Depends. Pipes are made from different materials. A common bureaucrat has pretty much no chance to be aware about effect of chlorides on metals, and on content of toxic metals in commonly used old alloys.
Because people are dumb and are more likely to scarf down sportsball results than metallurgy.
Most likely rundown from deicing of roads.
Chlorides on their own aren’t intrinsically bad. It’s in the interaction within the fairly complex system when they can show their bad side.
Well gee, I’m so happy to hear what you think about “real journalists.” Do you write on this subject often? Where can I subscribe?
Me, I’ll take some righteous indignation, well laced with hyperbole, over your prissy requirements any day. I want people up in arms, and Mr. Moore may be just the person to raise a groundswell.
See also milliefink at Post 17.
Ahh, one minute of choice every few years!
This. This. My sentiments exactly.
That’s not entirely accurate, I was pointing out the hyperbolic fallacy of the article when @milliefink pointed out it doesn’t matter if the end justifies the means - and I agree about that when the end is helping the people affected by the water in Flint, and the means is energizing rhetoric.
This is the best sentence I’ve read all day. For like, a million reasons.
I want to press the “like” button another 50 times. Well, at least I could get one “like” in. Well stated!
Forgive my naivete, but is that bad? A friend whom I trust a great deal when it comes to passing on reliable information shared it.
No, it’s not bad. 538 lives and breathes statistics. They originally began as an incredibly accurate poll aggregator.
Because they can’t afford to go elsewhere? Same thing that happened in Detroit, the people with the means (first whites, then more affluent blacks) left the black working class to clean up the mess:
Moving the shopping from inside the city to outside the city - I don’t know if that’s in the book or not, but I lived in Detroit from 1964 until 1990 (I live in Warren now - don’t get me started, lol), and until someone pointed that out to me, I didn’t even make the connection. But it makes a lot of sense as one factor in people leaving.
And drive-by shootings of houses across the street from where we lived was our particular reason.
Oddly enough, I love Detroit and would love to live there again. I could go on and on and on, but I won’t because it’s bad form.
That’s an interesting point, that I don’t remember him dwelling on. But yeah, malls were suburban for sure, and probably helped drive people out of city centers (not just Detroit, either) in addition to housing developments on the edges of cities. He focuses more on the role of jobs and the runaway factory. People left in part because good jobs were leaving, so it wasn’t just about race or class. You could go back to what Ta-Nehisi Coates has recently been arguing about African Americans being essentially pilfered via taxation, with city services evaporating along with jobs in places like Detroit, but tax burdens not really changing for people who are left behind.
You should read this book if you’re interested in the history of Detroit at all. It’s a pretty eye opening look at how white flight/class flight operated in the wake of civil rights victories in the early 60s (and shows that it wasn’t just a southern thing, either).
I readily acknowledge that I cannot possibly comprehend the situation within the context of my limited experiences, but does there not eventually come a point where it’s better to get on the next bus out of town heading anywhere rather than stick around and attempt to start a family?
Sure, but I think we have to account for the fact that people who are at the bottom of the economic ladder suffer from a lack of choices that people with even a little bit of money might have. Plus, what about people who already have a family there and are fully entrenched in the community? It’s much harder to uproot with a family and very little money. It was the same as with Katrina in 2005 - the people who could get out, did get out. Lots of people literally couldn’t leave (lack of transportation, they were homebound, etc). I’m not sure sticking them with the blame because of their lack of choices is really where we need to go here. The blame rests squarely on the decision to switch to the Flint River instead of water from Detroit to “save money”. The state running local governments in Michigan has been an unmitigated disaster and is deeply anti-democratic to boot.
And they are attempting to the same thing in New Jersey, with Atlantic City:
http://www.northjersey.com/news/state-plans-to-take-reins-of-atlantic-city-1.1499202?page=all
BTW, I’m not saying you’re victim blaming here, but I guarantee that someone is using that exact same logic to do that.
Michael Moore is more of a shotgun than a sniper rifle. Your expectations of him might need adjusting?
