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You are here: Home / Whine, whine, whine

Whine, whine, whine

by DougJ|  April 19, 20105:09 pm| 212 Comments

This post is in: Going Galt, Good News For Conservatives

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When capitalist Sonoma Napa wine makers battle communist firefighters, it’s hard to tell who the real patriots are.

I thought I was doing well in the wine business. Had I had any real brains I would have become a firefighter. What a racket they have.

[…]

Of course, most of them supplement that high pay with second jobs to allay the boredom, as they have so much free time on their hands.

[….]

Where do I sign up to be a firefighter? I can do that job two days a week and run my two wineries on the side. What a deal. I can’t wait.

I know nothing about firefighters in Sonoma or about V. Sattui wines, but I find this juxtaposition amusing.

Update. Sattui has a response (link fixed). He cites a lot of figures without giving links, so it’s hard to know if what he is saying is accurate or not (I would be surprised if there are actually Vallejo firefighters making 360K a year, as he claims, but what do I know here?).

Update update. Total comp for Vallejo firefighters is indeed quite high.

Update #3. There is indeed a member of the (Vallejo) fire department who earned 350K in 2007.

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Reader Interactions

212Comments

  1. 1.

    Bulworth

    April 19, 2010 at 5:11 pm

    This guy must not remember 9/11.

  2. 2.

    Zifnab

    April 19, 2010 at 5:15 pm

    Where do I sign up to be a firefighter? I can do that job two days a week and run my two wineries on the side. What a deal. I can’t wait.

    And how do I sign up for that $50 / hour tomato picking job John McCain was talking about?

  3. 3.

    HumboldtBlue

    April 19, 2010 at 5:16 pm

    There is nothing fucking amusing about this at all. This dipshit grape grower thinks that dedicated professionals should be paid and compensated along the lines of a McDonald’s counter worker.

    The reason firefighters pay so much of their fucking monthly income into their retirement is because — as the fucknozzle completely missed — is that they are forced to retire much earlier than someone who works as a bookkeeper, say for a fucking winery.

    Instead, shitty-mcshitferbrains thinks they have a cushy fucking job, never fight any fires and sit around gazing at their navels. Of course, Fuckknuckle McFucknut will be the first to grab the phone and dial 9-1-1 when his fucking grape-growing business is in danger of being destroyed by fire. Let’s just hope that if that happens, he gets a response from the teabagging fire brigade assisted by the reasonoid ambulance service and his property is protected afterward by the Ron Paul police department.

  4. 4.

    asiangrrlMN

    April 19, 2010 at 5:17 pm

    Really. Seriously? This guy not only had this thought, he had to write it down and then hit send or however he got it published.

    New rule: If you want to criticize someone for making “so much money” doing a dangerous job, you have to do that job for a month first.

    @Keith: Early “You win the thread!”

  5. 5.

    Keith

    April 19, 2010 at 5:17 pm

    Young bucks making firehouse chili all day with my tax dollars. Worse…than…the…Holocaust.

  6. 6.

    licensed to kill time

    April 19, 2010 at 5:17 pm

    I wonder how often Dario Sattui, Vintner, risks his life while rescuing those grapes from a possible fiery death.

  7. 7.

    Comrade Mary

    April 19, 2010 at 5:17 pm

    I had an incredibly awesome uncle who was a firefighter. He worked his butt off for years in steaming and freezing Toronto before dropping dead of a massive heart attack at a Sunday morning breakfast at the station. He wasn’t even 50 yet.

    This was just weeks after my grandfather had died at the age of 80. My mother had held it together as the eldest child as she helped arrange her father’s funeral and the disbursement of his estate, but she completely lost it during the eulogy for my uncle.

    My aunt is still around, having outlived a second husband who made her happy after Gord was gone, and she owes part of her modest standard of living to his pension package.

    Don’t trashtalk firefighters around me. Just don’t.

  8. 8.

    The Moar You Know

    April 19, 2010 at 5:18 pm

    I hope this asshole has a heart attack and calls 911 when the firefighters, decimated by budget cuts, aren’t on duty.

    We here in San Diego are doing phased closures of fire stations because of our budgetary situation. Fortunately, I do not have to rely on city fire because my town has its own stations. Response times are up.

    How can someone this stupid be of my same species? The mind boggles.

  9. 9.

    Lisa K.

    April 19, 2010 at 5:18 pm

    Oh, my…that is harsh.

  10. 10.

    Seanly

    April 19, 2010 at 5:22 pm

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Win. Fucking win.

  11. 11.

    Nathan R

    April 19, 2010 at 5:22 pm

    Really? I thought firefighting was still pretty much the one profession it wasn’t okay to disparage here in the communist states of America…guess not.

  12. 12.

    Mnemosyne

    April 19, 2010 at 5:23 pm

    So the next time there’s a fire on his property, this guy is going to handle it himself, right? After all, fighting a fire is so simple a child could do it. All he needs is a garden hose and he’s all set.

  13. 13.

    Progressive Elitist

    April 19, 2010 at 5:25 pm

    Probably not the best thing to say publicly as a business owner in the community. Folks will remember this.

  14. 14.

    Joel

    April 19, 2010 at 5:25 pm

    V. Sattui is Napa, right?

    Wife and I almost did a vineyard tour there. Glad we didn’t. And we won’t, when we go back some day.

    Frog’s Leap is the best tour around, FWIW.

  15. 15.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    April 19, 2010 at 5:26 pm

    @HumboldtBlue:

    There aren’t many situations where it is appropriate to paraphrase Stalin, but this feels like one of them. So here goes:

    If a winery is a problem, burn down the winery. No more winery, no more problem.

    P.S. DougJ, this post really could use the subtitle: Sour Grapes.

  16. 16.

    russell

    April 19, 2010 at 5:27 pm

    I wonder how often Dario Sattui, Vintner, risks his life while rescuing those grapes from a possible fiery death.

    The answer is “never”. If his vineyard, or the shop where he renders grapes into wine, or his house, catch fire, he calls 911.

    Dario, you could be a fireman. You could be living the dream. Go sign up.

  17. 17.

    Sentient Puddle

    April 19, 2010 at 5:28 pm

    Cartoon

    It sort of looks like that could be a winery in the background…

  18. 18.

    DougJ

    April 19, 2010 at 5:30 pm

    V. Sattui is Napa, right?

    The wine mentioned on their page is from Sonoma.

  19. 19.

    russell

    April 19, 2010 at 5:30 pm

    God almighty, what a dick. Really, it boggles the mind.

    And for the record, if you work “two days a week” and spend “a third of that sleeping”, that means you’re on duty 48 hours in the week.

    What a fuckhead.

  20. 20.

    Tom Hilton

    April 19, 2010 at 5:31 pm

    @Joel: there are a lot of wineries in Napa, and this guy’s place is just one of them. So, no reason to boycott Napa. (Edit: and I just noticed DougJ’s correction. Anyway, same thing goes for Sonoma.)

    On the other hand, I prefer Anderson Valley. Navarro’s wine is full of win.

  21. 21.

    Progressive Elitist

    April 19, 2010 at 5:32 pm

    Backpeddle, backpeddle, backpeddle.

    http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=114364271920402

  22. 22.

    DougJ

    April 19, 2010 at 5:32 pm

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ:

    P.S. DougJ, this post really could use the subtitle: Sour Grapes.

    Yeah, I could have done better with the title, I know.

  23. 23.

    DougJ

    April 19, 2010 at 5:33 pm

    @Tom Hilton:

    I love Navarro. They make the best dry muscat I’ve ever had.

    What a beautiful area up there.

  24. 24.

    Garrigus Carraig

    April 19, 2010 at 5:33 pm

    Read it for the comments. Our man is getting, er, flamed.

  25. 25.

    trollhattan

    April 19, 2010 at 5:34 pm

    Wife.gov grew up in the valley and knew the Sattuis. She does not like them. Now I know why.

    We once spent Bastille Day at Domaine Chandon enjoying the summer weather, the wine, the food, the music, the surroundings, until we were rudely interrupted by a wildfire that came marching up the hill onto the winery property. It is only today that I learn we should have told the firefighters to Leave Us Alone and Get a Real Job. Instead, we halted our drinking and left, routed like defeatocrats.

    Teh shame.

  26. 26.

    russell

    April 19, 2010 at 5:35 pm

    Castello di Amorosa.

    Remember that name next time you go shopping.

  27. 27.

    David in NY

    April 19, 2010 at 5:37 pm

    Can’t the guy even count? He thinks firefigthters don’t work much? I mean, two 24-hour shifts happens to be 48 hours, which is more than most folks work a week — and as somebody already noted, those alleged 8 hours of sleep are are hardly guaranteed, and they’re certainly not at home with wife and family.

    Why is it that these rich assholes can’t bear to pay public servants a living wage?

  28. 28.

    Zifnab

    April 19, 2010 at 5:38 pm

    Update. Sattui has a response.

    Your link is bad and you are bad for posting it.

  29. 29.

    Cat Lady

    April 19, 2010 at 5:40 pm

    Wine blogging tag DougJ. Also. Too.

    Sonoma/Dry Creek Mazzocco Zinfandel.

    I’m sure there’s a back story to this where a young buck firefighter hit on Vattui’s wife/girlfriend. It’s always about the pen1s, and wine guys are insufferable dicks.

  30. 30.

    Capn America

    April 19, 2010 at 5:41 pm

    The guy sounds like an asshole, but I think any firefighter getting more than $100K a year is probably overpaid.

    There’s a reason why so many people do this job as volunteers.

  31. 31.

    jl

    April 19, 2010 at 5:44 pm

    Average base pay is not so hot. So, if they pull down the dough it must be from overtime:

    From CollegeBoard career profiles:

    The average yearly salary of firefighters in 2008 was $45,700, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Local and federal government workers earned more than those employed by state government.

    Overtime pay is frequent because of the job’s unusual hours, and the benefits (including retirement) are excellent. By moving up the ranks, firefighters can command big salary increases.

    http://www.collegeboard.com/csearch/majors_careers/profiles/careers/105449.html

    How generous disability and retirement benefits should be is raising tempers with the budget shortages around the country.

    If you adjust for exposure to health hazards, firefighters live longer than average because they tend to be healthier and in better physical condition on average, something called the ‘healthy worker effect’. But they are exposed to more health risks due to accidents and exposure to toxins, and this effect does produce a shorter life span than similar people with less or no exposure.

    Study in Germany is what I can find on short notice, all the cool nerds at B-J will want to check it out.

    Mortality and life expectancy of professional fire fighters in Hamburg, Germany: a cohort study 1950 – 2000
    Norbert L Wagner , Jürgen Berger, Dieter Flesch-Janys , Peter Koch, Anja Köchel, Michel Peschke and Trude Ossenbach
    Environmental Health: A Global
    Access Science Source
    http://www.ehjournal.net/content/pdf/1476-069X-5-27.pdf

    So, with tight budgets, a complicates situation that is tailor made for misunderstandings and accusations of disability abuse and arguments over appropriate retirement benefits.

    But, one does not have to be an A-hole about the issue, especially if one is in the very demanding and hazardous occupation of vitner. They are exposed to toxic fumes too, and those vinegar flies can be vicious.

  32. 32.

    kommrade reproductive vigor

    April 19, 2010 at 5:44 pm

    Where do I sign up to be a firefighter? I can do that job two days a week and run my two wineries on the side. What a deal. I can’t wait.

    Go for it asshole. $100 says the first day of training squashes you like a grape.

    Christ, they get to retire at 50? Good thing he doesn’t know about my uncle who “got to retire” in his 40’s because a floor gave way beneath him. I’d hate for his beautiful mind to be troubled by all that WASTE.

    Dick.

  33. 33.

    Captain Haddock

    April 19, 2010 at 5:44 pm

    Sadly, I find it difficult to get irritated by raging assholery these days. Spring is here and I am thinking of my garden. My being pissed and miserable because half the country are total douchebags just doesn’t help anything or anybody.

  34. 34.

    Flitterbic

    April 19, 2010 at 5:45 pm

    P.S. DougJ, this post really could use the subtitle: Sour Grapes.

    Or Wrath of Grapes.

  35. 35.

    gocart mozart

    April 19, 2010 at 5:47 pm

    it’s hard to know if what he is saying is accurate or not (I would be surprised if there are actually Vallejo firefighters make 360K a year, as he claims, but what do I know here?).

    Wanna get some skin in the game DougJ. I say bullshit and I’ll give ya odds of infinity plus 1.

    If you win you get the whole universe even the parts I don’t own. Plus 1 also.

  36. 36.

    J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford

    April 19, 2010 at 5:48 pm

    I have a father, 2 brothers-in-law and cousin a couple times removed who are all firemen, none make $360K per year.

  37. 37.

    Mnemosyne

    April 19, 2010 at 5:48 pm

    @Capn America:

    There’s a reason why so many people do this job as volunteers.

    Hey, let’s go ahead and make the police department volunteers, too. After all, they get paid ridiculous amounts of money for sitting around in their patrol cars, so why should the taxpayers be financing their luxurious lifestyles? You and your buddy next door can patrol your neighborhood at night and ticket any speeders.

    You end up with volunteer fire departments in places where the county or state can’t afford to pay professionals. The fires they get are infrequent enough that they can hold down day jobs without having to be on call for 48 hours straight. If they worked the same shifts that professionals do, they would be fired from their jobs. Unless, of course, you think they should pull a 48-hour shift on the weekend when they’re off from work since they’re volunteering anyway.

    Believe it or not, volunteer =/= slave.

  38. 38.

    LuciaMia

    April 19, 2010 at 5:49 pm

    Shit.
    Remember that old ‘Kids In The Hall’ skit? A guy suddenly decides to quit his job and become a fireman.
    Hey, go ahead, dickwad, and see how easy it is.

  39. 39.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 5:51 pm

    Firefighters make a good living and EARN that money. Using this idiot’s arguments, why not question the police I see hanging at the donut shop or parked in a neighborhood waiting for speeders?

