The Poisoning of America

Journalist Jordan Chariton of Status Coup joins Steve to talk about his new book, “We the Poisoned: Exposing the Flint Water Crisis Cover-up and the Poisoning of 100,000 Americans.”

Aug 24, 2024

Let us never become immune to shock and outrage over the US government’s failure to guarantee its citizens a safe clean water supply. We must be outraged by the power that private players hold over us all with the blessings and collusion of officials whose titles suggest they should protect us.

Investigative journalist Jordan Chariton has been reporting on the Flint water crisis for nearly a decade. His newly published book, We the Poisoned, examines how systemic governmental failures, abetted by municipal, state, and federal authorities, and complicit media, combined to allow the Flint catastrophe.

Jordan talks to Steve about the devastating effects of neoliberal privatization schemes, driven by financial incentives and aided by powerful interests including Wall Street, which resulted in the use of untreated water from the polluted Flint River in a city already suffering from decades of economic decline. Privatization transformed public utilities into profit-driven entities, neglecting critical safety and quality controls. President Obama's inadequate federal response and successive Michigan administrations' culpability resulted in a combination of political negligence and deliberate actions all to avoid setting a costly precedent of government intervention.

Lest we relax into the belief that such crises are incidental and rare, be warned. Privatization is on an upward trajectory. The people’s health and safety interfere with profits and in the US, profit reigns supreme.

This episode offers a detailed portrayal of environmental racism, the perils of unchecked corporate power, and how both government and media support these atrocities.

Jordan Chariton, Status Coup CEO, is an independent progressive journalist who has worked inside and outside the belly of the corporate media beast for over a decade. He worked at Fox, MSNBC, and TYT, before starting Status Coup. He is the author of the newly published book, “We the Poisoned: Exposing the Flint Water Crisis Cover-up and the Poisoning of 100,000 Americans.”

@JordanChariton on Twitter

Status Coup News

FULL TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Steve Grumbine: All right, folks, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. I had Jordan come on here recently because Jordan has been covering the Flint, Michigan crisis; and East Palestine; and West Virginia. And, pretty much, he's the only guy that consistently shows up when the poorest people are in need.

And let's be fair. When it comes to economics, I see all my economic friends posting about the stock market. I see them talking about macro aggregates and things like that. But there's an entire separate element to macroeconomics that always gets skipped. I don't understand why it gets skipped, but it does every single time get skipped. And the entire macroeconomics community that could really be adding a huge weight to this to save lives.

Some reason or another, I, and I, your guess is as good as mine as to why they stay quiet on it. But they stay quiet on it. And here we are with the Flint water crisis that has been going on since, well, 2014, when they switched over. 2016, when Jordan began covering this as part of his work at The Young Turks.

And now in a groundbreaking book that we talked to you all about previously, I think every single person needs to run out to the bookstore and purchase this thing. It's called Exposing the Flint Water Crisis Cover Up and the Poisoning of 100,000 Americans, We the Poisoned, by Jordan Chariton. It's got a foreword by Erin Brockovich.

And I'm just going to quickly tell you some of the other people that weighed in on the back of the book as well. Michael Moore, who's weighed in. Karen Weaver, who has weighed in, Ryan Grimm, Nina Turner, Michael Isikoff and Peter Hammer. And of course, now you've got Steve Grumbine in here weighing in as well.

This is a must read book. I have it in my hands. Fantastic. I'm really, really proud to be associated with you in any way, shape, or form Jordan. So congratulations on finally, after all these years of sticking with this story, thank you so much for sticking with it, by the way. But congratulations on getting this book released and published.

It really is wonderful.

[00:03:28] Jordan Chariton: Thank you, sir. it was, didn't look likely for a while. But, uh, I'm very happy and proud that, the truth is out there. And, at the very least, the poisoned people of Flint now have access to the full details and, hopefully, other communities that are experiencing other, not just toxic water, but toxic government - now they know what happened in Flint and how to, hopefully, prevent it from happening to them.

[00:03:52] Steve Grumbine: Before we get too deep into this, I do want to make a point. You have been particularly, I don't want to call it brutal, but you have been direct in your critique of the media. And I know that you're dependent on media to get the word out about your book. So there's kind of a strange relationship there where you both need them and at the same time want to chastise them for not covering this.

But that said, I'm on the economic side. And I want to take the opportunity to do that, too. As I stated at the beginning of this thing. At Status Coup, where you do most of your work, I know when we've been together there, we have covered the genocide in Gaza repeatedly. We have covered the Flint water crisis repeatedly. And you've given me a platform by which to speak about Modern Monetary Theory and the impact of not only genocide, but also, quite frankly, the things that we could have done to make people whole in Flint, East Palestine, et cetera.

Why do you think that Obama, who had the power of the federal government, the most powerful country in the world. Why do you think Obama, rather than declare Flint an emergency, get funding through Congress and get those people made whole.

Why do you think instead he did a photo op drinking water to just let everybody know how great the Flint water was? Why do you think he chose that tack to discipline society and put a thumb in activist's eyes versus actually taking steps to alleviate the problem?

[00:05:23] Jordan Chariton: I think Obama, did issue a state of emergency, but that's not what was needed. What was needed was a federal disaster declaration. An emergency, basically, is the state running things. You're getting resources from the state with some federal help. Disaster declaration is the federal government takes over, could have sent the Army Corps of Engineers in there, dug up the pipes, FEMA, et cetera.

I think Obama, to a certain degree, I think he wrongly trusted his EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] that they were on this. I think he wrongly trusted the bogus data and water testing, which is all exposed in my book. And I think he trusted . . . it's a very technocratic way of government, which we know the Democrats love.

I think he just trusted his agency and the EPA. I don't think he actively was like, Eh, I'm just going to ignore the fact that they're all poisoned. That's ultimately what he did, but I don't think that's what he was thinking. I think he just trusted that the EPA was on it. I think that he wasn't, frankly, that focused on it; which says a lot about him.

I mean, this was a majority black community. It's the same type of community that he would have community organized in when he was an activist back in the day. Before he sold out. I'm not even sure it was Flint water he drank. Michael Moore swears that was water from Air Force One that he drank.

Um, But yeah, I can't answer to Obama. I frankly think that a lot of Democrats, um, Republicans too, but I think for the federal level it's a low priority for them. And I think that it's Flint, Michigan. It's fly over country. It's not a priority cause, you know, Democrats, you know back then, were winning Michigan pretty easily. And I think he, like many, were disconnected from what was actually going on. And I think he wrongly trusted his EPA. Which, frankly, was in on the cover up, that they were fixing it. But I think he knew when he was there that the things he was saying was bullshit. I also think that he didn't issue a disaster declaration.

