OVERVIEW
MANAGEMENT
PERFORMANCE
POSSIBILITIES
CAPITALS
ACTIVITIES
ACTORS
BURGESS
|
WATER
FLINT, MICHIGAN Why did a Democratic AG kill the Flint water RICO case? 
Original article: https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/dana-nessel-flint/ Burgess COMMENTARY The 'social contract' in the United States has always been very weak. Rather, there has been a culture of individual self reliance. When I was visiting North American as a student in 1960 I had a summer job in Montreal. I worked 7 days a week from 4 pm to 8 am (16 hours) as the safety boatman on a work-site in the middle of the St Lawrence River. For 99% of the time there sas nothing to do and I kept myself from being totally bored by reading. I read books from the economics section (in English) of the Montreal Public Library. This was more a collection of popular economics books than a collection of academic texts. Many of the books were asking the question about economic growth in the USA and Canada now that the Western frontier has no more. Many of these texts argued that economic growth could not remain healthy unless more and more land was settled and developed ... and that since all the productive land in North America had now been taken there could not be economic growth. There was also the idea that government having the land did nothing, but an individual or family having the land was the way to progress. Some of this writing went back to the 19th century and the very early 20th century ... and none of these books on economics in North America that I read in 1960 had much use for the role of the State in economic and social progress. I started my formal training in economics at Cambridge in the fall after this summer of reading. The early writing about economics in the UK and in Europe that I was now studying had very little of the 'frontier' economics that I had immersed myself in while reading through the night for much of the summer in Canada. Fast forward to the 2020s and it is apparent that the USA is still considerably influenced by the economics of individualism and the idea that Government has no utility. Bluntly put ... it helps to explain the popularity of the attack on American democracy in Washington on January 6th. When I compare the administrative performance of government at all levels in the USA with performance of government in some of the European countries it becomes apparent that US effectiveness compares rather badly. Though the US usually spends more money, it does rather little with it. In the USA the oversight of Government spending is more procedural than useful ... and the incidence of useless 'pork barrel' programs commonplace. There is a certain amount of focus on the Federal Government in Washington ... but issues are the lack of performance at the level of SDtate and Local government is arguably far more problematic. Peter Burgess | ||
|
Why did a Democratic AG kill the Flint water RICO case?
Kenny Stancil and Common Dreams January 18, 2022 Prosecutors investigating Flint's contaminated water crisis were pursuing a racketeering case against public officials whose austerity-driven policies caused the health catastrophe, but after newly elected Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel took over in 2019, those charges were dropped. That's according to investigative journalist Jordan Chariton and Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Charlie LeDuff's explosive new story, which was published Monday in The Guardian and sparked fresh questions about holding perpetrators responsible for the ongoing calamity. The Flint water crisis began nearly eight years ago when an unelected emergency manager appointed by then-Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, made the cost-cutting decision to switch the city's tap water source from Detroit's municipal supply to the Flint River, whose highly corrosive water caused aging pipes to leak lead into thousands of homes. From 2016 to 2018, prosecutors working under Michigan's Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette were reportedly preparing to use a federal anti-organized crime statute—the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act—against state and city officials who, along with JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, played a role in the poisoning of Flint. But after those investigators were dismissed and the probe resumed under a new team, the RICO case never materialized. Environmental justice defender Monica Lewis-Patrick said Monday that 'water warriors NEED to know' why Nessel 'dropped the RICO charges in the Flint water crisis.' When Republican Schuette was running for governor against then-Democratic candidate Gretchen Whitmer in 2018, Nessel, a Democrat, characterized the term-limited AG she was aiming to replace as 'an opportunist who has used the crisis to further his political ambitions via a series of politically charged show trials' and vowed to revamp the investigation. Soon after winning and taking office, Nessel fired the lead prosecutors and investigators working on the Schuette-launched probe, and restarted the inquiry with a new team. 'At that point,' Chariton and LeDuff reported, 'the prosecution team assembled by Schuette had been working for nearly three years—and filed criminal charges against 15 Michigan state and Flint city officials, including four officials charged with financial fraud that prosecutors said triggered the water crisis.' 'But when Nessel relaunched the investigation,' the pair wrote, 'her office dropped charges against top state and city officials, citing flaws in the Schuette-era investigation. In 2021, Nessel's office recharged several of those defendants—with a new round of indictments that included involuntary manslaughter, misconduct in office, obstruction of justice, extortion, and perjury. But gone were the financial fraud charges.' Last November, a federal judge approved a $626 million settlement for thousands of lead poisoning victims in Flint, but Chariton and LeDuff wrote Monday that 'the disappearance of the financial fraud charges is significant because the bond deal that allowed the city of Flint to switch its water supply had been heavily investigated by the Schuette-era prosecution.' According to The Guardian: In 2014, Flint needed to borrow nearly $100m to join the proposed Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA), a new regional system that Flint would join as both a customer and part owner. But at the time, the city was broke and at its borrowing limit.Peter Hammer, a Wayne State law professor who authored an extensive civil rights report on the Flint water crisis, told The Guardian that he 'never understood why the attorney general disrupted the initial investigation, dropped the initial charges, or set a different direction in her new charges that chart a course away from the issues of financing the KWA pipeline.' 'Her decisions mean that some of the most important questions relating to the crisis—the political and economic forces driving the KWA pipeline—are not being addressed,' said Hammer. 'This adds a new tragedy for the people of Flint who deserve to know the root causes of their suffering and to hold any financial wrongdoing accountable.' Responding to the new reporting, progressive podcast host Krystal Ball tweeted that 'political corruption poisoned Flint and political corruption shielded the wrongdoers from accountability.' According to Flint City Council Chair Eric Mays, who closely followed the criminal probe before and after 2018, 'Nessel let it go.' 'Was it a lack of political or legal will? I cannot say,' Mays told The Guardian. 'But it bothers me to this day her team hasn't addressed it.'
| The text being discussed is available at | https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/dana-nessel-flint/ and |