Monday, June 23, 2014

BOOTSTRAPPADO.

Detroit Free Press:
Detroit to resume water shutoffs for delinquent customers 
With the harsh winter’s end, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department is resuming efforts to shut off water service to thousands of delinquent customers. 
Meanwhile, resources are limited for Detroit residents in need to get assistance with water bills and avoid the health risks associated with having water cut off... 
Crews will be targeting those who have received a shutoff notice and whose bills are more than two months late. Customers with late bills can avoid a shutoff by entering into a payment plan. Typically, it takes a payment of 30% to 50% of the amount owed to start such a plan...

There are 323,900 DWSD accounts in Detroit. Of those, 150,806 are delinquent. Some of those delinquencies are low-income customers who are struggling to keep their utilities on, said some who work in providing assistance to those in need.
Coming soon: An article by Megan McArdle about how having to struggle for water will be good for the poor: "When I waited in line for the first iPhone, I was young, single, and carefree, and thoughtlessly failed to pack a Thermos of water (some of my friends offered me theirs, but all they had was Dasani). I emerged hours hours later absolutely parched. The lesson stayed with me and I profited from it: A few years later I was married, which made me rich, and now I keep a bottle of Resource handy at all times. Wouldn't depriving the poor of this kind of education be the real cruelty?"

UPDATE. Some garden-variety psychopaths have already gotten to the story ("You can certainly tell this story was written by a liberal. Water is not a right, human or otherwise. It is a need, but not a right"), but it won't become a really valuable conservatarian property until someone like McMegan puts a nice, fancy bow on it.

127 comments:

  1. Let's all mail her packets of Unsweetened KoolAid, that she should learn about about groupthink and bitterness.

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  2. Disboose10:59 PM

    "You can certainly tell this story was written by a liberal." That's a strange jump, since the author went out of her way to quote dipshit Facebook commenters who just knew the problem was welfare recipients who prioritized their iphones. Or the problem was Obama, who promised to pay everyone's rent if elected and now this is what happens.

    Me, I would have guessed the article was the product of a resource-poor TV newsroom (the online side probably has about half a head devoted to it) that's vainly hoping mentioning the word "Facebook" in its articles will help it unlock some of that sweet Buzzfeed success.

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  3. I got a bottle of breathable air here, for ya, you want it? Highest bidder!

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  4. whetstone11:04 PM

    Don't worry, federalism is ensuring that local problems are receiving local solutions.

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  5. AGoodQuestion11:11 PM

    The stupid of the Navigator Online link! It burns!


    I suppose a sub-literate opening sentence like "Detroit is an example of Democrat policies," should have warned me. (No, amigo. Detroit is a city, not a policy.) But he puts Detroit's entire economic collapse at the feet of Democrats in office without even looking sideways. Never mind that in 1962 oil was cheap, or that when it started not being cheap in the 70s the Big Three were the last to respond. No, Detroit was felled by Kwame Kilpatrick's socialist agenda.

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  6. Derelict11:21 PM

    This is of a piece with the wingnut way of revitalizing cities. In Detroit's case, the general conception is that is we deprive city workers of their salaries, and deprive retirees of their pensions, and then sell off city services and give any money left to the banks, something . . . something . . .PROSPERITY!

    The key to it all is impoverishing as many people as possible. For some reason, that's seen as a good thing.

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  7. Well, not to be Jeffy Bringdown, but... I am a contractor for a municipal water provider. Treating water and delivering water is in no way inexpensive. It's not as expensive as firefighting services, but they don't have a lot to do, either, when the well runs dry.


    And everywhere is in for a rude awakening on this. Source water is getting more difficult to treat in most regions, and water treatment operators are aging out almost as fast as Fox News viewers. Water rates are going up, my friends. The youngs don't wanna do it, 'cause the pay starts at shit, and only very slowly improves.

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  8. Derelict11:26 PM

    THIS.

    America is squandering freshwater, and many municipalities are grabbing quick cash by selling their supplies to Nestle or Coke. Meanwhile, few (if any) are upgrading their water purification and delivery systems.

