The City of Brotherly Love and communities across the U.S. face the specter of hundreds of millions of dollars in useless hydrants after a surprise ruling last month by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that requires fireplugs put in after Jan. 4 meet stricter standards for lead content, said Tom Curtis of the American Water Works Association in Denver. That means cities must scrap or retrofit inventory or buy hydrants and parts that some vendors aren’t even making yet.
And we wonder why the US is slowly collapsing as the major world power.
Classic bureaucratic irregulation. Ultimately, the US will fail just like the Soviet Union if the T-party doesn’t get the job done.
They are just doing there jobs. Next up is lowering the lead content of balloons. You voted for it so enjoy.
Maybe not Robert of Ottawa.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-12/tea-party-s-green-faction-fights-for-solar-in-red-states.html
Nice to know these idiots and the organizations they work for are facing extinction via Joseph Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction. That’s where the death of Government begins and we move into the cycle where we experience the rise of the Private Sector.
Not hard to believe that Obama’s reign will be remembered as the peak of Government’s rise.
http://moneytalks.net/mikes-content/10676-michael-campbells-money-talks-show-for-nov-16th.html
What’s a poor pooch to do?
People – DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE POTENTIAL IMPACT ON IQ’S OF LEAD IN THE DRINKING WATER SYSTEM.
Exhibit #1:
Some older parts of Toronto still have lead pipes. This is an obvious explanation for what’s happening at City Hall.
PeeJay
me thinks it’s the lead-pipe rap in the head that does the harm:-))))
and it’s time to strip these unelected bureaurocraps of their power and tune then into the fact they are servants and not over lords
Good God, more regulations from the eco-loonies at the EPA. I don’t think anyone there knows how a hydrant is constructed. There is a brass shutoff valve at the bottom of the hydrant far below ground which is only opened when there is a fire to be put out. There is no water in the hydrant when not in use to prevent freezing and any water in the hydrant cannot go back into the pipe network to household faucets so unless one is drinking from a fire hydrant there is no exposure to lead.
Forcing taxpayers to spend or borrow billions for a problem that does not exist. Bureaucracy at its finest.
Detroit might burn down? Oh no! Oh wait, would anyone notice?
Know a family with nothing but levers in the home. Are seriously considering replacing several ‘crucial’ ones with the old-fashioned doorknob. Why? To keep their young children from too easily opening some doors. At least with the regular knobs, there were plastic sleeves which made it difficult for the children to get out until they were old enough to understand when and when not to open the door.
I can never understand why these municipalities just don’t band together and ignore the EPA ruling. Perhaps I’m naive but wouldn’t it be worth a try?
Stupid laws and regulations should be ignored. An example of this is the Ontario ban on pesticides. People continue to purchase the good stuff out of province and apply it as before. I haven’t seen anyone prosecuted as yet.
Because the municipalities are run by another band of lefty lunatics. That’s where the left gets their start. Begin in the school boards then move on to municipal government and on up the ladder. And bureaucrats are given a small taste of power and feel the need to expand their reach until they can control other’s lives. Think of them as the kids who had no friends and are now exacting their revenge upon us all. The same as the nazi bureaucrats in the third Reich, who were “just doing their jobs” or “had to follow orders”. Petty little men and women who feel superior to the rest of us who only happen to pay their salaries. Sorry to bring up nazis but the similarity is there.
Yeah well, the EPA loons shut down the last lead smelter in the US. Trying to eliminate all lead from the environment is like cleaning up the OIL SANDS…..a big job….possibly impossible.
A more sensible approach would be curtailing further use of lead in manufacture rather than the snake! snake! snake! approach.
The Tea Party doesn’t have a green faction. Greenies are commies, first last and always.
I had a minor revelation last night while sleeping. Aka I had a nightmare, which I will now share with y’all.
If you look at the amount of money the government takes off you, between all levels of government taxation and fees etc. it is roughly half of your total income from all sources. Including money you get from government, of course.
Now in the US, they are attempting to make people sustain even more confiscation in the form of health “insurance” which is really just more income redistribution in capitalist drag. If your Arizona “insurance” fee gets spent on mental health care for some indigent illegal in Texas instead of being invested against the day you need a hip replacement or brain surgery, it isn’t “insurance” is it? It’s a tax.
