Posted on 04/10/2013 4:55:38 PM PDT by dragnet2
A gunman was barricaded in a home in Georgia on Wednesday with four firefighters he took as hostages after they responded to what appeared to be a medical emergency call, officials said.
The man initially held a fifth firefighter captive in the home, in Suwanee, about 35 miles northeast of Atlanta, but let that person leave to move a fire truck, police and fire officials said.
Officials were not releasing details about what happened inside the house or a possible motive but said the hostages did not appear to have been harmed.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
This state is a right to work state not supported by the unions. Pensions are paid into by the individual much like your 401K as is the medical. None of this has anything to do with what was going on with the Fireman hostages. I hope you never need one of these people that you hold in so much contempt.
You deny tens of millions of unionized government workers, including water and power, fire personnel, cops, city councils, their staffs, accountants, planners, etc and their bloated government salaries, pension and benefits are not choking off privater sector America?
You deny this?
First off, this was nothing but suicide by cop. Nothing more.
BS Degrees, Masters Degrees......AND........ they only work about 9-11 days a month.
And yes, they do spend a fair amount of time laying around the firehouse. As I remember, shift starts around 7 or 8am - you have to be doing something related to work until around 5pm - then from 5-9pm you have your free time - after 9pm you can go to bed and shift is over in the morning. Then you get 2 days off.
Free time is when all the firemen go to their vehicles, get their laptops, etc and start scheduling what they’ll be doing on their off-days, IE plumbers, carpenters, electricians, landscaping, pressure washing, moonlight as firemen/emt’s at other fire departments. That’s the joy of being a firemen, you can have another full time job.
As for the pensions you speak of, yes they contribute but the municipality contributes the majority of the money.
So, do I feel bad for the firemen that were taken hostage.
But right about now, all those firemen that used to think the cops don’t do s**t, have a different perspective on their fellow civil servants up there in Gwinnett County.
I live in Cobb county Miss Aquamarine. I have a damn fine friend that just retired from Fulton county Fire. My dad went to school with the longtime chief of Cobb...Roy Hamrick.
Unlike most states...Our FF aren’t paid much...most have to work another job on their 24 hours off just to pay their bills. They pay into a private 401 K...just like everyone else.
During the epic..biblical 2009 flood here in Cobb county...Our FF’s went far ABOVE the CALL OF DUTY...risking their asses braving the cottonmouths...swarming balls of fire ants...and raging ass current..saving untold numbers of lives versus the 10 we lost. One rescue I watched the young boy FF...couldn’t have been more than 19...saved a woman from her car that had been washed off a bridge and pinned undercarriage against a tree...rushed out the truck before a line could be unrolled and DOVE into a raging 15 knot mass of ugly...barely catching himself on the car..IN THE DARK...HAD HE MISSED THE CAR THE FREAKIN CHATTAHOOCHIE RIVER WAS TWO BENDS DOWNSTREAM...30 FREAKIN FEET ABOVE FLOOD STAGE AND 55 degrees of twenty knot current...He woulda been dead before he got to Douglas county and woulda washed all the way to West Point lake...90 miles downstream.
I ain’t heard of any those folks like her....or the hundreds like her...getting any extra bill. Nor would I think they would give a f#ck.
I wonder if that crane operator rescued from his 200 ft tall perch....from the raging inferno of burning 15 story building beneath him...by that young ass Atlanta FF DANGLING FROM A HELO by what was pretty much a leather swing set seat and NO GODDAMN HARNESS....I wonder if he got billed extra? I’m sure the FF got a damn dime extra and did not give a f#ck...ain’t NO AMOUNT OF MONEY WORTH LAYIN OUT A SACK THAT SIZE....IT WAS DONE OUT OF LOVE FOR HIS FELLOW MAN.
I know that in my younger days....when I did some steel erecting downtown....it paid no more to be feet on the ground or dangling 20 stories up on a beam being hoisted in place and bolted...with that NW wind blowing hard down the Appalachains.
No amount of Combat pay was worth laying the ass on the line...whether getting shot at in Central and South America...or standing watch on the port side .50 cal during a good blow at night...or working on a live 480 volt panel rolling in 20 ft seas that HAD to be fixed quickly before we hit another ship or the jagged ass rocks the 40 knot plus gale was blowing us toward. No sir.
