According to Chuck Todd. Are you watching? It's kind of late, and maybe you've been watching football games all day. Well, say what you like in the comments. I'll try to stay awake, and maybe I won't say anything more until tomorrow.
ADDED: Quite chaotic, with lots of interrupting and taunting. Harsh voices. Red-faced anger.
AND: Are they being annoying and rude in an effort to appeal to the young? I notice all the YouTube things featuring youthful characters, so I'm thinking maybe they're deliberately repelling me.
January 17, 2016
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Lady Crawley is losing the debate with Mrs Hughes and with The Hospital Board merger. Sad.
Bernie Sanders wants to outlaw "straw men". I wonder if Obama will be grandfathered in.
The Dems know their voters have no clue about the rhetoric used on them.
Federal control of local police agencies. A socialist dream.
Central Democrat Debate:
Who can give more free stuff while ignoring fact that free market capitalism as practiced in USA for past 60 years created 200 million large middle class with jobs, homes, cable tv, iPads, sunglasses, and many different pizza dining options?
Noting: Sanders can't hear the question. Is Malley the only one young enough to be president?
Althouse,
You misspelled 'doze'.
Sanders agrees with everything Hillary says...
O'Mally wants "just 10 seconds", and doesn't get it...
This is really going well
Are Ar15s being used in inner city murders?
Equal pay for equal work is what we have now..except when women are hired for diversity fulfillment.
Google New feed says Clinton and Sanders 'clashed' on gun control. I missed that, what happened?
Now they're 'clashing' on health care.
"Google New feed says Clinton and Sanders 'clashed' on gun control. I missed that, what happened?"
O'Malley bragged about the gun control measures he passed in Maryland. I thought Baltimore was in Maryland.
In truth, I'm only watching during commercials in the movie I'm watching on another channel.
Well..providers, clinics and hospitals that balance off losses from Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates are gettin' nervous.
Medicare for all.
Anyone looked at CMS statements in terms of ask vs approved reimbursements? Often 1/3 of ask. Medicaid is worse.
I've never seen this much of Sander's shtick. He is way out there.
Wow..this ewetoob influence is pernicious..wtf.
Clinton seems to very poorly deliver the compliment of "5 million viewers": shakes head, never makes eye contact
Yes, I'm watching. It's on acommercial break now. None of what they say will be understood without further commentary.
regarding Dylan Roof/Charleston shooting:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/us/background-check-flaw-let-dylann-roof-buy-gun-fbi-says.html?_r=0
So..do Dems want simple drug possession to flag potential gun buyers?
The clashed more pon health care. Hillary had this talking point which she repeated several times, about not wanting to start a fight over health care all over again.
We didn't learn what was Sanders new position about lawsuits against gun dealers and manufacturers nor exactly what he would do about Medicare. He defended his old position, though/
Yes, lots of unanswred and unasked questions and unvoiced criticisms.
What Sanders couldn't hear was a You Tube question.
This part of the debate is about the economy. All they are talking about is the 'too big to fail' banks, wall street and Super Pacs.
What about the economy? You know that affects the middle class living on Main Street.
This is what Hillary just said: "There is no bank too big to fail, and no individual too powerful to jail."
Thanks, Hillz. I'll get my Hillary for Prison t-shirt!
I watched the first question and answer and had to turn it off. They all think the current direction is great but we just need more taxes and more spending to create more entitlements.
O'Malley: I heard "Glass-Steel", not Glass–Steagall.
Wall Street is where the money is. We know that.
How will you create jobs, get the GDP growing again, and brighten the future?
Brent, yes that's what he said!!
"What about the economy? You know that affects the middle class living on Main Street."
They got nothin' on that, that's why they stick to Wall Street.
Yep, Glass-Steel.
No tuition!!!
I will translate the debate so far: TAX, SPEND, REGULATE (rinse, repeat)
walter, I hope that retroactive! I just finished putting 3 kids thru college.
Hey..anyone into cheap virtual classrooms? No! Brick and mortar indoctrination!!