    It’s the cost of having somebody AVAILABLE in a heartbeat to fight a fire or come to the rescue. I swear folks, America is getting dumber.

    If his business is bad maybe it’s HIS fault. If he has issue with pay in the state of California why not look at what prison guards make? They get overtime, they get cush pensions and honestly, if we didn’t put people away for stealing a twinkie or having a baggie of pot MAYBE we could take that money and do other, more useful things with it…like teach our children.

    Fucking buffoons…

  40. 40.

    YellowJournalism

    April 19, 2010 at 5:51 pm

    @Flitterbic: Bunch of Bullshit?

    So is this the type of letter that the acronym DIAF is made for? Not that I’d actually wish that on anyone, but that’s the type of irony this guy is going for.

    Teachers get all summer off! Police officers get to play with guns all day! Firefighters get to retire early and make a buttload of money, even in retirement! What’s next? The military gets to play GI Joe for real? Unfair!

  41. 41.

    Mark S.

    April 19, 2010 at 5:51 pm

    OT, but I’ve noticed the latest conservative meme is that tea partiers are very similar to Perot voters (I don’t feel like looking it up, but I know I’ve read Gergen making that argument). 538 asked a guy who co-authored a book on the Reform Party, and he said:

    The major difference is that Perot movement was a total rejection of both parties, while the tea party movement is a total rejection of only one party–the Democrats. Whereas only 5% of tea party supporters said that they usually or always voted Democratic, fully one-third of Perot supporters had voted for Walter Mondale in 1984 and slightly more had voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988.

    I also don’t remember a lot of Perot supporters joining militias, putting Hitler mustaches on Bush and Clinton, etc. They were concerned about the deficit, but they sure as hell didn’t think cutting taxes would balance it (about the only concrete proposal Perot had was a 50 cent tax hike on gas).

  42. 42.

    dmsilev

    April 19, 2010 at 5:51 pm

    Re: your update, a quick Google turns up this page, which links to a database compiled by the SF Chronicle. Selecting ‘Fire Department’ from the menu, looks like the highest earner did in fact make $350K and there were 100 firefighters at or above $100K.

    All that’s listed is a name and a total income.

    -dms

  43. 43.

    kommrade reproductive vigor

    April 19, 2010 at 5:52 pm

    But Joel, you missed on the Vermin Brun ’07!

    According to a civil lawsuit brought by county prosecutors, Sattui used the castle kitchen without proper plans. The suit also accuses the longtime Napa Valley vintner of using the castle’s kitchen without protection from “birds and vermin” and failing to properly clean and sanitize all plates, utensils and equipment, plus not having handwashing stations equipped with soap and hot water for employees.

    http://www.napavalleyregister.com/news/local/article_bd7a5243-4dd0-5caf-8e07-689a739cd30a.html

    Wow. Time to tweak the Brendan B.:

    There’s no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary or running an obnoxious LttE less than two years after your place of business gets the ban hammer from the health department.

  44. 44.

    robertdsc

    April 19, 2010 at 5:53 pm

    @Captain Haddock:
    This.

  45. 45.

    HumboldtBlue

    April 19, 2010 at 5:53 pm

    There’s a reason why so many people do this job as volunteers.

    The reason so many do it as volunteers is because they live in rural areas with a low tax base that is stretched to provide the most basic of public infrastructure. They do it because it’s an amazingly challenging and enjoyable and dangerous job. 99 percent of them would do it for money if the money was there.

    And volunteers, just like every other volunteer organization can only provide so much, both in expertise and execution. They can handle one house fire, but what happens when there is a house fire, a medical call and a false alarm all within minutes of each other — mutual aid happens, that’s what.

    So the city of Eureka, or the county fire district sends out an engine, or a truck or whatever is needed and now the city is vulnerable because any firefighter making more than 100k a year is over-fucking-paid. Fuck his/her overtime, their skill set, their professionalism, they work for us so therefore they should only be paid … 72K a year and not a penny more. Ignore the fact that they are forced into retirement at age 50, that an average week sees them on the job for more than 70 hours per week. They’re just sitting around trading recipes.

    Not only that, the two days a week meme is utter bullshit. There are a few forms and different methods of scheduling your fire service and the most basic is 24-on 24-off with an extra day off every 14 days.

  46. 46.

    Brian J

    April 19, 2010 at 5:54 pm

    So he’s complaining that there aren’t more fires to be put out? Well, that’s a new one.

  47. 47.

    Zam

    April 19, 2010 at 5:54 pm

    I worked with one of these assholes. He frequented porn sites while at work.

  48. 48.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 5:54 pm

    @LuciaMia:

    I have a friend who’s a fireman in SoCal. I can tell you…it’s a lot of work, you have to stay in tip top shape to hold onto your job AND you must be ready to go at a moment’s notice. No dilly dallying, no fucking around.

    It’s NOT an easy job. Wine boi should also realize that once he sees a 4-alarm in action or is told to go to a rural area to fight a raging wildfire, you need nerves of steel to get yourself to risk LIFE AND LIMB to help others.

    God, what is wrong with idiots who think anything that is funded by the government is so fucking easy? Why do I feel my IQ dropping every minute with idiots like him running around?

  49. 49.

    licensed to kill time

    April 19, 2010 at 5:55 pm

    @Captain Haddock:

    This is why I try to get my daily dose of raging assholery only through an approved source like Balloon Juice. At least I am assured of washing it down with hearty amounts of snark n’ laughter, which is proven to add weeks, nay, possibly even YEARS to your life.

  50. 50.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 5:56 pm

    @HumboldtBlue:

    AMEN. Smaller areas can’t afford fulltime firemen or police. They rely on volunteers or county sheriff to deal with problems.

    When you live in a bigger metropolitan setting you need to have people on call 24/7 or else it could mean lots of people die or will be hurt.

  51. 51.

    DougJ

    April 19, 2010 at 5:57 pm

    Re: your update, a quick Google turns up this page, which links to a database compiled by the SF Chronicle. Selecting ‘Fire Department’ from the menu, looks like the highest earner did in fact make $350K and there were 100 firefighters at or above $100K.

    Thanks. I added a link.

  52. 52.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 5:57 pm

    @licensed to kill time:

    Me too. I can’t go looking for stupidity anymore. Those morons do not want to hear facts.

    I won’t even read comment sections on newspaper sites. The idiocy is just too much to deal with.

  53. 53.

    LuciaMia

    April 19, 2010 at 5:58 pm

    Why are all the comments suddenly crossed out? BJ going nuts again?

  54. 54.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 5:58 pm

    @DougJ:

    Do we know if they are batallion captains? Were they doing overtime work (as in fighting wild fires in rich areas of Santa Barbara, OC or LA county?).

  55. 55.

    ctami

    April 19, 2010 at 6:00 pm

    Sattui’s wines are overpriced crap. They only sell them at the winery, mostly to out-of-town tourists who don’t know any better. They make a lot of their money selling more overpriced crap in their giant gift shop.

    I hope this jackass’s business goes through the floor after this gets out there. I’m betting the local firemen take their sweet time getting to the next emergency at his place.

  56. 56.

    DougJ

    April 19, 2010 at 6:00 pm

    Do we know if they are batallion captains? Were they doing overtime work (as in fighting wild fires in rich areas of Santa Barbara, OC or LA county?).

    No idea. I just said I would be surprised if it were true, and it turned out to be true. I’m not taking Sattui’s side.

  57. 57.

    licensed to kill time

    April 19, 2010 at 6:01 pm

    @LuciaMia:

    I blame dmsilev. He forgot and used the evil hyphen in front of his initials again @ 42

    OMG, the answer is 42!

  58. 58.

    Mnemosyne

    April 19, 2010 at 6:01 pm

    Reading that article, I have a sneaky feeling that the city is not, in fact, being brought down by its high firefighter salaries but by a series of really stupid NIMBY decisions that they now have a convenient scapegoat for.

    When the mayor of a city with a population of 116,000 makes more than the mayor of San Francisco, something is out of whack.

  59. 59.

    Zam

    April 19, 2010 at 6:01 pm

    So bankers and insurance execs need to make multi-million dollars every month or else the entire economy will be doomed. But a firefighter who generally contributes something extremely valuable to society cannot make a good living because he works for the government.

  60. 60.

    Mnemosyne

    April 19, 2010 at 6:02 pm

    @DougJ:

    Given how bad our fire season was in California last year, I’d be very curious to see what the previous year’s take-home pay was by way of comparison.

  61. 61.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 6:03 pm

    @Mark S.:

    I was a Perot voter and I can tell you why he appealed to me back then (when I was ready to walk away as the far right started taking control of the GOP)…

    He appealed to me because he wasn’t a politician BUT he had a plan. It wasn’t perfect, but he did work it to explain why he thought it would work. He had zero charisma and listening to him talk took patience BUT he seemed to care when the two party establishment candidates did all they could to tow the line.

    Perot would be rejected by tea partiers. They claim to want nothing to do with elitists (yet according to the stats, tea partiers ARE the elite in terms of earnings, education, etc). This movement is nothing but a call to challenge a President they feel is illegitimate solely because of the color of his skin. Perot started a party that wanted people who could come in and do what is right for everybody.

  62. 62.

    ksmiami

    April 19, 2010 at 6:03 pm

    Firefighters deserve every effin cent. Pilots should be paid more. What the hell is the matter with Americans right now?

  63. 63.

    John Cole

    April 19, 2010 at 6:03 pm

    These firemen seem to make an insane amount of money, and the pensions are equally insane (105% at age 55?), but I have to laugh at the guy who INHERITED his wineyard saying “he got into the wrong business.”

    Yeah, you really pulled yourself up by your bootstraps.

  64. 64.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 6:04 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    I know they were paid overtime for their hard work so that might be why some are so highly paid…but I wonder why morons like wine boi care?

    They earn their money. If he’s so worked up about salaries, he should go guard a prison. They make buko bucks.

  65. 65.

    HumboldtBlue

    April 19, 2010 at 6:04 pm

    did in fact make $350K and there were 100 firefighters at or above $100K.

    Again, that’s not base pay. You make whatever money you’re going to make as a firefighter through union contracts and overtime.

    They just don’t show up at 9 am work until 6 and go home. Jesus fucking christ raping an altar boy while his Cardinal meets with a Goldman Sachs representative. We’re talking pittances here, civil servants performing necessary tasks and we’re arguing about 100K a fucking year?

    I knew I shouldn’t have read the fucking blogs today. Self-deluded christers complaining about their persecution and fucknozzle vintners who should be slapped.

  66. 66.

    Martin

    April 19, 2010 at 6:05 pm

    @Mnemosyne: The little people don’t understand the wine/tourist business. If you want high-income do-nothings to visit your fine city, hire a high-income do-nothing to run it.

  67. 67.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 6:06 pm

    @John Cole:

    Firemen, police, teachers, pilots deserve to make a lot of money. I also think trust fund babies like Wine Boi need to STFU solely on the idea he is another useless idiot adding nothing but crocodile tears to the national debate.

  68. 68.

    jeff

    April 19, 2010 at 6:07 pm

    California, in particular, has agreed to many insane contracts for government employees, and it is a freaking outrage. This is one republican complaint that sometimes is accurate (though usually not–for example w/r/t teachers.)

  69. 69.

    jl

    April 19, 2010 at 6:08 pm

    Well, if you want to make this about Vallejo, the place is messed up. I think their public safety workers’ total compensation and retirement are out of line (even for SF Bay), and need to be adjusted given the the mess the city found itself in. Question is, should all the blame be placed on public workers and unions? I don’t think so.

    But the city acted like the real estate boom would never end and would be bottomless cash cow, and did not do squat, IMO, to adjust for closing of nearby Mare Island Naval base. Then the housing bust and financial panic came and they are messed up.

    Google or Yahoo search ‘Vallejo bankrupcty” and you will get plenty of opinions from all sides.

    Unions have offered givebacks and benefits cuts, not sure they are enough, though.

  70. 70.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 6:08 pm

    @Zam:

    Not only that but they raise families in the cities they serve, they own homes, they buy food, sundries, expensive items too.

    I wish these whiners would get it through their stupid heads that these people work hard for every dime they are paid…PERIOD.

  71. 71.

    Zam

    April 19, 2010 at 6:09 pm

    Firefighters deserve every effin cent. Pilots should be paid more. What the hell is the matter with Americans right now?

    We don’t pay the people who actually provided services we need and want. We pay the people who are able to mess around with numbers to inflate profits, or cut “waste” (meaning cutting services to those who need it but can’t reach the high standard of payment they wish for).

    The valuable in our society are people who often deal in theories with investment numbers and those who already had the money. These people “invest” the money and thus “create” jobs, and if we ever anger them they will take their shit home with them.

  72. 72.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 6:10 pm

    @jeff:

    I am a Californian and I am outraged by what Prisonguards pull in. Their union is strong but in the end it’s so much easier to fire hardworking teachers, police, etc than stop throwing petty criminals into overcrowded jails and paying 6 figures to guards to rake in overtime on such useless nonsense.

  73. 73.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 6:12 pm

    @Zam:

    Look at kids who go to business school instead of getting degrees in biology, engineering, etc.

    America was built by thinkers but the lure of easy money keeps them from giving America an edge we’ve sorely lacked for 2 decades now.

  74. 74.

    Mnemosyne

    April 19, 2010 at 6:12 pm

    @jeff:

    California, in particular, has agreed to many insane contracts for government employees, and it is a freaking outrage.

    As many others have mentioned, prison guards have a very powerful union and a huge part of our budget goes to running the prisons.

    There’s a reason why the prison guards union was in favor of Three Strikes and against any liberalization of the marijuana laws, and it ain’t because they’re huge believers in the majesty of the law.

  75. 75.

    jl

    April 19, 2010 at 6:13 pm

    @jeff: Go to California State almanac put out by the California Department of Finance and get some numbers to back that up, please.

    California has much lower ratio of state gov to local gov workers. Number of government workers and their total compensation bill for overall state and local workforce per resident about same as other states.

