[Gaffer]

The water became more expensive than phones when Obama started giving the doggone things away. ObamaPhones.

[ken5050]

I recall that one summer, during the early years of the Clinton administration, there was a bad heat wave in the south, and Congress passes a bill to help poor people by air conditioners...wonder how that turned out..

[SolidRedState]

Water should be free up to a certain usage amount. Meter it and charge those who use above a certain amount per cubic foot.

In this case, they should just cancel all unpaid balances, readjust the rates and start over.

Too messed up to fix.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

If you ever look at the employment history of city public authorities, you would be amazed at the corruption and flat out theft. By theft, I mean putting people on the payroll at inflated salaries to do nothing. And then there is the issue of floating authority “utility” bonds with the revenue going into the general account to be spent on God knows what. Or spent on dubious utility projects like “green” bike trails or solar projects. The whole system stinks and its no wonder it is collapsing. The end result is customers left holding the bag with water rates being jacked up to 5 or 10 times the rates of surrounding communities.

[yldstrk]

well you know what? I think humans have a right to enough water to drink and bathe. They don’t have a right to enough water to run a power plant or irrigate a farm, just enough for personal use. A right. Like air to breathe. Water used to cost a little for having been put through the cleaning process.

Now it costs an arm and a leg.

Here are the things I think humans have a right to:

Free speech
Religion
Enough food and water to sustain life
minimal housing and medical care
Self defense
Due process before deprivation of life liberty property
pursuit of life liberty and property

all the rest is gravy

[sickoflibs]

RE :”The latest news from Detroit, the poster child for failed progressive policies that have dominated that city for more than a half-century, is not good. In March of 2014, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) announced it would begin cutting off water service for customers at least 60 days overdue or more than $150 behind in their water bill payments. Activists outraged by the decision have taken their case outside the city—all the way to the United Nations.
The DWSD has targeted 1,500 to 3,000 business and residential customers every week as part of a get-tough approach that would enable them to begin recouping the $118 million owed from delinquent accounts. Accounts that comprise nearly half the city’s total number. As a result, the Department has shut off water service to more than 7,500 properties in the past two months alone.”

Al Sharpton did a segment on this with a black activist from Detroit and their take on this was ludicrous.

She blamed the Koch brothers for this water problem, its was them soaking the poor for more $$$. Not kidding.

She also mentioned automation taking away Detroit's residents jobs. This is a ironic as Sharptons prior segment was about how the GOP cant get women votes because they wont go along with Obama’s call for more employer mandates, paid leave, child care, etc.

Their fans must be completely clueless.

[pallis]

We need Obama water, like we have Obama phones for flash mob kids and drug dealers. The kids need water.

[stars & stripes forever]

LAMENTATIONS 5:3-5

3 We have become fatherless,
our mothers are widows.
4 We must buy the water we drink;
our wood can be had only at a price.
5 Those who pursue us are at our heels;
we are weary and find no rest.

[sickoflibs]

RE “What we see is a violation of the human right to water,” said Meera Karunananthan, an international campaigner with the Blue Planet Project. “The U.S. has international obligations in terms of people’s right to water, and this is a blatant violation of that right. We’re hoping the U.N. will put pressure on the federal government and the state of Michigan to do something about it.”

Yeah, our right to FREE water. Maybe the UN will step in and force bankrupt Detroit to turn that water back on.

Apparently they don't know where clean water comes from.

Note that Dems/libs have ruled that place for many many decades bankrupting it, now they are blaming the Koch brothers and crying to the UN.

[MamaTexan]

I wonder if anyone as looked to see if there is any correlation between the rise in casts and the increase in union contracts.

----

The average water bill is now an outrageous $75 a month, compared to national average of $40. For perspective sake, the average cell phone bill is $71 per month.

I don't know where they get their numbers to squawk about $75 dollars a month. That's what we pay...and there is no sewer or garbage attached to it.

Most people don't have cell phones, they have portable entertainment centers. The family kids me about how they have smart phones, but I have a stupid phone. All it does is make phone calls...... and costs $7 a month.

----

Who taught these people to budget?

[Mister Da]

Put a free faucet on every street corner, & tell them either pay up or collect their water on the street.

[artichokegrower]

Cut off their water would be bad. Cut off their 40 oz malt liquors would be an outrage.

[Smokin' Joe]

The very same policies these leftist groups would exacerbate in their quixotic quest for UN-sponsored “water justice.”

Well, fill in the blank on the "________ justice" thingy. It seems whatever someone doesn't get for free is subject to this approach.

But even more disconcerting is the tendency of late to appeal, not to a governmental entity within our nation, but the UN (a REAL hotbed of corruption and injustice) for "justice".

Enough of this sh*t. The UN has no jurisdiction here, and never should have. Get the US out of that pit of corruption.

[grobdriver]

if they don’t pay then our other customers pay for them

Which is exactly what they want - and expect.

[blueunicorn6]

Dear Democrat voters of Detroit:

“Elections have consequences.”

You kept electing Democrats, and now, you can’t afford water. This is known as “Cause And Effect”.

[Count of Monte Fisto]

People recovering from surgery cannot wash and change bandages. Children cannot bathe and parents cannot cook.

Sounds like a 3rd World country. This makes sense. Detriot has a 3rd World population with 3rd World ways and 3rd World problems. They can only capable of creating 3rd World conditions. They can not maintain the 1st World infrastructure that the 1st World people built there years ago.

It they didn't receive boatloads of taxpayer money from outside the city it would collapse completely back into wilderness. The remaining residents would live exactly like their ancestors did.

[Semper911]

it’s really our duty to go after those who don’t pay, because if they don’t pay then our other customers pay for them,” said DWSD spokeswoman Curtrise Garner. “That’s not fair to our other customers.” Garner also noted that the city has programs that help those “totally in need,” but that many of the customers who can afford to pay their bills don’t bother, “and we know this because, once we shut water off, the next day they are in paying the bill in full. So we do know that that has become a habit as well,” she contended.

That sounds so familiar. She described the welfare state our country has become.

[thirst4truth]

If you want free water, drill a well, not free or tap a spring, not free either. Once drilled or tapped then it is virtually free. Except now the state wants to monitor all that free water you get from your own private property sourced by your own money and labor.

I learned in Real Estate school that the original contract for purchasing a parcel of land, included underneath that land to the center of the earth and up into the sky to the universe. All the fly over rights have been taken away, now they are working on under your feet. They want the minerals, the water. They want to put meters on your water on your land to have it monitored by the state or feds, pick your poison.

[doublecansiter]

My town turns off the water if you’re 10 days late with
the payment.

[Gritty]

Water is a "human right"? OK. Fine. Let them get it like the rest of the world does who doesn't pay for the service of processing and piping it, sewage, administration, infrastructure required...