"There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families." - Margaret Thatcher
"Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation." - Margaret Mead
"We make our own criminals, and their crimes are congruent with the national culture we all share. It has been said that a people get the kind of political leadership they deserve. I think they also get the kinds of crime and criminals they themselves bring into being." - Margaret Mead
In Tennessee recently, Gene Cranick's home burned to the ground, while fully equipped firefighters stood by their fire trucks and hoses watching, doing nothing to stop the fire. The 'left wing media', like MSNBC's contributor Chris Hayes, Washington editor of The Nation, questioned on the 10/5/'10 edition of Keith Olbermann's Countdown if those firefighters would have stood by and done nothing if there were potential loss of life involved, not just property. That poses a very good question about the philosophy of government, and its proper relationship to individuals.
This incident has divided the county in Tennessee, and the whole nation, over political ideology far more pervasive than this specific incident. The right is extolling the political virtue of the decision that ordered the firefighters not to fight this fire. The left is in turn ranting over the immorality of the unethical decision.
At issue is a $75 subscription fee for South Fulton's municipal fire fighters to fight fires outside of their municipality. I agree that South Fulton should not, as a community, have to fund the fire fighting of their entire county; that is clearly unfair.
What I do not understand however, is that the firefighters have in the past waived the subscription fee, and fought fires. What I do not understand is the reasoning that there were only two alternatives here - pay the fee, in advance, and save the home; or let it burn. The question that occurred to me the moment I heard of this incident, as the details were unfolding is.........why didn't the fire department, after it was there, put out the fire, and have the county or their municipality bill Mr. Cranick and his insurance company (he had insurance)?
This would have preserved the Cranick home, and would have prevented that service from being an unfair financial burden to the South Fulton municipality. It is a win-win alternative that I believe crystallizes the failure of the right wing ideology.
Mr. Cranick is the most directly affected by the loss of his home, but now the county, of which South Fulton is a part, has lost a part of its tax base. The disruption and loss to Mr. Cranick will have a ripple effect, that will affect his neighbors, on outward. More of these kinds of losses, if this policy of 'let it burn' are pursued, will have a further disruptive and dangerously destabilizing effect on western Tennessee. If you do not believe that what happens to an individual affects their community and their state, if you believe it ONLY affects the person immediately involved, I would suggest you look at the rust belt, or communities with high numbers of home foreclosures to see what I mean about more than just the individual being affected by losses. Those are all individuals. What happened to them affected everyone else in their community.
This is the same short term not long term thinking that permitted unregulated conduct which crashed Wall Street. It is the essence of the penny-wise pound-STUPID thinking of the right wing ideology. This is the essence of the fallacy expressed by right-wing secular St. Margaret Thatcher quoted above, followed uncritically as political gospel by the right (along with anything ever said by Ronald Reagan, or Ayn Rand). It is reflected in the hateful and stupid statements of Tea Party prophet-for-profit, rip-off gold coin sales promoter Glenn Beck.
The very foundational premise of commercial insurance is that we share the risk, and share the losses when those kinds of risk - like fire or flood - occur. The foundational premise of communities establishing fire departments at all, and enacting fire safety regulations, like safe building capacity, or wiring minimum standards, or other building codes, is that preventing fires and minimizing loss when fire occurs benefits the ENTIRE community, not only the individual.
There is a reason that the northern European countries, countries which the ideology-driven right in the United States reviles as socialist, have higher taxes, but also more successful health care, education AND BUSINESS than we do. Germany is recovering, as an example, from the 2007-2009 economic crisis faster than we are. By EVERY metric, by every ranking, the United States is heading downwards, coming in behind these countries in every category. That is NOT because of our social safety net policies. That is because of socialism- moral-panic driven fear guiding policies, in everything from gutting regulation of business to calling it pro-business when corporations get tax breaks for sending investment dollars and jobs overseas for short term profit and long term loss. It is the result of an outlook that embraces lower wages for the majority of working Americans, but unlimited compensation and bonuses for the top executives - no matter how badly their decisions harmed their companies. There is an underlying "too damn bad, you are on your own" attitude towards the ordinary individual which includes most people in this country, but a fawning "anything you want" attitude towards a very few wealthy individuals. This underlying world view utterly fails to understand how communities, states and nations are comprised. This underlying world view utterly fails to understand how economies operate, which are driven by the ability of the majority of people to purchase goods and services as consumers, and to drive production as workers. This underlying world view claims to be about individual freedom, but cares nothing for the individual, only for the corporation, and only for short term gain. This underlying world view cares about a very few individuals, who actually need the least from society, and care nothing about the individuals who comprise the majority of that society.
John Donne wrote "No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind". This is not merely a bleeding-heart-liberal love thy brother and be his keeper concept. There is a pragmatic, hard core capitalist cost-benefit aspect to it as well, One that appreciates not only the immediate cost of providing services like fire fighting to Mr. Cranick, but also the larger impact of property values and tax bases, and how the economic factors of production and consumption affect local business, when an individual suffers a loss like the Cranick fire which could have been mitigated by fire fighters.
In an interview on 10/5/'10, Mr. Cranick had not yet decided if he would rebuild, pending consultation with his insurance carrier. Presumably, one of the decisions for Mr. Cranick will not only be to rebuild - or not, but also if he will rebuild on the same location, or somewhere else. This is another of the factors in how a loss and the resulting disruption can potentially affect a community.
Allegedly, other people who had not paid the requisite $75 have had fires had their fires extinguished by fire fighters in the past. Their requirement was waived, making the decision to fight those fires but not Mr. Cranick's appear to be arbitrary and capricious. I would hope that in response to this (allegedly) capricious decision of unequally applying the laws and regulations leading to a preventable larger loss for Mr. Cranick, that he and his insurance company sue whomever ordered the fire department not to put out the fire. I would hope that the community of South Fulton, Tennessee fires his ass so that he can never make such a decision again, and thereby sets a precedent so that the next person given the authority doesn't make the same bad decision.
But most of all, I hope that the Cranick fire prompts a more thoughtful, less blind ideology driven discussion about the relationship of the individual to society at all levels from local to national; and a more reality and result driven examination of how we arrive at the common good in our society. Because letting Gene Cranick's home burn was a crime against an individual, and our community - a crime of stupidity.
Interesting insight on how benefits to a singular entity, can benefit the community as a whole. Or another way to say that, how the limiting the use of an entities property hurts the community as a whole. But while you preach community on one had you denounce on the other: "No rights of privacy or ownership by the commenter exists over comments. Once they are published on Penigma they become an integral part of the Penigma content."
ReplyDeleteIsn't this similar to what South Fulton said to Mr. Cranick? You can't have our content...I mean Fire Services. Well, at least South Fulton offered it by a fee, this blog says once you put content here, it's ours, or better yet, our communities.
IF we are to expand our understanding of community, we must move beyond what we know as OUR community, and begin to learn what it means to participate in humanity.
First of all, Corcoranp, I would like to welcome you to Penigma, and thank you for reading our rules for participation before commenting.
ReplyDeleteIn response to your comment, I would first point out that this post was about the political philosophy of government in relationship to the individual.
Penigma, as a blog, is certainly not in any way a government.
This blog belongs to the individual, who writes here as Penigma; in acting as an administrator for the blog, I try to act on his behalf as I understand he would wish. If I misunderstand his wish, I expect he will make a correction.
As it happens, I am the person, not Pen, who made the decision that comments become part of content, belonging to the blog, with Pen's subsequent approval. So, I feel better qualified to be the one to expand on it to you.
South Fultun charged a fee, we do not. Participation is free, but as blog owner and admin, we feel an obligation to monitor and control that content, both as a moral responsibility, and a more pragmatic and practical one.