Sorry Limited blogger..sucker!! (so sorry)
> TAX, SPEND, REGULATE (rinse, repeat)
Sanders expansive health-care reform vs Clinton incremental health-care reform
Sanders Wall Street reform vs Clinton reception of Wall Street funds
First time I've watched them 'debate'. Wow. How very sad. Hillary looks medicated, Sanders is angry, but clueless. The other guy just smiles. It is so sad to watch.
I think any of the republican candidates, even the 'bottom tier' would destroy anyone of those fools on stage now.
Increase the double tax!
Wait..animated warming cartoon..
Shit..I need hip waders now...
SCIENCE!
I think we're entering the 'feel good' section of the debate.
I'll boil it down for you: Dem = good, green, scientific. Rep = bad, fossil, anti-sci
Hey MeeadHouse: Three of the most prominent dissenters on climate change have UW-Madison ties.
Curry at http://judithcurry.com/2015/07/29/assessments-meta-analyses-discussion-and-peer-review/
and Patrick Michaels: http://www.cato.org/people/patrick-michaels
and Spencer: http://www.drroyspencer.com/about
Bernie Sanders talks a lot about campaign finance reform - claims bad financing is blocking much legislation.
He also talked about banks. And talked about Goldman and Sachs giving money in speaking fees to Hillary Clinton.
At one point O'Malley said about something Clinton said: That's actually not true.
Before the commercial the topic changed to climate change.
Younger people are backing Sanders by what - 2/3?
O'Malley wanst to get rid of all carbon dioxide produxing fuels by 2050.
(I assume this is the candidate bathroom break.)
Sanders tried to explain if he replaced private insurance with Medicare for all, people would save money. He wouldn't give amounts. They could save $10,000 in premoiums and pay "a little" more in taxes.
O'Malley wants capital gains taxed at the same rate as ordinary income and ordinary income taxed at high marginal rates like they were for much of the Twentieth Century.
Sanders said he has no Super Pacs.
Bedlam. They want power so badly that they have lost their minds.
Draft Jim Webb.
re: ISIS, Middle East policy:
Sanders: "My job is praying and providing support to Muslim countries"
-- did I hear that right?
Brent, all 3 will eliminate ISIS, I didn't catch the details
> Brent, all 3 will eliminate ISIS
(smile)
of course
"I'm the only person on this stage that has (fill in the blank)." I watched 15 minutes and this was the lead of a sentence at least 10 times. Generally that talked about proposals to give the government more control over something. It's truly boring.
Ah...a ewetoob gadget head!
All seemed to avoid a discussion of the effects/tradeoffs of encryption: internal privacy vs external security intelligence
Clinton cut off again by commercial break.
There is a lot of contempt for the voters on display.
The voters get gulled by free-spending pacs, they can't be trusted to purchase their own health insurance, they can't be trusted to decide if they should own a firearm, they can't be trusted to to keep the police they hire honest, they can't be trusted to work out an acceptable wage from their employer, and of course they can't be trusted to properly spend the money that they earn.
The federal government is the level of government that is the least subject to actual voters.
"Brent, all 3 will eliminate ISIS, I didn't catch the details."
Maybe Brent should ask Trump for details. Oh yes, here's the answer channeling Trump "Good management!" Trump always gets so specific when asked for details, doesn't he?
This part of the debate comcerned foreign policy - mostly Syria and ISIS.
Hillary Clinton praised I think the diplomatic approach to getting rid of Assad. Sanders said the war proved he was right about the Iraq war or something like that. He said itwas a fight for the soul of Islam and we should listen to King Abdullah II of Jordan and there should be Moslem troops but not Americans, which would be an endless war. Countries like Qatar, richest country in the world per capita, need to put skin in the game.
Sanders aaid the first priority is getting rid of ISIS and the second Assad but he thought we should gte Iranian and Russian help to do that. Hillary had accused him of wanting Iranian troops in Syria.
Hillary said the power vacuum was created by former Prime Minister Maliki of Iraq and Assad of Syria - Sanders seemed to want to blame Bush and invasion in 2003.
O'Malley said we needed better human intelligence - not from the CIA it seemed, but from foreign service officers and businessmen so we could tell what would be the secondary and tertiary effects of any change. At the end there was aquestion about privacy vs security.
Kitchen table? Bill's never home for breakfast!