    My advice? Invest in cisterns and solar stills.

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  9. My next certification will get me a one-time, $500 bonus, and a $0.10/hr. raise. I've been at it for 26 months.

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  10. Of course, the people who moan loudest about water bills are rich people, who cry about an annual $40 backflow test AND all the water their completely voluntary in-ground irrigation system uses. They probably buy $500 of bottled water every month, and think what a bargain that is, too.

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  11. Some of 'em could save on the irrigation bill by just crying on their lawns, imagining their water bill. I won't name names.

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  12. JennOfArk11:43 PM

    Detroit started losing population in the late 50's/early 60's, as white people fled screaming to the suburbs. And Obama was born in the early 60's. Coincidence? Ask Alex Jones.

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  13. JennOfArk11:49 PM

    I think we should help out Detroit residents by raising money online for sending in water trucks. And the Detroiters whose water has been cut off? They need to put their heads together and determine where they want to dump their shit buckets. Whether that needs to be city hall, the bankruptcy administrator's offices, or the state legislature, just make a plan and stick with it. I'm imagining 150,000 accounts translates into at least 300,000 people; that's an impressive daily ration of shit if people get their shit together all in one place.


    I remember reading about the "nightsoil" collectors in pre-modern Japan, China, India...never thought it would come to that in contemporary America.

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  14. My advice? You're too damn late: Get guns & ammo.

    Corporate entities have been after all the water for yrs. now:
    Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water

    Also:

    Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.

    Sorry about linking to Amazon, but who has the time to go through Google Books, as if Google's in any way morally superior.


    And I'm very sorry for those foolish enough to have been born later than I, for they will have to live in the future!

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  15. Chinatown is made of people!

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  16. This.

    White Flight.

    I suppose people should be allowed to live and work where they want, but the long-term effects of property tax revenue going to a dog's breakfast of separately incorporated suburbs at the expense of the area's economic engine are both predictable and disastrous.

    Try asking a winger to see it this way, though.

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  17. I hear (along w/ those "other" voices) that California is about to outlaw lawns.

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  18. Spaghetti Lee12:12 AM

    Alrighty, time to update the list:

    Things that are, according to conservatives, not a right: drinkable water, breathable air, food, jobs you can earn enough to survive on, health care, education, functioning infrastructure, voting.

    Things that are rights, according to conservatives: hoarding as many guns as possible, the legal standing to refuse to serve someone whose race or sexual orientation you don't like, sexual harassment of women, publicly exposing one's racism and bigotry and not getting fired for it, shooting people who look like criminals, and, of course, delivering college graduation commencement speeches.

    What lovely people they are. Corollary to our friend's seemingly infallible lib-dar: When someone hears about several hundred thousand people losing running water in their homes and their first response is to smugly gloat about how they should have never dared think they had a right to it in the first place, you can tell that person is a conservative.

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  19. It just wouldn't be feudalism without pit toilets and open sewers.

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  20. Conservative wasn't the first label that came to mind.

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  21. Your 2nd and 3rd paragraphs are things of beauty, btw, Spags. Bravo.

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  22. JennOfArk12:25 AM

    Detroit population graph by decade.

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  23. Spaghetti Lee12:27 AM

    If we weren't a nation owned and operated by solipsistic assholes and loons, it would be pretty easy to seek out other solutions before shutting off the water in thousands of homes. How many gallons of perfectly drinkable water per day are used on golf courses? And if corporate types are simply incapable of schmoozing in a less resource-intensive setting, can we at least accept that golf courses don't have to be greener than a New York Jets uniform 100% of the time?



    Conservatives would probably accuse me of 'class warfare' here, not realizing (the primary talent of conservatives being 'not realizing') that rich people using their political and economic heft to screw people out of basic first-world amenities instead of changing their high-rolling lifestyle ever so slightly is also class warfare, the kind that they don't notice because it's actually been phenomenally successful, kind of like how fish don't notice being surrounded by water.


