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What?

I was offered a job today. I won’t mention the name of the company, but they are a nationwide provider of EMS services. The job is a paramedic position, and would require me to commute about 40 miles each way, paying $5 in tolls round trip.

Before I go further, let me explain my credentials:
I have been practicing in EMS for over 24 years. I have been an instructor for ten of those years. I not only have my paramedic school done, I also have three Associate’s and two Bachelor’s degrees.

The job market is very tight, and this illustrates why: They offered me a rate of $12.53 an hour. That rate is two dollars an hour less than what my last job was hiring new paramedics for ten years ago. I already collect a pension that pays me more than that, and I don’t NEED the money, and I am not sure that I want to drive 80 miles round trip to work a 12 hour shift that will net me about $7 an hour.

I could get a job working at a hamburger joint and take home the same amount of money.

By Divemedic, ago

Make accusations…

A Daytona Beach Police Sergeant resigned after the department discovered that she had hundreds of pornographic images on her two department issued computers, including 23 nudes of herself that she had sent to her boyfriend while on duty. Additionally, she deactivated the GPS tracking on her patrol car, so dispatchers would not know where she was.

That isn’t the worst part to me. The worst part is how she was caught: she was caught when the department was investigating a sexual harassment complaint that the Sergeant had made against another officer. Sexual harassment is no longer about dishonorable men that use their position to elicit sex from female employees, or about men trying to run women out of the workplace. Instead, it has become a powerful weapon that women use against men that they happen to not like, or to pull attention away from their own misdeeds. We see this all over, not just with sexual harassment, but also with claims of racial bias and domestic violence.

By Divemedic, ago

Explosions

For those who do not know, there was an explosion at a propane facility just up the road from me. The explosion could be felt for miles, and the fires continued for hours:

There are 53,000 twenty pound propane cylinders scattered about the scene, along with several propane tanker trucks, and three 30,000 pound propane tanks. This is what it looks like from the gorund:

By Divemedic, ago

Fraud

In response to Graybeard’s comment on my post about job prospects in the EMS field:

Yes, fraud is running rampant. In 2002, Medicare reimbursement for ambulances was less than $1 billion. In 2009, it had more than doubled, despite the fact that the amounts paid for each trip had not changed. I can tell you that the linked article’s claim that 80% of interfacility ambulance rides are fraudulent doesn’t surprise me one bit. I think that number is spot on.

The Feds are cracking down on this, but they are not even catching a fraction of the fraud. As the Affordable Care Act is implemented, it will only get worse.

By Divemedic, ago

Boycotts and revolt

There are organizations out there calling for a boycott of Florida because of the “Stand your ground” law and the Zimmerman case. Here is one:

It calls for a boycott based upon the supposedly racially motivated killings of numerous black people. The problem is that only one of them (Trayvon Martin) was killed in Florida. Oscar Grant was killed in California, while Chamberlain, Gray, and Graham were all killed in New York. Furthermore, all of the killings except Martin were performed by police officers, and none of the cases had anything to do with “stand your ground.”

So who is behind this? The People’s Power Assemblies, for another. They are a part of the Workers World Party, a communist organization that intends to overthrow the government.

So there you have it. The reason that all of this is being pushed, is that there are forces involved here that want to overthrow the US government. How is that for “fundamentally transforming” America?

By Divemedic, ago

Reasoned discourse

I have been posting comments on various Channel 6 WKMG articles for several days. Each and everyone has fallen victim to “reasoned discourse” deletion. Here is a copy of my last comment, that was also deleted within minutes:


Acquit Alexander? The woman who was in an argument with her husband at his house, where she was not
living at the time. In fact, she had gotten a restraining order against
hm because she was afraid of him, and then left her newborn baby at the
hospital and then went to his house to spend the night with him. Doesn’t sound scared to me.
Anyway,
at breakfast, she showed pictures of the new baby to her husband by
handing him her cell phone. While looking at them, he found evidence
that she was having an affair with her ex-husband. he questioned whether
the new child was his, and this started an argument. In the midst of
the argument, she went outside, got a gun out of her car, and then came
back, shot at him, and missed. Can’t be self defense, because the threat
to her ended when she left the house. Going back inside made her the
attacker in an all new, second fight.
She was arrested, and made bail. While out on bail, she went back to the house, and punched her husband, giving him a black eye.
She committed armed battery. She deserved every year of the sentence she got. This is plainly NOT a self defense case.

Read the court documents for yourself:
Source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/89763280/Order-Denying-Defendants-Motion-for-Immunity-and-Motion-to-Dismiss

There is an agenda here, and they are not about to let the facts get in the way.

