to scale up the “red-state model.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said of Brownback’s Kansas, “This is exactly the sort of thing we (Republicans) want to do here, in Washington, but can’t, at least for now.” Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s celebrated budgets all depend on the same magical growth that has somehow escaped the Sunflower State.

Do you know anyone who votes for Republicans who who doesn't vote at all? Have a talk with them. Or chip in $5 or $10 to the campaigns of people ready to fight them... by tapping the thermometer:

Michael Moore: How Racism Poisoned Flint’s Water

Flint water — a weapon of mass destruction (not a metaphor). Source.

by Gaius Publius

I'm a former resident of Michigan, in particular, Saginaw and Flint, and in my mind there's never been a question that the Republican and Rick Snyder attack on both Detroit and Flint are racist to the core. There's also no doubt in my mind that the decision to stop Flint from paying Detroit for water was also a way to further punish Detroit, by denying funds to the Detroit water district.

Still, intent is hard to prove, so let's just say that the decision to cut Flint's payments to the Detroit water district had the effect of using one largely minority and emergency-manager-controlled city to hurt another largely minority and emergency-manager-controlled city, intentional or otherwise.

And yes, Rick Snyder should be tried for homicide, negligent or otherwise.

"This is a racial killing"

The racial aspect of this story is widely under-commented. Even the excellent Bernie Sanders, in his recent call for Snyder to resign, did not touch on race. He well could have.

Now comes Michael Moore to let that cat publicly out of the bag. Here's USuncut with the story:

Michael Moore — Flint’s most famous native — is calling out the inherent racism of the policies that led to his hometown’s water crisis.

Michael Moore: “This is a racial killing.”

The result of a decision to switch water sources made under Snyder in June 2013, hazardously high levels of lead, copper, e. coli, trihalomethanes (which are toxic when inhaled, such as in a hot shower) and chlorine in the city’s water supply have created an epidemic of serious, long-term health problems in Flint. The alarming effects of Flint’s contaminated water were immediately apparent and known to public officials in 2014 when the switch was made, but were downplayed by political leaders for over a year.

Michael Moore, who posted a petition for Snyder’s arrest on his website Wednesday, tweeted last month that Snyder “knowingly poisoned a black city”, calling it a “version of genocide.”

This is a racial killing. Flint MI is 60% black. When u knowingly poison a black city, u r committing a version of genocide #ArrestGovSnyder

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) December 20, 2015

Moore held a rally in the city yesterday, where he accused political leaders of intentionally poisoning residents.

“This is not a mistake,” he said. “Ten people were killed here because of a political decision to save money… to risk the lives of people here in a city that is majority African-American, where 41 percent live below the official poverty line. That is what is going on here.”

Moore spoke on the racial disenfranchisement created by state policy in Flint. “It’s a crisis created by the Republican governor and visited on a city that is majority black and majority poor,” he said.

This gets the ball rolling. Time for others to step up.

The Racist Use of Michigan's Emergency Manager Law

The article makes a convincing case that Snyder's use of the emergency manager law is prima facie racist. Again:

The shocking racial disparity behind this policy lies in the racial breakdown of Michigan residents whose lives are controlled by appointed emergency managers. In 2013, The Atlantic’s Chris Lewis reported that “while the cities under emergency management together contain just nine percent of Michigan’s population, they contain, notably, about half of the state’s African-American residents.”

Last week, Louise Seamster and Jessica Welburn reported for The Root that over the past decade only two percent of Michigan’s white residents have lived under emergency management, compared to over half of black residents.

The cities targeted by Snyder for emergency management reflect the state’s attitude toward the human and democratic rights of African-Americans. Curt Guyette, an investigative reporter for the American Civil Liberties Union in Michigan, discussed the racial composition of cities currently controlled by emergency managers with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! Friday, saying that “with the exception of one, they are all majority African-American. And they’re also all very poor cities. So this is a racial issue, and it’s a class issue.”

I hope that the major tellers of this tale tell it all. It's not just the deaths and permanent brain damage; it's the racial targeting that got us there. Not much different from racial targeting by police — except in scale. If a foreign terrorist did this to an entire American city, they'd call the water pictured above a "weapon of mass destruction," as indeed it is.

Bernie Sanders, Killer Mike and Martin Luther King, Jr.

A bonus — listen to the end of this interview, Killer Mike talking with Stephen Colbert, about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the once-in-a-generation Bernie Sanders campaign.

