S4 E04 - Democrat Bungling - The Flint Water Crisis Part 1

The story of the Flint Water Crisis was not only overblown, but misrepresented.

River water isn't bad.  There's nothing wrong with the pipes.  The river is not polluted or better than lake water.

The only real failure in Flint was Democrat politics.  Two bankrupt cities in Detroit went to war.  A conflict of egos stoked by incompetence, led to contamination of drinking water. 

Ultimately, it was only the Republicans fixing the problem who were held accountable. 

Commentary on trending issues brought to you with a moderate perspective.

Transcript

The Tenth Man: 0:11

Water lines in Detroit are breaking in the winter's cold, yet it's the water lines in Flint, Michigan that are being replaced. The endless and wasteful aftermath of the Flint water crisis today on The Tenth Man. Water mains in Detroit are breaking as the winter cold takes its toll. It happens every year. Pipes burst, streets flood, And taxpayers foot the bill. Yet just a few miles north in Flint, millions of dollars are being spent to replace water lines that are perfectly fine. What connects Detroit's broken infrastructure to Flint's wasteful repairs? The answer lies in greed, corruption, and political dysfunction. The Flint water crisis wasn't just a tragedy, it was a cautionary tale of how power And politics can turn manageable problems into national disasters. Today on the 10th man, we'll uncover the truth about Flint and Detroit, how two struggling cities became entangled in one another's failures, and why the pursuit of justice has been so one-sided. Detroit's infrastructure is crumbling under the weight of decades of neglect. Ancient water mains, some over a century old, snap under the pressure of frozen soil. Repairs are slow and costly, with no end in sight. There were 10 water mains broken at one time in January 2025, and currently a 54 inch water main is broken, flooding out thousands of homes. Locking out residents due to freezing and loss of power. Meanwhile, Flint has become a hub of activity as crews dig up water lines in neighborhoods across the city. But here's the twist. Those pipes don't need replacing. The lead contamination that sparked the Flint water crisis was caused by improper water treatment, not faulty pipes, so why the frenzy? If you want to understand this, you have to go back to Detroit's bankruptcy. Also, to Flint's financial struggles and the tangled web of political greed that brought two cities together. Detroit went bankrupt. That was in 2013. It was the largest municipal bankruptcy in the U. S. ever. Detroit is also the largest majority black city in America. It is controlled, of course, by Democrats. And, unfortunately, much like the racist scenes in the movie Birth of a Nation, the D. W. Griffith movie, designed in part to show the folly of allowing black people to have the vote. That movie included portrayals of the first black congressmen back in the 1800s, and they were sitting at their, at the Capitol with their feet up on the desk eating fried chicken. And of course those scenes were both racist and inaccurate, but they wouldn't be altogether inaccurate if you applied them to the city of Detroit in the early 21st century. Once the wealthiest city in America, it was turned over to the Democrats. And they quickly went bankrupt. you may remember mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. He was the last mayor before the bankruptcy. He's noteworthy because he went to prison. To prison for real crimes, not lawfare. He was convicted of 24 felonies. Actual felonies. And his term as mayor was marked by big parties at the mayoral mansion and even the murder of an exotic dancer which is controversial and still unsolved. Now city bankruptcies like the one that took place in Detroit are not common. They're actually quite rare, there have only been 60 since the Great Depression. And Detroit's was the largest in terms of the monetary value. During the bankruptcy Detroit had an emergency manager assigned by the state. All Michigan cities with emergency managers assigned. have the same things in common. They're all Democrat. They're majority black. But most important, they all have a city income tax. This last one is most important because it shows an attitude of trying to tax others to support yourself. That's a common Democrat trait. The Democrat politician is always looking around and whenever he sees some money that people have accrued to provide for some need. He tries to figure out how he can get his hands on it. Or when he sees a bunch of people who are working hard, he tries to figure out a way to tax them. And try to do it in a way that he can get elected by not causing taxes to go up for his own constituents. Well in Detroit, as people left the community, so left the tax base. So the way it works is like this. As Detroiters left the community, so left the tax base. So they're not constituents anymore. So the Democrats are free then to proclaim the people commuting to the city to work. as parasites. To the Democrats, they're just more sheep to be sheared. And they're very creative in the taxes that they conceived. There's not just a city income tax. They were even talking about taxing people if they had a parking lot where they worked, if they were able to park for free, they were going to call that imputed income and tax you on your parking space. There's no mass transit. You have to drive to work. And then the city wanted to tax you for parking. Now these commuters are working. They're driving the economy. They would love to live in Detroit if it wasn't a dangerous dying city. So the city calls them parasites and says they need to pay taxes to support the police and the roads, even though the police aren't effective. The roads are poor and already being supported by Michigan's high gasoline taxes. So that's why we say, if you want to find a city that's failing, just look for a city income tax. And of course, another failing city with an income tax is Flint, Michigan. We'll talk about them in a moment. But we're going to take a quick break. And talk about the word of the day, or in this