Darnell Earley, emergency manager of the Detroit public schools, complained about teachers’ sick-out to protest abominable conditions in the schools. Earley said teachers were hurting children. Earley was previously the emergency manager of Flint, where he shut off safe water to save money and poisoned children.
Who should parents trust? Their children’s teachers or Earley?
Who has the best interests of Detroit’s children at heart?
Would children in Detroit’s tony suburbs be subjected to the same overcrowded classes and rat-infested buildings?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Earley has absolutely no standing whatsoever to declare that anyone else is “hurting children.”
Sickening hypocrite.
Love that stock photo of a nice, gleamingly clean new classroom. Bet you find a lot of those in DPS.
If I were Mr. Earley, I would have fled the Detroit/Flint area and be living in a cave on a deserted island. There are 25,000 really angry families. I’m surprised he’d do or say anything to call attention to himself.
Clearly, he thinks that anything he says or does is the divinely revealed word of some diety or other. A common attitude (and failing) of far too many politicos and political appointees.
I think of it as “the sun shines out of my @ss” syndrome on their part.
Zorba, you have created quite an unusual visual image! Somehow I can’t quite see that particular characteristic as one of which anyone would be proud. I guess it’s in the same class as the emperor’s new clothes. 🙂
Well, it does seem as though people like Earley think that everything that comes out of any of their orifices is golden. 😀
Probably why he needs drivers and security. Paid for of course by Detroit Public Schools.
I WOULD LOVE TO CLEARLY KNOW THE BACKGROUND OF ALL “”crooked”” politicians and administrators in the public sector like this particular Mr. Earley.
If any blogger can identify their affiliation, please cultivate workers, parents and students. Eventually, these crooked administrators and their family members cannot hide to have a special treatment from people whom they harm. Back2basic
Apologize about redirecting this info to So. California where all the children with their families in Porter Ranch and surrounding areas had to flee being poisoned by the leaking methane gas from storage wells, and had to find living quarters and new schools to attend as of yesterday…all their schools have been closed indefinitely. Please pass this info on since Obama has not yet declared this a formal disaster area..though our Governor just did. We need the help of the nation in publicizing this…. as does Flint.
————————————————
“Climate Hawks Vote
I’m Richard Mathews, treasurer of Climate Hawks Vote, and I live within smelling distance of the fracked natural gas leak that has been spewing methane and toxins into the Los Angeles air since at least October 23, coming from an underground storage area above the suburb of Porter Ranch and holding fracked natural gas imported from other states. The company responsible is Southern California Gas, a subsidiary of Sempra Energy.
Sign our petition–tell President Obama to declare the site a national disaster.
I live four miles from the site of this toxic disaster—the largest natural gas leak in U.S. history—and can smell the nasty fumes. But it’s even worse for people like my 88-year-old mother, who lives with me and is suffering from headaches and nausea but who feels she is too old to handle relocation. Thousands of families have fled their homes, and many more are still getting sick. Others like my mother are on the waiting list to get air purifiers. The leak isn’t expected to be fixed until Halliburton completes drilling a relief well around March.
Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas contributing to rapid warming—over 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. The greenhouse impact of this leak is the equivalent of the pollution from seven million cars or six coal-fired power plants. I’ve calculated that this leak spews more gas, by volume, into the atmosphere than the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster leaked oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
That global disaster troubles climate hawks like me. But equally worrisome, methane is highly explosive, and the chemicals mixed with the methane are making people sick. These include methyl mercaptan (the rotten-egg-smell they add to natural gas), benzene, radon, hydrogen sulfide, and a mist of crude oil. While the methane spreads around the world, these toxins stay close to the ground and accumulate in our valley.
On January 6, California Gov. Jerry Brown dropped by for an hour and declared it a disaster. Now, President Obama needs to meet with affected residents, understand the havoc wreaked by his pro-fracking policy, and declare the site a national disaster area.
President Obama’s national disaster declaration will help my friends and neighbors get tax benefits, mortgage relief, and federal resources to improve health—and help this nation to start fighting back against the out-of-control fracking industry.
Again, please click here to sign our petition to declare the site a national disaster.
Richard M. Mathews, for
Climate Hawks Vote “
The parents probably know it doesn’t matter what he says because he’ll be down the road in 6 months anyway. If you think we’re “reform weary” imagine those poor people.
Diane Ravitch
You stated above “Earley was previously the emergency manager of Flint, where he shut off safe water to save money and poisoned children.”
This is false. He did not shut off safe water. He did not do this spite the people of Flint. He changed the source of water from Detroit to the Flint river and saved the bankrupt city about $10 million dollars. He or any one else in the administration know that the chemistry of water from the river increased leaching of lead pipes in the city of Flint. Flint river water does not have high lead content, it simply increased the leaching rate from the old lead pipes.
Most old cities in this country have old lead pipes to distribute water. The change in the water source changed the chemistry of water which resulted in increased leaching of lead leading to bad consequences to the people of Flint. No one predicted this prior to the change. The water supply has been restored back to the Detroit water source. All old cities, i.e., all cities in the east coast use old lead pipes to supply water to homes. You or many of the people in the east coast are not immune from this phenomenon.
There is very good article in the Atlantic Monthly on this subject.
You need to apologize. He did not poison children and he did benefit from poisoning children. He did not shut off safe water to save money. He just changed the source of water to save money. Saving money for a bankrupt city resulted in the increased lead concentration in the water supply.
