Remember that case last year when firefighters let a house burn down because the homeowner had not paid his annual fee? You would think that people in that community, which eliminated its fire department over budget issues, would have learned to keep up on their dues. Nope.
On the plus side, clearly Obion County officials are serious about not raising taxes.
via io9.
AA+ Bonds
Honestly, you’d think every homeowner and business that could afford it would move the fuck out of there, although maybe they already have. Lord knows this poor woman could have used a bus ticket and a few months rent anywhere but the place where her neighbors abandoned her because she was late on her “don’t let me die please” payment.
It’s funny because a lot of governments have this nifty solution to market failure where they make everyone pay ahead of time for services that benefit everyone. I forget what they call it . . .
General Stuck
Life is cheap in Tennessee
Morons cheaper still
HyperIon
From the link:
Well, now she knows better!
gnomedad
OT, Hoekstroika alert! A moment of compassion, please, for Rick Santorum:
AA+ Bonds
I’m pretty sure Rick Santorum fucks the Devil
Linkmeister
Is this another example of that moral hazard thing we hear about? You know, like we shouldn’t bail out big banks ’cause then they’ll keep doing stupid things knowing we’ll bail ’em out agin’ and agin’?
Egg Berry
@AA+ Bonds:
You insult the Devil, who probably has better taste.
Villago Delenda Est
@Linkmeister:
Shush you! You’re not supposed to talk about that! Only the peasants are involved with moral hazards!
Southern Beale
Heh. I did a post on this over at my place today. With the almost identical lede as Tom’s!
Anyway, I have quite a lot to say about this, as you can imagine.
wetcasements
Those firefighters did exactly the right thing.
If bumpkin John Galt doesn’t want to pay a tax for a public service his house should burn down.
Taxes = public services, and I can’t believe how you and other progressives got burned on this story.
RSA
So libertopia is in Tennessee, not New Hampshire. Who knew?
debg
I wish I hadn’t read comments at the link–no compassion, no empathy, just a high level of dickishness except from one volunteer fireman who stood with the homeowner. Bleah.
hrprogressive
The problem here is that “taxes” have become such a cancerous term that raising taxes and getting people to pay for things like public services is so “unamerican” or whatever that people would rather impose a “YoYo” fee, and sucks for you if you don’t pay it.
MikeSJ
Sounds like reality bit this woman in the ass…the idea that fire service protection actually has to be paid either through taxes or fees seems to have not been a concrete concept to her.
If I seem unsympathetic it’s because I suspect she’s one of those who vote down any taxes or fees to actually, you know, have these services available to those who need them.
sukabi
@AA+ Bonds: the Devil’s got better taste.
srv
For those states that don’t want Obamacare, perhaps hospitals should just start turning away those who haven’t paid for insurance. Call it the RonPaulcare.
I would bet everyone who thinks it’s ok for a Fire Dept to operate this way would freak if EMS did too.
Jnc
Wet casements is right.
My dad volunteered for a VFD. They had to hold fundraisers b/c not everyone subscribed. So he volunteered his time and took the risk of putting out the fires and his reward was my mom having to bake cookies for bake sales.
Yes, I know this wasn’t a volunteer fire dept but the principle is the same.
Kolohe
“While the city provides fire service free of charge to its residents, it requires an annual $75 fee for homeowners who live in unincorporated areas of Obion County ”
Or you know, these people can live in the town limits where they pay their taxes, and not be free riding tax avoiding teabaggers. Or they can live outside of town, pay their taxes and get effective public services. But they can’t *both* be free riding tax avoiding tea baggers and get effective public services.
(or, if you wish, they can make it a proper property tax of 75 dollars and repossess the entire house when people don’t think they need to pay their taxes)
gocart mozart
If any Obion County official had a lick of common sense or a working set of balls, he would just get it over with and declare himself an anarchists.*
*This of course would be ironic for a Teabagger.**
** This of course assumes that a Teabagger knows what irony means.
amk
So let’s get this straight. The county folks are required to pay a ‘fee’ so that their homes aren’t burned down. So in effect they were required to pay a tax to the government. And yet the idjits there were thinking they will pay no taxes when they elected these corporate minions into ‘governing’ themselves.
fubar
Well, well. We are officially turning back the clock to the 1900’s. Can’t wait for the next Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire to happen. Or better yet, environmental / nuclear insurance in the case of a corporate disaster that you should have protected yourself against. Because, lawd knows you can’t rely on the govmint to protect you.