Anyone who does not wish to contribute their comment is free to contact us through our email to express their thoughts, or to blog elsewhere for free on blogger, including repeating their comment elsewhere as their intellectual property. Our policy is not so far as I can see damaging to anyone.
Given those alternatives, no, I don't think we are anything like South Fulton's municipal management.
Further, the decision to exercise ownership control over content arose because of a series of events here. We have exercised the right to moderate - and,rarely, refuse - comments. This has not been done in any attempt to censor comments that disagree with our own - those other views are welcome. Rather, it was in response to comments which raised issues of being inappropriate, inaccurate, or so repetitive and offensive or harrassing as to be a detriment to blog participation by others. In those instances, we requested the commenter rephrase to correct problems.
When one commenter, who had commented extensively here, requested we delete all of their comments, not only problem comments, in response to problems, we declined to do so.
MY reasoning for that decision also, seconded by my colleagues, was that the subsequent comments in response would be adversely affected by that removal, it would create a hole in the thread, adversely affecting the continuity and contribution of other commenters.
That rule is in place precisely to benefit everyone,equally and fairly, who reads (and comments) here on Penigma, while respecting the responsibility we have that operating this blog involves.
Perhaps I am not fully understanding your point here. I do not see any equivalent harm to Mr. Cranick's home burning down, in requiring that comments become part of the content, given the responsibility that we assume for that content, nor in the way we operate on this blog responsibly.
Respectfully, I believe you are making a false argument here. If you disagree, please, DO elaborate further.
You won't like my answers, because they diverge. You'll think I'm a tea party nutcase, which couldn't be further from the truth. So be it. Let's go:
ReplyDelete1. Read the coverage. The town already tried collecting $500 er call after the fact, and routinely got stiffed by people who wouldn't pay. They could enforce it because a town can't enforce mandatory fees or taxes outside of its borders.
So they cut the price to $75, but made it a subscription that you had to pay in advance. Call it local fire insurance. If they serve people who don't pay, then there's no reason to pay the fee.
2. Why any charges? Obion County, TN is dominated by voters in the unincorporated areas of the county, who've repeatedly refused to fund a county fire district. Instead, they free-ride on the fire departments of the county's towns. They are financially stressed, poorly equipped and mostly volunteer. 80% of their calls are in non-incorporated areas that pay no taxes to support the service.
The fees aren't going into someone's pocket. They are needed to equip the firefighters, who don't get paid. Equipment doesn't grow on trees.
3. Subscriber-based firefighting service is fairly common in rural areas, and it includes not rendering service to non-subscribers. Just try calling the subscriber-based FD if you live in, say, the mountains of Colorado or California and haven't paid your fees in advance.
Cranick was well aware of the fees. He says he didn't get around to paying them this year. Oh please. It's October. Try a different excuse, guy. No, I'm not crying for him.
Welcome Jake, to Penigma.
ReplyDeleteActually, I do like your answer, thank you for commenting.
I agree with you, actually, that it is unfair for towns to pay the freight for areas outside their borders.
What I do not understand is why the firefighters could not be equipped by the city attorney with a valid contract that would obligate the person who has the fire to pay, instead of having them try to collect on a bill. Nor am I convinced that it is legal to avoid paying the cost of a service used by calling it a fee or tax. Inside the city limits, sure, it is a fee or tax -- but outside? Surely there must be a legal means to categorize that service so it can be collected?
Further, my checking turned up that the South Fulton fire department had made it clear to the county that their services should not be financed in this way.
The county could provide service county-wide without sticking it to the individual towns -- and if it went unpaid, the homes (or business, whatever type of structure) AND LIVES would still be protected, and the county would have the same leverage for getting paid as they do for taxes if it were included.
At least one of the proposals proposed an increase of only $3.00 a month for all residents of the county on their electric bills, for example, which would fully fund that county-wide coverage.
I have not lived in the mountains of CO or CA, but I have lived in areas of MN sufficiently rural that police/sherrif and fire services was provided by the county contracting with local municipalities for those services, along with reciprocal agreements for support for each other between the police and sherrifs in emergencies.
I'm not persuaded that this is an unsolvable situation that needs to result in houses burning down or people being left to perish - potentially - in burning buildings. There have to be better solutions than that.
I don't know why it was that Cranick didn't pay the $75 this year. But the fact that he has paid in previous years suggest his excuse is at least plausible.
In any case, whatever your personal sympathies are for Mr. Cranick, this arrangement is not a good one for this area, rural or not. Having houses burn down harms not only the individual, but the entire areas where they live.
If the residents of this country refuse to recognize this, then they are a part of the problem in need of a solution. But simply not providing a basic service-- or worse, as is happening with other services like libraries, privatizing that service is not the solution.
That solution begins with how we define the relationship of the individual and government.
Or......do you disagree with that, Jake?
Against my better judgment, I find myself being forced to comment here.
ReplyDeleteI find myself in agreement with Jake. I'm not familiar with the law in Tennessee, but there is no assurance that they would have been able to collect a bill to Mr. Cranick. I don't know that a contract would have been valid unless Mr. Cranick had signed it in advance. Generally, a contract must be agreed to between the parties, and a contract which states that you agree to pay the fire bill might not be signed by anyone. The county attorney can't simply draw up a contract and have it be in force.
That being said, I would hope that if there were danger to life, that they would not have stood by and allowed lives to be lost. I agree, that if that were the case, that there would be moral and perhaps some civil culpability on the part of the county.
I, like Jake, find Mr. Cranick's excuse of "not getting around to it", unacceptable. Plausible? Probably. He didn't think it was important enough. I don't know whether he had insurance or not. If he did have insurance, I would have thought that the insurance company would make sure that the house was protected, and/or any required fees were paid.. (i.e. most mortgages, for instance, require proof of insurance, including casualty insurance, to protect their secured interest) An insurance company, who failed to make sure that the required fee was paid, wasn't doing a very good job. Now, of course, if he had insurance, they have a larger claim to pay than if they had spent $75 of their own money, perhaps, to make sure the fee was paid.
I don't, on the other hand, have any problem in the fire department refusing to provide service to someone who had not subscribed to the service when its clear that he knew about the obligation to subcribe, and chose to take his chances.
Some typos in my last post:
ReplyDeleteIn point #1, it should have read, "$500 per call" and " ... they couldn't enforce it ..."
From my understanding of it, the towns really couldn't collect. Think about it a second: You live in an area, and some town sends its cops or firefighters to your house and then hands you a bill?
In any case, we're talking $500 here. The towns are small, typically a couple thousand people. By the time they go to court and get judgments and (try to) collect them, they'll have spent more than they collected.
Have any of you actually been to court. Please trust me, it's not like on TV. It's boring, complicated, and takes forever, and a lot of it doesn't make sense. Really, there's no magic "lien" that makes people cough up the dough.
If those towns could have collected the $500 per call, they'd have been happy to do it that way. Subscriberships are a lot harder for all kinds of reasons.
Something else. "Thoughts of Enternity" worries what would happen if lives were at stake. Read the coverage: The policy is to fight a non-subscriber's fire if someone's trapped inside a building.
Always good to see you here ToE!
ReplyDeleteOther emergency services in this country which serve rural areas like this one find ways to get paid rather than not responding at all.
My point is that this arrangement is a dysfunctional failure of government, not a successful solution.
For example.......the fire department showed up, but then did not fight the fire -- but they stayed until it finished burning.
How is this a savings for the town of South Fulton? How is South Fulton better off NOT accepting the$75 offered by both Cranick, and separately, by his neighbors?
How is it fair to waive the fee for some people, but not others?
How is this area of western TN better off this way, than if the fire department HAD fought the fire?