    Whatever one's feelings on golf as a pastime, in theory cutting back on luxuries in order to help people who are suffering should be an easy choice. The lifelong goal of the conservative project, however, is creating a world where such thinking is considered dangerous and radical.

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  24. AGoodQuestion12:32 AM

    "Liberal reporter" is the standing assumption they have for any news story from outside the cult.

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  25. JennOfArk12:38 AM

    It all comes back to shit moats. And here I had forgotten all about them until someone invoked Amy Alkon the other day.

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  26. Spaghetti Lee12:38 AM

    I grew up and have only ever lived in the suburbs, so not only is my perspective lacking, but I have a vested interest in not thinking of suburban people as soulless conformity-obsessed racists. I don't think the Stepford image is accurate anymore. There's nothing that says suburbs have to be social and cultural dead zones. I grew up in one that was basically a small rural town before 'becoming' suburban and there is a sense of community and culture here, to an extent. And politically we're pretty blue, in no small part due to racial diversification. And I think those trends will continue and lots of suburbs age into being cities in their own right.

    All that said, suburban living is probably the worst possible way to live in a world that's running short on resources, from the asphalt blocking runoff and heating up everything (thus jacking up energy use in air conditioners) to everyone maintaining an emerald-green carpet of a lawn through liberal use of water and pesticides, to the low population density, to the need for a personal automobile to get absolutely anywhere. I'm sure there's more. If there's anything that will be the deciding factor of if we get through the coming ecological upheaval intact, it will be if Americans are mature and sensible enough to give some of that up and adapt to new realities.

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  27. JennOfArk12:41 AM

    Your posts are so thoughtful that sometimes I forget how funny you are, too.

    "... if Americans are mature and sensible enough to give some of that up and adapt to new realities."



    You slay me, man.

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  28. Spaghetti Lee1:08 AM

    Well, I thought of adding the parenthetical written equivalent of a sarcastic wanking motion after that, but I figured this thread's depressing enough already and shaping up to be an all-time Debbie Downer, so why bother?

    Actually, I've come to believe that people are more adaptable and more empathetic than conventional wisdom gives us credit for, especially when the chips are down: witness how post-hurricane New Jersey and New Orleans didn't turn into the orgy of rapacious violence conservative cheerily predicted. Also, when talking about the collapse of society it can be hard to separate the meta-pop-cultural and Hollywood bullshit stuff from the more sober analysis: I think the endless glut of post-apocalyptic movies and shows has convinced people that certain things are inevitable when they may only be probable or possible.

    When it comes to doomsaying, I really sincerely think we have more reason to be optimistic now than 50 or 100 years ago. War, poverty, racial and national relations, womens' rights, gay rights, environmentalism, technology and science; you'd have to do a lot to convince me that things have gotten worse on any of those fronts.

    I'll admit things look grim and I can sometimes get real down on the future, but I try to talk myself out of it. I'm not saying people shouldn't worry at all about fresh water and such, but I also think back to all that old dystopic fiction where society is predicted to have collapsed, mankind reduced to scavenging and subsistence living in the year...1998. Or 2002. And so on. The year 2050 looks scary to me in the abstract, but the year 2000 was an object of fear and loathing for a lot of 20th century thinkers, and the worst thing that happened that year was Nu-Metal. People have been predicting the collapse of society-economically, culturally, ecologically, politically-for as long as there have been societies. I'm a bit less inclined to believe them than I sued to be.

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  29. Gromet1:20 AM

    The tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots; we can't use actual water on this tree as it's privately held. (We reserve it for the tree of job creation.)

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  30. JennOfArk1:22 AM

    Speaking of golf courses, those would be good places for water-less Detroiters to dump their buckets of shit.


    Come to think of it, so would gated neighborhoods, chi-chi shopping areas, various corporate headquarters, etc etc.


    One of the big problems we collectively face is this insulation of the haves from the have-nots. Why should they care if the streets are open running sewers in poor neighborhoods? They don't. So the solution is to put the open running sewers in their neighborhoods. They've long been convinced that the underlings' shit stinks. Maybe it's time to prove them right.