They have another term for these sort of organizations where I’m from – Mafia.
edmund dantes
Look as I liberal I have no problem with this at all.
…
They chose to live in an unincorporated area.
…
They chose to refuse fire coverage when given the option to have the city extend protection for a reasonable (and far below cost) $75 a year fee.
…
The fire department showed up to save lives if necessary (even without the fee), and protect other houses nearby (that paid the fee).
…
Note if the fire fighters decided to fight the fire (without payment) and they got injured, workmen’s compensation insurance would decline to pay. The firefighter would have been working outside his job duties. He would now be disabled without being able to work a job to feed his family.
…
Since these people are outside the city’s jurisdiction, it has no way of forcing the fee on the people through taxes or other methods. In fact, it would be against the law.
…
Note the fee covers the cost of having the fire department protect your property not human life.
…
I’m not sure where I see the problem with the city’s stance, the firefighters, or the counties. Now if you want to rail against the stupidity of not paying taxes or paying the fee, go for it, but the policy makes sense.
edmund dantes
Another part is that if you wait to pay the fee, you should then have to pay the cost of fighting the fire. This is easily 5000-10,000 dollars minimum. These people refused to pay 75 bucks. You think you are going to get 4 figures out of them? Lien is no good since the house is a hunk of debris. They’d just walk away.
Perfectly reasonable solution by the city.
Kolohe
Obion county fun fact:
2004 Presidential Election results
Bush/Cheney (Republican): 58.1%
Kerry/Edwards (Democratic): 41.0%
2008 Presidential Election results
McCain (Republican): 66.7%
Obama (Democratic): 32.4%
Read more: http://www.city-data.com/county/Obion_County-TN.html#ixzz1focznt33
Odie Hugh Manatee
@HyperIon:
From what I understand, the issue of coverage is that voters in the unincorporated area of the city don’t have their own fire service and they also voted against raising taxes to pay for it. So the city gave them the option of paying for coverage, which some do and some don’t. I would be willing to bet that many who voted for the tax increase that failed are also paying for coverage and those who voted against it aren’t.
The woman admittedly thought that she wouldn’t need it because she didn’t think they would ever have a fire. I’ll stick my neck out here and bet that she didn’t support the tax increase to pay for fire coverage from the city either. If that is the case then I have little sympathy for her losing her home and goods. Why? Because this is the teahadist mindset; spending and taxes are out of control until they need those very services that the taxes support.
Then it’s the fault of everyone else when shit goes wrong. Right now, since I don’t know if this woman supported the tax increase that would have supported the city providing fire coverage for everyone in the area, I do sympathize with her and feel sad for her loss, but less so than if she had said I knew about paying for fire coverage and I have been worried about not having it, but I just couldn’t afford it. The ‘never thought it would happen to me’ excuse is pretty weak.
As far as the fire department showing up and doing nothing, they shouldn’t have shown up at all if they intend on doing nothing but watching. All they did was waste city money and it makes them look like assholes.
The whole thing is stupid but as I once heard, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
It’s the south.
amk
@Kolohe: It figures.
Justin
Just to recap some details from the last time we did this:
Three times since 2000, voters in the unincorporated area of the county have voted down measures to pay the municipal fire department for blanket coverage, or establish their own volunteer fire department.
Previously, when the fire department just put out the fires and billed them after, they collected in less than 50% of the cases.
edmund dantes
No. They are not stupid. The city is perfectly willing to extend coverage to save lives. They also have to prevent fire from spreading to paying customers. The firefighters still need to show up for those reasons. They are simply making the calculus that “we will risk our lives to save your life, but we are not doing it to save your property (and potentially losing my life and/or livelihood) when you won’t even pay to have the coverage.”
