We all need to pray for the children of Flint Michigan and for that matter anyone that has drank the lead laden water from the city of Flint. Pray that their minds will be spared, that somehow, someway the poisons of this water will not take hold in their mind or body. Flint has a population of over 100,000 people so just how many children do you suppose are under 10 years of age? Yes this is a catastrophe every bit as tragic as Hurricane Katrina or Sandy and probably even more insidious. If there ever was a time to find an antidote to lead poisoning that time is now but what is in front of that endeavor is what is in front of State officials in Michigan when it comes to putting people first.On a broader scale research to finding that antidote is not happening like it should because that antidote is not profitable. Some rail against government involvement, like the Republican leadership in Michigan, but without government subsidizing research, pharmaceutical companies will willing not find it alone and essentially the same ideology that prevents that is the same one at the core of Flint's problem but it goes further than that.
Certain wheels were turning in Detroit and in the Michigan governors office that essentially led to the indifference to the plight of people in Flint Michigan. Were this one of the affluent communities of Michigan, where moneyed connections are made to State legislators, do you think this would have happened? Of course not. Every precaution would have been taken but in Flint's case state officials would not make the tough decisions to bridge the gaps that could have led to maintaining connection to Detroit's water for the city until facilities at the Karegnondi Water Authority were ready. Even when residents of Flint began having unusual symptoms of burning skin, hand tremors, hair loss, seizures and children being diagnosed with anemia State officials and especially the emergency managers installed by Michigan's governor ignored or rationalized those complaints from Flint residents and when the Flint city council voted to return to the Detroit water supply because of those complaints the governor's emergency managers over-road the Flint city council and made the residents of Flint continue using the then acknowledged and clearly evident contaminated Flint river water. Even the General Motors plant there finally refused to use the water from Flint River because it was corroding engine parts. You would have thought at least that would have got someone's attention. You think?
As one more slap in the face of Flint's residents and children the governor drank a glass of water from Flint River in front of T.V. camera's to "courageously" demonstrate the safety of the water. Yes, apparently one glass. Of course the governor did not have to live with it night and day. The governor not only considered people there "expendable", he also thought they must not mind having their intelligence broadly insulted.
The Michigan governor's office and state officials and even some EPA(probably bought off) officials could ignore Flint because Flint is largely populated with low income Americans and African Americans that have little clout or real representation. The governor did not have to so closely "pay attention" to people with few money levers.
This is an indifferent to, insulated from the real world, gated community, bubble world 1% problem whose effects are in recent years skyrocketing out of sight and more and more evidence piles up that we certainly have a racial problem not just from the 1% but from "entitled" lower-income whites buying into inferences in right-wing dogma. George W. Bush's Hurricane Katrina debacle was just the beginning but the paranoid hyperbole erupting from the right-wing post-Obama election has embarrassingly exposed the latent racial ignorance that evidently could be repressed no longer. You see it from lesser income white police in Ferguson, Mo. to Charleston S.Carolina to grossly callous and brutal police shootings across the country to Flint, Michigan. That any minority children have suffered because of this psychologically genetic bankrupt reaction or revenge against the presence of Obama in the White-house is without excuse.
With the 1% it is a matter of priorities. Certain ideologies oppose government involvement but really only when it is not the right-wing's pet project. For the right, government subsidies for oil and gas and the military is mighty fine indeed. The problem is that money drives it to excess in preference to the needs of people. They could have spent the money to expedite or for that matter continue using the Detroit water supply until proper facilities were made but they didn't. That cost more money that could be used for oil subsidies. They will spend more money in excess for oil and the military and ignore low-income people that have no real voice to protest their being neglected.
People of this particular ideology should not have authority over a people and the likely poisoned for life children of Flint Michigan are witness to that.
Children have no choice but to trust those in authority above them. It is a sacred trust but we are losing that trust and the honor that once characterized life in America. We are losing it to indifference born of affluent lifestyles born of the love of money of which dominates more and more the interactions taking place across the nation. It felt comfortable and it felt safe to capitulate to those in power but it allowed evil to slip through and seize the children. You lose the ability to feel and imagine the plight of others and then you lose sight of "do to others as you would have them do to you". You don't have to lose it and it doesn't have to be that way.
Pray for the probable thousands of children in Flint Michigan that no expense will be sparred in search for the possible treatment or cure to their lead or other poisoning. In pursuit of that pray the government officials responsible for this repent and then are removed so that someone not compromised in this entire mess will be put in authority that will not obstruct treatment for these children for the sake of money, oil or whatever has been the obstacle to doing the right thing before.
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