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The Ride for 9-11 is officially underway. Southern California area firefighters, both active-duty and retired, departed this morning from the LAFD Historical Society Museum located at Old Fire Station 27 in Hollywood. The 3,308 mile bicycle ride across the United States is being undertaken in order to honor and keep alive the memory of those who made the ultimate sacrifice 10 years ago and those who continue to fight for our freedom and safety today. The Ride for 9-11 will cross 15 states over the next 47 days with riders slated to arrive in New York at the FDNY Firefighters...

All across America, municipal governments are awakening to the costs of overly-generous public sector compensation. In Orange County, California, the average total pay and benefits package for a firefighter is $175,000 a year. Firefighter unions say that there can be no cuts to fire department budgets without putting the safety of the public at risk. Yet for most of the nation's history, firefighting services were reliably provided by the private sector. Today, one county in Georgia is showing how that can be done again. The history of firefighting is instructive. After the traumas of the Great Fire of London in...

Complete Proof of the $12 Trillion Republican Debt Just below you can see the calculation and the documentation links for the Reagan-Bushes $12 Trillion ($12,049 Billion) national debt as of September 30, 2010. You can download this as an excel spreadsheet by clicking: Download as XLS. Their debt has 4 parts, but the bulk of it is calculated from 4 inputs (yellow and tan) that you can check with the color coded links to the treasury at the bottom. This will verify the $3.4 Trillion Reagan-Bush debt and the $6.1 Trillion G.W. Bush debt. Together that's $9.5 Trillion. Now some...

After introducing his controversial contingency plan, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) is working with majority leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) to craft a “hybrid” solution that would allow the debt ceiling to rise and include a modest amount of spending cuts: WASHINGTON — The Senate’s top two officials are working on what one aide called a “hybrid,” fail-safe solution to the debt ceiling debate that could garner enough political support to pass Congress. The plan, which is being hatched by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), would ensure that over $1.5...

Now that the table is set, here’s how the proposed plan would work: Republicans in Congress would agree to vote to authorize the president to propose three separate incremental debt ceiling increases, spaced over the remainder of his term. He would be required to couple each request with a corresponding set of spending cuts that exceed the dollar amount of his sought-after debt limit hike. These cuts would be of his choosing alone. The first pair of requests would come prior to the August 2 deadline. It would be for roughly $700 Billion. The next requests, for $900 Billion, would...

Media reports today are that a target of $2.4 trillion in deficit reductions is being negotiated to match an increase in the debt ceiling of $2.4 trillion to get the government funded into early 2013. The 18 months of borrowing from August 2011 through February 2013 works out to an annual rate of $1.6 trillion. That means the current deal allows for more deficit spending than FY 2011 ($1.5 trillion) and much more than the White House proposed earlier this year for FY 2012 ($1.1 trillion).The proposed deficit reductions are spread out over the next ten years and appears to...

Racine - A float commemorating firefighters' sacrifices in the terrorist attacks of 9-11 that had been embroiled in political controversy over the last week drew an enthusiastic welcome Monday morning at the Racine Fourth of July parade. Parade-goers grew silent then stood and applauded as Oak Creek firefighter Matt Gorniak drove the float down Main St. featuring a firefighter erecting an American flag on the smoking remains of the twin towers. Shouts of "there it is" and "is this the one?" could be heard from the crowd as the float approached to the sound of bagpipes. "I was in tears,"...

These days, almost anything can get caught in the blender of Wisconsin's union politics. It can even happen to a Fourth of July parade float honoring firefighters and cops killed on Sept. 11, 2001. "Back then, the public wasn't saying, 'How sad for the union' - they were saying, 'Those were firefighters who died,'" said Matt Gorniak, a Milwaukee-area fire lieutenant who is the driving force behind the float. "That's what this is about. It's above union, nonunion." Or at least it should be. The same float - a re-enactment of the famous photo of three firefighters raising the American...

On September 11, 2001, 2,977 people were killed by terrorists. The terrorists were indiscriminate in their slaughter of lives—while the attacks were an attack on America, the terrorists did not care whether those they killed were exclusively American or not, nor did they care whether or not the victims were carrying a union card. In New York, there were first responders killed on September 11th, 343 of them from the FDNY, many of them who happened to be members of a union, the IAFF. Yet, in Racine, Wisconsin, the International Association of Fire Fighters, Local 321 has made this...

Firefighters union accused of intimidation tacticsUpdated: Jun 28, 2011 1:04 PM EDT Public employee unions in San Diego are accused of using intimidation tactics to slow down signature drives to put a pension reform measure on the ballot next year. The firefighters union has the most to lose if the voters approve pension reform because new hires will lose the lucrative benefits that current firefighters enjoy. They, and others, have taken their cause to the streets. The unions are tracking down the locations of the signature gatherers, and their job is to keep as many people from signing as possible....

