Around 45 seconds into this Glenn Beck segment (via Angry Black Lady Chronicles), Glenn Beck’s co-host mocks the man in Tennessee whose house burned down by having him say, in a mock southern accent “That’s what the fire department does, put out fires.”
That’s where we’re at, folks: if you believe that fire departments put out fires, then you’re an idiot redneck. And if you can’t accept the fact that only idiot rednecks think fire departments put out fires, then you’re an elitist.
Steeplejack
__
Please, we prefer the term “Crackro-Americans.”
And it’s Angry Black
LandyLady Chronicles.Chris
Ow, the stupid, it burns.
Where do I send $75/year to prevent it from burning *me* next time?
Eric U.
someone tell me what is wrong with being anti-colonialist? Beck was yelling about that the other day. I’m guessing that if martians came down and wanted to start a colony, Beck would be against it. Then again, I wouldn’t put money on it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Eric U.: You know who else was anti-colonialist?
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris: Send it to me.
El Cid
Beck guy imitating guy with house burning down: “…Watch your house burn to the ground? It ain’t right!”
Beck: ‘This argument will go nowhere if you approach it talking about compassion, compassion, compassion.’
See, if no one’s house is allowed to burn down over $75, then no one will pay the $75.
Where is the outrage for the County for instituting such an awful system for paying for the city fire departments to take care of their fires?
Beck: “If you think this is all insane, this is Obamacare.”
See, if the FD put the fire out, it means that all the cheap welfare blacks is getting their health care paid for by you good people havin’ to pay for all the freeloaders.
Beck went on to mock those who had cancer who could call up an insurance company and get coverage, even though they already have cancer, and that’s unfair to the insurance company and costs everyone more, so, hey cancer lady, why don’t you just fucking die?
El Cid
@Omnes Omnibus: FDR.
Omnes Omnibus
@El Cid: I was going for George Washington, but okay.
VixenStrangely
@Omnes Omnibus: Omnes, I’m going to say “the Founding Fathers” for Chris’ $75 and the Samsonite luggage.
El Cid
In some ways related: apparently people do indeed care less about harm done to a large number of people than a few people.
freelancer
@Omnes Omnibus:
Y’all are way off. We hate Woodrow Wilson!
Eric U.
the Tennessee story is juicy enough I’m surprised that I followed that link and neither the ABL or her source understood the story at all. Thanks to whoever linked to the Angry Black Lady Chronicles the other day. I’m a fan now.
One problem I find with Beck is that he is a self-parody, and thus the only way you could make it funny is if he said something reasonable in the parody.
El Cid
@Omnes Omnibus: FDR was a bit more interesting because he was — rhetorically at least, not quite in actual policy — talking about ending colonialism in other far-flung empires, including for them 3rd world darkie types.
Spiffy McBang
I expected to be more astounded or offended than I was by his spiel about the fire department scheme, but since I tend to think it’s better this turned out the way it did so everyone can see what a stupid idea this opt-in fire coverage shit is, I didn’t have a huge issue with it.
And then he ties this to HCR? I know all about this guy’s nonsense and I still didn’t see that coming. It still amazes me when anyone, even him, demagogues an issue by ignoring some very well-known aspect of said issue that destroys the entire argument rather than picking on some piece that is less easily refutable. At this point I wonder if he’s not just playing out the string and waiting for everyone to throw him out of the public eye.
VixenStrangely
You know the dumb thing about this is–they actually do fight fires, firemen. It’s part of the name. And I think fighting fires was why Ben Franklin invented them, like bifocals and other clever things. To do something impoortant.
Fires spread. The reason you stop the fire where it started is so it doesn’t go out of control and damage surrounding properties. It’s a harder job I imagine to just let it damage one section and protect all the other areas around the “no-help” zone. This is just dumb about how fires work. Let alone how government should.
Mark S.
If I were Obama, I would give speeches attacking pedophiles and Nazis (or better yet, Nazi pedophiles). The right is so conditioned to be against whatever he is for, they would start saying Nazi pedophiles are the real Americans.
Omnes Omnibus
@El Cid: But FDR is already an object of hate on the right. Washington however….