Raj, go read the responses to you on the other thread before you come here making yourself look (more) ignorant.
Dienne,
Read the reports on Flint more carefully. There are many decent news reports not stupid blog entries by people with no scientific knowledge. Ignorance is not bliss.
Dienne,
Raj does not look ignorant.
He looks stupid because he is stupid.
The water had to be tested and treated differently, and it was not.
Poor Raj. He must suffer from lead poisoning himself.
Money is not saved when it is spent on sources of water that were tainted and that needed to be treated as a result of a bad, lead-pipe-ridden infrastructure or leaching effects that would have been mitigated or avoided had we had a fairer taxation system with enough revenues in it.
Does Raj mean to say that Detroit did not have any resources to hire someone who is a biochemist with a background in hydrophysics?
Water always gets tested thoroughly and comprehensively before it gets rerouted and given out to people. Or when it comes from a different source. Or when it travels through bad pipes. Or when it is perfectly fine, but then leaches out lead.
Mr. Earley should be apprehended and imprisoned.
Raj should think before he writes. Instead of asking Dr. Ravitch to apologize, maybe Raj should offer his own penance for such brazen and sloppy stupidity.
Really Raj!
Have you ANY dignity?
At the very least, treat yourself better by not blurting out your bizarre notions and values and subjecting yourself to public humiliation. You deserve better Raj, but you might have to be the one to make sure it happens . . .
Raj,
Early and Snyder will not escape public scrutiny for this total mess. THEY SCREWED FLINT, period. Money saving scheme does not give them legit excuse for contaminating children.
Your whining and complaint do nothing but make you so pathetic.
Just in case, let’s see what the Atlantic article says about Earley:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/dont-drink-the-water/399803/
“In 2012, Michigan voters repealed an emergency-manager law that had allowed emergency managers to take over troubled cities and school districts. But the state legislature then passed a different, and more far-reaching, emergency-manager law later that year. A group of citizens, including some from Flint, filed a lawsuit arguing that the law violated their constitutional right to equal protection. In November, a judge allowed the suit to go forward.”
And more,
“But making river water safe for public use is a much more difficult task than treating reservoir or lake water. Rivers are subject to runoff and the water quality can change quickly with air temperature or heavy storms. Flint found this out as soon as it turned off the pumps from Detroit and started pumping its own water in April 2014.”
“Residents said they noticed the difference almost immediately. Melissa Mays says her water started smelling like rotten eggs, and had a strange tint when coming out of the faucet, sometimes blue, sometimes yellowish.”
That’s exactly what happened. Raj. No excuse. No excuse.
No apologies, Raj. He cut off a safe water supply ad substituted an unsafe supply. The number of children suffering from lead poisoning soared. Te state government acknowled the error. Why can’t you?
Raj, It is not stupidity to question why such a major modification to the system lacked adequate quality assurance. Perhaps you need to learn basic quality assurance practices in industry. Basically, when a change is made to a system, you either first test it in a non-production environment before rollout, or if it is impossible to do this, you try limited release and/or phased installation with some type of monitoring for feedback. In both cases, you carefully monitor outcomes. Think of the disruption if someone decided to switch to an all new gasoline formulation for cars because it is cheaper. Sure, it might work, but most people would like to know before filling up.
There is someone accountable. We need to find out what lead them to this decision so it doesn’t happen again.
Cripes, Raj, bother to read. It was known in advance that Flint River water was not safe without an agent to make it not corrosive. That agent wasn’t scheduled to be added to the water until 2016, yet the Flint emergency manager and other officials switched to Flint River water in spring 2014. The evidence is plain – they knew the water wasn’t safe to drink. Furthermore, once people started complaining, Flint officials buried the story and lied, saying the water had been properly treated and tested, when they knew it had not. These are facts, Raj. There is simply no way to spin this in favor of Flint officials. The fact that you would try says a lot about the black hole where your heart should be.
And did you read this from SDP on the previous thread: “GM would not even use the Flint River water in their plant to clean parts because it was corrosive.”
So you’re still sticking with your story that no one could possibly have known that using Flint River water would cause any harm? When a major manufacturer won’t even use that water to clean parts? That’s your story and you’re sticking to it?
“There are many decent news reports not stupid blog entries by people with no scientific knowledge.”
…said the Master of the Möbius comment.
Apparently, the lead problems were perfectly predictable. To avoid them the Flint river water needed to be treated differently. This was well-known. The water was not treated.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/11/health/toxic-tap-water-flint-michigan/
From the article, “Later it became publicly known that federal law had not been followed. A 2011 study on the Flint River found it would have to be treated with an anti-corrosive agent for it to be considered as a safe source for drinking water.”
No apologies are needed.
On reading Earley’s remarks, I felt he thought that politically the walkout would create backlash from state legislators. Though I suspect the legislators will not care. Perhaps ithe publicity will get voters interested.
One of my favorite bloggers, Cathy O’Neill aka Mathbabe, posted this yesterday… it makes it very clear who serves under the leadership of despotic “emergency managers”:
http://mathbabe.org/2016/01/11/which-michigan-cities-are-in-receivership/
Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
Earley should certainly know about what actually “hurts children,” instead of this hyperbole, since he poisoned the children of Flint, Michigan when he switched Flint to unsafe water.
What is he now doing to make Detroit’s school buildings cleaner and safer for children? After all, he’s supposed to be the Detroit public schools’ “emergency manager.”