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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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The Young Turks (are on Facebook)
The Young Turks - YouTube
www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks
The Largest Online News Show in the World. Hosted by Cenk Uygur & Ana Kasparian. LIVE weekdays 6-8pm ET. Young Turk (n), 1. Young progressive or insurgent me...
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The Young Turks show streams live on weekdays 6 to 8 pm...
Flint cops were looking for any excuse to arrest people at a recent town hall.
The Young Turks were he only national media at the town hall meeting. Johnson was ridiculed for trying to come off as a tough guy.
The whole point in having it in a church was so they could arrest anyone.
It is the most American thing you can do is to protest your government.
That's wrong- that's insane - to hold a town hall in a church.
Arrest for no damn reason at all.
They set a trap for you so they could arrest you.
In 17 hours over 85,000 people viewed the discussion on the arrests at the church.
Last edited by untanglingwebs on Wed Apr 26, 2017 5:47 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Wed Apr 26, 2017 5:20 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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State police using online surveillance to track talk on Flint water crisis
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Gary Ridley | gridley@mlive.com By Gary Ridley | gridley@mlive.com
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on April 25, 2016 at 7:00 AM, updated April 25, 2016 at 10:05 AM
flint water
FLINT, MI - State police officials are using online surveillance to monitor social media comments made about the Flint water crisis, according to emails released by Gov. Rick Snyder's office.
The emails show that officials attempted on at least one occasion to initiate criminal proceedings against a Copper City man over allegedly threatening comments he made on Facebook about the government's handling of the crisis.
"It's time for civil unrest. Burn down the Governor mansion, elimionate (sic) the capitol where the legislators RE-INSTATED the emergency dictator law after the PEOPLE voted it down, and tell the Mich (sic) State Police if they use military force, we will return with same," according to a state police email about the Facebook post.
A state police official declined comment on any possible investigations stemming from the online surveillance, but said the information they collect is shared with other state agencies that could be affected.
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"In the interest of protecting our residents, the MSP monitors any incidents that have the potential to result in criminal activity and/or violence," Michigan State Police spokesperson Shanon Banner wrote in an email to MLive-The Flint Journal.
"Threats against individuals and organizations are shared with the individual/organization so they have situational awareness," Banner wrote
In January, a State Police senior intelligence analyst sent an email to the agency's intelligence commander and an Upper Peninsula post commander that the Copper City man made a potentially threatening statement following a Detroit Free Press article regarding Flint's water woes.
In the email, the analyst said she was assigned to the MSP Intelligence Operations Center and that she was monitoring Facebook and Twitter with regard to the Flint water crisis.
The analyst asked that the U.P. post commander attempt to determine the author's whereabouts and speak with him regarding the Facebook post.
State records show the man who allegedly wrote the Facebook post was on probation following his involvement in an armed standoff with police in April 2015.
State officials gave extra pay to more than 30 state workers assigned to special duty on the Flint water crisis, according to tens of thousands of pages of emails and documents released by the office of Gov. Rick Snyder.
The man was sentenced to two years of probation in September 2015 after pleading no contest to attempted felonious assault following a 12-hour standoff with law enforcement, according to The Daily Mining Gazette. Six other counts, including threats of terrorism, were dismissed in that case.
The charges in that case were filed after police said he made threats against multiple government employees, including a public works employee attempting to disconnect his water over a delinquent bill and a Copper City billing clerk.
Eventually, Flint water claims from the state analyst were forwarded to a Michigan Department of Corrections staffer, which oversees the state's parole and probation programs.
MDOC spokesman Chris Gautz said a case probation agent looked into the information and sought a probation violation Jan. 22 but a Houghton Circuit Judge Charles Goodman decided against proceeding with the violation.
Goodman could not be reached for comment.
The probationer's attorney, David Gemignani, declined to comment on the case..
Snyder spokesman Ari Adler declined to comment on what information is shared with his office by the State Police and what is done with it, stating the governor's office doesn't "comment on any work or actions by the State Police regarding security issues."
The governor and his office have received extensive criticism for their handling of the city's water crisis.
