The often-controversial Oakland County executive, L. Brooks Patterson, suggested the Flint water crisis may have been blown out of proportion, citing a radio interview on Paul W. Smith’s and Frank Beckmann’s show on WJR-AM (760) with Bill Ballenger, a longtime political observer and former state lawmaker who lives in Flint.
Patterson said Ballenger told Beckmann that the water crisis is overblown, and that tests on Ballenger’s blood found no elevated lead levels. Patterson said Ballenger’s remarks offer “the other side” to the story of what’s happening in Flint, where testing has found dangerously elevated lead levels in children after the city switched from getting water from Lake Huron through Detroit's water department to water from the Flint River.
Patterson said Ballenger “was adamant that he lives in Flint, he drinks the water, he showers in that water,” and that blood tests found no evidence of lead in his system. He said Ballenger called the water crisis a hoax and “one of the most overblown scandals in the history of the state."
Of course they are denying it. It’s a horrible situation but one that fits into the GOP as I see it.
This event lays bare the Republican sense of caring for the community: they don’t and when something as pervasive, well-reported and documented has occurred and a couple of these morons come up with some ridiculous “it didn’t happen to me” schtick, I suggest that the crisis is serious and the GOP version of “damage control” is bald-faced lying.
I, personally—in views not likely shared by many at Daily Kos—believe, strongly, that the GOP wants to “thin the herd.” That this poisoning crisis has made Republicans “happy” because a lot of commoners got sick and some have already died. A great day for Republicans.
They utterly deny that many kids have been poisoned and they want to wait for “a three to five year study” so the “facts” can come through.
Three to five years will allow many more people to get poisoned.
Perhaps this is spurred on by Obama declaring this an emergency: You know how Republicans react to Obama doing the right things.
U.S. President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency in Michigan on Saturday and ordered federal aid for state and local response efforts in the county where the city of Flint has been contending with lead-contaminated drinking water.
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The action is being taken to "lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in Genesee County," it said.
But these Republicans want to wait and see.
That is the Banality of Evil, plain as day, for all to see.