Ross Hershberger
I seem to recall that Ben Franklin organized the first fire department. Maybe that’s a myth. But let’s go with that and up the fee to a round hundo in his honor.
freelancer (itouch)
@El Cid:
Seriously, where are the fucking Christians on this? Where the fuck are they?! We heard a tiny bit of push back when Beck was ranting about “Jesus hated Social Justice! (It’s got the word Social in it! OMFG!)” but they are nowhere to be found on this vile, disgusting, greedy bullshit. Why the fuck not?
Oh yeah. ‘Borshun’s bad, mmKay?
Ross Hershberger
The spectator fire department issue should be extrapolated to its logical conclusion.
Fall off a roof? Let’s see your ambulance subscription card or you can lay there and bleed.
Get robbed? If your Police Membership isn’t up to date you can chase the thief yourself.
Want to drive on paved roads? Better have your Paving Fees paid up.
Maybe I’m misremembering this – it is nearly 1:00 am – but didn’t the spectator fire department actually turn up at the fire but just not put it out? I can understand not responding, but to roust themselves just to watch it go up in flames… That’s just perverse.
suzanne
@Chris:
God, if only. That would be a bargain at twice the price.
That’s in interesting thought experiment: How much would you pay to not have to share your country with assholes?
KG
sorry, not directly related to this post, but it is to the Mayan tag. One of my guilty TV pleasures are the conspiracy shows on the History channel. At the moment is some show about how there are all these ancient prophecies around the world (and the internet too!) that the world is going to end in 2012.
I don’t think the world is going to end anytime soon. But I just love watching them try to fit ancient prophecies into the modern world.
Ross Hershberger
You know who else didn’t want to share his country with assholes?
Sorry, but one man’s ‘asshole’ is often that same man’s brother in law.
Mark S.
@Ross Hershberger:
Yeah, they have to stand there and make sure it doesn’t spread to anybody’s house who’s paid up.
KG
@Mark S.: if they have decent writers on SNL, that will be coming shortly.
kdaug
Austin’s way ahead of you… Nazi Zombies!
Yutsano
@KG: This is seriously one of my fucking pet peeves. The Mayan Long Calendar did not and never was intended to predict the end of the world. What it actually SAYS is this is all we can calculate out to and possibly predict. What happens afterward was a mystery to them, but most likely it would have been the start of a totally different Long Calendar. As the Aztecs took it upon themselves to wipe them out, unfortunately we’ll never know.
@KG: You fry like a lager at the Texas State Fair. And no I don’t want to know how they did that.
KG
The thing I wonder about is what happens when there’s a clerical error and my payment isn’t showing up in their system?
VixenStrangely
@KG: I guess after your house burns down and you show them the cancelled check–they refund you $75.
MikeJ
@Mark S.:
Poison. Obama should come out against drinking poison. And jumping off large, multi-storey office buildings.
Martin
@Mark S.: After Beck’s little explanation the other day about how slavery arose out of government regulation, I don’t really think there’s a position Beck couldn’t be baited into supporting.
My middle-school age son yelled out from the other room “The first slaves came in 1619! What school did that guy go to!?”
VixenStrangely
@VixenStrangely: Respond to myself to add–of course you’ll need to contact your financial institution because all your records were burned in an actual fire. Which makes for very inconvenient record-keeping, to say the least.
Ross Hershberger
Well at least a couple of news stories are going more or less our way. This fire dept. thing makes the Libertarians look like kooks – not that that’s hard. And the issue of improper foreclosures should have legs. Families out on the street in front of their repossessed homes just looks too good for the media to pass up. And the implications of that look good for the Dems.
Have to say yes, it’s a disaster for the wronged home owners. And I hope every one of them takes a thieving bank to the cleaners over it.
Yutsano
@Martin:
I hope you bought pizza for dinner that night. Smart one you got there.
RSA
@El Cid:
__
I imagine that in some parts of the country, fire departments are paid by local taxes (perhaps even property taxes–I know, what a crazy idea), which is equivalent to an individual mandate. So there you go. We’re already surrounded by socialism.
suzanne
@Ross Hershberger:
…aaaaaaand that’s why it’s a *thought experiment* and not the Final Solution.
Omnes Omnibus
@suzanne: Do people necessarily want to share a country with their brothers-in-law? I have two sisters-in-law, so I don’t know the answer.
El Cid
@Yutsano: The Aztecs wiped the Mayans out?
Joseph Nobles
Man, oh, man, can’t be listening to Beck so often. Blood pressure.
