Obama tells Flint residents: 'I've got your back'

[Rancid]

Wow, seems like nothing but Obama bashers today. Hope you like your boy Trump better. Think Fascism is better than Obama? You only have yourself to blame when Trump does away with your First Amendment rights. Sad sad sad.....

So there are people that still believe the two parties aren't two sides of the same coin? Not disputing the trump comments, but Hilary would be the same. Prefer Coke or Pepsi?

[lannarebirth]

Wow, seems like nothing but Obama bashers today. Hope you like your boy Trump better. Think Fascism is better than Obama? You only have yourself to blame when Trump does away with your First Amendment rights. Sad sad sad.....

So there are people that still believe the two parties aren't two sides of the same coin? Not disputing the trump comments, but Hilary would be the same. Prefer Coke or Pepsi?

It took a lot of chutzpah for Hillary Clinton to descend on Flint and start pointing fingers. I guess she counts on the short memory of the electorate or the fact that some people will vote for her, no matter what she's done. This is what corruption looks like:

http://www.businessinsider.com/clinton-futures-scandal-still-relevant-today-2016-2#comments

[chuckd]

All of you blaming the Democratic party "leaders" of the City of Flint for making the decision to switch the water supply are

forgetting one very important detail. All of the decisions related to the switching of the water supply AND the response to

it occurred between 2011 and 2015 when the city was in receivership, being run by a series of financial managers appointed by

Republican Governor Rick Synder.

This was a cost-cutting decision spearheaded by Republicans, with the governor fighting tooth and nail for Flint's "right" to

switch from Detroit City Water.

Get your facts straight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis

Those three financial managers appointed by the Governor were:

Michael Brown - Dec 2011 to Aug 2012

Ed Kurtz - Aug 2012 to JUL 2013

Michael Brown (again) - Jul 2013 to Oct 2013

Darnell Earley - Oct 2013 to Jan 2015

Brown and Earley were Democrats. I don't know what party affiliation Kurtz had.

[up2u2]

Seems like most here tend to either forget or do not understand that for the most part the decisions which led to the original problem in Flint were made by local elected officials like the city council. By trying to save money they decided to buy water from a cheaper source in 2013. The water from the Flint River contained high levels of chlorine which is highly corrosive to iron and lead used in the pipes. Right after the switch in April 2014 people started complaining about the water. In Jan 2015 a public meeting was held for people to complain about skin problems for some children. It's in 2015 that essentially everything hit the fan. State and Federal agencies were in conflict over what to do and what to tell the public. That became a cluster-<deleted>. Seems like the problems could have been avoided by adding phosphorous to the water a fix that would have cost the city $50,000 per year. The reason the city is in such dire financial straits is the fact that it is the second most poverty-stricken city in the US for it's size and the fact that 20% of all city spending is mandatory to pay pensions of retirees from city government. The city is/was in financial receivership.

Obama for his part made this trip for public relations and nothing else. He simply moves on now looking for somewhere else to try to be presidential. Snyder, the governor is being blamed by the Democrats, which is political in motivation. Just goes to show how a stupid move by mostly Democratic, black politicians elected from a mostly poor black population, having not done their homework, reverberates throughout the nation and people try and place the blame on others. There is no doubt that state and federal agencies screwed up as well after looking into the matter and bickering over what to do. It is a given that the system did not work. However, if I were a resident of Flint, I would want the whole city council voted out, rather than trying to place blame on the state. After all it was the Flint water system and the Flint city council that took the initial action without due diligence.

? In 2011 Flint was deemed to be broke and taken into State receivership under the control of Republican Governor Snyder. A series of State 'emergency managers' were appointed to roll out austerity measures. Snyder's 'emergency manager' signed off on pumping polluted water from the Flint River into the towns water supply in 2013 ?

[Credo]

I think it is better to turn the water off and let people fend for themselves than it is to give them poisoned water without informing them.