OMally continues the lie that Trump called for a Muslim 'registry'. How do these moderators let them get away with that?
"His behavior was deplorable" Hil nodding..
Good times..
Is there any topic Sanders doesn't blame on Wall Street/rich people/The 1% ?
> Maybe Brent should ask Trump for details.
I am simply commenting on the headline "all 3 will eliminate ISIS."
As if it were simply that easy: simply declare it and it will happen.
prediction is hard ...
If Hillary shakes her head any harder it's going to fall off.
Did they just short-change O'Malley's closing statement.
> Is there any topic Sanders doesn't blame on Wall Street/rich people/The 1% ?
always on point
I think the debate ended - rather suddenly - and now there's still time before 11 pm for some instant analysis by Chuck Todd.
The candidates got a question at end - is theer something you wanted to say. First up, O;Malley. You didn't expect that, they said. He said it would take 20 minutes. He mentioend immigrant detention camps, and how the people of Puerto Rico were being-taken advaatage of by hedge funds [that's the P.R. debt and the fact that they can't go bakrupt. illary Clinton decioded to mention Flint, Michigan. Sanders said he agreedand also agreedthe Gov of Michigan shold resi Talked about campaign financing.
And hat was the end.
Sanders had also answered a question about Bill Clinton earlier.
They're replaying the debate on MSNBC if you missed any of it.
Saw the Sanders "medicare for all" plan: it's a 2.2% tax for all (payroll?), a 6.2% employer tax on payroll, increases in marginal taxes for the wealthy, elimintion of special treatment for capital gains in terms of income taxes, and half a dozen other tax hikes. Since Sanders says that only the 2.2% impacts the "middle class" he can promote the whole thing as nearly free.
Jane,
providers, clinics and hospitals that balance off losses from Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates are gettin' nervous.
Medicare for all.
Anyone looked at CMS statements in terms of ask vs approved reimbursements? Often 1/3 of ask. Medicaid is worse.
i.e. not "free"..and leads to fewer providers over time..
@Limited blogger said: "This part of the debate is about the economy. All they are talking about is the 'too big to fail' banks, wall street and Super Pacs.
What about the economy? You know that affects the middle class living on Main Street."
I found this to be the most disappointing part of the debate. Nobody had anything on invigorating the economy.
I appreciate somebody watching this clown show so I don't have to.
Original Mike said Nobody had anything on invigorating the economy.
Fixed pie mindset..all about redistribution..
They all lied about Flint, Michigan. I am from that area (close enough, anyway) and they all basically lied. The lead independent researcher, Marc Edwards of Virginia Tech has FOIA'ed all of the MDEQ emails and he is satisfied that while somebody screwed up bureaucratically, it never rose to the level if the governor or even the top levels if the MDEQ.
Edwards was interviewed a couple of weeks ago on the Detroit Clear Channel station by Frank Beckmann who is on in the slot before Rush Limbaugh. Beckmann's interview with Edwards was polite, thoughtful and comprehensive. Edwards is no friend of any Republican in Michigan. He's got some investigation targets in mind -- clearly lower-level MDEQ civil servants -- but because he isn't law enforcement he isn't saying who.
The Detroit Water & Sewerage Department and Flint (like Detroit, like Inkster, like Pontiac, like Benton Harbor and Highland Park and others) had been run into the ground by two generations of all-Democrat rule. And it fell to an Emergency Manager to fix it. The decision to transition to Flint River water before ultimately going to the Karenondi/Lake Huron source wasn't just an Emergency Manager decision; it was supported by a 7 to 1 vote of the all-Democrat Flint City Council. The one holdout vote, btw, wasn't protesting Flint River water; he was protesting Flint's eventual investment in the Karegnondi project. He wanted to stick with the switch to Flint River water.
Hwy Chuck..wtf with the "MDEQ emails"?
Thanks for the info, Chuck. Both Hillary and Sanders sure got on their high-horses over that issue. The Governor must resign immediately, etc.
You know..on a national stage...
let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King
sunsong..
Are you kidding?
Debate? There was a debate tonight? Who knew?
Why bother watching a debate between two geriatrics, one a socialist/communist and the other an outright grifter.