    You think your fancy country club, house, car, whatever is more important than poor people having clean water? Fine. Here is what poor people without clean water think about your attitude.

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  31. smut clyde5:49 AM

    delinquent customers
    You can't spell 'deliquescent' without 'delinquent'... You can? Buggrit.

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  32. Derelict7:26 AM

    the year 2000 was an object of fear and loathing for a lot of 20th century thinkers, and the worst thing that happened that year was Nu-Metal.

    President George W. Bush is all I'm sayin'.

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  33. Derelict7:31 AM

    My first reaction to the "water is not a right" line was "This has gotta be a troll." But, then, I think about they way right-wing minds work and I remember Cleek's Law. And, yes, these people would sell their own interests down the shitter--if it pissed off liberals.

    These people should come live in the country for a bit. I have a well that provides water. None of this gubmint water for me! Of course, when the power goes out, I can't even flush the toilet. One day of that goes a really long way.

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  34. Nightsoil collecting was an international trade, but I don't think it will catch on in modern America. Instead you'll get creepy rightwingers touring the street talking about the horrible smells and wondering whether slavery might not be better for people who can't even afford water.

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  35. Conservatives, in their endless quest to bring back the Good Olde Dayes, will be delighted when there's a good old fashioned outbreak of cholera.

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  36. A right is anything a neocon wants or needs. So if an employee for water and sewer comes to shut off a neocon's water, that is an invasion of privacy by a government thug bent on depriving him of his right to water, which in turn triggers the right to exercise 2nd Amendment remedies with a shotgun.

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  37. I don't understand your point. I don't see where anyone has said getting clean water into homes is inexpensive.

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  38. smut clyde8:09 AM

    Nightsoil collecting was an international trade
    Globalism at work!

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  39. redoubtagain8:16 AM

    Sh(2)ock Doctrine

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  40. Ellis_Weiner8:17 AM

    Well, when you put it THAT way, they certainly sound like hideous, resentment-filled, soulless, sniggering, emotionally-retarded aspirants for the approval of their own oppressors. Or is it me?

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  41. Like so many thangs such as healthcare, water is slowly being priced out of reach of more and more people, every day.

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  42. How about golf courses in Ari(d)zona?

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  43. Helmut Monotreme8:43 AM

    You're looking at it all wrong. You see Detroit as a city with major problems upholding the obligations it owes a couple of generations of residents, public workers and retirees. They see it as a vast ground level strip mine full of cheap resources like scrap metal and recyclable building materials. They think it might even be nice real estate, once they clear out the current residents.

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  44. What you're saying makes sense, but do you see how you're also thinking within the frame of water being a commodity?

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  45. You beat me to it! I was going to point out that the U.S. is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights myself.


    It's fun to read through that document and see all the Rights that we are supposed to have. The right to join labor unions! The right to higher education based on merit! Equal justice under law! It's a very entertaining read... a laugh a minute.

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  46. ♪♫ Tradition!Tradition! ♪♫

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  47. President George W. Bush

    The REAL Y2K.

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  48. Teresa9:13 AM

    Here in Snydertucky, under republican rule killing people is good business and excellent for the economy. It's for the children don't you know? The children of the rich should never have to tolerate the poor. ever.

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  49. mortimer20009:14 AM

    Delinquent residential and commercial customers in Detroit owe the department about $118 million, according to the department.

    For a little perspective, that $118 million those 150,806 customers owe is about 20% of federal water subsidies to corporate farms in California's Central Valley alone, 3% of what hedge funder David Tepper made in 2013, 1.5% of what we're still spending every month on the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, and less than 1% of Federal crop insurance subsidies to agribusiness last year.

    What people need are lobbyists.

    And "bootstrapaddo" is just fuckin' brilliant, as usual.

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  50. "Failing upward" meets macro-economics.

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  51. mortimer20009:22 AM

    Their list of rights also includes billions of dollars in taxpayer money for a long list of 1%-er entitlements: tax breaks, corporate subsidies, direct payments to the energy industry and agribusiness, war profits, etc., ad nauseum.