Please note that these “insurance fees” are being paid with after tax dollars.
Now add to this the burden of student debt incurred by every single person who wants to be more than a coffee slinger at Timmie’s. Doctors particularly can carry as much as half a million dollars of debt from student loans on graduation from residency if they become specialists. Captain Capitalism has been making this point again and again in his posts about the education bubble, and the information he reveals is extremely troubling.
Please note, also paid for with after-tax dollars, and being paid to institutions run by actual Communists and private in name only. Universities are all supported 99% by government one way or another.
Credentialism insures that the productive class lives in debt servitude into their forties. Bankruptcy does not relieve one of student loans either.
Finally, we have the nested regulations that are the subject of Kate’s post. EPA demands municipalities replace fire hydrants with new, as yet uncreated parts. Municipalities will have no choice but to comply, raising taxes on rate payers to make up the shortfall from their budget created by needing the new parts.
Once upon a time I visited a pipe company in Hamilton Ontario which specialized in municipal water systems and hydrants. The didn’t make the parts, they mostly just stocked them and maybe modified some things. It would amaze you how much they charge for a simple cast iron hydrant. Some of the parts for a hydrant cost over a thousand dollars. Parts, mind you. Simple castings with some machine work, like threads cut. Thousands. Of. Dollars.
Now, thanks to the EPA, the stock of parts for new hydrants is worthless scrap. Off to the scrap man or the after market, to be sold in the third world at a fraction of the price the command here. New parts to be purchased at even higher prices, because they are certified and made of pure lead-free Amazium instead of the usual cast iron, bronze and brass.
America’s stock of after-tax dollars just went down another tick, didn’t it? Somebody somewhere is making a boatload of money selling Amazium parts to municipalities, aren’t they? No-bid contract too, bet you. Most of the money will be going to the “friends” who got that contract for the company, won’t they? Donations, hockey tickets, dinners etc.
Multiply that by everything the EPA does, and the Justice Dept. and the Education Dept. and etc.
It came to me that this is the Soviet Union without the overt brutality and fatal micro-management. It’s a web of regulation, tax and debt that insures nobody does anything without having friends in high places to give them a special deal.
For Canadians feeling smug I have two names: Montreal and Toronto. Or SNC and Ontario Hydro, same diff.
Now cap it all off with the American Fed printing money. The deliberate effort to create run-away inflation in a deflationary market is the final piece of the puzzle. This is how socialism steals the last bit of your effort, by devaluing the money and equity you have saved over the years. Your only defence is debt, which you pay off with inflated dollars. Buy that house now, and use it’s rising price to buy the stuff you want with a second/third/fourth mortgage. Which worked until 2008, and left most middle class people with some semi-worthless toys, no savings and no house. They now rent. From a venture capital company which quietly bought up about two thirds of the empty houses in most markets at pennies on the dollar.
Prices are now slowly rising, as a result of this mass purchase. Where did somebody get the money to buy up half the houses in the USA? Friends, obviously.
The logical direction for this all to go is more of it. More EPA throwing their weight around. More tax. More debt servitude. More more more. It will continue until some bloated perve makes one demand too many and somebody with guts has nothing left to lose. Then it will hit the fan.
Showing once again the genius that Benjamin Franklin was: “A Republic, if you can keep it!”
This concludes my revelation/nightmare for today.
Yeah, I guess I am naive. These pricks remind me of the kid in class that, at 3:55PM on a Friday, reminds the teacher that she forgot to assign homework for the weekend.
The EPA is the un elected spearhead to impose leftist politics on the American people..
The separation of Church and State comes to mind.. Saving souls or the water table is all the same to me.. Abstract gain comes with a political lock in lock down that directly benefits a narrow political religious or environmental slant..
Putting yourself in front of the law because you are the law, ends up temping those in charge to round up their enemies while they are at it..
Every time..
This is a truly propitious moment in American history!
