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Obama to Flint: Drink the water and be quiet
By Shannon Jones
5 May 2016

President Barack Obama’s remarks Wednesday in Flint, Michigan before an audience of about 1,000 people at Northwestern High School displayed the arrogance and contempt of his administration and the corporate elite that it represents toward working people suffering from the devastating effects of lead in their drinking water.

Flanked by a host of state and federal officials who oversaw the disaster in Flint, including Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarthy, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and Democratic Congressmen and Senators, the president offered a series of false promises and platitudes. He blandly noted certain symptoms of the social crisis in America—crumbling roads and bridges, aging water pipelines, failing public schools—without acknowledging the role of his administration in presiding over this disaster.

In his trademark folksy and patronizing manner, Obama urged the people of Flint to resume drinking the city’s water, despite test results showing the persistence of dangerous amounts of lead. At the same time, he dismissed the serious short and long-term effects of the poisoning of Flint children by lead-tainted water. “The kids will be just fine,” he said.

To back up this assertion, Obama cited the spurious example of children accidentally chewing on lead flakes from paint. He noted that perhaps he had ingested lead as a child.

Obama also urged Flint residents to begin drinking the water again, which in many areas is brown and still contains high levels of lead. At one point in his remarks he asked for and drank a glass of filtered water, while proclaiming, “This is not a stunt.”

LeeAnne Walters, an activist whose actions played a pivotal role in exposing the lead poisoning of Flint’s water, told the World Socialist Web Site, “Obama’s speech was a complete atrocity. To sit there and tell a city of 100,000 that lead poisoning from drinking water compares to Obama eating paint chips as a kid is incredible. To compare drinking lead poisoned water to paint chips is like comparing apples to toxic waste. We were devastated. We were told our kids don’t matter—not just my kids, but all the children here. We’re talking about the long-term effects.

“He told us to drink the water. That means the programs for filters and bottled water will stop.”

Obama’s visit to Flint coincides with an explosive development of the class struggle in Michigan. It came in the wake of two days of angry protests by teachers in nearby Detroit, Michigan over intolerable conditions in the classrooms and attempts by authorities to rob them of pay. It also coincided with the start of mass water shutoffs in Detroit for households with delinquent bills.

Hundreds of people lined up along the route of Obama’s motorcade in Flint, some holding up signs calling for federal help for the city. Many expressed frustration and anger that work on repairing Flint’s water system has barely begun.

Estimates of the cost of repairing Flint’s antiquated piping run as high as $1.5 billion. Democrats in Congress have advanced penny-pinching proposals amounting to only a few hundred million at most. Obama himself in his remarks made only vague promises of fixing Flint’s pipes, specifying no concrete dollar figure. Instead he touted the work of non-profits, charities and philanthropists in providing assistance to Flint residents. He even cited approvingly the $2,500 raised by a group of prisoners in Indiana.

A central aim of Obama’s remarks was to perpetuate the cover-up of the criminal responsibility of government officials at all levels for the disaster. He made a point at the beginning of the speech of noting the presence of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and chastising those who responded by booing. “We’re doing business here,” Obama said.

Obama blamed the crisis on “poor decisions,” claiming that no one “consciously wanted to hurt the people of Flint.” Instead, officials simply “weren’t attentive to potential problems” when acting under budgetary pressures. “This is not to sort out every screw-up that resulted in contaminated water.”

In fact, officials did not merely make “poor decisions,” they actively conspired to ensure that the water source was switched to the Flint River despite ample warnings of the consequences. Documents show that state environmental officials altered reports in order to minimize the dangers of lead in Flint’s drinking water. When residents began to complain of the contaminated water, local, state and federal officials worked to discredit these complaints and cover-up their responsibility.

Obama wants to avoid an analysis of the “screw-ups” because his administration is itself culpable. The federal Environmental Protection Agency moved to isolate and silence Miguel Del Toral, an EPA officials who warned of elevated lead levels and said that the city was not using corrosion control. The agency regularly allows cities throughout the country to violate the government’s own standards.

Both Democratic and Republican officials were involved in the decision to shift Flint’s water supply to the polluted Flint River. This included former Democratic State Treasurer Andy Dillon who signed off on the decision to shift the Flint water supply.

The crisis in Flint is part of a generalized crisis produced by decades of deindustrialization, budget cuts, the elimination of regulations on corporations and growing social inequality. Basic social services are being starved for funds while the Obama administration lavishes countless billions on the Pentagon war machine and handouts to America’s wealthy elite.

Obama’s remarks on Wednesday were a declaration to the people of Flint and throughout the country that nothing will change, no serious assistance will be provided and that workers should simply stop complaining and be quiet.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/05/05/flin-m05.html

“Obama’s speech was a complete atrocity. To sit there and tell a city of 100,000 that lead poisoning from drinking water compares to Obama eating paint chips as a kid is incredible. To compare drinking lead poisoned water to paint chips is like comparing apples to toxic waste. We were devastated. We were told our kids don’t matter—not just my kids, but all the children here.

Fuck. Even with no elections to win, nobody left to impress (and you know he doesn't give a damn about how Democrats fair in November), this gutless piece of shit tells folks in Detroit - black folks in Detroit - to eat fucking cake. Every "progressive" brain-stem monster in this country should be held down and force-fed lead; and with every fistful they should be told, "Your President says not to worry about it. Shut the fuck up and eat"

Obama in Flint: Let them drink lead
6 May 2016

On Wednesday, US President Barack Obama told the residents of Flint, Michigan that their children, poisoned by water from the contaminated Flint River, and many potentially scarred for life, “will be fine.”

