The Real News Happening in the US: 2017

A storm drain on the west side of Flint, Mich. The oil crisis of the 1970s and corporate cost-cutting in the 1980s and beyond led to the decimation of manufacturing jobs in the city. Its population plummeted and crime soared along with unemployment. (Carlos Osorio / AP)

By Paul Eagan, Detroit Free Press
Chicago Tribune
February 18, 2017

The Flint drinking water crisis has its root causes in historical and systemic racism, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission said Friday in a hard-hitting report that calls the public health catastrophe " a complete failure of government" and recommends a rewrite of the state's emergency manager law and bias training for state officials.

The report, unanimously adopted at a meeting of the commission in downtown Flint, also calls for the creation of a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" a model that was used in South Africa after apartheid as a way of rebuilding government trust and credibility by listening to and addressing specific concerns raised by Flint residents.

It calls on Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to invite experts to provide training on "implicit bias" to his cabinet, his team responding to Flint, and to require all state departments, including the Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Health and Human Services, to do the same for their staff. Implicit bias is unconscious bias that can be directed toward historically disadvantaged groups, influencing decision-making.

And it includes the news media among the many institutions that could have served the residents of Flint better.

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Saturday 18 February 2017 21.33 EST from The Guardian

More than 300 LA flights cancelled and hundreds of homes evacuated over mud slide fears in one of state’s strongest storms in years

A firefighter carries a woman from her car after it was caught in street flooding.

Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images

At least three people have died after one of California’s strongest storms in years brought torrential rain and flash floods to the state.

More than 100 homes have been evacuated over fears of mud slides near Los Angeles after the pacific storm, dubbed a “bombogenesis” or “weather bomb”, parked itself over southern California, opening sinkholes and cutting power to thousands of people.

More than 300 flights at Los Angeles international airport have also been cancelled or delayed. The storm stretched far out into the ocean and was at its strongest late on Friday afternoon. It is expected to last until Saturday afternoon.
One man was found dead in a submerged vehicle in the desert town of Victorville after several cars were washed down a flooded street, San Bernardino county fire spokesman Eric Sherwin said.

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