Michigan Republicans Are Trying To Change Election Law To Stop Liberal Ballot Initiatives | ThinkProgress

“They are trying to stop [us] cold,” said LuAnne Kozma of the Committee to Ban Fracking In Michigan. “They are trying to cut us off and force us into court.”
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/03/24/3762667/michigan-republicans-fracking-ban-legal-marijuana/

Michigan Is The Best Example of How Destructive Republican Government Can Be

If you want to know how horrible Republican leadership can be, just take a look at the state of Michigan. Not only have the Republicans helped create the water crisis in Flint, but they’re now allowing corporations to undermine the state Constitution and the will of the voters. This has become the standard for how Republican politicians operates...
Interview:
https://youtu.be/pHWBHSLNOF0

Why didn't Flint treat its water? An answer, at last

...But testimony at a legislative hearing this week from the city's utilities chief may help explain: When Flint began to pump drinking water from the Flint River, the city's water treatment plant wasn't capable of adding corrosion control treatment, not without equipment upgrades the broke city couldn't afford...
http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/2016/03/30/flint-water-crisis/82421546/

Rick Snyder Testified Before Congress On The Flint Crisis. It Didn’t Go So Well.

Keri Webber got on a plane to fly from her home city of Flint, Michigan to Washington, DC this week in the hopes of finally being able to meet with her governor. “We’ve tried to meet with him in Lansing, we tried to meet with him in Flint,” she said of Rick Snyder. “We came to DC [to] meet on neutral ground. We never got a response.”
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/03/17/3761413/flint-congressional-hearing-day-two/

Welcome to Michigan: Don't Drink the Water

GOP, Democrats set to spar in Detroit and Flint.

It's hard to win a popularity contest when you're unpopular, but here the politicos come.

Michigan plays host this week to both the Democratic and Republican presidential roadshows.

What will the candidates find in the Great Lakes State? Failing schools. Crumbling roads. Poisoned water. And a people who have lost faith in their public officials.

They'll find America.

Some candidates will promise big government. Some will promise small government. But can they deliver an effective government?
https://youtu.be/6vyBq8W37w0

Ted Cruz Is Holding Up The Senate’s Bipartisan Bill To Address Flint’s Water Crisis

According to a report in Politico, Cruz is halting movement of the bill “to give him more time to study the details of the proposal.” The Republican presidential candidate placed a so-called “soft hold” on the aid package on Thursday, Politico reported, effectively preventing it from moving to the floor for a vote...
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/02/25/3753881/cruz-blocking-flint-aid/

Snyder Aide Says Governor Knew About Flint Water Issues A Year Before Action Was Taken | ThinkProgress

Snyder Aide Says Governor Knew About Flint Water Issues A Year Before Action Was Taken...
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/02/26/3754137/flint-snyder-aides-emails/

Top Snyder aides urged going back to Detroit water

The city of Flint, Snyder's top legal aide wrote in October 2014, “should try to get back on the Detroit system as a stopgap ASAP before this thing gets too far out of control.”
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/02/26/flint-water-crisis-snyder-detroit/80926138/

Michigan's Water Wars: Nestlé Pumps Millions of Gallons for Free While Flint Pays for Poisoned Water

As Flint residents are forced to drink, cook with and even bathe in bottled water, while still paying some of the highest water bills in the county for their poisoned water, we turn to a little-known story about the bottled water industry in Michigan. In 2001 and 2002, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality issued permits to Nestlé, the largest water bottling company in the world, to pump up to 400 gallons of water per minute from aquifers that feed Lake Michigan. This sparked a decade-long legal battle between Nestlé and the residents of Mecosta County, Michigan, where Nestlé’s wells are located. One of the most surprising things about this story is that, in Mecosta County, Nestlé is not required to pay anything to extract the water, besides a small permitting fee to the state and the cost of leases to a private landowner. In fact, the company received $13 million in tax breaks from the state to locate the plant in Michigan. The spokesperson for Nestlé in Michigan is Deborah Muchmore. She’s the wife of Dennis Muchmore—Governor Rick Snyder’s chief of staff, who just retired and registered to be a lobbyist. We speak with Peggy Case, Terry Swier and Glenna Maneke of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation...
https://youtu.be/gCl-3WwkJgg

Inside How Citizens, Journalists, Doctors & Scientists Exposed the Flint Water Crisis Cover-Up

We speak with Curt Guyette of the ACLU of Michigan. He is an investigative reporter who was just named Michigan Journalist of the Year by the Michigan Press Association. He talks about the citizen-led effort to prove, despite assurances by state officials, the Flint water supply was contaminated with lead...
https://youtu.be/eUpNEJsoMQA

What Did GM & the Governor Know? GM Stopped Using Flint Water Over a Year Before Emergency Declared

