Reading this Times piece on the flooding in the tax-burdened Southern Tier of New York, and reading local items about the work of the many local volunteer first responders who are returning from helping with Irene flooding, and will probably help with the current flooding, I’m reminded of how Texas is enjoying their low taxes:
Severe cuts have also hit assistance grants to volunteer fire departments throughout Texas. The grants decreased from $30 million per year in 2010 and 2011 to $13.5 million per year in 2012 and 2013. These are cuts that firemen are now dealing with.
“I don’t agree with it. I understand what Governor Perry did,” said Henry Perry (no relation). “Do I like it? No. I don’t like it at all.”
The cuts come at a time when Texas fire departments have already been slowing purchases of new fire trucks and other critical equipment as a way to save money, said Guy Turner, president of the Texas State Association of Fire Fighters. The association had endorsed Perry in his re-election for governor in 2010.
“What I fear will happen is equipment will start to fail and put our members at peril,” Turner explained. “You can imagine if you’re inside a structure fire and your engine quits.”
Every little town in my part of New York has a remarkably well-equipped and well-staffed volunteer/professional fire and ambulance company. Our taxes are high, but we’re not worried about whether the fire truck’s pump will break, or whether the ambulance will start, when we call 911. When some natural disaster hits, we have enough capacity to send our fire and ambulance companies to the rest of the state, and if a disaster strikes here, we know we can rely on the other cities and towns to send theirs. I seem to be one of the few who remembers that when the conversation turns to the supposedly crippling high taxes that we pay.
Odie Hugh Manatee
If you want to live cheaply with low taxes you may end up paying more in the end. As I have told past customers about doing regular oil changes on their vehicles; ‘You can pay me a little now or you can pay me a lot more later’.
martha
We cheeseheads are with you mistermix. We may live in a tax “hell” as Scott Walker/Paul Ryan keep telling us, but we have good equipment, well trained people (both volunteers and paid staff) and strong cooperative agreements in place to work together when emergencies hit ( fires, not so much, more like tornadoes, flooding, blizzards, etc…)
Richard S
They actually don’t have the right to secede but boy would I like them to.
cathyx
<blockquoteThe cuts come at a time when Texas fire departments have already been slowing purchases of new fire trucks and other critical equipment as a way to save money, said Guy Turner, president of the Texas State Association of Fire Fighters. The association had endorsed Perry in his re-election for governor in 2010.
Just perfect! Vote yourself out of a job. It’s the republican way.
adolphus
But Gov. Perry prayed and prayed for rain. What else do you want to do? One mortal man can only do so much, even if he is Cowboy. If you can’t shoot at fire to put it out, what do you want him to do? He already refused to stay its execution. Prayer and burying his head in the sand of denial are the only bullets in his gun.
Zifnab25
Are your taxes even that high? You’ve got a 4.5% city sales tax and another 4% state sales tax. That’s 8.5% – which pretty close to what Texas residents pay – 6% statewide, around 2-3% locally.
Meanwhile, you’ve got a city income tax pegged at around 3-4%.
That’s a difference. But I wouldn’t run off and call it a huge difference. Of course, in exchange for these rates, you get some of the finest municipal services in the world. A massive subway system and bus system. Multiple bridges and tunnels to and from NYC. Some of the best police and fire department crews in the country. A huge beautiful city park. Libraries. Museums. Malls. Unfiltered tap water so good they bottle it and sell it abroad. New York City is everything a city should be, and it costs you an extra 4% on your taxes.
Meanwhile, Texas is quite literally on fire and Perry hasn’t even called the legislature back into secession to address the issue. I imagine a Texas Governor Bloomberg would be handling things a bit differently.
satby
A serious car accident up the road needed had 3 ambulances called. The first 2 didn’t have the backboard to take the worst injured person out of the wreck. I’m from Chicago, and I swear to my neighbors that they live in the Mississippi of the north. Low taxes all right; and crap schools and no fire protection or services to speak of.
And the homeowners insurance policy costs are higher, because your house is guaranteed to be toast if you do have a fire.
harlana
@Zifnab25:
Wow, so wonder what that ducking out of DeMint’s interrogation was all about. It appears TX does not need Perry as much as Perry needs TX.