Pitiful Democrat lineup.
"ADDED: Quite chaotic, with lots of interrupting and taunting. Harsh voices. Red-faced anger."
Wow, its like Fox News and Donald Trump.
What a time to have a debate. I guess the DNC was going for the loner, grifter, and shut-in vote.
Does anyone else sense another Michael Moore movie coming on?
I just did an Iranian Harvard Med Student and I congratulated him on the sanctions being lifted...he laughed.
He had a small dick.
tits
Ah..did you inject HIV into that exechange..student?
Here's the link to Frank Beckmann on WJR, doing the interview with Marc Edwards:
https://audioboom.com/boos/4038196-marc-edwards-virginia-tech-professor-january-8-2016?t=0
The calls for Governor Snyder to "resign" are Wisconsin-like; hilariously overwrought and evidence-free. Michigan's state politics are a bit like, and a bit unlike, Wisconsin's.
Rick Snyder is far more of a technocratic, social-moderate than even Scott Walker. Snyder would have liked to let the Michigan same-sex marriage case fall by the wayside and let the federal courts take over. Snyder said that right-to-work was not on his personal radar until an aggressively conservative state legislature put it on his desk to sign. Snyder would like to raise state taxes for better roads. Snyder put Michigan into the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion.
But unlike Wisconsin, Michigan has Detroit, Pontiac, Flint, Benton Harbor, Inkster and Highland Park. Where Democrats -- only -- have ruled for two generations. Those Democratic enclaves have spent themselves into insolvency, while the Republican parts of the state (Grand Rapids/Kent County; Oakland County, etc.) have survived the cyclical ups and downs of the auto industry very well.
So Michigan developed an Emergency Manager system to avoid bankruptcies if possible; upon an independent certification of financial crisis, a gubernatorial-appointed EM can come in and clean house budget-wise. Take over powers as needed from local authorities. To try to avoid bankruptcy. Detroit's debt was too overwhelming to avoid Chapter 9. Pontiac, however, did it and Flint has been in the throes of the financial housecleaning effort.
It all points to a situation in which the Democrats' record of local government in Michigan was an almost pure record of financial disaster. This lead-in-the-water story gives them something to push back on, as long as they can personalize it as to the governor and a Republican administration, instead of some low-level MDEQ civil servants.
The audio file I linked puts the lie to that story. It is one of the worst-reported stories in the mainstream media right now. You know how when you are shocked, when you hear a story that you know about personally gets butchered by MSM types? This is one of those for me.
Paul said...
Debate? There was a debate tonight? Who knew?
Why bother watching a debate between two geriatrics, one a socialist/communist and the other an outright grifter.
Pitiful Democrat lineup.
1/17/16, 11:05 PM"
More pitiful is that this one of the two major political parties and could possibly win the election.
Chuck..wtf?
Walter, I don't know what your question(s) is/are.
The Flint, Michigan story is really taking off in the left-wing blogosphere. Getting the full Michael Moore/celebrity concern-troll treatment, with all of the usual lefty-race baiters chiming in.
"Flint" is being used by Dems as an answer to "Detroit." Detroit is of course the avatar of the left-wing paradise; high wages, high taxes, a city government laden with human rights commissions and all manner of union patronage. And we know what happened after 50 years of that. More than half the population (black and white) fled if they were able, the private sector cratered followed by public sector. And Democrats seek to avoid the responsibility for the chaos.
So they got "Flint," where (supposedly) uncaring and budget-hawking Republicans put budget-cutting above human interest.
But that "Flint" narrative is largely a fabrication.
Chuck let see if I understand this correctly: the city of Flint which has a mayor and city council and has a department of water and sewers of which both the mayor and city council have supervisory authority over did some really stupid thing and it's the governor's fault? The water department never tests for contaminants? The federal EPA had no idea? So Democrat stupidity and incompetence equates to Republican responsibility since Democrats simply are too stupid to be held to adult standards? Did I miss something? In one way Snyder is a bit of a fool: any businessman knows that the best loss is your first loss. Michigan would have been better of if all of those horribly mismanaged cities been allowed to go chapter 9.
bob; yeah, I think you get it.
