Government officials allowing this to happen should be sentenced to acute lead poisoning.
Good chance that's how they got this way.
Perhaps the dosage is still too low.
No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds
121–130 of 178 posts
Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds
#122Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think that many Americans would keep their jobs if it were not for the threat of abject poverty looming over their heads.
not sure I understand what you are trying to say witht regard to my comment
You are all kind of forced to work. In fact, we all are.
The most cruel part is that a lot of people work on things that result in no meaningful benefit for society.
Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can’t say that I follow. What does a king have to do with forming a more perfect Union, establishing Justice, insuring domestic Tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general Welfare, and securing the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity?
If you allow justifying government power according to some ambiguous notion of general welfare, then all you need to say is that something promotes general welfare. There is more to the structure of the US system than the preamble to the constitution.
You're conflating purpose with power. "Promote the general Welfare" doesn't create unlimited power. The power comes from the Constitution. The point is that once you are interpreting those powers, the Constitution's stated purposes are relevant to what they mean and how broadly they should be understood.
Nor was "general Welfare" some contentless phrase at the Founding. Protection, safety, prosperity, happiness, and the well being of the political community were all part of the contemporary vocabulary surrounding the public good. As Madison wrote in Federalist 45, “the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people is the supreme object to be pursued”.
All government powers carry some risk of abuse. But, as Joseph Story put it, “Neither rulers, nor any other functionaries, much less any private persons, have a right to cripple it, because it is according to their own views inconvenient, or dangerous, unwise or impolitic, of narrow limits, or of wide influence.”
Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds
#125This ruling seems obviously correct to me? The plaintiffs claimed this was a 14th amendment issue, but at the time the 14th was added cholera outbreaks were still somewhat common in the US and there was no remote notion of safe drinking water provided universally by municipal governments. Hopefully there is some other legal redress under a different law or EPA regulation, but the courts can't just give in to faulty r…
> Plaintiffs allege1 that the City, through a series of acts and failures to
act, caused lead to leach into Jackson’s drinking water. City officials then,
despite the presence of lead in the water, incorrectly told residents that the
water was safe to drink, despite knowing it likely was not.
This is the allegation. Doesn't sound much like "the constitution guarantees us safe drinking water," but rather "the constitution says our city government officials can't knowingly poison us and lie about it"
Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds
#126Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds
#127It's interesting how a lot of newer countries just put the right to water directly in the constitution. South Africa says some stuff about the government having an obligation toward "progressive realization" of the goal [1], whereas Slovenia just straight says water is a right [2]. [1]: https://www.gov.za/documents/constitution/chapter-2-bill-rig... [2]: https://www.uradni-list.si/glasilo-uradni-list-rs/vsebina/12...
The problem with the US is Americans treating their Constitution like some kind of Bible, untouchable and beyond reproach, when in reality it should have been a constantly evolving document. South Africa has one of the best constitutions in the world on paper because the authors very recently had to reconcile with and forgo their apartheid past. And they had a number of templates to adapt from, including the US, Fran…
The writers of the US constitution were well aware of how to enumerate positive rights, as they were common in the state constitutions, as well in many European countries' declarations of rights in restraint of monarchs. Many of them resisted this, especially James Madison, who called them mere parchment barriers and ineffective, even counterproductive. Madison's side mostly held sway, where the US constitution focused on the structure of government. The anti-federalists and other factions were the ones who pushed for enumerated positive rights, and they won only some concessions, like the Bill of Rights, which Madison and others worked to limit, such as phrasing some of them in negative terms.
You can disagree with Madison, but he certainly wasn't ignorant about these questions. He just felt positive rights were better secured through dynamic legislative processes within a stable and responsive democratic framework. The hard part is trying to maintain a responsive democracy. Without that positive rights are empty promises, anyhow, as they often are in these newer constitutions. One of the problems with making promises you can't keep is it delegitimizes government, which furthers the normalization of corruption and unlawfulness.
Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds
#128As a not American, why does freedom of speech include corporations giving money that are not citizens nor talking. But even that Congress has the power to spend "to provide for the common defence and general welfare" given by the constitution it still not a right to receive any of that. I have a feeling that there is a interpretation bias in favor of corporations over human life.
It's the difference between a "negative" and a "positive" right. The former is something that government cannot do (compel or prohibit speech) whereas a positive right is something the government is obligated to provide (clean water).
Many people- most, in the early days- had private wells, and do not in any way "get" water from the government at all. It wouldn't make sense for such a thing to be in the Constitution. Even now, the water at my house comes from a well in my basement.
What happened could easily fit under fraud, false advertising or any number of other criminal or civil laws. That's why I'm deeply skeptical of this part of the judgement:
> He also said there was no constitutional right to “truthful information from officials during a public health crisis.”
While technically true, that does not mean the conduct itself was lawful, and I'd expect someone better versed in legalese could explain it.
PS: this case in particular relates to the city of Jackson, a municipal government, not the federal Congress, so the bit about "common defense and general welfare" is not binding to them. That would be the articles the municipality is incorporated under, as defined by the state of Mississippi, which apparently are too loose.
Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
That makes no sense. The 14th not covering clean water at the time it was written is not because they didn't have germ theory. The comparison to the 2nd also makes no sense. First, machine guns come up in arguments about reducing the scope of the 2nd whereas the argument here is about expanding the scope of the 14th. Second, the 2nd is a lot clearer than the 14th. Pretty much every concrete right we get out of the 14…
> The 14th not covering clean water at the time it was written is not because they didn't have germ theory. That was the legal theory upthread. Which I contest. > Second, the 2nd is a lot clearer than the 14th. "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" seems pretty clear, and I'm inclined to consider "intentionally providing contaminated water" to be a violatio…
Except the law clearly says "deprive" not "provide". You'll have to show how folks are being deprived of water if you want to argue this line of reasoning, "providing contaminated water" is not covered by this text, and has the trivial rebutal that no one is forced to accept said water, even if the alternative is a shit situation. That situation does not deprive them of life, liberty, or property, and so there is no constitutional violation.
Plus, you don't need the constitution to place lawful burner on parties, you just need laws that do not conflict with that constitution. Just because the 14th/2nd don't guarantee access to clean water does not mean they therefore guarantee no access to clean water. That is not how words work.
Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds
#130Next up. Air.