He didn't do what was necessary because I think there's something to be said that they don't want to set a precedent. The federal government doesn't want to set a precedent that they could actually take aggressive action and help people because there's a lot of Flint, Michigans. Not the same exact disaster; but there's a lot of communities with water problems, with air problems, soil, fracking, mining, coal, you name it.

If they set a precedent in Flint, then that might have an expectation to do the same, in subsequent disasters. And I think the government, basically, wants to do some photo ops. Check some boxes that we did some testing, even though the testing is inadequate. Float up the fairy dust that we fixed the problem without the expectation or precedent that they mobilize massive federal resources.

Even though we clearly know from our conversations and what you cover, they have all the resources in the world to do it. And they could have ended this and fixed this, I mean, eight years ago. The pipes could have been dug up and replaced in a year or two.

[00:08:24] Steve Grumbine: Absolutely. You know, when Bernie Sanders was running back during where you first put your toe in the water on this - one of the key things that came out of that campaign that I think a lot of us had maybe never heard of before is environmental racism.

And you think about the fact that they take medical supplies and dump them into poor communities, and just bury them up in landfills with tainted and disease-ridden medical supplies and trash and other things that damage the people who are too poor, don't have a voice, and, because they can't grease the pockets of some donor or of a politician, they don't get any kind of democracy. We're not saving any kind of democracy for them because they are basically the human trash cans of the elite.

And with that in mind, I, I guess you've told the story about this and I'd like you to tell it again. Kind of like, Flint was a very important place many, many years ago. Fifty years ago, whatever.

And now it has become kind of a hollowed husk of poverty and joblessness and decay of the American infrastructure, if you will. Talk a little bit about Flint as a location, its history, and what makes it even more sad what happened.

[00:09:45] Jordan Chariton: Yeah, I tried in the beginning of the book to really set the timeline and the history. because I really wanted people to understand that this happened in Flint because of the controlled demolition of Flint over the last half century. And to do that I had to, obviously, show that Flint, back in the 1940s, '50s, '60s, it was, kind of, the envy of the rest of America.

It was known as the birthplace of the middle class. It was the birthplace of General Motors. If you are African-American listening, it was the epicenter of the great migration where African-Americans from down South migrated to places like Detroit and Flint for union jobs. Auto jobs.

So Flint was bustling in the Fifties and Sixties. I mean, middle class utopia. Vibrant city. One parent could work, the other could stay home with the kids. Two cars in the driveway. Kids playing in the neighborhood, running through the sprinkler. You know, picnics and vibrant parks and just a real, uh, suburban dream even though it was a city. Really suburban lifestyle. And, people could take a vacation and [have] a real sense of community.

And back in those days, uh, it was a competition between CEOs. How many jobs we could create? Those were the bragging rights, right? Now it's how much could we do with how little and stock buybacks.

But, anyway, Flint was, back then, a real bastion of the middle class lifestyle. It wasn't equal. Obviously, white people were doing better than African-Americans. But even African-Americans, to a certain extent, were doing well.

And then, for a lot of reasons, some federal - some state, it was just, you know, a battering ram was taken to it. From offshoring of jobs; General Motors shutting down factories; and General Motors was the economy in Flint. So you go from, at one point, 150,000 - 200,000 workers at General Motors in Flint to now, I mean, maybe less than 20,000? Racist housing policy - redlining. White flight - white people fleeing Flint, which craters the tax base. Which then, you know, it goes from an economically vibrant place to economically destitute. Racist rezoning laws. So, it was a mixture of the offshoring, NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement], you know, corporate deregulation on the federal level to state stuff.

So by the turn of the century, we're talking the 2000s, the early 2010s. I mean, I say it's kind of like if you think the Lion King when Scar took over the kingdom . . . It was dark. In my book, I call it a rotting economic corpse. And a rotting economic corpse is a prime target for the privatazeers, privatization folks, for the profiteers and for the economic vultures to circle around.

So that's why Flint was the perfect guinea pig for, and the book shows this, you know, I hate the narrative that always goes out that this was a tragedy born from, you know, politicians trying to save money and cut corners. This is not about saving money. This is a massive privatization scheme that was to make money. And a lot of people did make money. But

it would have never happened if everything I just described, that 50-year degradation-deterioration attack, really, on Flint. It w ould not have been as vulnerable for, um, you know, the privatization, the profiteers. And, you know, that's what happens when you have, basically, they could call it these public-private partnerships, which we hear that buzz-phrase all over country. But that's really code for privatization.

And that's what happened in Flint. The water system, there was an attempt to privatize the water system. And while they were building a brand new water system, they said, Eh, it's Flint. They're poor, they're black. We'll just use the Flint River while this new water system was being built.

And yeah, we'll just use the water plant that hasn't been used as a full time water plant in half a century. It's falling apart. It doesn't even have all the necessary equipment to treat the water. Best way to describe it is it's like one of these Boeing planes that are falling apart midair. So we'll use a polluted river and we'll use a decrepit plant and, you know, roll with it. And if people get sick, so be it.

[00:14:00] Steve Grumbine: Okay. So I, I want to put some context to this from an economic perspective for those people out there that are not necessarily fluent in MMT. Or even for those who are, but just don't choose these kinds of topics to do their activism on, for some reason. But when you think about what we call the race to the bottom. States. States don't issue currency.

So states are wholly, 100 percent, dependent on either federal spending, or taxing from their state-based taxation and local municipal taxes and bonds. They do not have the capability of spending money into existence like the federal government does. So when you strip away jobs from a state, that state is left with one or two things to do.

Number one, it can drop the bottom out of its tax base to lure companies back into there to provide jobs so that they can bring about taxation. Or, B, you end up with a desert like many of the rust belt is now where industry fled; followed by white flight. Followed by suburban flight. And then you're left with the most vulnerable people behind.

And what, what do they fund schools with? They fund it with local zip code driven taxation. Well, the poor can't do that. So guess what happens to their schools? They fall apart. Every bit of this is 100 percent about this race to the bottom.

So if you don't have the federal government stepping in; if you don't have protections to keep these kinds of businesses from fleeing; if you don't have something in place to prevent this sort of flight; what you end up with are deserts where people are really screwed. And then the hunger games really begin because what do they do? They sell off the area for pennies on the dollar. They did this in Puerto Rico. They do this everywhere they go. They did this in Detroit when Detroit was running into its own issues.

And now you see Flint. Flint, itself, is its own special animal. And, I'm loathe to say that most people have no idea that the federal government could have, literally, fixed this with simply a slash of a pen. They could have easily taken care of it.

[00:16:16] Jordan Chariton: I'll also add, um, it's important to this story and it's in my book. I actually had a few people tell me this was the pivot point in the book where they wanted to punch a wall. If you don't have media to expose this stuff or even investigate this stuff, from shady bond deals, to politicians selling you out, to privatization schemes.

