Posted on 06/29/2014 4:54:35 AM PDT by SkyPilot
Nicole Hill holds up her past-due water bill at her home in Detroit. Her water has been off for about six weeks.
It has been six weeks since the city turned off Nicole Hill's water.
Dirty dishes are piled in the sink of her crowded kitchen, where the yellow-and-green linoleum floor is soiled and sticky. A small garbage can is filled with water from a neighbor, while a bigger one sits outside in the yard, where she hopes it will collect some rain. She's developed an intricate recycling system of washing the dishes, cleaning the floor and flushing the toilet with the same water.
"It's frightening, because you think this is something that only happens somewhere like Africa," said Hill, a single mother who is studying homeland security at a local college. "But now I know what they're going through when I get somewhere there's a water faucet, I drink until my stomach hurts."
Hill is one of thousands of residents in Detroit who have had their water and sewer services turned off as part of a crackdown on customers who are behind on their bills. In April, the city set a target of cutting service to 3,000 customers a week who were more than $150 behind on their bills. In May, the water department sent out 46,000 warnings and cut off service to 4,531. The city says that cutting off water is the only way to get people to pay their bills as Detroit tries to emerge from bankruptcy the utility is currently owed $90 million from customers, and nearly half the city's 300,000 or so accounts are past due.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Wow! I did not know that.
“Everything she gets comes from entitlements.”
Well, there’s a reason they are called ‘entitlements’; the ‘clients’ are ‘entitled’ to them.
To quote a disgraced Canadian Cabinet Minister, “I’m entitled to my entitlements! That’s why they’re called entitlements!”
Seriously. He said that.
IMHO, a sense of entitlement is psychological cover for a sense of shame in receiving stolen property.
To turn Proudhon on his head, “all socialism is theft”.
Or they could take their buckets, walk to Lake Saint Clair and get all the water they want.
“maybe writing a letter.. in cursive...would help”
Suppose for a moment that she could. Who do you think in the Detroit Water Department could read it? She might as well write it in Klingon or Aramaic.
Of all the things to cut off, water shouldn’t be one of them.
Stupid point made by an apparently stupid city.
>> Feeling sorry for her or ....
Instead of properly managing the water supply, the city opted to neglect it and instead waste resources on ridiculous entitlements.
Of all the things the govt could provide, water is the most essential and the least expensive.
This crisis smells.
“Mexicans and Central Americans are hard workers, so we are told, and their countries are rat holes. So it takes more than just hard work to build and maintain a 1st World civilization.”
Actually, every single immigrant I’ve met in my life and career (including actually illegal Mexicans who worked in a restaurant) have been pretty darn hard working and serious. They know what “really bad” is, unlike your basic, flabby, worthless gibmedat US citizens, who think “hardship” is no cable. Mexico, for example, is in fact institutionally corrupt and degenerate*, in that the Hispanic lineaged, corrupt class has lorded over the native Mexicans for 75+ years. So, maybe we are not getting Mexico’s elite, but we might get their “hungriest for success”...which might be much better, and ironically, besides oil, the only export from Mexico worth having.
*Sound vaguely familiar?
It sounds exactly like the same excuses liberals make for the failure of the black community. Its the government's fault.
Mexico is a 3rd World toilet because its has a 3rd World people with 3rd World ways, 3rd World habits, and 3rd world problems. America is going to become a 3rd World toilet because of insane and suicidal people like you have no problem flooding the country with 3rd World people.
” America is going to become a 3rd World toilet because of insane and suicidal people like you have no problem flooding the country with 3rd World people”
Without immigration in the 20th century, you would have written that in German.
We need to put a halt to immigration. We cannot absorb more at the present time. Keep them out for a generation.
Illegal immigrants need to be punished and sent home. No benefits, no jobs, no schools, no healthcare, just a trip home.
“I used to make inside door panels for Cadillacs. They were crap because they were designed that way. There are plenty of things unions can be blamed for but quality of products isnt really one of them.”
This is a very important point. Quality is not their fault. Consistency of quality might be, except there are supposed to be statistical and other checks on the line designed to make this essentially impossible and continually improving. Those people are clerical/management.
Secretaries made bad cars?
poor thing is starving
there is definitely a depression, but there are a lot of people who wouldn’t be working if the job offers were desperately flooding their mailboxes daily.
There has been more immigration since WWII then in our entire history before WWII. And almost all of that immigration has been from the 3rd World. I hope you enjoy living in Haiti, San Pedro Sula, or on the banks of the Ganges River!
Well, just because there are jobs available doesn’t ensure that people like her are going to work! You have to actually work to get a paycheck but you can collect all those freebies while sitting home on your butt! Which option do you honestly believe she would take?!
I absolutely believe in taking care of those who truly are incapable of taking care of themselves. But people like her who put things like manicures, tattoos, hair straightening and highlights, and clearly a lot of food, before her responsibility to caring for her kids and paying her bills get no sympathy from me whatsoever. Welfare and food stamp programs should only be a means of helping people with a hand up, but it has turned into an expected lifelong hand out to these folks who feel they are entitled to free everything.
The water situation? A solution might be that a minimal amount of water, just enough to survive, is free. Anyone who didn't pay would be cut back to that minimum. Instead, the tendency is to charge a pricey base amount even to those who don't use much water.
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