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An Unspeakable Crime Has Been Committed In Flint-- But It Should Not Be Unpunishable

MURDERER

The outrage has been building in me since I first started reading and hearing about how Michigan Governor Rick Snyder abrogated democracy in Flint and set about poisoning their water system. People are dead; people are sick; people will suffer for their entire lives; and Michigan taxpayers-- probably U.S. taxpayers as well-- are on the hook for untold tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. One man-- one, repulsive, greed-driven, ideological slob: Rick Snyder. If we were primitive his battered carcass would be hanging from a lamp post and being eaten by vultures. But has a Grand Jury even been empaneled yet?

The first time we discussed it here at DWT, exactly a month ago, I asked what would have bene the reaction if Snyder had done this not to an economically stressed, predominantly African-American city but to a wealthy white enclave like Novi, Rochester, West Bloomfield or Grosse Pointe Shores.

Saturday Bernie Sanders called on Synder to resign. "There are no excuses. The governor long ago knew about the lead in Flint’s water. He did nothing. As a result, hundreds of children were poisoned. Thousands may have been exposed to potential brain damage from lead. Gov. Snyder should resign. Because of the conduct by Gov. Snyder’s administration and his refusal to take responsibility, families will suffer from lead poisoning for the rest of their lives. Children in Flint will be plagued with brain damage and other health problems. The people of Flint deserve more than an apology."

Resigning is a good first step. But unless Snyder is held fully accountable and severely punished for what he's done, other Republicans will do the same thing and worse going forward. This disgusting incident will either be permission for conservatives to behave this way towards American citizens or it will serve as a warning that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated. Snyder should never see the outside of a prison cell for the rest of his life. The artist DarkBlack did much better than a thousand words in his depiction of the governor:

Janell Ross touched on the underlying horror in a report for the Washington Post this week: "Government has, for some Americans, been a purely villainous force since at least the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan declared government to be the actual problem." Something tells me Flint is coming around to that point of view, although not in the way Reagan meant it.

[T]he situation in Flint highlights the very-real limits of reducing both the size and cost of government at every turn, of making savings the organizing principle of government. Money truly is not everything, even in a poor city in one of the richest countries in the world. When it is, the crisis in Flint is one possible result.

Flint is one of those economically hard-hit Midwestern cities, left in a constant state of crisis or quandary. From a distance, those fights can seem philosophically engaging: the stuff of good dinner party conversation and debate for people in the know, who also happen to live elsewhere. But on the ground in Flint, this has required sad and even terrible choices, all types of cutbacks and then a state declaration that none of this was enough.

Snyder used a state law to appoint an emergency manager, a process that began in 2011. And along with the emergency manager came a board to whom the manager could appeal to override decisions made by Flint's non-partisan, elected city council. In short, Flint has spent years under emergency manager control, a person whose primary charge appears to have been cutting costs.

If you missed Michael Moore's petition and his reasoning for why Snyder needs to go to prison, I suggest you give it a read. There is virtually no other outcome to conservative doctrine than catastrophes like Flint. This IS the Republican Party, 2016. If Snyder isn't in prison before the GOP presidential convention, he should be on their national ticket.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder Hasn't Been Arrested Yet-- What's Going On?

December 17 was the day we first wrote about the drinking water disaster in Flint, Michigan by contrasting the arrest of multimillionaire Martin Shkreli with the hands-off policy of law enforcement agencies towards Rick Snyder, responsible for poisoning the city of Flint, Michigan. Maddow was on the case very quickly and has stayed on the case... very doggedly.

As you'll recall, Snyder's administration keep reassuring Flint residents that the water was perfectly safe and that nay-sayers were crackpots and troublemakers for months and months before they finally admitted something was wrong with the city's drinking water late in December. It now turns out that Snyder was aware of the gravity of the situation for half a year. So for months his administration was telling residents to drink poisoned water. This is mind-boggling. I've never heard of anything like this in my life. He hasn't been arrested. I don't know if there's been a Grand Jury empaneled to investigate. NBC News reported that "Six months before Michigan's governor declared a state of emergency over high lead levels in the water in Flint, his top aide wrote in an email that worried residents were 'basically getting blown off by us.'" This was something that started in April when Snyder's anti-democracy plenipotentiary, Darnell Earley, ordered that Flint stop using water from Detroit to save some money. It didn't take long before the salty water from the Flint River to start corroding pipes and leaching out lead and causing illnesses among children.

"I'm frustrated by the water issue in Flint," Dennis Muchmore, then chief of staff to Gov. Rick Snyder, wrote in the email to a top health department staffer obtained by NBC News.

"I really don't think people are getting the benefit of the doubt. Now they are concerned and rightfully so about the lead level studies they are receiving," Muchmore said.

