it's not whether or not she had a right to them. she absolutely did. and railing against the system your whole life and then taking advantage of one of it's arms can be pretty punk rock. but hiding behind a legal firm and an assumed name is not punk rock, it's cowardice. it's not taking what is owed to you, it's cowardice and hypocrisy. spawning movements for self interest and articulating the abandonment of moral ideals like charity and compassion in writing is one thing. then later becoming someone in need of compassion and charity and hiding it, is ted haggard levels of hypocrisy. when you should have at least a mild epiphany and instead only continuing your pathological defense of selfishness. she wasn't a private citizen who's ideological beliefs happened to contradict what she had to do to survive. she was a public figure, the voice of objectivism, a philosophy that will span generations, the author of an ideological movement.

your cell phone analogy is non sequitur.


>> ^blankfist:

>> ^NetRunner:
@gwiz665 that's the thing though, if you think taxation is theft, doesn't it kinda undercut that if you then say "I demand you give me the services my taxes paid for"?
Someone broke into my car and stole my stereo when I was in college, can I ask him to foot my medical bills now, or is perhaps theft and taxation actually different in some way?

If you pay for these services, then you have a right to them. Are you implying I should suck it up and not call the fire department if my house catches fire because I think taxation is theft? Even though the money has already been stolen from me to fund that service? Lunacy.
Let me tweak your analogy a bit. Verizon steals $150.00 a month from you and in return offers you cell service. Would the correct option be to buy a plan with AT&T because you oppose Verizon stealing from you?

>> ^NetRunner:

@gwiz665 that's the thing though, if you think taxation is theft, doesn't it kinda undercut that if you then say "I demand you give me the services my taxes paid for"?
Someone broke into my car and stole my stereo when I was in college, can I ask him to foot my medical bills now, or is perhaps theft and taxation actually different in some way?


If you pay for these services, then you have a right to them. Are you implying I should suck it up and not call the fire department if my house catches fire because I think taxation is theft? Even though the money has already been stolen from me to fund that service? Lunacy.

Let me tweak your analogy a bit. Verizon steals $150.00 a month from you and in return offers you cell service. Would the correct option be to buy a plan with AT&T because you oppose Verizon stealing from you?

@WKB

True, but when the Columbine school shooting was perpetrated, conservatives were quick to point the finger at Marilyn Manson's lyrics. I'm not saying they were right, and I'm not saying that Fox deserves all of the blame here either.

I do think though, that the people pumping that kind of rhetoric onto the airwaves deserve SOME responsibility for atrocities like this. Allow me to compare the Woodstock of 1970 to the Woodstock of '99 for an example.

-------------------------------------------------------------

>>>>>>The 1970 Woodstock (billed as "3 days of Peace and Music") resulted in reports like this:

"The New York Times covered the prelude to the festival and the move from Wallkill to Bethel.[13] Barnard Collier, who reported from the event for the Times, asserts that he was pressured by on-duty editors at the paper to write a misleadingly negative article about the event. According to Collier, this led to acrimonious discussions and his threat to refuse to write the article until the paper's executive editor, James Reston, agreed to let him write the article as he saw fit. The eventual article dealt with issues of traffic jams and minor lawbreaking, but went on to emphasize cooperation, generosity, and the good nature of the festival goers.

When the festival was over, Collier wrote another article about the exodus of fans from the festival site and the lack of violence at the event. The chief medical officer for the event and several local residents were quoted as praising the festival goers."

--------------------------------------------------------------

>>>>>>The 1999 version of the event (featuring bands like Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock and the Red Hot Chili Peppers who are all, dare I say, a bit angrier [lyrically speaking] than the likes of Arlo Guthrie or Joan Baez) is painted in a much different color:

"Some crowd violence and looting was reported during the Saturday night performance by Limp Bizkit, including a rendition of the song "Break Stuff". Reviewers of the concert criticized Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst as "irresponsible" for encouraging the crowd to destructive behavior.

