Flint Lead Poisoning: The Anatomy of Government Failure
22nd January 2016
In the simple morality tale that is modern mainstream liberalism, government spending leads to good things and cutting government spending leads to bad things. So when news broke that Flint, Michigan’s, water system was laced with lead and may have poisoned up to 2 percent of city residents, including 23 children, they already knew the cause: Spending cuts imposed on the city by the state emergency manager.
The Detroit Free Press lectured Governor Rick Snyder, the villain in liberal central casting who appointed the manager, thusly: “To lead the state, a balanced budget is not sufficient…He has got to see people, not sums, as the bottom line of the state balance sheet.” Meanwhile, a headline in Vox declared, “Flint, Michigan, tried to save money on water. Now its children have food lead poisoning.” And The Week’s Ryan Cooper accused Flint of poisoning its own residents to save a few bucks. “This is a stark demonstration of austerity’s false economy.”
A dissection of the events, however, suggests that it isn’t government austerity that is responsible for the debacle but the government itself. And at every level: local, state, federal, elected officials, administrative agencies, you name it, I note in my column at The Week.