Dear Mr. Rhodes... Huh???

Starting off I'd like for you to ask yourself a question. As humans we have certain key needs in order to survive on an individual basis. The question I'd like for you to ask yourself is this: Do you, as a person, have a right to these survival necessities? Necessities like water?

If you answered yes, then you're across the aisle from U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes.

The city of Detroit is known as being a tad on the rougher side. So, when they filed for bankruptcy it was sad to watch, but wasn't surprising for the most part, in my eyes. The declaration of bankruptcy from the City of Detroit should reflect the struggles of it's some 4 million (in the Metro area of Detroit alone) residents.

Many of them have had problems paying their bills to the city, and in turn have their appliances shut off, their furniture repo'd, etc. However, When the city started shutting off the masses water (Over 24,000 houses this year) there was a large amount of backlash, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Even the United Nations took up word on the matter with this statement:

“Disconnection of water services because of failure to pay due to lack of means constitutes a violation of the human right to water and other international human rights. Because of a high poverty rate and a high unemployment rate, relatively expensive water bills in Detroit are unaffordable for a significant portion of the population.”

So, when Judge Rhodes rejected the resident's six-month moratorium on water shutoffs he placed himself in a position opposite that of the U.N.

Here is what I have to say on the matter, and do know I have a very strong opinion about this. We live in a great nation where resourced like water are readily available at the government's disposal. Ideally the people pay for the resourced and in return the government supplies it.

But we do live in a nation where we are blessed with such things, while there are nations in less fortunate parts of the world who don't have these kinds of blessings. We should give it because we have the ability to.

To say that a human being does not have the right to things required for us to survive in a country that has these things fully available for it's citizens anyways is absolutely insane.

So, if you're going to require people to still pay these bills with money they don't have, in an area notorious for already having large amounts of crime, do not be surprised when your organized crime rates grow rapidly while people are trying to make ends meat to pay for their children's water.

And once these crime rates go up be sure to place Judge Steven Rhodes on the front lines of community watch, and hopefully he'll be ready to back up his opinion on the matter.

Meanwhile, on a more faith-restoring note, the makers of the "Crush" animal cruelty videos were sentenced to a life of imprisonment yesterday.

If you are unaware of what the videos are, I would never link one to my blog, but they are fetish videos of girls being forced to torture and murder puppies, rabbits, and many other animals.

They were found guilty of child abuse, animal welfare crimes, human trafficking, and wildlife protection crimes in a Philippine court.

I will not put this lightly. If you force young girls to skin dogs alive and burn them with irons or cut off rabbit's ears there is a special place in hell for you, and I hope you spend the rest of your lives in jail seriously regretting and feeling extremely guilty for your crimes.

Lastly, I'll end today's entry on a happier note. The man who raised $55,000.00 on Kickstarter to make himself a potato salad threw a huge public party that promised "peace, love, and potato salad".

This crowd-funding project started as a joke where a man sought to make $10.00 to make his potato salad and not long after it's creation exploded in public popularity.

I do love this story so, so sincerely because it shows the comedic nature of the internet as a whole, and how this kind of humor can lead to huge effects. This lesson can transfer beyond just comedic effect. This shows the power when the masses come together. The internet has given average citizens the ability to make a difference societally that was impossible before.

I am excited to continue to grow up in this amazing technologically-advanced world and see what we, as a people, will accomplish throughout my lifetime and then beyond.

"There was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burnt himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we're doing the same thing, over and over, but we've got one damn thing the phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, someday we'll stop making the goddamn funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them." -Fahrenheit 451