Everyone then makes the leap to “well… they are there anyways, why not fight the fire?”. Forgetting the whole idea that if someone gets hurt in this manner, workmen’s comp is not kicking in to pay for the injured firefighter. The city’s insurance isn’t going to kick in either stating “you were outside the bounds of our contract”.
My bet, since that 75 bucks is far below the cost of maintaining and fighting fires, that it is a insurance rider cost.
wetcasements
“We are officially turning back the clock to the 1900’s.”
Except no, we aren’t. The person who lost their house (not their life) had multiple opportunities to pay a small fee/tax for fire protection. In their Randian wisdom, they decided not to.
And they got exactly what they deserve for being so foolish.
PurpleGirl
@Odie Hugh Manatee: In the earlier fire, the fire department said they show up to make sure people are out of the building on fire and to make sure it doesn’t move to an adjacent building. Once they’ve determined that no people are hurt and the fire “contained”, they should leave.
I’d feel sorry for the lady, except for the I “didn’t it would happen”. Life is uncertain: that’s why you get property insurance, pay for fire fighting services from some level of government, a whole lot of other stuff. (Bet she didn’t have any kind property insurance, either (who could have known). She’s gotta pay for a new house now.)
Ruckus
@Egg Berry:
You insult the Devil, who
probablyabsolutely has better taste.Fixt for you
Jay in Oregon
I hate this story (and the earlier one from the same county) because there is all sorts of fucked-up-ness and bad behavior all around.
If that woman voted against raising taxes to pay for coverage from the fire department and chose not to pay the $75/year “protection fee”, then she shouldn’t be surprised when the fire department does not provide her with the service that she refuses to pay for. That’s the situation she chose to live in, isn’t it? You pay for the services you want or need, and do without the rest (or assume the risk if your choice goes bad)?
The real fault lies in the 30+ years of rich Republican assholes and their sycophants telling people that the worst thing they can hear is “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”, that taxation is theft, and that the safety net is all about stealing money from hard-working (white) people and giving to dirty, lazy, (dark-skinned) freeloaders.
And yes, I get it’s shitty to hold some poor now-homeless woman accountable for her choices when TBTF banks, multimillionaires, and politicians get to skate. But the only way you’re going to make a dent in the brains of some teabagger/libertarian types is if there is a cost associated with their choices.
fubar
@http://wetcasements.wordpress.com/
Oh, you are so wrong and have devolved to a sad level. Obviously you have never been a firefighter. To sit and watch is moral bankruptcy.
And by the way, this is exactly the early 1900’s model that we have evolved from. From a time when you had to pay protection to ensure coverage. We had moved to a more progressive level where we cover everyone (irregardless of ability to pay) to establish a societal level that is (more or less) agreed on.
The mean-spiritness of you reply is delicious in it’s depravity. I wish you the assistance that you would not provide to your fellow man, Ebenezer.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@PurpleGirl:
Yeah, being there to save lives makes sense but it sure makes for a bad picture when nobody needs saving and they end up watching the fire burn.
Maybe they should have brought marshmallows and made lemonade out of lemons?
What, too soon? ;)
@Jay in Oregon:
I agree, some ‘tough love’ is in order for those who think they are the exception to the rule. Those people chose to not pay for a service and they have no right to complain when they don’t get what they didn’t pay for. Too many people are swallowing the bullshit that the rich are feeding them about ‘evil taxes’ and the government stealing their money, allowing the rich to use their votes to destroy the social fabric of this nation. Then these fools get pissed at the very people they refuse to pay for services.
While a fool and his money are soon parted, sometimes it’s foolish to not part with some of it. Especially when it provides a life and property saving purpose.
lol
@fubar:
Firefighters are supposed to risk their lives to save some cheap skate free-rider’s fucking trailer?
These people repeatedly voted for their area to NOT be covered by the fire department. They individually chose NOT to be covered by the fire department. Oh no. It can’t possibly happen to *me*. I’m *special*.