    Because of lower ratio of state to local government workers, more CA state workers are in higher skill managerial positions so I think difficult to compare average pay of state government workers across states.

    Now, if you want to talk about overly generous pension benefits for CA state and local government, you probably have a better case.

    I think your comment is far too broad. I do admit that some state workers, like prison guards, have made out like bandits, and needs to be fixed. I am sure there are other cases too.

    Edit: thanks for explicitly exempting teachers, though. CA compensation is about average, but they are almost all local government in CA.

  76. 76.

    middlewest

    April 19, 2010 at 6:17 pm

    I’d like to watch a reality show where glibertarians and other assorted ant-tax whiners are forced to go through firefighter training. I tried to think of a title, but “The Biggest Loser” is already taken.

  77. 77.

    MattR

    April 19, 2010 at 6:18 pm

    If I may be so bold as to quote Rudy Giuliani: “9/11! 9/11!! 9/11!”

    Seriously though, what are the odds this schmuck would race downtown on his day off and then run into a burning tower after its twin had recently collapsed?

  78. 78.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 6:22 pm

    @MattR:

    Simple – he’d shit his pants if had to do something brave and selfless like that.

  79. 79.

    WereBear

    April 19, 2010 at 6:22 pm

    We ask someone to be available on short notice to risk their lives to save other people.

    From here, it looks like an outrageous bargain.

    What is it that bankers make that is half so precious as what they sell?

  80. 80.

    Svensker

    April 19, 2010 at 6:25 pm

    I’m sorry, I’m sure firefighting is a horrible, hard dangerous job and I wouldn’t want to do it. But I think firefighters earning $350K a year is ridiculous. The cops and firefighters in my little east coast town make over $100K a year and I think that is ridiculous, too. They get it for “overtime” — yeah, because that’s the way the unions and the towns have figured out how to game the system. They’re not hiring new personnel on paper, so they’re staying “on budget” but they pay gazillions of dollars of overtime to guys, who then retire with pensions based on those gazillion dollars in OT.

    Unlike this winery person, I sure the hell am not going to my town meeting to say this, I’m not that dumb. But these salaries and consequent pensions and bennies are becoming a real problem in many communities across the country. I’m paying $9K a year in property taxes on a small 3 bedroom home with no granite countertops — I don’t make anywhere near what the cops/fireguys make, and I pay my own retirement (if there’s any left at the end of the year) and my own health insurance at $10K a year. It’s time to get reasonable here.

  81. 81.

    protected static

    April 19, 2010 at 6:35 pm

    He keeps mentioning Vallejo – but he’s complaining about negotiations for American Canyon. For FY09-10, it looks like they budgeted about $1.7 million for salaries, but expended under $850,000 – for a department of 15 full-time firefighters, 2 full-time administrators, and 15 reservists.

    Let’s see… $850,000/17… carry the 1… I come up with ‘fuck you, Sattui.’

  82. 82.

    malraux

    April 19, 2010 at 6:35 pm

    But I think firefighters earning $350K a year is ridiculous.

    What about the guy who runs the entire fire department? Its somewhat odd to label that person a firefighter, just as it would be to label the police commissioner a cop. Admittedly, 350K seems a bit high, but are we looking at total compensation in these numbers or take home pay? If its total compensation, then remember that pension plan, which doesn’t strike me as insanely generous for the kind of work that really chews up your body, would be pretty highly valued.

  83. 83.

    Mnemosyne

    April 19, 2010 at 6:39 pm

    @Svensker:

    I’m sorry, I’m sure firefighting is a horrible, hard dangerous job and I wouldn’t want to do it. But I think firefighters earning $350K a year is ridiculous.

    We had 63 wildfires in California last year, many of them near populated areas like Los Angeles, and a lot of those were out of the usual fire season when the extra assistance is usually budgeted for.

    I strongly suspect that these super-high payouts are because the Vallejo firefighters were loaned out to other agencies who needed them, not because they’re sitting around the station house eating caviar and drinking Cristal.

  84. 84.

    Mike Kay

    April 19, 2010 at 6:40 pm

    @The Populist: At first I supported Perot as did a number of liberals because he was the most high profile opponent of the first gulf war. Plus, he was really sticking it to Bush, they way most of us always hoped a Dem would, and he opposed NAFTA.

    But then he went flaky when the going got tough.

  85. 85.

    mclaren

    April 19, 2010 at 6:40 pm

    Naturally, the guy writing that article was correct and the various kooks and cranks and crackpots who’ve crawled out of the woodwork with failed efforts to defend the indefensibly high pay of firefighters (and prison guards, and police) are idiotically and provably wrong.

    The pay for firefighters and police and prison guards in America has, over the last 30 years, skyrocketed stratospherically above anything that is reasonable, let alone sensible. 1 out of every 5 prison guards in California now makes more than $100,000, and they retire with 80% pensions. Firefighters make absurdly high pay for doing very little work, and in most states they retire on 75% pension. Police in San Diego (which one of the kooks mentioned) start at $59,000 — with overtime, that skyrockets to well over $65,000 to $70,000 a year, and that’s for a rookie cop fresh out of the academy.

    What the kooks and cranks and crackpots who make fools of themselves by commenting on this thread don’t realize is that it’s not just people like that Napa winery owner who have recognized that this insane overpayment of firefighters and cops and prison guards is unsustainable — most of the people running most of the states in America are starting to realize it.

    “The Trillion-dollar gap: underfunded state retirement systems and the road to reform”

    $1 trillion. That’s the gap at the end of fiscal year 2008 between the $2.35 trillion states had set aside to pay for employees’ retirement benefits and the $3.35 trillion price tag of those promises.

    Why does it matter? Because every dollar spent to reduce the unfunded retirement liability cannot be used for education, public safety and other needs. Ultimately, taxpayers could face higher taxes or cuts in essential public services.

    You people offer a perfect example of the pathologies and dysfunctions afflicting the American electorate: you want to fight foreign wars but you don’t want a deficit. You want firefighters and police and prison guards who make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but you don’t want your property taxes to quadruple and you don’t want cuts in municipal services like garbage collection.

    Here’s a wake-up call, crackpots: you can’t have it all.

    “State debt woes grow too big to camouflage”

    California, New York and other states are showing many of the same signs of debt overload that recently took Greece to the brink — budgets that will not balance, accounting that masks debt, the use of derivatives to plug holes, and armies of retired public workers who are counting on benefits that are proving harder and harder to pay.

    If you don’t want to cut the U.S. military budget by at least 50%, and preferably 80% or more, you’re going to have to watch America go bankrupt.

    And if you don’t want to cut the pay for these insanely overpaid firefighters and cops and prison guards, you’re goingto have to watch your cities and towns go bankrupt, your schools will close, garbage will pile up in the streets because your town or city won’t have the money to collect it, your roads will fall apart with potholes and become impassable because your city or town won’t be able to repair ’em, and your local libraries will close because there won’t be enough money to keep them open.

    The $2 Trillion Hole: Promised pensions benefits for public-sector employees represent a massive overhang that threatens the financial future of many cities and states.

    LIKE A CALIFORNIA WILDFIRE, populist rage burns over bloated executive compensation and unrepentant avarice on Wall Street.

    Deserving as these targets may or may not be, most Americans have ignored at their own peril a far bigger pocket of privilege — the lush pensions that the 23 million active and retired state and local public employees, from cops and garbage collectors to city managers and teachers, have wangled from taxpayers. (..)

    Sweet retirement for public servants could lead to severe cuts in basic services.

    Most public employees, if they hang around to retirement, can count on pensions equal to 75% to 90% of their pay in their highest-earning years. And many public employees earn even more in retirement than their best year’s base compensation as a result of “spiking” their last year’s income by working ferocious amounts of overtime and rolling in years of unused sick and vacation days into their final-year pay computation. (..)

    The prospects are bleak for many state and local governments as a result of all this. According to a survey last month by the Pew Center on the States, a nonpartisan research group, eight states — Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and West Virginia — lack funding for more than a third of their pension liabilities. Thirteen others are less than 80% funded.

    Governments could fill that gap by raising property, sales and income taxes, but most are wrestling with huge revenue shortfalls in trying to balance their budgets.

    The more likely outcome is dramatic cuts in essential services, such as police and fire protection, health spending, education and infrastructure improvements, in order to cover ballooning pension payments. State and municipalities, after all, must do something: Most have a legal obligation to pay out earned pension benefits. And some don’t even have the courage to switch new teachers, bureaucrats and police to a defined-contribution system, to prevent the funding problem from worsening as time rolls on.

    We now return you to the regularly scheduled dementia from the crackpots at Balloon-Juice who defend our insane military expenditures and our crazy pay for public employees even though these unsustainable outlays are bankrupting every state in the union and destroying the middle class.

  86. 86.

    Svensker

    April 19, 2010 at 6:40 pm

    @malraux:

    What about the guy who runs the entire fire department?

    $350K a year for him, too, is ridiculous, unless the rate of inflation where he lives is ridiculous, as well. Public employees are mostly overpaid these days, at least where I live.

  87. 87.

    trollhattan

    April 19, 2010 at 6:41 pm

    What gives with the comments? After #42 they’re all waaay over there, off screen.

    <———-

    IE8

  88. 88.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    April 19, 2010 at 6:45 pm

    @Svensker:

    I agree. I am all for fair pay for doing a job, any job, but I think that compensation has been getting out of hand in some fields for some time now. There is nothing wrong with good pay and benefits for an honest days work and making the commitment to be there when needed, fit and ready, to do your job. Public workers deserve that much, as do workers in the private workforce. The problem is that over the years I have noticed that many earners in the private workforce have been losing out on the pay and benefits side of things and their unions have been steadily losing ground. At the same time we have seen the rise of powerful unions for public workers and a tremendous rise in pay and benefits.

    While public workers do pay taxes and such, they are paying taxes on pay that was funded via taxes. They can’t fund the system to keep it going by themselves since we have not perfected a perpetual funding machine (though GS is trying!). The private workforce pays the money into the system that makes it work and if the system needs more cash then they either hope their private workforce earns more to pay more in taxes, they raise taxes or they cut taxes.

    If public workers want top notch pay then the private workforce must have the same to be able to support it. That hasn’t been happening and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

  89. 89.

    Mnemosyne

    April 19, 2010 at 6:45 pm

    Who thinks that mclaren has any clue whatsoever what Prop 13 was, much less what TABOR laws are and how many states have passed them?

    Yeah, me neither. But since BoB is gone, at least we have another source of barely coherent insanity to entertain us.

  90. 90.

    Kineslaw

    April 19, 2010 at 6:46 pm

    The question about firefighters I’ve always had is what their job description should be. Firefighters are really expensive, factoring in salary, trainIng, equipment and pensions.

    Fire fighting is also expensive in terms of the physical toll it takes on fire fighters and the emotional toll it takes on their families.

    In very dense areas with a lot of businesses, firefighters can make back their expense fairly quickly by preventing the spread of fires through a business district or office or condo building. However, in a neighborhood of SFRs, I think the emphasis should be on containg a fire to the house of origin, and that can usually be done with a 10+ minute response time. In most towns fire officials fight to have a five minute response time, which is really expensive and doesn’t seem to be cost-effictive in terms of saving lives or houses.

    I spent 240 hours ( 10*24) at a fire station in Dallas and the engine went out to two fires, which is not that unusual. I also talked to some firefighters from a wealthy Dallas suburb and their fire chief had studied how much the city would save if it just paid to rebuild every house that caught on fire. The answer was millions.

  91. 91.

    stannate

    April 19, 2010 at 6:47 pm

    @DougJ:

    I thought you were making a Pink Flamingos reference in the title.

  92. 92.

    Midnight Marauder

    April 19, 2010 at 6:48 pm

    @mclaren:

    You people offer a perfect example of the pathologies and dysfunctions afflicting the American electorate: you want to fight foreign wars but you don’t want a deficit. You want firefighters and police and prison guards who make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but you don’t want your property taxes to quadruple and you don’t want cuts in municipal services like garbage collection.

    No, but seriously. Who the fuck is this even directed at? Did you mean to post this at Reason and accidentally ended up here somehow? I mean, honestly, I am at a complete loss for the population you are allegedly describing in your diatribe.

    Which would not be the first time such a thing has happened.

  93. 93.

    jeff

    April 19, 2010 at 6:48 pm

    @75–my statement refers to isolated abuses that proliferate in CA. I made it very clear I wasn’t referring to anything other than individuals making far too much–not system-wide overpaying. Thus, it is anecdotes, not almanac numbers, that are relevant to my point. Sorry that you’re bothered by this.

  94. 94.

    RNS

    April 19, 2010 at 6:49 pm

    Firefighting is unquestionably a dangerous and essential job.
    However, no one should be making $350K (in addition to the typically generous benefits unavailable to many of the citizens who are taxed to provide them) doing the job.
    While full time firefighters are necessary in large cities (like Chicago, New York, or Detroit, where I work) with large buildings and industrial facilities, they become less and less necessary the further one gets from the city center. Many rural and exurban communities function perfectly fine with volunteer departments. Here in metropolitan Detroit, Troy, one of the larger and more affluent suburbs, has a superb volunteer department.
    On the one hand, I hate to speak for the elimination of any type of union job. On the other (the one that writes the checks) I can appreciate the need for money starved communities to get by with less.
    Firefighting in suburban communities actually comprise a very small (5%) percentage of the call volumes, with medical emergencies being the vast majority of the calls.
    Volunteers aren’t the only alternatives that should be explored. The suburbs of any big city, regardless of size, all have their own departments, and much redundant administrative costs. Consolidation of entire metropolitan areas would be more cost and service efficient.

  95. 95.

    AhabTRuler

    April 19, 2010 at 6:53 pm

    We better hope this dude doesn’t find out about availability pay for Federal Criminal Investigators.

