Divemedic

DiGiorno’s pizza recently announced that they will be packaging a frozen pizza in the same box with a batch of cookie dough. You can have pizza and freshly baked cookies for dinner. What a great idea.

Of course, the nanny media is already bitching about how companies are making us fat by producing articles that we will buy, instead of producin what we SHOULD be eating, if only we were smart enough. The typical complaints about how it is bad for your health to eat pizza and cookies, and how companies should be offering healthier alternatives are heard.

Look, the grocery store offers healthy alternatives. I was just shopping today, and there were sections of the store that contained vegetables and all sorts of healthy stuff. Don’t like pizza and cookies? Then don’t buy them.

I will tell you that my brother owns a vending machine business, and he is constantly asked to carry healthy snacks. Every time he puts healthy snacks in a machine, they do not sell. The people counter that it is his fault, because he puts junk food in there WITH the healthy snacks, and people cannot make the healthy choice when there is junk food there as well.

The problem is obvious to these people- we have too much freedom for our own good.

You have to admire the Democrats for one thing: They know how to get stuff done. When they had control of the Congress and Whitehouse, they rammed through the Health Care law without even bothering to read it. When they do not have control, they browbeat the Republicans into submission by screaming about the need to be “bipartisan” and the Republicans cave.

When that doesn’t work, they attach amendments to bills at the last minute, and those amendments sneak through laws that would not normally pass. The Executive signs orders that have the effect of law, thus bypassing Congress, on laws that would normally not see the light of day.

They lie, they cheat, they steal their way to power. This is the reason why the founders intended to limit the extent of the power of the Federal Government.

I just read a column by Walter Williams, the man that I would like to see in the Whitehouse, and I love a couple of the quotes from it:

“A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”- John Adams

“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.” – Thomas Jefferson

“With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” – James Madison

But what do those guys know, they are old white men who lived over 100 years ago, don’t you know.

You’ve heard of no fly and no buy lists – get ready for no work lists. Millions of workers now must apply to the DHS and prove they are not terrorists in order to be granted permission by the government to work. 

The new DHS programs, called TWIC and SWACwill expand the TSA no fly list to be applied to a “no work” list. This means that once you are on the “no fly ” list, a list you get on without being told why, and without recourse to be removed, you can not get a job in any worksite that the government deems “vital.”

What happened to due process? Jury trial? Seriously, is this for real. or is infowars a conspiracy theory kook site? Anyone?

UPDATE: They may be pulling the trigger prematurely. Here is the list of crimes you can be denied for. Looks like a standard background check to me.

I know people who are bragging that they are getting back large refunds. I know one person who brags that he is getting back $8,000. During the discussion, another claimed that her and her husband are getting $14,000. I was incredulous. That money is not free- it means that you had too much money taken out of your checks throughout the year. If you file your taxes, and you are getting back 14 grand, that means that you could have $1,100 a month more in your pocket every month.

What gets me is that these people probably have a couple of maxed out credit cards, and could be using that money each month to pay off the 20% interest rate cards.

This year, I will owe $350 or so. That is as close as I can figure them when I set my W4 exemptions each month.

All paramedics go through it. You medics know what I mean. I once went through a period in my career in which I was called a nickname: “Doctor Death.” In a 24 week span, I worked 29 codes. In only one of those codes did I get pulses back, and that patient died two days after I took them to the hospital. The oldest of those dead patients was 102 years old, and the youngest was 6 months old. Also in that 24 week period, I had trauma alert patients, STEMI patients, and all sorts of odd events. One of the Doctors at the hospital asked me in jest if I ever got tired of my patients dying all the time, and I responded with a joke about how my laryngoscope was a deadly weapon.

You need a sense of humor in this profession, or you will soon burn out and leave, as so many who wear their hearts on their sleeves do. You wear that sense of humor, as odd as it becomes, like a suit of armor. That is the protection that you need if you are to survive the sights of hundreds of dead bodies. Trust me, that number is well into the hundreds. There was an incident several years ago where I triaged bodies, and personally decided that 31 people were dead in less time than it took me to write this post.

In essence, triage is a lot like playing god. You decide who will live, and who will die. The decisions that you make on every call will affect people for the rest of their lives. I have welcomed newborn babies into the world, and I have held the hands of people as they left this world. Every one of these decisions were made with relatively little oversight, and a whole lot of latitude as to how I come to that decision. It is a position of trust that I do not take lightly.