I wonder if the FF’s...rushing to the top of World trade...when EVERYONE ELSE WAS RUNNING DOWN THEM STEPS....Wonder if their widows think the money they got was worth watching them buildings come down with their loved ones inside...watching them die on national TV....was worth it?
And most importantly....when my wife had a reaction to her new meds and put her hand through our living room window...severing her artery with the smallest of four ugly lacerations....taking three of the 150 + stitches to close. I was around the corner at a neighbors and went running after the ambulance and first engine went by....I beat the squad rescue and chief to my yard...seeing my wife laid out on our deck covered in blood head to toe..looking very dead...the whole gory scene made worse with the splashing red from their lights running a circle...over and over and over.
I’ve seen some really gruesome...f@cked up shit in my life...I will NEVER forget that scene. And had she died...that image would have haunted me hard the rest of my life.
Her first BP was 70/30. There was one EMT trying to sew up the artery...the other was giving the IV with both the fluids and blood clotter that would save her life...One FF was taking her BP and reading it out every 30 seconds. One FF...rated in Advanced Life support EMT was in command barking out orders while another was on the radio with Cobb Gen ER telling THEM WTF was going on.
While the Chief stood right next to me...cool as ice...telling me this is his Ateam and they got this. SHe’s good...that EMT who so skillfully and quickly got the IV going...in the dark...before anyone else got to her....saving her life with his badassness like he did Marines in Afghanistan as a Navy Corpsman. His name was Steven Godsden.
He told me his head dude over there running the show was also a Navy corpsman combat vet...Brad Cummings. The rook of the crew...on the radio with the intern at Cobb..who thought they were all following his orders...was clueless. Another Steve..Steve Culbreath.
The EMT that sewed up her artery..in the dark...doing a better job than the er docs did in perfect light...Brandon Pirkle.
From the time they arrived till she was loaded was just shy of 5 minutes...two minutes later the Chief got the official “She’s good” from EMT Godsden riding in the back of the ambulance with my wife...along with FF Brad...the head dude.
Luckily for us...it was Friday night and the Trauma A team was on duty because Friday is usually a pretty busy night for car wreck trauma.
The only bill I got was from the ambulance company...a PRIVATE company...for $1500. It’s been paid in the year since.
I didn’t get jack squat of a bill from Cobb Fire. They did get a big fat delivery of Wallace BBQ one Friday night later on. Then another they got some deer chili. Another time I took them two gallons of untaxed Apple pie brandy. They got my undying gratitude and prolly tired of hearing my thanks....along with a letter to the head of Public safety in Cobb county.
Now some may bitch about the FF’s in their state. I bitch about bloated government employees myself....sucking up massive amounts of tax money for little in return. But to bitch about FF’s? Those who are the lowest paid amongst government employees but are expected to give the most...their lives...FOR YOU??
BITCH AT THEM WHILE THEY ARE SAVING YOUR LIFE. BE SURE TO BITCH AT THEM WHILE THEY ARE DYING SAVING YOUR UNGRATEFUL ASS...GO ASK THEIR WIDOWS IF THEY ARE ENJOYING THEIR FAT ASS LIVES YOUR TAX DOLLARS ARE PROVIDING THEM.
Go down to Manhattan and tell them how overpaid their dead brothers were...Do it next week so I can watch...you ungrateful bastard.
Aquamarine...Thank You.
I got through several lines of your disjointed, rambling hysterical wordy post, when I found you totally evaded my comments.
To bring you back from your hysteria, maybe you’d like to answer #42? The other poster ran for the tall grass.
It’s a yes or no question.
This is from just 2 years ago.
Seems public pension corruption is also eating the tax payers alive in Georgia.
At the bottom of this, there are two more simple questions for ya.
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Public pension crisis threatens your wallet
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Public pensions are a rock slide crashing down on local governments, threatening to bury some and alter the landscape of others.
The pension plans of five metro governments are hundreds of millions of dollars in the red. Add in the city of Atlanta’s gigantic liabilities, and the total pension deficit for the city and five core counties came to $2.8 billion in 2009, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has determined.
The city of Atlanta, for example, raised its pension benefits twice in the 2000s without making provision to pay for those increases.