By Divemedic, ago

Culture

In reference to the shooting that I mention here and here, the older brother of the would-be burglar has a Facebook page. According to the page, he is 23 years old, and graduated from Miles College in 2010. Miles college is a liberal arts black college that receives funding from the United Negro College Fund.

Here are a few examples of this college graduate’s writing:

Let
me tell who don’t no boots in da Sommer is a no no lol i saw a nigga
with some polo boots on with some shorts on then i saw a somebody with
some Tims on do you no how dum u look it 100 degrees out side in you got
this shit on 3,words kill your self

and this little gem:

 Man
it’s time 4 me to do wat I have to do I can’t be happy cause of all da –
shit around me I’m ta dat point wat aver happens happens I’m killing my
self. 4 da last 3 n a 1/2 week my head been pound I’m lose in a lot of
wight I can’t go back n play ball cause dis n dat on my mind wat ever
happens from here da man above no wats best 4 me.

Do you want to know why the black culture is failing? This is why. This man is the male role model for his younger brother, the one he looked up to, the one who raised him. This is a broken culture, and saving the lives and futures of blacks, as well as lowering US crime, is going to have to start with fixing this broken culture.



By Divemedic, ago

More on the Louisiana shooting

I posted yesterday about a man that shot a teen that had scaled a 5 foot tall fence to enter the shooter’s driveway, was confronted by the homeowner, and was shot. The homeowner, who was standing next to his back door, states that he told the intruder to freeze, the intruder (who has a history of burglaries and thefts) turned toward the homeowner with his hand in his waistband, and was shot. Here is a picture of the driveway:

The state has charged the homeowner with attempted second degree murder. In Louisiana, there are only four ways that the state can prove second degree murder. Two of them have to do with the sale of drugs, and don’t apply here. A third involves death as a result of a violent felony, and also doesn’t apply. The final way involves a specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm. In other words, they have to prove that he intended to severely injure or kill when he shot the lad.

One would think that the act of shooting someone in itself proves intent, but that is not the case. A killing can not be second degree murder if the shooter
possessed a belief that he must use deadly
force in self-defense, even if that belief turns out to be unreasonable, rather than the intentional mental state of
committing a murder. Like the Zimmerman case, prosecutors are overcharging what is clearly a manslaughter case, ar the most.

This is a common tactic for prosecutors: Overcharge, and push for a plea deal. If the person doesn’t take a plea, they must defend against the charge, and all of the lesser included charges. These two cases illustrate for me the need to do away with lesser included charges. I think that prosecutors should file the charge that the person is likely guilty of, instead of overcharging and hoping that a lesser charge sticks.

Anyway, the homeowner will likely use Louisiana’s self defense statute as a defense.

Use of force or violence in defense

A.  The use of force or violence upon
the person of another is justifiable when committed for the purpose of
preventing a forcible offense against the person or a forcible offense
or trespass against property in a person’s lawful possession, provided
that the force or violence used must be reasonable and apparently
necessary to prevent such offense, and that this Section shall not apply
where the force or violence results in a homicide.
B.  For the purposes of this Section,
there shall be a presumption that a person lawfully inside a dwelling,
place of business, or motor vehicle held a reasonable belief that the
use of force or violence was necessary to prevent unlawful entry
thereto, or to compel an unlawful intruder to leave the premises or
motor vehicle, if both of the following occur:
(1)  The person against whom the force
or violence was used was in the process of unlawfully and forcibly
entering or had unlawfully and forcibly entered the dwelling, place of
business, or motor vehicle.
(2)  The person who used force or
violence knew or had reason to believe that an unlawful and forcible
entry was occurring or had occurred.
C.  A person who is not engaged in
unlawful activity and who is in a place where he or she has a right to
be shall have no duty to retreat before using force or violence as
provided for in this Section and may stand his or her ground and meet
force with force.
D.  No finder of fact shall be
permitted to consider the possibility of retreat as a factor in
determining whether or not the person who used force or violence in
defense of his person or property had a reasonable belief that force or
violence was reasonable and apparently necessary to prevent a forcible
offense or to prevent the unlawful entry. (emphasis added)
Note that the law states that the force must be reasonable and necessary under the circumstances,
but does not explicitly limit the degree of force to non-deadly force.The law also states that a person lawfully in his residence can use force, if he holds a reasonable belief that force is required to prevent a break in, as long as two conditions are met: The person must be in the process of entering the residence, and must have reason to believe that an unlawful entry was occurring.

The presence of an unknown person immediately outside your backdoor at
2:00AM,where the intruder was required to scale a
fence, would seem to allow a reasonable
belief that an unlawful entry into the dwelling was occurring or about to occur.

Again, I think that this is a lawful shoot, but that will likely get me called a barbarian and a racist, like I was yesterday for my Zimmerman and Alexander opinions.

By Divemedic, ago