Does he really believe his listeners are so idiotic that they don’t understand he shoots his own argument down at the end of the clip? Eh, maybe so…
First he says:
“You don’t pay the $75, your house burns down. You pay the $75, that’s how you get the costs spread around and keep the firefighters available.”
Hey, Beck, replace firefighting with roads, police, military, parks, any dang thing the government does, and you’ve just justified reasonable tax increases when necessary.
Then at the end of the clip:
“They were willing to pay the $75 at the fire.”
Which isn’t true, by the way – the homeowner was willing to pay ALL costs of putting out that fire, not a $75 fee, but the fire department wouldn’t accept it and put out the fire. But say they were. If all it takes to spread the costs around is $75 a year, then why couldn’t the man pay at the fire? Why couldn’t he, Glenn? What if he paid that morning and the fire started that afternoon? Would the fire department be justified in not putting out the fire? Think, Glenn Beck, think!
And comparing this to the health care system is double crazy. The health care system where you don’t pay until you get sick – that’s the one we just had. It’s called “no insurance, get sick, go to the emergency room, drive up costs for everybody else.” The homeowner willing to pay all costs is like the sick person standing there at the hospital, willing to pay all expenses for treating his illness and being refused. See, that’s what the reasonable people are angry about, Glenn! But you, the functionally insane person, thinks this shows how Obamacare is evil. Ye gods! Obamacare is about making everyone pay to spread the costs around and cut into the cost curve! The penalties start out small, but then they ramp up!
Ah, geez, I greive for my country when I listen to someone getting it so backassward wrong and making a bloody fortune to do so.
Ross Hershberger
@suzanne:
If you come up with a solution to just the brother in law thing I’ll send YOU my $75.
freelancer (itouch)
@KG:
Invisible Hand uses invisible fire truck to spray invisible water on your unfortunately very real fire. That and eventually the company that commits the most clerical errors goes out of business due to lawsuits and better companies take their place. It’s just like Evolution. See? Economics IS just like science! But Evolution is a Myth, Science is a Religion, but Jesus is real, and mad at the moneychangers, but you really should have paid the $75 dollars, it’s the taxes that you shouldn’t pay, cause you’re hardworking, but your house burned down cause you’re a deadbeat, and you should have kept your receipt in a fireproof box, that way you know you would have won the day, but then you should have known to put your pets into fireproof boxes, and now they’re gone too…
Being a wingnut is an Infinite Loop of Pee Wee Herman and Francis going, “I know you are, but what am I?”
Mike in NC
@KG:
But have you actually watched that shitty show in the last 20 years? What a wasteland.
Martin
@Yutsano: Thank you. He’s very curious, and hardly anything goes by that I don’t turn into a lesson. Half the teachers love him and half curse him under their breath.
One of my recurring lessons is that adults fuck up all the time. We get things wrong, we get lazy, and many adults will lie with impunity. If he thinks a teacher is wrong, challenge them. If he thinks he’s being lied to, challenge them. They don’t have a right to their own set of facts and if lies go by unchallenged, people will accept them as truths.
He’s interesting.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
Ross’ last post will be Exhibit A in his murder-for-hire trial.
Kirk Spencer
@Ross Hershberger:
Oh, it’s worse than that.
What they got called for was a grass fire, and they got there before the fire got to the first man’s house. Since it wasn’t paid property, well….
But wait, it gets even worse, or perhaps this time ironic.
See, behind this is politics. The city has a fire department. This region (county as I recall) does not. It’s been in negotiation with the city about paying to use the city’s fire department for two or three years now, and has been refusing. They didn’t want to have to raise taxes. Because they won’t raise taxes, some people have coped the problem by paying the $75 response fee.
But that brings up the worst of all. The owner was begging them, willing to pay MORE than the fee, if they’d just put out the fire. They didn’t – or at least whoever was in charge wouldn’t let them.
Ankhmoor’s fire department would be proud. For the rest of us, we get a stirling example of the consequences of the perpetual tax cut.
Provided anyone is paying attention.
Martin
@freelancer (itouch): And you get an endless cycle of people suing the government on the assumption their paperwork was lost and the wingnuts and libertarians go off screaming about tort reform and how the government wastes taxpayer dollars.