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  52. Sunny Raines9:48 AM

    conservative is a synonym for complete A-hole.

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  53. One of the hallmarks of a civilized society is potable water

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  54. Time to break out a shit trebuchet.

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  55. Derelict10:15 AM

    One of the hallmarks of a civilized society is forcing people to pay for potable water.

    FTFY

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  56. tigrismus10:18 AM

    Cacapault?

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  57. Derelict10:26 AM

    Water IS a commodity. Always has been. The question is how a society chooses to handle that commodity.

    As Americans, we used to look at clean fresh water as essential to prosperity. New York City created its massive public water system based on 1. the public health aspect, and 2. the realization that clean potable water enabled everything else in the city. Most other municipalities great and small followed suit and reaped the benefits.

    In America today, water is now viewed as a resource that needs to be monetized. And with most cites and towns suffering serious budget difficulties, selling off your water rights for a few million seems like a great deal--for the moment. Interesting how the long-term vision that led us to create nearly universal access to clean fresh water is being destroyed by the short-sightedness of fixing short-term budget shortfalls.

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  58. Well, a universal water tax works for me, if it's progressive. I can't work for free, sodium permanganate still costs $10/gallon and electricity isn't free, either.

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  59. "Cons are basically against civilization."

    For the last 20 or 30 years, at least.

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  60. tigrismus10:53 AM

    Missing one or more terminal zeroes?

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  61. When there's money involved, ethics and morality usually take a back seat. https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/04/03-6

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  62. BeatnikBob11:00 AM

    The You-En 'International' Declaration of Human Rights? What commie libtard Democrat President signed THAT? Obviously unconstitutional under the Gadsden Flag, not to mention the Articles of Confederation, which were never actually properly dissolved, making our nation a true libertarian paradisaical Somalia and currently as lawless as the Wild West. Just open your eyes!


    Ah, the Teabagger pretzel logic is impressive for its mathematical neurological maneuvering. So many people running around today that belong in straitjackets.

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  63. catclub11:05 AM

    "cause the pay starts at shit,"


    Where else would the pay start at a sewage treatment plant?

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  64. (ad nauseAm)

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  65. Magatha11:11 AM

    OT but not really - I highly recommend reading Just Enough: Lessons in Living Green from Traditional Japan by Azby Brown. (Published by Kodansha International (2010), ISBN 9784770030740 - I got it from my beautiful local library, yay libraries.)

    It's fascinating. I mean, the sustainable Edo culture is history now, but the concepts - everything from nightsoil to recycling everything to the idea that normative values are all about minimalism, well I found the whole book to be edumacational.

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  66. mortimer200011:17 AM

    They see it as a vast ground level strip mine full of cheap resources like scrap metal and recyclable building materials.

    That may be but I think it's much simpler. Wingers have a "sixth sense" when it comes to cities like Detroit: they see black people. And in their moronic, racist minds, this explains everything.

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  67. liberalrob11:17 AM

    Agenda 21!

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  68. gocart mozart11:17 AM

    Water is a luxury that must be earned. The real problem our society faces is that way too many moochers are breathing the air for free. Don't worry, with America's can do entrepreneurial spirit it will only be a matter of time before this problem too will be solved. Rest assured, we have people right now as we speak hard at work on innovative solutions.

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  69. mortimer200011:26 AM

    Yes. The Ad Nauseum is where they archive antacid commercials.

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  70. DocAmazing11:34 AM

    Of course, cutting off water service could not possibly lead to an increase in fecally-transmitted diseases (when one can no longer flush the toilet nor wash one's hands, one shares one's gut flora more freely), which will then increase the load on emergency medical services, which will decrease public funds available for (fill in the blank, as long as it isn't a stadium).

    It's almost clever.

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  71. DocAmazing11:35 AM

    Con reply: "All water is po'table. You put it in a bucket and carry it to where you want it. See? Po'table."

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  72. XeckyGilchrist11:39 AM

    It is surprising to note how much the articles of faith of wingnuttery amount to a war on public health. I attended a seminar a while back about public health and the first slide in the presentation was a list of public health triumphs - fluouridation, workplace safety laws, food safety regulations, et very cetera.