Liberals will protest that the Emergency Manager took over effective control for the Flint mayor and city council. And since the governor appointed the EM, the governor is to blame.
But yeah, there's no doubt the city would be in Chapter 9 without it.
Technically, here is how the lead situation arose.
Water had been piped up from the DWS system, at a rapidly-rising cost (the DWS collections system was a joke, and the future was for a lot of rate increases). So Flint said it would get water from the Flint River. They drew Flint River water in, treated it, and then distributed it within the city. They tested the Flint River water where it was treated, and it was fine. But as the treated water went through the system, it leached lead from local lines and homeowners' old lead plumbing. So that water that tested fine eventually was laced with unacceptable levels of lead when it cam out of the tap in many scattered homes. The reason for the local leaching was because Flint River water is very high in chloride. Not in itself harmful, the chloride is chemically corrosive to iron pipe and lead solder joints. Detroit, like many places, uses a corrosion-inhibitor called orthophosphate to control those processes and effects in its water system. It isn't even particularly expensive. But Flint River water is really, really high in chloride content.
It's all a technical problem to be handled by mid-level water quality experts. It's a ministerial thing and not a governor-level decision. It should have been caught earlier, but it wasn't.
Chuck wrote: You know how when you are shocked, when you hear a story that you know about personally gets butchered by MSM types? This is one of those for me.
There's a name for that: Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy:
Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge
It was actually coined by a progressive liberal from Madison, WI: [linkM]
Like all bankrupt Dem-run cities, murders go to the forefront and Flint is #1, Detroit #2 in the U.S. of A!
http://www.inquisitr.com/386174/most-dangerous-cities-flint-michigan-ranks-as-the-deadliest/
Thanks for the information Chuck. A quick reading of headlines on Google News and other sites all pointed to the Republican Gov. as the evil doer. Budget cutting, evil Republicans.
The Dems never make a mistake. It is always someone elses fault. Always. Decades of Dem. rule have turned so many cities into third world hell holes. But its always someone elses fault.
Does Uncle Bernie need a hearing aid?
Chuck, I was reading a Free Press story saying the EPA and the state's Dept of Environmental Quality were memoing each other for month about the lead leaching problem. So the EPA and some state bureaucrats knew about it, but it sounds like neither went up the chain of command to alert higher authorities to the problem.
I have to give Bernie credit, for as a largely poor, NY Jewish kid, he adopted socialism/ Communism and managed not to be a total loser and/or terrorist. Often such guys end-up in the academy, entombed in tweed and socialist economics. He could've drifted out to San Francisco with a nose for drugs and/or hippie free love.
He could've gone full dark radical retard and become a murderer like Lee Harvey Oswald or Bill Ayers.
No, Bernie got out of New York and put up flyers in Chicago and organized against the Man. He drifted up to Vermont. He became an itinerant and unskilled carpenter.
Would the revolution even happen?
He became respectable-like, and a Senator. He made sure The People had running water. The old socialist/democratic fossil you see today who's apparently more principled than Hillary Clinton.
... so I'm thinking maybe they're deliberately repelling me.
To be fair, they start off as pretty repellant people.
Amanda: notice that this was a thread about the Democratic Party debate, and all you could do was rage about Trump.
"Quite chaotic, with lots of interrupting and taunting. Harsh voices. Red-faced anger."
Is that who we are?
As for Flint, it gets better: That Emergency Manager Snyder appointed? Lifelong Democrat.
@Chuck, thanks for the reply. So in essence the sheer incompetence of the local officials is what resulted in this fiasco. First the inability to collect monies due from users followed by the incredible ignorance of the local water officials of the city's water infrastructure and the leaching effects of the very high levels of chlorides in the river water and the failure to take that in consideration.
Reminiscent of blaming George W Bush for the failure of the Democrat Mayor of New Orleans, the New Orleans City Council along with the Democrat Governor of Louisiana for the failure to evacuate the probable affected areas (which was and still is the primary responsibility of the local and state government) and to blame Republican President Bush for the failures of the levees constructed under Democrat President Clinton.
If the Republican Party didn't exist the Democrats would have to invent a Republican Party just to be their whipping boy lest they would be unable to evade responsibility for their stupidity, corruption and incompetence.