Villago Delenda Est
The stupid of Rick Perry.
It quite literally burns.
satby
I can haz edit pleez?
Villago Delenda Est
@satby:
You’re paying more, but at least, thank Jeebus, it’s not to some terrible government agency, rather to some upstanding private insurance company.
bemused
I’ve got a sneaking feeling that all those bitchin’ cranks that write letters to the local newspapers screaming about potholes, crumbling highways, neighborhood blight, police/fire response time or anything else they think is being neglected by their incompetent, sloughing on the job city/county/state employees are the same know-it-alls who think they pay too much in taxes for what they get. They want 5 star service with a five dollar bill.
Davis X. Machina
Texas is fertile ground for the Good Word. A reading from the Gospel according to Saint Margaret, the Thatcher:
“Remember, my little ones, everything that is, can be bought and sold. And that which cannot be bought or sold, is not. So, too, there is no such thing as society, there are only individual men and women, and there are families. Everything private is better than anything public is, or ever can be. It’s your money, that you earned. And so long as one of us, anywhere, labors under a collective bargaining agreement, none of us are truly free.
cathyx
Putting out fires by bucket brigade is tax free. Maybe they should look into it.
mai naem
Surely, the American people would not be so stupid as to vote for Rick Perry. I mean, c’mon, anybody seriously think that Americans would vote for the guy who looks like Bush’s twin. I mean I know one can never underestimate the stupidity of the American voter, but still. Bush’s twin? No way.
cathyx
@mai naem: Bush won 2 elections.
Mino
Oh, we’re gonna pay. It will be in insurance rate increases, cause nothing pleases our state lege like being lobbied by the insurance industry.
Phylllis
@satby:
This. The better your local/county fire service, the lower the ISO rating. Lower ISO ratings = a break on homeowner’s insurance.
Warren Terra
In other fun Texas facts, under Perry the Death Penalty has apparently overtaken Plane Crashes as a cause of death in Texas, according to some people’s back-of-the-envelope calculations.
SCarolina
When I lived on Long Island we used to faithfully support our volunteer fire department. We always used to kid them that they never lost a basement yet. They were the best and always ready to lend a hand, whether putting out fires or getting transporting medical personnel during a snow storm. Yeah, our taxes were high but I’d take that over what we have in here in South Carolina and Texas. The taxes are low here but so is everything else, like wages, services, and jobs. Then again, we have Jim DeMint – what more can I say? Blech.
Davis X. Machina
@SCarolina: The question ‘how much taxes do we pay’ is really about ‘what kind of society shall we have’, and it’s hard to have that discussion when one of the parties to it keeps asking ‘what is this “society” of which you speak?’
Mino
@Davis X. Machina: It’s nuts that this country is being controlled by high-functioning sociopaths, loopy opportunists and gutless wonders.
Auldblackjack
@Zifnab25: There are also NY State taxes to consider. But holy shite on the Perry thing. Which TV haircut will have the sack to ask “Gov. Perry, wildfires have ravaged your State for weeks and first responders seem to be overwhelmed. Are you considering calling the State Legislature back into secession while you still have a State?”
Can you say “My Pet Goat?”
RoonieRoo
And even better than not having a working pump on a fire truck, our firefighters themselves are being put at even greater risk trying to do their jobs. Their safety equipment is failing or they don’t have the correct safety equipment for the job they are being asked to do.
Not only is Texas on fire, we are apparently trying to use our firefighters as extra kindling.
Mino
And if you think the US reps we send to Washington are loopy, you ought to see the ones running things here at home. I’ve said before that the US should secede Texas before she totally wrecks the place.
JCT
And unless we get our act in gear for 2012 we get to watch Perry expand his “Texas Miracle” to the whole country. I am amazed that Texas re-elected this guy.
Honestly, I’m 49, this is about to be the most stark Presidential choice in my lifetime. This is saying a lot given that I was a college freshman for the Reagan-Carter election.
gbear
Perry is counting on the generosity of well-equipped fire departments from other states to send crews down to TX and save his m-f’ing ass.