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  73. vratrm11:45 AM

    I would imagine that charging for water is roughly equivalent to congestion pricing for traffic: the real benefit is not the recouped costs but the behavior modification that the fee introduces -- in the case of the congestion tax reducing unnecessary rush hour trips and in the case of water, discouraging wasteful usage.

    However the cost to a city of a single person doing without potable water in their home or sanitation is surely much higher than their water bill could ever be. As just one example, Detroit needs to demolish tens of thousands of properties, including vacant lots that have become dumping grounds. The cost for that in present dollars is over $2 billion. What does the city think the value of an inhabited building will be after several months of no water or sewage?

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  74. Mooser11:45 AM

    And you thought you were on velvet when you started writing that column for the Voice. But now TPM has headlines like "Student trapped in Giant Vagina", and what the hell are you gonna do to top that?

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  75. Mooser11:47 AM

    I never drink water. Do you know what fish do in it?

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  76. Modemocrat12:14 PM

    Ah, no, the U.S. has not ratified the full Declaration of Human Rights - the Economic, Cultural and Social rights are no-go in the USA. Carter tried to get the Senate to ratify these articles, but was of course distracted by Iran.
    Reagan, under the stewardship of Ed Meese, made certain that not only would they not be ratified, but the USA has actually worked actively to try and suppress these as valid human rights, instead calling them "desirable goals."


    Ed Meese has continued working hard to ensure that things remain thus.

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  77. JennOfArk12:16 PM

    Also OT - I've been doing a little experiment this year to see how little I could throw away (that is, in the garbage where it will go to a landfill). We have those huge wheeled green plastic trash cans which are big enough to fit a body in, to give an idea of scale; so far this year I have yet to completely fill the can. It looks like it will probably be full by the end of July or possibly the end of August, when I will roll it out to the curb for my annual or biennial trash pickup.


    My recycling can, on the other hand, which is about 2/3 the size of the trash can, goes out to the curb every other week, and it's always at least half full.


    Vegetable and other non-meat food scraps go into the compost, and meat scraps go to the dogs next door, so I'm keeping most of the stinky stuff out of the garbage. The one exception is the trays meat comes packaged on from the grocery store - they're styrofoam, which they don't recycle here, and they have that maxi-pad glued to them for soaking up juices from the meat. They get pretty stinky until they dry out. Other than that, there's nothing going into the garbage which will rot or recycle. Probably 90% of what goes into the trash here is plastic overwrap from food packaging, which isn't recyclable.

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  78. J Neo Marvin12:30 PM

    Anyone who has the gall to write "Water is not a right" deserves the same fate as McTeague.

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  79. Not sewage -- potable water. Not a turd herder. :)

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  80. Whoever "liked" this should take it back!

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  81. Another thang that costs municipalities TONS of $$$ is the distribution infrastructure. Water losses above 5% of total production are unacceptable in my state, but there are towns who routinely lose 20% or more because of aging pipes and undetectable leaks.

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  82. Halloween_Jack12:49 PM

    I'd make the joke about breathable air, but you know that there's some bottled-oxygen magnate somewhere tenting his fingers a la Burns, murmuring, "soon..."

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  83. J Neo Marvin12:50 PM

    Isn't Detroit one of the cities affected by Michigan's "emergency manager" law? Republican appointees installed by the Republican governor to replace elected officials and operate a municipality according to Republican policy?

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  84. Jimcima12:53 PM

    Not so pre-modern - the engineers I work with in Bangalore, my coworkers and peers, get their potable water delivered by water truck to their residences; non-potable water only comes through the pipes four hours a day.

    When the fresh water trucks stop for deliveries at their homes (cash only please) some of the water drips or sloshes out of the tanks, and the local slum dwellers rush to collect the overflow before it hits the ground and is wasted. Oftentimes the drivers will let them do this, but kicking them away is also acceptable behavior.

    My reflexively conservative American coworkers tut-tut and say "Well, India, you know?" and I say "Well, capitalism, right?" and as the temporary winners in this zero-sum game they often snarl the "No one has a right to water!" line.

