The question of sending a fire engine to a medical emergency is one fire districts often question — but the firemen say it is necessary, and so do their friends and fellow fire house buddies, the EMTs heartily agree.

Of course it is featherbedding, and fully supported by the fire unions — although unions are specifically forbidden for firemen and police in California. In our era of euphemisms, fire and police unions are called “Associations,” but they provide every service of a union including the control of just about every elected official.

We could save a great deal of money, and lives by dispatching an EMT on a motorcycle as the very first responder to medical alerts (and 90% of all calls ARE medical emergencies) — the doctors say if you don’t get to a severe heart attack in 4 minutes, don’t bring a deliberator, bring a clean white sheet.

(The Fire union would demand that it be a seven-person motorcycle!)

We need to look carefully at fire staffing, fire pay and retirement.

It is eating us alive — with the average fireman in California making a LOT more take-home pay than the Commanding Officer of a nuclear submarine!

Mark Steyn hit it this morning when he remarked upon the list of 500,000 on the watch list, and that it is not easy to check that list instantly.

Steyn remarked that if you buy a book on Amazon.com, and access that site 8 years later, the site will instantly remind you of that previous book purchase, and six other books that people who liked that book have also subsequently ordered – and Amazon.com has a LOT more than 500,000 in their database!

I don’t even want to recall the BILLIONB that were spent on Air Traffic Control, and FBI computer systems that never worked properly – yes, they were designed and built by private enterprise but to government specs, and installed under government direction. Amazon.com and a thousand other huge private systems work all day every day – because the management says they must or the manager loses his job!

Think any government workers will lose their job over this? Think again! If it happened at Amazon.com, the Boss would say to the IT department leading people, “How long have you all worked here – NOT counting tomorrow?”

I saw our Homeland Director on two TV news/opinion shows this a.m. She appeared either clueless, or restrained — either way it was not reassuring.

The Obama administration appears to treat this ‘attack” as a criminal matter at home, while it engages in war abroad — not just Afghanistan and Iraq, but in Yemen. Yemen appears to be the next war, regardless of what the doves may wish.

President Obama appears to be bifurcated (or confused). Perhaps he thinks he can mollify his left wing by domestic talk of criminal treatment, while engaging in war abroad. His drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen are hardly criminal pursuit but rather war-making with technology.

(1/3 of all aircraft ordered for delivery this year are drones.)

We escaped a disaster this time just because the device failed, but the bomber got all the way to his destination, undetected although Amsterdam has body canners.

The only fault I can find so far with our processes is why the name did not progress from the “watch” list to the “no-fly” list after his father’s warning, and why the bomber was permitted to keep his multiple-entry visa?

That does not appear to be a political failure, but simply bureaucracy at work.

While I find it interesting that Amazon.com sold MORE Kindle books this Christmas  season than they did printed books, the Senate healthcare Reform Bill was far more interesting.

In what can only be called alchemy, the Senate says they can take half a TRILLION dollars out of Medicare but keep it whole without reducing its value to seniors: increase taxes half a TRILLION dollars and keep healthcare increases down without knowing what new drugs and technologies will be invented; provide ‘universal coverage” while leaving 25 million citizens uninsured; and, at least to me violate the constitution by REQUIRING private citizens to purchase something from a private company which I find nowhere in the Constitution.

Can the government also require us to only buy GM cars? California bonds?

I also wonder if the Healthcare Bill is a complete financial failure – can we remove the pension of those who saddled us with it?

The mind boggles!

The concept of a “third party” is insane – we already have a third, and fourth and probably a fifth, sixth and seventh.

None of them, and I am a member of one of them, ever gets enough votes to matter. Voting in an alternative party is like praying – it doesn’t do any good but it makes you feel better.

One of the reasons another party won’t work is that passion will not win the voting day – organization wins the day in voting: City, county, state and national organization, and not just organization but EXPERIENCED organization with money. Money and experienced organization that understands media buys, understands bussing people and precinct organization – and most importantly has a message and a messenger. Democrats and republicans have money and experienced organizations.

If the Ross Perot debacle taught anyone, anything, it is that even a strong organization with money and a good candidate can only act as spoiler and re-elect Democrats because as badly splintered as they are they vote together.

Yes, both political parties spend too much – but GWB to the contrary notwithstanding the Republicans spend less. Yes, both political parties are corrupt because both are populated with politicians. (A third party would be equally corrupt because it has politicians.)

Each party “gets religion” when their excesses cause the other party to win, and then promptly reverts to its old ways letting the other party win. The loss of 20+ House seats and 5 Senate seats will cause the Democrats to soften their socialist tendencies and try to not get so far ahead of the population, with the hope of coming back for another bite of the apple.

“Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) — California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, anticipating a $21 billion state budget deficit, plans to ask President Barack Obama to ease mandates and minimums on social programs to save as much as $8 billion.

The Republican governor plans to seek the relief, according to a California official who asked not to be identified because details haven’t been resolved. Instead of seeking one-time stimulus money or a bailout, the most-populous U.S. state wants the federal government to reduce mandates and waive rules stipulating expenditures on programs such as indigent health care, the official said.

California is among states most affected by the economic recession. It has the lowest credit rating and recorded the nation’s second-highest rate of home foreclosures, trailing only Nevada. Unemployment peaked at 12.5 percent in October amid the loss of 687,700 jobs from the year before, when the jobless figure was 8 percent. Wealth declined as the stock market lost 40 percent of its value in 2008.”

The article goes on to note that California’s bond rating (Moody’s) is Baa1, two steps lower than Greece – the poorest of the European nations!

