Flint Water Debacle - Yet Another Result Of Our Crumbling Infrastructure

The water calamity unfolding in Flint, MI has many causes - including the neglect and crass cost-saving efforts of the Repuke Snyder administration (decision to use water from the Flint River instead of tapping Detroit's). But the primary oversight was in not attending to the city's deplorable water pipes - already corroded even before the Flint River change caused lead to leach from the pipes into the water. Effectively poisoning thousands of kids in the city, with devastating consequences to I.Q. as well as probably leading to higher crime rates.  See e.g.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline

This is part and parcel of the ongoing national debacle of allowing a rotting infrastructure to proliferate. We act like essential idiots, paying more attention to the Business News crawl of the DOW's daily gyrations, than to our REAL wealth - tied up in water mains, pipes. highways, bridges and sewer systems. Yet the cost of that unattended and lackadaisically maintained infrastructure is growing by the day. The American Society of Civil Engineers already estimates a cost of over $2 trillion to attain a stage of basic repair.

The water pipe issues, in fact, are not new. Many may recall barely two years ago the incident near Charleston, WVA,  At that time a solvent known as MCHM ( methylcyclohexane methanol ) leaked from a chemical storage plant and invaded the entire water supply system from the treatment plant to the pipes in people's homes. Even after the water itself had been restored to its original drinkable-washable form, it remained subject to re-contamination as it passed through the now MCHM -laden pipes.  Hence, the complaints of people (as reported on the news shows then) that they still smelled the licorice odor of the chemical. Of course they did, because the water collected it as it's transferred into and out of the pipes. To be clear-  as in Flint -  all the pipes needed to be replaced, though the authorities were reluctant to admit it.

Too much expense. But they're perfectly ok with thousands being poisoned and health expenses.

As long ago as 2011, The Economist   ('Life in the Slow Lane', Apil 30, p. 29) delivered a blistering assessment of the nation's infrastructure that was enough to make any red-blooded American sit up and take note. Then puke.

In examining the state of U.S. infrastructure, especially in comparison to other industrialized western nations, we brought up the rear in just about every category. It was enough of an Rx to cure once and for all the misplaced and delusional belief in American exceptionalism.

It is really eerie, creepy and more than a little sickening, to behold how so many in this country have been eerily fixated on the rise and fall of the stupid DOW while their national infrastructure has essentially regressed to the status of a third world nation's. It is more than a little frightening also, that people can become so transfixed by an artificial set of numbers based on phantom money  (e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2009/04/why-few-will-make-money-with-stocks.html ) while the very concrete developments that support it lay crumbling across the land: from burst sewer mains in Atlanta, to burst water mains in Colorado Springs and Denver (most over 100 years old), to collapsing bridges such as the one shown in Minneapolis from some years back. All symptoms of a country with misplaced priorities. A nation that would rather piss trillions away on military occupations  and tax cuts (like the $660b one in December) than spend for true domestic security.

The Economist piece noted that while the American highway system (mainly constructed in the 1950s when infrastructure spending was a healthy 4.8% of GDP) was a shining beacon, it is now a near travesty. The degenerating quality of the roads sees Americans spending more time commuting than nearly all Europeans with the exception of the Hungarians and Romanians, still trying to dig out from the communist-depleted pasts. The longer commute time means more time wasted as well as more potential for deadly accidents.

Rail is not much better. What most of us who have traveled overseas behold here is not a patch on the rail systems of the Germans, Austrians  or Swiss. In fact, the rail systems here are downright retro by comparison. While the fastest U.S. rail transit is the northeastern corridor's Acela (between D.C. and Boston) which moves at 70 mph, the French TGV from Paris to Lyon travels at an average speed of twice that, or 140 mph. Japanese trains go even faster, up to 220 mph. Not only are American trains slow, the Economist observed, they are usually late, with a 77% punctuality rating compared to 99.9% for the Swiss and 98% for the Germans. But then the Swiss and Germans don't squander their capital and resources on useless "wars".

The Economist noted that "between 1956 and 1992 America constructed the interstate highway system, among the largest public works projects in history which criss-crossed the contry with nearly 50,000 miles of motorways." So what happened? Well, according to the report, "modern America is stingier". The total public spending on works is now barely 2.4% of GDP compared to the average 5% of GDP in European nations. I would also add that this diminished contribution parallels the nation's ever diminishing vision, which has almost correlated with its increasing finacialization, e.g. enhancing growth in "financial services" - stock managers, bond traders, investment bankers...at the expense of supporting engineering works.

And don't even get me started on antiquated water and sewer systems now affecting over 22,000 mid to large size communities with pipes over 75 years and corroding just like Flint's.  Rather than replace the damned pipes with new ones, the cheapskates have taken to using a chemical proclaimed to inhibit corrosive effects and prevent lead from leaching out. But this is a temporary fix at best and eventually those pipes will have to be replace or we will all be facing a water crisis just like Flint's.