  96. 96.

    jl

    April 19, 2010 at 7:00 pm

    @mclaren: Go the Statistical Abstract of the United States, look at the section Income, Expenditures, Poverty and Wealth, then go to 687 – Average Earnings of Year-Round Full-Time Workers by Educational Attainment

    Mean total compensation for men with bachelors degrees in 2008 is about 63K, women 53K. Tops out at between 60K (women) to 90K (men) in mid fifties. for people with Masters, add another 10K.

    Most police, fire and EMR personnel require at least some college and all require post HS training.

    I do not see how the salary levels you quote are ‘insane’.

    For overly generous pensions, I might agree in some cases.

  97. 97.

    jl

    April 19, 2010 at 7:01 pm

    @jeff: Not so bothered if you make clear it is isolated cases or particular sectors. Abuses do exist, I admit that.

  98. 98.

    mclaren

    April 19, 2010 at 7:04 pm

    @Midnight Marauder:

    No, but seriously. Who the fuck is this even directed at? Did you mean to post this at Reason and accidentally ended up here somehow? I mean, honestly, I am at a complete loss for the population you are allegedly describing in your diatribe.

    The population my comment is directed at is you.

    You and crackpots like Mnemosyne rush out of the shower to defend any indefensible crazy expenditure of public monies while ridiculing essentially every sensible expenditure of public monies.

    I’ve heard it again and again and again on this forum…every time someone suggests that there are too many donut-eating cops sitting around in their batmobiles doing nothing but engaging in grossly illegal civil forfeiture stops in the hope of legally stealing someone’s car, there’s a firestorm of hysteria supporting these overpaid parasite cops.

    Every time someone proposes cutting back on America’s crazy and unsustainable military expenditures, this forum erupts with f-words aimed at anyone who points out our military is worthless and incompetent and our foreign wars are bankrupting us for no useful purpose.

    Get a clue, clowns. America is a rich country. We should be spending our money on education, basic scientific R&D, infrastructure — these are the expenditures that pay off. These are the budget outlays that make a country wealthy and prosperous.

    If instead Americans like you and Mnemosyne foolishly and ignorantly insist on pissing away all of America’s wealth on prison guards and muggers with police badges and overpaid underworked firefighters and a U.S. military that can’t even win a war against 15-year-old barefoot kids who are armed with bolt-action rifles, then America is going to collapse to third world status.

    America’s infrastructure is crumbling. Our roads and bridges are falling apart, our water mains are bursting and our sewage lines are disintegrating.

    The United States is falling behind in science. Most graduate students in physics and engineering now come from overseas; ever since 9/11, these foreign students increasingly go back home to work instead of getting jobs in America.

    And you fools are actually trying to defend paying a bunch of fat lazy know-nothing do-nothing prison guards and firefighters and cops $70,000 and $80,000 and $100,000 a year, while post-doc PhD researchers in physics and molecular biology and materials science are trying to scrape by on $30,000 a year?

    What is wrong with you people????

    Are you all on drugs? Are you all drunk? Are you all brain-damaged? In what kind of demented Bizarro World does this even begin to make sense?????

  99. 99.

    jl

    April 19, 2010 at 7:04 pm

    Forgot something:

    Mean total compensation for men with bachelors degrees in 2008 is about 63K, women 53K (for age 25 to 34) .Tops out at between 60K (women) to 90K (men) in mid fifties. for people with Masters, add another 10K.

    Since most of these jobs require college degree, or some college plus specialized training, I think 25 to 34 is good age for comparison for rookie cop.

  100. 100.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 7:05 pm

    @mclaren:

    Maybe you haven’t seen my points (and many other regulars here) when it comes to this issue.

    California would be fine RIGHT NOW had we A) NOT thrown Gray Davis out (we’d vote him out), left the DMV fees alone and tweaked a few other things.

    The finances of this state are not being caused by public workers, dude…I can tell you what it is and it starts with Prop 13.

    How is it is fair that somebody living in a house valued at 500K pays basically NOTHING in taxes YET I pay the going rate? Firefighters, policemen do jobs that keep us safe. They DESERVE to make a good living. If we don’t pay them a good wage, we don’t get the best and the brightest…people WILLING to serve and do their best.

    You and many others want to do this on the cheap. The pension funds are underfunded because the asshats who run them bet on the very STOCK MARKET that the republicans wanted to put our SOCIAL SECURITY INTO. Gee, how would that have looked had we melted down had that gone into effect?

    You can easily fix this state by making sure everybody PAYS THEIR FAIR FUCKING SHARE. YOU want to point fingers at teachers, firefighters, policemen…I point at prison guards admittedly but our prison system is bloated and ineffective for the insane amounts of money we pour into it.

    Asshat tea partiers want to blame the current president for this mess but where were ANY of these idiots when Bush took the Clinton surplus and flushed it down the fucking toilet?

    Ronald Reagan got it to some extent, he had the gnads to raise taxes BUT he still spent more than we took in causing us to be in serious debt YET people revere the man like he was a great president or something (he wasn’t). So basically we had the chance to close bases under the first Bush yet these small town, red state, tea bag types fought it. So basically all of us subsidize small towns and useless parts of the country that do nothing but whine about “big government” yet all of them have the waste in their backyard (bases we do not need, agriculture subsidies, etc).

    Wanna talk serious here or do you want to call us out as “part of the problem”? The problem is easy to fix yet nobody wants to do it but they want to make other people scapegoats because of bad decisions of many.

    Oh well…

  101. 101.

    jl

    April 19, 2010 at 7:06 pm

    @mclaren:

    “Are you all on drugs? Are you all drunk? Are you all brain-damaged? In what kind of demented Bizarro World does this even begin to make sense?????”

    The real world?

    Stick to overly generous public pensions, you might have a better case.

  102. 102.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 7:11 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    Yep, it’s okay to let people NOT pay their fair share under an antiquated law like Prop 13. See, it’s the firefighters and the police and the teachers who are to blame for California’s woes.

    Bullshit to anybody who wants to whine like that. An average teacher in a large district where they have experience can earn upwards of 90-100K in this state. They get a pension THEY pay into because they do NOT get social security.

    Sorry, why isn’t McLaren going after major corporations that DUMPED their pensions on the taxpayer because THEY couldn’t handle it?

    I am dumbfounded by anybody who can’t see that we have an unequal taxation model in California…but hey…LET’S BLAME THE COPS/FIREMEN/TEACHERS because they should make minimum wage?

    Please…

  103. 103.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 7:13 pm

    @mclaren:

    America’s infrastructure is crumbling. Our roads and bridges are falling apart, our water mains are bursting and our sewage lines are disintegrating.

    Yep, and we could have used Clinton’s SURPLUS to reinvest But NOOOOOO…we all rah-rah’ed Bush and Cheney to invade a country that posed ZERO threat to us.

    If bridges collapse, I won’t blame anybody but idiots who thought it was “unpatriotic’ of me to question a war that most reasonable people KNEW was a mistake.

  104. 104.

    Joel

    April 19, 2010 at 7:13 pm

    @Tom Hilton: I think my post wasn’t clear; I’ve gone to Napa many times and will do so again. I just have never been to (and probably never will go to) V. Sattui.

    Frog’s Leap is in Napa, next to Stag’s Leap.

  105. 105.

    dmbeaster

    April 19, 2010 at 7:14 pm

    The Vallejo firefighters situation is unique – the city is now bankrupt and trying to get out of its extremely pricey contract with the firefighter’s union (it has renegotiated a lot of its union contracts – don’t know current status of firefighters deal). It paid well in excess of the standard – don’t know how it came into existence. And also not a good example of allegedly how public employees are mostly overpaid (though the prison guards in CA have definitely done well also).

  106. 106.

    mclaren

    April 19, 2010 at 7:17 pm

    @JL:

    I do not see how the salary levels you quote are ‘insane’.

    Then you need a wake-up call.

    FACT: a full tenured professor in a top-50 U.S. university typically makes $120,000 per year.

    FACT: a starting rookie cop in San Diego makes $59,000, with overtime pushing that well into the $70,000 range.

    If you think some pimple-faced donut-eating mugger with a badge deserves to get 65% of the pay of a full tenured professor at an Ivy league college for tasering grandmothers and 6-year-old kids, you’re either drunk or on hard drugs.

    A PhD researcher in the hard sciences who teaches at an Ivy League university adds value to society. That kind of person has taken 20 years to build up specialized expertise and generate value for society. From PhD researchers in the sciences, we got things like the transistor, the laser, modern antibiotics.

    What does a firefighter do that deserves more than $20,000 a year?

    The only specialized skills a firefighter has involve chopping through a door with an axe. That’s not worth 100K a year. Any idiot can chop through a door with an axe. Not any idiot can invent the transistor.

    What specialized skills does a cop have? Shooting an unarmed suspect who’s handcuffed, then planting a drop piece on his corpse and lying in the police report. Any corrupt fool can do that. But it takes real expertise and genuine knowledge to create the vaccine for polio.

    Listen up, fools: when you reward ignorant incompetent do-nothing know-nothings like firefighters and cops and prison guards with $100,000 a year or more, while paying post-doc PhD researchers peanuts (typically 30K a year or less), you’re going to get a society dominated by ignorant incompetent do-nothing know-nothings.

    Which, judging by the comments section on Balloon Juice, has already arrived.

    Welcome to Idiocracy, folks…brought to you by the Balloon Juice commentariat.

  107. 107.

    Yutsano

    April 19, 2010 at 7:21 pm

    @Mnemosyne: My response to him is usually the same: tl; dr. Honestly, what else can you say? There is no point in arguing someone who is lefter than all of us and he can prove it too!

  108. 108.

    Mr Furious

    April 19, 2010 at 7:21 pm

    From the SF Gate article:

    Vallejo’s base pay for firefighters is more than $80,000 a year. Last year, 21 of them topped $200,000 in salary and overtime, according to city payroll records

    The article (probably not accidentally) does not get specific enough about the figures. My assumption would be that these numbers are based on the city’s budget and encompass total compensation—salary, benefits, retirement, and of course overtime. Who knows? Possibly even withholding… I seriously doubt any of that reflects take-home pay, and it’s likely these guys were netting half that in their checks.

    The city has stumbled repeatedly in dealing with the union, interviews and records show. For example, the city has matched the average percentage of firefighter raises in other Bay Area departments, which boosts Vallejo’s salaries because its firefighters are paid more to begin with.

    Sounds to me that the overpaid stooges on the city payroll are not riding around in red trucks but sitting behind desks. Much like auto execs they stupidly spent money on contracts without regard for the future. Looks like they were overmatched at the bargaining table, fucking up one side of the city ledger, and at the same time, poor financial decisions and short-sighted city planning cost many millions more dollars in revenue than the FD budget was taking.

    Making matters worse, the city budgeted a savings of $5 million last year after cutting the number of firefighters working each day by four, only to see an arbitrator side with firefighters and order the higher staffing level to ensure public safety.

    Again, the article doesn’t get specific enough, but my father was a firefighter and a union rep and heard about this kind of shit around the house all the time. It mentions cutting four firefighters per day to save money. How many stations in Vallejo? Four? How many does that leave on duty per station? How many firefighters does it take to man the equipment?

    Does anyone here think pulling a “man” (I’m done typing out “firefighter”) off a fire truck is the same thing as cutting an office worker? Say there are five men per truck. They roll up to a fire and each one has an immediate task to perform. Who do you cut? The guy who’s hooking hose up to the hydrant? Or the two guys at the other end of the hose? When it’s time to enter the structure, what would these penny-pinching assholes have them do? Send them in solo and give ’em an extra radio?

    When vineyard boy’s wife and kids are trapped in their mangled Mercedes, which overpaid guy does he want not to show up? The guy with the jaws of life? Or the guy who pulls his wife from the car? Maybe the other guy running his child over to the ambulance? Perhaps the other three guys extinguishing the other car burning mere feet away?

    This is fucking absurd. We are talking about life and death situations. And not just the firemen—most calls aren’t five-alarm warehouse blazes, that require risking life and limb. But trimming staff or closing stations means response times fall or teams are short-handed—and that costs lives.

  109. 109.

    Midnight Marauder

    April 19, 2010 at 7:23 pm

    @mclaren:
    @mclaren:

    Underwhelming troll is underwhelming.

  110. 110.

    Chyron HR

    April 19, 2010 at 7:24 pm

    Shorter mclaren:

    Never forget 9/11, the day the do-nothing axe-swinging firefighters tricked America into thinking they were heroes!

  111. 111.

    jl

    April 19, 2010 at 7:26 pm

    @mclaren: How is that different from an electrician or plumber? Such blue collar careers are often compensated just as well or better than PhD academics.

    You want math and stats types and molecular biologists and other academics to be generously compensated with money? When in the history of civilization has that ever happened? And you take it out on public safety employees? Bizarre. The only time maths, stats and physics dudes have been well paid on average was when they went to Wall Street to bankrupt the world economy. That did not work out so well.

    You say:
    “The only specialized skills a firefighter has involve chopping through a door with an axe.”

    OK, whatever. You need to calm down.

  112. 112.

    libarbarian

    April 19, 2010 at 7:28 pm

    So, let me get this straight.

    When a guy in a suit can do a job that no few others can or will do and can use that leverage to arm-twist his employers into as high a salary as he can get out of them, then that’s just a good, healthy, part of the free market.

    When a blue collar worker can do a job that few others can or will do and can use that leverage to arm-twist his employers into as high a salary as he can get out of them, then that’s an unfair extortion of taxpayer money

    Did I understand that right?

    The only specialized skills a firefighter has involve chopping through a door with an axe. That’s not worth 100K a year. Any idiot can chop through a door with an axe. Not any idiot can invent the transistor.

    Yes, but ONLY an idiot could say something like the above with a straight face.

  113. 113.

    mclaren

    April 19, 2010 at 7:36 pm

    Shorter Midnight Marauder & Chyron HR:

    (Beavis & Butthead laughter) Huh-huh. Huh. Huh. Cops rule. Firefighters are cool. (More Beavis & Butthead laughter) Science and knowledge sucks. Huh-huh. Huh. Huh-huh-huh.

