Taking Over Flint

To understand what's going on in Flint, you need to know something about the Emergency Manager Law. Soon after our governor took over, he proposed the EML as a way to rescue school districts and municipalities that were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. What they do is appoint an emergency manager to take over the troubled entity. This guy has supreme power, he can over rule the mayor or the superintendent, the city council or the school board, and can even  nullify union contracts. After the law was duly passed, somebody organized a petition drive to put the measure on a referendum ballot. The law was subsequently voted out by the electorate, but the legislature and the governor immediately passed the law all over again, changing it just enough that it qualified as a brand new law. I voted against the law myself, but probably not for the same reasons that most others did. I voted against it because I don't believe the taxpayers should have to bail out any failed organization. They made their bed, let them lie in it.

Be that as it may, the City of Flint was one of those that got an emergency manager. Detroit was another one, but that's a whole nother story. Flint had been buying their water from Detroit, which pumped it out of the Detroit River, which is not as polluted as you might think because it's actually a channel that connects Lake Huron with Lake Erie. Anyway, Flint's EM decided that they could save some money by cancelling the contract with Detroit and pumping their own water out of the Flint River, which is way more polluted than the Detroit River. Some time later, unacceptable levels of lead were found in Flint's water supply. I don't think that the lead actually came from the river, but the other chemicals in the river interacted with the lead pipes in Flint's antiquated water system. I thought they said they were going to switch back to their old water source but, either they haven't done it yet, or it's too late because the damage has already been done and, last I heard, Flint's water still has the lead in it.

People are saying it's the governor's fault, and it kind of is because he's the one who pushed for that Emergency Manager Law in the first place, but I don't think it's fair to say that he deliberately poisoned the people of Flint because most of them are Black. Be that as it may, now he wants to pump more millions of dollars into Flint and is even asking the federal government to get involved. And you wonder why I call him a RINO? It probably would have been cheaper in the long run to just let places like Flint and Detroit go down the drain. If those people can't take care of their cities, they shouldn't have them.

I agree that a bear attack in your neighborhood is unlikely. An attack by two legged predators is way  more likely, but many Chicagoans probably go through their whole lives without that happening either. If you're not interested in guns, and are not willing to put forth the effort to learn how to use them properly, then you certainly shouldn't buy one.