If you don't have media - whether it's just that your newspaper has been cut or you have a newspaper but they won't investigate anything and they just repeat, you know, state propaganda - you leave people very vulnerable. And in this case, I mean, the signs and the red flags were there before they switched to the Flint River.

They were activists opposed to it. They were activists opposed to the unelected emergency managers that were put in place in Flint. That's another sub part of this story. I mean, democracy was stripped in Flint. All this talk about democracy nationally in the 2024 election. Democracy was canceled in Flint.

The governor, a Republican at the time, declared a financial emergency and he appointed unelected emergency managers, which are basically czars, to do his bidding. So that those czars - their power superseded the power of the elected mayor and city council. And if you don't have media that's going to investigate any of this . . .

The book exposes, there was a local ABC station in Flint that, literally, had evidence and documentation of the deadly Legionnaires [disease] outbreak that killed a lot of people in Flint. The bacteria was formed from that Flint river switch, and that water plant not treating the water properly. They knew about it six months later.

And the local ABC station just killed the story. They didn't run it. They could have saved God knows how many lives if they would have ran that story in October 2014, 6 months after the water switch. Uh, because the residents would have found out that their water was toxic then, not 16 months later.

So, media is a big part of this. If the media is not going to investigate; if the media, uh, whether it be because corporations are advertisers on their stations, or, or other than we're basically, you know, we are speaking up as citizens on our own.

[00:18:32] Steve Grumbine: What was the game that [then-Michigan Governor Rick] Snyder did? Because, obviously, it didn't just end with Snyder when he was removed; it went to [current Michigan governor Gretchen] Whitmer and everyone else. Everyone was kind of covering this thing up. It isn't just a one-person show. But tell the story of how Snyder made this thing happen to begin with.

[00:18:49] Jordan Chariton: Yeah. And the reason I call this, the biggest government cover-up of the 21st century, and I do not say that to be dramatic. I know of no other scenario that involves, uh, the federal government, state government, local government, city government, foundations, and Wall Street - all in one dark cabal that is still killing people.

That's the thing. People, the narrative has been this, this is over. This is not over. Cancer is surging and the water is still toxic. I mean, don't take it from me. Talk to the residents. They're posting images of their brown water ten years later. They're telling me, their water smells.

I was just in Flint for the book. People are showing me on their arms and legs, their rashes ten years later. But very long story short, cause I, I want people to obviously get the book. Basically, you know, water is the cash cow in a lot of communities now. Uh, water's, in some places, called the liquid gold. And forever in Michigan - Detroit, majority black, um, pretty much dominated water. Detroit water and sewage provided Flint and about half of Michigan their water. And Detroit, you know, same story for Flint, Detroit went from a middle class utopia to a rotting economic corpse around the turn of the century for a lot of the same reasons.

So one of Detroit's only assets left was its water department. And Detroit got its water out of Lake Huron, which is one of the Great Lakes, and piped it to, you know, up to Flint. And then Flint actually resold water that it got - after giving it to its residents - resold water from Detroit and sold it to other communities.

So Flint not only used it as water for its residents and businesses, but also made some money off of it. So, for a lot of reasons, local officials in Flint, uh, local officials in Genesee County, which Flint is part of - Genesee County is majority white, Flint is majority black - uh, they wanted to, quote, regionalize the water system.

That's another code word for privatize. So they want, they didn't want Detroit to basically control Michigan's water. Detroit, you know, majority black; Genesee County, majority white. There were foundations that wanted to, quote, regionalize services, i.e., take control from a black city, give it to the white region, you know, uh, Genesee County.

Detroit, for a long time, had been price gouging Flint. So there were legitimate complaints about, well, we wanna create our own water system 'cause Detroit is price gouging us. However, Flint was Detroit's biggest customer. So if Flint left Detroit's water system, it would go belly up. So at the last minute, Detroit offered Flint to cut its rate in half. You know, you go to the store, 50 percent off, to keep Flint.

But still, the powers that be decided, we're going to switch to a new water system. And we're going to build this water pipe, the same exact path as the existing pipe from Detroit to Flint. So , obviously, it wasn't about saving money. They just got a half off discount. But they wanted to build this new water system.

And the reason was, there was a lot of reasons, the water Flint got from Detroit was treated water. So it was already treated with chemicals. By the time it got to Flint, it's ready to go out to residents. The water on this new water system was going to be raw water.

Well, what do you need a lot of raw water for? Fracking. Agriculture. You know, meat packing, farming, the auto industry. Uh, you would want raw water for that, not treated water. Most of the water in this new system wasn't even going to be used for residents to consume, it was going to be used for businesses. So, it was a complete boondoggle. There was no reason for this new water system.

Engineering-wise, doesn't make sense to build an identical pipeline on the same exact path. So, basically, Snyder and his minions, uh, I believe they wanted to bankrupt Detroit. They wanted to privatize the water system. He was big on fracking and natural gas. This was going to give a lot of raw water to frack the hell out of Michigan.

And Wall Street was involved because, as you know, Steve, and you rightly said, states can't print money so they rely on a lot of bonds; issuing bonds. So cities issue bonds, states issue bonds so that they could build new water systems or, you know, whatever projects they need. They don't have the money up front, so they issue bonds so they could borrow money and then pay at interest back.

Well, Flint had no money in 2014. It was broke. It literally had no credit rating. Legally, it was not allowed to borrow more money. So they created this cockamamie, fraudulent, quote, emergency that would give Flint an exception to borrow a hundred million dollars. Imagine that. A broke, nearly bankrupt city was allowed to borrow a hundred million dollars. Wells Fargo and JP Morgan, so Wall Street, issued the fraudulent bonds, and Flint was able to help finance this completely unnecessary new water system.

Fast forward. Snyder is out. There's a new governor, Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer. There's a new democratic attorney general [Dana Nessel]. Prior to them, there was actually a criminal investigation moving forward. Uh, it was actually going after the governor, based on my reporting, for involuntary manslaughter. They were building a case against the Republican governor for involuntary manslaughter because he knew about the deadly Legionnaire's outbreak 16 months earlier than he notified the public and he failed to notify the public.

So they were going after the governor heavy duty. They were also going against the money. They were going after this fraudulent bond deal that was based on a fake emergency. Suddenly, the Democratic Attorney General, she fires the prosecutors that had been running the investigation for three years. Right before they were actually going to launch a massive racketeering case, RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations], which is reserved for the mafia. That's what it was created for, uh, in the seventies. They were going to charge a RICO case over that fraudulent bond deal.

I don't know for a fact, but I do believe they were going after the banks too. And we know what happens when you go after banks in America. So a Democratic AG, she fires all them.