Davis X. Machina
@Mino: People will vote for people because they have the balls to do what they only dream of doing. They’re not up to the consequences of saying to the world “Fuck off and die!” themselves, but they’ll vote to do it at arms lenghth. Assholes by proxy.
PurpleGirl
@gbear: What well-equipped fire departments in other states? What states are close by that don’t or haven’t pulled the defunding of things like fire fighting? Frankly, he could ask for aid from someplace like NY or Michigan but by the time the trucks and men got to Texas, I don’t think they wouldn’t help very much.
superdestroyer
Texas Public schools get a better return on their schools considering that the schools outperform New York (at least at the 8th grade level when correcting for race) and do it at a much lower costs. Data
Do you have a reference for how much better fire safety is in New York. I know when I did consulting work in New Jersey I was amazed how poorly organized the volunteer fire departments were. The joke in Northern New Jersey was one had to hope that you house did not catch on fire during the work day.
ppcli
I was going to add something snarky, but really any comment would only detract from the disheartening simple fact. Plus the realization that if Perry were to be nominated for President, I expect that at least 90% of these firefighters would still vote for him over Obama, even if half of them have been laid off and Texas remains on fire all the way to November 2012.
“Well, he framed me for armed robbery, but man, I’m aching for that upper-class tax cut.” [votes for Bob]
— Krusty the Clown.
wasabi gasp
Sadly, Perry is not literally pissing on their heads.
nancydarling
In discussing Perry’s clusterfuck, AKA Texas, on another blog, here is a comment from another poster there:
Perry’s fubar in Texas reminds me of when Ronny Raygun was Gov. of Calif.. After he came into office, he was informed that the state had sold its obsolete (circa 1930-50) forestry fire fighting equipment to Chile in order to upgrade the service. As Gov., he cancelled the sale and had them hauled (since many vehicles were unable move themselves) back to the stations. It did not matter that the maintenance budgets had been cut. Replacement parts were no longer available.
nancydarling
Block quote at #33 should have started at “Perry’s fubar…”
Sometimes I’m a mini-clusterfuck myself.
Mino
@PurpleGirl: I wonder if the trucks would get here before the fire reached them?
El Cid
Prayer is free.
This is how we do things in Reelamurka, libs.
PurpleGirl
@superdestroyer: NYC has a professional paid fire department.
nancydarling
Here is a repost from comment at the “There’s Got to Be a Morning After” thread on September 8th.
Shlemizel - was Alwhite
I’m sure Texas’ problems are because of all the damn Mexycans and the other takers and leaches. There would be plenty of money even with no taxes at all if it weren’t for them.
With these people it is never that taxes are too low. They will not be happy until taxes are zero and then they will whine about not getting what they need from the government.
ppcli
@El Cid:
Aha. That’s the problem right there. Too many of the wrong kind of prayers made Jesus angry.
nancydarling
Block quote fail again!! Everything after the block quote should be included. I should stick to shovels and wheel barrows and things I understand.
wrb
Letting Texas burn now is actually a smart thrifty move, since they will be able stop paying for firefighting immediately, since there will be nothing left to burn. Texas, Arizona, Nevada, SW Utah, look like they are going to be desert pretty soon, why waste money on a futile fight?
GregB
God to Rick Perry.
Drop dead.
ppcli
OK, gotta give ex-prez W. some credit here. At least when he was in office and there were cameras around, that Crawford ranch was well brush-cleared.
PurpleGirl
@superdestroyer: More information from the FDNY web site:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/pdf/vital_stats_2010_cy.pdf
NYC Land Area: 322 sq. miles
Population: 8,391,881
Fire Houses: 218
EMS Stations: 32
Personnel–Uniformed Fire: 10,849
Uniformed EMS: 3,399
Civilian: 1,622
Are you sure you want to insult the NYC Fire Department?
ppcli
@GregB: Ah, good one. Perhaps we’ll also soon read “Brainless Perry found in Topless Bar”.
PattyP
@adolphus: But if taxes were even lower, every household would be able to afford its own fire truck!
Zifnab25
@PurpleGirl: All they ever do is run into buildings hit by airplanes and drag people to safety during the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history.
