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skucera t1_j3e0k01 wrote

At what point is it just straight-up racism that the state government (controlled by white republicans) won’t fix the infrastructure in the largest black community, which also happens to mostly vote democrat?

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domestication_never t1_j3e5rnl wrote

State republicans haven't helped. It's well established that the responsibility for water is the city though. It's on them. They've have shrinking tax take for years due to shrinking population. Jackson is not in a healthy way as a city. Hospitals are closing too. The economic activity just isn't enough to sustain the infrastructure they need as a city. Tax needs to be higher, but the residents can't afford that.

The federal government is putting in 600 million to try and fix it. The city fundamentally isn't looking financially viable in the long term though - if there isn't the tax based to sustain the water supply, you can be sure other issues will follow.

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PenguinSunday t1_j3f6z03 wrote

It should never have been allowed to get to this point. This is the United States of America, the richest country in the history of the world, and an entire city has no access to clean drinking water. It's disgusting. Wtf is the government even for if it won't step in to fix this?

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gangofminotaurs t1_j3g0u25 wrote

A lot of the rise in life expectancy in the last centuries, generally attributed to food or medicine, really happened alongside access to clean water. That communities today would be left out when there's no good reason to (i mean: not a failed country, no war...) is unconscionable.

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WestCoastBestCoast01 t1_j3ho9l0 wrote

The “richest country” lives on the coasts, Mississippi is desperately poor.

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abk111 t1_j3hpogi wrote

Which is why they take in plenty of fed money sponsored by coastal states. If they decide to use it to own the libs or pay celebrities instead of investing in infrastructure that’s a local government problem.

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Wyndrell t1_j3p95sq wrote

Mississippi's gdp per capita is about $48,000/person, making it about as rich as the United Kingdom or Germany, and considerably richer than Japan, Italy and South Korea (amongst others).

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Hobbit_Feet45 t1_j3fk498 wrote

No one wants to live there if there’s no water. You gotta fix the problems to bring people and businesses back. They are at an inflection point. They can do nothing and watch the city death-spiral or they can take out loans, pass a bond with extra tax revenue or get the damn state or feds to bail them out.

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kiklion t1_j3grnj8 wrote

I thought people were leaving/population was dropping before the water failed. Sure, no one wants to move to where there is no water but doing a one time fix on the water won’t fix the underlying issues either.

If the city is positioned in an economically important area, then whatever local laws and regulations are driving people away or discouraging people from staying need to be re-evaluated.

If the area isn’t particularly economically important then why put good money after bad?

Either way, the city should be able to maintain it itself.

8

GlassWasteland t1_j3j028h wrote

Yes, well the feds gave the state millions for projects like this, but the guys in the state decided to spend it on a volleyball arena for some college, because a rich football players daughter went there.

If the feds really wanted to help Mississippi they would go down there and start an anti-corruption campaign doing deep dives into every politician.

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CT-91 t1_j3f1jhz wrote

I think what you said is correct I live in Indiana we get a lot of transplants from Kentucky which when I was younger I couldnt understand why anybody would come here of all places but like there is absolutely nothing and no way to live in some parts of KY (this isnt me shitting on KY I love your state and Indiana and KY will always be like cousins)

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evanwilliams44 t1_j3f4zhc wrote

Really close cousins that spent all summer together but nothing ever got weird you promise?

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iAmTheHYPE- t1_j3fwgn7 wrote

> (this isnt me shitting on KY I love your state

They keep re-electing McConnell...

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docmedic t1_j3hfu31 wrote

The sad thing is that the state is probably waiting for the city to become abandoned, and then fix it for all the white government officials.

This isn’t a normal process at all.

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domestication_never t1_j3hkq6e wrote

Madison, five miles away is whiter and has zero of these issues. They don't even have to wait for it to fail to have an alternative, it's built finished and right there

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docmedic t1_j3i7acc wrote

The only issue with Jackson is that “too many” black people live there. Once they are tortured enough to leave, then that’s great real estate again for Republicans.

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sp3kter t1_j3ehjnl wrote

Another Detroit or worse?