What is the solution? WHERE do we get that $2 trillion to begin maintaining our infrastructure - which admittedly is not as sexy as stocks? The Economist for its part (p. 31) proposed introducing a "fuel tax rate increase"(currently at 18.4 c a gallon) but they also noted that "these are even more unpopular than deficits". Well, tough luck! Do Americans want to be able to keep driving without breaking an axle on a pothole or not? DO they want to retain other benefits, like drinkable water, or not? It's time to make up their minds! And it's time for politicians to stop game-playing and coddling people with the myth they can have endless tax cuts and also have a prosperous nation.

Flint is the 'canary in the coal mine' warning us of the dystopic future that we all face if we don't wake the fuck up for once and get our national priorities in order!

YES! That Damned Rebel Flag Needs To Come Down In South Carolina

The despised Confederate flag, cradled by Dylan Roof - which even Mitt Romney now tweets ought to be removed from the South Carolina State Capitol.

The newly released images from a secret hate website manned by racist killer Dylann Roof, have not only revealed multiple scenes of this vermin with Confederate flags -  but also  spitting on and burning American flag. In addition, he displays a disgusting, hate-filled manifesto. (Some query whether he really wrote it, but the sentiments expressed are the same as those he's already divulged, e.g. to his "friends".) The new revelations have been so graphic and sordid to even prompt Republican Mitt Romney to tweet for the removal of the Confederate Battle flag from the South Carolina capitol. Well, at least one major Republican - and a former presidential candidate - has the balls to call out for what's needed! Good on you, Mitt, at least for this!

Kudos are also due to SC State Rep Doug Brannon, another Republican, who has vowed to introduce legislation this December to remove the Confederate Battle Flag from the state capitol. In addition, there has now been an outpouring of demands from SC citizens to "Take down that flag of my ancestors' heritage!"

Getting rid of that degenerate piece of rotten fabric really ought to be no biggie for anyone with a grain of sense and common decency - especially after what the newly released images show.

My wake up call on flags  - namely those of enemies and why they don't merit being hoisted- occurred when I was in Dissen, West Germany in May, 1985. This was not long after our host (Reinhardt) had driven us to the East German border to the town of Allendorf. We emerged from the car and walked to the border near a river bank in the literal shadow of a manned guard tower. There East German soldiers actually (briefly) pointed rifles at our heads. Reinhardt swore he saw them laughing, but my eyes weren't that great. I had to take his word for it.

We did get several shots of the armed guard tower, which featured in several of Reinhardt's slides we all watched later: Reinhardt, me, his wife Elli and Janice.


The slide above shows the armed guard tower, erected (like hundreds of others)  so that any East Germans attempting to escape to the West (West Germany) would be shot on sight. Reinhardt told me even two weeks earlier two had been shot and killed as they tried to get through.  Another slide showed the hated East German flag, the symbol of oppression for millions.

Below, we're seen watching the scenes, including one - slide I've since  lost - of me standing at the near side river's edge, with the guard seen in the tower in the background

When the slide of the East German flag appeared, Reinhardt said: "One day Germany will be one, east and west united, and this flag will fly no more."  By 1990 this had happened, and when we visited Munich and Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 2013 and met Reinhardt again, I asked if any such flags had survived.

He responded, "Yes, in some museums".

He then asked me pointed questions over Spaetzli  and dunkel beer that I could not answer: "How is it that in your country - the U.S.  - you still have Confederate war memorials, but here in Germany no town or village is  permitted a single Third Reich memorial?  Also, how can some of your people fly those crossed bar Confederate flags but here one would be prosecuted if he flew a swastika flag?"

I had no answers - but his questions made sense. Why indeed? The Confederate battle flag, like the Nazi swastika, was the emblem of hateful aggressive losers. After the Civil War, given the South had lost, it ought to have been retired  to museums (like swastikas in Germany)  but instead had found its way to rise above state capitols, such as in South Carolina.

Today it remains the same symbol of hate - as much as the swastika - and this isn't a matter of "political correctness" either - any more than the E. German flag's prohibition was political correctness after reunification. It isn't any coincidence that the hateful turd Roof was captured in photos showing an '88' t-shirt (white supremacist code for “Heil Hitler”) and also the Confederate flag. The two go together like dung and donkey piss.

It also isn't a matter of "subjectivity". NO black man who beholds the Stars n' Bars can see anything other than an evil symbol of oppression and aggression, the same reaction evoked in German Jews who see the swastika or former E. Germans who see the hated flag of E. Germany.

