I understand and can relate to their plight. For four winters in a row, we, being abysmally poor, have been unable to afford the heat/electric bill that comes with heating this s-hole apartment we call our home. Lately, at night, it's been in the low 30s F., and so we turn burners on the stove to keep warm, which really doesn't work. You bundle up and stay close. Here in Los Angeles, the cost of centrally heating the place runs about $400 a month, about $350 more than we have. So, it's either eat or freeze. And the rates keep climbing every year. If it weren't food eating right and juicing, we'd constantly be sick. Last week, the stove went out, broke. And it usually takes the apartment manager 1 to 3 weeks to get it together to deal with such things. We have ice on the windows and snow out the door in the hills. We only drive where we absolutely have to, because gas prices around $4 a gallon here make doing anything else like surfing ot visiting people, out of the question.
The people in those counties who are being raped financially by rich county supervisors have my deepest sympathy. And for years now. BUt, you can survive. Wear layers of clothes and many blankets on the bed.
Wish we had a fireplace...
================================
Banks stand to lose millions of dollars in debt repayments if the biggest municipal bankruptcy in American history is allowed to proceed.
But the real victims of the financial collapse in the US state of Alabama's most populous county are its poorest residents - forced to bathe in bottled water and use portable toilets after being cut off from the mains supply.
And there is widespread anger in Jefferson County that swingeing sewerage rate hikes could have been avoided but for the greed, corruption and incompetence of local politicians, government officials and Wall Street financiers.
Tammy Lucas is the human face of a financial and political scandal that has brought one of the most deprived communities in America's south to the point of what some local people believe is collapse.
She says: "If the sewer bill gets higher, my light might get cut off and if I try to catch up the light, my water might get cut off. So we're in between. We can't make it like this."
Mrs Lucas's monthly sewerage rate bills - the amount levied by the county to flush away waste and provide water for baths and showers - has quadrupled in the past 15 years. She says it is currently running at $150 (£97) a month, which leaves little left out of her $600 social security cheque for food and electricity.
"We need to keep the water running because we're women," she says. "We need to take baths. I try to pay the sewer bill and the water bill together and then what little I got left I try to put on my lights. I got to have lights."
more at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16037798
The people in those counties who are being raped financially by rich county supervisors have my deepest sympathy. And for years now. BUt, you can survive. Wear layers of clothes and many blankets on the bed.
Wish we had a fireplace...
================================
Banks stand to lose millions of dollars in debt repayments if the biggest municipal bankruptcy in American history is allowed to proceed.
But the real victims of the financial collapse in the US state of Alabama's most populous county are its poorest residents - forced to bathe in bottled water and use portable toilets after being cut off from the mains supply.
And there is widespread anger in Jefferson County that swingeing sewerage rate hikes could have been avoided but for the greed, corruption and incompetence of local politicians, government officials and Wall Street financiers.
Tammy Lucas is the human face of a financial and political scandal that has brought one of the most deprived communities in America's south to the point of what some local people believe is collapse.
She says: "If the sewer bill gets higher, my light might get cut off and if I try to catch up the light, my water might get cut off. So we're in between. We can't make it like this."
Mrs Lucas's monthly sewerage rate bills - the amount levied by the county to flush away waste and provide water for baths and showers - has quadrupled in the past 15 years. She says it is currently running at $150 (£97) a month, which leaves little left out of her $600 social security cheque for food and electricity.
"We need to keep the water running because we're women," she says. "We need to take baths. I try to pay the sewer bill and the water bill together and then what little I got left I try to put on my lights. I got to have lights."
more at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16037798
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