My book details all this, she appoints completely amateur-hour prosecutors who have no business or experience prosecuting a case like this. The lead prosecutor she put in had never, ever, faced a jury before in a criminal case; and she drops charges against 8 state officials that had been charged. Part of those dropped charges were financial charges she dropped. Then she recharges many of the same, officials with lesser crimes.

And, wouldn't, you know it, Steve? She never went after the money. She never went after the fraud. The financial fraud. Uh, right now, actually, I'm in a bit of a back and forth with her office. Because I put in freedom of information [FOIA] requests for key documents that would outline that racketeering case that was going to be charged. First they told me they don't have the documents, which I knew they were lying. Then all of a sudden they saw Jesus. And they said, Oh, we'll look again. And then they magically found the documents, but told me they won't give it to me.

So bottom line, the pattern here from a Republican governor to a Democratic governor, and now a Democratic attorney general. I believe they swept, not just I believe, the evidence shows they totally buried the financial fraud that caused this. Because if they would have went after the financial fraud that caused this, they could have actually bankrupted the state of Michigan. Because the attorney general's office actually signed off on that fraudulent bond deal. So the state of Michigan would have been on the hook, potentially, for hundreds of millions of dollars because bond holders, potentially banks, could have sued them for bond fraud.

The other part, Wall Street. These banks that issued the bonds, would have also faced liability. Hundreds of millions of dollars because, as part of the bond contract, they were supposed to do the due diligence to ensure that the Flint water plant was equipped to treat the water. Of course they didn't.

So you, basically, have a state that could have went bankrupt if that financial fraud would have went forward in court. And you had banks, which, obviously, fund both parties. So this whole thing has been swept under the rug. And most people, I believe, have no clue that the Flint water crisis actually uh, the dark underbelly of it, is one of the biggest scams and boondoggles in American history.

[00:27:18] Steve Grumbine: Well, piggybacking on that biggest scam and boondoggle, I'm curious, at what point in this entire discussion have you taken note of any form of democracy happening in this space? Like, where is the agency for the aggrieved? Where is the agency for the people? It's so brazen that there is no democracy in this, storyline, and quite frankly, in this country, but this is a microcosm of everything we're experiencing right now. How does someone put on the old red, white, and blue and convince themselves democracy reigns supreme here?

[00:27:54] Jordan Chariton: First of all, all the resistance people right now that are Tweeting about, you know, our democracy at threat, you know? And Yay Kamala! And all that. Not trying to make this about the election, I didn't hear a peep from them when the Republican governor of Michigan declared a financial emergency and installed czars.

And by the way, Democratic governors have done that too. They have appointed unelected emergency managers. So, if you really care about democracy, which you and I have both talked about. We don't actually have a functioning democracy, we have the appearance of one. You should definitely care about it on the local level, 'cause that affects you more than the federal level.

But no, there's been no democracy here. In fact, 10 years after this happened, most people probably have no clue that these emergency manager laws are still on the books in Michigan. Why would they still be in the books in Michigan when you have a Democratic governor and a Democratic house and a Democratic Senate? All these Democrats blasted Snyder for the emergency managers he installed.

Yet they haven't gotten rid of the law. Why is that? Hmm? Because the bottom line is, how could you call it democracy when, from the jump, they, they, literally, in a deadly manner, lied to the residents; gaslit the residents. Told them, don't believe your lying eyes. Don't believe your lying skin rashes. Don't believe your brown water. Everything's fine. They lied to them for 18 months. They didn't change back to the Detroit water system for 18 months. They're still lying to them, telling him the water is fine. I've proved multiple times that the state of Michigan has been cheating on the water testing both under a Republican governor and now under a Democratic governor.

So who the hell knows what the real lead levels are in Flint? And regardless of who people vote for at the end of the day, Flint residents were super excited to vote for Gretchen Whitmer. To vote for Dana Nessel, the attorney general. Because they thought getting Democrats in and getting rid of the governor and his administration who poisoned them, that they were going to get help. And Whitmer ran as a candidate on reopening Flint's water stations where they got free water, which the former governor, they shut down those water stations. She ran on justice for Flint.

Well, she's been in office about six years, she has not reopened the free water stations. She gave Flint a state park. They don't need a state park. They need clean water. They need new pipes. They need Medicare for All. They need a lot of things. So there's no democracy, even though, you know, residents can elect people.

I mean, the attorney general literally came in; it's a huge scandal; the media barely has laid a journalistic glove on her. But my book shows she, literally, whether it was unintentional incompetence or intentional sabotage, she, literally, tanked the criminal investigation. She took an investigation that, at this point, if she would have kept those prosecutors on, probably would have had convictions. And, probably, would have, you would have had a lot more money going to Flint residents. And she, for no reason at all, other than, I think, as the book shows, pettiness, politics, cleaned house started from scratch. I spoke with lawyers who said it was unheard of for an attorney general to come in and do what she did. Which was fire all the prosecutors and start the investigation from scratch. Drop charges.

So it, kind of, seems like you can't be this incompetent. It has to be intentional. But to answer the question, I mean, I don't know how you could even, depict this as democracy. Because, in a democracy, if people who elect politicians - if those politicians, even if it's unintentional - harm - there's no greater harm than poisoning - harm those residents - you're supposed to, then, make it right. Make it whole.

You can't make everyone whole. People have died. People are permanently injured. But to the best that you can make it whole, provide, you know, new infrastructure, clean water, financial reparations, health care, ongoing testing. Very few of those things have been provided. So, no; there's no democracy in Flint.

[00:32:02] Steve Grumbine: All those things that you just laid out are national priorities as well. Quite frankly, I want to take you back to something funny. You . . . It's not funny, but it is funny. You said that they gave him a park in Flint. It sounds like giving out parks is the soup du jour of all these disaster scenarios. Because is that not exactly what the hell they did in East Palestine, as well?

[00:32:23] Jordan Chariton: Oh yeah, Norfolk Southern. Uh, Instead of paying to permanently relocate poisoned people, and when I say poisoned, I mean, I'm not comparing crisises, but East Palestine; a toxicologist told me the other day, this might be the worst chemical disaster in world history. And Norfolk Southern is getting away with putting in a twenty million dollar park; providing an Easter egg hunt for kids; a shitty settlement. Um, And that's it.

[00:32:50] Steve Grumbine: You said something very important also, that, you know, Flint is but one of many of these that could be happening around the country. I know, you know, of a few of them. But talk a little bit more about that. Because I think people get myopic, and they say, well, Flint, that's not my backyard. Flint, that's somebody else.

And most people, sadly, it's good for, uh, listening to a show on the radio or maybe reading a book, but once they're done with it, they're off to the next subject. This is not going away. This is happening around the country. Talk a little bit about your fears and concerns about Flint just being one of many.