    There’s a massive disparity in this country between the pay our society hands out to people who actually know things and actually produce anything of value, as opposed to the goons and pukes who wave guns and hose down burning houses with water.

    And as for 9/11, that’s a excellent example

    The firefighters who rushed into the burning twin towers were ignorant incompetent fools, and the result proves it. Most of those ignorant fools died because of their stupidity. They should stayed the hell out of the twin towers. But this kind of stupidity and incompetence is typical of police and firefighters in America. They’re too pig-ignorant to realize when their actions make a situation worse, instead preferring macho heroics that make a bad situation worse.

    If firefighters and police had been put in charge of inventing the wheel back during the dawn of civilization, we’d all still be living in caves in the dark.

  114. 114.

    Mr Furious

    April 19, 2010 at 7:38 pm

    @mclaren:

    What does a firefighter do that deserves more than $20,000 a year?

    First—No professional of any kind should be forced to work for $20K. That’s ten bucks a fucking hour, dick. But you expect somebody to run into a burning building for that?

    The only specialized skills a firefighter has involve chopping through a door with an axe. That’s not worth 100K a year. Any idiot can chop through a door with an axe. Not any idiot can invent the transistor.

    And any idiot can drive a 60-foot, 32,000 pound piece of specialized equipment worth a quarter-million dollars at high speed through city streets to deliver that axe. Along with the other idiots who surveyed the scene, determined which fucking door you were trapped behind and cleared a safe path in for that idiot with the axe who then idiotically chops through the door and then carries your unconscious ass down to the street where soome other idiot administers CPR and saves your life.

    I look forward to your next post where you explain that any idiot can then drive the ambulance that takes you to the hospital, and into the operating room where some other $20K-a-year idiot hands the surgeon his instruments, because a fucking monkey could handle that task.

    Fucking moron.

  115. 115.

    Mr Furious

    April 19, 2010 at 7:45 pm

    @mclaren: This bullshit isn’t worthy of a response. You are way past wasting everyone’s time.

  116. 116.

    Yutsano

    April 19, 2010 at 7:47 pm

    @Mr Furious:

    I look forward to your next post where you explain that any idiot can then drive the ambulance that takes you to the hospital

    Sad part? EMTs don’t make jack for money. I think they top out somewhere in the $35,000 range and can start as low as $10 an hour. And oh yeah they do a helluva lot more than just drive the bus.

  117. 117.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    April 19, 2010 at 7:50 pm

    @Mr Furious:

    This bullshit isn’t worthy of a response. You are way past wasting everyone’s time.

    It is worthy of a kick in the junk. Jeebus Mclaren, you give heartless asshole a bad name.

  118. 118.

    celticdragonchick

    April 19, 2010 at 7:51 pm

    More fun with Sonoma County today…

    Clay Greene and his partner of 20 years, Harold Scull, lived in Sebastopol, California. As long-time partners, they had named each other beneficiaries of their respective estates and agents for medical decisions. As 2008 began, Scull was 88 years old and in deteriorating health. Greene, 11 years younger, was physically strong, but beginning to show signs of cognitive impairment. As Scull’s health declined, it became apparent that they would need assistance, but the men resisted outside help. In April of 2008, Scull fell down the front steps of their home. Greene immediately called an ambulance and Scull was taken to the hospital. There, the men’s nightmare began.

    While Scull was hospitalized, Deputy Public Guardians went to the men’s home, took photographs, and commented on the desirability and quality of the furnishings, artwork, and collectibles that the men had collected over their lifetimes. Ignoring Greene entirely, the County petitioned the Court for conservatorship of Scull’s estate. Outrageously referring to Greene only as a “roommate” and failing to disclose their true relationship, the County continued to treat Scull as if he had no family. The County sought immediate temporary authority to revoke Scull’s powers of attorney, to act without further notice, and to liquidate an investment account to pay for Scull’s care. Then, despite being granted only limited powers, and with undue haste, the County arranged for the sale of the men’s personal property, cleaned out their home, terminated their lease, confiscated their truck, and eventually disposed of all of the men’s worldly possessions, including family heirlooms, at a fraction of their value and without any proper inventory or determination of whose property was being sold.

    Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Greene from their home and confined him to a nursing home against his will–a different placement from his partner. Greene was kept from seeing Scull during this time, and his telephone calls were limited. Three months after Scull was hospitalized, he died, without being able to see Greene again.

  119. 119.

    Mr Furious

    April 19, 2010 at 7:51 pm

    @Yutsano: Yup. And it’s wrong. I went to college smack in the middle of Westche$$ter County, NY and the ambulance service there was volunteer manned by a bunch of us college kids.

    In an area that populated and wealthy, that seems pretty fucking ridiculous. But I’m sure the local mansion-owners were strapped by their property taxes…

  120. 120.

    jeff

    April 19, 2010 at 7:52 pm

    Jl–yeah, I looked back at my original comment, and it was not clear, after all. Sorry. I meant to say that CA has a long roster of individuals making shitloads of money as public servants. But it’s a few scattered around. Nevertheless, these few really do constitute an outrageous state of affairs: there are a few assholes out of hundreds of employees making absurd money (being a cop, fireman, etc.) It’s odd, especially, because the electorate bristles at paying judges and DA’s six figures, even as cops and firemen rake it in hand over fist.

    Pensions are another story. I think the individual states have to get out of the pensions, somehow. I do think that public employees deserve full pensions after a 20 year career. I also think we all do. Alas, they–who are on the taxpayers’ payroll–are the only people in America that get them. So, let’s abolish them.

  121. 121.

    mclaren

    April 19, 2010 at 7:53 pm

    @libarbarian:

    So, let me get this straight.

    When a guy in a suit can do a job that no few others can or will do and can use that leverage to arm-twist his employers into as high a salary as he can get out of them, then that’s just a good, healthy, part of the free market.

    When a blue collar worker can do a job that few others can or will do and can use that leverage to arm-twist his employers into as high a salary as he can get out of them, then that’s an unfair extortion of taxpayer money

    Did I understand that right?

    No, you didn’t that understand that. Evidently you’re got a reading comprehension problem. So I’ll spell it out for you.

    People deserve to get paid depending on their skills.

    If a job involves few skills, then the job should have low pay.
    If the job involves high skills, then the job should have high pay.

    How many skills does a prison guard have?

    How much skill does it take to CONNECT A FUCKING HOSE TO A FIRE HYDRANT?

    Now ask yourself: how much skill does it take to run a CNC machine tool?

    One whole hell of a lot of skills, in the case of the CNC machinist. Therefore machinists who work with modern numerically controlled machine tools deserve their pay.

    Electricians and carpenters and plumbers need a lot of skills – they need specialized knowledge of local building codes, municipal zoning ordinances, and much more. So electricians and carpenters and plumbers and deserve high pay.

    A fucking prison guard does not deserve high pay.

    A fucking firefighter does not deserve high pay.

    A fucking cop does not deserve high pay.

    The issue isn’t whether someone wears a suit or is blue collar or white collar. The issue is skills.

    For 30 years firefighters fought against using modern technology like IR scanners to see through smoke in a burning building, because firefighters, like cops and prison guards, are macho meatheads. They deserve low pay because they don’t bring any meaningful skills to their jobs. For 50 years, firefighters also ignorantly and foolishly purveyed a whole slew of nonsensical myths about how fires start, which resulted in the conviction of countless innocent people for arson because of firefighters’ stupidity and ignorance.

    Many arson investigators, it turned out, had only a high-school education. In most states, in order to be certified, investigators had to take a forty-hour course on fire investigation, and pass a written exam. Often, the bulk of an investigator’s training came on the job, learning from “old-timers” in the field, who passed down a body of wisdom about the telltale signs of arson, even though a study in 1977 warned that there was nothing in “the scientific literature to substantiate their validity.”

    In 1992, the National Fire Protection Association, which promotes fire prevention and safety, published its first scientifically based guidelines to arson investigation. Still, many arson investigators believed that what they did was more an art than a science—a blend of experience and intuition. In 1997, the International Association of Arson Investigators filed a legal brief arguing that arson sleuths should not be bound by a 1993 Supreme Court decision requiring experts who testified at trials to adhere to the scientific method. What arson sleuths did, the brief claimed, was “less scientific.” By 2000, after the courts had rejected such claims, arson investigators increasingly recognized the scientific method, but there remained great variance in the field, with many practitioners still relying on the unverified techniques that had been used for generations. “People investigated fire largely with a flat-earth approach,” Hurst told me. “It looks like arson—therefore, it’s arson.” He went on, “My view is you have to have a scientific basis. Otherwise, it’s no different than witch-hunting.” (..)

    In mid-August, the noted fire scientist Craig Beyler, who was hired by the commission, completed his investigation. In a scathing report, he concluded that investigators in the Willingham case had no scientific basis for claiming that the fire was arson, ignored evidence that contradicted their theory, had no comprehension of flashover and fire dynamics, relied on discredited folklore, and failed to eliminate potential accidental or alternative causes of the fire. He said that Vasquez’s approach seemed to deny “rational reasoning” and was more “characteristic of mystics or psychics.” What’s more, Beyler determined that the investigation violated, as he put it to me, “not only the standards of today but even of the time period.”

    From “Trial by Fire,” The New Yorker, September 2009.

  122. 122.

    Joel

    April 19, 2010 at 7:53 pm

    setting aside that mclaren is a raging asshole, there’s something to be said about taking the absolute maximum of a distribution and using that to apply adjustments to the median of said distribution.

    just my statistical 0.02

    most everything else has been said

  123. 123.

    Yutsano

    April 19, 2010 at 7:54 pm

    @General Egali Tarian Stuck: Three words for you dude. Not. Worth. It. You cannot argue against certitude, mclaren is convinced all police are teh evil and firefighters are underskilled baboons. But hey he’s RIGHT! Just ask him!

  124. 124.

    Mr Furious

    April 19, 2010 at 7:56 pm

    Here’s a market-based answer to your bullshit:

    THOSE ARE FUCKING JOBS THAT MOST PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO DO, SO FOR THAT REASON THEY HAVE TO PAY THOSE WORKERS MORE!

    Construction worker is a specialized, high-skilled profession? I thought those idiots just swung a hammer?

  125. 125.

    mclaren

    April 19, 2010 at 8:00 pm

    @Mr. Furious:

    I look forward to your next post where you explain that any idiot can then drive the ambulance that takes you to the hospital.

    Ignorantly and foolishly wrong, as usual.

    EMTs need one whole hell of a lot of skills. An EMT is typically one of the first medical personnel on the scene of an injury, and an EMT’s decision often makes the difference between life and death. EMTs need extensive medical skills.

    Yutsano is exactly right. EMTs are grossly underpaid.

    Once again, skills. People should be paid according to their skills.

    No surprise there’s been a firestorm of hate and fury in response to my comments, since if the ignorant kooks who post on balloon juice were paid according to their knowledge and skills, you’d all be out on the street eating out of dumpsters.

    This bullshit isn’t worthy of a response.

    Shorter version: You’re too ignorant and too incompetent to come up with a credible argument for why firefighters should be paid more than tenured university professors, so you’ve resorted to mindless profanity.

    Typical.

  126. 126.

    Mr Furious

    April 19, 2010 at 8:02 pm

    For the record, fuck mclaren. This concession is not in response to his crap…

    Yes, those firemen are/were making too much money—that shit is unsustainable even in a financially stable city. But that is the situation created by morons at Vallejo City Hall who fucked up the contracts and then short-staffed the department forcing overtime pay that certainly far exceeded the amount of money they thought they could save so mclaren or the other asshole upthread would stop bitching about $9,000 property taxes.

  127. 127.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 8:04 pm

    @Mr Furious:

    There are people who abuse any system they are in. In the end, I do not believe Firefighters/police/teachers are overpaid.

    McLaren can get his house robbed, then burnt to the ground and then a teacher can re-educate him on the REAL problems this state has and he still won’t get it.

  128. 128.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 8:05 pm

    @Mr Furious:

    Last I checked construction has a lot of illegals in it to keep wages down.

  129. 129.

    Mr Furious

    April 19, 2010 at 8:06 pm

    @mclaren: I didn’t say anything about the EMT in the back giving medical care. I said THE DRIVER.

    Any idiot can step on a pedal.

    (yes I realize the driver is also an EMT, but that redundancy sure seems like a waste of your hard-earned tax dollars, right?)

  130. 130.

    Midnight Marauder

    April 19, 2010 at 8:06 pm

    @mclaren:

    EMTs need one whole hell of a lot of skills. An EMT is typically one of the first medical personnel on the scene of an injury, and an EMT’s decision often makes the difference between life and death. EMTs need extensive medical skills.
    __
    Yutsano is exactly right. EMTs are grossly underpaid.

    Well, I think we’re all now eagerly awaiting your explanation on how virtually all firefighters (and police officers) have EMT 1 training, and how those skills should increase their pay accordingly.

    You know, since firefighters are usually first to arrive on the scene and all.

  131. 131.

    terry chay

    April 19, 2010 at 8:11 pm

    Actually, the firefighter comp in Vallejo and the prison guard on the CA state level are issues that invite honest debate. In some areas, some jobs total comp has gotten out of line (and not just on Wall Street). In other areas, these same jobs are underpaid. It deserves a look at the local politics before riding to any side’s defense here.

    I’m not too sure what’s going on in Napa firefighter negotiations (the Winery is probably in the wrong by confounding these negotiations with Vallejo, that was a pretty extreme case that was widely reported in the Bay Area).

    It‘s a pity mclaren has pooed on this thread with his over-the-top vitriol.

  132. 132.

    Amanda in the South Bay

    April 19, 2010 at 8:12 pm

    @celticdragonchick:

    I hate to say this, but they should have had a registered domestic partnership a long, long time ago-two elderly people living together without any sort of legal relationship is an invitation to disaster. I’ve read nothing to indicate that they did take advantage of California’s pseudo marriage equality. Are there elderly heterosexual couples who are not legally married who have had similar situations? I know domestic partnerships aren’t exactly 100% equal to marriage, but I think the differences wouldn’t have mattered in this case.