Snyder has been the recipient of public protests outside of his Ann Arbor home and high-profile tongue lashings from Democratic representatives during his March testimony in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Dozens of protesters demonstrated once again Wednesday night outside the embattled governor's personal condo in downtown Ann Arbor.
The information was released as part of an April 15 release of more than 127,000 pages of state departmental emails related to the Flint water crisis. The dump included emails from the departments of Corrections, Natural Resources, Licensing and Regulatory Affairs and the Michigan Civil Service Commission.
It was the fourth set of emails released by Snyder's office.
It is unknown how much the state is spending to monitor social media posts about Flint water but the April 15 email release revealed that state officials gave extra pay to more than 30 state workers assigned to special duty on the Flint water crisis.
While the records don't usually indicate how much the overtime and extra pay awards amount to in total, in some cases, the water emergency resulted in officials receiving thousands of dollars of extra pay.
In one case, George Krisztian, who was assigned to act as a DEQ point of contact on the Flint crisis, received 5 percent extra pay, increasing his annual salary to $104,568 late last year.
Sheryl Thompson, deputy director of MDHHS field operations administration, also received a 5 percent bonus earlier this year for leading a task force to coordinate departmental response to the water crisis, bumping her annual pay to $142,014, the released documents show.
Investigators from Attorney General Bill Schuette's office, which filed criminal charges against two Michigan Department of Environmental Quality staffers and a city water plant employee, say they have combed through roughly 2.5 million pages of emails as part of their investigation.
More Flint water crisis charges guaranteed, attorney general says
More Flint water crisis charges guaranteed, attorney general says
Attorney General Bill Schuette guaranteed more charges are on the way as the investigation into the Flint water crisis continues. |
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Wed Apr 26, 2017 5:39 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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s
Six arrested by police at water meeting released from jail
Flint Police arrested six people on Thursday, April 20, 2017, at House of Prayer Missionary Baptist Church during a Flint water town hall meeting on the city's north side, following Mayor Karen Weaver's recommendation earlier this week to remain with Great Lakes Water Authority in Detroit. Officers also stopped men wearing hats from entering the church's sanctuary, and residents were asked to leave unless they complied. They also escorted people out who used profanity inside the church. Jake May | MLive.com
Jake May | jmay2@mlive.com
Dominic Adams | dadams5@mlive.com By Dominic Adams | dadams5@mlive.com
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on April 21, 2017 at 2:16 PM, updated April 22, 2017 at 2:32 PM
UPDATE:
Standing on the sidewalk with a megaphone, Abel Delgado -- one of the people arrested on charges including disorderly conduct, assaulting an officer, and interfering with police -- addressed the crowd.
FLINT, MI - Six people have been released from police custody after they were arrested during a town hall meeting at a church in Flint on Thursday.
The meeting at House of Prayer Missionary Baptist Church on West Carpenter Road had more than 100 people who gathered to ask questions and give input on Flint Mayor Karen Weaver's recommendation to stay on the Detroit water system.
The arrests came after Flint police Chief Tim Johnson asked men to remove their hats and issued a warning to the crowd.
"I just want to make sure this meeting goes off the way it's supposed to and that everybody's respecting everyone," Johnson said on April 20. "Please don't be in here trying to disrupt this meeting, because if you do I'm going to escort you out and I'm only going to take you to the back door and then you're going to jail. I'm not going to play with nobody tonight."
Officers stopped men wearing hats from entering the church sanctuary unless they removed them, and men who would not remove their hats were asked to leave, MLive-The Flint Journal previously reported. The issue led to arguments between members of the public and police.
Police also escorted people out who used profanity inside the church.
Thomas M. Cooley in Auburn Hills Law Professor Gerald Fisher said if the meeting were a public hearing hosted by the city it would be operated under Michigan's Open Meetings law.
"Everybody would have opportunity to speak and you couldn't stop people from speaking or prevent them from speaking because they had a hat on," said Fisher of a public meeting. "I would say if it really became disorderly - in other words, if it undermined the ability to conduct the meeting properly, then people could be removed."
Johnson declined comment to MLive-The Flint Journal on Friday, April 21.
Through Spokeswoman Kristin Moore, Johnson said the charges against the six who were arrested include being a disorderly person, assaulting an officer and interfering with police.
