61–70 of 79 posts
Even regular tap water in many US cities is contaminated with PFAS and other pollutants. When water does reach a house, only about 5-20% is used for cooking or drinking - the rest for watering plants, showers, toilet flushing, washing. Is it better to just outfit each home with an under-sink reverse osmosis machine and pipe in raw reservoir water?
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indefinitely is a bit extreme. it should say "until pumps are fixed and service is restored"
Indefinitely != infinitely. It just means they do not know how long it will take.
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I know nothing about Jackson, but municipalities all around the country are reliant on money flowing federal>state>local, urban>rural, etc. There can be good reasons to subsidize infrastructure - for example, urban residents help maintain a rural farming community because they desire the agricultural products. It’s not even clear the entire state of Mississippi is “capable of taking care of themselves” as over 40 per…
And California is 30%, that's a difference obviously, but not such a big difference that you have to say they are unable to take care of themselves. Water supply is a local thing, and local leaders need to take responsibility, not blame the state.
https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal-analysis/balance-of-...
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do you know anything about jackson's local government, local tax base, the dynamics of power, the surrounding wealthy suburbs, or the extent of how much a repair like this would cost? here's a primer: - https://mississippitoday.org/2021/11/08/jackson-water-crisis... - https://mississippitoday.org/2021/03/24/why-jacksons-water-s... - https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/a-mississippi-citys-...
I do know that funding and managing local services like water, sewer, schools, police, fire dept., etc. is the responsibility of the local municipalities. If you want to argue something else then please explain why local gov't even exists in the first place. This is a primarily a failure of local government likely due to weak/inept leadership. Just because something like fixing your water supply is politically diffic…
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Indefinitely != infinitely. It just means they do not know how long it will take.
It doesn't mean forever but it is widely understood to mean that there is no foreseeable resolution in the near future. I think most of us know to avoid the word unless we're signaling some degree of permanence.
Shouldn’t the army corp step it at some point? Shouldn’t the military be able to fly in some pumps if really needed?
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I do know that funding and managing local services like water, sewer, schools, police, fire dept., etc. is the responsibility of the local municipalities. If you want to argue something else then please explain why local gov't even exists in the first place. This is a primarily a failure of local government likely due to weak/inept leadership. Just because something like fixing your water supply is politically diffic…
nobody is ignoring it. please take the time to learn about this situation before making generalizations.
So, they begged for outside money (again, for something that is their responsibility) and when that didn’t work stuck by their “do nothing and blame the state” strategy which ultimately created a humanitarian crisis that leaves federal taxpayers on the hook.
Did I miss anything?
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Mississippi isn’t able to take care of themselves as a whole! https://mspolicy.org/mississippi-no-longer-the-state-most-re...
They are 44%, and California is 30% - it's not that dramatic of a difference to call them "isn't able to take care of themselves".
The average per person income in Mississippi is like 25k so that 6k is not coming from the residents excess wealth.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/federal-aid...
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Considering Mississippi is one of the states most reliant on federal aid, I think maybe we should just say the whole state is a failure then? Maybe all of Mississippi should deal with the implications of raising their taxes even more. They’re a red state so I assume a state government official that campaigned to raise taxes wouldn’t win as easily as someone who campaigned to get federal money. The article i link says…
> The article i link says they’re getting ~10B from the feds so they’d need a ~15% tax rate on their 3M people earning avg of 25K to pay for that. Thank god for them 25K income is so low that they only pay federal tax rate of ~12%. Huh? That isn't how that works at all. Cities issue bonds to raise the cash to pay for large projects. Those bonds are paid down over time or not at all if they just pay interest w/ no pri…
Considering how dependent the state is on funding, it’s not crazy to imagine that the local municipalities would also be similarly dependent.
Jackson surely knows how to raise bonds. In Dec2021 their water and sewer bond rating was put in the “B” range (Baa) for their existing 200M in debt for the water system.
Mississippi likely just has no more money from their existing population available. And has likely started to run out of availability debt accessible.
Ps: The “rest of us” surely are suckers paying for it, but it looks like we always were. I’m in California and I’d raise my own taxes by $12 just be able to brag to red states that California takes less in “government handouts” than them. But it doesn’t matter. We’re all in one big national union working together to help each other. It doesn’t matter who is paying and who is getting re-elected - those residents need water. And fwiw, it’s not like the fed balances the budget. That’s just “free money” anyways.
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It doesn't mean forever but it is widely understood to mean that there is no foreseeable resolution in the near future. I think most of us know to avoid the word unless we're signaling some degree of permanence.
Indefinitely doesn't imply permanence to me. I take it as meaning what it means: there is no reasonable prediction for when the situation will be resolved. Which seems correct for this case.