"These folks are scared and worried about the health impacts and they are basically getting blown off by us (as a state we're just not sympathizing with their plight)."

Half a year later-- this week-- Snyder declared a state of emergency. It seems pretty clear that Snyder, frantically trying to duck responsibility and cover his ass, is to blame. Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan, wrote that "The source of the Flint Water Crisis leads directly to Gov. Rick Snyder and the fiscal austerity policies that he and his Republican colleagues have been pushing for years on Michigan residents. Families in Flint were forced to drink lead-tainted water while the administration scoffed at their concerns and cries for help. An entire generation of Michiganders now face an uncertain future because of Republican cuts to essential and life-giving services."

In his rush to save money while poisoning a city's children, Snyder's austerity agenda will cost Michigan taxpayers upwards of a billion dollars. Thursday Chuck Todd interviewed Michael Moore, film-maker and Flint resident, who told him Snyder should be arrested and that his weak apology was like that of a drunk driver saying, hey, he wasn’t trying to kill that kid on that sidewalk. "It really was absolute insanity. The governor refused to listen. He mocked the critics. He mocked the doctors doing the studies at a local hospital. He ridiculed them. He wouldn’t listen to anybody." And he was covering up what he already knew to be true and getting worse.

Yesterday Tom Hartmann explained why it makes sense for Snyder to be criminally charged., in part by quoting Moore's letter to Gov. Snyder.

Dear Governor Snyder:

Thanks to you, sir, and the premeditated actions of your administrators, you have effectively poisoned, not just some, but apparently ALL of the children in my hometown of Flint, Michigan.

And for that, you have to go to jail.

To poison all the children in an historic American city is no small feat. Even international terrorist organizations haven't figured out yet how to do something on a magnitude like this.

But you did. Your staff and others knew that the water in the Flint River was poison-- but you decided that taking over the city and "cutting costs" to "balance the budget" was more important than the people's health (not to mention their democratic rights to elect their own leaders). So you cut off the clean, fresh glacial lake water of Lake Huron that the citizens of Flint (including myself) had been drinking for decades and, instead, made them drink water from the industrial cesspool we call the Flint River -- a body of "water" where toxins from a dozen General Motors and DuPont factories have been dumped for over a hundred years. And then you decided to put a chemical in this water to "clean" it-- which only ended up stripping the lead off of Flint's aging water pipes, placing that lead in the water and sending it straight into people's taps. Your callous-- and reckless (btw, "reckless" doesn't get you a pass; a reckless driver who kills a child, still goes to jail)-- decision to do this has now, as revealed by the city's top medical facility, caused "irreversible brain damage" in Flint's children, not to mention other bodily damage to all of Flint's adults. Here's how bad it is: Even GM won't let the auto parts they use in building cars touch the Flint water because that water "corrodes" them (link). This is a company that won't even fix an ignition switch after they've discovered it's already killed dozens of people. THAT's how bad the situation is. Even GM thinks you're the devil.

Maybe you don't understand the science behind this. Lead, in water-- now, bear with me, this involves a science lesson and you belong to the anti-science party, the one that believes there's not a climate problem and that Adam and Eve rode on dinosaurs 6,000 years ago. Lead is toxic to the human body. There's no way to fully eliminate it once it's in your system, and children are the most damaged by it.

By taking away the city's clean drinking water in order to "cut costs," and then switching the city's water supply to Flint River water, you have allowed massively unsafe levels of pollutants and lead into the water that travels in to everyone's home. Every Flint resident is trapped by this environmental nightmare which you, Governor, have created.

Like any real criminal, when you were confronted with the truth (by the EPA and other leading water experts across America), you denied what you did. Even worse, you decided to mock your accusers and their findings. As I said, I know you don't like to believe in a lot of science (after all, you used to run Gateway Computers, and that, really, is all anyone needs to know about you), but this time the science has caught up with you-- and this time, I hope, it's going to convict you.

The facts are all there, Mr. Snyder. Every agency involved in this scheme reported directly to you. The children of Flint didn't have a choice as to whether or not they were going to get to drink clean water. But soon it will be your turn to not have that choice about which water you'll be drinking. Because by this time next year, if there is an ounce of justice left in this land, the water you'll be drinking will be served to you from a tap inside Jackson Prison.

I am calling upon my fellow Michiganders-- and seekers of justice everywhere-- to petition U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, asking her to arrest you for corruption and assault (i.e., the physical assault you committed against the children of Flint when you knowingly poisoned them).

Yesterday, the federal prosecutor in Flint, after many of us had called for months for this action, finally opened up an investigation into the matter (link). Now we need your arrest, prosecution and conviction.