−5

Gommel_Nox t1_j3hf6gu wrote

Contrary to popular opinion, Detroit has very clean water. Companies wouldn’t be fighting each other to steal it if it were that bad.

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periwinkletweet t1_j3e5uqn wrote

It's not all the states responsibly. The city leaders have made errors also. I feel so bad for the residents there

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procrasturb8n t1_j3he2of wrote

Yet, the feds gave the state money to address it, and the state legislature decided to do something else with the funds.

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BitterFuture OP t1_j3efs0m wrote

Sometime around 1865, I'd say.

Edit: Conservatives have joined the discussion, I gather? Don't like being called out on your racism, boys?

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After-District8811 t1_j3h1w09 wrote

At what point is it straight up incompetence that the local government (controlled by black democrats) ran the city services into the ground after decades of corruption and mismanagement? Blaming this on the state government makes no sense when it’s the city governments responsibility. They are the ones that fucked up, many many times. The residents of Jackson, MS vote for incompetent leaders and this is the result. Period.

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ultradianfreq t1_j3i62u7 wrote

As you can see you’re the only comment here who isn’t placing all the blame on the racist white republicans. It’s always weird when people totally ignore the locals running the cities that these things happen in. Republicans are trash but using them as scapegoats to excuse the incompetence and corruption and the root cause of a matter doesn’t help the local black community who are the victims of the corrupt scumbags making the decisions. See this happening over and over again. People seem not to know you can fight racism, support minorities, and hold leaders accountable even if they themselves are minorities. This ideology of treating each group identity as though they are homogenous is itself racist.

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ConcreteState t1_j3h7ik8 wrote

They figured out how to sneak 'colored only' water fountains back into the state

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SQUIRTnCIDER t1_j3hkfmi wrote

So what you said isn’t racism. It sounds more political.

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Serverpolice001 t1_j3ffozs wrote

Was so sad happened in flint too

0

redander t1_j3gw7fd wrote

Not just flint. There is lots of cities in Michigan that had issues with the water in the years following. Flint just got the most press due to the political aspects of it.

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sandyposs t1_j3fj6sm wrote

At what point does a city get declared officially uninhabitable and its inhabitants provided relocation?

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iAmTheHYPE- t1_j3fwp0f wrote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania

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IcedExplosion t1_j3gtitp wrote

that was a fascinating read! I was raised pretty close to there but I’ve never heard about it.

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SnakeDoctur t1_j3huczh wrote

That's by design. The catastrophe was covered up by government officials for well over a decade, until the fires started affecting too many residents for it to be plausibly denied any longer. By then the company responsible had long been dissolved leaving residents with no means of recourse.

At which point the government started forcing people to leave, offering them pennies on the dollar to their home's actual value (offering just $50,000 for a property valued at over $400,000 for example)

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bk15dcx t1_j3e3r0h wrote

Yet 5 miles away in Madison things are fine

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Twelvey t1_j3f9mdb wrote

Just so long as Brett Farve's daughter has a new volleyball court to play on...

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hello_world_wide_web t1_j3e0ia6 wrote

Ask Gov DeSantis, Abbott or Polis to help relocate them...they seem to be pretty good at such things!

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[deleted] t1_j3fba60 wrote

When you keep electing the same stupid people.

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EvangelionGonzalez t1_j3erjkr wrote

If only there were some kind of bills they could have voted for regarding infrastructure...

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Enlightened-Beaver t1_j3enwbx wrote

Keep electing republicans…

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Armadillo_Rock t1_j3fr01m wrote

People in Jackson vote Democrat.

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Ad-Careless t1_j3gd1ho wrote

The GOP holds every statewide office and large majorites in their House and Senate and have for a long time.

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OuidOuigi t1_j3gf0uu wrote

And the cities manage water treatment.

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Ad-Careless t1_j3gwnng wrote

And who allocates state and federal taxpayer dollars that pay for water treatment and water treatment plant upkeep and maintenance, professor?

So under your scenario, the leaders of Jackson, Mississippi just... want their city to be without water?

