December 2010

There seems to be some confusion, some of it deliberate, about Florida’s “guns in parking lots” law. The law allows citizens who possess a valid Concealed Weapons permit to keep firearms in their vehicles without fear that they can lose their jobs for doing so. It prohibits an employer from taking any action against an employee for having a firearm in his car, or for refusing a search of his car that is intended to look for weapons.

Exempted from this law are employers that operate certain types of businesses, like nuclear weapons plants and explosives manufacturers. This is where the confusion begins. Disney has stated that they have a policy that weapons are prohibited in the theme park areas, and this is enforceable because of that clause. To clear this up, lets take a look that the clause and what it means. The exemption clause reads:

(7) EXCEPTIONS. The prohibitions in subsection (4) do not apply to: (snip irrelevant parts)
(e) Property owned or leased by a public or private employer or the landlord of a public or private employer upon which the primary business conducted is the manufacture, use, storage, or transportation of combustible or explosive materials regulated under state or federal law, or property owned or leased by an employer who has obtained a permit required under 18 U.S.C. s. 842 to engage in the business of importing, manufacturing, or dealing in explosive materials on such property. (Emphasis added)

Since Disney is not in the PRIMARY business of handling or manufacturing explosives, the bold part is where Disney claims to derive the ability to exempt itself from the law. This is where the deliberate obfuscation comes in. The permit that is issued pursuant to 18 USC 842 is a permit issued by the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE) to manufacture and deal in explosives. Disney has such a permit, as they use it to purchase wholesale Class C explosives (fireworks) for their daily fireworks shows. This would seem to place Disney firmly in the exempted class of employers. Until you dig.

Disney’s permit to manufacture explosives only covers a specific piece of property, the property where the explosives are stored and handled. In the county plat book, the Disney resort area is not one contiguous piece of property, but is divided into hundreds of smaller plots of land. This is probably done for tax reasons, and to avoid fire codes that would prohibit handling explosives on the same land where operating theme parks and hotels. Since this is the case, an employee working at the EPCOT, Magic Kingdom, or Animal Kingdom resort, or at any of the hotels in the Disney area would not be on the same piece of property where the employers is licensed to handle the explosives. Thus, Disney should not be exempt on any property not covered by the explosives permit.

I believe that this is the case that was being made by Jon Gutmacher when he was representing Mr Sotomayor in his lawsuit against Disney. We will never know, because Disney settled the case out of court to avoid losing, and the terms of the settlement have not been disclosed.

As an atheist, I celebrate Christmas. To me, it is a holiday that allows us to get together with our friends and families and bond with them. Regardless of if you are an Atheist, Agnostic, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, or any other religious stripe, we should all endeavor to get along for one day a year.

Merry Christmas

Edited to add: Thank you to all who commented on this blog, wishing me a Merry Christmas. I was unable to respond, as I was working, and we do not have internet access at work. Again, thank you. I hope the coming year brings all of you happiness and prosperity.

This article about the redneck society states that you might be a redneck, if you think it is called “duck tape” instead of “duct tape.” The redneck society page says it as well.

Well, if you call it “duct tape,” you are wrong.  The trademarked name for the tape is actually “Duck Tape.” It was invented during world war two by Permacell, a division of the Johnson and Johnson Company and was used to seal American ammo cans against water. The resulting tape was nicknamed “Duck Tape” for its ability to repel water.

EMS in the United States is provided in one of five ways: fire service, private, third service, public-utility and hospital-based.

The fire service model is where EMS is run by the fire department. The personnel who staff the ambulances are usually cross trained as firefighters, and assume those duties at fire scenes. Since most fire departments in the country who follow this model are seeing 80% or more of their calls as EMS runs, having firefighters sitting around, waiting for a fire seems inefficient. So while there are no fires, they are put to work running EMS calls.

The advantage to this system is that it is more efficient to minimize the amount of down time that crews have and put them to work. The disadvantages to the system are that 1) most of the personnel would rather run into burning buildings than clean up grandma’s feces filled diapers. 2) If one of these people rises to the level of chief, you get an entire EMS agency that focuses more on the 20% or less of the organization’s responsibilities, and virtually ignores the primary mission of EMS, and 3) To adequately serve potential patients, EMS resources must be matched to meet demand. Fire departments have historically deployed ambulances using a fixed neighborhood station model, and many continue to use 24-hour shifts. This results in lower efficiency, with too many resources during non-peak times and non-peak neighborhoods, and not enough resources during non-peak times and in non-peak neighborhoods.

The next government run system is the ‘third service’ model, in which EMS is run as a branch of local government as a stand-alone service. Like its public-safety counterparts, it is completely owned, financed, and operated within the local government structure. The advantages here are that everyone in the EMS organization is charged with and working on the delivery of emergency ambulance service, and management is directly responsible to local officials.

The disadvantages here: As with all government run models, it is common for third-service and fire-based organizations to be evaluated by a level-of-effort approach instead of performance outcomes. This means no repercussions exist if the service underperforms. Poor performance is often addressed by simply adding resources. Another disadvantage is that control of expenditures is dependent on the local government’s budgetary and managerial processes. This makes it difficult to keep spending appropriate, as the people doing the budgeting are either invested in the process (the EMS chief) and spend too much, or they know nothing about EMS delivery (the city commission/mayor’s office), and spend too little.

There is private EMS, which is where a private company provides EMS service to the community, and is funded entirely by user fees, billed to those who use the service. Since the model also provides the more lucrative non-emergency transportation between hospitals, private homes, and nursing homes. In combination with lower wages, less opportunity for advancement, and higher expectations for productivity, the provider can usually make EMS profitable. The advantage here is that this service costs the taxpayer very little, but the disadvantages here are that significant oversight is required to prevent the company from cutting too many corners, and that employee turnover and burnout rates are generally high.

There is the “public utility model,” where the EMS agency acts like a public utility like the electric company. They are a for profit service that is contracted by the local government to provide service to the community, and they are paid a fee by the local government, and also bill the people who are transported to the hospital. The majority of the funding (if not all of it) is through these user fees.The advantage here is that the contractor is held to a standard, and if they do not live up to that standard, they can be replaced.The disadvantage is that this is a variation on the “for profit” system, and the disadvantages here are the same.

Similarly, hospital based systems see the same difficulties as the PUM and the for-profit models. In my area, there were two hospital based ambulance services, but they only did the more profitable interfacility non-emergency transports. A few years ago, one was replaced by a contract with Rural Metro. The other is still there, but is still relegated to interfacility transports.

Eric Sheptock has been homeless since 1994 when he last held a job, but he has a cellphone, 4500 friends on Facebook, and gets 1500 emails a day. He does it all by using free computers, begging for cash, and being paid to speak about how the government doesn’t do enough to help homeless bums.

Sheptock won’t take a job that would compromise his advocacy efforts or the long hours he spends tending to his digital empire, he says. In other words, the man is a professional parasite. He gets up every morning from the same bed in the same shelter, showers, gets a free breakfast, and spends the next 6 hours surfing free internet.

There are 6500 others just like him in DC. The only thing that makes him unique is the fact that he spends his days complaining that people and the government don’t do enough to give him better free stuff. At 50 years old, he hasn’t had a job since he was 25 years old and quit his job to be a crack addict. He first came to Washington DC to protest the Iraq war.

If you subsidize something, you get more of it. I say that it is time to stop feeding the strays with government cash. If a private charity wants to pay for these leaches to loaf all day while complaining that you aren’t giving them enough, that is the charity’s business. I for one, think that we have funded enough of this. If he can spend his days surfing the net and lobbying government officials for free cash, he can get a job.