Violence escalated the next night during the final hours of the concert as Red Hot Chili Peppers performed. A group of peace promoters led by an independent group called Pax had distributed candles to those stopping at their booth during the day, intending them for a candlelight vigil to be held during the Red Hot Chili Peppers' performance of the song "Under the Bridge". During the band's set, the crowd began to light the candles, some also using them to start bonfires. The hundreds of empty plastic water bottles that littered the lawn/dance area were used as fuel for the fire.

After the Red Hot Chili Peppers were finished with their main set, the audience was informed about "a bit of a problem." An audio tower caught fire, and the fire department was called in to extinguish it.

Back onstage for an encore, the Chili Peppers' lead singer Anthony Kiedis remarked how amazing the fires looked from the stage, comparing them to a scene in the film Apocalypse Now.[12] The band proceeded to play "Sir Psycho Sexy", followed by their rendition of Jimi Hendrix's "Fire". Kiedis later stated in his autobiography, Scar Tissue that Jimi Hendrix's sister had asked the Chili Peppers to play "Fire" in honor of Jimi and his performance at the original Woodstock festival, and that they were not playing it to encourage the crowd.

Many large bonfires were burning high before the band left the stage for the last time. Participants danced in circles around the fires. Looking for more fuel, some tore off panels of plywood from the supposedly inviolable security perimeter fence. ATMs were tipped over and broken into, trailers full of merchandise and equipment were forced open and burglarized, and abandoned vendor booths were turned over, and set afire.[13]

MTV, which had been providing live coverage, removed its entire crew. MTV host Kurt Loder described the scene in the July 27, 1999 issue of USA Today:

"It was dangerous to be around. The whole scene was scary. There were just waves of hatred bouncing around the place, (...) It was clear we had to get out of there.... It was like a concentration camp. To get in, you get frisked to make sure you're not bringing in any water or food that would prevent you from buying from their outrageously priced booths. You wallow around in garbage and human waste. There was a palpable mood of anger."

After some time, a large force of New York State Troopers, local police, and various other law enforcement arrived. Most had crowd control gear and proceeded to form a riot-line that flushed the crowd to the northwest, away from the stage located at the eastern end of the airfield. Few of the crowd offered strong resistance and they dispersed quickly back toward the campground and out the main entrance."

>>>>>>See also, this poignant response from a person in the crowd: http://newsroom.mtv.com/2009/08/17/woodstock-legacy/ (crowdmember comments @ 2:20)

----------------------------------------

Now now easy there big fella, before you start telling me about how correlation does not imply causation consider this: an article recently published by the American Journal of Psychiatry concluded that:

"Childhood exposure to parental verbal aggression was associated, by itself, with moderate to large effects on measures of dissociation, limbic irritability, depression, and anger-hostility." Furthermore, "Combined exposure to verbal abuse and witnessing of domestic violence was associated with extraordinarily large adverse effects, particularly on dissociation. This finding is consonant with studies that suggest that emotional abuse may be a more important precursor of dissociation than is sexual abuse."
See: http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/163/6/993

Maybe not the best example I could have found but I've already spent WAY too much time on this post. The point is, WORDS carry a lot of power. Even if the pundits (right OR left) never came out and said it, the implication of violence was certainly there at times.

I KNOW Fox has lead the charge of fear mongering in the name of ratings but anyone else who subscribed to that level of attack should share some of the blame as well. Again, not saying that they should take all or even a lot of the blame, but they should be responsible for the violent laced rhetoric they spout.

I say STOP THE AD HOMINEM ATTACKS and we'll see less violence against PEOPLE and (hopefully) more enthralling arguments where the IDEAS are being attacked (which I'm all for) :-)

p.s. sry for the huge post but i was on a roll

You guys laugh at her, but she DID inform the fire department. You DO NOT want to fuck with the FD.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Not evil, no. Just driven by a voracious invisible hand that cares not for me and thee.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Haha. Rural businesses are evil. They kill people for the lulz.