Ross Hershberger
I remember 15 years or so ago the excellent automotive writer Peter Egan (SP?) in Road and Track writing about his county’s decision to close rather than repair a critical bridge in his rural neck of the woods. He recounted the history of infrastructure building in (Minn or Wis) rural areas, then wondered if his generation would be remembered as the one who failed to keep those roads open.
Looks like it’s getting worse than that.
Yutsano
@Martin: I can already see this conversation:
You:”Blah blah blah blah blah…”
Kid: “Dad, you’re bullshitting.”
And you don’t know whether to smack him or hug his neck.
bend
The end of that idiot Beck rant is literally him arguing for a stronger individual mandate. He laughs at the notion that not buying health insurance will incur a fine of only a thousand dollars. Wasn’t it only about seven months ago that him and the rest of Murdoch’s Ship of Fools were going CRAZY about how forcing people to buy insurance being tantamount to slavery?
Mnemosyne
@KG:
I think I saw the answer in a movie once.
Martin
@Yutsano: About 2 years ago he started correcting me on things I was getting wrong, or incomplete, etc. It was a bit unnerving, but you could tell from space how happy he was to know something real that his parents didn’t know – something he worked to learn. Impossible to not be proud about that.
JWL
Doug J: I challenge you to name a single, prominent democrat who loudly challenges these political morons on a regular basis.
The question is rhetorical. There are none to name.
ulee
I can only hope those firefighters lay down in their beds at night and think, “man that was some fucked up shit. I mean, that was some fucked up shit.”
suzanne
@Ross Hershberger: Hmmm. I don’t really have a problem with either of my brothers-in-law. My ex-husband has an asshole sister, though, but she went on exotic vacations a lot. So that would be my solution: Send the asshole bros-in-law to a remote island paradise. That way, they think you’re doing them a favor, so they happily go, and get out of everyone else’s hair. Only problem would be funding this expatriation, but that just brings us back to the original question.
IronyAbounds
What absolute idiocy. Of course, the whole thing could have been avoided with even a modicum of intelligence in designing the system. They want people to pay up front and don’t want incentive not to pay up front. Fine, charge people who don’t pay on time $1,000 if needed to be called out. Almost everyone will pay early, and if they don’t a profit is made.
I swear to God, conservatives are so fucking stupid you have to wonder if there has been some secret intelligence sucking signal broadcast by Fox News for a long time. Oh wait, that would be O’Reilly, Hannity, Beck, Fox & Friends, Megan Kelly, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee…
pseudonymous in nc
@Joseph Nobles: Exactly. “This is Obamacare” is just mendacious beyond belief, because the only saving grace of a mandate to buy shitty insurance from profiteering fucks is that it goes some way towards dealing with adverse selection.
The city tried a $500 callout fee, but fewer than half of the callers paid up, and the city didn’t have any legal means of enforcing the fee, not even a mechanic’s lien. So it took the advice of a risk assessment manager and an insurance agent — remember, the firefighters have to carry their own insurance — and decided to drop the option to pay per call. That still left 400 non-subscribers, a few of whom showed up at a city meeting and complained that they weren’t being covered gratis.
Is there some kind of 100-year cycle of cultural amnesia, where the case for basic public services has to be reinforced by having some unlucky bastard get a taste of the Victorian fire plaque experience? Can’t they relive it at a theme park instead? Call it “The Gilded Age Experience” and have people dressed up in silk and pearls look down on you as they pass by in their landau?
KG
@Yutsano: I know, I know… I just find it funny because they are connecting dots without numbers.
@freelancer (itouch): So, Costa Rica, then?
suzanne
@Gold Star for Robot Boy: A GBV fan. Total win.
freelancer (itouch)
@KG:
The basement… of the Alamo.
Chuck Butcher
I have to tell you that I am glad to live in an area so damned rural that such an idea would never occur to anyone – well, until now. Maybe this kind of stupid shit works where “rural” is 15 minutes from town, here you can easily be over an hour from town even with lights and siren. Yes, we do have a lot of dependence on volunteer FDs, the county is 3500 sq mi and a total pop of 14K (10K in the county seat).
You can tell a firefighter not to put out a fire, but it’s like holding sirloin in front of a dog and telling him, “no,” he might not go for the steak, but he won’t like you for it.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)
@Joseph Nobles:
1) They are prevented by law from charging more than $500;
2) They have no way to enforce payment. As is, the fire departments get paid by fewer than half of the unpaid people whose fires they put out;
3) This guy did the same thing three years ago. He was trying for a second crack at the free riding apple.