@Flint The best I had heard before this was that there was a memo in 2011 that said Flint cold take the water provided it was treated. It didn't explain there was no problem per se with the water in the Flint River, but there was a problem with running it through Flint's pipes, unless you did something, (add orthophosphate to the water, like Detroit did, although it needed it less) which something was not done.
The real problem, of course, was with the quality of the local officials, and maybe with the fact that nobody important lived in Flint, so there was nobody who knew somebody who knew somebody and who knew about this problem. Or if somebody did contact somebody, that person was probably treated as a wacko.
There was also the claim that the state of Michigan was too slow to declare an emergency, but I think the city came first. And the fedferal government came last.
Now I found these this Deroit Free Press Op-ed article that tries to pin the blame on the state government: (for applying he wrong water quality standard)
http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/nancy-kaffer/2015/11/07/flint-lead-water/75268692/
Maybe also nobody ever thought to reason out the reason why water hadn't been taken from the Flint River before. There was a reason this hadn't been done, which somebody maybe back in 1935 or 1948 or 1957 or 1966 knew. But now whoever knew about that had long since retired.
It maybe wasn't that the Flint River used to be much more polluted (and now we had the Clean Water Act) At least, not only that.
Jane the Actuary said...
Saw the Sanders "medicare for all" plan: it's a 2.2% tax for all (payroll?),
I think that's an income tax, but Sanders calls it a premium.
a 6.2% employer tax on payroll, increases in marginal taxes for the wealthy, elimintion of special treatment for capital gains in terms of income taxes, and half a dozen other tax hikes. Since Sanders says that only the 2.2% impacts the "middle class"
The 6.2% is paid only by the employer (it would be paid by self-employed people, though, something maybe he doesn't notice) so it's not a tax on reported income.
he can promote the whole thing as nearly free.
You know what his campaign manager said?
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/01/17/bernie-sanders-releases-details-on-health-plan-that-would-raise-taxes-but-he-argues-save-on-costs/
“It’s going to replace much larger expenses that you pay currently to the private sector,” Mr. Weaver said. “If I ask you to pay $5 in taxes and I save you a $100,000 in costs, am I raising your taxes? I guess technically I am, but really it is the net of what the effect is.”
Sammy it is undisputed that the lead is not being imported as pollution from the Flint River. It is as I described; clean/high chloride content water that is corroding iron pipe and leaching lead from homeowners' own pipes.
And yes, the Detroit Free Press is as calculated an anti-Republican mouthpiece for Michigan Democrats as there is in the media. Nota bene, that the Freep actually endorsed Snyder for reelection in 2012; but that was because Governor Snyder's incompetent joke opponent -- Lansing mayor Virg Bernero never had a chance. And in fact Snyder is a true Republican moderate. The Free Press does that every once in a while. Endorse the Republican who can't possibly be beaten. And thereby grab a tiny ephemeral fistful of bipartisan neutrality.
Titus: "I just did an Iranian Harvard Med Student and I congratulated him on the sanctions being lifted...he laughed."
Not surprising that he laughed. It's more cash that can be used to execute homosexuals in Iran.
Chuck said...1/18/16, 6:48 PM
Sammy it is undisputed that the lead is not being imported as pollution from the Flint River. It is as I described; clean/high chloride content water that is corroding iron pipe and leaching lead from homeowners' own pipes.
There seems to be some attempt to confuse people, I suspect by a lot more than the Detroit Free Press, which actually doesn't say anything wrong if you read it carefully.
It is interesting - there is nothing actually wrong with the Nov 7 article!
It actually says, if you already know it, that the problem is with pipes.
It just never mentions the word "chloride" so it passes over everybody's head except somebody who already understands this.
A report commissioned by Flint in 2011 evaluating the Flint River as a long-term source of drinking water, and delivered by the city to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality two years later, included that chemical — phosphate, often referred to as corrosion control — on a list of chemicals required to make river water safe to drink. Two years later, a Flint employee emailed the report to an MDEQ drinking water official, who passed it along to another state staffer, documents obtained by the Free Press via a Freedom of Information Act request show.
