by JJ » Fri 05 Feb 2010, 20:17:48
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('timmac', 'W')hy the city officials want to ring a new food tax and not choose to layoff a few firefighters and cops is beyond me, I don't know how they are with the fire dept but hear in Vegas we had a fire across the street in neighbors house and there was 4 fire trucks and about 20 fire fighters, 10-12 of them were just standing around and really only 4-5 were doing the work, funny thing 2 of them were women and they were doing most of the grunt work, must been newbies, I do think in most large cities that fire fighters and cops are to many, but the union is so embedded with city officials we will all just keep paying more taxes so they can keep there salaries and retirements..
Watch out, once other cities see this it will be coming to your town and state next..
It's not beyond me. I was talking to a local firefighter here in little Burnet, Texas, who just moved here from NJ. He went to work for our fire department at twice what I make annually and because he had retired from the FD in NJ he was grandfathered in here and will be able to retire here after only five years. (he is my age, 51). He is getting over 100,000 dollars a year (including his pension) plus benefits for what appears to me to be doing almost nothing. Need to raise taxes to support that.

and the other part that chaps me is that when there is an emergency call, five or six vehicles are dispatched. When I fell over in a coma, I was billed 7,800. for the ambulance ride five blocks (Bing said they didn't even turn on the lights) and 8000 dollars for the helicopter ride after I lay in the ER for four hours because they didn't know what to do with me (thankfully the neurosurgeons in Austin were much more professional).
Its definitely a health industry. don't know about the care part. almost every nurse I see is 200 pounds overweight. The Austin American Statesman ran an article about some nurse reunion on the front page with about fifty nurses lined up in a row for the picture and only ONE of them was normal sized. All the rest were morbidly obese. I wonder if I'm the only one who noticed? even the female gym teacher up here at the middle school must weight 500 pounds.
edited to clarify