[chuckd]

Seems like most here tend to either forget or do not understand that for the most part the decisions which led to the original problem in Flint were made by local elected officials like the city council. By trying to save money they decided to buy water from a cheaper source in 2013. The water from the Flint River contained high levels of chlorine which is highly corrosive to iron and lead used in the pipes. Right after the switch in April 2014 people started complaining about the water. In Jan 2015 a public meeting was held for people to complain about skin problems for some children. It's in 2015 that essentially everything hit the fan. State and Federal agencies were in conflict over what to do and what to tell the public. That became a cluster-<deleted>. Seems like the problems could have been avoided by adding phosphorous to the water a fix that would have cost the city $50,000 per year. The reason the city is in such dire financial straits is the fact that it is the second most poverty-stricken city in the US for it's size and the fact that 20% of all city spending is mandatory to pay pensions of retirees from city government. The city is/was in financial receivership.

Obama for his part made this trip for public relations and nothing else. He simply moves on now looking for somewhere else to try to be presidential. Snyder, the governor is being blamed by the Democrats, which is political in motivation. Just goes to show how a stupid move by mostly Democratic, black politicians elected from a mostly poor black population, having not done their homework, reverberates throughout the nation and people try and place the blame on others. There is no doubt that state and federal agencies screwed up as well after looking into the matter and bickering over what to do. It is a given that the system did not work. However, if I were a resident of Flint, I would want the whole city council voted out, rather than trying to place blame on the state. After all it was the Flint water system and the Flint city council that took the initial action without due diligence.

? In 2011 Flint was deemed to be broke and taken into State receivership under the control of Republican Governor Snyder. A series of State 'emergency managers' were appointed to roll out austerity measures. Snyder's 'emergency manager' signed off on pumping polluted water from the Flint River into the towns water supply in 2013 ?

Two of the three emergency managers were Democrats. I don't know the political affiliation of Ed Kurtz.

See post 33, above.

[connda]

Obama said he wanted to use the crisis to make long-term improvements to the city, where more than 40 percent of residents live in poverty.

Let see...how about doing something about unemployment instead of cooking the figures. US unemployment is over 20% nation-wide and as stated, in the inner cities of the 'Rust Belt', is more like 40%. What happened to all those 'shovel-ready jobs'? Whoever puts America back to work will solve this problem. If people were working in Flint, the city would have the tax revenues to fix it's problems. And what about all the other cities similar to Flint? Easy for a lame duck president to spend other people's money, or just print and spend America's grandchildren's money too.

But the US is looking more like 1950s Soviet Russia, right along with big government, central planning, and lie after lie coming out of the government and propagated by a main-stream news cartel which rivals the Soviet Pravda propaganda machine.

Jobs for Americans. Put America back to work.

[hawker9000]

Wow, seems like nothing but Obama bashers today. Hope you like your boy Trump better. Think Fascism is better than Obama? You only have yourself to blame when Trump does away with your First Amendment rights. Sad sad sad.....

If one casts off their normalcy bias and looks at the world through the lens of a political atheist, you'll notice that events like the Flint water issues are not 'events' but a slowly building problem of institutional neglect and faulty priorities. BTW, the US has already sunk into classical 'fascism' where there is no clear delineation between government and corporate interests, with both channeling the nations wealth to the few (oligarchy). Those who point fingers at one 'political party' or the other, and toss around words like 'fascist' as a pejorative simply don't grasp the realities of a system that is built to harvest wealth while leaving a trail of human misery. Of course, then again, you're not suppose to understand. Good luck on both sides with that 'finger pointing' that leads to nowhere.

Really. Not that our present Organizer-in-Chief, and an exploding $19T debt, are exactly anything to shout about certainly. But are the fingerlings who elected an Islamist mayor of London, and bankrupted themselves in Greece, etc., etc., etc., SO obviously on the better path?? Yeap, like fer sure, Europe has a lot to teach us!