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GlassWasteland t1_j3j1rxi wrote

And the state received federal funds to fix this problem, but spent it on a volleyball arena at a college because a rich football players daughter went there.

That is what people are currently mad about.

That and they are receiving another 75 million this year, 400 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill and it still won't be enough.

Part of this problem is that politicians no longer are willing to tell people hard truths like taxes have to go up to pay for infrastructure, part is corruption at all levels of Mississippi government, money that is supposed to be used for infrastructure gets stolen, but also Jackson is a dying city that the middle class has fled, leading to a tax base that can't support the infrastructure necessary for a city.

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StoopyDumb t1_j3h6x53 wrote

Yeah… the state is majority Republican. Of course they’re going to keep voting Republican, they don’t care about a majority black Democrat city having no water. Or actively want to keep it that way. I’m not really seeing your point. The people who vote Republican aren’t the ones suffering here.

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After-District8811 t1_j3gnkm0 wrote

Nice try making everything a partisan issue but in this case the city government, which is overwhelmingly democrat, is the one to blame for this problem. The local government has been corrupt and mismanaging the city for decades. Mismanagement over a long period of time makes the city basically unsustainable, as taxes decline they can’t provide basic services. It’s a sad story but making this about partisan politics is disingenuous and deflects attention from the real issues.

−3

Gommel_Nox t1_j3hgbgk wrote

I really don’t think it’s as simple as you want it to be. The city government might be in charge of water treatment, but they get their funding from the state. When you try to address a societal problem without funding, you get what you pay for. The Republicans at the state level who determine Jackson’s annual budget for things, such as emergency services, road repair, education, and yes, water treatment.

So how do you square that circle, so to speak? Yes, Jackson wants to solve its water problem so people don’t have to constantly buy pallets of drinking water just so they can take a bath. No, Jackson will not be able to solve its water problem without adequate funding from the state. No, Jackson does not want to release those funds to Jackson for reasons.

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[deleted] t1_j3fta9l wrote

[deleted]

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BitterFuture OP t1_j3gj8zi wrote

If they were capable of shame, they couldn't be conservatives in the first place.

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After-District8811 t1_j3h1dwp wrote

Blaming this on white people is absurd. Go look at the races of the local Jackson government (the people actually to blame for this mismanagement).

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LegitimateBuilding6 t1_j3hbext wrote

Imagine being the world’s richest person.

Knowing that fixing the water issues in Flint and some other towns would only cost a couple of hundred millions.

But instead you chose to by a different company, run it into the ground and sink your own net worth with it…

/smh

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Moonhunter7 t1_j3gniaz wrote

Maybe their government representatives can do something about it when they are done banning drag shows….

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Slutdragonxxxpert t1_j3eggng wrote

I thought I was supposed to cook my food with Mississippi River water according to tiktok

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malphonso t1_j3f0oyb wrote

New Orleans is on MS River water and consistently comes near the top rankings for water quality and taste.

−9

carlover2393 t1_j3faeu0 wrote

Source? As someone who is from, and has lived in New Orleans, I can tell you that’s just blatantly false.

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malphonso t1_j3fdpq8 wrote

Source on using the MS River

I'll confess that I was repeating the same thing I've always been told about NOLA water taste ranking, which is from 1984

But I'll offer this weaksauce of a travel blog ranking water taste and purity, (which puts us at 16.]https://bestlifeonline.com/best-drinking-water/

−3

badsamaritan87 t1_j3fgk4j wrote

When I lived there, I think Orleans parish also probably came first in number of boil orders.

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dxrey65 t1_j3em13d wrote

Feeling "abandoned and angry" now, but then all that clears up every election day when they vote the same nitwits in every damn time. The kind of guys who run on "the government is the problem", and then proceed to demonstrate that after they win by not doing jack shit to fix anything whatsoever.

It's hard to imagine living without a decent water supply, but man, those guys need to wake up or something. Reddest state in the country, the most conservative state (the "let's not change or improve anything"-style conservative), and last fucking place in just about everything else.