Americans live in huge cities of strangers. So, next time there’s a fire, the Firemen can organize all the citizens in the neighborhood into a “bucket brigade”, with the water source being whatever pure and clear source is readily available.
This is also way better for the environment as those filthy firetrucks are propelled by polluting diesel!
Nothing brings people together better than working for a common cause.
After their houses burn down, they can live together on the streets as friends rather than strangers. They say,”it takes a village”, and the U.S. under my plan will soon consist of many villages,all living together in old fashioned harmony.
And we can all thank De Prez. THIS is the “hope and change” moment for America, when people join together to make their world a better place!
All together now,”I’d like to teach the world to sing….in perfect harmony…..”
‘Rules for the sake of rules,’ rather than applying common sense seems to be the order of today’s world. The individual is suspect, whereas the collective, ruled by people eager to climb on board the bandwagon, is taking over. NGOs, partially or completely funded by gov’t grant money, are rife with this type of useless regulation and overreach. I’ve never seen anything like it. The NGO I work for has changed radically in five years.
The voluntarily nonproductive, “know” how the means of production must be run.
Having watched someone else do it once, while busily distracted with stuffing their pockets with other peoples produce, they know exactly how everyone else should use their resources and skills.
Has not worked in 2000 years but the stupid,lazy and hungry for petty power, all gravitate to the bureaus.
Bureaucracy metastasizes until the host dies, it can’t help its self any more than a tick can release before it is bloated.
Tea Party’s Green Faction Fights for Solar in Red States
———-
With so much tax funded profits up in the air its hard to not want to go with the flow..
If progress means I dont get a slice of the pie then its not progress at all.. Then its just a shitty political point that couldn’t rub two nickles together to make a dime..
Besides we all know that environmental programs are 99% campaign donations and 1% environmental good.. Its not like the environment has fingers and toes to do the math so she is as happy as she ever was..
Really..
Its not like the right can continue to sit on its hands while the left bribes huge segments of our business community with guaranteed tax funded profits.. Nobody cares whats right or wrong.. left or right, up or down when a sweet contract is slapped down in front of them..
The only thing they worry about is the small print, not the small guy..
People vote accordingly..
“Bureaucracy metastasizes until the host dies, it can’t help its self any more than a tick can release before it is bloated.”
Excellent! That’s exactly IT.
The EPA bureaucracy hadn’t made up any ridiculous new rules this week so they had to come up with something. It’s just called justifying your “phoney baloney jobs” at somebody elses expense. Being an enviro-animal rights-lefty is clearly a mental illness.
The reason is simple….all levels of government work for themselves and NOT for the citizens. The more rules the better….the more union goons they can hire and the more influence the public sector can have on the outcome of elections as they throw their support behind the candidates that promise them the most candy…..and the thing goes round and round and round. And at the point where the public sector becomes in full control, the whole damned thing collapses. It is at this point that right wing repair crews have to come in and that is why you get stupid comments like “Tory times are tough times” from the unions. Yes….Tory times are (or should be) hard for the public sector, but good times for citizens.
The cancer began in Detroit . It has infected America, till the rot of big Government, with lefty loons has made The USA terminally ill, growing into full blown mutation.
The minutia of communism from the “progressives” are making it a shell of what it once was.
“Tory times are tough times”
and “Grit times are –it times”
Don’t do it! Door knobs on the outside of your house/apartment are a safety feature.
A criminal skumbag, on the outside, can’t put as much torque on the door knob as you can holding the door leaver on the inside while you’re trying to get the lock done up.
The door lever can also be defeated with a length of pipe, same as a screw driver and pliers on your car door.
The EPA pr–ks have clearly been ingesting a lot of lead.
Let’s assume that a tragedy strikes – your house catches on fire.
By accident, a fireman sprays some lead contaminated water on you. Your IQ instantly drops 75 points.
Your only option at this point: A job with the EPA.
How sad.
Must be a black op. Tea and Watermelons do not mix.
Forcing taxpayers to spend or borrow billions THAT DO NOT EXIST for a problem that does not exist.
Bureaucracy at its finest. Quite So!
One mad barking Bureaucratic call after another. Soon you have no Nation left.
Which is when the communists step in with guns.