Flint’s Water Crisis Is No Accident. It’s the Result of Years of Devastating Free-Market Reforms.

[eridani]

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18794/flint-water-crisis-neoliberalism-free-market-reforms-rick-snyder

The spectacle of a community knowingly poisoned has rightly captured the attention of the national media. But Flint’s water emergency also speaks to a much larger crisis. Flint has spent the last two generations battling hostile suburbs for a rational distribution of regional taxes, as Daniel Hertz recently explained in these pages. The competition between municipalities has pitted Flint against its suburbs, producing a race to the bottom in taxation as local officials strive to produce a “better business environment” at the expense of schools, health and public safety.

The city has been blindsided by GM’s strategy of profit maximization, as the company shifted tens of thousands of jobs to the South, West, and beyond, in order to avoid unionized workers. Of the 80,000 GM jobs once located in Flint, some 8,000 remain, while unemployment is double the national average and poverty hovers at 40 percent of the population.

At the same time, the city has seen state interest wane as its demographics have shifted as a result of white flight and regional impoverishment. And while state officials have now recognized the city’s water problem, little has been said about its shuttered schools, lack of safety or grim poverty statistics.

The few public funds that do exist for Flint demonstrate the narrow vision of contemporary urban and social policy. The state government has earmarked federal “Hardest Hit” funds, meant to keep underwater homeowners in their houses, for demolishing vacant structures instead. Likewise, local officials and elites advocate for “shrinking city” strategies in Flint and Detroit.

These policies offer no solutions to struggling residents, instead assuming that poor and high vacancy neighborhoods will eventually revert to urban green space following a period of government inaction. What happens to the poor and working-class people who used to live in those new green spaces? No one seems to care.

[yeoman6987]

1. Absolutely

But the state needs to restructure the state tax allowing under funded cities to get money from other cities. It is not the fault of flint and detroit that they don't get enough property taxes to run the city. More needs to be give from wealthier areas.

[KG]

2. it's been a bi-partisan effort

[burrowowl]

3. All involved

especially the Governor should be prosecuted for willful poisoning of thousands of children!

[Octafish]

4. They let New Orleans drown.

When people tried to walk out, they were shot.

The conservative spirit in action is inaction with violence toward the oppressed when necessary for control.

[The Second Stone]

5. The Constitution guarantees a republican form of government in all the states

and what Flint got was an appointed dictator. Flint should sue to have the "emergency manager" (dictator) law declared unconstitutional.

[bemildred]

6. Correct. nt

[nilesobek]

7. In China this criminal Snyder

would have already been taken behind the courthouse and shot. Republicans=above the law. I'm not going to war for the MIC, nor will my sons. They will have to defend their coastal mansions all by themselves.

[raouldukelives]

8. It's the Wall St way. Hollow it out from within, take the money and run.

Let the next chump "Do the right thing". Our country and municipality's exist to serve to corporate shareholders and will do so valiantly until they cannot. Rinse, lather, repeat.