[00:33:29] Jordan Chariton: Yeah, I think it comes full circle from what we spoke about earlier. So, because so many of these cites, which were, once upon a time, economic, economically vibrant, have basically been demolished economically. They are very, very reliant on, you know, one or two massive corporations that , provide most of the jobs in those communities. Or foundations that provide a lot of grants for those cities. Or like you said, help from the federal government.

They're not self sufficient as cities. They're not creating jobs on their own, as cities. And their tax base has been really hollowed-out over the last 40, 50 years. They can't provide services. A lot of their services have been privatized because there's not enough public resources. So they, you know, send out from the garbage department to the water department to, whatever, uh, has been sent out to private corporations. Which is a whole nother terrible can of worms.

So, bottom line, because places like Flint, or East Palestine, or Kalamazoo, which I've covered. They have an air pollution crisis because they have a packaging company that is literally gassing the poor black community with toxic levels of gas. Well, Flint. General Motors was the big jobs provider then. But, when General Motors left, the city, economically, became very hollow. And desperately needed help from a local foundation which provided a lot of services. Unironically, that foundation was pulling the strings behind the scenes in this privatization scheme.

So, as they were giving Flint government money, they were also screwing the people of Flint. But, at the end of the day, a lot of bad shortcuts and privatization schemes happen in these communities, because these governments have to rely on foundations with bad motivations. Or corporations that are cutting corners or just straight up gassing you. And that's what happened in Flint. Uh, they were broke. And it made it so this bullshit narrative of, oh, this new water system will save money for the residents and will save government money.

Of course, again, it was a privatization scheme. And there were corporations involved and Wall Street involved. That's how the bonds got involved, you know, issuing bonds because Flint couldn't fund a new water system on its own. Kalamazoo, the same thing is happening. Graphic Packaging is a multi billion dollar packaging company. They're in Kalamazoo, uh, western part of Michigan. It's thought of as a great place because they're recycling paperboard and cardboard, but the stuff coming out of that plant is toxic levels of gas.

I got sick, my cameraman got sick, a block away from the plant. High levels of asthma, COPD [Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease]. There's a 17 year old I was made aware of died of a severe asthma attack nearby the packaging company. 32-year-old, just died. Neighbors can't have people over because it smells so bad in the community.

And Gretchen Whitmer helped this packaging company expand. The governor of Michigan helped the packaging company expand despite the health and environmental department of Michigan issuing violation after violation. Why, Steve? Because Kalamazoo is a hollowed -out economy. And Graphic P ackaging provides between 600 and 1000 jobs and funds a lot of food pantries. And funds a lot of, uh, local youth programs, just like General Motors did.

You seeing a pattern here? Where governments look the other way and let corporations, or foundations, basically, have their way with the citizenry? Or engineer these, you know, corrupt or privatized schemes? Because without them, there's not many jobs and there's no economic engine.

By the way, that's happening in a lot of places. So when I say, don't think Flint doesn't involve you, don't think East Palestine isn't connected to you, don't think Kalamazoo is irrelevant to you. You probably have no idea what kind of chicanery, or fuckery, excuse my French, is going on in your local community because you probably don't go to your city council meetings.

So, trust me. There's a , good chance, no matter whether you're in a big city or a small city, they're doing some type of bond deals where they're borrowing money, uh, or they're doing some type of privatization scheme. Or they are currently, or they already have, privatized some of your systems. And they're doing it very recklessly, without the first priority being public health.

[00:38:24] Steve Grumbine: You know, that whole privatization scheme is the neoliberal playbook from soup to nuts. And, when you think about it, it's like, let's make government as absolutely ineffective as possible. Let's take away the funding source, whether it be making people believe that it's their hard earned tax dollars at the federal level, so that they're always fighting with each other. Or at the state level, let's go ahead and offer a sweetheart deal to lure business A out of its existing headquarters to place B in our backyard where we cut them tax break upon tax break.

Ultimately, the other area doesn't have the money for good public services. So people, naturally, think the government is just horrible. Well, imagine what happens when you underfund something. Imagine what happens when your funding source is completely tethered to some rich dude who, on a whim, decides he doesn't feel like doing it anymore. Or some rich donor that decides - You know what? You know, I think I don't like what you said. So I'm just going to pull my funding - or any number of things. At the end of the day, instead of it being public where the people make decisions, it's private where an individual or a group of individuals make those decisions.

And so, naturally, once government has been hollowed-out and it looks ineffective, Republicans can run a platform or, whoever else can run a platform, saying: See? Look, you give government the opportunity to save lives, and they don't do it. What do you . . . Oh my God, of course government's the problem. Let's privatize some more.

And so they've got their built-in, screw you, plan to privatize everything. From Medicare, you know, which is being privatized before our very eyes. Schools, we Josh Shapiro, who was on the shortlist to be Kamala's VP is a charter member of charter school lobbying. I mean, this is a guy who worked hand-in-glove with the Republicans here in Pennsylvania to bring charter schools.

So, ultimately, this concept of neoliberalism swept through both the Reagan party, obviously, uh, conservatives back in the eighties. And even Jimmy Carter, who gave birth to this neoliberal framework. You got Bill Clinton that did it. You got George HW Bush who did it. You got Clinton, Bush, Obama. Every single one of them have done it. And Biden has done it as well.

And I don't expect, you know, I know Trump certainly did it. And I can assure you that the next presidents will as well. There is no countervailing force to stop mass privatization other than we the people learning about this shit. Getting out in the streets. Becoming ungovernable. Doing direct actions. Because you already voted for these people, right?

I mean, we saved democracy, isn't that what we're sold? We saved democracy! We did this thing, man. Aren't you so happy about the outcomes? As a genocide is going on, et cetera. So the point I guess I'm making here is, is that these are not isolated. The politics of that are the politics of privatization.

The US is exporting this to other countries who had robust public services and who are now in the process of privatizing. You see it happening in the UK. You see it happening in Australia. You see it happening around the world. So this strategy here, is a bipartisan global phenomenon of giving away to global corporations what we give to local corporations, you know, within the states. And, quite frankly, national corporations, you name it.

These conglomerates are literally in charge. This beast has grown bigger than the government is willing to control. And it's basically said we can't do anything about it. It's too big. Too big to jail, too big to fail. And they've kind of either A, thrown up their hands, or B, then on the other side of the revolving door and profited from it.

I mean, I know it plays heavily into your book here because this whole thing is a privatization scheme, but what are your thoughts?

[00:42:30] Jordan Chariton: You just have to think about it. I mean, just picture it in your head. A city that had gotten its water, no problem, for 50 years. Sure, it was costing too much, but, like I said, they did get a 50 percent discount. For no reason other than a bunch of politicians, a foundation, wanted to build a new water system that could be privatized and they could take the water and use it for all sorts of cash cow motivations. You know, give the water for fracking. For meat packing. For farming. For you name it. They, basically, built a completely unnecessary, entire new water system. And used residents in a poor black town as guinea pigs.