I used to work for a number of years for the St Paul Companies, the oldest insurance company in my state. Part of the corporate art collection included the medallions / signs which used to be put on houses and commercial buildings so that the fire fightres - some of which were private, not government btw - could tell which fires to fight.
It was not a successful arrangement - as witnessed by some of the really bad fires in our country's history, where unisured/unpaid for fire protection houses on fire spread fires to too many other houses for the firefighters to put out.
Your comments - Jake, ToE - do not address that larger impact of buildings burning down or other disruptive events which impact entire communities, not just an isolated individual - and the role of government.
dog gone, let me be clear on something. I don't think Obion County's way of doing it makes sense. I did some research on the county, and it looks more like a glorified suburb than a truly rural area. Population density of about 60 per square mile.
ReplyDeleteAnd from the background where Cranick was interviewed, it looked fairly suburban. So yeah, I think subscriber-based firefighting has a potential risk of allowing fires to spread. I'm not sure that the current policy there of fighting enough of a non-subscriber's fire to keep it from spreading is adequate.
However, a few other points need to be made.
First, the voters in that county keep rejecting a tax-funded fire district. Dumb, but that's the way it is. None of us here will change it. The question is how to deal with the reality of people who won't support county-wide universal fire service.
Second, while I do question whether "limited" fighting of non-subscriber fires will keep them from spreading, it's also worth saying that unincorporated Obion County isn't exactly Chicago, either. You're not going to have whole cities burning. Maybe a subdivision, and maybe having one burn down will make those dummies wake up. You'd hate to think that's what it takes, but sometimes that's what it takes.
Thirdly, I'm not a lawyer, but if a non-subscriber's unfought fire spread, I think the liability would be on the non-subscriber's head. Here he rejected fire coverage, but made no alternative arrangements.
However, that liability would probably be cold comfort. Once someone's house burns down, how will he even begin to pay for the destroyed subdivision?
All of these are reasons why Obion County, two-thirds of whose population is comprised of people in unincorporated areas served by fire departments the majority of the county's voters refuse to pay for, ought to stop being so stupid.
The crowning irony is that if you live in a place with subscription service, your homeowners insurance is priced as if you have no fire department at all. So if those people would just approve a county-funded fire department, the reductions in their insurance rates would offset the taxes.
They must not teach arithmetic in Tennessee, not to Mr. Cranick or the rest of the voters in that county.
Please produce some evidence that the fire department has in the past waived the fee, or has accepted the fee at the time of the fire and then fought the fire. I find that difficult to believe, but possible I suppose.
ReplyDeleteMr. Cranick gambled. Presumably the fee was due the first of the year, or some time in the past, and he would have been sent a bill for the fee. He chose not to pay the fee. "I didn't get around to it" is admission that he knew about the fee, but felt that it wasn't important to pay. I don't know whether his house was paid for or not, but if it was.. and he chose NOT to pay his insurance, would you next be crying because the insurance carrier refused to cover the loss? The fact is, he took a gamble, and unfortunately for him, a fire happened. I don't have much sympathy for him.
Now, before you go on about the county's responsibility.. let's look at it this way: The people of that county have CHOSEN not to fund a rural fire department. They have apparently refused, time after time, to pass the appropriate measures to extend fire protection. I'm aware that there are such things as volunteer fire departments in rural areas, etc. Yet, even those volunteer fire departments don't operate in a vacuum. The trucks and equipment cost money. Fuel costs money. Someone has to pay that tab. Many rural communities then impose a tax, (or take it out of property taxes), to pay for at least the rudiments for fire service. The people of that county, including, Mr. Cranick, chose not to do so.
I don't think the insurance company has grounds to sue. They will probably have to cover Mr. Cranick's loss, and then, it would be my guess, they will promptly drop him from coverage. Anyone else who insures anyone in that county will probably either significantly hike their rates and/or insist that the $75 will be paid or void coverage.
Continued...
This reminds me of the people who build houses repeatedly in flood plains, knowing that the river (creek, etc) floods every year, and that every 5 or 10 years that the dikes aren't adequate and they will be washed away. They don't buy flood insurance, (usually because its too expensive) and then they whine when the river rises and washes away their house. They chose to gamble, and they have to accept their responsibility.
ReplyDeleteSince you excel at research, you can probably find this out as well: the county may or may not be duty bound by law to establish fire protection. If they are not, and the people of that county have chosen not to do so, who are we to make their political decisions for them, even if we believe their decision not to fund fire protection and to rely on a rather imperfect subscription system to be unwise?
My violin of sympathy here is sitting in the closet, the bow is not strung, and I have no intention of playing it.
TOE, the claim that this fire department had fought fires before outside their municipal boundary was made by Mr. Craniick, in a television interview. If I can find the link to the interview, I will email it to you later. He mentioned multiple instances, including on his street.
ReplyDeleteThat would appear to be corroborated by Jake's statement that the fire department had put out fires for non-subscribers, and then been unable to get paid for it in the past. Jake - can you provide that source here please? Thanks if you can!
Jake, I think you and I are in agreement that these people are being short sighted and penny wise /pound foolish in failing to have a better arrangement.
Jake wrote: "The question is how to deal with the reality of people who won't support county-wide universal fire service."
One suggestion is for those towns that do fund fire fighting services NOT to fight fires anywhere outside their borders, discontinuing the subscription service.
That might prompt those who ARE currently paying the subscription to deal more effectively with serious county wide planning.
ToE, I had a similar thought; I also wondered if Cranick's insurance will be in effect if he didn't maintain his fire fighting subscription.
Unlike you, I feel some compassion for Mr. Cranick's loss, regardless of the other circumstances, including the possibility of his own judgement failures.
While I certainly do not presume to dictate the political decisions of anyone in this TN county, I think it is perfectly legitimate to take a look at those decisions critically.
To the extent that those decisions appear to parallel and reflect a wider, underlying philosophy that is expressed in politics at all levels of government, it is exactl appropriate here.
The tea party has insisted on less government,including services. Any number of traditionally public services are being privatized from prisons in Arizona (linked to potentially shady dealings with the governor's office there) to libraries in major cities. From proposing privatizing Social security and thepost office, actually contracting out many of the support services in the military--to these people not funding their own firefighters.
There is a disturbing trend to repudiating government doing the appropriate business of government.
In my opinion, every time with disastrous, and far more expensive results. That merits raising this as a discussion of these political philosophies in contention in the upcoming elections.
As to your violin - I hope your heart softens at least a little. In the meantime, in case it does, don't let the cat use that violin as a scratching post. You might need it later?
In fact, the department bent the rules a few years ago for Cranick's adult son, who was allowed to pay his fee after the department came out. But that one's a bit hazy, because Cranick also said that his son extinguished that fire before they got there. So maybe they allowed him to pay afterwards because they didn't actually do any firefighting. I really don't know.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, the fact remains that the subscription departments only guarantee to fight the fires for their subscribers. Anything more than that is what they call "lagnappe" (sp) in New Orleans.
There's no obligation for them to fight fires for non-subscribers. Here is a link to a county report that discusses all of it.
One suggestion is for those towns that do fund fire fighting services NOT to fight fires anywhere outside their borders, discontinuing the subscription service.
ReplyDeleteThat might prompt those who ARE currently paying the subscription to deal more effectively with serious county wide planning.
That would be the harshest idea of all. It would deny service even to those willing to pay all the fees. So, to avoid penalizing a freeloader, you punish everyone else. Welcome to junior high school.
"That would be the harshest idea of all. It would deny service even to those willing to pay all the fees. So, to avoid penalizing a freeloader, you punish everyone else. Welcome to junior high school."
ReplyDeleteHarsh depends on how they do this, Jake. If they phase it out, or give sufficient advance notice of this intention, so that other arrangements can be made by those who are willing to press for fire fighting services, it might help change attitudes about the status quo.
