Erie County Water Woes

It's pretty pathetic when you think about it. Here we are in the United States and when it comes time to kick out the cash for some stupid war that will accomplish nothing useful or for some weapons system that never works as advertised, Uncle Sam has as open wallet.

When it comes time to take care of its own – its citizens – the people that actually pay the taxes that provide the money that we need for taking care of this country – Uncle Sam gets pretty stingy.Get ready for some moths to appear.

New York is not much better. Governor Cuomo is pretty open about tax breaks and credits – basically passing the corporate taxes onto the working class – for businesses in order to get them to relocate or start up here in NYS. But when it comes to fixing the infrastructure that the businesses and workers are dependent upon? Get to distraction mode.

Our good Uncle Sam and Governor are so stingy they makes Scrooge McDuck and Ebenezer Scrooge look like the Good Samaritan.

So it was no surprise to me when a water main broke (again) in Western New York. This time in Amherst and it affected a good chunk of Erie County and a part Genesee County. And Good old Senator Schumer was there to promise to deliver the goods to help rebuild the broken infrastructure.

The pipe that broke is nearly ancient and an atrocious piece of technology. It has been described as a tin can with concrete poured around it, wire wrapped around that, and then a final case of concrete around that. A Rube Goldberg design if there ever was one.

When it blew there were people that did not even know that it was unsafe to drink the water because of potential contamination. Isn't that why we pay these taxes for things like a reverse 9-11 call? I get those for missing children and other sorts of information. Why not for this? And shouldn't it apply to cell phones as well? And the media were not duly informed either from what I understand. So the radio and TV stations were slow to get the information and get it out.

But let us go to war and that will be out as soon as the first bomb is dropped or bullet is fired.

So people were drinking and showering/bathing in potentially contaminated water.

And Senator Schumer was quick t get on the scene and talk “good politics” - he made a promise to get a federal grant to help repair and potentially upgrade the water system from the near ancient mess that it is to something more modern. Detroit must still be lingering in the Democrats memories.

Either that or it is an election year and the Democrats are eager to hang onto the seats that they have and hope to cut into the Republican majority.

Then again, all the affected areas tend to be more conservative in nature and if the Democrats want to make any gains in the halls of power they need to make inroads to areas like Amherst, Williamsville, and especially Genessee County.

Who is notoriously missing? Governor Cuomo and the state representatives. They may have said something, but I have not seen anything official, so I shall leave that until I do more digging.

It is rather disturbing that we have such old infrastructure in this country and how much it places our citizens and the economy at risk. Look at all the businesses that had to close because of the loss of water. And the workers that will not be paid because they were not working.

Look bigger – look at all the ageing and breaking infrastructure and how many jobs could be created and kept going for quite a long period of time if the United States and NYS were to get serious about rebuilding the day to day infrastructure that people need in order to work and live.

Socialists understand that home comes first. The government has a responsibility to take care of its citizens and their needs.

Socialists demand:

-the end of all foreign and military aid (humanitarian excepted) to oppressive dictatorships and other anti-democratic forms of government

-a massive infusion of money into local and state infrastructure projects, not limited to water supply, but roads, bridges, and other necessities as determined by locality

-an infusion of money into better communication technology to keep our citizens safe from local environmental threats

These are our citizens and we need to do better than what we witnessed this week.