The firefighters showed up to make sure everyone was safe and that it wouldn’t spread. They did the right thing.
fubar
@lol
We have a winner! Us and them man. Don’t make the grade, tough sh*t.
I’m loving the comments here. Makes me feel all warm and cozy by the Freeper fire. And yes, firefighters risk their lives every day for ordinary, cheapskates. That is what we do. And by cheapskates, I mean everyone.
Man, there is some mean (and I do mean mean) neighbors in the BJ community. Hope you are never my neighbor.
Jerzy Russian
@Jay in Oregon:
Yup. Stupid should be painful and cost a lot of money.
Jay in Oregon
@fubar:
I’m all for helping people regardless of their ability to pay, and I pay my fair share of property taxes and income taxes and gas taxes because I believe in the system. I want the fire department to come to my house, and to my neighbor’s house, and even the house of the asshole who threatened to shoot my dog for peeing in his yard.
But as I understand it, that’s not what happened here.
She does not live within the city limits and therefore doesn’t pay whatever property taxes cover the fire department—which cannot simply absorb the cost of covering all of those residences out in the sticks, if I remember correctly. The unincorporated area that she lives in was offered the option of paying some kind of property tax to cover those services, and they voted against it. Then the fire department offered a $75/year fee for individual residences to be covered (on the presumption, I assume, that the people who did vote for the property tax would not like to be without fire protection because their neighbors are selfish pricks). She and other residents choose not to pay that fee.
And for the record, I would have no problem had the fire department said “fuck it, I don’t care if she didn’t pay the fee, no one deserves to lose their house because they’re an idiot” and tried to help her. And if it was a case that she couldn’t afford the fee and was hoping that she wouldn’t ever need their services, then I would feel differently. Because I want to live in a society where people will stand up and do the right thing.
But the report makes it sound like she simply thought she could get away without paying the fee, either because her house would never catch on fire or because the fire department would ride out and help her anyway. At what point do you stop trying to help people who don’t want your help???
(Again, this is why I hate this story: because I have conflicted feelings about everyone involved, and I think everyone acted badly to some degree or another.)
Comrade Luke
Uh…THEY WENT TO THE FIRE.
fubar
Hey jay, you hit the nail on the head in your second to last paragraph (and perhaps did not know it). You take away the ability of people in general to say ‘I don’t want your help’. Mostly because they do not have the capacity to make that decision at the time – could be for a lot of reasons. For example, do we say that the police will only help you if you paid your taxes? Or maybe you are a little behind because of illness/job/whatever? Oh sorry, you got raped, but you deserved it because you were in the wrong neighborhood/time of day/whatever.
Seems like a lot of BJer’s are projecting some negative emotions here. The FD puts out fires, period. To make an assessment of who is qualified to get their assistance or not is morally bankrupt. If the government/city/municipality cannot figure out a way to do that for all is a cop out.
And for the record, I had the privilege of serving as a firefighter (as well as first responder in other areas). And I have no idea what the full story of this woman is, nor do I care.
pseudonymous in nc
Mnemosyne
@pseudonymous in nc:
But I thought that the Fire Extinguisher Fairy was supposed to show up and give us all free fire protection if we got rid of all of those evil government firefighters !
/libertarian idiot
Jay in Oregon
@fubar:
I understand that you’re a first responder, and I am grateful that there are people out there like you who are willing to risk your lives to protect and rescue others—and as I’ve said, I pay my taxes to help make sure that people like you can help EVERYONE who needs it.
Make no mistake: I think the system has completely broken down in Obion County. There is no reason why anyone should have to worry about if the fire department is going to save their house. Shit, even putting out the fire and then billing the woman for the full cost of the emergency response would be more decent than what actually happened, and that’s damning with pretty faint praise.
But when we start trying to figure out exactly HOW the system in Obion County broke down, we to have to look at everybody involved; that includes both the firefighters who refused to help people in need, and the citizens who think they’re too good to hold up their end of the social contract (and yet expect that safety net to be there for them).
