"I heard about Tracy, California, which is charging $300 every time the fire department answers an emergency call that doesn't involve a fire.
That summons up not only the prospect of little Susie's kitten being left to die up in the tree, but also of her dad who has just collapsed with an asthma attack. One citizen said if her husband had a heart attack, she'd set her kitchen table on fire to dodge the fee.
To be sure, you can buy an annual package deal for $48, which makes sense if you average more than one emergency call every six years. I'm not sure if that's $48 for one non-fire call, or if you get unlimited calling. Tracy (population 81,714) is not the only town considering charging for emergency services. So is Los Angeles.
Of course, the extra fee will be paid by your insurance company, right? Not a chance. Poor folks may have to look twice at a family member writhing on the floor and ask, 'Are you really $300 worth of sick?' That's why we all consider it more or less our right to pick up the phone and dial 911. Of course since the whole community shares the cost of the emergency call, that's socialism, right?"
Today is election day here in Norman. One of the idiots running for city council dropped off a door knocker the other day. It proclaimed loudly the conservative mantra that "a recession is the wrong time to raise taxes."
That would make sense, except for these conservatives, there is never a good time to raise taxes, just as there is never a wrong time to cut taxes. No matter if you can't pay for workers in your prison system (as you harumph about "tough on crime"). No matter if we have to furlough state employees, or even teachers.
Republicans have pulled off a tremendous victory in the word game. They have managed to badmouth government completely, and convince the average citizen that all taxes are bad. Those same conservatives, of course, really just dislike government services they don't use and believe those services are socialism.
It is hard to imagine how that belief has made us a better people, nor made us more prosperous or healthy. Well, to be fair, it has made a small segment of the society incredibly wealthy.
As I keep saying, conservatives seem to think that the middle class of the 1950s arose because of some magical free market beliefs. And they seem intent on destroying that same middle class.
5 comments:
Didn't cities in earoly America try to chage fees for firservices and it led to an entire city burning to the ground?
I don't think that EMS should charge for rescues, but I do get tired of idiots getting stranded out on ice floes while ice fishing after having been warned half a dozen times that the conditions were unsafe. I think that people should be charged under these circumstances or if is a hoax (balloon boy). I think there are also instances where people abuse the 911 system with wasteful calls, but it would be better to deal with this on a case by case basis rather than punishing everyone.
I think some privatization works, like for smaller scale projects. On the other hand, there are times where it is a huge failure, such as when Tennessee tried to privatize their public mental health system back in the mid 1990's.
The "I love government" crowd have a very unhappy future coming their way. The government cannot support itself, and the private sector can no longer support the government. The government has tried to compensate for the lack of support by borrowing money; but that will not work over the long term. Ever seen a train wreck?
I have seen an idiot comment. is that the same as a "train wreck?"
Since you think the "private sector" is fundamentally different from the "government," I suggest you no longer use your public services at all, Ernest. No public water, no cops, and for god's sake, don't touch foot in a public library. But then again, you don't sound like you have read much beyond Glenn Beck, so who needs a library?
Bob,
I am not sure of your example (but then again, my specialty is post 1870 America). It would not surprise me, as it took us a while to recognize that we could do more as a community. I do know that our early cities were an Ernest-troll dream. No sanitation, and no fire prevention. Disease rolled through those cities just as the fires did. At some point, we realized that we had some things in shared need, and we could pay for those through our taxes and fees.
But then came the dumbest and most idiotic strain of conservatism that said that government was evil and always cost us our freedom. These brainiacs believed that the private sector could do absolutely everything better than the public could, and have spent the last 30 years trying to make that so. Reagan started much of it with his "government is not the solution, it is the problem" mantra, but the Bush/Cheney/Ernest/TeaParty/Beck wing have taken it to a whole new level of stupidity.
So poor people won't be able to use emergency services? The Ayn Rand Republicans don't care, and don't have to care. They believe that as long as they get theirs, that is all that matters--oh, and as long as we get to torture others and bomb countries we don't like.
The Republican party used to include people like Eisenhower who didn't realize that building interstates was socialism and horrible. It used to include people who recognized that burning rivers and acid rain were bad things.
But then again, that Republican party could read.
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