"What Happened in Flint Is Immoral" - Hillary Clinton
In one of the latest misadventures in her grand narrative Hillary Clinton recently went to Flint to address the issue that has been plaguing it's residents for the last year, water so contaminated with lead that it is affecting the brains of the citizens. She credited herself, on Rachel Maddow, with being responsible for the assistance Flint citizens received shortly thereafter, and for Governor Snyder's declaring a state of emergency and signing a bill which designates $28 million for bottled water, faucet filters, testing kits, additional school nurses, medical treatment and to help the city with unpaid water bills, saying “As you may know, I appeared on a show this past week and demanded that Gov. Snyder ask for the help that Michigan needs to deal with the horrible consequences that children and their families are facing in Flint and I saw that Gov. Snyder turned around within two hours and finally asked for the help that he should have asked for some weeks ago. ”
(Gov. Snyder's staff refuted this claim to responsibility shortly thereafter with this statement: “Gov. Snyder announced the state was coordinating with FEMA days before and [was] dealing with the crisis on Thursday, not watching political talk shows,” he said. “Such comments from political candidates who are not working toward a solution to the problems only serve as a distraction from the vital work that is being accomplished. ”)
The process which Hillary took credit for was already well underway.
But if something else felt a little incredulous for you when you heard that Hillary Clinton was in Flint, speaking to local politicians about the water crisis, there is a good reason for that. The Clinton's record on the environment and in particular water quality is far from stellar.
Gov. Bill Clinton twiddled his thumbs as the Arkansas' powerful chicken industry contaminated the drinking water supply for 300,000 people with half a million tons of chicken waste.
A plant drained sewage into the local water supply at the rate of 1 million gallons a day causing Salmonella and Dysentery. Seventeen long months later Clinton declared “disaster emergency” and connected the afflicted townspeople to a clean water supply. For those seventeen months there were globs of grease floating in drinking water pulled from local wells and hundreds of fish living in a previously clean spring were killed.
Hillary did nothing.
And then He did it again.
Bill continued to grant Tyson permits that put the water supply at risk. In 1989 the state gave permission for Tyson to build a 471,600-gallon chicken waste lagoon within 200 feet of a stream near Rogers AK. The stream provided drinking water for locals. State health department inspectors tested local wells and found multiple to be contaminated with bacteria. The fish in the nearby ponds which were contaminated by the leaking lagoon all died. Clinton failed to take action. The pollution became a top story on local news, and Tyson voluntarily closed the lagoon.
Again, Hillary did nothing. And learned nothing, as well.
But that was all so long ago. Let’s look at some more recent events.
In 2006, as Senator from NY, Hillary Clinton sided with Republicans and oil-state Democrats in supporting expanded drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The same drilling that later that year lead to one of the greatest industrial/environmental disasters in the history of the country. The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, which gushed 4.9 million barrels (210 million US gal) of crude oil into the Gulf; The largest oil spill in the history of the petroleum Industry. A disaster which was compounded by the ill-advised use of 1.84 million US gallons Corexit, a toxic dispersant manufactured by ExxonMobil. (The same ExxonMobil whose lobbyists have raised over $2 million for Hillary's campaigns.)
Of course by 2008 Hillary had ‘evolved’ and disapproved of off-shore drilling.
But she still hadn't learned. Or she just didn't care.
Hillary Clinton's state department championed fracking worldwide.
At a 2010 gathering of foreign ministers in DC, Clinton spoke about America's plans to help spread fracking around the globe. "I know that in some places [it] is controversial," Clinton stated, "but natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel available for power generation today."
Fracking, the extraction of shale gas, has been linked with 39 percent higher concentrations of radon (a radioactive gas), flammable drinking water, asthma, headaches, high blood pressure, earthquakes, anemia, heart attacks and cancer. A 2014 study conducted by the Colorado Department of Environmental and Occupational Health found that mothers who live near fracking sites are 30 percent more likely to have babies with congenital heart defects. Fracking leaks greenhouse gases directly into the atmosphere. Natural gas facilities in North Texas’ Barnett Shale region emit thousands of tons of methane (a greenhouse gas at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide) every hour. A recent disaster in California resulted in ~96,000 metric tons of methane spewing into the atmosphere.
Clinton's Global Shale Gas Initiative continues to spread to this day.
3 days ago Greenpeace asked Hillary to say "No" to fossil fuel money.
She refused.
Which is understandable...
Hillary's biggest campaign bundlers are fossil fuel lobbyists.