I’m not talking about polite disagreement about the role of government, and how the tax burden should be apportioned; I’m talking about the right-wing noise machine and its followers treating me and others who believe that we have an obligation to help people in need like Nazi war criminals, and who think that asking multimillionaires and billionaires can maybe kick a few bucks in to help people who are starving and living on the street is like the Final Solution. So yeah, I may feel a little schadenfreude from time to time when they get a glimpse of how their worldview actually plays out in the real world.
I can live with that burden.
wetcasements
@fubar
If you work for free then you’d have a point. Actually, if you work for free _and_ bought your own fire truck, uniform, axes, station, communications system, and paid the salaries of your co-workers, you’d have a point.
Benno
I’ve seen far too few people say: put out the damn fire and bill the family punitively for the cost. This seems to be the humane (dare I say “christian”) option?
Look, I never thought I would get in a severe accident on the the highway, but 10 years ago I did. I had health insurance, auto insurance, etc., but none of it covered the ambulance. Still, the ambulance came and carried my unconscious body away. And you know what, they fucking billed me for it after the fact. And I paid for it because they performed a service for me. By the logic of Obion County Tennessee, it wouldn’t have mattered if I had health insurance. If I hadn’t pre-paid for ambulance coverage I would have died on the spot. This is NOT how human beings treat each other.
(I realize I am extrapolating, that these cases are not about emergency medical care. But the kind of person that argues that the FD did the right thing often has never considered the logical conclusion of their argument. If you charge $500 or $1000 after the fact and the lady doesn’t pay, you have legal options. If you simply don’t act I question your morality.)
over_educated
This is my favorite comment from the story:
How can we have a functioning society when folks do not even understand that the government gets its money from taxes?
Enlightened Liberal
@over_educated:
That was my favorite too.
The whole issue is just a microcosm of the entire teabagger problem- they want government services, they just don’t want to pay for them- the other guy can pay.
Blue states give more money to the feds than they get back to support Red states. I pay exorbitant taxes in NYC so that there can be state highways going through tiny upstate communities, and so on. In this case, the residents of unincorporated
Galt’s GulchObion County were trying to leech off the taxpayers of the nearby town, and are butthurt that the other town said “no.”Instead of using water to fight fires, they use it to drown government in a bathtub. Their choice.
Enlightened Liberal
The corrollary of the teabagger problem is that they don’t want government services (UI, AFDC, Amtrak) to exist until they themselves need it.
edmund dantes
@Benno: How do they plan on forcing the people to pay when the city has no authority outside of its jurisdiction? How do you expect them to extract $5000-10000 dollars from someone that wasn’t willing to pay $75? How are they supposed to fight a fire without any equipment since everyone is waiting until they need the service to pay for the procurement of the equipment? Who pays for the disability insurance for the firefighters? Who pays for the training?
I want for these people to have fire service, and I feel the city has gone way above the call of duty in offering to extend services to a region outside their limits at a beyond below cost price. I just don’t have sympathy for them when they say “we knew, we chose not to, hoocanoode?” If they couldn’t afford the $75 dollar then by all means let’s set up a method to get them covered.
Benjamin Franklin
Should Grandma call them when the cat is up a tree?
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
You freakin’ socialists can’t see how the Marketplace works.
Privatizing the Public Sector (police, fire, etc) gets you the best bang for your buck. Are you willing to pay more? Do so. Look; Citizens United brought some reasonableness to the Electoral process. If you have more money, you can have more free speech. Simple.
“Power to teh Property !”
Enlightened Liberal
@fubar:
Here’s the problem- the city taxpayers are paying for protection that is being compromised because those resources are being used on freeloaders who don’t reside in the city and are using the services for free.
Benno
@edmund dantes: How did the ambulance force me to pay? I didn’t ask for them to show up. I didn’t ask for them to take me to the hospital. But they showed up anyway and carried me off without the benefit of explaining to me the possible financial repercussions were I to make such a decision. Somebody else decided that my broken carcass should be taken off the highway and *their* decision saddled me with an un-asked-for bill. About a month after I got out of the hospital they sent me bill. About a month after that they sent me another. And they kept doing it until I paid. I couldn’t deny that they had provided a necessary service. I couldn’t deny that it was me whom they served. Had I not paid they would have sued me. And they would of won. And I would of had to pay them + a hell of a lot more.
