Yesterday, I posted about the lead poisoning of many children in Flint, Michigan, that resulted from shutting off the supply of safe water and replacing it with water from the polluted Flint River. Readers might wonder what happened to the man who made that decision. This reader responded: He is now Emergency Manager of the Detroit Public Schools. He was appointed to this position last January by Governor Rick Snyder.
She wrote:
And what is the current job description for former Flint emergency manager Darnell Earley? He is governor-appointed Emergency Manger of Detroit Public Schools. One would think that even Rick Snyder would feel compelled to remove Earley from his position in Detroit after learning of the Flint water scandal, but one would be wrong… Earley has continued to wreak havoc on Detroit Public Schools, serving Detroit’s students the educational equivalent of contaminated water. I was surprised that Rachel Maddow didn’t include this information in her otherwise excellent piece on Flint.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here’s a link to the school situation in Flint: https://t.co/5Jy4CezW76
I meant the EAA, not Flint alone. Also Detroit is under a blackout this morning:
http://www.ibtimes.com/detroit-power-outage-2014-100-buildings-without-power-include-fire-stations-schools-1732026?rel=rel1
Another one for the “can’t make this stuff up” file. He needs to go. To jail.
It just never seems to end, whether it’s a school, or a whole school system, or a building, or a city. The Guardian had a fascinating article about what the public loses as more and more buildings are acquired by corporations. It might as well have been about schools.
“…we are seeing a systemic transformation in the pattern of land ownership in cities: one that alters the historic meaning of the city. Such a transformation has deep and significant implications for equity, democracy and rights.
A city is a complex but incomplete system: in this mix lies the capacity of cities across histories and geographies to outlive far more powerful, but fully formalised, systems – from large corporations to national governments….
“In this mix of complexity and incompleteness lies the possibility for those without power to assert ‘we are here’ and ‘this is also our city’. Or, as the legendary statement by the fighting poor in Latin American cities puts it, ‘Estamos presentes’: we are present, we are not asking for money, we are just letting you know that this is also our city.’ http://bit.ly/1PihArZ
If the privatizers destroy that, there will be no one left to claim the city (or the school). How convenient.
Thanks so much for the link. I was wondering about loss of ownership myself. I think there’s a difference between owning something and purchasing a service, and it comes down to whether the public is willing to invest in entities where they don’t build value over time.
Someone should do a map. I wonder how much formerly public property has gone to private title, over time? I’d love to see a map with color-coded property transfers.
Yesterday on this blog, on the thread of a related posting, Michael Fiorillo wrote:
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And so-called reformers are happy to provide the pedagogical equivalent of Flint River water to public school students…
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This is for the zealous purveyors of self-styled “education reform” that are all in for $tudent $ucce$$—
How loathsome and indefensible that his comment went so quickly from figurative to literal.
From the Army-McCarthy hearings, 9 June 1954, Mr. Welch to Sen. McCarthy:
“You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
The roots of rheephorm go deep—and they still bear rotten fruit.
😒
Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
So, the man responsible for lead poisoning so many Flint children, is now I charge of Emergency Management for Detroit schools?
If this were fiction, it would be pretty close to being considered dystopian. Unfortunately, it isn’t fiction.
Nothing succeeds like failure in the world of patronage politics.
Darnell Early constantly writes to us telling us that he,alone decides what we can discuss at our school board meetings. Yet, he claims Flint city Council members under the same law,PA 436, decided to switch to Flint River water. #ArrestGovSnyder.
It’s alarming to a lot of people, I think, because we don’t know where it ends. We don’t know who or what will rein in what are essentially attacks on working and middle class people.
They’re now barring them from courts- excluding them from the civil justice system:
“In short, Encore and rival debt buyers are using the courts to sue consumers and collect debt, then preventing those same consumers from using the courts to challenge the companies’ tactics. Consumer lawyers said this strategy was the legal equivalent of debt collectors having their cake and eating it, too.”
It doesn’t seem like there’s a national figure or “movement” appearing to challenge this stuff- the cavalry isn’t coming 🙂
Rachel Maddow talked about the loss of democracy — and portrayed that as “a Michigan thing” — without recognizing that the loss of democracy is occurring over a widespread swath of our country — specifically, majority-black school districts. Why are Democrats not complaining about the loss of democracy and disenfranchisement of black people, rather than the ridiculous “right to being ranked and sorted by standardized tests that are clearly biased towards the white culture”….
“A Michigan thing…?”
Hardly.
But for Maddow and other apologists for an Overclass-captured Democratic party, it would never be, for example, “A Newark thing,” since that would put the wrong kind of spotlight on her Stanford pal, the insufferable Cory Booker, who did so much to destroy the Newark public schools and teachers union.
Michael
That’s the first thought that came into my mind as well.
Maddow is a Democrat mouthpiece who reserves her “exposes” and indignation for Republicans.