Because, in order to cover the costs (which I strongly doubt that it does), you need to collect the $75 from every person in the county, not just those who have a fire and then decide to pay up afterward. It’s the exact same reason you have to require people to buy health insurance if you want universal coverage.
The service that they are receiving isn’t someone putting out the fire. It’s knowing that someone will put out any future fire. That’s the only way it can work.
As I said in a previous thread, if I’m the city of South Fulton, I’d do my best to get out of the business of providing fire protection outside the city altogether. There’s no upside for the city here. They have assumed a high risk of expensive liability without sufficient premiums to cover that risk. On top of that, if they weren’t in that business, they wouldn’t be taking such a PR hit right now. Why the hell do they want to do this? My guess is that they are required to by law, in which case I’d be hiring some expensive lawyers to find a way to challenge that.
Angry Black Lady
@Steeplejack: Angry Black Landy has a ring to it!
also this?
slays me.
Also, too, can someone tell stuff to stop happening. I spent most of the day blogging, and somehow it’s 11 pm and I sort of have to write a brief right now. And I still wanted to rant about the idiot who shot some kid in the ass because he didn’t like the kid’s baggy pants. WTF?!
Seriously. Just stop happening, stuff.
People, stop being asshats.
Us normal folk have shit to do.
freelancer (itouch)
@Chuck Butcher:
Exactly. A firefighter fights fire. A doctor treats the patient in front of him or her. The Coast Guard hoists you out of danger no matter what. To what degree is America exceptional if we so callously now put a priori $ signs on no shit, for real, life and death/basic human decency situations?
hamletta
All you Johnny-come-latelys should really have a look at the earlier thread where all the issues about this situation were hashed out.
I just want to add that I’ve been to Obion County (wasn’t sure where it was, till I heard mention of Union City). It’s a rough, sad, poor area. The “Big City” is Paducah, Ky. Granted, I went there on a late autumn day when the sky was covered with a thick blanket of gunmetal clouds, but really.
The “cities” that have the fire departments are tiny and poor. If the county residents don’t want to cough up the dough to cover fire protection, they have to do something to cover their costs.
Blotto von Bismarck
Republicans need to make this an integral part of their campaigns. With this issue in the forefront, there’s no way they’d lose.
Oh, and railing against elitists is no longer cool. Glenn Beck implied so himself! If rural whites can no longer be considered to be properly conservative…
Comrade Kevin
This is a motherfuckin’ invitation,
The only one you could ever need.
This is a motherfuckin’ invitation,
You try me.
Chuck Butcher
@hamletta:
How odd, I suppose you have some idea that a 3500sq mi County with 14,000 total population is just over run with money… Our houses don’t burn down while somebody just watches. Maybe that’s why such a thing as taxes exist and maybe that’s why it’s a bad idea to “just say no.”
Joseph Nobles
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN): The three items you mention do change my view of the situation, especially the third one. I don’t think they’d have to refuse a voluntary payment of more than $500, but the point here is moot since the guy has stiffed them in the past. Dang, what an idiot.
But as bend pointed out above, Beck has made a truly strong argument for an adequate individual mandate. Tie payments like this to property taxes.
You mistake me on the second quote, however. I’m talking to Glenn there. I highly doubt $75 per household would be adequate as well. I’m basically decrying Beck’s ability to work through the implications of his argument. But since Beck has a predetermined place he’s trying to get to (Obamacare bad – I got mine, eff you), working through implications of his argument is the least of his concerns.
P.S. OT, but if you don’t want the hairs of your neck to stand up, don’t go read this article.
ab
Hey, remember how Glenn Beck hates 9/11 victims families?
Those 3000+ people? What freeloaders!
JWL
Remember this one?*
“Now, what I am trying to do is to eliminate the dollar sign. That is something brand new in the thoughts of practically everybody in this room, I think – get rid of the silly, foolish old dollar sign. Well, let me give you an illustration: Suppose my neighbor’s home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose 400 or 500 feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire. Now, what do I do? I don’t say to him before that operation, “Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 for it.” What is the transaction that goes on? I don’t want $15 – I want my garden hose back after the fire is over. All right. If it goes through the fire all right, intact, without any damage to it, he gives it back to me and thanks me very much for the use of it. But suppose it gets smashed up – holes in it – during the fire; we don’t have to have too much formality about it, but I say to him, “I was glad to lend you that hose; I see I can’t use it any more, it’s all smashed up.” He says, “How many feet of it were there?” I tell him, “There were 150 feet of it.” He says, “All right, I will replace it.” Now, if I get a nice garden hose back, I am in pretty good shape”.
