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Rick Smith
CBS News
Tuesday, January 12, 2021 / 6:10 PM
Former Governor Rick Snyder expected to be charged in connection with Flint water crisis
By Zoe Christen Jones
Former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and others in his administration are expected to be charged for their role in the Flint water crisis, sources confirmed the CBS News. The ongoing crisis, which began in 2014, exposed residents of the majority Black community to high levels of lead and was blamed for an outbreak of Legionnaires disease.
Snyder, former health director Nick Lyon and other former officials are expected to face charges, although specifics have yet to be announced. Since 2014, at least 15 current or former state and city officials and staff have been indicted in connection to the water crisis.
A spokeswoman from the Michigan attorney general's office told CBS News that she could not comment on an ongoing investigation, but added investigators were "working diligently."
The news comes years after multiple probes were launched into the government's role in the crisis. Thousands of lawsuits were filed against the city and state after a local medical center found that most children in the city had over 50% more lead in their systems than their peers, a devastating figure that could be traced directly to the Flint water source.
The crisis began in 2014, when the city of Flint switched its water source from treated water from Detroit to the Flint River in an effort to save money. The city failed to treat the water, allowing massive amounts of lead from old pipes to be pumped directly into Flint homes.
Residents became alarmed when brown, foul smelling water began pouring from their taps. But Flint officials assured them that the water was safe, a lie that physicians estimate exposed over 14,000 children in Flint to lead. Snyder only declared a state of emergency in January of 2016, after federal officials announced their own investigation.
"Let me be blunt, this was a failure of government at all levels," Snyder said during a 2016 Congressional hearing. "Local, state and federal officials — we all failed the families of Flint."
In August 2020, the state of Michigan announced a preliminary $600 million settlement for families affected by the water crisis. While the money went toward over 10,000 active claims against the Michigan government, many Flint residents felt like the money couldn't bring back their safety.
Years later, many Flint residents still don't trust their drinking water. Parents can still be seen buying bottled water by the gallon, a costly precaution that has only become harder since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
"It's almost like we got PTSD with the water because we don't really drink it comfortably, like, you know what I'm saying?" one Flint resident told CBS News. "People actually lost their lives to it."
Rick Smith
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Rick Smith
Dallas Weekly
Wednesday, January 13, 2021
Senate Passes Bill to Create African American Burial Grounds Network
By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent
The U.S. Senate unanimously passed legislation that would better protect historic African American cemeteries. The measure also paves the way for the creation of an African American Burial Grounds Network.
“We know that for too long in too many parts of our country, Black families were blocked from burying their loved ones in white cemeteries,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) remarked.
“These men and women were freed slaves, civil rights champions, veterans, mothers, fathers, workers in communities. We need to act now before these sites are lost to the ravages of time or development,” Brown concluded.
Initially introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2019 by Congresswoman Alma Adams (D-NC) and Congressman Donald Machin (D-Va.), the bill primarily addresses at-risk Black cemeteries in South Carolina.
Still, it authorizes the Department of the Interior to conduct a thorough investigation of African American burial grounds across the country.
According to a Smithsonian Magazine report, the study would “lay the groundwork for the network, allowing experts to coordinate research efforts, create a nationwide database of Black cemeteries, and receive grant funding.”
Sen. Brown and now ex-Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) later introduced the measure in the Senate. It now heads back to the House for a formal vote. The action is yet another recent legislative attempt to honor and preserve Black burial grounds.
In 2019, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) joined by Reps. Gregory Meeks, Yvette Clarke, and Adriano Espaillat, all of New York, announced the African Burial Ground International Memorial Museum and Education Center Act’s reintroduction.
That legislation would establish a museum and education center at the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan.
This site currently holds the remains of an estimated 15,000 free and enslaved Africans and early-generation African Americans from the colonial era.
The National Park Service would manage the museum in consultation with the African Burial Ground Advisory Council, which would be established by the legislation.
“The African Burial Ground is culturally and historically significant to New York and the nation. The establishment of a museum and an education center at this cemetery will illuminate the plight, courage, and humanity of the free and enslaved Africans who helped create New York,” Sen. Schumer told NNPA Newswire in 2019.