case, a phrase. The mainstream media uses and abuses a lot of phrases like the phrase extreme weather, for example. Normal winter temperatures, such as the ones causing the water line breaks in Detroit, are now called extreme weather, to promote the climate change agenda. And that phrase has therefore become meaningless. So we're just giving that phrase as an example that's obvious. So, here's another one. We all know what an ad hominem is. It's when you run out of arguments so you call people names like racist or a racial epithet or a white nationalist, etc, etc. But we are now hearing today what is the weakest, lamest, most facile ad hominem ever used. It's on the news every single day and every single hour of the day. How bad would you feel if someone insulted you by calling you listener discretion is advised and Unelected billionaire. Isn't that the weakest ad hominem you've ever heard? Unelected? There are only there are only two people in the entire country who are elected by the entire country. The president and vice president. Donald Trump. And J. D. Vance are the only two people in the world who are elected by the American public. Calling anybody unelected all by itself is the weakest ad hominem possible. And none of those federal judges throwing judgments on the conveyor belt of lawfare was elected. All were appointed by presidents, as was Elon Musk. And billionaire? How is that an insult? It's at best neutral because billionaires get that way due to a combination of merit and luck. And it seems anybody would be lucky to have a billionaire working for him for free. And that's what we Americans have today. But if there's one sentence that says it all about the Democrats, it's this. Four people who are despised by the Democrats are Donald Trump, Elon Musk. R. F. K. Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, who all have one thing in common. All four used to be Democrats, and the Democrats loved them back then. The two cities of Flint and Detroit have much more in common than just their politics. The two cities are joined by their water systems, quite literally and physically. But contrary to what you might think, and all you've been told. The Flint crisis was not caused by switching their water supply from Detroit to the Flint River. Cities all across America use river water. They're in a panic, saying, We're not using Great Lakes water anymore. Well, look at a map. How far are you from the Great Lakes? If you're not in the Great Lakes basin, you're on river water. If you're in a municipal water system, then. Yes, there are millions of people who are using Great Lakes water for drinking, for their drinking water supply. But not all by far not even most and we'll talk about corrosion in a minute But if you want to know some real corrosive water go to Brownsville, Texas Back in the 1990s in Brownsville, Texas. The Rio Grande water is sufficiently corrosive and people were coming to home to find wet spots on their walls due to pinhole leaks. The water etched its way through the copper tubing. Full story is there are different grades of copper tubing with thinner and thicker walls. And if the proper tubing had been used, these leaks wouldn't have occurred. But people had to replace all the plumbing in their houses because of the wrong copper tubing being used and the corrosive water. Now that's corrosive. so the Flint crisis was not caused by switching their water supply to the Flint River because, in fact, many cities use river water and that includes the city of Flint. Flint's water supply was the Flint River up until 1971. In 1971, they switched to buying their water from Detroit. And that's because, believe it or not, in the 1970s, the city of Flint was growing. And they were concerned not about water quality, but water quantity. They were concerned about the capacity of their plant and the river to supply a growing city. Now ask yourself, what would be so magical about Detroit water? In fact, it's also drawn from a river, the Detroit River, and it's in fact the same water. Flint River water flows into Lake Huron, which flows into the Detroit River. It's the same water. So somehow letting it flow to Detroit so that it can be treated there and then pumped back to Flint where it has to be lifted 400 feet into the air in the process at the same time. That's a good idea. Of course it's not a good idea. The water's already in Flint. You should use the Flint water. How much electricity was consumed pumping that water up to Flint? How much coal fired electricity was used? What about the harm to the climate? When the story broke, people started talking about all the pollution in the river. Well, the Flint River is not polluted. Not since the Clean Water Act of the 1960s. The problem with the river water is it has a low pH, not a high pollution. Actually, it doesn't even come from the Flint River per se. Well, it kind of does, but it actually comes from the Holloway Reservoir. It's a beautiful man made lake far upstream from Flint. There's a Flint River Watershed Coalition that promotes canoeing, and fishing on it. the dam that impounds the reservoir has a spillway with a little waterfall, stepping stone falls. It's all quite nice. And the tributaries to the Flint River include designated trout streams such as, one near my house. All sounds quite lovely, doesn't it? Quite unlike the pictures that they show you of the Flint River downtown. Well, of course, that's not where they get their drinking water. They get it from the reservoir. And the water that we sent to Flint was just fine. Sorry if you didn't take care of it, Flint. In 2011, both Flint and Detroit were broke. Emergency managers were appointed by the state. And one reason Detroit was broke is because its residents didn't pay their water bills. People in Detroit say, Water is a human right, which is all you have to say when you're a Democrat. So what did the city of Detroit do? Well, what do Democrats do? They look around for somebody else with money, don't they? So the city of Detroit was supplying Flint. In fact, Flint was its biggest water customer. Its largest single water customer was the