(*Hat Tip to FDR_
magurakurin
@Yutsano:
My understanding was that the Maya wiped themselves out. There is a fair amount of evidence of civil war and eventually cannibalism that has been found in some of the ruins discovered in the jungles of the Yucatan. But yeah, the whole 2012 Maya prediction thing is utter bullshit. It’s more like getting to 999,999,999 and not having a word for billion. It’s the end of the calendar and like you said, since they didn’t make it that far we and they will never know what would have come next.
aimai
@VixenStrangely:
Not only that, but since they have to stand around and watch to make sure the houses around don’t burn then they are immobilized for a fairly lengthy period of time–meaning they can’t go fight fires for their subscribers elsewhere. Maybe they have some plan for dealing with that, like that they leave and fight the other fire and leave some pencil pusher explaining that they will come back if the houses adjacent start to catch?
aimai
No one has pointed out how really imprecise and inefficient a way of paying this is. Anyone who has ever collected money for the god damned PTA knows its better to assess a single “tax” up front, like, say, embedded in school fees where it is a derisory amount of the total than to keep asking people for one off amounts. the fluctuations in a voluntary fee system like this are anathema to a well run department: you can’t predict from year to year how much you are going to have, you can’t decide in advance about capital purchases or hiring, etc..etc..etc…
Cermet
@RSA: Not only that (our fire dept is funded by property taxes) but our uses local volunteers! Talk about socialism!
Ajay
When a fire is put out by a fire department, its socialism. Why you pay 1000s of $$ to a corporate entity to do the same, its perfectly ok; patriots would only do it this way.
El Cid
The fire department should have saved the home, then shot the guy.
debbie
Didn’t anyone consider garnishing the guy’s wages for the 75 bucks?
Steaming Pile
I, for one, would like to see lawsuits being filed. This is beyond simply not being “right.”
AxelFoley
@Steeplejack:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Alwhite
Franklin did not form the first fire company, he did however form the first publicly supported fire company in the new world (the f’ing commie!).
Before that you paid your money to a local fire company & they put a badge on your house to indicate you belonged to them. No other company would put out your fire . . . unless their “plug ugly” took control of the water plug (through physical violence) and demanded you pay his company since yours could not get water. Occasionally as fires spread a bidding war would start amongst neighbors whos houses had caught fire.
Since that model of fire protection was the founders method the doctrine of original intent makes it superior to so-solisht commie community funded model.
DecidedFenceSitter
@debbie: Have you missed the part where the city cannot legally pursue financial reimbursement. All they could do is send a bill and say “Will you pretty, pretty please pay this, even though you are under no obligation to pay it?” And thus only 50% of people do.
@Steaming Pile: Which part isn’t right? Because the moment the city gets sued, they could decide not to cover anything outside the city, and leave all those out-of-towners screwed, not just the ones who aren’t willing to pay. There’s no legal obligation for the city to cover those out of town.
Wag
Didn’t his mortgage company (or the landlord’s mortgage company) consider paying this $75 fee along with the homeowner’s insurance? I guess not , meaning they may not have been aware.
I think these drown the government in a bath tub types are treading on thin ice. Once their policies begin to adversely impact Insurance Company profit margins there will be hell to pay!
debbie
@DecidedFenceSitter:
Yes, I did miss that part. Sorry. I forgot how the norm anymore is to twist legal language so that regulations contain as many loopholes as possible. Just like that part of the Medicare Part D legislation, where the government is prohibited from negotiating lower drug prices. More sound fiscal sensibility from fiscal conservatives.
shecky
I simply don’t understand the outrage anyone outside the county has over this situation. The fire dept arrangement is the way it is because locals affected want it this way, as reckless or stupid or heartless as it may be. Crannick, in particular, liked the arrangement, and stupidly expected to freeload off the system anyway. In the end, he got not only what he deserved, he got exactly what any sane person would expect from the arrangement.