I not only think this is an ineffective and shortsighted arrangement they have now, I am skeptical that the fees they are charging are likely to pay the municipalities adequately. I'd wonder if it might not be a debt problem for them - I question if it is agenuinely sustainable system.
Jake, you make some excellent observations, and they are well grounded in facts - thank you, on both counts.
@dog gone, thanks for the props. At least here, we can disagree without ripping each other apart.
ReplyDeleteI am no fan of the way that county does things, but I can't say that it "doesn't work." It sure doesn't work for the freeloaders, but the other county residents seem to think it works for them.
I think it'd be punitive to withdraw service from everyone, including those willing to pay their fees, because no one can bear to tell a free loader, "Sorry for your loss, but it's really not our fault."
Jake wrote: "I am no fan of the way that county does things, but I can't say that it "doesn't work." It sure doesn't work for the freeloaders, but the other county residents seem to think it works for them."
ReplyDeleteI took the impression from what I read that there were areas that did not have fire department coverage, but could contract with the nearest municipality for fire response. But that there were also other areas that had no access to these services, not even by contracting fee-for-service. It seems a patchy, inadequate arrangement.
Jake wrote: "I think it'd be punitive to withdraw service from everyone, including those willing to pay their fees, because no one can bear to tell a free loader, "Sorry for your loss, but it's really not our fault."
That is not the reason to withdraw services. Placing the emphasis on the area they are supposed to serve is the reason. I am skeptical that it is cost effective to the FDs to contract out their services, but is rather a stop-gap measure. As I thought about this event, I was reminded that in fire fighting, response time is critical to a good outcome.
Seems to me this is spreading limited resources rather thinly over a larger area than intended. That is likely to mean longer response times, and also risks fire fighters being unavailable to cover their own municipal area - where the citizens DO pay taxes for their services - in order to go outside their town boundaries to take care of these other people.
Let me be clear; I really don't want anyone to be without fire fighting services. Nor do I think it fair that the towns have to shoulder a greater burden by paying for their fire fighters to buy equipment, training, etc., to serve these other people not just their own town.
If these towns gave sufficient notice that they would no longer be doing this fee-for-firefighting deal, oh....say after the end of 2012, except as reciprocal emergency coverage --- answering larger fires than a single fire department could handle for example. That would be enough notice for those individuals who would be affected, who currently pay the service out-of-area fees, to make other arrangements. One might hope the 'arrangement' would be a comprehensive county-covering system of FDs.
We seem to agree that having fire department coverage of their own would be the best solution. That might improve the status quo, IF it could be done right.
Gentlemen, while the discussion of the specifics of the circumstances surrounding Mr. Cranicks loss has been lively.......
ReplyDeleteI'm a little disappointed that only corcoranp has addressed the larger issue here, although I'm not sure I entirely understand that comment.
There is a shift in what and who we perceive to be our community, our society; the us is all of us, versus an us-v-them perception.
As a reflection of that shift, there seems to be a redefining of the role of government, in some cases a rather extreme redefinition being proposed, that would systematically 'reduce big government' to the point of discontinuing roles - like firefighting - that are customarily served by government.
This is done either by contracting out those services - which would seem to be the awkward arrangement in the case of Mr. Cranick, but also the proposal in AZ for their state-wide prisons, suggestions that Social Security be privatized, medicare-medicaid be privatized, education be privatized through vouchers, libraries are being operated by for-profits, military services are by contractors, including military security related forces.
I haven't found a case yet where this actually resulted in an improvement of services OR the promised savings. In every case, the cost has gone up, and the quality has declined - in some cases dramatically - for those services.
May I gently lead further discussion to this larger issue, which appears to be a difference between the left and the right, as an appropriate topic leading up to the 2010 elections next month?
Thank you.
Welcome to Penigma Corcoranp and Jake ! Happy to have your comments.
ReplyDeleteIn the richest nation in the world, if we can no longer find a way to afford to help protect the homes and lives of those who are less able to do so, whether that is because of economic distress or because of ignorance, our solution cannot ethically be to allow them to die or to allow their homes, not and call ourselves christians. I will have more that I want to say on this in an upcoming post, but to me, fundamentally, this question is a basic ethical test. Do you allow those who through privation, stupidity, greed, or ignorance, put themselves at severe risk, do we allow them to die when we could otherwise prevent it, by stepping in and saving their life when they start to drown, are starving, are dying of thirst? If you are unsure which is the right ethical choice, for myself my suggestion is to read Matthew, Chapter 25.
Hi, Pen - I noticed that the international association of firefighters condemned letting the home burn.
ReplyDeleteI'm still trying to understand the premise of the firefighters AND their equipment, showing up at a fire outside their district. If they are going to these fires, staying until they are done burning, isn't the equipment expense, and the expense of paying the firemen to fight fires the same, pretty much whether they do anything or don't do anything at this point?
Aren't these firefighters and their equipment still deployed outside their municipal boundaries, among other things, taking them away from being available to their own town?
So.......where is the savings to the town of South Fulton in not taking that check they were offered andfighting the fire?
This seems to present not only ethical questions, as you point out, but also practical ones.
That was part of my thought processes in suggesting they consider not fighting fires outside South Fulton. Either do it, or don't do it, but not an inconsistent sometimes we do, sometimes we don't policy.
Clearly, having some homes in this county burning down when it could be prevented, and shifting the burden for fire departments to the municipalities for covering the rural areas has problems.
Houses burning down, other than as planned fire department exercises is not a good thing.
Sheesh - what are we, the United States or a third world nation where you might expect this to be a problem?
I honestly don't think that either Penigma or Dog Gone understands that the issue isn't an ethical one, its a political one. I'm not a tea party member, by any means. I'm not even a conservative, in general. However, this case seems to me to be a case of someone whining because they made a mistake, a miscalculation, and want the world to feel sorry for them.
ReplyDeleteFrom the reading and research, I see that there are a few things on which everyone seems to agree here. They are:
1) The citizens of Obion County, Tennessee have decided that they were unwilling to fund a rural fire department, or to fund the city's fire department so that it would fight fires in unincorporated areas of the county. Fire departments, even volunteer ones, are usually funded by property taxes. In many states, a hike in property taxes must be approved by the voters. If the voters don't approve, there is nothing that can be done about it.
2) The fire department of the city apparently was unable to enforce taxes and fees outside the city limits. (I think that if they routinely filed suit, they might prevail, but such suits are expensive and probably would not bring enough money to fund the fire department's costs)
3) The fire department therefore had a subscriptions system, by which homeowners or property owners could pay a fee, apparently $75 per year, in return for which the fire department would respond and fight fires occurring on their property.
4) Mr. Cranick was aware of the fee.
5) No claim has been made that Mr. Cranick did not have the money to pay the fee. In fact, his only comment was "I didn't get around to it".
6) Its unclear whether there is a mortgage on the house and/or whether he has insurance on the house.
7) Presuming that he had insurance on the house, and had a mortgage, one would think that the mortgage company and/or insurance company would have ensured that the $75 fee was paid. If they did not, then that's another interesting line of analysis.
8) Its unclear from the reports whether Mr. Cranick's neighbors had paid the fee. If they had, then the fire department is right to stand by to make sure that their houses are not harmed by his as it burns.
This is not a good system that they have there. However, it is a system that the people of that county apparently want for themselves. Are YOU going to give the money for a fire truck, the equipment, and the fuel to fund a rural fire department if they refuse to fund it themselves? Just where do you think the money will come from?
continued
I honestly don't think that either Penigma or Dog Gone understands that the issue isn't an ethical one, its a political one. I'm not a tea party member, by any means. I'm not even a conservative, in general. However, this case seems to me to be a case of someone whining because they made a mistake, a miscalculation, and want the world to feel sorry for them.
