'The decorations, I'm told were a deep blue with diamonds.....
Nothing says you care about the people of Flint like hosting an opulent party for your friends in downtown Ann Arbor behind blacked out windows
By Mark | February 4, 2016
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In the whole scheme of things, having a party behind covered windows with a bunch of rich folks, eating expensive cake while poor people suffer, probably isn’t that big of a deal. Compared with lying about water quality, and encouraging people to keep drinking poison, it’s really inconsequential. I think, however, it illustrates just how little the people we elect to look after our interests here in Michigan really care about us. While they may give a good speech or two, vowing to work diligently and make things right, all they really care about is moving the needle on public opinion enough so that they can keep going, doing exactly what they were doing before.
I like to think, if I had just played a pivotal role in one of the biggest public poisonings in our nation’s history, I might be a little more conscious of my actions and how they might come across to those who either lost family members to Legionnaires’ disease, or will likely spend their entire lives worrying about their children’s health and how their futures will be affected by lead poisoning. To have such a party, given the context of what’s going on in Flint, not only demonstrates a complete lack of decency, but also levels of stupidity and contempt that are truly breathtaking.
And, before you start writing your irate comments, no, I don’t begrudge this politician’s wife her expensive cake. I just think this demonstrates yet once again the contempt this administration has for the people of Michigan. To think that they can continue on, as though nothing has changed, is absolutely insane to me. In an ideal world, a leader confronted by a situation like this would have immediately moved his/her office to Flint, and would have made sure people knew he/she was fighting every day, from sun up to sun down, to get water trucks on every corner and medical care for every man, woman and child. A decent leader would have gone on every news channel available to them, and demanded that the President come to Flint, and see firsthand what these people are dealing with. A decent leader wouldn’t be at a hidden party in Ann Arbor, counting on the people of America to send individual bottles of clean water to the people of Flint. And I sure as hell don’t think a good, responsible leader would have told people as late as December that the water of Flint was likely safe to drink, knowing full well that it wasn’t, or deny that there was a link between the Flint River and Legionnaires’ disease for an entire year, when they’d known since last March that they were linked.
All of that aside, one hopes this big, lavish party was as fun as hell for all involved… as it may be the last one some of these folks see for a long, long time.
update: OK things have apparently taken off a bit since I posted this last night. Most notably, my friend Amber Fellows did some detective work, searching through the social media accounts of local cake shops, and found the above photo. Then, having seen that, the folks at MLive called up the cake shop in question and began asking questions. Heather Anne Leavitt, who made the cake, told them that she had no idea who the cake was for. “I had no idea, like seriously no idea,” she told them. “We delivered it to the West End Grill and put it down and I’m taking photos of the cake. Then Claudia, who was also working on the cake with me, looks up and sees Rick Snyder on all the photos in the room, and so we put two and two together. We knew that renting out West End Grill is not a cheap thing to do on a Saturday night, but we have a lot of high end clients. We just didn’t know this one was the Governor.” So, yes, it’s now public knowledge that party in question was thrown by Rick Snyder for the First Lady of Michigan, and that it was held at the West End Grill…
.Drip, drip, drip… Little by little, ike dirty water from a tap in Flint, the truth keeps coming out.
http://markmaynard.com/2016/02/fiddling-while-flint-burns-a-blind-item-about-an-administration-that-clearly-doesnt-care/
= new reply since forum marked as read
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