The Ingratitude of Xians

Via Divine Irony:

A Colorado man who was rescued from his submerged car by first responders now claims, via his lawyer, that it was something else that saved him: grace, presumably of the divine kind.

And he’s getting ready to sue the people who pulled him to safety – because he says they took too long to show up.

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To me it seems like he should be suing God and thanking the first responders….

Are Firefighters People?

 Firefighters are about to become the most important public employees in the country, if they haven't already. We would be smart to take extra-good care of them.

Steve Benen at Maddowblog:

As brutal wildfires spread in Colorado, federal fighters, along with state and local first responders, are doing everything they can to deal with the disaster.

But Sarah Kliff noted a detail yesterday that I did not know: thousands of federal firefighters do not have health insurance.

SNIP

For what it's worth, the Affordable Care Act would extend health care subsidies to these firefighters -- many of whom make modest salaries between $25,000 and $35,000 a year -- making insurance affordable for them in 2014.

SNIP

Postscript: Incidentally, didn't Mitt Romney and his campaign just spend a week telling voters it's absurd of President Obama to want to hire more firefighters? Given the developments, maybe that wasn't the smartest thing Romney has ever done?

Update: John Lauer, a 27-year-old member of a Colorado-based "hotshot" crew, is one of the uninsured first responders, and he's created a petition on Change.org in support of health benefits for firefighters. As of this afternoon, it has a little over 116,000 signatures.

It's the Budget Cuts, Stupid

One overlooked factor in the case of the Tennessee fire department that watched houses burn when owners failed to pay protection subscriptions is the effect of government budget cuts.

In a Kentucky county perhaps not coincidentally on the Tennessee border, that connection is clear-cut.

From the Middlesboro Daily News:

Bell Countians will be asked to consider adding a fire department subscribers fee to their budgets in the new year.

In a notice issued to media on Monday by Assistant Fire Chief David Miracle, the fire department states, in part:

“The Bell County Volunteer Fire Department would like to inform the citizens of Bell County that effective January 1, 2012, the BCVFD will be collecting an annual subscribers fee for the fire department. This is a voluntary fee and is in no way mandatory. The BCVFD will not deny our services to anyone.

SNIP

Miracle stated that the fire department would like to be funded entirely through a mandatory subscribers fee and claimed that BCVFD representatives had proposed that in Bell County Fiscal Court (BCFC) in the past.

The BCVFD and the BCFC have been in and out of court for five years due to changes in county ordinances that now requires the BCVFD to submit receipts for reimbursement, rather than receiving an allotted amount each year with little accountability.

The BCVFD collectively says that they are not owned by the county and have no indebtedness to tax payers.

“We own it,” Miracle said, “We are a 5013c non-profit corporation.” He also likened the BCVFD to a paving company that would be used contractually by the county.

Bell County Judge Executive Albey Brock disagrees, as he has many times in this long-running argument. “Since the fire department’s inception, the taxpayer has given them over $6 million,” Brock said. “They are a non-profit group established to provide service.”

Since the BCVFD has closed two of the nine stations (Colmar and Arjay stations were closed mid-December) in the county, Brock says funding will be halted. “At this point, we can’t fund them, if they’re closing stations.”

So it's a political fight. But it's a political fight that wouldn't happen if Bell County weren't strapped by state budget cuts, caused by federal budget cuts, caused by deficit hysteria and an economic meltdown caused by banksters on Wall Street.