With all of that trust, the background check that I had to endure was not nearly as thorough as the one that was done when I got a concealed weapons permit. Ask yourself why people who feel that I am trustworthy enough to give potentially lethal medications and make life or death decisions as a paramedic feel that I am not trustworthy enough to carry my defensive weapon to class when I am attending college.

I just began doing my taxes, and that is always a depressing time of year. I made 18% less in 2010 than I did in 2008, and 7% less than 2009. In all, it was the lowest pay since 2004. They take money out of my check for our retirement plan, and our plan is funded 31% by us, and 24% by earnings on investments, leaving 45% for our employer to fund.

Now the State is talking about reducing our retirement benefits. They want to exclude overtime and incentive pay from the calculations. They also want to reduce retirement benefits from 3.23% per year to only 1.6% per year. This means that I will see a net reduction of 62% of my retirement. On top of that, they will penalize you 5% per year for each year you retire before the age of 55. Instead of getting 71% of my pay upon retirement at age 50, I will get 20% of my pay. In other words, I will have paid in more than I will get back in benefits. 

So I have a choice to make:

1: I can retire this year before the changes take effect, and change careers. I would get 39% of my pay to go now with 15 years of service. I would maybe go get my master’s degree and be a Physician’s Assistant. I have some cash saved, and I could pull it off. Maybe I can even work part time while I am in school. I would even make more as a PA than as a FireMedic, and work fewer hours. The downside is that I will not be working for the two years it would take to complete the degree, and I am a little on the old side to be changing careers.

2: I can stay here for the next 8-13 years, but accept declining pay and hours, and reduction in my retirement pay. Under this new plan, I would have to work here for 13 more years to get the same retirement I can get by leaving now.

Seems like a no brainer. If this bill passes, I will have to take my education and skill set elsewhere. Maybe it is time to start getting my paperwork together so I can apply. I am not angry. Just remember that you get what you pay for. If a less educated, less experienced workforce is all that the taxpayer is willing to pay for, that is their choice to make. I just know that I also have other options, and I can choose to take my skillset where I can maximize my own earnings.

The city of Kingsland, Georgia has a total area of 44 square miles spanning both sides of I-95, making it the seventh largest city in Georgia by landmass. I-95 runs through the city for 4.5 miles, near mile marker 9. The vast majority of that 4.5 mile span is sparsely populated. For its geographical size, the city is actually quite small. Kingsland only has a population of about 13,600. A large area of the interstate has been incorporated, even though there are not many homes or businesses in the area. Coincidentally, the city encompasses two exits and the 4.5 miles of highway between them.

The police department of Kingsland employs 46 sworn officers, meaning that there are 3.4 officers per 1,000 residents. This is significantly higher than the National average of 2.5 officers per thousand. Twenty five of those officers are assigned to the patrol division, with about 5 officers per shift. Those 25 officers write 13,000 citations per year. The city actually budgets for this. The police may not have a per se quota, but writing into the budget that you need 13,000 citations is a bit of a target number, wouldn’t you say? Now let me add that I did not receive a traffic ticket in this area, but I did see something that caused this post:

On that five mile stretch of highway, I saw three Kingsland Police officers with three separate cars pulled over for traffic infractions at 4:30 pm on a Sunday. That is more traffic stops than I saw for the rest of I-95 in Georgia COMBINED. Now I know that this is not proof that the city is padding the coffers with some traffic money, but it seems odd to me that a city with 5 patrol officers per shift, that more than half of the shift is dedicated to writing traffic tickets on a 4 mile stretch of highway. I mean, aren’t those 5 officers needed to patrol the 44 square miles of city that they are responsible for? Or is this just a means of revenue enhancement for the city?

According to the City budget, each officer is projected to write 500 citations per year for FY 2010/11, up from 286 in 2008/09 (page 105). This is an average including ALL officers, even the ones with desk jobs. If you recalculate that number using only the 20 patrol officers who are not supervisors (who generally don’t write tickets), that average shoots up to 650 per officer. Fines are the second largest source of revenue for the city, comprising 20.7% of the city’s general fund revenue (page 69).

Aren’t we tired yet of hearing how traffic enforcement is for safety, that there are no quotas, and that the traffic fines we pay are not legalized robbery?

I went to the National archives yesterday. There is something about standing in the presence of our founding documents that is awe inspiring. These papers are the documents that are the basis of our Nation. I wonder how many of our Congressmen have looked upon and read the constitution and bill of rights. How many of them look at those documents as simply an obstacle to be overcome in carrying out their agenda?