    I have no response but to hope they get kicked, hard and with contempt, one day soon.

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  85. J Neo Marvin1:06 PM

    If I ever start a Goth band, they will be called The Nightsoil Collectors.

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  86. JennOfArk1:25 PM

    Ok, that may be the most awesome band-name comment ever.

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  87. Derelict1:40 PM

    I'm sick of these puns.

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  88. Spaghetti Lee1:41 PM

    Whiskey is not a right either. A need, but not a right.

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  89. Derelict1:42 PM

    As I often say, I hope the policies espoused by people like that become the law of the land--and that those who pushed for those policies lose all their money and have to live under the laws they wanted imposed on others.

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  90. Derelict1:45 PM

    You want us to down-vote your getting raise? Personally, I'd like to see at least one zero added to both those figures. But, hey, I'll take what you can get.

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  91. Derelict1:53 PM

    "Student Trapped in Giant Vagina" is a pretty slick headline. The story demanded some tight writing on a hard deadline. But the long and the short of it is that the student was rescued by a group of firefighters who knew the ins and outs of dealing with what could have been a hairy situation.

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  92. Smarter than Your Average Bear2:15 PM

    Why are you being so kind to them.

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  93. KatWillow2:58 PM

    Looks like pretty soon there is going to be a Cholera epidemic in Detroit.

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  94. KatWillow3:01 PM

    No no no no no! NOT the blood of Patriots, the blood of moochers and liberals.

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  95. KatWillow3:07 PM

    Cholera and Typhoid Fever.

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  96. TomParmenter3:13 PM

    Here in eastern Massachusetts, not only is the soil rich and wet, we also have a half-trillion gallons in reservoirs in place. And, oh yeah, Boston just won a national award for best water and the Mass Water Resources Authority, which supplies Boston, came in second. Time for a fence and a look at that militia thing again.

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  97. Gromet3:15 PM

    And six-year-olds. Lots of those.

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  98. KatWillow3:16 PM

    Probably the water shut-off is a ploy by the owners of Detroit to sell off the City's valuables (museum goods, parks, etc.). SHOCK DOCTRINE.

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  99. nellcote4:20 PM

    Install a gravity feed system.

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  100. JennOfArk4:26 PM

    Reality is approaching Infinite Jest.

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  101. Derelict4:29 PM

    Don't think we haven't thought of that. However, erecting (and then maintaining) a water tower is really not practical. I'm also not sure the local height ordinances would allow it. (In the libertarian paradise, I wouldn't face such restrictions on my freedom!)

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  102. Derelict4:32 PM

    Nothing bespeaks the greatness of America better than outbreaks of preventable Third-World diseases.

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  103. L Bob Rife4:34 PM

    Trebushit.

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  104. Derelict4:37 PM

    Turd Tosser? Fecal Firing System? High-pressure Excrement Extruder? Crap Cannon?

    Nah, tigrimus definitely wins this one!

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  105. JennOfArk4:44 PM

    Super High-Intensity Trebuchet, or as it's known by its acronym, SHIT.

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  106. They do sell canned air in some parts of China.

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  107. ohsopolite7:14 PM

    But it was a close shave, nonetheless.

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  108. Wow! When California outlaws lawns only outlaws will have lawns! This makes the next season of Sons of Anarchy really something to look forward to for your average Better Homes and Gardens fanatic.

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  109. Public Health has that dirty word "public" right in it. Shamelessly.

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  110. You can make very nice art supplies out of the sytrofoam meat pads. Clean them and then etch your design onto them using them as the plate and then ink them and press/print your design onto paper. You might find a preschool that wants them for use this way.

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  111. Tehanu10:21 PM

    "we used to look at clean fresh water as essential to prosperity. New
    York City created its massive public water system based on 1. the public
    health aspect, and 2. the realization that clean potable water enabled
    everything else in the city."

    This. I need more upvotes for this.

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  112. RogerAiles10:24 PM

    Shorter: Let them drink lake.

