Guvmint Is Not Done Screwing Over Flint Water Victims Yet
...The main reason why Flint residents won't get more is that, unlike private companies, they can't sue the government, thanks to the doctrine of sovereign immunity, which protects government from tort lawsuits. In fact, prestigious law firms that are representing victims of the recent California gas leak in a class action lawsuit against Southern California Gas Co., owned by the non-governmental Sempra Energy, are so far declining to help Flint victims because the odds that they will succeed against the government are low to zero....

The Flint Water Crisis Is the Result of a Stimulus Project Gone Wrong
...Snyder's office did not return my call, but sources close to the situation at the time tell me that it was essentially because Genesee County and Flint authorities saw the new water treatment as a public infrastructure project to create jobs in an area that has never recovered after Michigan's auto industry fled to sunnier business climes elsewhere. And neither Snyder nor his Emergency Manager Ed Kurtz nor the state treasurer Andy Dillon had the heart to say "no," especially since to hand Flint to DWSD would have made the whole project less viable. What's more, they felt that just as Detroit was receiving an infrastructure boost post-bankruptcy (with the state-backed $650 million ice-hockey-arena-cum-entertainment center that I wrote about here) it was only fair that Flint get one too.

All of this shows two things:

One, the Flint water crisis is the result of a Keynesian stimulus project gone wrong....

Liberals Still Say Austerity Poisoned the Water in Flint, Damn the Evidence
...As Reason’s Shikha Dalmia reported on Monday, sources told her that the state-appointed emergency manager went along with the plan because “Genesee County and Flint authorities saw the new water treatment as a public infrastructure project to create jobs in an area that has never recovered after Michigan's auto industry fled to sunnier business climes elsewhere.”...

...But Flint’s principal problem—one that pre-dates the water crisis by decades—is that its economically-underprivileged taxpayers can’t afford to pay the pensions of retired city workers. Excess government spending landed Flint in its current, sorry state, not austerity. Likewise, the disastrous decision to go with a more expensive water option was not austerity, but government-sponsored stimulus gone (predictably) wrong....

Walmart, Other Corporations Are Donating Water Bottles to Flint: Guess Who Can’t Stand That
...Let me get this straight: when corporations put profits first, they are accused of undermining social institutions with their greed—when they unquestionable put people first… they are also accused of undermining social institutions!

In any case, it’s worth asking whether the private sector supplanting government functions is actually a bad thing. Despite what liberals like Dana Milbank and Katrina vanden Heuvel think, privatization and austerity are not the causes of the Flint water crisis: government mismanagement, regulatory failure, and Keynesian fiscal stimulus are. If the private sector can deliver affordable, clean water to Flint, why shouldn’t people prefer it? Is government-managed delivery of public goods really an absolute moral necessity, even if the government is bad at delivering said public goods?

Michael Moore: Don't Send Bottled Water to Flint
...Amen! If you want to help, he says, be a part of the “revolt” that will help overhaul a broken water system, and hold the people who did this accountable.

Moore outlines a detailed plan that includes a call to arrest Governor Rick Snyder and put the federal government in charge, echoing support for the NRDC lawsuit filed today which requested that a federal court force Flint to replace all lead service lines immediately....

Stop Drinking Bottled Water
...Drinking municipal tap water means connecting yourself to your local water system, where the goals are to think holistically about the conservation of natural resources, replenish local aquifers, and build a resilient infrastructure to distribute water to the public.

Drinking bottled water means colluding with a corporation which is not required to release any public information about how it plans to cut costs, exploit workers, dig wells, or employ a fossil-fueled supply chain in its quest to get a bottle of overpriced water into your hands....