Divemedic

There are a couple of reasons why volunteer fire departments don’t work in many cases. In rural communities, they are an excellent resource, but after a response area reaches a certain size, they generally (with a few exceptions) don’t work.
1. Insurance companies: The real mission of the fire department is not to put out fires. It is to save the members of a community money through reducing insurance costs. Fire departments are rated by the insurance services organization on a scale of 10 (no fire department) to 1 (very few departments achieve this). Rankings range from 1 to 10, with 1 being the best and 10 being the worst. An ISO Class 3 rating is a very good rating especially for a department that has both paid and volunteer staff. Class 1 is very difficult to achieve as it means total fire protection. Departments that are outside city limits tend to receive Class 8 or 9 because of extended response times and lack of water supply, and this is true whether or not the department is paid or volunteer.

This is where volunteers shine. In rural areas, the cost/benefit of maintaining a paid department is out shone by volunteers.

2 Liability: In general, it is difficult to discipline volunteers. After all, it isn’t as if you can suspend them without pay or terminate them. In addition, many younger volunteers tend to drive way, way too fast when responding to calls, and they tend to freelance more. This causes liability issues, especially in urban areas where there are more chances of hitting someone.

3 Activity levels: The training and response levels demanded of firefighters increases every year. In urban and busy suburban departments, a fire station may easily run 3,000 or more calls per year. It is difficult to find volunteers who will dedicate themselves like this. I know there are departments who have volunteers at this level, but they are the exception, and not the rule.

There are other reasons, but these are the big ones. I say this after spending 8 years as a volunteer and having to face all of the above issues. Volunteerism used to be fairly strong in central Florida, but it has all but disappeared within the last 5 years. That is also the case in many other areas of the country.

There are many paramedics out there who work for private ambulance companies and claim that paramedics in the public sector (like firemedics) are incompetent and lazy. While I admit that this is true in many cases, I also have to say that the state of the for profit medical world today is committing fraud for profit.

When I worked for the fire department, there were many paramedics that did everything that they could to get out of doing work: this often meant that patients were shortchanged and care suffered in the name of laziness. I fought the battle against lazy medics for years.

The flip side of that is what happens in for profit systems: systematic Medicare and insurance fraud.You see, insurance and Medicare will not pay for a patient to travel anywhere by ambulance, unless there is no cheaper way for the patient to safely get to his destination. Here is how and why it becomes a systematic fraud on the taxpayer:

When a person is in a nursing home, the nursing home gets paid a fee for the housing and basic care of the person. This includes food, medicine, and transportation to medical appointments. For a patient who is on dialysis, this means three trips a week to and from the dialysis center. The only way that a nursing home can get out of paying for the transportation is if an ambulance is required because of the person’s inability to take another means of transportation. This creates a situation where the ambulance company lies to get the business, and the nursing home lies to get out of paying for the person’s transportation.

It is so bad, that some nursing homes tell the physical therapists that they should stop rehabilitating a person’s ability to walk once they can walk 30 feet. Anything more than that, and the person is considered no longer eligible to ride in an ambulance. The ambulance company then instructs the transport crews to avoid using the word “ambulatory” in reports, and even threatens termination for any crew that allows a patient to walk to the truck and/or stretcher.

I have been on calls before where we are supposed to take a person from home to dialysis, and the person pulls up next to us in traffic while driving their own car, and told us she will be home in 5 minutes so we can take her to her appointment. Does that sound like an ambulance is the only way for her to go?

Private ambulances doing transfers, 911 calls, nursing homes, hospitals. The health system of this nation is broken, and riddled with fraud. Making everyone have insurance is not going to make it any better.

When I was in graduate school, I was telling some of my fellow students a story about 911 abusers, and one in particular. This patient used to call 911 at 3 am from the payphone outside of his favorite bar, and complain of chest pain. When we arrived at the hospital, he would get off the stretcher and walk across the street to his sister’s house. He would also call when he had no money for food. The hospital would give him a sandwich, and he would then leave. In all, he was transported by EMS to the hospital an astonishing 284 times in a calendar year. He once broke into a fire station and stole uniforms and personal items, and was caught by the police walking down the street in a firefighter’s uniform. One afternoon, he was found by a patrol officer, floating face down in a pond, having fallen in while intoxicated and drowned. We had ice cream and cake that night to celebrate his passing. The world is a better place without this welfare and resource abusing loser.