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BitterFuture OP t1_j3emkcd wrote

No, this is the effect of those voters on the areas of the state that vote against them.

Conservative are literally trying to starve out the few liberals among them. Or even just those who don't vote, because they're, y'know, black.

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LakewoodHayandGrain t1_j3l423h wrote

Force everyone to move - free real estate to sell to developers. Get the US government and taxpayers in Mississippi to pay to fix the water problem. It does not matter if no one moves into the houses, the developers got the taxpayers' money from their friends in government. Now it is time for everyone else to bear the burden.

All the wrong people are in prison.

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Groomsi t1_j3hwalc wrote

When will Mississippi be renamed to Nestle?

1

shadowjacque t1_j3h13rj wrote

Either change your political leadership and address the real issues or blame people who have little to do with the problems.

0

BitterFuture OP t1_j3h1aox wrote

They vote to change their leadership.

They get overruled by the Republican majority.

They get punished brutally for voting the wrong way.

But sure, it's totally their own fault, right?

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shadowjacque t1_j3h4mq4 wrote

It is the fault of the folks who vote for candidates based on imaginary issues or things that are not that important. Absolutely.

The rest are victims for sure.

I believe in fighting and not giving up but at some point perhaps leaving is the answer. Obviously not all can do that.

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CountBeetlejuice t1_j3ls2cl wrote

>They vote to change their leadership.

no, they voted in a gop gov..

>They get overruled by the Republican majority

which they voted for.

>They get punished brutally for voting the wrong way.

>But sure, it's totally their own fault, right?

there is a price for voting gop, the politicians only gaf about corp paymasters

yet Mississippi still keeps voting gop, and then are surprised when they get treated this way.

and they are now suffering from the harm from those they chose, absolutely a case a chickens coming home to roost.

0

BitterFuture OP t1_j3lsczt wrote

You really didn't really the article, did you?

The people suffering here did not vote for Republicans. You are literally blaming the victims.

https://www.bestplaces.net/voting/city/mississippi/jackson

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CountBeetlejuice t1_j3ly26h wrote

>You really didn't really the article, did you?

i did

>The people suffering here did not vote for Republicans.

their state did. you are aware gov is chosen by state elections, are you not?

if they dont like the states leadership, they are free to leave the state. something i would greatly advise, as its NOT going to get better, only worse.

if they choose to stay, the price is living under the corrupt gop administration of that state

its not like Mississippi hasnt been gop for decades and this snuck up on everyone

−1

Plastic-Wear-3576 t1_j3m057l wrote

Have you ever been forced to leave your home? People tend to not want to just give it up. These people have memories of this place and your grand solution is they should move.

You also talk like anyone can just uproot their lives like it's such an easy thing to do.

1

CountBeetlejuice t1_j3m60eb wrote

>Have you ever been forced to leave your home?

yes. multiple moves have been forced due to bad situations, both with govt decisions, and job changes.

>People tend to not want to just give it up.

then dont. but it IS a bed of the own making, by the majority of the people in Mississippi

>These people have memories of this place and your grand solution is they should move.

or deal with the consequences of the decisions the people of Mississippi people chose.

again. let me be blunt. this situation exists because the people of the state voted for those in power who created this.

because of decades of this, the choices have now been reduced to live under the misery, or move to a different state.

>You also talk like anyone can just uproot their lives like it's such an easy thing to do.

its not easy. but sometimes it is necessary

the situation in Mississippi has been the way it is for many decades. this didnt sneak up on anyone, and the majority of the state voted for this, repeatedly, over many decades, so there is almost no chance for improvement anytime soon.

0

BitterFuture OP t1_j3m2ee6 wrote

>if they dont like the states leadership, they are free to leave the state. something i would greatly advise, as its NOT going to get better, only worse.

I, too, remember Martin Luther King's famous speech leading the exodus from Georgia, "I have a dream of it never getting better, only worse."

Can you hear yourself? You sound like a Republican talking snidely about how women who want rights should just leave.