And, by the way, my book shows the governor of Michigan and his people? They were warned a year before. A year before they switched to the Flint River that there were health risks of using the Flint River.

They fully knew that there were bacterial and other health risks from that river because, as aforementioned corporations, General Motors, Dow Chemical, DuPont, and many others had dumped their waste in the Flint River for 100 years. If you talk to people in Flint, because most people weren't even aware they were switching at the time, to the Flint River, I mean, they would have thought it's a joke that you're switching to the Flint River because it was well known as a polluted dumping ground.

So you cannot make this up other than this is what happens when there is an unholy cabal between, quote unquote, public servants and for profit corporations. Or, for profit services, uh, when they merge together, to basically put balance sheets and profits over health. And, as my book shows, there's email after email and document after a document where it's clear the politicians know that the water is toxic, but they do do not take action because Flint was on the hook for these bonds.

So six months after the water switch, when governor Snyder in his administration, this is in the book, he had a top lawyer sounding the alarm. Sending emails to his chief of staff and others, Flint's water has E. coli, uh, TTHMs, which are cancerous chemicals. We need to switch back to Detroit. This was six months after the water switch.

She was, basically, told by the emergency manager, it would be too expensive to switch back. What was he really saying? It would be too expensive because we're already on the hook for a hundred million dollars in bond repayments. Flint. So we're not going to go back to Detroit and pay a million dollars a month for clean water for our residents, because we already have to pay for the bonds. Which are fraudulent.

So they, basically, they sold out residents because they couldn't double-dip. There was no way to go back. There was no turning back because Flint had indebted themselves— I shouldn't say Flint, a bunch of high priced lawyers and profiteers had saddled Flint with 30 years of bond repayments— for a completely unnecessary water system. So they could not take the urgent action to switch back to Detroit, which would have saved a lot of lives.

The only reason they did switch back to Detroit, uh, water in a, a year after that point was because a brave, local pediatrician took it upon herself to get the data showing that children's blood lead levels had skyrocketed. And she just put them on blast and held a press conference. If she didn't do that, they would have never switched back to Detroit. Or they would have taken even more time to do the right thing.

So, at the end of the day, the fox is running the hen house. It's not our politicians running government. It's the foundations. It's the corporations. My book also shows emails that included J. P. Morgan executives involved in this bond deal. You don't vote for your government thinking JPMorgan is going to be running things. You don't vote for your government thinking an unelected czar is going to be running things.

You don't vote for your government, nobody voted based on changing to a new water system. If you're going to do something drastic like that, you should have candidates running that they want to do that and you could vote for them or not vote for them. That's why there is no democracy here. Nobody in Flint voted to join a new water system. No one.

[00:46:57] Steve Grumbine: You know, this is the same exact story that we do on a global scale. Especially the global South. Using the same kind of debt arrangement for global South countries that are desperate to survive. But because of predatory corporations with the backing of the IMF, the EU, uh, the World Bank, you've got all kinds of different long arm of empire doing this around the world on behalf of multinational corporations.

So why wouldn't we do it to our own citizens here at home? It's the way we do business everywhere. And that brings me to the next point, which I think you started down. And I just want to make the point. How much FOIA requests? How many requests did you put for information out there? And, and how forthcoming? I know you've already said that Whitmer's office refused you, but it wasn't just them. It was a lot of people.

Not only did you not get help and get forthcoming on interviews and and other documents you had asked for, but you'd also been stonewalled by the media as well. Talk about how little support you had across the board.

[00:48:02] Jordan Chariton: Oh, my God, Steve. I could write a whole nother fucking book

[00:48:05] Steve Grumbine: Well, let this be the precursor to it, brother.

[00:48:08] Jordan Chariton: Um, I gotta tell you, I think the Flint water crisis to this day is ongoing because we have a corrupt media in this country. That's from national media. Corporate media. And frankly, I don't think independent media has done us any favors. The independent media is great in a lot of ways, but terrible and others. Uh, you know, in a, in a healthy society.

And I think we've talked about this. In a healthy democracy, you have a strong media that is separated from the corporations and politicians they're supposed to hold accountable. In a healthy media ecosystem, when an investigative reporter or an outlet breaks a big story, others pick it up and then run with it, and build on it. It's been the opposite in my case. I mean, I didn't, I didn't find like small little nothings. I found evidence of political payoffs from the governor's office to try and pay off sick Flint residents to keep quiet. I found evidence that the governor's office just deleted their phones right before the criminal investigation.

Destruction of evidence. So they got rid of all their text messages and communications that would kind of show crimes being committed. I got evidence of witness tampering. I got evidence of residents' brakes being cut. Like, some of the top activists, their brakes were cut as they were driving. I got evidence that residents were being surveilled by the local state government. I got evidence of total illegal and manipulated water testing.

Any one of these things is like a really big deal kind of scandal. But, put it together. That's why I say it's the biggest government coverup of the 21st century. I got evidence that the governor of Michigan, his health director, his chief of staff, I got their phone calls showing that at a critical time, when that deadly Legionnaires outbreak was spreading all over Flint that they were on the phone together over two days. Over 20 times. And the governor in particular was on the phone, uh, quite a bit during those times, when his environmental and health department were trading worried emails about Legionnaires. The prosecutors in the investigation concluded that that was evidence that it was a coverup. That he was covering up the Legionnaires outbreak.

I got evidence that the governor received a written briefing in October 2014 about the Legionnaires outbreak that he did not notify the public about until January 2016. Legionnaire is a deadly waterborne bacteria, and he knew about it in October 2014 and did nothing till January 2016. So I got evidence of all that.

I brought this stuff, piece by piece, to different outlets. I mean, I can go down the list. New York Times. Washington Post. Associated Press. Daily Beast. Mother Jones. BuzzFeed News, when it existed. I mean, the list is endless. Um, Slate. Salon. Independent outlets.

From top Chicago Tribune. Detroit Free Press. Um, Detroit News. The Flint Journal, the Flint's hometown paper. It was either you don't get responses - in one case I got a response; and I am not kidding - Is there a Trump angle to this? Meaning, we're not going to cover it unless you could connect it to Trump. I said, well, it happened under Obama, but to tell you the truth, it's more of a state government corruption than federal. Never responded to me. I got, I mean, I'll give you a story. A perfect example.

Those phone calls I got. Which, by the way, included the governor's chief counsel calling him multiple times at 4 in the morning. At the same time, beginning of the water crisis, when residents were showing up with brown water, the governor's top lawyer is calling him multiple times at 4 in the morning.

I'm not calling you at 4 in the morning unless I'm drunk or there's a real fucking disaster going on. And I drove, beginning of COVID to Michigan, um, 10 hours. I met with a top editor from the Detroit Free Press in a parking lot. We had our windows down cause, at that time, you know, nobody knew anything.

