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The Scam of traffic safety

A cop with a stopwatch is more believable than a GPS unit. At least, that is what the Ohio court system believes, if their March 2010 ruling is any guide. In this case, a man was clocked by a cop in an airplane at 84 miles an hour. The way this works, is that a cop in a plane times cars with a stopwatch as they pass over quarter mile segments of the highway. The time to traverse the quarter mile is then used to compute the speed of the vehicle.

The problem here is that the driver had a GPS tracker placed in his car by his employer in order to control speed limit violations. The tracker indicated that he was going 50 mph, not 84. The court ruled that they could not accept the reading of the tracker without expert testimony from the manufacturer that would testify to the accuracy and method of operation of the device. According to the court:

“Barnes presented no evidence from a person with personal knowledge regarding how the GPS calculates speed, whether there is any type of calibration of the equipment used to detect speed, whether the methods employed by his particular company to detect speed are scientifically reliable, or the accuracy of the GPS’ speed detection,” the panel said. 

 This would have required that the accused hire an attorney and expert witnesses to attend the trial. To beat a $35 traffic ticket (I wish. In Florida, a speeding violation of 84 in a 65 will cost you $180) you are expected to spend several hundred dollars.

Meanwhile, the government has a bottomless checkbook with which to defend their cash cows. In Sonoma county, CA in 2009, the government of Petaluma spent tens of thousands of dollars to beat the GPS readings. Protecting speeding ticket fines, a $10 billion per year scam, is of utmost importance.

By Divemedic, ago

A lot of cash

I haven’t mentioned this on over a year, but I want to take a look at the US debt. As of today, we are $14.9 trillion in debt, according to the US treasury.

When Obama took office, that amount was $11.9 trillion. An increase of $3 trillion (or 140%)  in just 33 months.

When GW Bush took office, we had a national debt of $5.7 trillion. The debt increased $4.7 trillion in 8 years. This means that the Obama administration is just $400 billion shy of borrowing in 3 years what it took his predecessor 8 years to borrow.

Not like I am really happy with Bush’s spending, either. Or Clinton’s.

By Divemedic, ago

D day minus 82 days

Packing, and not the fun kind. I am busy trying to pare down all of my stuff for the upcoming move. Trying to pare down the contents of a three bedroom house into a one bedroom apartment is a chore. I have rented a storage facility for the things that I am not taking, and the remainder of my things are going into the trash, or are being sold.

One of the things that I cannot take is my suppressor, as it is illegal in the state where I am going. I am trying to find a buyer. Meanwhile, storing over 20,000 rounds of ammo, 8 cases of MREs, 30 cans of freeze dried Mountain House food, about 2,200 books, and all of the other assorted items is giving me a backache.

It is a busy time. I need to complete all of the paperwork for admission to the school, rent an apartment, get the services hooked up, rent a U Haul trailer, ensure my shots are up to date, pack, finish my classes, work my two jobs (I am leaving one at the end of November, the other two weeks later), and do the move.

To make things worse, I noticed today that the windshield of  my truck has a foot long crack in it. I have to get that fixed, as well as all of the other chores. Busy, busy. There are 82 days until I go.

By Divemedic, ago

So long EMS, and thanks for all the fish

I applied for, and was accepted to, a Master’s degree program that will allow me to become a Physician Assistant upon completion. This means that I will be retiring from my current job and moving several states away to attend the school. For the first time in 22 years, I will not be associated with prehospital EMS. It is a big step, and a bit scary, but exciting at the same time. I am giving up security for a chance to have a better career.

What first planted the seeds of my desire to leave was an apparent lack of medical standards in my agency, and the way that it was ignored by the administration. I wanted to maybe find a job at another local agency, but there weren’t many hiring at the time who would pay me what I was already making, and besides, I know people who work for other agencies in the area, and they didn’t seem much better, nor did the idiots at some of the local hospitals. I decided to stay put.

Then the TEA party came around, and I had to listen to them drone on and on about how I am a parasite and how I and my benefits are a drain on the system. My pension and my health care are costing the taxpayers too much money, even though they are a mere 4% of the state budget. Free lunches for poor kids in school add up to more than what it costs to run the pensions of state employees.

Meanwhile, I am hauling a Medicare patient to the hospital for the third time this week, this time for knee pain times two weeks. Knowing that Medicare is 30% of the state budget makes me realize that the TEA party is politics, not solutions.

Anyway, all of that came to a head when I began working for a theme park doing BLS first aid for $12.75 an hour, and got a raise at my 90 day point to $17.50 an hour. You see, when I was hired by my original agency 15 years ago, my starting pay was $8.45 an hour. In fifteen years, I made it to $19.27 an hour, and that includes two promotions.

That was when I realized that I was no longer happy working in EMS. I love the medicine, I just don’t like all of the politics and the games that go along with the job. I still feel like I have more to offer patients and I want to stay in medicine. Becoming a PA will help me do just that.

No hard feelings to the TEA party, or to the public. You decided to pay less, and as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. The people who are skilled and able to leave will do so. If you are willing to accept a lower level of service, then so be it. As for me, it is time to move up to bigger and better things.

By Divemedic, ago

The Soviets were free

There are an estimated 800,000 full-time law enforcement officers in the United States: 120,000 Federal and 620,000 State and local.

That breaks down to 1 Fed for every 2,500 citizens, and one cop for every 375 citizens. Contrast that with this article about the Stasi and Gestapo:

The Soviet Union’s KGB employed about 480,000 full-time agents to oversee a nation of 280 million, which means there was one agent per 5,830 citizens. Using Wiesenthal’s figures for the Nazi Gestapo, there was one officer for 2,000 people. The ratio for the Stasi was one secret policeman per 166 East Germans. 