1

CountBeetlejuice t1_j3m6qem wrote

>I, too, remember Martin Luther King's famous speech leading the exodus from Georgia, "I have a dream of it never getting better, only worse."

georga got better because voters chose it to get better

Mississippi voters chose the gop instead.

>You sound like a Republican talking snidely about how women who want rights should just leave.

overlooks I support the freedom at a federal level and do not support it being a state law issue, just like with gay marriage

nice try at a false equivalency

this situation though, is 100% a state issue, and arose because the residents of Mississippi chose gop leaders for decades, AND continue to do so meaning there are no improvements forthcoming anytime soon.

0

CountBeetlejuice t1_j3lrq5e wrote

What did people from Mississippi expect, when they continue to elect republicans who only care about their corporate payoffs, and dgaf about the people there.

0

black19 t1_j3h05t0 wrote

I want to feel sorry, but I don't. Keep electing the wrong people, keep getting the same results. Get your shut together, MS.

−1

BitterFuture OP t1_j3h15xp wrote

You don't feel sorry for the reliably Democratic city dying because the Republican state surrounding it is fucking them over for voting the wrong way?

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black19 t1_j3k1jz2 wrote

Correct. I don't feel sorry for them. They still have a choice. Live in a place that has shithole water or move.

−2

StoopyDumb t1_j3h73og wrote

The state is majority Republican. Of course they’re going to keep voting Republican, they don’t care about a majority black Democrat city having no water. Or actively want to keep it that way. I’m not really seeing your point. The people who vote Republican aren’t the ones suffering here.

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black19 t1_j3k1p4j wrote

My point is they have a choice.

−3

StoopyDumb t1_j3k5f5o wrote

You didn’t read my comment at all…

0

black19 t1_j3k68ub wrote

No, I read it. I even understood it. You said you couldn't see my point, so I replied with my point. So if you don't understand my point, instead of replying with something snarky, why not just be an adult and ask?

0

white_sabre t1_j3hpi8m wrote

https://m.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2021/jul/13/city-forgive-unpaid-water-bills-starting-july-19-s/

A city using pre-WWI water infrastructure writes-off an incalculable sum of money stemming from unpaid bills, then condemns others when the system breaks? Lunacy.

−1

[deleted] t1_j3hub87 wrote

[removed]

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white_sabre t1_j3j3gh4 wrote

The same way every other municipality in the US makes payments in order to keep services intact.

0

DtheMoron t1_j3epy5u wrote

puts on tinder foil hat I’m curious about the amount of bottle water purchased in areas like here and Flint, MI, as opposed to other parts of the country, has some kind of part to play in the lack of repair. Nestle would never put capitalism first… right? /s.

Edit: Tinder foil. I’m keeping it.

−5

BitterFuture OP t1_j3er8r4 wrote

You got a cool foil hat from Tinder?! I knew I got burned with them!!!

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DtheMoron t1_j3esa6p wrote

I guess the pocket sausage messed up my phone. No ragrats.

1

PuellaBona t1_j3f25zn wrote

I thought you misspelled tender and were talking about gentle foil. You know, since it was for your head. I need sleep.

0

vr0202 t1_j3f1bco wrote

You get what you voted for. Sorry.

−6

ruminaui t1_j3f4jlp wrote

That area is mostly populated by African Americans and they vote mostly democrats, which is why the state gov doesn't do anything about it.

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After-District8811 t1_j3h1kbk wrote

Why doesn’t the local (overwhelmingly democrat) government do anything about it? It’s their responsibility and it’s their mismanagement which has led to the problem.

−4

ruminaui t1_j3hqamq wrote

Because it isn't? If you bother to read the article the reason the have this issue is that the republican controlled state government and representatives keep shooting down efforts to repair the crumbling infrastructure. Even tough the money has been apportioned by the us congress, the money is there but Four Republicans from Mississippi’s congressional delegation, Representatives Michael Guest, Trent Kelly and Steven Palazzo and Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, keep voting against the bill, give no reason. Tough we all know the reason.

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zer1223 t1_j3htwyy wrote

Seems like it ought to rise to a "department of justice" issue at this point. Investigate those fucks

0