The president’s trip to Flint took place amid an ongoing drinking water crisis in the city, where the water supply was poisoned when it switched its water source to the Flint River in 2014.

After taking a tiny sip of Flint water while delivering a speech at Northwestern High School, the president announced that the water is safe to drink. Obama went on, “I don’t want anybody to start thinking that somehow all the kids in Flint are going to have problems for the rest of their lives, because that’s not true.”

Trivializing the disaster, Obama declared, “If you are my age, or older, or maybe even a little bit younger, you got some lead in your system when you were growing up. You did. I am sure that somewhere, when I was two years old, I was taking a chip of paint, tasting it, and I got some lead.”

Obama’s statements are reminiscent of the declaration attributed to Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France before the Revolution, upon hearing that the population of Paris could not afford bread: “Let them eat cake.” Obama declared instead: Let them drink lead (or eat lead-based paint)!

The attempt to downplay the significance of what has happened in Flint (paralleled in many other cities throughout the country) by referring to the widespread use of lead paint in an earlier period displays an extraordinary level of ignorance and complacency. Regulations on the use of lead paint were bitterly opposed by the paint industry for decades before the clear evidence of its disastrous health consequences, particularly for young children, eventually led to it being banned in the US in 1978.

According to the World Health Organization, lead-based paint continues to cause 600,000 disabilities each year worldwide. Nearly 150,000 people die every year from lead poisoning, with paint a major contributor. Yet Obama would have Flint residents conclude that everything is “fine” because they have ingested lead through their water instead!
In an effort to further minimize the disaster, Obama added, “As long as kids are getting good health care, and folks are paying attention, and they’re getting a good education, and they have community support, and they’re getting some good home training, and they are in a community that is loving and nurturing and thriving, these kids will be fine.”
A thriving community, with quality education and health care system is no description of Flint, America’s second-poorest midsize city. The historic home of General Motors has been polluted and abandoned by the auto companies. It has a child poverty rate of over 40 percent and one of the highest murder rates in the country. During the course of this presidency, Obama has done much to attack health care and public education, subordinating both ever more directly to the profit interests of giant corporations.

Obama made these comments just days after the New York Times article previewing his appearance painted a picture of the shattering effects of the water crisis on Flint residents. The top official coordinating the federal response to the water crisis told the Times, “The first thing I noticed when I got to Flint, quite honestly, was the level of fear and anxiety and distress.” Another local health official said that people were streaming into hospitals with “depression or suicidal ideation directly linked to what’s going on with their children.”

Flint residents who heard Obama’s remarks were disgusted. LeeAnne Walters, whose children had been exposed to lead and who helped lead the fight to reveal the crisis before a national audience, walked out of the meeting.

Obama’s comments in Flint say much about social relations and political life in America. The president is a creature and creation of the ruling class and the political establishment. A “made man” with intelligence connections for his entire adult life, Obama is a millionaire and his friends are millionaires. One doubts if he’s even consciously lying—on some level he likely believes that the problems faced by poor people would just go away if they would stop complaining.

From the 2008 financial crisis, to the BP oil spill, to the General Motors recall, to countless other crimes committed by the government, banks and major corporations, Obama has dusted off the same routine everywhere he goes. He puts on a “folksy” vernacular, gives “shout-outs” to local politicians, mentions the local sports team, and, if the interns did their homework, even a local sandwich shop.

Obama tells his audience there’s nothing to worry about, while gently chiding those responsible. And when, a few years later, he meets the objects of his chastisement on the golf course, he tells them that it was all to put some distance between them and the “pitch-forks.” No one is held responsible, and the world goes on as before.

After more than seven years, Obama appears to be tired of the routine, wanting to finish up his term so he can collect seven figures at a corporate law firm without having to say the word “folks” ever again. He’s putting in less and less effort. Last month, Obama told the New York Times, “Anybody who says we are not absolutely better off today than we were just seven years ago, they’re not leveling with you. They’re not telling the truth.” This despite the fact that the median household income has plunged by thousands of dollars over that time.

The Flint water crisis is a vast social crime for which the Obama administration bears direct responsibility, with the Environmental Protection Agency helping for months to suppress evidence that Flint residents were being poisoned. The city’s decision to switch over from the Detroit Water and Sewerage department was entirely bound up with the reorganization of the region’s water system in connection with the Detroit bankruptcy, which the White House supported and facilitated.

The poisoning of Flint residents is also tied to the Obama administration’s restructuring of GM and Chrysler, which released GM, Michigan’s largest company, of responsibility for cleaning up pollution, including in Flint, while allowing it to close plants and slash the wages and benefits of workers.

But whether it was the extent of his own complicity, or the tone-deaf character of his statements, or even the number of times people had heard the same routine, something was different. His song and dance didn’t work. The Democratic Party functionaries, preachers, and trade union officials that packed the vetted audience cheered, but workers who spoke to the WSWS responded with disgust and hatred in the same way as Ms. Walters.

There is an objective significance to this response. During the Obama presidency, the working class of Michigan has witnessed the foreclosure crisis and economic crisis, the bailout of Wall Street, the pro-business auto restructuring, the Detroit bankruptcy and finally the poisoning of a major American city. Over the past year, workers have begun to fight back with Detroit teachers organizing a struggle against the destruction of public education in the city and Flint residents demanding clean drinking water.

Such experiences are paralleled in different forms throughout the country. Whatever the hopes of Obama, the social anger among workers throughout the country has deep objective roots. It must, however, be given conscious political form and direction, unifying all workers in a common and conscious fight against the capitalist system.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/05/06/pers-m06.html