Thus, as numerous media and other voices (including Romney's)  have called for, this flag needs to come down and be retired to a museum with all the other paraphernalia of Southern "heritage".. It was bad enough the damned thing was flying high in the state capitol after the massacre of nine black innocents in Charleston. The very fact that the U.S. and State flags were at half mast - as per decorum - but the Confederate flag remained high, said it all. Silently gave testimony to a state that - though it yearned for unity in the wake of the killings - bestowed benediction on hate by the Battle Flag that flew high.

In the aftermath, assorted namby -pamby talking heads like Lindsey Graham bellyached that it couldn't  be taken down because it was part of "our Southern heritage" but "a compromise might work". This deranged fool also added: "“this is part of who we are. The flag represents — to some people — the Civil War, and that was the symbol of one side.”   Bull pockey!  The East German flag and the Nazi swastika also represented "one side"  in different contexts (Cold War, WWII) but that doesn't mean they're allowed to be openly hoisted in public places any more!

 Will these traitorous supporters  (especially Reepo politicians like Graham) ever get it into their heads they LOST the war? That instead of celebrating their odious leaders - like Jeff Davis and John C. Calhoun and Robert E. Lee- they ought to be hanging their heads in shame? Where does it end?

 I thought is was bad enough when, ten years ago - in an issue of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Review, there was a section devoted to how Southerners were buying KKK outfits and Confederate Battle flags (and other clothing emblazoned with it), for....TODDLERS! How outlandish and over the top can you get? Don't these people understand that the Confederate Battle Flag is an affront to all black people as well as all civilized people with any iota of sensitivity? It is an emblem of the slavery and abuse at the hands of the Southern slave owners!

Still, what pro-Confederate Southerners do with their flags and Rebel paraphernalia on their own time and dime (and in their own homes) is their business. If they want to plaster all the walls in their homes with Rebel flags or photos of Jeff Davis, that's their business. Same with flying it in the front of their own homes. Where I have a problem is when it's flown in a public space, intimating that all citizens of the place or state are agreeable to its hidden messages, oppression, slavery, symbolism for "heritage" or whatever. No they are not! Not any more than flying a Nazi flag would be in Dissen, Germany today.


Some deluded supporters of this piece of antiquated refuse have actually suggested that "it's how it's used that matters". Uh, no, Sparky, it's what it REPRESENTS!

In addition, digging up some obscure image of some poor old black guy carrying this symbol of his ancestors' oppression doesn't prove it's accepted by blacks, or that its position in the South Carolina Capitol of Columbia is justified. It is merely a cheap ploy unworthy of a really thoughtful blogger or commentator.

Sadly, all this shows how far we have to go and the first step for healing in Charleston is getting rid of that damned, demented symbol and sticking it in the back room of a museum.


See also:

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/19/lindsey_graham_the_confederate_flag_is_part_of_who_we_are_in_south_carolina_even_if_its_a_racist_symbol/

Racist Domestic Terror In Charleston, SC - What's Behind It?

The racist domestic terrorist, Dylann Storm Roof,  who needs to be taken down like a rabid dog.

By now everyone is aware of the massacre of nine African-Americans in an historical Charleston, SC church. Video imagery has captured a white gunman - now identified as 21 year old  Dylann Storm Roof by the FBI . This POS actually sat with church goers (doing a bible study class)  calmly for an hour before opening fire. According to eye witnesses this maggot Roof reloaded five times and at the end had taken the lives of nine (6 women and 3 men),  including the pastor, a black state senator, in an attack the U.S. Department of Justice called a hate crime.

Well, of course it is a hate crime! DOH!  One does not need a Mensa level IQ to grasp that. (Or shouldn't) Any little scumball who'd go into an all black church and gun down its worshippers is a disgusting racist termite - no two ways about it. And yes, his crime is not only mass murder but mass murder done as a hate crime. For this, this sandy-haired shooter with the fucked-up name, Dylann Storm Roof,   needs to be hunted down like a rabid dog.

Charleston Mayor Joe Riley told reporters:

"This is an unfathomable and unspeakable act by somebody filled with hate and with a deranged mind,"

Roof  may have a "deranged mind" but it was certainly filled with hate. Where he got it, who knows? Did he listen to too much talk (hate) radio, slapping down black people as "apes"?  We know, from David Livingstone's book 'Less Than Human' that when  an entire race is denigrated whether as "apes" in the case of blacks, or "rats" in the case of German Jews (during the Third Reich) than the enslavement and slaughter of people belonging to those groups becomes easier because the whole class has been de-humanized.