A group of New York City atheists is demanding that the city remove a street sign honoring seven firefighters killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks because they say the sign violates the separation of church and state. The street, “Seven in Heaven Way,” was officially dedicated last weekend in Brooklyn outside the firehouse where the firefighters once served. The ceremony was attended by dozens of firefighters, city leaders and widows of the fallen men. “There should be no signage or displays of religious nature in the public domain,” said Ken Bronstein, president of New York City Atheists. “It’s...

Noticeably missing from San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee's lengthy introduction of the city's "official family" at Friday's funeral of two firefighters was public defender and pension reform advocate Jeff Adachi. That's because Adachi, who had been standing with other dignitaries at the memorial outside of St. Mary's Cathedral, was asked to leave before the service started.According to witnesses, a large firefighter in uniform came up to Adachi and asked him to leave, at the request of a member of the fallen firefighter's family.When asked about the incident, Adachi confirmed that he had been asked to leave. "I had gone to...

ORANGE COUNTY, Florida (NBC) -- A Florida firefighter has been fired and another has been demoted in connection with a road rage incident in Orange County. Fire officials said a video was released showing Orange County fire engineer David Jordan driving a 15-ton truck and tailgating a car, whose driver wouldn't move over, last May 1. Investigators said Jordan nearly hits the car several times, even though he has room to go around the car. The car then gets into the left turn lane, which investigators said, by law it should have pulled off on the right shoulder and stopped...

JUSTICE SERVED? The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the Chicago Fire Department must hire 111 black applicants who passed a firefighters entrance exam 16 years ago and pay millions of dollars to thousands more who took and passed the same test. Was justice served? An attorney for the group said that the 111 jobs would be filled from applicants who passed the 1995 test and that their pensions would be adjusted as if they’d been firefighters since 1995. Attorney Joshua Karsh also said that 6,000 other blacks who also passed the test will divide “tens of...

The most dramatic political development (in terms of state governance) so far this year has been the passage of anti-public employee union legislation in the Middle West. Next Tuesday, Wisconsin will give us our first look at the political consequences, when people there will vote in a statewide special election for a State Supreme Court seat. That election has become a de facto referendum on Governor Scott Walker's legislative (and anti-union) agenda. Our sources indicate that the Republican incumbent, who won the February primary vote in a near-landslide, no longer commands a majority in private polling and that turnout will...

I'm surprised they don't include images of dead bodies. No doubt firefighters perform heroic acts everyday - including that awful day in Oklahoma City when Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. But to use images from that attack to oppose a law that would affect union collective bargaining procedures? NewsOK: [link] A state senator today blasted a firefighter union television advertisement as "horrific and tasteless" for using images of the Oklahoma City bombing to make a case against his bill. The advertisement by the International Association of Firefighters began airing today. It...

On the day that the bill passed the Wisconsin Assembly effectively ending 50 years of collective bargaining in Wisconsin and eviscerating the ability of public unions to raise money through dues, a new front opened in the battle for the future of Wisconsin families. Bagpipes blaring, hundreds of firefighters walked across the street from the Wisconsin Capitol building, stood outside the Marshall and Ilsley Bank (M&I Bank) and played a few tunes — loudly. Later, a group of firefighter and consumers stopped back in at the bank to make a few transactions. One by one they closed their accounts and...

Los Angeles - Thousands of mourners gathered today for a funeral at the downtown Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels to remember Los Angeles firefighter Glenn Allen, who was killed battling a blaze in the Hollywood Hills. "Glenn Allen was a beloved husband, father, brother, and son, a 36-year veteran of the Los Angeles Fire Department, who like his father before him, dedicated his life to the most selfless public service there is -- saving other people who find themselves in harm's way," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said during his eulogy. "He was a giant on the force." The funeral...

San Diego, Calif., Jan 31, 2011 / 01:12 pm (CNA).- Members of the San Diego Fire Department have won a sexual harassment lawsuit against the city for being forced to participate in a local gay pride parade in 2007. On Jan. 26, the California Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by the city and instead upheld a lower court ruling in favor of the firefighters. The move ends a several-year legal legal battle for four firefighters who lodged a complaint against San Diego for being forced to participate in the city’s gay pride parade in 2007. Although the...

Those of us who have worn the uniform and their families know what God, sacrifice, duty, honor and country are all about. I humbly ask my fellow veterans, service personnel, law enforcement, firefighters, first responders and their families to give generously to FreeRepublic so that it might survive and thrive in a world constantly threatened by socialism, communism, totalitarianism and other threats to our freedom and liberty. The recent shootings in Tucson, Arizona and the Left's attempts (before the victims were in an ambulance) to blame conservatives, the Tea Party Movement, talk radio and Governor Sarah Palin just illustrates the...