Governor Rick Snyder,
I listened to your State of the State (SOTS) address Tuesday night and was sickened by your total and complete lack of anything even remotely resembling compassion regarding the Flint Water Crisis. When you concluded your speech by stating that you promised to “fix” this, my first thought was:
“What part of permanent brain damage does he fail to comprehend?”
You need to stop trying to shift the blame. You are Governor Rick Snyder – that means the buck stops with you and only you. That is the burden of public office.
I should properly introduce myself, so you know who I am and what stake I have in this whole process. I’ve been spearheading the fight against your policies since February of 2011. As soon as the draft language came out on the bills that later combined to become PA4 of 2011 (signed by you on March 16, 2011). The draft language so closely mirrored the Enabling Act of 1933 (Germany) that I knew I had to get involved.
I was integral in the filing of the first two recall petitions attempting to stop you.
In April 2011, at the first language clarity hearing in Washtenaw, I tangled with your stuffed shirt, John Pirich. You can watch his puffery and blatantly ostentatious attempt to declare our language ‘unclear’ in the video. I make my appearance at the 10:44 mark and completely obliterated his ten minute argument in a matter of seconds.
In April 2012, you sent the second string, Attorney Andrea Hansen, to defend against the recall language which you found offensive because of the phrase “Governor Snyder has abused the children of Michigan.” She wasn’t nearly as long-winded or well-prepared as Mr. Pirich, so she finished her ineffective argument in only 4.5 minutes. I make my appearance in this second video at the 4:29 mark. I decimated her argument too, with straight up common sense.
Now you know who I am – Just A Mom – with a child who attends public schools in the state of Michigan. We are not pleased.
This all boils down to one thing – and I think you know that. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-inspired language that became MI PA4 of 2011. The citizens of Michigan repealed that law in November 2012 by an overwhelming vote, only to have you re-enact it FIVE WEEKS later, under a different name, with a few slight changes, and including an as-yet-unused appropriation to keep citizens from repealing it again.
That second ALEC-inspired piece of crap legislation now rides the books of Michigan as MI PA436 of 2012. It was swept in and passed, along with 282 other pieces of crap legislation during a whirlwind lame duck session that lasted ten days and kept our legislators in their seats well into the night on more than one occasion in December of 2012.
You justified the PA4 of 2011 by stating we needed it to “fix” financially distressed communities and school districts. You claimed it was to be used “sparingly” and only when necessary. You then proceeded to have over 400 people trained as Emergency Managers. That told me that you had no intention of using it sparingly. In fact, revisiting a campaign interview you gave a few days before the election in 2010, you gave away your intentions and your agenda in your final statement:
“Literally there’s a fairly significant likelihood that you could have hundreds of jurisdictions going insolvent in the 2013, 14 time frame, if not sooner. It’s not just a Michigan issue. This is the next hidden national issue.”
If only more people had listened. You laid out your plan, right there, plain and simple. All you had to do to make that prediction come true was to decimate the finances of the communities you wanted to take over.
Your rush to pass unconstitutional laws was very evident from the beginning of your first term. You bragged about working “in dog years” to reinvent ruin Michigan as fast as you possibly could. It will take more than 20 years to repair what you have demolished in just five short years.
Now you have a colossal mess – all in the name of saving $100 a day over a two year period. So, in exchange for saving approximately $73,000 you have poisoned 100,000 people, many of them children, caused 87 others to get sick from Legionnaire’s disease, and caused the death of ten people. You poisoned an entire generation of children to save $73,000. That should make you feel like crap… but instead it appears to have made you feel it necessary to cover your own ass and throw other people under the bus.
Your office and other appointees are jumping ship with reckless abandon. Diving off a sinking ship destined for the bottom of a political quagmire of the legacy you made for yourself. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) has lost the two top slots. Your own press secretary, who has faithfully repeated your lies and covered your misdeeds with rationalizations for five years has stepped down. The paddle has shit all over it and people just keep handing it back to you. Whatever are you to do?
Right now you’re refusing to accept that paddle and are just floating down shit creek without it. Perhaps you should grab hold of it and develop a plan of action that includes rebuilding the infrastructure of Flint’s devastated water system; preparing for and adequately funding special education programs in this state that will follow and assist every single one of those children that have been exposed to this atrocity; removing any personnel from office that were complicit in the cover up of this whole mess from day one; and a host of other things that will serve to make this at least a little better.
You can’t “fix” this and you can’t make it just go away. All you can do at this point is try to make it better. You need to spend the rest of your life working on that, both in and out of public office.