Other than that? Completely useless.
SBJules
I’m a Californian and we have fires, but I’ve never seen anything like the Texas fires and how they are being fought. There evidently is not a central “Forest service” or the like. It is each little volunteer fire department for themselves and of course Perry cut their budgets. The Los Angeles Times has lately been featuring Perry on the front with some “Texas miracle” every day. Yesterday’s was about the Texas healthcare system which has the highest uninsured rate in the nation. Prayer is pretty much all he has left.
Firebert
I sincerely hope The Turd in a Toupee suffers a crushing and humiliating defeat to The Black Guy.
El Cid
@Zifnab25: They are leeches and do not create jobs.
Roger Moore
@JCT:
I’m not. What you’re seeing is the delayed price of his reelection. It’s a standard Republican trick. Slash any spending that’s associated with long-term consequences so you can cut taxes without an immediately perceptible loss in the quality of government services. This proves how great you are at cutting the fat out of government and forms the basis of your reelection campaign. The trick is to run for some other office before the long-term problems you’ve set up get bad. Then you blame those problems on your successor’s incompetence. Perry just forgot that the guy before him was using the same trick, so the consequences came sooner than expected.
maya
Rick Perry is an ash hole.
Dead Earnest
Isn’t NY one of the states that pays more taxes than dollar value of return it receives (from the Fed, but fungible fun none the less)?
Isn’t Texas one of the states that receives more dollar value than the tax they send in to the Fed?
May be that Texas is not one of the welfare states but I suspect it remains the case that some higher tax states of the NE, with better state funded services are fungibly (sp?) funding some of the lower state (poorly) funded services of the lower tax states.
So you got that going for you, which is…
arguingwithsignposts
@Zifnab25:
I certainly don’t want to slag on the NYC fire department, but “running into burning buildings” is pretty much in the whole “raison d’ etre” of firefighters. So let’s don’t elevate that department above others.
Roger Moore
@nancydarling:
I think you mean “FYWP“. If you put two underscores (__) on the lines separating paragraphs, the blockquote won’t end after the first paragraph.
nancydarling
@Roger Moore: Thanks, I had forgotten that step.
Auldblackjack
@Dead Earnest:
Texas gets about $0.94 back of every $1.00 sent to the Feds.
Roger Moore
@nancydarling:
It’s still a FYWP moment. Well written software would allow multi-paragraph quotes without inconvenient, hard to remember workarounds. My impression is that the main reason to stick with WP is because the other blogging software is even worse.
WereBear
That has been my experience. While Blogger is really improved, and you got the built in Google home field, WordPress has the options.
To be On Topic, it has always amazed me how many people retire to a place with no services at the very time of life when they will probably need them most.
PurpleGirl
@arguingwithsignposts: It was superdestroyer who was slagging on the NYC firefighters by questioning if NYC is safer than Texas and then commenting on a volunteer force in northern NJ. I was merely pointing out some statistics on the size of the NYC department.
Zifnab25, I believe, wanted to remind superdestroyer about something the FDNY had done and whose anniversary is tomorrow (with subtle snark).
While I’m not looking forward to tomorrow and am already bored by the TV shows and interviews, a young probie firefighter who grew up and lived in my complex died that day and tomorrow they are holding a remembrance ceremony for him.
I believe the one insulting fire fighters is superdestroyer and not Zifnab25. (I know a couple of volunteer fire fighters and they are the best people in their communities for what they do.)
arguingwithsignposts
@Roger Moore: FWIW, FYWP doesn’t do that itself wrt the blockquote issue. I run other WP sites, and none of them have that problem. I think there’s some add-ons in the commenting code that cause the problem.
arguingwithsignposts
@PurpleGirl: Yeah, I saw superdestroyer’s comment. I gathered he was slagging on NYC teachers too, and the comment seemed too idiotic to reply to directly.
I agree with your point, and having known some firefighters myself, both professional and volunteer, they do an incredibly difficult job.