ReplyDeleteFrom the reading and research, I see that there are a few things on which everyone seems to agree here. They are:
1) The citizens of Obion County, Tennessee have decided that they were unwilling to fund a rural fire department, or to fund the city's fire department so that it would fight fires in unincorporated areas of the county. Fire departments, even volunteer ones, are usually funded by property taxes. In many states, a hike in property taxes must be approved by the voters. If the voters don't approve, there is nothing that can be done about it.
2) The fire department of the city apparently was unable to enforce taxes and fees outside the city limits. (I think that if they routinely filed suit, they might prevail, but such suits are expensive and probably would not bring enough money to fund the fire department's costs)
3) The fire department therefore had a subscriptions system, by which homeowners or property owners could pay a fee, apparently $75 per year, in return for which the fire department would respond and fight fires occurring on their property.
4) Mr. Cranick was aware of the fee.
5) No claim has been made that Mr. Cranick did not have the money to pay the fee. In fact, his only comment was "I didn't get around to it".
6) Its unclear whether there is a mortgage on the house and/or whether he has insurance on the house.
7) Presuming that he had insurance on the house, and had a mortgage, one would think that the mortgage company and/or insurance company would have ensured that the $75 fee was paid. If they did not, then that's another interesting line of analysis.
8) Its unclear from the reports whether Mr. Cranick's neighbors had paid the fee. If they had, then the fire department is right to stand by to make sure that their houses are not harmed by his as it burns.
continued
This is not a good system that they have there. However, it is a system that the people of that county apparently want for themselves. Are YOU going to give the money for a fire truck, the equipment, and the fuel to fund a rural fire department if they refuse to fund it themselves? Just where do you think the money will come from?
ReplyDeleteSince when do any of us have the right to make the political decisions for the folks in Obion county? I don't live there. I don't even live in Tennessee, and I know that Penigma and Dog Gone don't either. If they, through the ballot, have chosen not to have rural fire protection, and then CHOOSE, (yes, Mr. Cranick by "not getting around to it", made a CHOICE), not to subscribe, then when the gamble goes against them, that's too bad.
I'm perfectly aware of the contents of the Gospel of St. Matthew, Chapter 25, by the way. It doesn't apply here.
Again, I use my analogy of the people who routinely build their houses in flood plains, knowing that every year the river (creek, etc) floods, and that every 5 or 10 years, the levees will not hold and they will be washed away. Yet, when it happens, they whine about "poor me", and wonder why bad things are happening to them.
Government is not put in place to coddle us from all of our bad decisions. Mr. Cranick learned, the hard way, that when you fail to pay your $75 subscription fee for the fire department, you gamble that there won't be a fire... and if you're wrong, you have to live with the consequences.
I'm sorry, TOE, but respectfully, I completely disagree.
ReplyDeleteThis IS an ethical question, it is a question of proportionality. We do not execute people for jaywalking, we do not slap them on the wrist for murder. We SHOULD not allow their belongings nor animals to burn for want of a fee being paid.
It is also this, which of us will willlingly stand around while an animal suffers and dies when we could otherwise prevent it. For me, i would have GLADLY handed the firemen and women $75 FOR Mr. Cranick, and that is part the point and partly an answer to your question. When asked if I am willing to pay higher taxes to see to it my infrastructure and necessary services are funded, I say yes, and I say yes KNOWING that it may mean someone else hasn't necessarily paid their fair share, in fact in spite of it, for after all, I AM my brother's keeper, even the ignorant or wilfully stupid ones. I may allow them to learn hard lessons, but I will not allow them to suffer disproportionately to the offense, nor will I allow innocent creatures to die for their offense.
Lastly, this is ALSO an economic question, for in truth prevention is FAR more efficient and less costly than the cure. Mr. Cranick will now be a burden upon that county far in excess of $75. Moreover, he may well bring suit (one which he likely will lose) against the county. Consequently the expense to the county will vastly exceed the money it "saved" by servicing only those who pay the fee.
Like you, Penigma, I don't have a problem with paying higher taxes to see infrastructure property funded. That's part of the point. The people of that county chose not to fund their infrastructure. Mr. Cranick is a resident of that county. I don't know whether or not he voted for a mill levy increase to fund infrastructure such as a rural fire department or not. If he did, and his neighbors voted him down, then I have a bit of sympathy for him. If he voted not to increase taxes, so they could have good infrastructure (including a rural fire department), then I have even less sympathy. However, if he brings suit, and loses as I agree he will most likely, I hope that at the conclusion of the suit, the county asks that the Court award to it the attorney's fees that they spend defending the lawsuit.
ReplyDeleteI'm aware that my attitude sounds harsh and uncharitable. I'm quite sick, however, of hearing the "oh, poor me", from people who make stupid, even selfish and feckless decisions, and then expect society, specifically our government, to bail them out of every such decision. In this case, no one was injured. No one was killed. I hope that if there had been anyone in the house, that the fire department would not have allowed them to die or be injured. THAT in my opinion, would have gone to far. However, I draw a line between the destruction of life, which I hold sacred, and property, which I do not.
The fire chief there probably regrets now giving the order to let the structure burn, but under the circumstances, I still refuse to condemn the decision, and I still refuse to feel much if any sympathy for someone who made a choice to risk fire, and lost that gamble.
ToE, clearly, I agree with Pen on this. RE 4. and 5. of your list, Cranick not only knew about the fee, he had previously paid it over and over. For that reason, absent knowing why he may have been distracted from paying it this time, it seems reasonable that if this fire department had previously fought fires and collected - sometimes failed to collect, but sometimes DID collect afterwards, Mr. Cranick, as a regular paying subscriber deserved the benefit of the doubt. For a fire department to show up, and not fight a fire, is not terribly different from a person being in a car accident which traps them. If they are not in immediate danger of injury.....should emergency first responders not still use the jaws of life to get that accident victim out of the vehicle? Should the decision to give them aid depend on providing proof of insurance, or evidence that they didn't make a bad decision to find themselves in that situation? If someone in South Fulton hasn't paid their full tax bill, for example, would you also suggest that before responding to an emergency, the FD check the tax records? Would it be ok if they just check the municipal records.....or would they need to check the county, state and federal tax returns before responding? What about where one municipality has a reciprocal response arrangement with a neighboring one? Should the South Fulton FD only respond to some people in that situation, as back up to the local FD, but not others?
ReplyDeleteWhere do we draw the line? Not where it was drawn here. There is an inherent problem underlying how and why it was drawn here.
Or is the right thing, to help without judging first, without using this kind of emergency event to pinch pennies?
On a purely financial basis - where is the value in NOT fighting this fire? Where is the savings? HOW is this NOT a lose-lose situation? How is this decision NOT a cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face kind of decision?
Neither Pen nor I are attempting to dictate the decisions of these people in Tennessee. That doesn't mean that it is not appropriate to evaluate HOW we make political decisions, decisions just like this one about less government where it is needed, or what kind of government. I think you are a very smart man, who clearly recognizes the distinction.
In a forest / trees analogy, this is more about the larger forest than a few specific trees.
What strikes me about a lot of these discussions is the nearly complete ignorance about how fire fighting services are delivered outside of urban areas.
ReplyDeleteDo people know that 75% of the firefighters in the United States are unpaid volunteers, and that nearly 100% of rural fire fighters are volunteers?
Do people know that subscriptions are common in rural areas?
Do people know that, in rural areas too thinly populated to have enough volunteers, fire fighting service to combat wildfires is typically delivered by private companies, many of which are subscription services?
Last first, first last..
