Two Visions of America

[murstein]

When American politics has been riven by partisan wrangling, the driver has always been between two visions of America. This was true when Washington's cabinet was split by arguments between Alexander Hamilton's Big Business agenda and Thomas Jefferson's Small Farmer agenda, and it's true today

Comments

[jaiser]

Anyone who actually thinks that someone who expects the fire department to put out their housefire is a freeloader has earned themselves a special place in whatever passes for Hell, imho.

I wonder how they'd feel if it was *their* home...?

[laureth]

"Freeloader" because they hadn't paid their special fire protection money. In regular places, that's accounted for in the taxes we already pay. It reminds me of the Gilded Age private fire brigades.

Oh look, I have the perfect icon...

[jaiser]

Indeed the perfect icon. "Special fir protection money"... Bah! It amazes me that someone, somewhere actually thought this was a *good* idea.

[etumukutenyak]

It's Social Darwinism rearing up again. What idiots.

[freydis]

from what I understand, its a $75 fee a year for fire protection- completely voluntary, but I suppose its like insurance. You don't have to have it, but..

So, if someone doesn't pay it, why should he get the fire protection? His neighbor paid, and the fire department came out to make sure the fire didn't go into their yard.

For the record, I'm a fan of my taxes paying for the fire department coming to my house when my house is on fire, but not all towns like taxes, and if this is their way of not having exorbitant taxes or whatever, that is their right. But if its clearly stated that the $75 a year is your insurance for fire protection, and you won't have the fire protection without the $75, well, that's the gamble he took.

[murstein]

True.

On the other hand, when he realized his mistake, he offered shild: ". . . pay whatever it would take . . ." When he offered it, they refused to come out. He offered it again, when they came out to put out the small portion of the fire that jumped the property line.

This is not frithful; a frithful response would be to allow him to make the year's payment when he first called. This is not even grithful; a grithful response would have been to make him pay a punitive amount for immediate coverage. 20 years' worth of annual fees, or more than that, would be the immediate example. As Jonah Goldberg put it in the link above:

Why isn’t there a happy middle ground? You can pay 75 bucks upfront or, if you wait until your house is on fire, it will cost you, I dunno, $10,000? Lots of things work like this.
By refusing even grith, the fire department is in effect saying that the Cranicks are as much utengarth as it seems Chancellor Merkel considers the Germans slain by a Predator drone in Pakistan on Monday

[laureth]

OTOH, if they took his payment, it would pretty much set a precedent for "people don't have to really pay anything, but can just pony up the year's fee when they call in a fire." It's like paying your insurance premium up only when you go to the hospital for an operation. It's the ongoing protection payments (even when not needed) that fund it, more than any one-time payment.

This does not mean I agree with the system. Ohhhh no, I do not. But the way it was executed there, suckity suck as it was, seems legit by its own rules.

[jaiser]

While I agree that it was 100% within the law, in this case the law is ridiculous. So now, instead of taking "whatever it takes", the town's/state's social services system will have to help pay to house this family because they lost everything. This seems most illogical, if the original plan was to save the local government money.

When Medicare will pay for some 80 year old dude to have boner pills or a penis pump (yes, it's true!), I find it unacceptable to let someone's home burn down over $75.00.

IMHO, this is a slippery slope. What's next? If you don't pay your $5,000/year police "protection money", we won't respond to your 911 calls and you'll be robbed/raped/murdered? Somewhere, a line drawn must be.