This is great news from my vantage point. a +1 for Trump and his team for taking care of this mess. Throwing a lot of money may not be the right solution but it does fix a lot of pipes.
EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes
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Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Relocated like cattle to another pasture? I can't for the life of me understand this philosophy that financial economy under-girds life.
Uh... how about, give them money to relocate so the children in the failing schools can grow up somewhere that doesn't have the highest crime rate in the country, can drink water that isn't poisoned, and get a job that still exists? They are real people who are fucked because they were born in a dying city which relied on a dying industry. They aren't plaything for your anti-financial philosophy.
Look, I'm not opposed to helping people relocate, but please don't trivialize my "philosophy" as some kind of a toy. I grew up in a community fractured by racial and socioeconomic segregation. It's not some play toy thing when I see schools and basic infrastructure being systematically defunded in in the name of globalization.
Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you're proposing we throw good money after bad? The city failed. It it's not financially feasible to fix it so it is self-sustainable at a level of investment that can be paid back in a reasonable amount of time, relocating is a perfectly acceptable proposal. People have every right to stay there if they can afford to do so, but if they are going to ask others for financial help bailing them out, it's not in the l…
I'm proposing we throw good money into basic human necessities instead of investing in weapons, and that our measures of success be linked to human health and wellbeing, not to level of absolute exploitation.
I wish that was on the table. Even still gp's point would stand that beggars have a hard time justifying being choosers.
Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you're proposing we throw good money after bad? The city failed. It it's not financially feasible to fix it so it is self-sustainable at a level of investment that can be paid back in a reasonable amount of time, relocating is a perfectly acceptable proposal. People have every right to stay there if they can afford to do so, but if they are going to ask others for financial help bailing them out, it's not in the l…
I'm proposing we throw good money into basic human necessities instead of investing in weapons, and that our measures of success be linked to human health and wellbeing, not to level of absolute exploitation.
None of which is related to whether or not its sustainable to keep pumping money into Flint.
Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes
#55This is great news from my vantage point. a +1 for Trump and his team for taking care of this mess. Throwing a lot of money may not be the right solution but it does fix a lot of pipes.
From the article:
> The funding was approved by Congress in December and signed into law by President Barack Obama, but the EPA had to review and approve a formal request from state officials detailing how the city intends to use the grant money.
Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Framing it that way misses an important part of the story. It was the institutional and regulatory failure during the switch away from Detroit city water that made the lead an emergency. Part of the reason that happened is that Flint had depopulated and was basically a failed city. It's not acceptable that it happened, but it didn't happen just because Flint was trying to skimp on infrastructure 40,50,60 years ago.
You're acting like this was forced on them from budget cuts. The city manager was warned about exactly this happening and still went ahead and did it because it was the city manager is appointed by their corrupt Republican governor [1]. The city manager should not have been able to make those decisions without a much more thorough vetting process. 1: http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2016/02/flint_wate...
>their corrupt Republican governor
What does the party affiliation have to do with this particular statement? Additionally, your citation doesn't seem to link to a corruption case.
If a Governor is corrupt, just say 'corrupt governor' and provide a link (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Blagojevich).
Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes
#57Flint is one of thousands of places in the US with poisonous levels of lead. I wonder how this administration plans on dealing with it: http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-lead-...
This expenditure was approved by the previous administration. As for the current administration... I'm sure the free market will figure out ways to improve water quality. High taxes are the only thing preventing that from happening.
> I'm sure the free market will figure out ways to improve water quality.
OK, I'll bite. So how would the free market possibly improve the water quality in Flint?
Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm proposing we throw good money into basic human necessities instead of investing in weapons, and that our measures of success be linked to human health and wellbeing, not to level of absolute exploitation.
None of which is related to whether or not its sustainable to keep pumping money into Flint.
A city without clean drinking water is unsustainable, regardless of how much money you "pump" into it.
You can't drink money.
Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes
#59Flint is one of thousands of places in the US with poisonous levels of lead. I wonder how this administration plans on dealing with it: http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-lead-...
I would imagine one of those places is my apartment. Lead is bad, but it's not that bad... Removing lead from gasoline is probably 100x times more important than other hand wringing
Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everything is a financial decision at the end of the day. You can't just wish away the laws of economics. Let's say that regulations dictated that they had to spend this money and they didn't have it. Add enough of such regulations and a shrinking tax base and eventually you have an insolvent city. What do you propose we do then? Near as I can tell, it's reasonable to have such regulations so people don't get hurt by…
Saving $140/day at the risk of $100M damage to infrastructure is not good financial sense. It's the financial sense exercised by the kind of person who expects someone else to pay for the mess, i.e. a government official. A private corporation which was exposed to the liability would have likely chosen to raise the price of water to pay for the corrosion inhibitor, but someone whose job is to manipulate the balance s…
If that private corporation were a mining company in Montana they would choose to take the profits, go bankrupt, and again have the people pay to clean up the mess.