In reply to this comment by dag:
Thanks for the link. I think the most important part of the article is this:

Imagine an actual for profit fire company. Would they really do this? Would they really turn down a higher fee and risk the bad press of being the compnay that sat there while a familty home burned?

My answer to that is, yes - probably, they would. Because a rural area only has the population density to support a single private fire department. It's them or nothing. And letting the house burn down sends a heck of a message to other potential subscribers.

With a defacto monopoly on a service for the common good, a private business will do whatever increases subscribers and profits the most.

Where Time-Warner is the only broadband provider, they will raise prices to the sweet spot, just under where people will actually drop their subscription - and fight tooth and nail against anything that undermines their monopoly.

The same mindless devotion to profit would apply to a privatized fire department. Keep your money-grubbing corporations out of my community services please! This includes things like fastfood companies sponsoring my kids text books.

some things, BlankFist, are just not solved by a free-market. I hope someday you'll moderate your political views to the shades of gray that represent a non-black-and-white reality.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
You asked a while back, and I feel this guy did a decent job of answering it.

http://theemptiness.info/2010/10/burning-down-the-house/

Haha. Rural businesses are evil. They kill people for the lulz.

In reply to this comment by dag:
Thanks for the link. I think the most important part of the article is this:

Imagine an actual for profit fire company. Would they really do this? Would they really turn down a higher fee and risk the bad press of being the compnay that sat there while a familty home burned?

My answer to that is, yes - probably, they would. Because a rural area only has the population density to support a single private fire department. It's them or nothing. And letting the house burn down sends a heck of a message to other potential subscribers.

With a defacto monopoly on a service for the common good, a private business will do whatever increases subscribers and profits the most.

Where Time-Warner is the only broadband provider, they will raise prices to the sweet spot, just under where people will actually drop their subscription - and fight tooth and nail against anything that undermines their monopoly.

The same mindless devotion to profit would apply to a privatized fire department. Keep your money-grubbing corporations out of my community services please! This includes things like fastfood companies sponsoring my kids text books.

some things, BlankFist, are just not solved by a free-market. I hope someday you'll moderate your political views to the shades of gray that represent a non-black-and-white reality.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
You asked a while back, and I feel this guy did a decent job of answering it.

http://theemptiness.info/2010/10/burning-down-the-house/

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Thanks for the link. I think the most important part of the article is this:

Imagine an actual for profit fire company. Would they really do this? Would they really turn down a higher fee and risk the bad press of being the compnay that sat there while a familty home burned?

My answer to that is, yes - probably, they would. Because a rural area only has the population density to support a single private fire department. It's them or nothing. And letting the house burn down sends a heck of a message to other potential subscribers.

With a defacto monopoly on a service for the common good, a private business will do whatever increases subscribers and profits the most.

Where Time-Warner is the only broadband provider, they will raise prices to the sweet spot, just under where people will actually drop their subscription - and fight tooth and nail against anything that undermines their monopoly.

The same mindless devotion to profit would apply to a privatized fire department. Keep your money-grubbing corporations out of my community services please! This includes things like fastfood companies sponsoring my kids text books.

some things, BlankFist, are just not solved by a free-market. I hope someday you'll moderate your political views to the shades of gray that represent a non-black-and-white reality.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
You asked a while back, and I feel this guy did a decent job of answering it.

http://theemptiness.info/2010/10/burning-down-the-house/

@dystopianfuturetoday, don't try to pin the Republicans who go voted in on our ideology, brother. You're just grasping at straws at this point.

But let's talk about some of the things you're bringing up.

1. Government services. The go to argument for statists any time you attack the amount we pay in taxes and what we're taxed on (income & inheritance tax being the worst of them) is "What about the roads? The fire department? The police?!" What's important to point out here is that these cited governmental "services" are always the bare minimum offered, and never do they scream out "What about our defense budget? The unreconciled transactions each year in the Treasury Department (reaching $25 billion in 2003 alone!)? The jackbooting swat teams at the G20 summits?! The prison industrial complex?!!! Homeland Security?!"