ReplyDeleteJake, I don't see the point as meritable/relavent. Whetherr I subcontract my fire services should have little to do with whether they save someone's life. If they must later bill for those services (as all ambulance companies do), then they must. We don't allow ambulance services to FAIL to respond or refuse care simply because the patient cannot pay, I assure you.
ToE, the issue isn't about whether we bail people out of EVERY decision - and never was. It is quite simply about proportionality. It is disproportionate and therefore wildly unjust, to allow someone's life to go up in smoke (i.e. their life's posessions, their family pets, etc..) for want of a fee. If we were talking about not letting them go to the fair becuas they'd been convicted of public drunkenness, or get a vehicle license becuase they had several DUI convictions, you'd get no argument, but we're not. We're talking about letting someone's home burn to the ground, failing to raise a charitable hand to stop an egregiouss event, for money.
Put another way, had this been a stranger's car who had driven into a lake and the fire department was on hand and COULD keep the car from being ruined and the dog trapped in the back seat from dying, would you say it was ok for them to do so? Clearly the stranger (to the county) had not paid HIS fee?
Lastly, I know you are a deeply faithful person, do we hold the foolishness of society or the irresponsbilities of those within it which is not criminal so strongly against them that we turn our backs when they are in need? Is that the lesson of the Samaritan? Clearly the Samaritan could have, like the Pharisee, crossed to the other side of the road and passed on by. We are called to help all, not just those we like, not just those whose cause we feel is just, but all, without judgment - lessons should be learned, but let those who are without error in judgment please cast the first stone, or in this case, the first torch. For my part, I will get a bucket full of water and help. Were I a member of that Fire Department, I'd have put the fire out, rules be damned, some rules are false righteousness, this was one.
Jake, I don't see the point as meritable/relavent. Whetherr I subcontract my fire services should have little to do with whether they save someone's life. If they must later bill for those services (as all ambulance companies do), then they must. We don't allow ambulance services to FAIL to respond or refuse care simply because the patient cannot pay, I assure you.
ReplyDeleteBelieve me, if you don't pay your fire service subscription fee, say, in the mountains of Colorado or California, they can and DO watch your house burn to the ground while they save the homes of people who did pay the fee.
Yeah, it's harsh, especially to urban people accustomed to universal taxpayer-funded fire coverage. But things work differently in remote areas.
I don't think Obion County, TN is that remote, and I think they should have universal, tax-supported fire coverage there. But the voters have decided otherwise, and Cranick knew it. My point is that this way of doing things is well-established in this country, even if few urbanites know that.
Put another way, had this been a stranger's car who had driven into a lake and the fire department was on hand and COULD keep the car from being ruined and the dog trapped in the back seat from dying, would you say it was ok for them to do so? Clearly the stranger (to the county) had not paid HIS fee?
With respect to fires, the South Fulton, TN fire department won't fight non-subscriber fires if only property is threatened, but if people are threatened they will fight the fire. It would really be worth reading the coverage before making reckless comments.
Then how do you propose to pay for this increase in service that you propose? The people in the rural area apparently refuse to properly fund fire protection. They apparently have, in the past, refused to pay a $500 bill for firefighting services after the fact (and BTW, I think a $500 bill for a major fire is way too low), and now, at least one of them, failed to pay the subscription fee, and is whining on national television about the consequences of that act.
ReplyDeleteI agree, and I think everyone that is part of this discussion agrees, that a firefighting service is important, whether it be rural or city. In my teens, I grew up where we were covered by a rural fire department, and it was a volunteer department. It was NOT a subscription, and every so often, they would need a new truck or a new station, and a bond issue would be placed on the ballot. Usually they passed, because people understood this was important for the community.
I think in this situation, that DG is correct. The city should discontinue the subscription service entirely. Only respond to fires within its city limits, and give notice that this will start on If the people in the unincorporated areas wish to fail to fund the fire department, then they can deal with the consequences. Perhaps when their insurance companies drop them, or increase their premiums by 100% or so, they will have a wake up call about how much they could save by having a reasonable tax levy to fund even a volunteer fire department.
Going back to Mr. Cranick:
If a stranger's car is in the lake, and the fire department is there, they should pull it out to save the dog, if feasible, because life is at risk, even if it is an animal. In Mr. Cranick's case, I've seen no evidence that there was any indication that there were pets or any persons in the house. Therefore, its a property issue.
Why should the people of the county support him, BTW, because his house burned down? Yes, the Red Cross, Salvation Army, churches or other charitable organizations may assist him. His friends and neighbors may assist him. But, if he is employed, (not reported here, so I don't have that information), has insurance, (and you're right, DG, they may very well try and use the failure to pay the subscription to deny coverage), then the government should not support him. (BTW: unless they specifically required him to keep it up in his insurance contract, they will probably lose that fight)
our solution cannot ethically be to allow them to die or to allow their homes, not and call ourselves christians
ReplyDeleteI thought I'd say something: As an atheist, I don't feel any need to call myself a christian. I don't need a set of manmade superstitions to guide me.
Jake - first, my apologies that your comments waited this long to be posted. We are usually much more prompt. Please know that your comments are valued here.
ReplyDeleteIn response to your comment about being an atheist, the argument for the ethical response to be similar would be on the basis of utility.
ToE, I have not yet had the opportunity to verify the details, but yes, there do seem to be family pets involved in this loss. I would remind you, however, of something that you already know, that animals are legally property however much we love them, and that firefighters would be required to treat them as such under these arrangements.
One of the problems I have with the stand-by-an-watch 'rules of engagement' here is......how do these firefighters KNOW conclusively that no lives are being lost or at risk? How does anyone know without making an attempt to fight a fire, conclusively, that no one is inside?
Is the decision to watch a building burn made after some kind of canvassing and questionaire? And if you can account for family members (of which I am skeptical, since it is nearly impossible to RELIABLY know, arriving on an emergency scene who is home and who is not) do you still know that no one else was inside?
The possibility of a human life being lost exists in this arrangement. Let me remind readers here that my argument is that this kind of arrangement is a poor choice on the part of these people, not that we should impose on them a better choice.
It is a specific event that is intended as a springboard to larger, philosophical discussion here, about infrastructure and services as public policy. (I'm including firefighting equipment in infrastructure.)
ToE wrote: "Why should the people of the county support him, BTW, because his house burned down? Yes, the Red Cross, Salvation Army, churches or other charitable organizations may assist him. His friends and neighbors may assist him."
ReplyDeleteMy point has been that this affects the people in his county, not only him, in ways which have a cost.
If he is employed, he cannot work without a place to live, clothes to wear, food to eat and a place to keep and prepare that food. Presumably, if Mr. Cranick is now financially impaired from this loss, he could require assistance; most counties in this country do provide for example food assistance, and in some cases medical and other assistance. Not only charitable organizations would presumably be involved.
The largest loss to the county however is probably the tax base. The value of the property without a home, as in playing Monopoly, is less. If, as is probably the case, Mr. Cranick's tax payment for his home and land was more than $75 greater than the land alone each year, this was a penny-wise pound-foolish trade off.
In this case, Cranick's son, who lives in the area, will presumably be assisting his father and other family members, if he can. But without a home, it is also possible that Cranick could leave the area, in order to live with family or friends while he deals with the loss of his home.
That would mean that Cranick would no longer be a consumer in that area, decreasing sales at local businesses - no grocery store purchases, no gas station purchases, no hardware store purchases, etc., where he used to shop.
So we have losses to the tax base, potential expenditure in assistance from the county, probable loss of contribution to production, and loss of consumption sales to local business, on which btw, there may be sales tax. Without Mr. Cranick's home, the property value of that county just declined by the value of Cranick's home......which is more than the cost of fighting the fire.
