Someone should tell Abbott that the broken water main was teaching kids CRT from inside a uterus so maybe he would do something about it.
You kill me. What incompetence? The fact they used cast iron pipe, the industry standard for forever? It was a 24" cast iron pipe, something that big is going to be close to the supply, everything down stream gets cut off to fix it. As far as I know they are still using ductile iron pipe for waterline. I hate to defend Texas as much as the next guy, but I just don't see the stupid you do.
Industry standard also involve a bit of maintenance as well. The fact that everything there was in such bad shape that they have no way to isolate a leak like that would imply either negligence or incompetence. (the design has shutoffs but they were in such bad shape they couldn't fully isolate.) So just like the power grid failure as a result of non existent maintenance and no hardening of systems to bring them up to industry standards is a clear example of negligence and incompetence this water main break appears from early reports to be the same story.
While we're all shitting on Texas, the Uvalde DA has announced that her investigation into the school shooting will take "at least six months. " I'm sure she picked that timeframe because she's going to be SUPER thorough.
You're right, it should. Water system neglect and stretching old, outdated materials way beyond their useful lives isn't exclusive to Texas. It could, and does, happen to every city in the country. I have a little experience with these guys in several cities. Texas, in this case, isn't not doing anything that the rest of the country is. In fact, I'd bet every city is staring down a reckoning when it comes to its aging infrastructure and its ability to handle the growth and strain ahead them. Do you know how many water valves there are in a typical city? It will be in the thousands. One for every hydrant. Two for every tee. Three for every "x" crossing. One for every dead end for flushing when a hydrant cannot be installed at that dead end. Do you think that anyone is going out and functioning all of these valves, servicing them, on a regular basis in your area? You'd have seen it, a crew could spend days or weeks on a single, long road just doing the valves in that road. I literally avoided a street near downtown Norfolk, VA because I know a waterline had been leaking for years through the brick structure of an old sanitary sewer manhole. I met with public works employees and showed it to them myself, as part of the design phase of a sidewalk update project. They didn't take the time or resources to repair it during that opportunity.
You were the one questing how anyone could see incompetence in this scenario. Just because it isn't exclusive to Texas doesn't negate the fact that this is a combination of incompetence / negligence.
The issue is not that this shit broke, it's that it takes them 2+ days to fix, in the middle of a heatwave. No backup plan, no resource. The "fucking Texas" part is how these assholes run so lean they assume no one will need water in Odessa, TX in the summer for a couple of days. They don't think to plan for contingencies, and it seems callous and stupid when yes....people and animals can die in that heat without water. We see infrastructure issues all the time, just most places don't have such massive service outages with no backup plan in place. Also, are you forgetting the blackouts in Texas that happened, and absolutely nothing about them was solved?
In many of my posts here I have complained about legislators passing ineffective laws. The state of New York is making my point: New body armor rules in NY miss vest worn by Buffalo killer Also from the article: "New Yorkers are still allowed to own body vests and purchase them in other states...." My point remains that if we are going to pass laws in response to these events, they should reduce or eliminate the possibility for those events happening again, not just inconvenience otherwise law-abiding citizens. This law will affect photojournalists far more than potential mass shooters.
I view this as a clear signal that politicians are looking to score points with their voting base but don’t care about actually creating effective laws. The criticism from the right implies ignorance on the part of left leaning pols, but I think it’s worse than ignorance - they don’t give a shit about getting it right. How hard would it have been to learn about protective vests and who uses them and why? It probably would have taken an afternoon at most. This is nothing more than pandering.
In a development that I'm sure will shock all of you, it has been revealed that NOT ONLY did the Uvalde police have body armor and ballistic shields*, but they were in the building within minutes of the killers arrival, where they proceeded to speculate on who was in charge. Oh, and that locked door that they had to wait on the janitor for? Not actually locked. It's looking like the department is going to try throwing the chief under the bus to save their own asses. *Initially they said that they didn't have any of that stuff.
I'm sure everyone has heard of the "they shot a kid/staff" theory... I'm believing it more and more the way this is going. It will be interesting to see what the FBI investigation has to say... you have to think that with this public interest, they will release a public statement other than "active investigation" sometime soon.
Whoever burns for it deserves to. Reform doesn’t come from training or policies, it comes from punishment. It comes from making as public of an example as possible with these humps, so the other humps either get the message or resign.
Then of course remains the other burning question: where did a teenager with no job or credit get ten thousand dollars worth of hardware, and when are the people who directly made this possible going to prison?
He worked at a fast food shop (I think it was Wendy's). He lived with his grandparents, presumably with no bills to pay. It's entirely possible that he saved up the money on his own, and it was confirmed that he bought the guns legally. Where did you get this $10k number from? That's about double what I heard.
Why do you think California has the restrictive gun laws it already does? Thanks Republicans! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act