They might not have had an option, Firefighter's union may have forced them to rescind it until he is proven guilty.

Tags are crazy wrong again. News applies, law applies,equality applies, and terrible could apply. *nochannel

I read the op-ed and the original article, it sounds like there were witnesses. Hopefully if he is guilty, it will be handled correctly.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39516346/ns/us_news-life/t/no-pay-no-spray-firefighters-let-home-burn/

https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/keep-it-simple-and-take-credit/

"Implementing these kinds of policies are also no road to electoral success. Peoples’ lives are hard enough without tax credits and savings accounts and eligibility forms and government phone calls that determine whether one’s household income puts one in the bracket for this or that plan or benefit or subsidy and on and on. No voter is thanking anyone who puts them on this road, even if there’s a small pot of money at the end of it.

And forget the annoyance—the amount of immense mental energy and social capital required to keep track of, comprehend the eligibility requirements of, and then successfully apply for these benefits is a de facto regressive tax on people whose lives are too materially difficult to deal with arcane bureaucratic bullshit. That is, those people that need the help the most.

So what to do? No more savings accounts, no more cleverly hidden help that people won’t even notice, no more tax-preferenced, means-tested, government-monitored, website-reliant, bronze/gold/platinum-benefits-so-long-as-you-apply-during-open-enrollment. Just give people the stuff they need.

This shouldn’t even be a liberal-socialist divide, although it seems to have become one in recent years. When society decided citizens should be able to read, we didn’t provide tax credits for books, we created public libraries. When we decided peoples’ houses shouldn’t burn down, we didn’t provide savings accounts for private fire insurance, we hired firefighters and built fire stations. If the broad left takes power again, enough with too-clever-by-half social engineering. Help people and take credit."

As Lambert Strether of Corrente says: universal, concrete, material benefits.

*related=https://videosift.com/video/Firefighters-respond-to-Sonoma-fire-to-find

Firefighting strike team respond to Sonoma fire to find... has been added as a related post - related requested by eric3579.

A firefighter has no idea what he's getting into when he's doing his job and rushing into a burning building. He wants to go home after work, see his family, make it to another day of life. If he feels the need to pull his gun until he confirms the situation is safe, then do it!

You see what I did there? In both instances, ignoring protocol and going in with a loaded weapon is far more likely to create a dangerous situation than it is to save their own life.

Offering cops a blank check has resulted in many thousands of unnecessary civilian deaths. Meanwhile it's actually increased the danger cops face, because many black men (correctly) assume they're going in to a life-or-death situation.

In summary, do you hate the police and want to see them die? Because that's the only logical end-point on the path you've chosen to defend.

Your video, Jet Boat Firefighting, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

https://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.de/2017/06/a-firefighter-who-attended-grenfell.html

Your video, Firefighters of GTA V, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

@ChaosEngine

i have many:teachers,police,firefighters as facebook friends.

during the run up to the election i was posting a ton of my research,analysis and commentary in regards to the election.

this,on it's own,should not be surprising,what WAS surprising is all the support i received from these people and who were simply afraid to like,or comment.

they were literally sharing my work with other people via private messaging.

each and every one expressed to me a fairly robust paranoia that if they liked any of my posts,or commented,that they would receive disciplinary action and that their jobs would be in jeopardy.

i found this very troubling and what i could not,and STILL cannot reconcile,is how some people not only ignore this very subtle form of censorship,but find it a viable and understandable in the realms of social media.

when you restrict what a person can comment or speak on due to fear.this is censorship.

in the case of justine sacco,she was simply making a joke and when put in context..a really damn good one.but due to the self-righteous moralizing of total strangers,her life was destroyed.

now there will be some that may still find this justified,and that is fine,that is their right but what REALLY chills me is that nobody is addressing the much deeper and far more insidious nature of public shaming.basically:other people saw what happened to justine sacco and will modify their social media persona accordingly.

this,in my opinion,will only result in a vanilla goo like substance that offers no challenging ideas,no conflicting opinions that offer an opportunity to discuss and debate difficult subjects,because debate starts with disagreement,and if you impose a fear of retribution by simply posting any content that may be construed as controversial.then the conversation ends...
and we all pay a price for that kind of groupthink.

this will force the really bad and worst of us to go underground,and reside in an echo chamber where their fucked up ideas are parroted back to them,resulting in a confirmation that their worldviews are correct.

conversely...

those who may have good ideas,or wish to engage in controversial subjects,or in the case of justine sacco..make a fucking joke...will be relegated to the "good little worker bee" position.who never challenges power or authority and simply obeys...for fear of losing:financial security,public standing etc etc.

they become fucking stepford wives.

and in my sincere opinion,this is the real danger.

My father was a firefighter, so I always got this point hammered home.

Unfortunately shock is the only thing that gets the point across for most people. We have so little experience of what real fires are like that a dangerous kind of complacency tends to be pervasive.

Same with RTA's. It's usually only the victims and the poor bastards who have to clean up after that really appreciate the knives edge we live on.

The occasional kick to the gut like this is entirely justified IMHO.

Even if you did just make me weep like a lost child.

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Nice.
Who knew that being inclusive and friendly to other nations and peoples might pay off for them in the end with hundreds of singing, dancing, enthusiastic firefighters when they need them most!?!

I love it when a plan comes together.

'All houses matter' comes from an old cartoon referencing the "all lives matter" argument. Everybody can agree that all houses matter, but let's prioritize action on the houses that are actually on fire, and let's call ourselves firefighters instead of houselovers.

Like I said, egalitarianism is a respectable vision, and I think it's a decent counterpoint to, for example individualism. I just see an unfortunate behavior among many self-proclaimed egalitarianists to shout down activists by saying that equal treatment is more important than prioritizing specific social remedies. Eg "it's not about gay marriage, it's about all marriage; it's not about black lives, it's about all lives, and it's not about women's rights, it's about human rights." I agree - there's nothing in egalitarianism that inherently precludes any specific activism, but I see it as fairly common and non-constructive for people to act as though it does, or that it's somehow morally superior to care equally about all issues at once.