If you think this makes me an evil, heartless right-wing extremist SOB, then so be it. I don't call people morons often, and never generically, but in this case, you are a moron. Specifically.
There's outrage in northern Minnesota after firefighters allowed a man's mobile home to burn.
Outrage, I tell you. Sheer raging outrage, which in itself is outrageous. That there's outrage, I mean, about which I am truly...outraged. And what, I ask, fuels this righteous fire of furious, indignatious ignition? What great miscarriage of justice has left a poor, hapless citizen alone at the mercy of those horrid, merciless agents of the BATF local firehouse and whose only hope is the saintly estate of journalism?
Carl Berg had failed to pay the 25-dollar annual fee required for fire protection for homes outside International Falls city limits.
Berg says he couldn't afford the fee or fire insurance. He says he lost everything in last month's fire.
Oh.
Pardon me whilst I work up some outrage over that. (Grunt) Dang, can't do it. Sorry—I tried.
Twenty-five bucks, folks. That's not per month. That covers you for a year. Toss 49 cents into a coffee can each frickin' week and you'll still have 48 cents left over at the end to blow on a half-order of those chicken nugget-like things. I'm sorry, but in this country, no matter who you are, no matter what you do, if anything, no matter if you're on welfare and food stamps or just what you can bring home panhandling, you can afford $25 per year to pay someone to stay on call, equipped and ready to come and put out a fire. This isn't rocket science (because if it were, it'd cost $25 billion per year just on standby, plus a couple hundred million for each actual trip, at least NASA's way).
But I digress.
Oh yes. Outrage. There actually are folks who have enough outrage to spare, just sitting around, that they can throw it away on this kind of absurdity. Must be a Really Slow Day for Social Inequity and that sort of thing. Notify UNICEF that it's time to bomb some more Smurfs.
The Fire Department poured enough water to put the fire out temporarily and make sure everyone was safe. But when the blaze rekindled later, firefighters let the flames destroy what was left.
Fire Chief Jerry Jensen says he doesn't want to see that happen again. He says a firefighter's job is to "put out fires, not to watch them burn."
Now, at first this might carry the Appearance of a Stupid Thing to Do. I mean, seeing as you're already there with your truck and hoses and everything, would it have hurt to have added a little milk o' human kindness to that water and help a guy out? I mean, like the man said, isn't that, like, your job and all?
Local officials have been haggling for two years over how to pay for fire protection.
There's your answer. Yes, it would have hurt to have put out the guy's fire. If a man can't won't pay a mere pittance like $25 per year for the privilege of public fire protection (and yes, someone somewhere has doubtless already referred to fire protection as a "right") then give me some reason the faithful, law-abiding, bill-paying taxpayers of International Falls should pay up one cent for him! Because they're nice guys? I might fall for that one if we were discussing a legitimate hardship, but this is beyond ridiculous. If local officials have been haggling even one day over how to pay for fire protection, it's one day too many. You've evidently already got a mechanism in place to pay for it. Carry it out like you would anything else. If you don't pay your power bill, the man comes over in his little truck and does mean, restrictive things to your access to electrical current. Even in winter. Even if you're "poor." And over a lot more money than $25 per year.
It's neither mean, heartless nor even strict to demand the same accountability for fire protection. It's everyday common sense. And I've already ranted way too much over such a small thing, but way down inside I don't really think it's a small thing at all.
The idea of simple, basic personal responsibility is a foreign concept to millions of otherwise capable Americans because their elected representatives have discovered that it pays (it pays the elected representatives, that is) to convince you that you have none and should have none. That all you need to do is trust your friendly neighborhood government to take care of you, womb to the tomb. And you may not even owe $25 per year—not if we can get those Evil Rich People to pay it for you. (All they'll have to do is lay you off from your job in order to afford it. Evil Rich People do seem to employ a whole lot of Other People, Evil or Otherwise.)
To these people this issue is hardly an absurdity—it's the foundation for their worldview, and the basis for their claim to power, not to mention money. Your money, without which they can't finance their airplane trips from coast to coast to tell you how they need you to tighten your belt and ante up more taxes, nor their very jobs, if you can call them jobs.
That's what filled me with so much, well, outrage that I was compelled to post umpteen bazillion words about a stupid $25 fee in a town hundreds of miles away, in Minnesota, of all places. If you're smart, you won't tick me off like that again, or I'm liable to go on and on about, say, Oregon, or worse, South Carolina. You have been warned.
(Hat tip to Ralph Bristol, and thanks to Mudville Gazette for the Open Post.)
UPDATE: Thanks much to Mark over at Cutting Edge of Ecstasy for granting me my first "Spewy" award:
WARNING: Do not attempt to consume liquids while reading this post.
I'm truly touched. (Sniff) If anyone spewed actual liquid in the process of reading this post, I'm tempted to offer to pay for any damage, just to celebrate. Tempted, now—but not yet yielding to said temptation.
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Posted by: Rob | Monday, 10 October 2005 at 12:29 PM