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  113. Spaghetti Lee10:53 PM

    Aw shit, does that mean I have to finish reading it?

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  114. freq flag11:17 PM

    Ah, a fellow alumna from the Sam Houston Institute of Technology, I see.

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  115. freq flag11:21 PM

    Not-so-instant Karma, but yeah...

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  116. realinterrobang11:23 PM

    When I was a kid, we used to bathe in Lake Huron preferentially to bathing in the tub at my aunt and uncle's cottage, so I can't kind of not recommend using the lake for some things, at least.

    There are three things that have happened since 2000 that I never thought I'd see -- torture being discussed as if it were something legitimate, Medicins Sans Frontieres doing third-world medical clinics in the US, and now free marketeers depriving people of clean water (using that same language from the free-trade treaties that differentiate between "human needs" and "human rights"). If something that, when withheld from a human being, causes them to die in three days isn't kind of definitionally a human right, what is? All the lovely abstract ideals like freedom, democracy, and all that jazz look pretty fuckin' useless when compared to ingest this or die in three days, at least from where this pinko is sitting.

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  117. freq flag11:26 PM

    He seems nice.

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  118. montag21:07 AM

    Coming very late to this thread, but here's something I don't think has been considered.

    Municipal water pricing has traditionally reflected two things--the actual costs of water treatment, which may or may not be subsidized in part by the city, and penalty pricing for wasting water. I doubt seriously, given that Detroit has been laying off municipal workers, that the actual costs of water treatment have gone up. Their base has gone down, but to a considerable extent, their treatment facilities have long since been amortized, they haven't needed to expand those facilities because of population increases, so there's not much explanation for why fees for water have doubled.

    Unless they want to clear big areas of the city so that developers can pick them up cheaply. Here's how they do it. Jack up water prices. The poor can't afford to pay for water, so their water is cut off. After a few months without water, the poor give up and move, and if they don't, the city uses their code enforcement authority to condemn buildings without water service (most cities have such code authority in place), and the property effectively becomes worthless. Developers swoop down and pick up large blocks of properties for a song. The poor are already priced out of the surrounding suburbs and have to move on, somehow. At any rate, they become someone else's problem.

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  119. Hence the appeal of Space Colony type Sci Fi to a certain twisted brain. They can wank off to fantasies about people being tossed out of the nearest air lock if they can't pay their air bill.

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  120. Does the brownish one smell like farts?

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  121. BigHank539:34 AM

    If we didn't have cats (and their damn litterboxes) our waste stream would be a third of what it is now. Our weekly non-recyclable load is about two gallons worth of volume. In the last town we lived in we could cancel curbside pickup, and did so. More effective to take a single garbage bin to the collection center every two months.

    We've had to add a second recycling bin, since all the home-office paper gets recycled, and the canned cat food, well, comes in cans. We've gone to local suppliers for meat and don't have to deal with the styrofoam trays, thankfully.

    There are houses on our block that I know only have two people living in them, and every week there's an overstuffed rubbish bin in front of it. What the hell are they cramming in there?

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  122. BigHank539:36 AM

    I've long assuming reality was an improbably convoluted practical joke.

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  123. BigHank5310:03 AM

    There's huge swathes of Detroit already available because the houses have either fallen down or need to be razed--entire blocks worth. If someone really showed up and wanted to buy a few square miles of Detroit the city government would find a way to make it happen. They're currently trying to move people so they can de-commission all utilities (water, sewer, electric, and road maintenance) in unoccupied areas.

    Fees have gone up because the number of customers is shrinking but the size of the system isn't. They have to maintain water lines that reach a million users that aren't there anymore.

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  124. Derelict12:09 PM

    I assume you say that tongue in cheek.

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  125. Come now sir. Your average libertarian doucheguzzler might delight in the idea of shoving moochers out into the vacuum of space but cannibalism is barbaric!

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  126. XeckyGilchrist4:09 PM

    I didn't realize that happened in Brazil.

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  127. Christopher Foxx6:25 PM

    "you can tell that person is a conservative"


    aka, sociopath.

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