Bad trade off.
If you have ever known anyone who lost everything in a fire, it is a devestating experience. If your argument ToE, is that too bad he made his choice, we should not have compassion because he was stupid, just like people who are flooded out periodically.......do we have that attitude about every disaster, large or small?
ReplyDeleteI live in Minnesota, as does Pen; ToE lives in Kansas. That is at the end and in the middle of 'Tornado alley'. The majority of California is built on earthquake fault lines. Do we say, when there is an earthquake, oh, they were stupid too bad for them? Do we decide we will do nothing to stop the damage from an earthquake afterwards - like fires? Or do we fund FEMA, plan for emergencies; and locally, legislate that building codes require structures to meet standards which are as earthquake resistant as possible, and render emergency assistance to people in Tornado hit areas?
I would go further, and crystalize Pen's argument in his post as do we give greater importance to people, or to up front savings measures which result in an outcome that is a larger loss?
I would make the argument that the problem is the same here. Mr. Cranick saved $75, but lost his home. The fire department saved the costs of firefighting (and then, only sort-of) but as residents and a municipality of the county lost far more.
As human beings, the choice to let Cranick's home burn demonstrated a lack of human compassion, a compassion which should exist regardless of other judgements of Mr. Cranick and his family. Whether Mr. Cranick was stupid or irresponsible should not be the basis on which we feel compassion for him experiencing a devestating loss; it should be a separate issue.
Just a few minor details - Obion county has about 32,000 people; it is part of what is referred to as the Union City micropolitan district of Fulton and Obion counties, 'anchored by Union City'.
ReplyDeleteper wikipedia (I was lazy)"The median income for a household in the μSA was $28,573, and the median income for a family was $35,661. Males had a median income of $29,682 versus $19,791 for females. The per capita income for the μSA was $15,859.
It appears that the Cranick family's insurance will be paying, per an interviw with the Cranick's son on national television.
News reports indicate that three dogs and a cat died in the Cranick fire.
ReplyDeleteJake,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the civil reply (as always) - first, my comments are hardly made in ignorance. My parents have a home in a rural, volunteer fire department served community. I am executor for the place and am pretty familiar with the rules of the road.
The issue, for me, never was and never is about money or contracts, it is about decency. The germans passed laws forbidding non-jews to marry jews, and forbidding jews to own property. While legal, it was anything but ethical as I'm sure you will agree. Some things aren't about laws. As Rand Paul proved when he tried to say that property rights usurp anti-discrimination laws. The High Courts recent McDonald decision absolutely repudiated that notion. Property and contract law runs a distant second to the needs of preserving life. In this case a few animals died, I know we (collectively) consider them property, I also know I don't. Even if the house were empty, I would not have stood idley while the home burned, not if I was there, not if I could have helped, quite frankly because the proportionality of letting it burn vs. paying a small fee is out of balance, wildly out of balance imho.
With respect to your faith (aetheism), that's your decision, my point wasn't about your faith, my point actually was that this community, and rural America in general calls itself christian, yet puts tax law ahead of simple human decency. I consider that an hypocrisy. With respect to manmande superstitions, perhaps so, but then again, neither you nor I have proof there is God (in whatever form that may mean from Deist, to Buddha, to wrothful Y'weh), or that there isn't. I can call your belief that there isn't faith, belief without proof, just as you can call mine faith - whicih I freely acknowledge. The difference being, I DO acknowledge and in fact embrace the idea, for that IS exactly what faith is, belief without the need of proof. Whether I believe in Christ as the proximal Son of God, whether I believe in 'heaven' up in the sky (or in heaven at all), is wholly another matter. I DO believe however that the Bible, the parts which are in the New Testament most of all, offers an excellent roadmap on how to approach a lot of ethical choices. Those are manmade, but hardly superstitions, and it about THAT to which I was referring, belief in God not required.
As an aside, both my brothers are aethiests, one is a geneticist, the other a history teacher, I've had this argument more than a few times, if you intend to come back and say something akin to "I don't have to have proof of non-existence" please save your time and space here - no, you don't, but it is still purely faith that your answer is right, neither of us have proof.
@Penigma, this might be sheer semantics, but I don't "believe there is no god." I am non-believer, i.e., without a belief in gods or God. I could change my mind, but it'd only be as the result of factual evidence, or maybe mental illness.
ReplyDeleteWhich isn't to say that I think believers are crazy; superstitious, perhaps, but not crazy. Most people want to put the universe into a framework that matches their ethical values, as if to say that the universe supports their values. If I believe in any "god," it would be the probability tables, so I don't imagine that there's a god(s) who administer justice. We do that right here, for ourselves.
Anyway, as for the rest, I respect your ethics on this issue. Reasonable people can come to different conclusions. I merely had wanted to note that the Cranick case is hardly unique in the annals of rural fire protection.
People reading about this tend to bring an urban mindset to the table, reflecting the reality that most people live in places where there is universal fire protection provided by government and financed by taxes. The idea that people might have to pay a user fee for fire protection, and that non-payers might not be protected, strikes most urban dwellers as weird, when in fact it's not so weird in rural areas, at least remote ones.
Now, in the case of Obion County, Tennessee, I don't think that county is remote enough to justify subscriber-based fire protection. They really should do this through a tax-financed county district. Among other things, those taxes would be offset by reductions in homeowners insurance premiums, because insurance companies consider subscription-based service to be no service at all for purposes of risk rating.
I grant that it's hard to accept the idea that firefighters could stand and watch someone's home burn, when they could have put the blaze out. But when you examine the totality, that decision becomes more logical and understandable.
In that setting, Mr. Cranick was free-riding. He was well aware of the fee structure, and chose to ignore his obligations. There is no indication that he was unable to pay, nor is he mentally incompetent. While I do think it's penny-wise and pound foolish of Obion County's voters not to finance a fire district through their taxes, I can understand why a hard-pressed town fire department would say to the Cranicks, "Enough is enough."
Thanks, Jake for your comments; I hope it doesn't need saying, but I will anyway, to be certain - your views as an atheist are every bit as welcome here as those who have religious faith.
ReplyDeleteThe one statement you made, " But when you examine the totality, that decision becomes more logical and understandable." I think is wrong.
I think if you examine the totality, the full scope of consequences, not just a very narrow and limited part of the totality, their decision is far from logical.
I refer you to the concepts in the field of ethics of utilitariansim and consequentialism, and philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.
@dog gone, as I read your (and others') objections to what happened, I can't conclude anything other than that, in practice, you couldn't support a meaningful fire service by subscription. To make a subscription worth paying for, there'd have to be some advantage to subscribing, and a disadvantage to not subscribing. Other than being ineligible for service unless you subscribed, I can't see any other differential that would cause people to subscribe.
ReplyDeleteIn Obion County, the subscription fees make it possible for the town FDs to sustain their efforts in unincorporated areas outside their borders. Without those fees, they need taxes (rejected by voters) or per-call fees that they can actually collect.
I notice that part of the subscription arrangement appears to be a further agreement by a subscriber to pay $500 per call. I suspect (but am not certain) this is to avoid the argument prior to subscriptions that FD services were unsolicited and therefore don't have to be paid for.
In any case, without subscribers, tax revenue, or collectible fee-for-service charges, those FDs will have to cease service outside their borders, even to people willing to pay. The result will be not just unanswered property fires, but likely unanswered calls where human life is at stake.
I am reminded of Bill Clinton's quoting of John F. Kennedy's statement, "The perfect is the enemy of the good."
To avoid the discomfort of cutting off one free rider like Gene Cranick, you'd withdraw all fire service to that county's unincorporated areas, depriving 20,000 of the county's 30,000 residents of any protection. Presumably, this would be to force them to approve taxes that you and I support, but which they do not.