In October 2014, General Motors recognized the Flint water was corroding its engines. They got permission from the city’s unelected emergency manager–who was appointed by Republican Governor Rick Snyder–to disconnect from Flint’s water and go back to Detroit water. It would be another year before the people of Flint were finally allowed to disconnect from the corrosive Flint River as their water supply and hook up again to the Detroit water system. By then, the Flint River water had corroded the city’s aging pipes, poisoning the drinking water with lead, which can cause permanent developmental delays and neurological impairment, especially in children. We speak with a GM autoworker in Flint about the company’s actions once it realized that Flint’s water was corroding car engines...
https://youtu.be/2I0ShNQC2Cc

Ring of Fire On Free Speech TV | Episode 241 - The Roots Of Flint’s Crisis

If you need proof of how poorly Republicans govern, just take a look at Flint, Michigan, where the ongoing water crisis is the perfect example of what Republican leadership is all about…

Major pharmaceutical companies are trying to hold off on price increases ahead of this year’s election, but only because they want to take the teeth out of healthcare reform…

And Elizabeth Warren says there are two distinct justice systems in America – one for the poor, and one for the wealthy – We’ll bring you the details in tonight’s backstory…
https://youtu.be/Pgh3kL2d-Jc

A congressional hearing for the Flint water crisis

The mayor of Flint asked for more aid during this crisis and governor Rick Snyder was noticeably absent.
https://youtu.be/Ey0mCmU1V6E

Real Time with Bill Maher: Erin Brockovich – February 5, 2016 (HBO)

Consumer advocate Erin Brockovich joins Bill Maher to discuss how greed and corruption created a toxic water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and across the nation.
Interview:
https://youtu.be/qI7p_cFtZ4w

Environmental Injustice: What the Candidates Missed in Flint — and the Rest of the Country

The EPA has never once made a formal finding of a civil rights violation in its 23-year history...
http://www.alternet.org/environment/environmental-injustice-what-candidates-missed-flint-and-rest-country

"There's a Jim Jones in Michigan": Lawmaker Likens Flint Crisis to Cult Leader Who Poisoned Members

Congress held its first hearing Wednesday on lead poisoning in Flint’s water supply. The crisis began after an unelected emergency manager appointed by Republican Governor Rick Snyder switched the source of Flint’s drinking water to the corrosive Flint River. Flint’s former emergency manager, Darnell Earley, refused to testify at the hearing, despite a subpoena. On Tuesday, he announced he was resigning from his current position as emergency manager of the Detroit Public Schools. Republican Congressmember Jason Chaffetz of Utah, chair of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which convened the hearing, said of Earley that he would direct U.S. marshals to "hunt him down" and serve him with a subpoena. We play highlights from the hearing, including Flint resident LeeAnne Walters, who was one of the first to sound the alarm about lead contamination in the water. "Despite the evidence and the fact that my son had lead poisoning, the city and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality still continued to tell everyone that the water was safe," Walters said. Congressmember Sheila Jackson Lee raised the specter of a 1970s cult leader who led the mass murder-suicide of his more than 900 followers, nearly 300 of them children. "There is a Jim Jones in Michigan, who gave a poisoned concoction to children and their families," Lee said.
Interview:
https://youtu.be/IrWZPq7XacY

There’s So Much Lead In Flint’s Water That Filters May No Longer Work

Results of recently-tested water samples, released Friday out of Flint, Michigan, show levels of lead so high in some locations that government-issued filtration systems are unable to effectively treat the water...
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/01/30/3744566/flint-water-lead-exceeds-filters/

Flint Faces Water Crisis Now, And For Years To Come (Tom Ashbrook, On Point)

It’s a ritual we all do every day: turn on the tap and fill up a glass with water. In Flint, Michigan the consequences are catastrophic. The drinking water is contaminated by lead. Four percent of Flint’s children have been poisoned. The Governor declared a state of emergency. State police ready to go door-to-door with bottled water. The White House is monitoring. Parents are up in arms. This hour On Point, infrastructure, water safety, and the crisis in Flint. — Jane Clayson
Interview:
https://onpoint.wbur.org/2016/01/11/flint-water-crisis-lead-water-rick-snyder

Michigan Officials Quietly Gave Bottled Water To State Employees Months Before Flint Residents

The Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget decided to haul water coolers into the Flint state building in January of 2015 out of concern over the city’s water quality, a year before bottled water was being made available to residents, according to documents obtained by Progress Michigan...
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/01/28/3743987/flint-water-state-employees/

Mich. Guv Had 'No Knowledge' State Offered Staff Bottled Water Starting In 2015

FLINT, Mich. (AP) — Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder says he wasn't aware that the state offered fresh bottled water for state employees in Flint starting in January 2015, although residents were told that tap water was safe to drink until last fall. (Reader comments too.)
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/snyder-government-employees-bottled-water-flint