City officials did not release the names of those arrested.
"As for the arrests made, the police chief said it should be known that no one was arrested, or asked to leave the town hall, for wearing a hat," Moore said.
Weaver said she wasn't aware of the arrests until after the meeting.
"The whole purpose of the town hall was for people to ask questions, get answers and information about the water source recommendation," the city said in a statement. "In order for that to happen, and for any meeting to be productive, there has to be order and people need to be respectful of one another regardless of where a meeting is held."
Police say six people were arrested Thursday evening at a Flint church during a town hall meeting on Flint Mayor Karen Weaver's recommendation to stay on the Detroit water system.
Weaver said the city has hosted town hall meetings at various buildings such as union halls or conference centers.
"Churches often open their doors to us free of charge and we appreciate that," Weaver said in a statement. "There is nothing unusual about having a community meeting at a church." |
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Wed Apr 26, 2017 6:40 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Thomas M. Cooley in Auburn Hills Law Professor Gerald Fisher said if the meeting were a public hearing hosted by the city it would be operated under Michigan's Open Meetings law.
"Everybody would have opportunity to speak and you couldn't stop people from speaking or prevent them from speaking because they had a hat on," said Fisher of a public meeting. "I would say if it really became disorderly - in other words, if it undermined the ability to conduct the meeting properly, then people could be removed." |
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Wed Apr 26, 2017 7:00 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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» Volatile town hall erupts with old wounds as officials try to explain water source decision
Posted on Apr 20, 2017
Tiara Lee Darisaw (Photo by Jan Worth-Nelson)
By Jan Worth-Nelson
Near the end of the two-hour-long town hall Thursday night at the House of Prayer Missionary Baptist Church, a teenage girl, Tiara Lee Darisaw, stepped up to the mic.
“I realized that the more and more we speak about Flint, the less and less you guys speak,” she said. “I want to know what’s gonna happen in September when you all stop the water pods, and in 2019 when you’re all supposed have fixed the pipes, and what’s going to happen to our families that we care about?”
“Sometimes we need to listen,” Pamela Pugh, the city’s chief public health advisor, agreed once the cheering died down. “We will act,” she said, and announced several dates for upcoming water discussions, in particular several that she said would focus on health issues.
Town Hall panel at House of Prayer Missionary Baptist Church (photo by Meghan Christian)
A panel of ten officials — from the state, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and the city — were there to explain and answer questions about the Mayor’s announcement Tuesday that the city would stay on Great Lakes Water Authority — what some call “Detroit water” as its primary water source, instead of switching to the Karegnondi Pipeline as had been scheduled for this summer.
Instead, they faced down familiar themes of anger and frustration with ongoing health concerns related to the water crisis and the city’s notoriously high water rates.
John Young, a water consultant to the city and retired president of American Water Works, reiterated to the audience what he had spelled out at the Tuesday press conference: that of 12 options considered as the city attempts to move forward from the crisis, staying on GLWA water was the best. The four criteria used for the comparisons, he said, were the cost, the public health benefits, the risk and reliability of the infrastructure elements required, and the time required to make the change.
Under the proposed arrangement, the GLWA would take on the city of Flint’s 28-year, $7 million/year bond obligation to the KWA. In exchange, the KWA pipeline and its water supply will be available to the city as a backup water source. Since Flint’s water plant — the nexus of so much trouble in the last three years — will again go back to not treating water, money which had been allocated for its upgrades would instead be applied to infrastructure improvements such as repairing leaks in the city’s distribution system. Weaver said it has been estimated the city is losing 35 to 40 percent of its water from leaks in the aging pipes.
Young said the Flint plant still could be used for water storage, however, providing a backup supply when needed.
An anonymous question submitted on a card from the audience was “How can the people who still live in the city of Flint get past the mistrust of government and trust what is being said about the rates and quality of water?”
Applause and rustles of comments followed the question. Richard Baird, the governor’s senior advisor, replied over catcalls from some, “I’m not afraid to answer that because there is no good answer. There is absolutely no reason for people to be trusting until they see day in and day out consistency of behavior in putting things together that make a tangible difference and that address real problems that people are having.”
Weaver agreed, “It’s on us to prove it to people. We have to verify each other’s findings and hold each other accountable.”
