>“We are dealing with an old, crumbling system that continues to offer challenge after challenge,”

if only we invested in our own infrastructure like so many other developed nations do

That's socialist commie bull shit, we're 'Murkins we don't like clean water, and air and safe roads. GUUUUNZZZZZZZZZ!!!

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For the sarcastically challenged /s.

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This is what “running the government like a business” gets: a preoccupation with minimizing spending, particularly on non-immediate (but necessary and inevitable) expenditures.

If only that wasn’t exactly how they’re writing the new Republican friendly textbooks for schools.

"running goverment like a business" really means rich people not having to pay taxes.

It is not just the infrastructure.

In Atlanta, we had multiple water pipes break in our building's parking garage. The design was built to withstand below freezing temperatures for a handful of days.

Not temperatures in the teens for almost a week, it just doesn't get that bitterly cold down here to call for the insulation necessary for that.

We don't need no dadgum infrastructure. That'd just be more tax dollars that can't go towards high school & college football coaches.

It will stay that way as long as FEMA is capable of swooping in and fixing everything with more federal money when shit actually hits the fan

The South was not designed for this weather. What a shock

I'm in Virginia and had a pipe burst during the Christmas weekend, apparently it happened all across town because plumbers were booked for like a week out. One the plumbers I normally work with said he had to fix several of his own pipes.

Or most businesses, or they cheat claiming far less than what they earn

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We don't need to lessen FEMA's abilities.

We just need to send states more bills.

Say, well heads freeze in TX (again) this year, and the Feds find that no actions were taken from the last several outages (see report from 2011 below). Help them. Then, bill them.

https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-05/ReportontheSouthwestColdWeatherEventfromFebruary2011Report.pdf

It's not so much that the infrastructure down here is decayed (though some is), it is that we don't bury our water and sewer pipes as deep into the ground as is done in the North There is usually no need to.

As a result when the temperatures got down into the single digits, the ground got cold enough to cause the water in those pipes to freeze.

The solution is clearly more privatization. Everyone needs to purchase and install a large water tank at their home and water will be trucked in weekly. /s

Per the article, Jackson,Mississippi has been having problems since August.

It's not generally cold in Mississippi in August.

The problem is the infrastructure.

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That's one city, there are numerous other cities without Infrastructure problems who are dealing with broken water mains because of the cold.

Don't get me wrong, I think FEMA serves an important role, I just feel like to many local governments use it as the main form of infrastructure maintenance and not the last line of defense

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Stipulated. Jackson, Mississippi is one city.

You're misdirect, however, is pretending that there's only one problem.

Take Asheville, NC if you'd like to drill-into another. Lost water because their treatment facility that starts the whole water supply chain shutdown.

It's a series of systemic infrastructure issues that only time and hard work will address.

(and, for those from Asheville, y'all deserve credit for starting/completing as much of it as you have...your dam work was a lot of damn work. Still more to do, though)

Got it...and I feel ya. If only we can stop rebuilding beachfront condos for the rich who watch them wash away every couple of years due to hurricanes.

The problem is that the pipes break when it freezes and then once it thaws, you get the leaks. I told the people in my office that the best thing to do if your pipes aren't well insulated is to keep some water running a bit. Running water doesn't freeze as quickly as standing water. It at least gives you a fighting chance

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That's definitely what ends up happening—and it's probably what most politicians who support that slogan actually mean—but there are probably a non-trivial number of people who either only understand that phrase to mean "maximize operational efficiency" (without bothering to really parse what that entails) or genuinely don't understand that government should be a service, not a business.

It's historically laughable and demonstrably false, but I'm sure plenty of people still think that way, somehow.

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But that’s communism or some other bullshit the gop will make up as an excuse

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>The spending bill would provide roughly $45 billion to help support Ukraine's efforts to defend itself against Russia's attack.

Not against the war in Ukraine, but wouldn't this money be better off allocated to something else? Couldn't we have taken it from the defense budget and given it to Ukraine?

These are our tax dollars, correct?

"run the government like a business" You know, where one guy on top reaps a disproportionate amount of the benefits by exploiting the people at the bottom.

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It really means “profits first and all of my contractor buddies get first dibs on all new projects”.

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better off for something else? probably. but once money is allocated to particular "pot" for use, the money very rarely gets shifted around to another "pot". budgeting and accounting is very specific for government stuff.

Oh, so like a monarchy?

Exactly... lowest temperatures recorded at ATL in the past decade (in C):

2022 -13

2021 -5

2020 -6

2019 -6

2018 -11

2017 -9

2016 -7

2015 -12

2014 -14

2013 -6

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2022 wasn't even the lowest temperature in the past decade and the lowest record temperature at ATL was -21 (1985). I get that this cold snap was a bit longer than is typical, but it's not really that far out from "normal" levels cold. When you design for 90% confidence that something won't break, 10% of the time it will. And when we're talking about building design (which tend to be around for decades or more), you're basically guaranteeing failure at some point.

The voters keep voting for more of this

I don't think the /s is needed there. That seems like a very plausible Nestle solution. Lots of people have propane/heating oil delivered to a storage tank, water wouldn't be any different.

And you know they'd market it towards the rugged individual, who now won't have to rely on the socialist water network and only has to pay for what they use. It'll be a lot more expensive in the end, but they'll pat themselves on the back for their forward flawed thinking.

I live in the South and this cold snap is nothing new. In fact in my area we reach lows like this every single year.

The major difference this year is that our outdated infrastructure and massive population growth simply cannot handle any sort of strain. It’s abysmal how behind this nation is infrastructure wise.