For water treatment professionals, the importance of phosphates is obvious: More corrosive water is more likely to degrade the interior of service lines, allowing dangerous substances from those pipes to enter the water. By forming a barrier inside service lines and plumbing pipes, phosphates limit the corrosive effect of water, and stop lead from contaminating the water.
It's got words and phrases like:
"make river water safe to drink"
"corrosive water"
"interior of service lines"
"corrosive effect of water"
Lead does get mentioned, but also "dangerous substances from those pipes"
Even someone who got very high scores on an SAT or GRE test wouldn't really understand this. It's not clear that the corrosive substance is not lead. Nor does it explain really how the phosphates help, in a way lime does not, or for what other purpose(s) the two could be used interchangeably.
The next paragraph doesn't help too much either:
It's also common knowledge that river water, subject to constant changes of temperature and makeup, tends to be more corrosive than lake water — and is likely to require treatment with phosphates. Nor is it a mystery that an aging, broke city like Flint would have older homes with lead plumbing, or that its water distribution system would include lead service lines or welds.
The word that you might miss there is "makeup"
River water is different in both temperature (which is probably an irrelevancy - I mean water temperature is different also in different seasons, and why should the temperature be too much diffrent) and makeup
Maybe the Detroit Free Press did explain this clearly in some article(s) way back when they first started wrting aboutthis is detail.
The earlier article, a week and a half earlier, by the same columnist, Nancy Kafferr, that the Nov 7 article links too, is the same, although it has a bit more detail:
http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/nancy-kaffer/2015/10/29/flint-water-crisis-government/74736590/
When Flint began to pump river water, its treatment plant chose to add lime, lowering the acidity of the water, instead of phosphates, which form a barrier inside pipes that prevents lead from leaching into the water. MDEQ now says that lime didn't satisfy the EPA's lead and copper requirements. Over the last 18 months, Flint residents complained that the water smelled and tasted bad, and caused skin and other health problems, caused in part by coliform bacteria, and the disinfectant used to treat it.
Then lead test results began to roll in. The state's own test results showed lead levels almost doubling in six months. A Virginia Tech University researcher found increased lead in the city's water. A local hospital researcher found that an increasing percentage of children had elevated blood-lead levels. After months of denial, the state finally acknowledged in October that there was a problem. The city has since switched back to Detroit water, but it will be months before the phosphate coating is restored. The effects of lead poisoning are irreversible.
Do phosphates also lower the acidity of the water? If so, did somebody misunderstand the double purpose of adding phosphates?
But theer's something else there:
And more troubling, an EPA employee e-mailed MDEQ officials to offer a rationale allowing them to deny having received a draft memo written by an EPA drinking water specialist about lead in Flint's water.
There's a point also: GM at one point had switched their water source from the Flint River.
The Nov 7 article says that neither the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) nor the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) insisted on corrosion control.
And the city of Flint's director of public works, Howard Croft, doesn't have any idea why, or doesn't want to say. He said: "That's a fair question."
And now the whole country is being carefully misled about this.
The article also says that the mayor of Flint lost his race for re-election in November. It doesn't speculate as to why.
You have to wonder is if any of this is connected to any political machine, or somebody with a stake in treating water one way and not another.
It could be there's a whole lot of things wrong, both with the MDEQ and the EPA, a lot of it having nothing to do with this situation. Just a whole lot of things wrong with the way both of these agencies work, and this is just a tiny piece of it.
Making a lot of people interested in hiding any sign of dysfunction or misfeasance.
Maybe also a lot of the way city government in Flint works. Which the emergency manager didn't change.
First the inability to collect monies due from users followed by the incredible ignorance of the local water officials of the city's water infrastructure and the leaching effects of the very high levels of chlorides in the river water and the failure to take that in consideration.
Is it chlorides? Or is it bromides? Michigan water is notoriously high in bromides (that's why Dow started there). Chlorides are not "corrosive" per se; bromides are more easily oxidized to bromine which is corrosive. Finally, lead halides are all poorly soluble in water.
I still don't understand the "corrosiveness" of the river water. cand someone explain this in chemical terms?