    I know many LGBT people (myself included) are very, very cynical about marriage. But we need to take legal precautions along the way as well, even if its just a silly piece of paper you pick up at the courthouse.

  133. 133.

    Mr Furious

    April 19, 2010 at 8:12 pm

    @mclaren:

    You’re too ignorant and too incompetent to come up with a credible argument for why firefighters should be paid more than tenured university professors, so you’ve resorted to mindless profanity.

    I never claimed to be making an argument for firefighters to make more than a professor. But, how about this? I think $120,000 for being a professor is pretty fucking cushy—if they’re worth it to the university, they’ll be paid more or they can go elsewhere or justify it with grants.

    And if a firefighter end up outearning him because of poor administration forcing him to work ridiculous overtime, I’ll gladly hand it over.

  134. 134.

    protected static

    April 19, 2010 at 8:12 pm

    Vallejo is an outlier – and, for the editorialist, a smokescreen as well. In the original editorial, Sattui is arguing that because Vallejo city officials are guilty of something approaching criminal neglect when negotiating with their fire union, another Bay-area city (American Canyon, which appears to pay their firefighters an average of approximately $50K/year) shouldn’t give their fire department raises.

  135. 135.

    Yutsano

    April 19, 2010 at 8:14 pm

    @Midnight Marauder: A firefighter’s job is to get them the fuck out of the building in the first place and to do stabilization until an EMT can take over and further the stabilization until the patient can be transported to the hospital. That is the normal flow of events, and it’s why a lot of EMTs also work out of fire houses to insure simultaneous arrival. However, there is no guarantee the EMT will arrive at the same time, so that is why it falls to the firefighters to step up in that role. Police officers often arrive at a scene long before the other two, so that justifies their learning these skills as well. In other words, they don’t sit around all day eating doughnuts and thinking of ways to terrorize the populace. The Washington State Patrol is some of the finest LEOs I’ve known, they’re also damn funny.

  136. 136.

    LT

    April 19, 2010 at 8:15 pm

    They did this days before a tribute to fallen Vallejo cops and firefighters. Classy.

  137. 137.

    Mr Furious

    April 19, 2010 at 8:15 pm

    Everywhere I’ve ever lived the fire department has been the first responder, by design, and circumstance.

  138. 138.

    Citizen Alan

    April 19, 2010 at 8:16 pm

    The fact that, statistically speaking, mcdouchebag is unlikely to die in a fire is proof to me that there is no God.

  139. 139.

    anonymous

    April 19, 2010 at 8:19 pm

    I don’t see why glibertarians gotta hate on firefighters; they did some fine work on 9/11.

  140. 140.

    mclaren

    April 19, 2010 at 8:22 pm

    @The Populist:

    McLaren can get his house robbed, then burnt to the ground and then a teacher can re-educate him on the REAL problems this state has and he still won’t get it.

    Thanks for revealing the depth of your ignorance. You’ve made a huge fool of yourself. I lived in the toilet bowl known as California for nearly 30 years and watched it go down the tubes because of crazy self-destructive decisions made by ignorant incompetent voters like you, before I finally left California for good nearly 20 years ago. I correctly concluded that California would continue its downward spiral into dementia and bankrupcty precisely because of ignorant incompetent kooks like you and Mnemosyne.

    The evidence is incontrovertible: California’s expenditures skyrocketed during the 2000’s housing boom, so California’s fiscal problems are entirely of its own making. Stupid ignorant Californians like The Populist and Mnemosyne thought it would be wonderful to pass insane laws like the “three strikes” law, and so you ignorant fools turned your state into a giant penal colony with a nice ocean view. The result was predictable, and is now coming to pass, because (although you’re too stupid and too ignorant to understand it) when you sentence some petty criminal to life in prison for stealing a slice of pizza, it’s going to cost a fortune to incarcerate that poor harmless schmuck for the next 70 years.

    As for my house getting robbed…the courts have already spoken on that point, but as usual you people are too ignorant to know the basic law.

    The courts have decided that police have no responsibility to protect individuals in America.

    On June 27, in the case of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, the Supreme Court found that Jessica Gonzales did not have a constitutional right to police protection, even in the presence of a restraining order.

    By a vote of 7-to-2, the Supreme Court ruled that Gonzales has no right to sue her local police department for failing to protect her and her children from her estranged husband.

    Source: Castle Rock v Gonzalez.

    The court case Warren v. District of Columbia remains the leading case on this point:

    Two women were upstairs in a townhouse when they heard their roommate, a third woman, being attacked downstairs by intruders. They phoned the police several times and were assured that officers were on the way. After about 30 minutes, when their roommate’s screams had stopped, they assumed the police had finally arrived. When the two women went downstairs they saw that in fact the police never came, but the intruders were still there. As the Warren court graphically states in the opinion: “For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands of their attackers.”

    The three women sued the District of Columbia for failing to protect them, but D.C.’s highest court exonerated the District and its police, saying that it is a “fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.”

    Learn the society you live in, ignorant fools. The courts have declared as a matter of settled law the police can stand by laughing and joking while you’re raped and murdered, and the police have no legal obligation to lift a finger to help you.

    Police in American society serve one purpose and one purpose only — to protect the property rights of the wealthiest 1%. If you’re not rich and you expect police to protect you, you’re a fool.

    Source: Warren V. District of Columbia

  141. 141.

    Joel

    April 19, 2010 at 8:24 pm

    @terry chay: agreed (!)

    @protected static: this one also

  142. 142.

    Mnemosyne

    April 19, 2010 at 8:24 pm

    Ah, mclaren. I hope s/he never stops bringing the crazy, because I am laughing out loud right now.

    Never change, mclaren, never change.

  143. 143.

    Yutsano

    April 19, 2010 at 8:25 pm

    @Mnemosyne: I really should stick to my tl;dr standards, but I really do get in the cat with the mouse mode sometimes.

    BTW I have a friend in California who says Prop 13 should indeed be changed, but only to affect commercial properties and if any residential taxes get changed that the impact should be minimal. She’s big in the Pasadena area Democratic Party, so I’m guessing she might have her ideas taken seriously if Jerry becomes the next governor.

  144. 144.

    Joel

    April 19, 2010 at 8:26 pm

    @mclaren: WATCH OUT, HE’S GOING GALT!

  145. 145.

    scarshapedstar

    April 19, 2010 at 8:30 pm

    Stomping grapes, walking into burning buildings… hmm… yeah, I think I know which is the REAL man’s job.

  146. 146.

    Mnemosyne

    April 19, 2010 at 8:30 pm

    @Yutsano:

    That was really the big mistake in Prop 13 — it makes sense for residential properties to have some protection against sudden increases in property tax, but it makes zero sense for it to apply to commercial properties as well. My company has been based in California since the 1920s and I guarantee you that they’re paying less property tax as a percentage of their income than most homeowners.

  147. 147.

    Amanda in the South Bay

    April 19, 2010 at 8:30 pm

    @celticdragonchick:

    The thing is, (and I may misremember this, but a top notch probate paralegal told me) is that California doesn’t recognize common law marriages entered into in California; you can enter into a common law marriage in another state and CA will recognize it, but not in CA.

    Again, they’ve had several years to register as domestic partners. I don’t know if it’d have helped, but they should have.

  148. 148.

    WereBear

    April 19, 2010 at 8:34 pm

    Chee. Somebody should have moved to another state.

  149. 149.

    Yutsano

    April 19, 2010 at 8:39 pm

    @scarshapedstar: Actually in Italy the women stomp the grapes. So yeah what does THAT tell you about him?

    @Mnemosyne: I understand that Prop 13 was a perfect storm of Republican advantage taking coupled with the possibility of people being priced out of homes because even back then the California housing market was insanely expensive. I don’t know the exact history behind it, but it wouldn’t shock me if the commercial tax exemption was part of the sweetener to get more Republicans to support it.

  150. 150.

    mclaren

    April 19, 2010 at 8:40 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    My company has been based in California since the 1920s and I guarantee you that they’re paying less property tax as a percentage of their income than most homeowners.

    So now the truth comes out.

    As we always suspected: Mnemosyne is one of those leeches and parasites who runs a private company that socializes their costs (unreasonably low California property tax grandfathered in from before Prop 13) while keeping their gains private.

    Same-old same-old, the classic story of Reagan’s uh-murr-uh-cuh for the last 30 years…suck on the public teat while pocketing your private income made possible primarily by the tax breaks you get, then rail hysterically at the horrible lazy gubmint.

    Don’t you have an appointment to carry a misspelled sign at a tea party protest, Mnemosyne?

  151. 151.

    Yutsano

    April 19, 2010 at 8:45 pm

    @mclaren: I’d respond, but I would never deny Mnemosyne the pleasure of tearing this reading comprehension fail a new one. A woman’s gotta have some fun after all!

  152. 152.

    Mnemosyne

    April 19, 2010 at 8:54 pm

    @mclaren:

    As we always suspected: Mnemosyne is one of those leeches and parasites who runs a private company that socializes their costs (unreasonably low California property tax grandfathered in from before Prop 13) while keeping their gains private.

    Man, I wish I owned a company. Sadly, I am a mere corporate drone, a tiny cog in the bowels of the Giant Evil Corporation that I work for. I’m not even a California native, and Prop 13 passed when I was nine years old and living in the Midwest.

    However, in English, when people refer to the company of which they are an employee, they generally refer to it as “my company” so as not to confuse people. I didn’t realize that I would have to specifically say, “the company that pays me an hourly wage” for you to understand that some of us have jobs where we work for other people.

    Don’t you have an appointment to carry a misspelled sign at a tea party protest, Mnemosyne?

    I think you’re way behind on writing your manifesto. Ol’ Ted had some good ideas about the increasing mechanization and alienation of our society but, like you, his solutions lacked any practical application.

  153. 153.

    mclaren

    April 19, 2010 at 9:01 pm

    Of course you don’t respond. No one actually bothers to respond…no one provides a credible argument.

    Just name-calling, insults, f-words.

    And we wonder why Obama is treating the entire Democratic party as a bunch of chumps and breaking every campaign promise he ever made?

    It’s because the ignorant kooks who comment on balloon-juice are, sadly, typical of liberals in America. There’s hardly any difference between the tea partiers and liberals nowadays, they just believe in different crackpot fantasies.

    The tea party kooks want to increase military expenditures and cut taxes for the rich and yet reduce the deficit…while the liberal kooks want to pay firefighters more than university professors and yet have an educated productive society.

    Let’s run through the pathetic “arguments” in favor of overpaying firefighters:

    “They work really hard.”

    Ditchdiggers work really hard. Should we pay ditchdiggers $150,000 a year?

    “Your house could burn down without firefighters.”

    And you could get the plague if your garbage wasn’t collected, because rats would gather. Should we pay garbage collectors $150,000 a year?

    “They’re blue collar employees and they deserve to make a decent living.”

    $150,000 is a fuckload of a lot more than a “decent living.”

    So what other arguments have you people come up with to justify this kind of unjustifiable overpayment of firefighters and police and prison guards?

    Nothing.

    Zero.

    Zip.

    Diddly.

    Nada.

    Bupkiss.

    You have no credible arguments. Just name-calling.

    Yeesh. And we wonder by liberals spent 30 years losing the argument about whether to cut taxes for the rich…

    Develop some reasoning skills and stop being lazy with the name-calling and get into an actual debate sometime instead of just slinging f-words and whining “I won’t bother to respond.” Then liberals will be able to push back against conservatives.

  154. 154.

    mclaren

    April 19, 2010 at 9:09 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    However, in English, when people refer to the company of which they are an employee, they generally refer to it as “my company”…

    No, they generally refer to it as “the company where I work.”

    You need to re-take your English As a Second Language course.

    Of course your effort to distract us from the fact that you have no credible logic to justify paying prison guards or firefighters more than university professors has failed.

    Too bad for you. But keep screaming those Karl Rove smears comparing me with the Unabomber–one of these decades, someone might even believe you.

  155. 155.

    Comrade Tank Hueco

    April 19, 2010 at 9:09 pm

    Someone needs to get a girlfriend.

  156. 156.

    Yutsano

    April 19, 2010 at 9:10 pm

    @Comrade Tank Hueco: I’m giving up. I keep saying there is no arguing against certitude but yet I keep getting sucked in. I feel the need to move on now.

  157. 157.

    mclaren

    April 19, 2010 at 9:22 pm

    @Yutsano:

    I’m giving up. I keep saying there is no arguing against certitude but yet I keep getting sucked in. I feel the need to move on now.

    Just like Peggy Noonan felt the need to “walk away” from the revelations about Bush’s torture of prisoners in Gitmo.

    Walk faster, Yutsano. Walk faster!

    “Move on” away from my suggestion that we cut America’s military.

    “Move on” away from my suggestion that we stop turning America into a giant penal colony with 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prison inmates.

    “Move on” away from my suggestion that we pay college professors and K-12 school teachers and machinists and other people who have special skills more than cops and firefighters and prison guards.

    “Move on” away from my suggestion that we unleash the hounds of antitrust hell against the giant monopolistic corporate cartels that have destroyed the free market in America and raped consumers mercilessly into penury.

    “Move on” away from my suggestion that we rip through Wall Street with mandatory life sentences for fraud.

    “Move on” away from my suggestion that we primary the hell out of Obama with someone far to the left to show him the price politicians will have to pay for pretending to be liberal but governing as conservative-lite.

    “Move on” away from my suggestion that the only genuine solution to America’s broken health care system is a universal nationalized single-payer system, of the kind every other first world country uses.

    “Move on” away from my suggestion that liberals need to get some backbone and fight as hard for what they believe as the conservative lunatics fight for what they believe.

    Keep moving on, Yutsano. Just like John Kerry “moved on” after November 2004.

  158. 158.

    El Cid

    April 19, 2010 at 9:23 pm

    I think some of you don’t appreciate the life-threatening risks and grindingly punishing long hours involved in winery ownership.