I handed him the documents. Including I got a briefing that the governor got showing that he lied to Congress, that he did know about the Legionnaires outbreak 16 months earlier. The Detroit free press editor said to me, this is, this is gold. We're inclined to do this with you. I even offered that he could put one of his reporter's names on it in front of me. 'Cause you know, these corporate places want to take credit. 'Cause this was never about like, you know, winning a Pulitzer for me. I knew that wasn't going to happen. I didn't do it But he's telling me this is basically like, you know, smoking gun shit, uh, I got to go back to my boss, I'll get back to you quickly. Three days later, I get an email. We don't have the resources. I said, what do you mean you don't have the resources? You're the Detroit Free Press. You got a lot more resources than me and I've already done the reporting.

Newsweek, another example. My former partner Jen and I, we knocked on 400 doors in Flint in the summer of 2018, because I got a tip that the Snyder administration was cheating on the water testing. They were, literally, sending in environmental officials from the state to residents homes. Running their water, in some cases, for five to ten minutes. And then putting the sample bottle under [to fill]. Which is totally illegal. It flushes out potentially high levels of lead. And, voila! They said our levels are safe. We're not finding lead. Of course you're not finding it, 'cause you ran the water.

The EPA confirmed that they did it the wrong way. Did the EPA do anything about it? No. I brought this to Newsweek. We , basically, made them a binder, like, for idiots. 'Cause most of the editors have not been following this. And they have no idea when I brought it to them that this was even still going on. You know, they've been following Trump and Russia and whatever other nonsense on a national level.

So, long story short, Newsweek signed on to do the story. I'm getting ready to go to Michigan. This was November 2018; so right around time [of] the midterms. It's supposed to publish. I land in Flint, and I get an email from Newsweek killing the story. They say, yeah, we think, uh, you've done great work here, but we just don't have enough hard data. I said, do you mean you don't have enough hard data?

There's, I don't know any outlet in America that has knocked on 40 doors, let alone 400 doors in the last 20 years. That's just not done anymore. Like old school door knocking. You know, on the ground journalism. And I have, I had 35 residents on the record and documentation to show it, in many cases, that they had manipulated the water testing.

So, clearly, either the lawyers said, no. Or the state government in Michigan got to them. Or there were advertiser concerns. I can't know for certain. But it was just not plausible. And that was Newsweek. Vice killed a story years ago that I was supposed to do for them. Basically, because of some bullshit smears that were spread about me.

I mean, I could go down the list, there's so many. Detroit News. I got evidence that Snyder's people wipe their phones. Cleaned, deleted, their phones. Um, they get back to me - oh, I think this has already been out there. Like, literally, gaslighting me. I said, no, it hasn't been out there. I have the documents.

And, it was just, they didn't want to report it. There was, for some reason, I think part of it is corporate advertisers. I think part of it is the media, for the most part is heavily made up of out of touch semi-wealthy white people that do not go to places like Flint or East Palestine and are completely disconnected. And if it doesn't happen in their neck of the woods, they don't give a fuck.

They'll cover the initial excitement if a train blows up. Or, you know, the water is poisoned. But they're not big on the whole follow-up part of it. And they just don't care. I mean, that's the best way I could describe it. They don't care. And I have gotten so much rejection for this story. But then, the few times I've been able to get the truth out. And when news consumers learn about it. Because that's what this is all about, right? Try to get the information to the people?

People are outraged. Most of the response I get from people is why isn't this on CNN? Why isn't the media covering this? Well, they're not covering it because A, they don't care. They're poor people. It's not only about race. I mean, East Palestine is mostly white, but they're poor. So there is a racial element in a lot of cases, but there's also a class element to it. and it is an outrage.

And that's why I've said, and you and I have talked about this. You know, um, you could protest outside BlackRock. You could protest outside of the government. But, if you're not circling the New York Times, Washington Post, your local cable stations, that are, literally, the gatekeepers for this information and are helping the politicians and the corporations and the foundations cover it up; you're letting them get off scot free.

[00:56:43] Steve Grumbine: Speaking of money. I just, you don't have to go down this path too long. But I want to just, as we close this out, I want to bring this up. Anybody ever give you a price tag on what it would take to fix Flint? Anybody give you a ballpark?

[00:56:57] Jordan Chariton: It would have, it would have, taken a few billion.

[00:56:59] Steve Grumbine: Yeah. A few, a few billion. Let's say five billion.

[00:57:01] Jordan Chariton: Basically, what . . . Basically, what we fart out in the morning to Ukraine or Israel or name your country.

[00:57:07] Steve Grumbine: I was going to say, let me just throw this at you. In April, Congress passed a supplemental aid bill to Israel, a supplemental. In other words, they had already had a larger aid bill. But they passed an extra 14. 5 billion to them. And just recently, in the last couple days, uh, agreed to adding 3. 5 billion off of that supplemental package. Just the 3.5 extra extra extra on the supplemental genocide funding support of this administration that people ignore and pretend isn't happening.

That, right there, could have easily wiped out the problem that's going on in Flint. I see easily. It would have taken a huge bite out of crime, let's put it that way. It would have gone a long way to making those people whole. Can you imagine what 14. 5 billion split between East Palestine and, uh, Flint might do? Or just put it at Flint even. I mean, my goodness, the point is, is that we're chopped liver in this country.

We have no democracy. We have no agency. And when you bring this stuff out to people to make them realize that it's going to take more than stumping out of your local voting booth with the I voted sticker on your forehead. If you don't realize it's going to take more than that, we're just going to keep getting more of the same.

Because , this here. This 14. 5 billion to Israel and the extra 3. 5 billion here the last couple days. I mean, you save democracy. There it is baby. You got your democracy. I don't see any of the evidence of that kind of money being spent on America. On infrastructure. On we, the people.

And I don't see any kind of conversation about it. I don't see people in any way, shape or form fighting about it. And quite frankly, I see the actual people you supposedly did vote for to get in office being the ones that are fundamentally making the situation so untenable that the people are dying. Literally, like this is, as you said, the slow, silent version of genocide, if you will. Genocide on the poor. It's class war against the poor. One more way of saying, you know what, we don't give a rat's ass about you. We're not going to fund you. You're not our priority. Go pound sand. Die quickly, but die quietly. Did I miss anything there?

[00:59:25] Jordan Chariton: No. And, you know, I think to really crystallize this, and like I said, I, I believe A, I think the book is a good read, but B,

[00:59:34] Steve Grumbine: A great read, by the way...

[00:59:35] Jordan Chariton: I think it exposes like some sinister shit that even ,like, the best filmmaker or script writer could not have come up with. To me, this makes Watergate look like child's play. Nobody died from Watergate. It was a bunch of knuckleheads breaking into an office. If a president wasn't involved, nobody would have blinked twice. This is like coverups that actually are actively killing people. Cancer is through the roof. When I was knocking on those doors, every block, I would find out about more people dying.