I just wanted to put out there – especially in the current 9/11 remembrance – that we don’t elevate one group of public servants to the status of superheroes based on their location.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Perry’s Master Plan:
1. Choke off public funding for an essential service.
2. Tut-tut as bad event becomes a full scale gut-wrenching, oh God please help us, horrible disaster because a hamstrung provider of the essential service can’t adequately respond to the event. (If possible do tut-tutting from the safety of another state.)
3. Point out the disaster this proves any public funding of the essential service must be a complete waste of money.
4. Call your pal who just happens to own a business that could kinda sorta fill in for the publicly funded essential service, in a few months, no more than a year, tops. We promise.
5. Give your pal the contract to provide the essential service.
6. Raise taxes for the essential service because your pal is … uh … producing jobs, yeah! And America mumblemumble capitalist, freedom, God mumble. Nice little house you have there, be a shame if something were to happen to it.
7. When people complain that the contractor is absolute crap at providing the essential service, call them Communists.
superdestroyer
@arguingwithsignposts:
The original post was that since New Yorkers pay high taxes that they have better volunteer fire departments than low tax states. It was offered without a single bit of proof but with the supporting idea of many people that higher taxes means better government services. Yet, for schools, there is no connection between more spending and better academic achievement.
NYC has a professional fire department like virtually all large city. Large Texas cities also have professional fire department but do with lower taxes. How how does one compare the cost benefit of high spending on fire departments.
I thought that progressives where the smart ones who used facts and analysis to support their positions.
arguingwithsignposts
@superdestroyer:
Your link didn’t say that. And, from what I could tell, the difference between the two (five points on a standardized test) was negligible.
And, IIRC, mistermix doesn’t live in NYC, but Rochester.
Well, there is the concept of Cost of Living, which would show some disparity between the two states. I’m sure someone could put some numbers together for you.
I didn’t get this at all. I read the OP to state that relatively higher taxes spend on public services led to better public services, a much larger point than the strawman you seem to have erected.
As to that point, I can attest that VFD support in rural areas of Texas doesn’t compare at all to the support in an area that uses taxes to fund a professional service. Nor does County Sheriff crime coverage, ambulance service, hospital service, nor does rural water and sewer. You may enjoy lower tax rates, but you pay for them in other ways.
Joey Maloney
@cathyx:
The first one was 5-4.
PurpleGirl
@superdestroyer: Because the higher taxes mean that the equipment is up to date and properly maintained. It means that although the fire fighters might be volunteers, they have a fire house, and trucks, and other equipment that they need. They are prepared to fight fires. While I live in NYC, a friend’s brother was the fire chief of Roosevelt (LI), I spent a lot of time with friends in Peekskill which has a volunteer department, a late college friend was a volunteer fire fighter and then managed the river rescue squad in New Baltimore (NY). All these areas kept their departments running optimally because the operations were supported by taxes. Do you want me to believe that the Texas units which are being hurt by lower state support can continue to work well as their trucks and equipment ages? Or that they don’t have a state-wide fire fighting unit? When it comes to civilization, you get what you pay for — in human services and the needed hardware.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Oh hooray. Superdestoyer is back. How many posts will it take for him to get to blarh har minorities blarhgle?
TenguPhule
Or as we like to call him here, BOB’s incompetent little friend.
Porlock Junior
This post is enlightening; it helps one bring the pieces together nicely.
I mean, it has been obvious for some time that the Good Lord in His implacable justice is Totally Pissed at Texas and has been for months and shows no sign of relenting. And we know exactly why: the place is run by and for unrepentant Sodomites.
Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.
–Ezekiel 16:49 (NIV, less thundering than King James but less misleading here)
BTW, my apologies to Texans who aren’t Republicans, who are already suffering enough; this obviously isn’t aimed at you. Why God is aiming that stuff at you, I don’t know.
But God isn’t into the big fat miracles any more; he prefers to make it all look like natural causes. Texas refuses to tax itself for the public good, even when the good wouldn’t be just for shiftless poor people but would protect the taxpayers — a sure sign the Devil has a grip on them. But Gods sends no highly visible angels and demons he makes it all look like just logic. You don’t take care of stuff and you get hurt.
It’s the same thing as, you know, populating the Earth through the ingenious processes of evolution. Keeping the planets swinging around the Sun by gravity rather than angels.