Perhaps my righteous-indignation-at-the-shortcomings-of-others tank is running low, but why should I care if it was irresponsibility or misfortune that made someone cold? Cold is cold, and dead is dead. The day I’m more concerned with a few bucks overcharged than the health and well-being of my fellow man, is the day I call up mama and ask her what the hell happened to her baby boy.
Just me?
I’ll leave the subject of this ridiculous attempt at ridicule to respond in depth. Suffice to say, WTF?!
I think your strawman is in need of a brain.
But perhaps I shouldn’t be so blithe, are you feeling okay? How many fingers am I holding up? That’s right, just one. Wanna guess which one it is?
She had one that lived?
I see Minnesota and Soviet Russia have something in common. 
I have to go with manhatten on this one.
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for deadbeat leeches, (not that all poor people are leeches, or deadbeats, mind) but it looks to me that the PGW probably made the situation much more difficult and worse than it needed to be through their own ineptitude. And now they want their good-paying customers to pay for it.
I don’t understand why people who pay their bills have to make up for others who don’t. That’s all. I understand that there are those who have valid reasons for not being able, but that still doesn’t make it fair.
Even though I can pay my bills, that doesn’t mean I’m wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. I know whatever has been added to my bill isn’t a massive amount of money, but it’s still something extra that I have to pay that I shouldn’t.
That money could be going towards something else I need it for, and at this time of my life (being 20 and paying for everything with practically zero help and the closest parent being 1000 miles away), I have every right to be stingy with my money. There are many people who find themselves in similar situations who don’t want to be forced to pay for other people’s irresponsibilities.
It’s not a lot of money, I realize this. I guess you can say its a matter of principle. Another example of, “no good deed goes unpunished.”
Manny makes a good point. 'Struth, had I bothered to delve into the subject as he did, I might have as well. But he did, I didn’t, and that’s that.
But I wonder if these people aren’t trying to cover thier own incompetence with a bit of good old fashioned scapegoating?
“Look at those deadbeats! They’re the ones forcing us to charge you more money! Oooooh, those dirty deadbeats!..”. Of course, it took Manny to bring this aspect to my attention, you old radical, you.
That was me. Not 3W.
This again? Yeah right.
Actually, I was always more of a fan of the Lone Deranger. But I’ve always been very fond of the Daffy Duck portrayal of ol’ Robin. "Feared by the bad, loved by the good, Robbin’ E., Robbin’ E.,…" Gotta admit, got a nice ring to it. Thanks, sweetums!
As to your simplistic, almost childlike, value system, well, if that’s the best you can do, I guess we should be grateful. Who’s your guru? Big Bird?
As for theft…in case its escaped your myopic attention, you’re getting ripped off every day of your life. If it was the poor folks who were doing it, they wouldn’t be poor folks, now would they?
Yeah, the poor folks and their “friends” in Congress, like Kerry. You never answered my questions.
Why should people receive heat that don’t pay for it?
Why should OTHER people have to pay for it?
And before you start mewling about children freezing to death, please provide a single, solitary, cite for same.
We’re talking TWELVE FUCKING DOLLARS. They threatened to evict me over TWELVE FUCKING DOLLARS. Seems a bit different than not paying my heating bill for six months, or however long they can get away with it.
My point exactly. If it were just 12 dollars, why didn’t you just pay it? Surely you had two beers or three McDonald’s in the same time period.
It’s truly astonishing to see how many intellectually disingenuous hoops you’ll jump through in order to believe something unflattering about somebody you don’t like.
You silly, silly little man.
/3W
Then tell Daddy Dearest not to post under your screenname. Surely you can handle that, right? I mean, you apparently manage to breathe and all.
While your at it, maybe you can answer the following questions, which have now been posted for the third time.
Why should people receive heat that don’t pay for it?
Why should others be required to pay for it?
Please do not provide a typical liberal college student daddy’s boy response, if that’s possible.
If you understand my positions and values well enough to sneer at them, why do you need more explanation?
Repetition does not give merit to a question, but since you’re determined to prop this question up for me, I’ll be glad to knock it out of the park for you.
Because they need it.
Because we can afford it.
If you need more reason than that, I honestly don’t know what to say to you.
Because your positions don’t make any sense, that’s why.
I don’t have a cite for children, but the Chicago Reader - sponsor of this fine forum - ran a front-page story on a man who froze to death in an unheated home in Chicago just a couple weeks ago.
I have, on two occassions, encountered frozen bodies on my way to work in Chicago. One was on the sidewalk between my house and the El, and the other was downtown in the Loop.
A good half dozen or so people freeze to death in Chicago in an average winter. Not all of them freeze outside on the sidewalk.
We do get winter house fires started by carelessness with space heaters, or using ovens for heating. Not to mention carbon monoxide poisoning for same. Search any Chicago area newspaper for these stories, there happen every year.
There is no question it gets cold enough here to kill people
I, personally, do not like to encounter dead bodies on my way to work, I don’t like the notion of people freezing to death, or burning to death, or dying from breathing poison.
While I would prefer that everyone pay their bills like Good Citizens, I can deal with paying a few extra bucks a month to prevent these tragedies - if truly necessary. If we’re talking utility mis-management that’s a completely different story.
If you don’t have a problem with people dying… well, I hope you’re not my neighbor.