Roads, police and firefighters are all paid for by local taxes (not Federal), mind you, and most of which can be paid for by excise taxes or other voluntary taxes. Can we put that dog to rest?

2. Social contract. I didn't sign it. You didn't either. As mentioned above, a contract is an agreement where both parties voluntarily agree to the terms. Those who believe in the social contract idea tend to think, as you do, that it's a trade for living in a 'democracy'. That's ridiculous on its face. And your 'like it or leave it' mentality on the matter has the intellectual maturity of the Republican 'this is a Christian nation' philosophy. Bravo.

3. Taxes. Offering services and goods under the threat of violence is immoral, therefore compulsory taxes are theft. If you agree with compulsory taxes, then you agree services and goods should be offered under the threat of violence, and in any other arena outside of government that would be considered sociopathic.

You're >> ^bla
nkfist:

"much more easily than say, getting rid of 100% of the bad cops without some kind of telepathic superpowers or magically preventing 100% of the crimes that lead to victims sueing the police"
Exactly my point about breaking a few eggs to make your big government omelet. Statists may dislike the atrocities of government, but they see it as a necessary casualty. Every day we see cops doing downright untoward and malicious things to people, even murdering them, yet the system keeps right on going. Never does a statist say, "Shit, maybe this whole police state thing isn't panning out as expected."
It's always, "there are some good cops out there too." It's senseless Stockholm Syndrome battered wife apologies.
I love Watchmen because of this very notion. Tangent alert. Nite Owl II is your typical effete modern liberal and a sensitive intellectual. He believes violence is necessary to correct the social injustices, but believe it should be just. That doesn't stop him from continuing to work with people like the Comedian and Rorschach who use violence with a great deal less restraint. In fact, he enjoys Rorschach as a partner and accepts his overzealous violence. He may not condone it himself, but he sees it as a necessary evil. Breaking a few eggs to make an omelet.


You're not even making sense. No one said it's OK to have a few bad cops. They should be fired wherever they're found. But you can't catch all of them. You can't get rid of 100% of the bad cops without getting rid of 100% of cops in general, and if you did, there'd be a hell of a lot more violence. If men were angels, there would be no need for government, but they aren't. Anarchy = prehistoric tribal warfare, mob justice, etc.

Police brutality is like soldiers going ape-shit and shooting people they're not supposed to. It's not that it's private or statist, but rather it's individuals that break and weren't fit for the job.

What needs to be done, is to make incitements for better people to want to become officers. There are different ways to do this; raise the pay, higher entry demands on education/other tests, bonuses payed on "good behavior" stuff like that. Fully privatizing the police force is not a good idea, I think (*memories of blackwater*) since they are a basic brick of the society, keeping law and order. I want many things privatized, but emergency stuff I don't. Fire department, ambulances, police all that jazz should be covered by the state, since they are indispensable and we cannot allow "we went bankrupt" to make us lose lives for whatever reason.

Think of a privatized fire department that fails to show up because they went bankrupt the night before... very bad idea right there.

>> ^Psychologic:

So if people vote against instituting a tax to pay for fire service in remote areas then what is the alternative, tax them anyway?

The alternative is I make a fuss about it, point out how wrong it is, and hope that next time people vote differently.

Like you said, it would be a thousand times better if they just made a default assumption that people want to pay, and make it require a conscious effort to opt-out, rather than vice versa.

>> ^blankfist:

Why stop at fire departments? Why not move to have government take over every service imaginable and wipe out business altogether?

Because a mix of markets and regulation works a lot better for most things, and I have no desire to deprive people of individual choice. Quite the contrary in fact.

Most of what animates my politics is luck egalitarianism. People who make good choices should do well, people who make bad choices should do less so, but random things that happen to everyone should be factored out of the equation as much as humanly possible.