The result: a $1.3 billion deficit in 2009. DeKalb County’s plan was fully funded 13 years ago, so officials declared a “contribution holiday” and for several years paid little into the fund. By 2009, DeKalb was running the highest deficit of any of the metro counties
Critics assert that some local leaders have mishandled their pension systems — offering generous benefits that they couldn’t actually afford to score political points. The critics point out that the two pension increases in Atlanta were enacted during election years.
Now city and county governments must find more money for pensions at the same time they’re trying to plug budget deficits, leaving them with an array of bad choices: raise taxes, cut services, increase employees’ contributions to the pension plan or reduce benefits to retirees.
On Jan. 1, DeKalb County police Sgt. Jeff Wiggs and other DeKalb employees saw their contribution to the county pension plan nearly double, to 8.4 percent of their pay.
“That caught us completely off guard, and especially the amount,” said Wiggs, president of the DeKalb Fraternal Order of Police.
“The majority of the department, they’re making $38,000 or $40,000 a year, trying to raise two or three kids. That’s hard to do,” Wiggs said.
For the typical DeKalb worker, the increased contribution comes to $1,750 a year, at a time when most county workers haven’t seen a raise in years.
DeKalb’s pension plan costs are jumping this year by more than 50 percent. The pension will suck $47.7 million out of the county budget at the same time DeKalb is facing layoffs, furloughs and the closing of at least one library.
Another $23.5 million will come out of employees’ paychecks.
Region full of shortfalls
Other local governments face grave problems as well:
● Atlanta — the region’s poster child of past pension mismanagement — is now planning the radical step of a “hard freeze,” which some experts say no government has tried before in Georgia. Without the step, which freezes all employees’ future pension benefits at today’s level, city officials say Atlanta’s $1.3 billion pension deficit will eventually triple. Its $125 million annual pension bill already consumes more than 20 percent of the city’s budget.
● Cobb County’s pension fund in 2009 contained just 55 percent of the money it has promised to retirees — one of the worst cases of underfunding in metro Atlanta. The worst: Atlanta Public Schools, which has funds to cover an abysmal 17 percent of its obligations.
A widely accepted benchmark holds that, at any given time, pension funds should contain at least 80 percent of the money they have promised to pay out.
● Gwinnett County this year increased employees’ required contributions to as much as 9 percent of their total pay.
Governments in Fulton, Gwinnett and Cobb counties have also taken a page from the private sector’s playbook by closing their traditional pension plans to new hires.
“The taxpayers can’t pay everything,” said Virgil Moon, head of Cobb’s pension board. Cobb closed its pension plan in 2010, increased employees’ contributions and set up a cheaper plan for new hires.
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Tell me Mr. Vigilant, why should the tax payers be paying for ANY portion of government employee retirements, when those in the private sector are now being told they should be saving for their own retirements. Should the government sector do the same?
Private sector employees are now being told not to expect their employers to pay for their medical benefits. Should the same go for the government sector?
“Much better pay in private sector”??? Where’s the paycheck for life in THAT though?
How would you feel if you worked for a state or local government for 20 or 30 years only to have your pension slashed dramatically or taken away entirely? Well, this exact scenario is playing out from coast to coast....
Hey, Mr. Vigilant, this has been happening to those in the private sector for about 15+ years now?
You didn't get the memo?
Should government employees pay for their own medical and retirement benefits like the private sector is now doing?
Where'd ya go Mr. Vigilant?
There is no paycheck for life for those in the private sector....Ms. Aquamarine forgot about that little detail.
There are quite a few Fireman Freepers, one even lost his life in the World Trade Center. His wife is still a Freeper.
We will much about in da streets
but we must stay out da Bushes
Of course if there were a real disaster you would probably still be waiting.
Bravo!
Reminds me one time at a gathering some moron was railing on an attendee who was an airline pilot. He was going on and on about how pilots are overpaid and don’t really fly the plane and how anyone can fly nowadays yada yada. The pilot in a cool tone said, “yeah but when the g.d. wing is on fire and you are wetting your pants in the back I am worth every f__king dime, right?” Turn and walked off. I started laughing and said, “well, enough said”.
I watched EMT’s save my young daughter after a bad wreck. The good ones are amazing to watch.
Of course! We must pay government employees and their unions to the point where they collapse city/county/state budgets while the tax payers are broke and on their knees.
Because they’re all HEROS!
You betcha!
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