“As a nation, we must always remember the tremendous burdens and afflictions experienced by those who were brought here in bondage, and who fought – for generations – against impossible odds to achieve the full measure of dignity and equality and justice that they were due. I am proud to cosponsor this legislation, and I urge my colleagues to pass this bill and for the president to sign it into law.”
The African American Burial Grounds initiative would provide grant opportunities and technical assistance to local communities as they work to recover and preserve those historic sites.
According to the letter signed by more than 60 organizations dedicated to cultural heritage and preservation, cemeteries are places of tribute and memory, connecting communities with their past.
“Unfortunately, many African-American burial grounds from both before and after the Civil War are in a state of disarray or inaccessibility,” the letter stated.
“By creating a national network, the African American Burial Grounds Network Act would help re-discover the existence of burial grounds ahead of commercial development, helping to avoid disturbances that create distress and heartache in communities. Preserving and protecting these sacred sites, and the stories they tell is an integral part of our American heritage.”
Rick Smith
Bloomberg News Service
Thursday, January 21, 2021, 3:15 PM EST
NRA Must Face New York Fraud Lawsuit Seeking to Dissolve It
By Erik Larson
·
State judge denies National Rifle Association’s bid to dismiss
N.Y. claims gun group diverted donations to enrich executives
The National Rifle Association was ordered to face a fraud lawsuit New York filed to dissolve the gun rights group for allegedly ripping off donors, even as the NRA pursues protection from creditors in bankruptcy court.
A New York judge on Thursday denied the NRA’s request to dismiss the suit by New York Attorney General Letitia James after saying last week’s bankruptcy filing was unlikely to derail the case. The judge said that since it’s in state court, he felt free to proceed with the hearing. Federal judges usually place a hold on litigation against debtors to give them breathing room to reorganize.
“I would not be proceeding unless I was confident, based on my own research, that there were reasonable grounds to do so,” New York Supreme Court Justice Joel M. Cohen said. Deciding whether to put litigation on hold “is not the exclusive province of the bankruptcy court,” he said.
James alleges that the NRA diverted charitable donations for years to enrich executives, in violation of laws governing nonprofit organizations. The case, filed in August amid a power struggle between former NRA president Oliver North and longtime leader Wayne LaPierre, poses one of the biggest legal threats to the NRA since its founding in New York in 1871.
“Today’s order reaffirms what we’ve known all along: the NRA does not get to dictate if and where they will answer for their actions,” James said in a statement on Thursday, adding that she looks forward to “holding the NRA accountable.”
‘Lurid Allegations’
Jennifer Rogers, a lawyer for the NRA, didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the ruling. The NRA has called New York’s suit a baseless, premeditated attack on the Second Amendment that was timed to have maximum impact during the election cycle. (BS) In court on Thursday, Rogers said the state had brought its case with “unprecedented fanfare” while making “lurid allegations.”
The NRA’s motion to dismiss the case was made on technical grounds about which county the group is incorporated in and whether the suit should be tossed out because it was filed in the wrong court. The merits of the state’s fraud case won’t be heard until a trial, tentatively set for next year.
The ruling follows the first hearing of the Chapter 11 claim on Wednesday, when the NRA’s bankruptcy lawyer said the group was “not afraid” of New York’s lawsuit and “not in any way attempting to escape regulatory supervision.”
The NRA, which has accused New York regulators of illegally targeting it for political reasons, filed the bankruptcy case in Dallas and announced it is moving to gun-friendly Texas.
In the same ruling on Thursday, Cohen denied the NRA’s request to transfer the case from state court in Manhattan to federal court in Albany, as well as its motion for a temporary hold on the case until a lawsuit it filed against its former advertising agency is resolved. New York argued that state court is the best place for a lawsuit by the state’s attorney general enforcing state charity laws.
In a grim acknowledgment of the pandemic, the NRA told the court that one of its lawyers, Carl Liggio, who was rushed to the hospital with Covid-19 last week, has died.
The fraud case is New York v. National Rifle Association of America, 451625/2020, New York Supreme Court, New York County (Manhattan). The bankruptcy case is National Rifle Association of America, 21-30085-11, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas (Dallas).