And who will be cheering on that day when you are fitted with a bright orange jumpsuit? The poor and minority communities of Michigan who've endured your dictatorial firing of their mayors and school boards so you could place your business friends in charge of their mostly-black cities. They know you never would have done this to a wealthy white suburb.

I welcome all to look at the appalling facts of this case, which have been reported brilliantly here, here, and especially here by the great Rachel Maddow. Thank you, Rachel, for caring so deeply when the rest of the national television media didn't.

I'm asking everyone who agrees with me to sign on to this petition and call for your arrest, Governor Snyder. You are not allowed to run amok in my hometown like you have done. The children whom you have poisoned have to endure a life of pain and lower IQ's from your actions. You have destroyed a generation of children-- and for that, you must pay.

It is time for you to go to prison. Out of mercy, I'll ask that you have in your cell your own personal Gateway computer.

Sincerely,
Michael Moore
Flint native
Michigan resident and voter

This is the crux of what Republican governance is all about. There many be many reasons to not vote for a Democrat, but there should never be any reason to vote for any Republican. The Agenda Project's web ad yesterday:

Martin Shkreli Was Arrested But A Far Graver Crime Was Committed In Flint, Michigan-- Will There Be Accountability?

Why isn't Rick Snyder running for the GOP nomination?

The most hated man in America, Martin Shkreli, the pharmaceutical drug gouger, was just arrested in New York this morning on securities fraud charges, though not on price gouging. Related: Tuesday night's GOP debate was filled with hatred and bombast from a mostly desperate group of ugly Republican politicians striking out irrationally at President Obama and Hillary Clinton on the supposed subject of foreign policy and national security, which was nothing more than a backdrop for their permission to screech unaccountable lies at the moon about the president. Just horrible, deceitful, hackish people. Anna Marie Cox published a wonderful scorecard that compared Mike Huckabee to "grandpa farts," Ted Cruz "a mirror that reflects no light," listening to Carly Fiorina to biting down on aluminum foil and the Republican Party frontrunner and probable nominee for 2016 to "dogshit ground into your living room carpet."

There was nothing discussed related to keeping our country and our families safe-- just a contest of who could tell more gruesome, frightening stories to blame on the Democrats. Nothing about conservative governance principles that are putting the country and the people in such mortal danger on a daily basis. Philadelphia-based reporter and author Will Bunch had this mess in the back of his mind when he tackled the news that the Republican-imposed government of Flint, Michigan had been systematically poisoning it's own citizens-- albeit mostly children-- to save a few pennies on the city's water bill.

Residents began to complain of skin lesions, hair loss, chemical-induced hypertension, vision loss and depression. Finally, a health study confirmed what many parents feared: The number of children in Flint with unsafe levels of lead in their bloodstream has doubled in less than two years.

The new mayor of Flint has declared a state of emergency-- but for thousands of kids in the economically challenged Michigan city, that may be too little, too late. Health experts say that lead poisoning can cause neurological and behavioral problems for children that are irreversible.

Who will keep us safe? More to the point, how did America become a nation that will move heaven and earth to keep hundreds of thousands of kids under lock and key should one email happen to mention ISIS, yet at the same time will feed children rank and obviously polluted tap water and for years ignore a mound of evidence that these kids are being poisoned. Since almost all of the Republicans are running on a platform of slashing both environmental regulations and the size of the EPA (which, stating the obvious, was already MIA in Flint under Democratic President Obama), we probably won't get the answer to that question tonight on CNN.

...It is a serious way to run a country to drop everything-- the lack of working class jobs, the never-ending struggle to get health care to every citizen, the massive debt that's typically required to get a college education, policing policies that leave some neighborhoods feeling like an occupied territory-- to make terrorism our one and only focus?

Too often, we use terrorism, and the fear of being attacked, to not only voluntarily give up some of our freedoms but to also squelch debate on ideas that might reduce some of the massive inequality in America and mean a better life for million of people, using the dozens who might be killed by terrorism as an excuse.

I would ask, who will keep us safe from a system in which-- even with all the hard-fought incremental advances under Obamacare-- some 29 million Americans are still not able to obtain basic health insurance, in which thousands -- become needlessly sick or face medical bankruptcy or even die every year in the world's wealthiest democracy?

Who will keep us safe from a political system in which almost every election and every political candidate is for sale to the highest bidder-- most famously, a billionaire like the host of tonight's "Who Will Keep Us Safe?" debate on CNN, Mr. Adelson-- and in which more and more states are passing laws to make it harder for minorities, seniors and college students to vote? And who will keep us safe from the ravages of climate change-- a topic that had most of the world's attention in Paris but which has seemed to escape the notice of the GOP presidential candidates?