  159. 159.

    El Cid

    April 19, 2010 at 9:26 pm

    @mclaren: I’m not sure what salary number is right, but might ‘much higher life risking actions’ on some average invoke higher pay?

    I mean, you’d have to pay me more to ask me to run into a burning building, breather-pack and protective clothes or not.

    This isn’t a prompt for some bullshit snark response about how I’m advocating every firefighter get a million dollars — hey, I read CounterPunch too!

  160. 160.

    Yutsano

    April 19, 2010 at 9:27 pm

    @El Cid: I’ll check with Michael Chiarello at some point, see how he manages the horrific rigors of winery ownership.

  161. 161.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 9:31 pm

    @El Cid:

    The fact these people put their lives on the line is enough for me to support high salaries.

    In the case of teachers, they spend HOURS of their own time grading, writing reports, planning lessons. It’s a thankless job and it holds a TON of responsibility.

    Honestly, I’ve always believed our soldiers should get more pay for what they do.

  162. 162.

    Svensker

    April 19, 2010 at 9:36 pm

    @Mr Furious:

    forcing overtime pay that certainly far exceeded the amount of money they thought they could save so mclaren or the other asshole upthread would stop bitching about $9,000 property taxes.

    Excuse me? Why am I an asshole? I pay a shitload of property taxes and have to pay my own social security, my own health insurance, and fund my own pension, while making half (or less) of what my average town employee makes, not including their benefits. I plan to be working — if I’m lucky — when I’m 75, while those same employees will have been retired for 15 years and getting bigger pensions than my 75-year-old ass will be earning.

    I’m not bitching “because my property taxes are too high, whine whine.” I’m bitching because it is not sustainable. The public sector cannot be significantly outearning the private sector, particularly when the private economy is going to shit.

  163. 163.

    El Cid

    April 19, 2010 at 9:36 pm

    @The Populist: A great deal of this is a huge joke, where we argue about the chaff we’re all supposed to fight over when the vast percentage of the national wealth has been increasingly shifted to the super-rich for the past 30 years.

  164. 164.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 9:37 pm

    @mclaren:

    Thanks for the name calling idiot. When you have to call me idiotic, you show yourself to be one deluded asshole.

    I can out-debate you on this and already have since I am a life long Californian and proud of it.

    LEAVE asshole. We don’t want you here anyway. As for debating you? What’s the fucking point, you are trolling and you know it.

    I said it earlier and you decided to be a dumbass and IGNORE MY POINTS. My point is simple. Abolish Prop 13 for both persons and business, raise DMV fees and the problem fixes itself.

    You can hate on firefighters, police and teachers, jerkwad but all you’ve done is show how ignorant YOU are on the issues by pointing the finger of blame at hardworking members of our society. You should be voting out the GOP who defend the status quo and the older union bought dems who won’t tell them to back off on overtime rules. Nope, you want to go after people who are doing a service for you AND the rest of us.

    Go wallow in your sorrows, dummy. I won’t argue with you anymore.

  165. 165.

    Mnemosyne

    April 19, 2010 at 9:37 pm

    @mclaren:

    No, they generally refer to it as “the company where I work.”
    __
    You need to re-take your English As a Second Language course.

    Aww, look, mclaren called me an immigrant. I hear that’s quite an insult where s/he is.

    Of course your effort to distract us from the fact that you have no credible logic to justify paying prison guards or firefighters more than university professors has failed.

    Other than the fact that they have a very short career, are in danger of dying every time they go to work, and are constantly having assholes like you whining that they get paid way too much for people who are in the serving class, firefighters are exactly like college professors.

    Tell you what — the next time your house is on fire, call your English Lit prof to come put it out for you. She should be able to do it much more quickly and safely than some grunt with a fire science degree.

    Too bad for you. But keep screaming those Karl Rove smears comparing me with the Unabomber—one of these decades, someone might even believe you.

    Yeah, it’s weird how all of your insane talk about how we don’t really need firefighters or police officers leads people to compare you to insane people. I don’t know how that happens.

  166. 166.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 9:38 pm

    @El Cid:

    You and me agree but heck we are rubes according to McLaren the troll.

    Hell, he can’t answer my points about the budget but he can call other’s names when they have had his number throughout this thread.

    Hehe, I love when idiots like him call me a name. It just means I can let loose and call them what they really are…dupes and buffoons.

  167. 167.

    SaneVet

    April 19, 2010 at 9:38 pm

    John Cole, as usual the voice of reason (I don’t know the emoticon for “seriously, not sarcastic”). He and a few others have mentioned the pensions, which are the real problem.

    To firefighters and Mary: I’m cool with six figure salaries when you put on the uniform and might have to save my family/me/my household pet by doing something heroic and dangerous. It’s just that, when you retire at 55, can you do it for less than 65-85% of your highest-earning year, overtime included? Like maybe a middle class wage? You have saved some of that money, right? You take care of us, we’ll take care of you, just not in opulence. Virtue is its own reward, and also you get buttloads of chicks every time you go on a call.

    The wine dude is a d-bag for calling firefighting an easy job. Everybody else is a d-bag for not noticing the massive economic fail that is surely coming if we don’t fix the public employee pensions, while CALPERS loses what little we socked away by buying those super-awesome AAA Goldman CDOs.

    Rational Discussion of Issues Uber Alles!

    TL/DR: Me too. No editing.

  168. 168.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 9:39 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    He called me an idiot but heck I wear it like a badge of honor seeing he won’t debate me on the budget. He wants to continue acting like a concern troll.

    Gloves.off.

  169. 169.

    Midnight Marauder

    April 19, 2010 at 9:40 pm

    @mclaren:

    Goddamn, you are SO hardcore.

  170. 170.

    Yutsano

    April 19, 2010 at 9:41 pm

    @The Populist: I get it. It’s basically the Atwater playbook but with a supposed liberal bent. I don’t recall EVER defending the salaries or pensions of prison guards (and I don’t live in California so AFAIK the rates aren’t the same up here) plus when we enumerate the specific skills firemen and police have we’re defending thugs and idiots. He only sees what he wants to see and ignores the rest. I really am done now, I have better things to do with my time than play lefter than thou.

  171. 171.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 9:42 pm

    @SaneVet:

    We can all agree that there needs to be some sanity sold to the unions when contracts come up for renegotiation.

    The problem with this state is not so much with pensions BUT with the unbalanced tax system.

    I pay the full amount for my home yet somebody who was in theirs since Prop 13 went into effect can pay basically NOTHING for theirs AND pass it on to their kids (Correct me if I heard this wrong).

    Business owners (of which I am one) can own a building and PAY NOTHING on it’s value. THAT is wrong.

    Those DMV fees Arnie lowered when he won that joke of a recall election? He should have left it alone and we’d be in MUCH better shape. If i have to pay a little more to register my car, so be it. I know rich people will be paying their fair share on the mercedes and BMWs they drive too.

  172. 172.

    El Cid

    April 19, 2010 at 9:43 pm

    @Yutsano: Really, though, I am lefter than thou.

  173. 173.

    jl

    April 19, 2010 at 9:44 pm

    @SaneVet:

    “you get buttloads of chicks every time you go on a call.”

    I did not know that.

    Cut their pay, cut it now! No pensions!

  174. 174.

    Yutsano

    April 19, 2010 at 9:46 pm

    @jl: Every now and again a line will pop up in an otherwise sane argument that will make me giggle to no end. What about the gay firefighters? Huh? Are they just supposed to sit back while the hets go to town on the firebunnies?

  175. 175.

    The Populist

    April 19, 2010 at 9:51 pm

    @Yutsano:

    I criticized the prison guard union and he still called me out. I see them ABUSING the system their union did negotiate (and when I say negotiate, why is it he is not angry with those who signed off on that contract?).

    Firefighters get tons of overtime because, last I checked, I live in a state that sees a LOT of forest/wild fires. Remember when San Diego was threatened by wildfires to the extent that it came VERY close to the city itself? MY local firefighters had to go bail out San Diego county because the idiots down there enacted a system where they don’t fund the fire departments properly. Basically I have to pay for THEIR lifestyles…but I don’t mind, we are all in this together (or at least I THINK that) as I am not selfish like those folks are.

    Police get overtime because that is how it is in that job. Teachers are salaried so moronic McLaren has no idea what he’s talking about there.

    As for pensions? Who can begrudge what idiotic politicians give unions in negotiations? God bless anybody able to make a good living.

    Now pensions are a problem BUT, AGAIN, the pension programs over leveraged themselves in housing and the stock market. Remember, righties encouraged this “ownership” bullshit when Bush wanted to privatize the Social Security.

    Pension funds fucked up but I am not going to begrudge somebody their right to a negotiated pension. What California NEEDS to do is fix the fucking tax situation. If the right doesn’t want to fix it, then we all go down together I guess.

    The joke is on righties who think pensions are the problem. It’s a PROBLEM but not what they make it out to be. Look at the budget and tell me there isn’t fat as well as taxation issues we need to address THEN I think the pension issue can be fixed.

  176. 176.

    different church-lady

    April 19, 2010 at 9:57 pm

    Because, you know, when you’re trapped in a burning building the guy you want to have in charge of saving your life is someone who knows how to put fermented grape juice in a bottle.

    I’d _headdesk_ here, but my doctor told me I needed to stop doing that once an hour…

  177. 177.

    Svensker

    April 19, 2010 at 9:58 pm

    @The Populist:

    Pension funds fucked up but I am not going to begrudge somebody their right to a negotiated pension. What California NEEDS to do is fix the fucking tax situation. If the right doesn’t want to fix it, then we all go down together I guess.

    California is not the only state in the Union, ya know, nor the only state with serious budget problems.

  178. 178.

    SaneVet

    April 19, 2010 at 10:00 pm

    @The Populist

    You’re right, except about the car tax. That’s disproportionately a tax on the poor. For me, the number sucks now that I can afford a safe, newish vehicle. The percent sucked when I drove a ’92 Explorer a few years ago and didn’t make jack. As will always be the case, a graduated tax is fair while a flat tax works for the rich, who DGAF anyway.

    Also, the Prop 13 inheritance house only works if the parents retain ownership and don’t die. Can we agree on Prop 13 reform without repeal (heh)? I don’t want the nice old lady on my folks’ street to be taxed out of her house. I will not stomach another McMansion where a good person used to live.

  179. 179.

    Yutsano

    April 19, 2010 at 10:01 pm

    @Svensker: This is true, but when you’re the largest state by population plus you have the eight largest economy in the WORLD, inordinate amounts of attention gets focused on you. We’re not exactly out of the budget woods up here and yet our governor STILL won’t approve a tax increase, regardless of how mild it is. You are nowhere near alone it’s true, I think it’s just an economy of scale thing.

  180. 180.

    Gian

    April 19, 2010 at 10:09 pm

    @mclaren:

    all that wah wah wah, I don’t think cops deserve a decent wage, I don’t think firefighters do either and so on.

    when was the lat time you saw a wall street exec killed in the line of duty?

    cops, prison guards, and firefighters get paid more than waiters because on any given work shift they just might die doing their job – the training requirements and physical fitness ones to boot are quite high, and here in Cali – firefighters are also paramedics most of the time (excluding the state prison inmates who are given a reduced sentence to fight wildfires)

    no doubt that gaming overtime rules is a problem, but this notion that cops and firefighters aren’t trained professionals who have to make tough decisions on the fly? utter right wing radio bunk. Call your local police academy and ask if you can pay to attend the shoot/don’t shoot training.
    or the rules on what a cop needs for a search warrant, or how to handle an informant, or how to answer questions about an informant in court…

    2007 BTW had the “tea” fire in santa barabara it was huge and firefighters came in from all over the state, I’m sure they racked up a ton of overtime working 7 days a week at 20 or so hours a day, but hey they work for the government and are only saving lives, and houses that people live in, they might die doing it, so don’t pay them – anyone could do it –

    it’s not like there are any other jobs where people get overtime for working long hours, right? lets repeal all the overtimes laws, workers get paid too much – right? it’s a free market, and if we get people desperate enough they’ll work for food, and that’s good, right, just like greed?

  181. 181.

    Josh

    April 19, 2010 at 10:10 pm

    mclaren:

    I hold the prestigious honor of being an English major with a specialization in creative writing. I can vouch that writing “my company” is a perfectly reasonable way to say “the company I work for.” In this case the meaning is in the context, which should be obvious to anyone who knows how to read context into a series of words comprising a sentence.

    It’s quite obvious that you’re being disingenuous, and your aggressive posture and obvious bias in the types of words you choose to employ suggest that you knew that but have an agenda which requires ignoring the painfully obvious.

    That’s also why you choose to apply labels to people that have no real meaning in the context in which you choose to apply them. It’s an emotional attack, designed to create a hostile environment in this thread. This suggests that you’re not endeavoring for reasoned and rational debate.

    It’s the operational definition for “trolling.” We could choose to engage you, but there is no real point on that matter. You’re arguments have several logical holes in them because your arguments are constructed with several logical fallacies at their base. (The most glaringly obvious and overused is the “strawman” in your case.)

    I hope you’re having fun, though. You’re especially talented, but nothing I haven’t seen before.

  182. 182.

    SaneVet

    April 19, 2010 at 10:13 pm

    The Populist,

    Can you enlighten me on how to link your post when I do the @The Populist thing? I’m new here. To the internets. Sorry.

  183. 183.

    Yutsano

    April 19, 2010 at 10:14 pm

    @Josh: I just want to say that was one beautiful takedown there good sir. Well done. Well done indeed.

    @SaneVet: When you put your mouse over a comment, you will see a “Reply” floating there. If you click that, it will bring up the character string in your reply box and tah-dah!

  184. 184.

    SaneVet

    April 19, 2010 at 10:25 pm

    @Yutsano:

    Thanks. I have a dysfunction that causes me to not see intuitive things on comment threads. Also, right about Josh.

  185. 185.

