For those of you who say vote R no matter what, and not voting is the same as voting D.
So what will electing Republicans do this time? What will make 2027 and different than now? I’ve said time and time again: just because Democrats are your enemy doesn’t make Republicans your friend.
I spend a good number of posts in pointing out police malfeasance. Now I am going to take some firefighters to task. Those who read this blog know that I was a firefighter for more than 2 decades, and I have a drawer full of certifications that back this up. I want you to look at this video, then I will give you my 2 cents’ worth.
Firefighters are permitted to break and move things, as well as forcibly damage property in order to deal with exigent circumstances. The emergency does not give them unlimited authority, but firefighters are not generally permitted to do more than is reasonably necessary for the exigency. Courts assess the need and the response in light of what responders reasonably knew at the time. The controlling court case here is Bowditch v. Boston, 101 U.S. 16 (1879).
The exact authority, compensation rules, and potential liability also depend on the state and local law governing the fire department. Bowditch, for example, addressed a Massachusetts statutory compensation scheme, while the Fifth Circuit’s Baker v. City of McKinney limited its ruling against compensation to damage objectively necessary to prevent imminent harm during an active emergency.
So the question becomes: Was that path for the hose objectively necessary to gain access to the water supply? I would argue that there was a better path for that hose, and taking that alternate path to gain access to the water supply would have taken less time than breaking the windows on the car. Here is a picture of Engine 82 (the same exact fire truck). If you look at the area within the red circle, you will see that there is pump intake in the middle of the fire truck, and the yellow circle is the front bumper intake of the fire truck.
Looking at the video, the firefighters spent 41 seconds breaking out the windows on the car, and another full minute passing the hose through the car from the hydrant to the front intake. So, it was nearly two minutes to connect the hose by going through the car.
Now take a look from the video of the firefighters breaking the window:
Which method do you think would be faster? The question then turns, according to the court cases involved, was it necessary for the firefighters to break this car’s windows?
Note the New York firefighter who posted this admits they weren’t doing it to gain access to the hydrant, they did what they did to “deliver justice like this to the bad guys,” and also calling this an “act of justice.”
Delivering justice as some sort of ad hoc parking enforcement court is not the firefighters’ job. Go ahead, Google “FDNY engine 82 break car windows” and see just how many times FDNY is “delivering justice” by doing thousands of dollars in damage to car owners whose only transgression is illegal parking.
This is wrong. Had I done this in my department, I would have been fired, and rightfully so.
Every city, along with their lobbying partners, is busy trying to scare voters about Amendment 3. Remember Kissimmee and how they gave the fire fighters 25% more time off at a cost of $11 million a year?
The Kissimmee city commission is voting on their city’s annual budget. The $322 million budget is up from the previous year’s $310 million for a population of 90,000. City officials are threatening cuts to services. Property taxes represent $31 million of the city’s budget, and ad valorem taxes on homestead property represent about 21.1% of Kissimmee’s taxable property value. What does that mean? Approximately $6.5 million of the city’s $31 million in property-tax receipts comes from homestead property. Even if the law were to completely eliminate property taxes on homestead property, the city could still afford a 1.7% increase in spending over last year.
I am tired of local governments stealing all of our money.
On March 22, 2003, the band “Live” played for the Mardi Gras celebration at Universal Studios Orlando. I went, mostly because I liked their music. About halfway through the concert, they stopped playing and the singer said “I want to take a minute to talk about George Bush’s illegal war.” I yelled out, “Shut up and play the fucking songs.”
Some dude standing next to me pushed me and took a fighting stance, so I punched him as hard as I could. He went down and I got out of there before security could arrive.
The point here is I paid to go to a concert, not a political rally. A musician is no more qualified to comment on foreign policy than any other random person. If he had been expressing his opinion about the best guitar, microphone, or even what flavor is best for LSD, he would probably be qualified to express his opinion. They are abusing the fact that they have an audience held captive by the cost of a ticket to attend this concert to force that same audience to listen to your completely unqualified opinion.
So when I hear that Ed Sheeran stopped his concert in order to express his opinion on Palestine and Israel, I have only to remind them of the saying: Dance, monkey, dance. We pay you for a concert, not to hear your take on today’s news.
In a followup to my post about Republicans, here is a big reason why I won’t be casting my vote in the Florida Governor’s race:
That right there is the Republican nominee in the Florida governor’s race. To the Republican party:
We always talk about a line in the sand. This is one of them. I won’t EVER vote for someone who says I am the enemy. You want to call me a white supremacist? This honky is keeping his Governor’s vote to himself.
His record sucks balls anyhow. He’s been convicted of drug possession, writing bad checks, and who knows what else. This is the best that Florida’s Republican party has to offer?
What are you going to do if Target doesn’t want to let her return anything? You going to pull an unloaded gun on them before grabbing the cash from the register and running away with your slides on your feet?
That’s called armed robbery, champ. You will get caught, because by the looks of your wife, she isn’t running anywhere, and your shoes are going to slow you down.
Of course we know that this is all bravado and bluster, since he is at the Pharmacy counter and not the customer service one. We don’t need gun owners like you. You are an asshole.
Stop me if you have heard this before: The Republicans are telling us if we sit out this election, the Democrats will win. If the Republicans win, we already know what will happen:
Of course, the thing you will hear in return is:
I’m as pissed as you. But sit out and you won’t even get the hearings, you’ll get more graft, more Islamic enabling and our 2nd Amendment rights will be attacked. You know better
I was reliably told by the very same people that a vote for Trump was a vote for Democrats, yet Trump put some solid people in SCOTUS, and that alone has made more progress than the entire Republican party has in the past 30 years. The entire party hasn’t done a thing to make our lives better since Clinton’s first term, and even then all they managed to pull off was a sunset clause on the AWB.
Why should I vote for you? What do I get from you, other than “I am not a Democrat?” In the words of the two Bobs: “What is it that you would say you do here?”
