The auto industry has a history of weighing the costs of whether it’s cheaper to spend the money to fix the defect in millions of cars or to simply pay off a bunch of lawsuits filed by the victims surviving family members. Instead of simply fixing the problem, mid-management staff covered it up from the public. General Motors learned that it had installed faulty ignition switches in many of its cars. Last year, it was revealed that, once again, one of Detroit’s automakers had put profit ahead of people’s lives. But it’s not just street crime that makes one wonder about what is going on in Michigan. Just for context, if New York City had the same murder rate as Flint, Michigan, the number of people murdered last year in New York would have been almost 4,000 people – instead of the actual 340 who were killed in NYC in 2015.
Flint has one of the worst murder and crime rates in the country. There are many things that happen in Flint that would give one the impression that there is a low value placed on human life. It’s not just the water that was recklessly used to put people’s lives in jeopardy. In Michigan, from Flint water, to Crime and Murder, to GM Ignition Switches, It’s a Culture of Death.
As with the Governor, it was OK to abuse a community that held no political power or money to fight back. Wait – did I say “people?” I meant, Flint people. People were shocked this could be going on in their neighborhoods. It sounded as if the city was under attack from an invading army or from terrorists. For weeks, an undisclosed number of army troops pretended Flint was Baghdad or Damascus and basically had at it. Streets with dilapidated homes had rocket-propelled grenades fired upon them. The army decided to practice urban warfare on Flint, making use of the thousands of abandoned homes which they could drop bombs on. Actual unannounced military exercises – complete with live ammo and explosives – were conducted last year inside the city of Flint. During these two years of water contamination, residents in Flint have had to contend with a decision made by the Pentagon to use Flint for target practice. Here’s a story which has received little or no coverage outside of Flint. While They Were Being Poisoned, They Were Also Being Bombed. But if you live in Flint or the State of Michigan as I do, you know all to well that what the greater public has been told only scratches the surface. Here are ten things that you probably don’t know about this crisis because the media, having come to the story so late, can only process so much. Citizen activists uncovered these actions, and the governor now faces growing cries to resign or be arrested. When the governor’s office discovered just how toxic the water was, they decided to keep quiet about it and covered up the extent of the damage being done to Flint’s residents, most notably the lead affecting the children, causing irreversible and permanent brain damage. To save money, they decided to unhook the people of Flint from their fresh water drinking source, Lake Huron, and instead, make the public drink from the toxic Flint River. The basics are now known: the Republican governor, Rick Snyder, nullified the free elections in Flint, deposed the mayor and city council, then appointed his own man to run the city. News of the poisoned water crisis in Flint has reached a wide audience around the world.
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