city of Flint. So they demanded payment from Flint and kept raising their rates because the city had to pay. The Democrats in Detroit Saw Flint as a goose to be plucked, and turning the screws on Flint was easier than squeezing the money out of their own residents. But we have to be fair to Detroit. It's not all their fault. When they do try to shut off water to people who don't pay, they face lawsuits. And the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, has been suing Detroit continuously since 2014 because they expect people to pay their water bill or face a water shutoff. Well, it's pretty clear that Flint and its suburbs can't carry the burden of Detroit's water bill. Water bills of Detroit's water customers, so feeling the pinch, Flint joined a cooperative to create a new water system, bringing water to various communities from Lake Huron, direct from Lake Huron, and this would be cheaper, more efficient. This is when it turned ugly, or maybe uglier. The city of Detroit, fearful that it was losing its cash cow, now acted like a jilted lover, and told Flint, no, you cannot leave, you cannot join the Karegnondi water project. And Flint said, no, we're going to do that, we need to cut our expenses. So then Detroit invoked a clause in their contract with Flint and told them if they did not withdraw from the Karegnondi Water Project, Detroit would cut them off in a year's time, and they were allowed to do that. Do you understand how serious this is? And how nobody talks about it? It was in all the papers, maybe down in the column. did you hear that? Detroit said no water for you, Flint. And none of the Democrats, none of the news media, not the ACLU, nobody has said boo about this, that Detroit completely cut Flint off of its water. Or that's what they said they would do, if they switched. Well, flint was in a bind because the water project cooperative would not be delivering water for 18 months as everybody knew. So striking back the flint city council told Detroit, well, we're not going to give you a year. We're going to cut you off right now. So there were a lot of intelligent moves by intelligent people, right? Or there was a lot of political posturing and blustering and saber rattling that led to the crisis. Now, Flint had always known that they could just switch back to the Flint River supply. They have a waterworks, and it's intact. And so they decided to do just that. Well, they couldn't just decide. Remember they were under an emergency manager appointed by the state and they had to get his permission first. This is another major point that goes unstated or is lied about because the emergency manager was a Republican. The state government was Republican at the time. It's Democrat right now, but because this emergency manager was appointed by the Republican governor. He is often blamed for the Flint water crisis, even though he actually put the brakes on the transfer. Yes, he stopped it. Since the state of Michigan was also managing the bankruptcy of Detroit, the emergency manager of Flint took into account the fact that the loss of the revenue from the Flint water would have a negative impact on Detroit. So, he did not just sign off on it. First, he had to do a study, or the state did a study. And after the study determined that the city of Detroit should be able to manage without the revenue from Flint, Or the fact that they were going to lose it in 18 months anyway, another six months. Only then did he grant permission. Emergency manager Darnell Early did not create the Flint water crisis. He allowed the city of Flint to create the Flint water crisis. People talk as if he forced them to do it, but on the contrary, once Early granted permission, the city council members, they formed a conga line and marched around city council chambers singing, We Shall Overcome. And then when they did the cutover, they had a big ceremony where they had a toast to each other drinking the new water that they supplied themselves from the Flint River. It was not the state of Michigan that caused the cutover. From Detroit water to Flint River water. Everything would have been fine after that in most cities. The water plant worked before, it could work again. And if the government has simply done its job, the minimum requirement, There'd be no story here, but incompetence in Democrat run cities is the norm. And for the first and only time in American history. The Water Department became the vehicle of poisoning citizens. We'll look at the aftermath in the next episode. Now a preview of some coming episodes. America is the worst country in the world, except for all the others. We're paraphrasing Winston Churchill's remark about democracy, but it applies very well to America. We're often called a third world country based on the lies spread by the media. Lies such as We have a mass shooting every day, or a school shooting, either one. Gun lies are among the media favorites, and another one is that more children are killed by guns than any other cause. Other lies are that America is racist, or that a half million people go bankrupt every year due to medical bills. Each of these statements is completely false, as we've demonstrated in other episodes, but people cite them and say, That's what makes America. country. But anybody can play that game, and in future episodes we'll examine who's a third world country. And, if you're listening from overseas, you might be a winner. Now this is all in fun, it's all tongue in cheek, and it should be fun because it's so easy to do. For example, just look at Socialist Canada, where a recent airplane crash caused by their terrible weather due to climate change, climate change caused by their huge petroleum exports, nearly resulted in the deaths of dozens of people, including Americans. A crash at a Canadian airport, under the authority of Canadian air traffic controllers,/ In a jet aircraft built in Canada, supported by the Canadian government's huge subsidies to the Canadian Aircraft Company, supported by taxation to excess by the downtrodden Canadian people. Now, tell a friend about the Tenth Man podcast, and thank you for listening.