‘This is not a mistake. They did this. They knew.” So declared professional conspiracy theorist Michael Moore of the government in his hometown of Flint, Mich., where the water has been tainted with contaminants for nearly a year.
According to the Daily Mail, Moore held a rally that was attended by some 200 residents. Moore got their attention by claiming that Gov. Rick Snyder knew that “toxins, pollutants and, eventually, lead” was infiltrating the city’s water supply after it switched sources.
“This is not a mistake,” Moore told those assembled. “Ten people here have been killed because of a political decision.”
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Protesters chanted “Snyder’s got to go, hey hey, ho ho, water is a human right” and held up signs that read “Callous Rick made Flint sick.”
The fact that the population of Flint is 56.6% black conveniently fed the narrative that the water supply was purposely poisoned to kill off blacks.
Flint was under control of a state-appointed emergency manager when it switched using tap water from Detroit’s system to the nearby Flint River in April 2014 to save money.
But the city didn’t add treatments that could have reduced corrosion and removed contaminants from the water, thus leading the more corrosive Flint River water to leach lead from pipes.
Flint, which is about 60 miles northwest of Detroit, returned to using that city’s water in October after tests found elevated levels of lead in the water and in the blood of some children.
The claims that the government knew about the situation in Flint and did little to reverse it is partly true. Except it’s not the city government that sat on its thumbs. As noted last week in these pages:
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) top Midwest official knew about the Flint, Mich., drinking water crisis of 2015 months before telling the public, according to a Tuesday report by the The Detroit News.
Maybe the real racists are in the federal government, the head of which, after all, is half-white!
