The Michigan I knew is truly gone

[Edena_of_Neith]

(anger)

http://www.city-data.com/forum/michigan/549545-man-freezes-death-after-city-limits.html

You know, I've read Charles Dickens extensively, and this is something out of the depths of horror of a Charles Dickens novel.
But this is not 1800s England. This is 2009 Michigan, in the United States of America.

Mercy, sympathy, and pity, are forgotten words in Michigan.
I lived in Michigan for 35 years, and I will testify that at one time, Michigan was better than this.
Apparently, not any more.

The state of Michigan has a Democratic Governor, and Bay City is run by the Democratic Party.
We have all said the Republican Party is the party of nieziehizm (sp?) and big business, and ... whatever. The Democratic Party is the party of the little guy, the working guy, the elderly, the poor.
So this is ...

Well, as I said, truly the Michigan, that I lived in and knew, is dead and gone.

Edena_of_Neith

[bunny]

Wow. That was really depressing.

You'd think they'd have sent a collection agency before shutting off the power in the middle of winter.


/Aside:

That's an awesome forum, btw.

[Edena_of_Neith]

(very serious anger, but the anger not directed at anyone here on Kay)

They had 700 billion dollars for Big Banking. Top banking executives took the perks, gave themselves millions (or even billions) in bonuses, took swanky vacations with only the very best for themselves.

But for a 93 year old man in Bay City, Michigan, they raised the cost of electricity skyhigh (anyone who has lived in Michigan knows very well how the ultilities industries have been behaving), and when the man could not pay, they put a Limiter on his house, designed to blow out if he used 'too much electricity.'
This was based he had not paid his bills. His house was found stuffed with money he was collecting up to actually pay his bills, but that did not matter.

So then the sub-zero temperatures and winter wind storms hit, the 93 year old man tried to stay warm, and that was too 'power intensive' for the Limiter, and so it blew itself out, and it took out the electricity at that home.

In the sub-zero cold, the winter windstorms, the blizzards, without heat, the man froze to death.
The coroner reports, based on the autopsy, that this death was drawn out: slow, agonizingly painful, the man finally degenerating into hypothermia, then deep hypothermia, then coma, then death.

700 billion for Big Banks. 700 billion, for corporate executives to play in. 700 billion, to stuff bank vaults and the pockets of already wealthy men.
(Heck, for that matter, 50 billion for the head of the agency supposedly overseeing Wall Street, an agency that was supposed to protect it from corruption. Did he face the Death Penalty, with Cruel and Unusual Punishment, as the man in Bay City has done?)

Not one red cent for a poor man in Bay City, Michigan, whose only crime was that he was poor.

God Damn them to Burn in Hell.

Edena_of_Neith

[shiningbrow]

That's sad. In California, the utilities companies have programs to help low income residents with utilities bills. Most states have laws that prevent shutting off power when it's cold, regardless of the billing situation. This sounds like technology gone very wrong.

[Edena_of_Neith]

I agree ...

But I believe that this also, truly, is a case of People Having Gone Wrong.

I merely comment.

[Edena_of_Neith]

I would have given you Rep for that comment, shiningbrow, but it is telling me that I must spread more around first.

Can anyone help me out here with giving Shiningbrow Rep? Shiningbrow has something very worthwhile to say.

[Limper]

Detroit... home of the car makers.

The car companies and the labor that built the cars looked lovingly across the dying industry they both worked for took each others hands and skipped off a fucking cliff together and took Detroit with them.

The city only had one industry and that industry was full of money grabbing idiots who killed it.

[bunny]

I would have given you Rep for that comment, shiningbrow, but it is telling me that I must spread more around first.

Can anyone help me out here with giving Shiningbrow Rep? Shiningbrow has something very worthwhile to say.

covered

[Edena_of_Neith]

covered

Thank you.