When I told that story, the other students and a professor who was there were horrified that we could be so callous as to celebrate a person’s death. I was told that we should be nice to everyone, and remember that people can be down on their luck, and that we are all one month’s pay from being in his shoes. I asked, “what we should do when a patient tells me to suck his dick?”
The professor, “You should tell the patient that we will not stand for that sort of language.”
I say: “Then the patient tells you to kiss his ass.”
The professor says, “Well, then you tell him that if he continues to behave that way, you will fire him as a patient.”
I tell her, “You know that in emergency medicine, the law says that I have to treat him no matter what, don’t you? The patients know this, and they know that they can have a lot of fun with you, especially if they know you are a pushover that will take whatever they dish out.”
 The professor, “Well, that is why I never worked in emergency medicine.”

And therein lies the problem. There are a lot of people who would and could never do your job, have no idea how to do your job, and have never seen what you have to do to accomplish it, yet are just filled with helpful advice and opinions on how you should be doing your job.

This reminds me of a scene in the movie “Demolition Man”

Squad Leader: Simon Phoenix! Lie down with your hands behind your back.
Simon Phoenix: What’s this? Six of you. Such nice, tidy uniforms. Oh I’m so scared!
[the Police Officers look at each other]
Simon Phoenix: What you guys don’t have sarcasm anymore?
[Police Officer talks to his automated assistant]
Squad Leader: Maniac has responded with a scornful remark.
automated assistant: Approach, and repeat ultimatum in an even firmer tone of voice. Add the words, “or else”. 

To all of those people, I have a message: Until you have done that job, you have no idea what it is like, dealing with the trash of society. Many people out there do not act like those who operate in polite society. They respond to courtesy and polite language as a junkyard dog does to fear: that is, they see it as a sign of weakness, and will exploit that weakness to their own advantage.

Many on the right were quick to condemn the unions for running hostess into bankruptcy. Of course, like most issues, there is another side to the story. It seems that the union in question actually agreed to take a pay cut in order to help stave off bankruptcy the time the union contract came up for renewal in 2004. Shortly thereafter, the executives of Hostess received substantial performance bonuses and large raises.

Fast forward to 2012, the union refused to take a pay cut, fearing that the money that they surrendered would simply be used again to reward executives. It seems that the fears were not totally misplaced, with executives getting a bonus equal to 75% of their annual pay:

The update on the sale process came as
Hostess also received approval to give its top executives bonuses
totaling up to $1.8 million for meeting certain budget goals during the
liquidation. The company says the incentive pay is needed to retain the
19 corporate officers and “high-level managers” for the wind down
process, which could take about a year.

In fact, earlier this year, the CEO of the company saw his own pay rate TRIPLE to $2.5 million per year, and other executives received 80% pay raises. Blaming the union because they won’t take a pay cut, but holding the executives who gave themselves huge pay raises harmless, is the epitome of cluelessness. 
 
Anyone want to take bets as to how many of those corporate officers will receive high paying jobs at the new companies?

This evening, I sat and watched the show for the first time. One of the families was a prepper group that was preparing for a New Madrid earthquake event. They were pretty well set up with food, farming, honey bees, and a decent skill set. They had a prepper community of about 30 people in the area that traded skills and supplies. There was one main flaw in their preparations: security.

They claimed that they ethically did not want to have guns and ammunition like the “right wingers” and said that their main security was being part of a nurturing, friendly community of people who would support each other. They said that should a marauding band of armed people come to take their stuff, they would feed them and offer to trade with them. If that failed, they claim that they will poison the attackers with the food supply, or cut their throats while they sleep.

That tells me that it is not an ethical issue about violence, but a fear of inanimate objects. It also tells me that since they have no way of protecting their food and supplies, they will not keep them for very long.