I laughed like a drain when I learned that Texan Republicans didn't want American schoolchildren learning about critical thinking. That's so transparently evil and short-sighted...

Between that and lead in the drinking water in millions of American homes, I'm actually impressed by how well America is doing.

No no, a monarch is at least ostensibly accountable to their people. A business can just laugh when people are angry at them.

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The US is doing that “quiet quitting” thing.

>It’s abysmal how behind this nation is infrastructure wise.

It makes a bit more sense when you consider the US is the only developed nation that is still growing, and doing so pretty quickly, all things considered.

Sure but everytime we try to spend money on anything else people whine about it. No one whines when it goes to defense but anything else and people are screaming socialism.

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That's not true, the lowest temp in Atlanta in 2020 was 22°F. The last time we got down to single digits in Atlanta was in 2014. Also those temperatures would only last no more than a day. This was a multi day event ending with snow Monday night.

It definitely was cold for an extended period of time. That can freeze and break those pipes.

I get that for some that's what running a business is like for most businesses. Only for those who own the business, & never step foot in it. Your everyday business....is how small governments should be run. Then there would be actual budgeting for things that occur. Just like how a person may run their own individual life. You know plan for today, the next year, the rest of your life-knowing full well as things "age" they'll need to be replaced. Where I live, they don't think about those things, then oh we need this, this, & that-NOW. And guess who pays for ALL that now? The people who live here. I own , run my business. I've saved for those emergencies, for things that will break down, a lot of it that went back into the business when Covid hit. And it pisses me off, that the village government decided to raise our taxes so the schools-all of them could have things that were not needed immediately. This happened right before Covid. Oh then well the water system needs to be upgraded, increase water/sewer by 83% in 1 year-this was during Covid. Replace water meters, & make people pay for all those estimations that were not quite right(some had to pay 1000's in a couple months). This is a government who did not budget, like a business would. And we're all paying for it. Yes, I get the "big" businesses have those at the top that get millions, if not billions. But that is not a basic business. You probably budget for your home....that is a business model. That is what is needed. People in government who think about the things that will be needed down the road & to plan for it.

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“We do not need a $250,000 campus-wide Wi-Fi system just so you can be on Reddit all day!!” “Your organization owns unique linemen vehicles that require routine software and firmware upgrades that can be performed over the air during down time. Your decision will now force the maintenance teams to individually link to each truck, update it, remove it from the bay, park it, and get the next truck. Each upgrade can take three to four hours. I wish you the best of luck in 2018, I quit.”

Or the developed parts of this nation.

>That's not true, the lowest temp in Atlanta in 2020 was 22°F.

...Which is -6C...

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>This was a multi day event ending with snow Monday night.
>
>I get that this cold snap was a bit longer than is typical

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Maybe this is more like a 5% event rather than a 10% event...but still for multi-decade construction, this is a design failure...

They used Celsius

Who needs infrastructure when you can have religion?

>We just need to send states more bills.

These shit states already take more federal dollars than they give back, what would increasing the discrepancy achieve?

That's not cold enough to break water pipes, but when the high is in the teens °F for days it is.

The relevant data here would be longest sustained below freezing temps, not absolute. He acknowledged it normally gets below freezing, just not for this long. Which is critical, since water takes quite a while to lose its heat.

(Anecdotally, I have family there that had a pipe burst in their house, which they've been living in for more than 25 years without any issue.)

Instead how do you feel about spending two decades destroying two countries, try to rebuild them, failing, then leaving?

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Most of the taxes should be going back to the people inside this country, and they are

Ukraine spending is a hundred times less than the money going back to the states. The problem is the money going to the states is not necessarily spent on what it needs to be used on

Much of these pipes breaking is the local citizens paying a corruption tax for supporting decades and decades of mismanaged and stolen money. The entire USA has layers on layers of criminals in government at the federal state and local levels

Red states have more issues because more corruption, but blue states have a lot of problems too

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Didn’t we just pass an infrastructure bill?

I think you misunderstood.

Bill the states that need the service for the services that they consume.

They'd be for that because, of course, distributing the costs to other states would be socialism. I hear that they hate that.

Yep. Koch Energy may have poisoned rivers repeatedly, lobbied for laws that benefitted them at the expense of workers and citizens, and supported candidates opposed to basic human rights. But, good luck switching to a competitor.

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A few years back in Ottawa, Canada, a high tech mogul won the mayoralty on the run-it-like-a-business platform. Homelessness? He proposed building tourist kiosks in the places where homeless sleep, such as beneath bridges. Council? He said he could only implement his agenda if all of the 30+ councillors thought like him. Not "agree with me" but "think like me", a purposeful use by an autocrat. He lasted one term, thankfully, losing his second try with only 24% of the vote.

LOL, the government is hardly "minimizing spending". Both parties have spent money in the last decades like drunk sailors. How about having a government that actually governs properly?

they should probably vote again for the same people theyve been voting for for the last 70 or 80 years

Against the mission statement of the South

But how would we pay for ukraines infrastructure and natos guns and bombs??

Had to cut holes through my entire house and run 12 forced fan heaters into the drywall this past weekend. It was a crap show much farther north of you too

But but Brett favre needed money for volleyball, and by golly when Brett Favre asks for money. You better find some money for him. Even if it's from the poorest of people, Brett Favre and his daughter need it more.

I'm in Tennessee and had a pipe freeze in the crawl of my 2 year old house. My plumber had 14 calls ahead of me. Fortunately I was able to thaw our with a blow dryer before they broke.