Not even mentioned in the lengthy and excellent article is the looming pension fiasco – caused by CalPERS losing more than $209 BILLION over the past 24 months – approximately the size of the entire annual California budget, and the requirement that California taxpayers make up the losses a pensions come due!

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aKc0QT2U7Gc0

It is amazing to me to compare and contrast the Revolutionary War (since I wrote about the Delaware Crossing) with the fights we now endure.

In the Revolutionary War, the two British commanders were brothers – the Howe brothers. One commanded the fleet, the other the British Army – both had tried to talk King George out of attacking the Americans. (The got their commissions from their aristocracy but rose to their commands by merit.)

Admiral Howe told the King that even though he was given half the entire British Fleet it would not be sufficient to bottle up America because of the length of the American coast. General Howe told the King that defeating the Americans in battle was impossible, because they could melt into the population, or retreat to the Appalachian mountains, or disappear in the Frontier.  (The Frontier to everyone in 1776 was western Pennsylvania!)

The British had no allies (a situation we are now suffering)! The French and the Germans had been fighting the British for centuries, and not only would not help the British but the British had to keep half the fleet home to keep the French or Germans from attacking Britain!

The British spent a year trying to deflect the battle – but they wanted the taxes and they wanted Parliament to levy them. The Americans were willing to pay taxes, but wanted their local authorities to levy them. Neither side could square that circle.

The British hired Hessian Mercenaries to help fight (sort of like Blackwater), having tried to hire Russian forces and other European forces. The Hessians were almost all volunteers from a nation-state called Hessia where farming was the main income but the land was so poor that the Prince recruited and hired out his soldiers a a profit center.

The British considered several tactics to win the war – terror, which had won the battles for Britain against the Irish, Scots and several European nations. Basically that consisted of sacking and burning the towns – but the Brits tried that after the Battle of Bunker Hill, and that only angered the Americans to a higher pitch.

(It took the British three tries to capture Bunker Hill, and they lost 900 of their finest troops to death or serious injuries. That was not something they wished to continue!)

The Brits considered blockade, since the Americans had everything they needed to fight a long war – except gunpowder – but there were too many ports.

The Brits considered establishing forts, but decided the Americans could always mount an attack one fort at a time,

Finally, the Brits decided to take New York and operate on campaign at a time, some north, and some south. Their fleet could always control any river like the Hudson even if it could not block many ports at once.

The parallels are obvious, just reversed. We now mount armies while our enemy shoots from behind trees and melts into the population. We establish forts, which are susceptible to single massed attacks.

Slowly, with our Special Forces we are learning the Frontier skills again – small forces speaking the local language, moving quickly at night 

INDIAN FIGHTING!

How did we ever forget it? It won our freedom from the British!

From the Wall Street Journal: “Venezuela Warns on Toyota Plant

“Venezuela’s president has threatened to expropriate Toyota’s local assembly plant if it doesn’t produce more vehicles designed for rural areas and increase technology transfer.”

President Obama needs to send an envoy to teach Hugo how to do these things with greater subtlety!

• All negotiations regarding pay and pension for public employees to be done in PUBLIC. (It’s OUR Money!)

• Pensions to be figured ONLY on “base pay” — ignoring “spiking” final pensions by including overtime, and extra pay and benefits.

• All disabilities to be figured and determined after retirement, stopping “Chief’s illness” where police and firepeople get disability in the last year, getting MUCH higher than retirement. Disability should count ONLY as “tax free” — not in addition to base pay.

• Repeal the California law permitting “3” as the multiplier for years served in figuring retirement. It had previously been 2.5 (the same as the military.)

• All retirement to be figured on the average last two years of service, to avoid advancement just before retirement to “spike” the retirement pay.

• All contracts currently existing to be maintained, unless the political entity declares bankruptcy – but all politicians who voted for the public employee pensions over the past 10 years to have their retirement reduced by 50% to help pay for their stupidity!

• Politicians who approve pay and retirement for public employees must have their own retirement plans which cannot in any way be tied to employment or retirement plans for anyone else.

• No active public employee, may make more money than the current President of the United States (the ULTIMATE “Public employee”) or  in retirement more money than the last retired President of the United States.

•  Politicians who approve pay and retirement for public employees must have their own retirement plans which cannot in any way be tied to employment or retirement plans for anyone else.

• No active public employee, may make more money than the current President of the United States (the ULTIMATE “Public employee”) or in retirement make more money than the last retired President of the United States.

• Making all pay and retirement for California public employees a subject of public vote. Strangely enough our most liberal city (which is also a county) San Francisco has had this requirement for more than a century. Still more amazing, the last three requests for pay and retirement have been turned down! (San Diego County and Orange County made this a law in 2009 – too little too late!)

1. There is a LOT more, but this is a good start.

There is a vast difference between scientific consensus and political consensus.

We are much like a patient who has been diagnosed with a serious illness by a doctor.

What is our confidence in the doctor? What is our confidence in the test results? If the prognosis is dire, do we even want to afford the proposed solution and pauperize our family if the illness is not as dire as predicted?

That is the political question to be answered. We have read articles by very smart people who say that our illness that has been diagnosed by the doctor is questionable at best, and indeed  the lab workers have been shown to have been playing fast and loose with the test results.

Some of our friends believe every word the doctor says about everything including the local restaurants because, well, he is a doctor. One of the doctors most fervent PR men, a former journalist turned politician has been proven to be a fraud in overselling the doctors abilities to predict the course of our illness.

It is our decision, not the doctors! Right now we are conflicted, but leaning toward getting at least a second opinion.