141–150 of 209 posts
I guess Washington Post forgot to fact-check Jackson Mississippi has been always run by corrupt democrats at federal, state and local level. They are poster child fan boy of Benny Thompson who is the longest running Congressman at the moment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Majority black town in the poorest state in the union, which is also a Republican state. That's no coincidence. EDIT: as in the town is being intentionally poorly maintained by the rest of the state.
I'd like explanations from each and every person who downvoted this. Nobody apparently had the courage to try to refute the argument, and even a cursory examination of the facts will reveal that this commenter has the facts right. Mississippi's Republican governor and Republican legislature have repeatedly denied proper funding to Jackson to address this issue in the past. It takes about 45 seconds to look this up.
"Proper" as defined by the people who are asking for the money.
The fact that they're regularly asking for more money is causally independent of essentially anything else.
An alternative theory, which seems to have a lot of supporting evidence, is that the Jackson government habitually mismanages resources.
Where I reside..what you’ll call a third-world country (Nigeria), everyone who builds a home digs their personal water borehole and sewage system because our government is too incompetent to maintain city-wide infrastructure. I’ve always thought it would be much better if we can get centralized systems for these things as they do in developed countries, but I’m pretty sure this is the type of thing we would see regul…
Having better local sources of water and treatment may turn out to he a better idea than centralized water treatment. Here in the US, water is pumped (often uphill) and purified to drinking water standards, only for 70% of residential water used for watering green lawns. Those lawns are usually grown in a way where soil microbes are killed off, water retention capability are reduced (so it needs more water), and the…
The people with lawns that I know and grew up knowing didn't take care of them to "signal wealth". Many would never care to own a luxury car or Rolex. Rather, they enjoyed gardening, the aesthetics, and having their kids play in the lawn. They barbequed every weekend and enjoyed time outdoors at home.
> Those lawns are usually grown in a way where soil microbes are killed off, water retention capability are reduced (so it needs more water)
This land will never be used for farming again. It's residential and will remain so for centuries or longer.
Many of these perceptions are from assumption or projection. Not actually living these lives or being familiar enough with the people making these decisions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the NYT article it looks like the state legislature holds the purse strings on any federal funds that might help: "the State of Mississippi received $75 million to upgrade drinking water systems across the state, with an additional $429 million coming available over the next five years. But that money is in the hands of the state Legislature, not Jackson officials."
> the State of Mississippi received $75 million to upgrade drinking water systems across the state $75mm is about Jackson, Mississippi’s annual tax take, not including $40mm for sewers and water [1]. Apparently they need $2bn to modernise their water infrastructure [2]. Financing that at 8% is about $160mm a year in interest alone; unaffordable. This reeks of overbuilding. The solution has to involve reducing the inf…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not necessarily. Jackson is a typical blue city in a red state. Even before all the gerrymandering, a single city won’t have enough political power at the state level. Given the political differences, state officials can withhold funding or hold back on maintenance without much repercussions.
I can name numerous blue cities in red states that, you know, have municipal water systems that work properly and have for decades. Stop blaming the Republican boogeyman for problems that are due to city-level incompetence and corruption. Jackson is most definitely not a well-run city that’s being held down by the white man. It has lots and lots of problems of their own design.
White people in the state are trying to get funds to go to where they live, not where other people live (just like everyone does), and additionally they live in a revanchist mythology of Jackson being overrun by blacks with the help of the Democrats, and tell stories of how beautiful Jackson was to their grandparents. That would be enough to seal off any possible empathy.
Jackson is just big Flint. Or Dixmoor: https://news.google.com/search?q=dixmoor+water
In the 60s and 70s, ghettos grew to encompass entire cities while the middle-class retreated to subsidized enclaves. In the 2000s, the grandkids moved back into the city for work and to imitate people on television who seemed cooler than them. Maybe this is the next phase of the cycle.
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I guess your idea of America is from movies - immigrated here 24 years ago from a so called third-world country and I can tell you it’s rather unsettling when you see the bowels of America especially in the southern parts (I live in Louisiana).
Honest question - why do we send so much foreign aid but don't fix our own backyard? This has been going on for decades and there must be an opportunity cost here. Sure some things cannot be solved by just throwing more money at it, but a lot of things can be. I remember this was a popular topic in pro Ron Paul 2008 reddit discussions. More people are eager to help Ukraine than our own states. They'd be ashamed infac…
Ironically, googling sources for this is difficult because almost every result is about how Americans think we send 10-25% of the federal budget as foreign aid, but the actual number is far less.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having better local sources of water and treatment may turn out to he a better idea than centralized water treatment. Here in the US, water is pumped (often uphill) and purified to drinking water standards, only for 70% of residential water used for watering green lawns. Those lawns are usually grown in a way where soil microbes are killed off, water retention capability are reduced (so it needs more water), and the…
I would be very glad if grass lawns were made unlawful in the US. It is a terrible waste of time, money, and natural resources for something so useless. I don't have any idea why this silly concept became so common in this country.
Let's ban avocados, too! They're an incredible waste of water and resources. (I can't stand how they taste, so this wouldn't affect me.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess your idea of America is from movies - immigrated here 24 years ago from a so called third-world country and I can tell you it’s rather unsettling when you see the bowels of America especially in the southern parts (I live in Louisiana).
Honest question - why do we send so much foreign aid but don't fix our own backyard? This has been going on for decades and there must be an opportunity cost here. Sure some things cannot be solved by just throwing more money at it, but a lot of things can be. I remember this was a popular topic in pro Ron Paul 2008 reddit discussions. More people are eager to help Ukraine than our own states. They'd be ashamed infac…
I guess Washington Post forgot to fact-check Jackson Mississippi has been always run by corrupt democrats at federal, state and local level. They are poster child fan boy of Benny Thompson who is the longest running Congressman at the moment.
In the past 30 years they've had a Democratic governor for only four years, from 2000-2004.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Majority black town in the poorest state in the union, which is also a Republican state. That's no coincidence. EDIT: as in the town is being intentionally poorly maintained by the rest of the state.
I'd like explanations from each and every person who downvoted this. Nobody apparently had the courage to try to refute the argument, and even a cursory examination of the facts will reveal that this commenter has the facts right. Mississippi's Republican governor and Republican legislature have repeatedly denied proper funding to Jackson to address this issue in the past. It takes about 45 seconds to look this up.
Having spent the 45 seconds the parent comment did not share, the story I see is one where the state was willing to match more funds but the city had other priorities. This isn't written as criticism of the city's decision but acknowledgement that different people see things differently. If some other disaster had happened that decision might have been vindicated.
[Dated April 28, 2022, MS Gov] Reeves said the state was willing to match Jackson’s water and sewer infrastructure spending, and criticized the city only putting up $25 million of the $42 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds it received for such work.
https://mississippitoday.org/2022/04/28/tate-reeves-veto-jac...
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assessment team flagged numerous system problems in a July 2022 report, one month before the system failed. The problems highlighted in the report include:
- Poor administration, lack of staff
- Finances are in shambles
- Customer complaints
- Lack of routine monitoring and maintenance
- Water in storage tanks isn’t cycled
- Frequent line breaks