Seems to me that there are certain public safety services that just need to be done in a civil society. We are supposed to live in one of those, you know. This isn’t so much a debate about the merits of taxation. Assuming there aren’t bizarre local or state laws preventing it, the FD could easily have collected, say, $500 through legal recourse, which is more than 6x what they would have collected if she’d paid the premium. Call it a penalty.
The fact that you have no sympathy for their exquisite personal saddens me.
Enlightened Liberal
@Benno:
Protecting life and limb is different from protecting property. The FD showed up to protect lives, they just weren’t going to protect their DVD collection and collection of Elvis Collectors’ Spoons unless the dues were paid up.
Kind of like insurance, really.
Paul in KY
@AA+ Bonds: Begins with a ‘T’ doesn’t it?
Paul in KY
@PurpleGirl: They knew the situation. Sad that they couldn’t rustle up $75 to pay the fee. I hope the rest of the people in the county pay it.
REN
I don’t know about you people but where I live the volunteer firefighters would not be standing around watching a neighbors house burn down over $75. And if the firechief tried to prevent it he would be hanging upside down by his heels from the nearest tree.
Me
See http://troy.troytn.com/Obion%20County%20Fire%20Department%20Presentation%20Presented%20to%20the%20County%20Commission.pdf
In particular, see this line: “… Collections are less than 50% and fire departments have no way of legally collecting the fee.” So to anyone saying “They should have saved it and then sent a bill after,” they do not have that legal ability. Also, South Fulton does not have a volunteer fire department; of the 22 firefighters, 17 are paid firefighters and only 5 are volunteers; if you want paid firefighters, you have to raise the money to pay them, or they will go somewhere that does pay them, and no one will get coverage.
In short: This is a financial decision. The county and state governments have decided to not make fire protection a governmental function (where it might be handled by, say, some form of progressive taxation so that poor families don’t get left unprotected), and this woman indicates that she knew she was uncovered and chose not to get coverage – “I thought it couldn’t happen to me,” not “I couldn’t afford it.”
Do I feel sorry for her? Yes. The same way I feel sorry for anyone whose bad personal decisions come back to bite them; the same way I feel sorry for someone who, say, gets screwed over by their employer after voting against unionization both at the company level and at the governmental level; the same way I feel sorry for Alabama having economic hardships because they drove off the cheap labor their economy depends on. Which is to say, a mild detached sympathy for the situation entirely overwhelmed by awareness that it’s their own damn fault.
Now, I do feel sorry for the woman’s daughter or anyone else who lived there. They didn’t make the bad decision they’re suffering the negative effects from.
centerfielddj
All the logical argument in the world can’t get me to accept that it is acceptable in a civil society to refuse to put out this fire. All efforts made here, regardless of their merit, make me mindful of Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”. In fact, the greater their efforts to persuade with impressive logic, (they can’t collect the bill! They won’t get workers’s comp if they’re injured!), the more it reminds me of Swift.
That said, these people are running up against the inevitable consequences of libertarianism. I wonder how another vote on the tax would turn out now?
Reducing this to money, which these Tenneseans appear to care for at the expense of people, doesn’t it hurt the property values of the homeowners in the neighborhoods of the destroyed homes?
pseudonymous in nc
@REN:
Where you live, I’m guessing the volunteer firefighters probably receive some kind of funding from property taxes and have appropriate jurisdiction (and liability coverage) for your address.
The ridiculousness of this is compounded by the fact that if unincorporated Obion County and the majority of its voters got their collective act together to put together a VFD, there’d be a way to seek federal assistance from FEMA and an obvious mutual aid compact with the city department. But they have to admit that they have a fucking problem first, and that the solution is to work out how much it costs to run a fire department and raise the money across the entire population.