Maybe also Roof fell victim to vile propaganda spewed as in hate billboards across the South (e.g. SPLC Intelligence Report, Summer, 2015, p. 5).  The epicenter of white nationalism and billboard hate now appears to be Harrison, Arkansas. According to the SPLC (ibid.):

"A billboard war that started in 2013 continued to rage in the small city of Harrison, Ark.,  which to the dismay of many locals has become a battleground for white nationalists bent on promoting racism and sowing discord. "

The fact is we don't know exactly what spawned Dylann Storm Roof's  hate, but - as previous SPLC Reports have noted - we know there's been a steady uptick in hate groups and hate crimes since Obama was elected in 2008.  Indeed, the hate momentum was fueled further after Obama's 2012 re-election, very likely because all the racists were convinced Mitt Romney the plutocrat would be the white 'savior'  to finally replace him. When it didn't happen, they went bonkers. So we beheld racist swine from Texas to Virginia hanging our president in effigy via the chair prop introduced by relic Clint Eastwood at the GOOP  convention in July, 2012.

We also saw students on election night at the University of Mississippi going ape shit,  hanging then burning effigies of President-elect Obama after the final, projected winning returns were tallied on CNN.. The haters simply couldn't take it and there also followed many incidents - mainly in the South- and often included presumed Obama voters beaten up. For what, exercising their franchise? Evidently! (They exercised it for the wrong guy, according to the misfits.)

There are a number of books that are useful in exploring further this penchant for human hate and degradation.   One such work is Simon Baron-Cohen's, Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty. The aim of this (2011)  book is to explore how it is some humans can be so incredibly cruel, and wreak havoc on so many while pouring out racial, ethnic and other hatred. What is it that turns  people to misshapen monsters? Baron-Cohen, a renowned Cambridge psychologist, is well qualified to pursue this issue and answer the question of the ages: What is cruelty? What is evil? And can they be explained scientifically?

As an objective scientist, Cohen dislikes the term "evil" (freighted as it is with supernaturalism and emotion) as much as I do. In place he uses "empathy erosion" as an alternative. Empathy is just the capacity to feel what another person does, put oneself in his place, and hence - be able to feel his pain. For example, it would be analogous to putting oneself in the place of a poor black, say being racially mistreated or abused in the Old South, before Civil Rights came in. Putting oneself in his place, one would feel his pain and want to do anything to help him. Not doing so, and the person would either join in setting attack dogs on him, or stand by and watch while KKK'ers beat him, which is even worse.

Because empathy erosion is more measurable than the term evil (since one can gauge its presence or absence by using positron emission (PE) tomography in the region of the brain called the posterior superior temporal sulcus) then it's more useful since it's quantifiable. A typical way to do a base quantification would be to hook the person up then show him assorted photos, such as concentration camp scenes, and measure the response. If the PE  radiance region area is maxed out at a certain limit, than that discloses highest empathy. If not, then empathy is absent and hence there is erosion .

The Nazis were not totally insensitive to how their victims were feeling, they simply didn't care! They lacked empathy and hence displayed monstrous empathy erosion. Hitler displayed some of the least empathy, and as explained in one earlier theory by Harvey Hornstein (Cruelty and Kindness: A New Look at Aggression and Altruism,1976, Prentice-Hall) his own empathy erosion probably arose from having authoritarianism imposed on him: His father Alois used to beat the boy senseless, and often for no reason. Later, devoid of empathy, Hornstein reasons Hitler took out his pain on the Jews.

Did this little Charleston, SC racist maggot take out his "pain" on innocent blacks? We don't know because we can't be sure in his earlier life there was even some excitation of pain centers. Was Roof beaten by a gang of blacks? Did he call them "apes" or "thugs" to incite their reaction? Did a black teacher take a paddle to Roof's  behind for some misbehavior? We don't know, but in any case none of those can be used for justification of his bestial act. Even if Roof  was beaten senseless by the Crips it doesn't justify mass murder.

If a gang victim, Dylann Roof's  response ought to have been to man up and report his beating to the law, not become his own judge, jury and executioner.  If, OTOH, he'd harbored deep seated Obama-hatred and took that out on nine innocents, he'd also have done better to grow up and suck it up.   You don't get to kill nine innocents in a church to feed your hate of Obama!

What should happen to this piece of refuse, Roof, if found guilty and condemned to death? Maybe do a partial electrocution - to the point his eyes are nearly popping out of his head and his face is sizzling- then finish it off with a trip to the gas chamber.

In any case, an example needs to be set. The problem is it likely won't reach that phase because when finally cornered Dylann Roof - evident punk that he is-  will probably off himself. Or the cops will do it - which has the benefit of saving the good taxpayers of Charleston, SC hundreds of thousands of bucks!

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/bill-berkowitz/62712/homegrown-right-wing-racist-terrorist-massacres-church-goers-in-charleston-south-carolina

See also this  salon.com piece, torching the idiocy from some on the Right that "we don't know it's a hate crime" (Doh! We DO! Stop being so delusional and in denial!)

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/notallwhitepeople_twitter_racists_react_to_news_of_dylann_storm_roofs_killing_spree_with_delusional_denial/