But many in the audience remained restless and unconvinced.
Some, like water activist Arthur Woodson, asked for more specifics and more time to study the costs and benefits of the proposal. David Sabuda, the city’s chief financial officer, said the comment time was determined partly by the risk of competition for the federal government’s authorized $100 million for the state’s response to the water crisis,
Audience assembled for the town hall. (Photo by Meghan Christian)
Woodson also said Flint residents need to be represented on the GLWA board, to have a voice in water delivery and concerns.
At times officials struggled to explain how the rate structure would be handled under the evolving proposal. Sabuda said, “We anticipate holding the current rates stable,” though making it clear the terms of the proposal are still in process.
The new GLWA contract would replace a contract with the GLWA which has been in effect since October, 2015. The city, which had been on GLWA water for years, switched to the Flint River in April, 2014 as what was billed as a cost-saving measure until the Karegnondi Pipeline was finished. But the city switched back to the GLWA, ostensibly for the short-term, after the disastrous sequence of corrosion and lead poisoning that became the water crisis.
As questioners lined up, the tenor of the town hall shifted into increasingly emotional territory, with speakers venting suspicion of the state’s behavior and pleading for their needs — especially the needs of the poor — to be taken seriously.
“We are not taking this no more,” Tony Palladeno, a water protestor who appears at almost every water meeting, said. He said poor people were being driven out of Flint by others trying to make it into “Ann Arbor.” Offering his usual colorful language, Palladeno said he is broke, asserting he was “squeezing Abe’s head so bad in my pocket because it was all I had, I had him in a choke hold and his head came off.” He said he hoped he and his supporters, some of whom are out of town water warriors camping out in Kearsley Park at an outpost they are calling “Camp Promise,” would have a chance to meet with Mayor Weaver to share some of their ideas.
Things got heated when Palladeno and his wife went over their two-minute comment time limit and, objecting to requests to quiet down, were eventually dragged from the sanctuary and into the parking lot by security and police, Palladeno shouting, “Don’t touch my wife, don’t touch my wife!” and others loudly saying, “Leave her alone.”
[Added Friday: The situation deteriorated badly by the end of the meeting, when the Palladenos, along with four others, were ejected from the building and arrested, according to FlintPolice Chief Tim Johnson, on charges of disruptive behavior, assaulting an officer and interfering with police.]
Debra Williams, a Vernon Street resident and General Motors employee, voiced futility as she departed the sanctuary after the event.
“It just seems like this will never get resolved,” Williams said. “One would think they would have done an assessment of the Karegnondi pipeline switch back then — of what it would cost and what it would involve.” She said she still didn’t understand why officials at the time were in such a hurry to use the Flint River.
Among other complaints, one speaker, Nancy Burgher, declared the town hall should not have been held in a church. Her comments were met by applause and cheers from about half the room.
Nancy Burgher “This should not be in a church.” (Photo by Jan Worth-Nelson)
“Politics and this — this church — don’t match. We should be able to speak.” Referring to a previous speaker who had been ejected for using the “F-word,” Burgher said, “She accidentally used it — she was frustrated — she’s got a lot of physical damage and was agitated, and they escorted her out, and I had to go get her stuff and bring it to her and they would not let her back in.”
Before being ejected, that commenter said she and her husband both were ill because of the water and though they have been receiving health care assistance, many of her friends and neighbors don’t qualify. She issued a passionate pleas for health care for all and predicted that there would be more deaths, and “it’s on all of y’all.”
The GLWA recommendations will undergo further consideration during a 30-day comment period and also are under consideration by the City Council, who will need to agree to the proposal. The relationship between the Mayor and the council have not always been smooth, and council members already are registering complaints that they had been left out of the process.
After the press conference Tuesday, Fourth Ward Councilwoman Kate Fields commented, “The Mayor and the state have been working on this for six to nine months. Don’t’ you think an interesting question is why city council has not been present for those discussions? Who actually makes that final decision? The City Council does. So far, we have seen no real documents…no real figures.”
EVM Editor Jan Worth-Nelson can be reached at janworth1118@gmail.com. |
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Thu Apr 27, 2017 10:07 am |
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