    Mnemosyne

    April 19, 2010 at 10:36 pm

    Do you think mclaren has realized yet that s/he has spent many words and killed many electrons to argue on the side of a guy who inherited his wealth and begrudges the compensation paid to people who actually work for their money?

    Anarchism and libertarianism aren’t nearly as far apart as their proponents would like you to believe.

  186. 186.

    Mnemosyne

    April 19, 2010 at 10:43 pm

    As far as public pensions go, frankly, one reason they look so outsized is because almost every private company has eliminated them in favor of a 401(k) system, and the ones that haven’t use their pension funds as a convenient source of cash. So instead of a pension being looked at as a normal benefit of working at the same place for 20 or 30 years, they’ve been turned into a strange income source that only government employees get.

  187. 187.

    SaneVet

    April 19, 2010 at 10:50 pm

    @The Populist:

    Hey dude or awesome chick,

    I’m out. Thanks for being a rational person on the webs. Time to grab a broom literally. I’ll come back sometime.

  188. 188.

    Yutsano

    April 19, 2010 at 10:58 pm

    You wanna know the real sad part? There really is a good honest conversation that could happen here, but instead we have inflammatory rhetoric clouding the issue. Why not figure out if indeed the Vallejo fire department pays above scale and see if it can be brought closer to the median, and let’s also regard that firefighters indeed do a valuable service in our communities. In other words, let’s all chill the fuck out and find a solution like adults.

  189. 189.

    SaneVet

    April 19, 2010 at 10:59 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    Sorry, I saw this before I looked away. You should be freaking outraged that your money goes to this. Again, 100K is fine for people who save me from bad stuff. 360K is insane, even if they do run into fires (the guys who run in to fires don’t make that).

  190. 190.

    celticdragonchick

    April 19, 2010 at 11:03 pm

    @Amanda in the South Bay:

    Probably so…but there is no guarantee that it would have been recognized either, considering that other legally binding contracts were ignored by state agents.

  191. 191.

    Mnemosyne

    April 19, 2010 at 11:16 pm

    @SaneVet:

    You should be freaking outraged that your money goes to this. Again, 100K is fine for people who save me from bad stuff. 360K is insane, even if they do run into fires (the guys who run in to fires don’t make that).

    I’m less than 10 miles from where the Station Fire was last year. $325,000 was a small price to pay for the number of homes and lives saved.

    Sorry, I just can’t get too het up about overpaid firefighters. I’ll join the mob on prison guards, though — I’ll even bring my own torch. :-)

  192. 192.

    Gian

    April 19, 2010 at 11:59 pm

    @SaneVet: @SaneVet:

    when wall street bankers who were full of fail got a bailout and a bonus, some of whom on the out-lier land of the graph, like the 350K firefighter

    failed utterly at their jobs and made their companies go under or get bailouts
    and get bonuses that are 10X the yearly pay of the guy who might die at work I’ve got other priorities for my outrage.

    tax dollars – going to someone who can die saving lies, versus tax dollars going to someone who sells “CDOs”

    this whole debate is the right wing radio song and dance – be mad at the union guy, he makes more than you – and he’s lazy and wah wah awawahawahawah. pick on other people who work, blame them ’cause you ain’t getting a cut of that 5 billion in QUARTERLY bonuses that goldman sachs just kicked out, screw them for having a living wage….

    living in Cali – having a house in a decent (not good, not the beach) area, having kids — honestly for a normal family life the dollar amount varies, if you bought in ’05 it might be 80K a year to live in a decent place – think if you were a govt employee you didn’t go with a funky loan, you stretched for the best you could afford

  193. 193.

    Wile E. Quixote

    April 20, 2010 at 12:07 am

    OK, who’s trolling as mclaren? Seriously, no one could be that much of an ignorant fucking cunt. Of course if mclaren really does exist I have to wonder what she does for a living. Probably not much given the amount of time she’s spent on this thread.

  194. 194.

    RNS

    April 20, 2010 at 12:12 am

    @Gian:
    “when was the lat time you saw a wall street exec killed in the line of duty?”

    Sadly, it’s much too rare an occurrence.

  195. 195.

    Wile E. Quixote

    April 20, 2010 at 12:12 am

    I’d also be interested in finding out what skills mclaren has besides being an ignorant cunt, completely missing the point and trolling. Is mclaren really McMegan McArdle after pounding a few bottles of T-bird?

  196. 196.

    Wile E. Quixote

    April 20, 2010 at 12:32 am

    @mclaren:

    You know who else deserves high pay? Prostitutes, because they’re the only people who will have sex with mclaren.

  197. 197.

    Ruckus

    April 20, 2010 at 12:34 am

    @John Cole:

    Yeah, you really pulled yourself up by your bootstraps jockstrap.

  198. 198.

    Mr Furious

    April 20, 2010 at 12:53 am

    My company has been based in California since the 1920s and I guarantee you that they’re paying less property tax as a percentage of their income than most homeowners.

    Who’s got the comprehension problem?

  199. 199.

    DPirate

    April 20, 2010 at 5:35 am

    Three cheers for McClaren. RAH RAH RAH

    The defense of compensation for firefighters here seems best put by Comrade Mary, who says that since her dad was a firefighter, no one can say anything detrimental to any firefighter. To make 350K in a year, that guy was on the clock for days at a stretch. If you think he was humping it in the burning bush all the time, you are out-of-touch with blue-collar life.

    I’d bet I can identify who is paid hourly and who is salaried just by their comments on this thread. Rich rightists will be for the OP, and rich leftists for the firefighters. The poor will be reversed.

  200. 200.

    electricgrendel

    April 20, 2010 at 5:49 am

    Elitist fucking bastards. Firefighters put in the work to unionize, collectively bargain and do a deadly job and they get derided. The market can obviously bear this expense, or else it wouldn’t be there right? Sort of like how we have to paid CEO’s so much because they’re so special and unique? It’s funny how when blue collar workers make a lot of money it’s a horror and an affront, but when white collar workers do it then it’s okay. It’s also funny how it’s always white collars bitching about this disparity and then turning around and crying “class warfare!” when people call them on their own pampered overpaid lifestyles.

  201. 201.

    El Cid

    April 20, 2010 at 6:16 am

    I’m in favor of determining rational pay systems based on work done versus resources available, but I think the great problems — I mean real problems that have catastrophic affects upon the nation, not cultural bitterness lower down — is at the level of those getting tens and hundreds of millions and billions of dollars.

    $300K/yr places one is a vastly different socio-econo-cultural position than the vast majority, but you aren’t the ones at the Olympian heights to determine how the nation is run, unless by personal involvement you become an influential networked thinker and actor as a politician, media figure. or culture / religious leaders.

    And when the nation’s stability and survivability comes into question because, not only has the nation been reconstructed so that its main economic activities take the form of enrichment games for the richest with the national benefit side lopped off, the activities pursued literally bring the nation to the edge of economic collapse, maybe we should once again us tax policies as a way of taming such, of applying brakes to the apparent madness into which the super-rich have been able to accustom themselves and their institutions over 30+ year.

  202. 202.

    Erik Vanderhoff

    April 20, 2010 at 10:40 am

    @DougJ:

    The difference between Sonoma and Napa is one of how far up the trail one drives. They’re right next to one another and both in Napa Valley. And most wineries have vineyards spread all over, so they might grow grapes in Sonoma, Napa proper, Paso Robles, etc.

    V. Sattui makes a very nice Riesling and a light, sweet dessert wine called a Gamay Rouge that I like very much. But I’m not so sure I’ll be spending too much money there any more. Especially not when St. Supery is only a mile or so away…

  203. 203.

    Mnemosyne

    April 20, 2010 at 11:30 am

    @DPirate:

    I’d bet I can identify who is paid hourly and who is salaried just by their comments on this thread. Rich rightists will be for the OP, and rich leftists for the firefighters. The poor will be reversed.

    I’d bet that you will be 100 percent wrong in your guesses, but please present them. We can use some more lulz.

    I also find it amusing that you think that poor leftists will automatically be on the side of a guy who inherited his wealth and thinks that firefighting is easy work.

  204. 204.

    RNS

    April 20, 2010 at 1:28 pm

    @Mnemosyne: Firefighting is not easy work.
    Neither is it the long, constant, tedious, repetitive-motion injury inducing work of many blue-collar jobs that are not nearly as generously compensated.
    Similarly, it’s potentially dangerous work, but statistically safer than other less handsomely rewarded occupations like driving a cab (with the exception of volunteer firefighters, who do the same hard, dangerous job for minimal compensation).
    @El Cid:
    “I’m in favor of determining rational pay systems based on work done versus resources available, but I think the great problems—I mean real problems that have catastrophic affects upon the nation, not cultural bitterness lower down—is at the level of those getting tens and hundreds of millions and billions of dollars.”
    Yes, and yes.
    @electricgrendel:
    “Sort of like how we have to paid CEO’s so much because they’re so special and unique? It’s funny how when blue collar workers make a lot of money it’s a horror and an affront, but when white collar workers do it then it’s okay. It’s also funny how it’s always white collars bitching about this disparity and then turning around and crying “class warfare!” when people call them on their own pampered overpaid lifestyles.”
    I don’t read many defenses of excessive CEO compensation on this site.
    Also, there are many “white collar” wage slaves who should be distinguished from the “white collar” elites who enjoy “pampered overpaid lifestyles”.

  205. 205.

    Mnemosyne

    April 20, 2010 at 2:52 pm

    @RNS:

    Firefighting is not easy work.
    Neither is it the long, constant, tedious, repetitive-motion injury inducing work of many blue-collar jobs that are not nearly as generously compensated.

    So the solution is to make firefighting a minimum wage job rather than boost up the hourly rate of blue-collar jobs?

    Looking at those numbers, I strongly suspect that Vallejo is doing the same shortsighted thing that my husband’s company is doing (1). You’re told to reduce headcount because of budget cuts, but all of the work still needs to be done, and we’ve had three bad fire seasons in a row. 2008 was especially bad for Northern California, and Vallejo probably sent responders to it who racked up huge amounts of overtime.

    So you “save” money by cutting back on full-time staff and end up paying more money on overtime than you would have if you’d kept those full-time workers. Classic case of “penny wise and pound foolish.”

    Vallejo does seem to be overpaying its city employees, but since (as I mentioned above) the mayor of Vallejo makes more money than the mayor of San Francisco, it seems to be a problem across the board and not limited to the fire department, so it doesn’t seem very useful to concentrate on the fire department when it’s a citywide problem.

    (1) For mclaren’s benefit, since s/he seems to have reading comprehension problems, when I say “my husband’s company,” I mean “the company that pays my husband an hourly wage to do work for them.” Clear enough?

  206. 206.

    RNS

    April 20, 2010 at 3:44 pm

    @Mnemosyne:
    “So the solution is to make firefighting a minimum wage job rather than boost up the hourly rate of blue-collar jobs?”

    I’m pretty sure I didn’t mean that when I approvingly cited “I’m in favor of determining rational pay systems based on work done versus resources available”.
    That being said, firefighters do benefit from better PR than your average factory worker or cab driver, many of whom not only work harder but frequently face more (different) risk.
    Also, don’t be quite so quick to paint all firefighters as mythical working class heroes. While there is widespread recognition of the value of union membership when it comes to their own wages, benefits, and working conditions, that’s pretty much the extent of their class consciousness. Way too many (especially among the lighter complected union brothers) are reactionary assholes when it comes to their personal politics.
    Of course, that goes double for cops.

  207. 207.

    Mike

    April 20, 2010 at 8:41 pm

    Before you judge fireman pay, you gotta determine if they’re just fire or fire/EMS, and you need to know call volume. We should also take a look at the danger data – wouldn’t be surprised if firefighting is safer than driving a truck and comparable to delivering pizzas or working a convenience store counter.

    In an earlier life, I was an EMT who was stationed out a firehouse a fair amount. I had 4-5x the daily work of the firefighters. I also had to work OT to pull down $28k, whereas they started out at $42k with a very generous pension.

  208. 208.

    Console

    April 21, 2010 at 5:09 am

    There are a lot of jobs where you don’t get paid for what you do, you get paid for what you CAN do. Yeah, you may put in more physical work then a firefighter, but no one is asking you to run into burning buildings. That’s a pretty big difference.

    Hell, my job is like that. I’m an air traffic controller at a low level facility and 95 percent of the time my job is easy. But you aren’t going to find many people that are capable (or willing) to work the nightmare that the rest of that 5 percent is. My pay is essentially based on that 5 percent, it’s irrational to treat it any other way, otherwise the job wouldn’t be worth it. If you drop pay too much then I’ll just pick a job where I don’t have to worry about killing a few hundred people. In that sliver of hard work I do, I have more responsibility and am exercising more skill than a hell of a lot of jobs, and that’s the standard I should be judged by. Same thing for firefighting, you drop the pay too much and people would just pick another line of work. You don’t go into burning buildings everyday, but the fact that you will be called to do it is enough to drive up the cost of compensation by a lot.

  209. 209.

    RNS

    April 21, 2010 at 8:47 am

    “Same thing for firefighting, you drop the pay too much and people would just pick another line of work.”

    Explain volunteers.

  210. 210.

    Console

    April 21, 2010 at 12:19 pm

    I don’t know too many volunteer stations that would be able to cover the amount of work needed for any area that actually has a lot of people.

  211. 211.

    phg

    April 22, 2010 at 12:09 pm

    I followed the link. There are 4 pages firefighters between $100k and $200k. There are 6 pages of cops. I wonder if this includes the cost of benefits, even so the numbers are staggering. Just think, they can retire at age 45 with 50% of pay and benefits till they die.

  212. 212.

    terry chay

    April 22, 2010 at 1:05 pm

    @Yutsano: That would probably be declared unconstitutional. If not by the state supreme court, then certainly the (current) U.S. *cough* Citizen United *cough*

    For Prop 13 to be repealed, it’ll have to be repealed. There is no incremental repeal for that one—except getting at that that kindled the “revolt” first: the restrictions on localities spending on their K-12 systems.

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