Raise your hands if you didn’t see this one coming.

After making several trips to Michigan to bolster her numbers there against Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton seemed to be all in on the Flint water crisis as a tool to help bolster her campaign. The original idea to have a debate there supposedly came from Team Clinton and she’s been pounding the issue as hard as she can. But all of the lip service in the world can’t replace good old fashioned hard cash, so daughter Chelsea has now been deployed to start up a new effort to distribute water to the citizens affected by the lead poisoning crisis. (Detroit Free Republic)

Flint Mayor Karen Weaver and former first daughter Chelsea Clinton announced a new program Sunday — the Flint WaterWorks initiative — which will provide the city’s youth with jobs to directly help families affected by the water crisis.

Through the program, young adults will be given jobs distributing clean water, healthy food and nutrition information and services to families. They also will help make “Flint’s water infrastructure safe,” Weaver said, by aiding her Fast Start initiative to remove all lead and lead-tainted service lines in the city.

According to Weaver, the Flint WaterWorks initiative was developed in partnership with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, whose team helped the mayor establish the public-private partnership program.

This package has it all. The former First Daughter is the face representing the Clintons and there is water being given to the needy and jobs for young people willing to deliver and distribute it. Make no mistake… people will get real help from the program. But let’s be equally clear that one of the biggest recipients of the help is Hillary herself.

There’s a half million dollars going into the initial effort which should really get it off the ground. That’s extremely generous, isn’t it? I suppose Bill and Hillary are digging into those last couple of book deals to pay for it. No? Oh… well it’s probably coming from the family’s charitable foundation? What’s that you say? It’s not coming from there either? Well then who’s ponying up the cash?

The initiative is being started with a $500,000 contribution from J.B. and M.K. Pritzker to the Community Foundation of Greater Flint.

“For my mother and for me, this is not political,” Chelsea Clinton said at a news conference. “It is deeply personal and I think it should be personal to every American. … (We want) to see the children of Flint as our children and to see the youth in Flint, as the mayor says, as being a promising youth for Flint and really our country.”

Of course it’s not political, Chelsea. Perish the thought! But just for the record, who are these Pritzker folks who are being so generous in helping out the good citizens of Flint?

J.B. Pritzker is known as “The Other Mayor of Chicago” and he’s no stranger to the Clintons’ inner circle. A bit of quick checking will show you that he was the national co-chairman of the Hillary Clinton for President campaign during her first run in 2008. And strangely enough, his sister is part of the whole Obama – Clinton cabal as well.

Clinton’s second Chicago fundraising stop Wednesday evening also comes with some Obama-related history. It’s being hosted by billionaire J.B. Pritzker, who supported Clinton in 2008, even though his sister, now Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, was leading Obama’s national fundraising drive.

Oh… he’s also been a long time, major donor to the Clinton Foundation, so I suppose one hand washes the other.

Look, I’m glad that the people of Flint are getting some additional help after being betrayed by Obama’s EPA for months on end while they were being poisoned. Money can do good for people no matter the source. But you’d think that at some point even Hillary Clinton could reach a level of political chicanery which would embarrass her. This is so transparent that it makes the finest crystal stemware look opaque. Getting your deep pocketed cronies to dump a ton of money on Flint and propping up your otherwise idle daughter to remind people where the cash is coming from is about as low as it gets. And they say GOP campaigning gets ugly. Yeesh.