Free Republic

The last time this happened, our thread ran for more than 1,100 comments. To refresh your memory: The city charges a $75 fee up front for firefighter services throughout the year. Pay the fee and the F.D. will show up and douse the flames that are consuming your home. Don’t pay and the F.D. will show up and … watch it burn. I can understand a policy in which paying the fee gives you priority over a non-payer if your house and their house are on fire simultaneously and the department has to choose which to respond to. And I...

Retired Portland police and firefighters sue city to keep pension overpaymentsBy Maxine Bernstein, The Oregonian Updated: Wednesday, September 07, 2011, 11:15 PM More than 500 retired Portland police and firefighters and their spouses have brought a class action lawsuit against the city, arguing that Portland's public safety retirement fund breached their contract by trying to recoup nearly $3 million the fund mistakenly overpaid them in pension benefits. The lawsuit, filed initially by five plaintiffs in Multnomah County Circuit Court, seeks to stop the Portland Fire and Police Disability and Retirement Fund from withholding pension payments that the fund's board says...

They pedaled through intense heat, pouring rain and pounding hail, but nearly a dozen firefighters who left on bicycles from Los Angeles six weeks ago made it to New York just in time. "They've been unstoppable," said Erik Scott, spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department. "I think some of the amazing things they've done is the terrain they've gone through," Scott said. "They are exhausted but in good spirits." As part of the national "Ride for 9-11," firefighters from Los Angeles city and county and other stations across Southern California cycled cross-country to raise money for charity and honor...

One hundred and ninety motorcycles, driven mostly by Chicago firefighters, are on their way to New York for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. The motorcycles left on Tuesday morning from US Cellular Field and will make stops at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where flight 93 went down, and at the Pentagon, before reaching Ground Zero on September 11th. Tom Maloney, a Lieutenant for the Chicago Fire Deparment, started the Chicago to New York motorcycle ride after the 9/11 attacks. Maloney and several other Chicago firefighters traveled to New York after the attacks to help the New York firefighters dig through the rubble....

Chicago will hire 111 bypassed black firefighters by March 2012 and pay at least $30 million in damages to some 6,000 others who will never get that chance, under a court order expected to be approved Wednesday by a federal judge. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously agreed that African-American candidates did not wait too long before filing a lawsuit that accused the city of discriminating against them for the way it handled a 1995 firefighter’s entrance exam. A federal appeals court affirmed that ruling in May and remanded the case back to the trial court to implement a...

WASHINGTON - The cops, firefighters and rescue workers who toiled at Ground Zero will not be invited to take part in the 10th anniversary ceremony, a city official told the Daily News Friday. First responders will instead be asked back to the site at another day for a separate commemorative ceremony, city officials said.

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...