The people of the county pretty much know how the system works. They presumably like the way the system works, or else they would choose different. As such, outsiders outrage over this seems completely misplaced.
jinxtigr
@Joseph Nobles: Sounds like he’s saying, ‘We shouldn’t have committed war crimes just because there were orders’. I agree…
Bill Section 147
@El Cid: I think the Mayans didn’t score till the end of the fourth quarter.
Jules
@shecky:
And that there is the fear behind all “entitlement” whining.
That freeloader just might get something I can’t get or have had to pay for.
A whole movement was begun because old white conservatives were pissed that those brown folks might be getting something the Tea Party ass can not get or has to pay for now that there is black dude in the White House.
In a small town in TN there will be an over abundance of folks who claim to be Christians, but for the life of me I can’t see what is “christian” about letting someones house burn to the ground with their pets inside.
I think Jesus told a story about some workers who all got paid the same amount no matter how long they had worked that day….
Older
@Wag: “Didn’t his mortgage company (or the landlord’s mortgage company) consider paying this $75 fee along with the homeowner’s insurance?”
Interesting question. My mortgage company wants to know that I have all the insurance that I need, and they want to know where the nearest fireplug is. I wonder how this guy gets a mortgage at all without showing how he will be able to fight a fire, if one should occur.
Mike Lamb
Every time I hear about this story, I get visions of Jack Nicholson in “The Departed” collecting his protection services fee from local business…
Jay C
A couple of points:
Apparently, Obion County, TN has just (as in, like yesterday, 10/5/10) approved a county-wide fire-protection plan (where the FDs in the towns are all agreeing on which “exurban” areas they will cover) and sent it to their County Commission for approval. Still no news, though as to how this it is going to be paid for: AFAICT, coverage will still be some sort of optional (They don’t call TN “The Volunteer State” for naught I guess!).
Also: Has Glenn Beck gotten any negative feedback over his on-air mockery of the poor slob who lost his house? I imagine if Rachel Maddow or Stephen Colbert went on and sneered at Mr. Cranick for a cretinous Tennessee redneck, the apoplectic shrieking from starboard over such a prejudiced characterization would be deafening. Oh well, “liberal media” and all…..
REN
@Wag
I was thinking the same thing. If his homeowners insurance was paid and up to date I’m guessing they might have something to say about all this.
I live in a rural area and had to watch my next door neighbors home burn down this spring. If the fire chief had tried to keep those volunteers from fighting that fire they would have run him down and then backed over him.
Catsy
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN):
Cite? This is the first I’ve seen anything like that written, and every story I’ve read on the issue has pointed out that he paid his fee in years past and not paying it this year was just an oversight.
DecidedFenceSitter
@Catsy: As I’ve told it too, I discover that I seem to have been slightly off – his son got busted 2-3 years ago, house saved, and sternly told to pay the next day.
pseudonymous in nc
The initial local reporting quoted Cranick saying that he just expected the fire department to show up anyway. The “we forgot” came later. There’s also a report saying that “two or three years ago” the department responded and told them to pay the $75 the next day. Which doesn’t really count as an excuse.
VAdem
The Maya were not whiped out and the Aztecs did not defeat them. The great northern cities such as Tikal collapsed for unknown reasons, some think it’s due to war, others think it’s due to environmental degredation. Even after the collapse of Tikal there were and are Mayans living in the area. When the Spanish came to the areas controlled by the Mayans they still had all their culture including their writing, calenders and architecture. The Spanish destroyed most of their books and a lot of the culture but the Mayans are still here, living in what is now Guatamala, Southern Mexico and Belize.
Angry Black Lady
@Jay C: Libruls are held to a higher standard. Could you imagine if the outcry if anyone on the left had said “I hope George Bush fails” or “I want Bush’s policy on X to be his waterloo.”
Asshats.
Some dipshit on my blog is taking the Glenn Beck route and blaming the homeowner for his own pets dying and wants to charge him with animal neglect.
God Bless the USA (United States of Asshats.)
donquijoterocket
@Jules:
There’s all that and track any cons argument against something back to its root and you’ll generally find it either comes down to some MFin freeloader got a chunk of what’s mine or, this is going to cost me something either monetarily or in terms of my personal comfort and convenience.
It’s why there never was and never will be such a thing as “compassionate conservatism” there are no compassionate conservatives.