Highway de-icing salt. Studies have found up to 70% of road salt remaining in the watershed -- lakes and rivers.
narciso at Patterico linked to this:
http://gregbranchwords.com/2016/01/17/the-real-tragedy-in-flint/
It all got started when Detroit abruptly cancelled its water contract with Flint, giving Flint one year’s notice, when Flint announced it would join a new source of water in three years.
Obviously, the city of Detroit was trying to kill, or keep customers from the new (founded 2010) competing Karegnondi water authority:
http://www.karegnondi.com
http://www.karegnondi.com/#!about/c20r9
Flint hadn't treated its own water in 50 years. Nobody knew anything, and if they studied anything, it was for newly built or newer systems with plastic and copper pipes. But Flint had a 100-plus-year-old system of cast iron mains and lead service lines. Lead pipes are OK as long as there is a coating of lead oxide on the pipes. But now it would be dissolved away.
The Director of Michigan Department of Environmental Quality had a degree in food science, an MBA in finance, and had spent the previous few years managing a entrepreneurship incubator, (whatever that is) and was a political appointee.
The EPA apparently understood. Now maybe they had no legal authority to stop it, but the question can be asked: What on God's earth required them to maintain secrecy about this? If somebody had been (legally) pouring radioactive waste into the water supply of Flint, Michigan, would they also have stayed silent?
A comment on the GregBranchWords blog:
He [the Governor] knew early on that people were complaining about the water. I believe (and will, until a renewed interest in “transparency” proves otherwise) that all along, he asked his “experts” in DEQ if anything was wrong. And they said, “No, boss, everything’s fine.”
The man is horribly naïve, politically speaking, and he got duped here by sycophantic, incompetent boobs. Which doesn’t excuse him from accountability. It makes him a fool, not a monster.
Nowthe question is: What are the politics that would motivate the MDEQ to permit this to happen,or the city of Detroit's water board to attempt to force Flint back to purchasing water from Detroit?
We don't know exactly what Detroit was demanding in order for it to sell water to Flint during the 2014 to 2016 period. They may have been afraid of losing even more customers. The Detroit water board was in the habit of notcollectingh money from people in Detroit.
A Detroit news story from October 26:
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2015/10/26/opinion-flint-water-disaster/74657458/
The decision to join the Flint joining the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA) was made on March 25, 2013 with city council vote of 7-1. Flint's emergency manager, Darnell Earley, who wrote this piece, says he was appointed Flint emergency manager only in October 2013.
Darnell Earley claims the use of the Flint River in the interim was part of the decision.
He doesn't say any more, except he says the DWSD terminated the contract with Flint in April 2014 - which sounds like pumping water from the Flint River was not included in the original decision!
Which way is it?
He further states:
"At the time the decision was made there was no way to predict such an unfortunate outcome."
What was unfortunate? Detroit cancelling the contract?
Also I have read a claim theat the DWSD was wasting money. That is, it was used for patronage purposes - i.e. it was handing out contracts and jobs, and not collecting bills from city residents. It never billed people anyway, only buildings.
Maybe they knew Detroit (or the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department) could attemot to sabotage the Karegnondi Water Authority, That could explain why Genesee County Drain Commissioner Jeff Wright made an affirmative vote by the Flint City Council a condition of Flint joining (or helping start) the Karegnondi Water Authority, even though it apparently was not legally necessary.
The Detroit Water & Sewerage Department could be worse than Samuel Insull (founder of Commonwealth Edison)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Insull
or Ivar Kreuger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivar_Kreuger
Detroit got an Emergency Financial Manager in In March of 2013.
Were the two EFMs at odds with each other?
Who was negotiating with who about extending the water contract?
http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2013/04/detroit_gives_notice_its_termi.html
GENESEE COUNTY, MI -- The city of Detroit has given notice that it's terminating a nearly 50-year-old contract for selling water to Flint and the county next year, but Drain Commissioner Jeff Wright says he doesn't think Detroit can turn off the area's supply of water so easily...
Detroit and Genessee County played hardball and Flint lost.
Officials from DWSD have been locked for weeks in a war of words over water with county and Flint officials. Each claim they can supply the area's future water needs at a lower cost than the other.
Note: Flint already had a EFM before Darnell Earley. Oct 2013 was only his personal appointment.
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