Perhaps most importantly, who will keep us safe from those politics that have created a staggeringly unequal society in which nearly all of the income gains of recent years have flowed toward the top 1 percent and  in which jobless middle-aged, middle-class workers have been stripped of almost all hope.

In 1941, with America less than a year away from joining World War II, Franklin Roosevelt used the State of the Union address to deliver his famous Four Freedoms speech. In it, he did, of course, speak of freedom from fear-- understandably in a time of rising fascism. But he also noted that a successful America requires "freedom from want-- which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-- everywhere in the world." If that is ever eliminated from our national debate, we cannot truly be free.

Curt Guyette is one of the best investigative journalists in Detroit and his piece in yesterday's Guardian is worth reading. "It might seem counterintuitive that Flint, Michigan’s declaration that there are dangerously high levels of lead in the city’s drinking water -- and in the blood of the city’s children-- is a positive thing," he began. The contamination of the city’s drinking water is, after all, is a gut-wrenching tragedy. But the declaration about the undrinkable water, made by newly elected mayor Karen Weaver on Monday, is positive in this regard: it is evidence that a semblance of democracy has returned to Flint. Such an announcement would have been unimaginable even six months ago, when Flint was still under the control of an “emergency manager” appointed by Governor Rick Snyder. The state’s usurpation of local power essentially obliterated the kinds of checks and balances that are key to a functioning democracy."

A series of emergency managers, accountable only to the governor who appointed them, held near-dictatorial power over an impoverished city of 100,000 residents-- a majority of whom are African American.

Operating under the most extreme receivership law found anywhere in the United States, these emergency managers had the power to break collective bargaining agreements, abolish city ordinances, fire employees, sell off city assets, and slash the healthcare benefits of retirees. About the only thing Snyder’s appointees couldn’t do was miss a bond payment.

In addition to everything else, these emergency managers held complete power over the duly elected city council and mayor. The emergency manager told these officials what they could and couldn’t do and determined how much, if anything, they would be paid. Any decisions the elected officials made could be overruled.

It was under this autocracy that Flint-- in April 2014-- ended a 50-year relationship with the Detroit department of water and sewerage to begin drawing the city’s drinking water from the corrosive, polluted Flint river. The initial savings to the city were pegged at $5m.

As soon as the changeover occurred though, it became apparent that the decision was a disastrous one. Residents began complaining of water that looked, smelled and tasted bad.

Because of high bacteria levels, a series of boil-water notices were issued. Then came news of dangerously high levels of total trihalomethanes, a carcinogenic byproduct of the chlorine being used in increased amounts to combat the bacteria problems.

As early as February of this year, according to emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the ACLU of Michigan, the US Environmental Protection Agency began raising concerns that the highly corrosive river water, along with everything else, was beginning to eat away at the pipes carrying water to Flint’s 40,000 homes. And of particular concern to residents and the federal government alike was the effect of the corrosive water on an untold number of lead service lines and leaded home plumbing.

Despite mounting evidence that levels of lead in the city’s drinking water were increasing, the state-- and the city officials under their control-- adamantly maintained that the water was safe.

If not for a determined coalition of residents who refused to swallow those false claims in addition to the toxic water provided to them by the order of Snyder’s appointee, the full extent of the problem might never have come to light.

It came to light because the residents went around Snyder's anti-democratic government, appointed to oppress them, and worked directly with water experts at Virginia Tech. The state department of environmental quality, a dumping ground for GOP ideologues, discounted their findings. As Guyette wrote, "What is the likelihood that one gubernatorial appointee is going to announce that a decision made by another gubernatorial appointee is resulting in the widespread, systematic lead poisoning of children? And when the city council voted to return to the Detroit water system, the emergency manager/dictator vetoed it. The emergency manager, Darnell Earley is gone now, but is not in prison, nor has Governor Synder been dragged out of his office and hung from a lamppost. Nor is the Republican Party of Michigan disbanded.

I've always been intrigued by a story my mother's younger brother told me when I was a child. He fought in Italy towards the end of World War II and he told me about how the Italian people in a small village between Milan and the Swiss border, Giulino di Mezzegra, caught the country's right-wing dictator who had brought so much pain and suffering to the nation. On April 27-- three days before Hitler's suicide, Mussolini and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were captured near beautiful Lake Como, shot the following day and strung up in a mundane square near Milan, where my uncle and his detachment found their mangled bodies, which had been abused by the crowds. Does Rick Snyder deserve better? Do any fascists?