I also concluded that the preppers in this show make the prepping community look like a bunch of idiots. From the 400 pound guy running around his yard with a rifle, to the family that was building a bunker to defend against a world wide tornado swarm, this show make preppers look like a bunch of loons. Maybe that is because the first rule of prepping is to keep a low profile, and the only preppers who would go on such a show are the dumb ones.

When the US federal government spends money, expenses are officially categorized in three different ways:

Mandatory spending includes entitlements like Medicare, Social Security, VA benefits, etc. which are REQUIRED by law to be paid.

Interest on the debt. 

Discretionary spending includes nearly everything we think of related
to government– the Military, all of the Alphabet agencies, the courts, Federal prisons, foreign aid, food stamps, welfare, bailouts, etc.

The two categories that must be spent every year are the interest on the debt, and mandatory spending. That totaled about $2.5 trillion in FY 2011.

The government took in about $2.3 trillion in tax revenue in FY2011. Even if the rest of government had been shut down, we would still have a $200 billion deficit. With the discretionary fund, this resulted in a deficit of $1.3 trillion.

What does this mean? This means that the government could confiscate 100% of the income of the top 1% of wage earners (anyone who makes more than $340,000 a year), and there would still be a $300 billion deficit.

In fact, increasing the taxes of all Americans by a third (133% of last year) would still require that all government discretionary spending be cut in half.

Does anyone here think that we can fix this?

My local gun store opened at 7 a.m. this morning. By 8:30, they had sold 15 AR15 rifles, their entire inventory. Also, there are no magazines to be had, and they are running out of ammo. They also told me that calls to their distributors have revealed that all black rifles and their magazines will be back ordered for the foreseeable future.
I wonder how many of the people buying these guns today voted for Obama yesterday.

(I voted for Johnson.)

Being a post whore, there is a topic that is guaranteed to get hits: Sex. A recent study showed that women’s sexual appetite falls as a relationship ages, while the appetite of men remains constant.

This creates a bit of a question in my mind: For women, as the “shiny” wears off, her desire to have sex diminishes. Does this mean that this predisposes women to have an affair with a new male, who would presumably trigger increased desire, or does it mean that the man who has the same desire as he always had will be predisposed to an affair with a woman that still desires sex?

In other words, are we as humans biologically designed to preclude monogamy?

So we all know the four rules:

I used to be in favor of the death penalty. My opinion has changed over the past few years: I am in favor of the death penalty in theory, but after seeing the
innocence project and the Duke Lacrosse case, I am of the opinion that
our legal system is too corrupt to ensure that we are not executing the
innocent.

Maurice Patterson was convicted of murder in 2002 for a fight where the
victim was stabbed 14 times. Three people witnessed the fight,
fleetingly and in the dark, and a fourth witness claimed to have seen a
man with blood on his hand hiding from the police. All four witnesses
identified Maurice Patterson in a live lineup weeks after the attack,
but they only testified regarding these identifications after being
threatened with Contempt of Court.

A bloody knife was found near
the scene and sent to Orchid Cellmark for DNA testing. STR test results
excluded Patterson, indicating a mixture of the victim’s profile and an
unknown profile. Comparison to the State CODIS DNA database revealed
that the unknown profile belonged to a drug addict with a history of
violence. Though the State Police Forensic Science Center had been
notified that the sample included the victim’s blood, this information
was never directly communicated to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s
Office. Prosecutors continued with the case against Patterson regardless
of the exculpatory results.

Robert Wilcoxson and Kenneth Kagonyera served almost 10 years in North
Carolina prisons for a murder they didn’t commit before a three-judge
panel overturned their convictions on September 22, 2011, based on DNA
evidence proving innocence.

In this case, a man was killed during a home invasion, and police managed to secure confessions from the two defendants. Three bandanas and two pairs of gloves were located on the side of the
road near the Bowman residence and were collected by deputies as
evidence in the case. The bandanas and gloves found near the crime scene
were submitted for pre-trial DNA testing. Results excluded all six
co-defendants, however this information was never turned over to
Kagonyera or Wilcoxson’s attorneys.

Sure,
we have DNA and such, but when the system is so corrupt that
exculpatory evidence is “lost” or buried, we are executing the innocent.
That makes us all as a society guilty of murder.