At the extremes, I'm more of a basic egalitarian -- I don't think bad career and business choices should force you to starve to death, or have to have your medical ailments left untreated, or to have the fire fighters let your house burn down.

At some point you really should try to get to understand liberals in this country for what they are, rather than constantly making lame straw man arguments about communism and socialism.

>> ^blankfist:

As far as I'm concerned the minimal the government should offer is fire, police, roads and jails, and if this man is paying local, state and property tax, he was due this coverage.
>> ^blankfist:

So under your beautifully crafted socialist utopia that man's house could still burn down and there's not a fucking thing he can do about it.

You two should have a long talk, and try to work this out.

Kidding aside, you're really missing the point here. I, and many liberals, disagree with the Supreme Court on lots of things, past and present. I'm also not really all that interested in the narrow question of legal findings in the US court system, but the universal moral questions this situation raises, all of which you've refused to engage.

You say that these fire fighters shouldn't have let the fire burn. Why shouldn't they?

The fire fighters don't owe the man anything, he didn't pay his fee. They don't offer out-of-pocket service, it's $75 on time, or it's burn motherfucker burn. It would make business sense if they offered an out of pocket service, but they don't, and forcing them to do so would be slavery (just like forcing shop keepers to serve black people if they don't want to).

If anything, Gene Cranick's pleading and complaining is really the moral outrage -- he thinks he was owed better treatment than he got!

What moral code are you following to imply that this fire department has done anything wrong? It's most certainly not libertarian, because if you really cared about property rights, you would understand that this is how things had to be.

>> ^NetRunner:

I'm still waiting for someone to join Glenn Beck, and defend the righteousness of letting the house burn down.
If you're not willing to go that far, even for "deadbeats" who can't pay, then what are we really talking about?
Instead of taxing everyone, and serving everyone, we serve everyone, but make people have to opt-in to paying $75/yr, or else run the risk of getting slapped with a bill of several thousand dollars if their house catches fire?
Does that really strike people as a superior method of financing fire departments?


So if people vote against instituting a tax to pay for fire service in remote areas then what is the alternative, tax them anyway?

It reminds me of rural garbage collection vs city garbage collection. In many rural areas people have to sign up for curb-side or at-house garbage service, so if they don't pay then they don't get the service. In cities there is usually a tax that covers all residents, whether they use it or not. Both versions have their positives and negatives.

Obviously fire service is more serious since you don't lose your house if no one picks up your trash, but the people who live in an area should have some say in which type of system they want. If the majority in that area don't want a tax then I don't see a problem with giving each person the option of paying for individual service.

Perhaps it would be more fair to have an automatic tax with the ability to specifically request an opt-out if desired. I know if I spent a lot of extra money building a house from material that won't burn (which some people do) then I'd probably see fire service as unneeded. Of course if I opt out and my house really does burn then there should be a way to get the fire department to put it out, even if it costs far more than whatever I opted out of intentionally.

(My area is tax-based, which I have no problem with.)

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^werbwerb:
Why are we speculating about how a privatized department would work? This wasn't a private department and FDs aren't going to be privatized anytime soon.
...
twisting it to rail against the "Tea Party" is just silly.
If privatization is a total red herring, please describe how it would work differently.
Further, I would ask you to characterize the Tea Party's policy preferences when it comes to government services. Would they prefer this subscription-based service idea, or would they prefer a universal fire service paid for with property taxes?
I'd also like you to tell me what you think should happen to people when they don't pay. Should the fire department let the house burn down?


I'm not going to try and describe how a private FD would work. I'm not for privatization of FDs so I have no idea.

I don't know. I'm not a Tea Party member and I'm not particularly interested in their policy preferences. However, Olbermann takes a one sentence shot at them using this incident and does not elaborate further on why.

It doesn't matter what I think. It's up to the cities who offer services that extend beyond their city limits. They're the ones who must decide on a policy by weighing all of the factors.