When Will Rick Snyder Face Charges?

Probably never and his actions in Flint will only improve his standing among Michigan’s white voters. But the evidence against Rick Snyder is growing:

Adding to controversy over what top officials knew and when regarding Flint’s water crisis and resulting health epidemic, emails obtained by the Flint Journal suggest that Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder told state officials to suppress lead testing results, both from local health officials and the community, while they figured out how to present the information to the public.

The emails, which are from October and November 2015 and were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, include correspondence by Jim Henry, Genesee County’s environmental health supervisor, to county Health Officer Mark Valacak, and correspondence between Henry and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) Laboratory Director George Krisztian.

They “show growing frustration on the county’s part as it attempted to obtain information from the DEQ,” the Journal reports.

Testing on buildings within the Flint School District began on Oct. 2, and Snyder gave a press conference Oct. 8 admitting that lead levels exceeded federal limits. At one school, Freeman Elementary School, levels were six times higher than federal limits.

This is disastrous governance. It’s also pretty much what whites in Michigan wanted when they voted Snyder into office twice. It’s Flint after all and we all know what Flint and Detroit actually mean in Michigan (and national) political parlance.