(even though the math for the Soviets is incorrect)
We have ratios of police versus citizens that is more than that of the Soviet communists, and rivals that of  the Gestapo.

But we don’t live in a police state. This is a free country, after all.

By Divemedic, ago

Just lucky, I guess

According to some douchebag named Tim Wise, I am the recipient of 12 to 13 years of institutionalized affirmative action as a result of my attending public school, and this is why I, as a member of the white establishment, am so fortunate.

When I graduated from high school, the school I graduated from was one of two in the entire county. Everyone from the east side went to one school, everyone from the west side of the county went to the other. We all attended the same classes, taught by the same teachers. I can’t see how there is any difference.

After high school, I joined the military and did six years there. When I got out, I was broke, but willing to work. I tried making it for a couple of years as a business owner, but we were soon technically homeless. My family and I lived in the storeroom of my business and we bathed in a 48 quart ice chest.

I took what little money we managed to scrape together and used it to rent a UHaul, then moved back to Florida. When I got there, I took a job in residential construction that paid $7.45 an hour. I spent 8 hours a day in the Florida summer heat, running electrical wire through roughed-out houses, taking home $950 a month to support a family of four. Our rent was $350 a month. The government told us that we wouldn’t qualify for public assistance as long as we were still married, so we got none.

Over the next 5 years, I moved jobs every time there was an opportunity to make more money: I  worked at the airport repairing ground support equipment, at Disney repairing the electronic control systems on dancing chickens, at Sherwin Williams on paint manufacturing equipment, and at a stainless steel mill repairing stainless steel pipe manufacturing equipment. There were ups and downs. A few times, they hired me as a maintenance worker because they had a lot of broken equipment and then fired me as soon as I fixed everything that was broken. Still, I didn’t give up.

Each time I changed jobs, it was for more money. Over that 5 year period, I went from $7.50 an hour to $12 an hour, and finally to a salary of $30,000 a year. Then Bill Clinton signed a “most favored nation” treaty with China, flooding the market with cheap stainless steel, making it cheaper to import stainless steel products than it was to manufacture them, which put my employer out of business. 

Finally tired of being laid off, and decided to take my volunteer firefighting occupation full time. I went to school, by working odd jobs during the day, and going to school at night. I graduated the fire academy and got hired. While I was in school, my wife and I got a divorce. Divorce is financially devastating, and the child support added up to about two thirds of my take home pay.

This was the poorest time in my life. I lost my car in the divorce, so I was running to work for a month before I could save enough for a bicycle. I lost 40 pounds that summer. After six more months of saving, I managed to buy a car at a buy here/pay here place. Now that I had a car, I was able to get a second job as a janitor, and then a third job as a lifeguard, to make ends meet.

Since then, I have earned 4 college degrees and I am getting ready to begin my masters degree. I did it without handouts, I did it without Pell grants, welfare, food stamps, or anything that I didn’t work for myself.

But hey, none of that was due to hard work and perseverance. It was all luck and ‘white privilege’ that got me here.

By Divemedic, ago

A peek into police culture

I was recently required to go to a class on the incident management system. The class was comprised of about 60% police supervisors and 40% fire supervisors. The class gave me an opportunity for some insight into the way that cops (especially the supervisors) view the world.

The class presented the supervisors with a few scenarios, and challenged those supervisors to set up a command structure that would adequately manage the situation. Since this was a class attended mostly by cops and was being taught by cops, the scenarios and the conversations were mostly cop-centric. It was a learning experience, but perhaps not in the way that was intended.

The first scenario was that a child services worker was doing a well being check on a home, after receiving a tip that one of the children in the home was being sexually molested by the father. When she arrived at the home, she found that the father was home alone with 3 children, ages 9 through 14, and he was intoxicated. The social worker told the father that she was removing the children from the home, because the only adult was intoxicated. The father refused, an argument ensued, and the social worker was asked to leave. Social worker attempts to take the youngest child with her, and is shot in the stomach by the father. Socail worker staggers outside and 911 is called.

The cops said that this is an active shooter situation, and their primary objective is to enter the home as soon as they have three officers present, and “take out the bad guy.” I am betting that they were not talking about shooting the social worker.

After this first scenario, we took our first break. The topic of discussion during the break was how the “new NRA law” was stupid and creating problems for police. One of the cops said that they tried to work with the NRA, but that the “gun nuts” were being uncooperative and would not give an inch. Another used an example (paraphrasing, my memory isn’t perfect)
“There is this guy who has been “Baker Acted” several times, and has even fired shots at police officers. We were at his house, and he has guns. Now normally, I would just take the guns, and he would never see them again. Thanks to this new law, this guy keeps the guns. Now I am forced to risk leaving the guns there and getting sued when he shoots someone, or taking the guns, and getting sued by the NRA.”
Third cop says: “The odds of being sued by the NRA are low. I’m still going to take them.”

There are a number of false assumptions there, but it seems to me that if a person has shot at cops, wouldn’t he be convicted of at least one felony and thus be prohibited from firearm possession?
If he was found to be a danger to himself or others after being Baker Acted, wouldn’t a court have found him incompetent, and wouldn’t he then be prohibited from owning firearms?
Why does a cop think that he has the power to confiscate private property, simply because he thinks he is the “only one” that is trained and competent to handle firearms?

By Divemedic, ago