This was years ago, by the way. More people dying. And not just the elderly, we're talking forties, fifties, sixties. Liver failure, kidney failure, cancers, all sorts of things. But from a human perspective, as America, you know, you believe the marketing and branding. That we're this, the wealthiest country on earth. And some, the envy of the world. And, you know, we talk about these third world countries.

Well, in the book, I described an incident where I was knocking on those doors and I came up to a, a mother sitting on her front porch. Her one-year-old baby was sitting on her lap. And I came up. We talked. And she showed me her kid had white sores and rashes everywhere. All over her skin.

They had just moved into that home a month or two after Governor Snyder declared Flint's water, quote unquote, safe. Based on that manipulated testing that I exposed. And I talked to her and she explained my baby, she, she was African-American, her child, uh, African-American. You know, beautiful skin before she moved into this home. Now she's got white sores. She was showing me in her ear, her arm, her leg; never had this issue. But after her mother bathed her in Flint's water, the water that the governor declared was, quote, safe. The water that the media then regurgitates what the state government says. What the EPA says. Cause that's how that, that's the playbook.

The media doesn't investigate things. They just regurgitate whatever the EPA or the state government says.. And this woman broke down. You know, saying to me, uh, these kids shouldn't be going through this. But the city don't care. The state don't care. They're just too busy. You know, buying new, uh, cop cars and, you know, new guns and gadgets, to go after us with.

And she said to me, it broke my heart. I don't, in a lot of cases, these moments are what radicalizes me as a journalist. She said, I was even willing to call Child Protective Services on myself just to get water. Because she's poor. Twenty percent of Flint doesn't even have transportation. They shut down the water stations at this point.

She doesn't have a car. And is too poor to go buy cases and cases of bottled water, just like a lot of people in Flint can't go by cases and cases of bottled water. So a mother says to me, in the wealthiest country on earth, I'm going to call CPS on myself to get my kids clean water. So don't tell me that we're the wealthiest country on earth, that we're some vibrant democracy.

There's stories like this throughout the book.

[01:02:39] Steve Grumbine: Get the book.

[01:02:40] Jordan Chariton: These people have been poisoned. It's been swept under the rug and then left to die. Meanwhile, you have a bunch of wealthy white pundits on television news and in the New York Times, you know, with this West Wing bullshit. You know, West Wing the show about some fairy tale of democracy in America.

We don't have democracy. Maybe you have some democratic elements, but you don't have a democracy if you're poisoning your citizens and leaving them to die. No, to be clear, it's not just Flint where these kind of things are happening. But unfortunately, you know, I'm not an octopus. I can't cover every place. And I, I've tried to stay on Flint because, to me, this is kind of ground zero for it all. And if they get away with poisoning Flint and basically allowing the people to just die. I mean, they, literally, are using it. It's eerily similar. They're using the same playbook in Flint in East Palestine. It's the same thing.

Uh, don't believe, your rashes, if you're East Palestine residents or Western Pennsylvania, because not just East Palestine, who've been poisoned. Don't believe your rashes. Oh, you're peeing blood? It's a coincidence. Oh, you're having strokes? Seizures? Your body's tingling? Your, your memory's gone?

Just the other day, I was in East Palestine, Steve. I met a 35-year-old woman who lost her hair. I met a 55-year-old woman who, all of a sudden, has dementia. I met, uh, a man had double breast cancer. Very rare in men. All of this stuff happened after they chemically nuked this town. But bullshit testing. Cherry picked data. The media regurgitates what the EPA says. And, voila! We'll cover it on anniversaries and then declare it fixed.

It's the same playbook, folks. And if you think it can't happen near you, it can. And I would really encourage you, after you buy my book, uh, cause I do need to feed my family, um, I really encourage you, get involved. I'm not saying only get involved in electoral politics, but go to city council. Make sure you know what your community is doing, what your government is doing. Because, trust me, there's a lot of people in Flint that wish they would have went to their city council or the state capitol to know what they were doing before those decisions were made that ended up poisoning them.

[01:04:52] Steve Grumbine: Absolutely. Folks, the book is We the Poisoned, by Jordan Sheraton. By all means, go out and pick this book up. And by all means, you economic activists out there that probably don't want to be chastised, but you're going to be chastised. This needs to be ground zero. This is what makes economics matter. If you're not doing something to help people out. If you're just worried about investing. You're missing the plot. You're really, really, really missing the plot.

People desperate. And you have the keys to the car. You have the keys to the kingdom. And if you don't use this opportunity, these opportunities to leverage your knowledge; you're wasting your time and you're wasting opportunity to save lives.

Jordan, your final word on your book. Let everybody know where they can get it. Let everybody know where they can find the rest of your good stuff.

[01:05:41] Jordan Chariton: Yes. unfortunately it's not in all bookstores yet. Uh, a couple bookstores told me there was a delay getting it into bookstores. There was a delay getting it into bookstores. I guess this is positive, since so many were selling online, so, uh, they were running out of books at the warehouse to ship to the bookstore.

So, check if it's in your bookstore locally, but you could definitely order it on Barnes and Noble online. Yes, Amazon online. You could also do Bookshop online, which is actually kind of like a filter for independent bookstores. So that's Bookshop.org.

So I encourage people Amazon Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org. And if you can, leave a review on Amazon or Barnes and Noble page because people read reviews. So the more positive reviews, the better. And, for me, I definitely want to know what people think, because, you know, this is my life's work, really. I put in eight years to this. And, um, yeah, the last thing I'll say is, you know, we could argue about a lot of things in this country. Whether it's free health care from the state versus the federal, which I know you've had arguments about.

We could argue about guns. We could argue about all sorts of things. We all need water folks. It's the one thing that really is not that political. I've talked to some, you know, rocked-ribbed, gun shooting NRA-types who have been fighting their government because their water was contaminated. I've talked to some tree-hugging, you know, commies, 'cause their water was contaminated. Most people care about this. Truth is, most people don't know.

And water is more important than anything. It's more important than MMT. It's more important than climate. It's more important than anything because you cannot live without it for longer than a few days. So this should be one of the top stories in America.

And I hope once you've read the book, definitely take action. You know, call your local Congressperson. Senator. Set up a rally because you're not just rallying for Flint. You're rallying for yourself because this is coming to a town near you. It's not if. It's when.

[01:07:40] Steve Grumbine: Good stuff, Jordan. Thank you so much, folks. You heard the man. Get the book. Definitely, definitely, definitely support Jordan at Status Coup. It is worth your time. And, on behalf of my guest, Jordan Chariton, myself, Steve Grumbine. For Macro N Cheese. We are out of here.