I'm having a tough time with those ethics. Not only does it expose a lot of people to mortal danger, but there is an element of political coercion that makes me uncomfortable, even though I support the goal behind it.
To me, ethics worthy of their name enable people not just to make "perfect" choices, but to choose the lesser of evils.
jake wrote: "To me, ethics worthy of their name enable people not just to make "perfect" choices, but to choose the lesser of evils."
ReplyDeleteI agree Jake with the last sentence of the above paragraph. What I have suggested as a possible alternative is not what you describe as,
"To avoid the discomfort of cutting off one free rider like Gene Cranick, you'd withdraw all fire service to that county's unincorporated areas, depriving 20,000 of the county's 30,000 residents of any protection. Presumably, this would be to force them to approve taxes that you and I support, but which they do not."
First of all, it is not 'one free rider' is it? I haven't seen reliable figures - so far, I'm still looking - but I would argue to you that my first impression is that quite a lot of those 20,000 people outside the municipal borders are already without firefighter protection, lacking subscription coverage. More don't, than do; and some are sufficiently rural not to have the option of subscription apparently.
We have rural areas without their own coverage,relying on towns that do - if they have any at all.
I'm arguing that it is not in the public interest, as public policy, to have houses burning down when it is possible to avoid houses (or other property) burning down.
I would argue to you that the subscription rate is a poor compensation to those municipalities for having to pony up the money for equipment and training, while rural areas contribute disproportionately less. I would argue to you that it is an inequity for those volunteers to have to fight the fires outside their jurisdiction.
I'm not suggesting for a moment that this be done on short notice, yanking coverage out from under anyone. I'm proposing that it be phased out so as to allow for a better choice to exist - better for municipalities like South Fulton, AND better for those sorta-rural areas.
You seem to be suggesting that if these municipalities stop agreeing to this bad arrangement, these western Tennessee citizens are incapable of coming up with any alternative other than all of them burning to death if there is a fire. I don't believe that is so.
And apparently at least some of the solutions proposed by fire departments like South Fulton's have NOT been tax-based, although I have to admit they have been fee-based. Those proposals provided better coverage, and wider coverage, at less cost per person.
I simply believe that for the municipalities to be the ones to say no to the present agreement would be more effective than when the other people in the county have tried to put this on the table for change. Some places are so sparsely populated, they don't have the choices these people have. I'm arguing for a move, in a sense, against the inertia of the status quo -- an argument based on the premise that no one wins when houses are left to burn down.
But I would also suggest that Tennessee being a fairly southern state, and given the demographics of the Tea Party, that the status quo also reflects a very dysfunctional notion of government more generally.
Which was my point underlying the specifics.
@dog gone, thanks once again for your civility. I really appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteWe agree that it's not in the public interest to have houses burning down. I also think we agree that public services don't pay for themselves. You can't create services by wishing for them; someone must pay for them.
More specifically:
1. According to the report that I linked in a prior post, 15% of the geography of the county is too far from the towns to be served at all. My impression (which could be wrong) is that few people live in that part of the county, and that most can be served from the towns.
2. I'm not suggesting that Obion County is incapable of doing it any other way. We agree that they ought to have a tax-funded fire district. Where we differ is what to do in a case where the county's voters reject the set-up we'd like them to have.
3. You'd have the towns announce that they'll withdraw all protection outside their borders, as a means of forcing those in the unincorporated areas to do it our way. I argue that the practical impact would be to withdraw services from those willing to pay for them, because we disapprove of the implications of a strict subscriber-based model that denies services to non-subscribers.
4. Whether or not the refusal of the unincorporated majority to do it our way is a hallmark of "Tea Party" thinking is, to me, interesting but ultimately beside the point, or at least somewhat theoretical.
I accept the situation as it is, because frankly I can't change it anyway. To me, it's a constraint, and now the issue is how to optimize the result within the constraints. I think the subscription model is the way to do it. Alternatively, perhaps the towns and the county could work harder to establish a legal framework that would make it possible to efficient collect per-call charges from those outside of the towns who don't pay their subscriptions but use their fire services anyway.
The county's report says the towns have tried to collect for those services but have been unable to do so. I accept that constraint too, but maybe it can be changed. Also, those who want them to do it our way (a tax-funded county district) should keep on trying. That's why we have democratic self-rule.
But I reject a coercive method that would essentially blackmail the residents of the unincorporated areas into doing it the way we think they should. I question the ethics of that, but of course, there is always room for disagreement.
As Jake as put it so eloquently, I think we all agree that there should be a taxpayer funded rural fire department. When the voters of that county refuse, repeatedly, to fund one, I disagree with what should be done about it.
ReplyDeleteAs Jake pointed out, subscription fire departments aren't uncommon. They aren't well known, because they are exclusively a rural phenomena. Most urbanites aren't familiar with them at all. (I was vaguely familiar with the concept, but not aware they used them in Tennesses). I consider myself much more an urbanite than rural, despite going to high Jr. High and High School in a pretty rural setting.
It isn't wise for the cities to discontinue the subscription service, as that, as Jake points out, deprives those who are willing to pay for that service the opportunity to have fire protection. It is, quite frankly, cutting off the nose to spite the face, (or perhaps other body parts, but I remember this is a family blog).
Again, this is a culture issue to some extent. I say that people have a right to chose, if they want, to not pay for fire protection when its a subscription service. I think its an exceedingly poor judgment, but they have a right to do it. However, what they don't have a right to do, in my opinion, is whine when its apparent that they exercised poor judgment, and the results come home to roost.
Property isn't sacred. Life is. I'm sorry that the animals were killed in the fire. I might have been moved to save animals if I had known about them in there... but, technically, as you pointed out, they are property. Mr. Cranick made that choice, and it isn't our place to un-make that choice for him, nor is it our place to condemn the fire department for refusing to honor a contract which didn't exist. (To form a contract, there must be, among other things, a consideration, or the exchange of something of value. That didn't happen here.)
This also isn't a tea-party issue. This has to do with Mr. Cranick (and apparently lots of other people there) demanding service for free, and then whining when it isn't provided.
Something I have posted elsewhere:
ReplyDeleteIt occurs to me that the idea of a county-wide fire district there is much easier said than done.
Consider that there are eight town FDs, seven all-volunteer and one paid. With eight chiefs. They primarily serve towns with a total of 10,000 people, with another 20,000 served on a fee basis outside their borders.
Consolidating those departments would tax the patience of even a group of people inclined to get along with each other. Now imagine if there were other divisions, ranging from partisan to egos to longstanding personal feuds, to resentments within and between towns, and between the towns and the unincorporated areas.
I could imagine the town taxpayers rejecting the consolidation out of fear that their service would go to hell. I could imagine the county taxpayers rejecting consolidation out of a fear that, over time, all of the firefighters would be on the payroll and that the initial low tax wouldn't be very low for very long.
And then I can imagine a dogfight among the chiefs of those eight departments for supremacy, not to mention the town councils, and the county government.
I can imagine Satan's own ball of string, and a lot of people saying let's leave well enough alone and have the towns charge each user for each call. And then I can imagine the users saying, hey, if I pay that 75 bucks a year, you'd better not be running to some freeloader's house.
That, too, is small-town, rural reality, writ small. Those pastoral hills can be pretty vicious, and nothing is more vicious than a local battle with relatively small stakes.
A couple of assumptions here, Jake.
ReplyDeleteOne, if I understand your reasoning -correct me, please, if I am wrong - it boils down to these people might be too petty and foolish to get along well enough to stop houses from burning down(and businesses and other structures). Maybe they are, or, maybe they just have to work through the process like adults - whether nice adults or jerks is up to each one of them, a personal decision.
There is nothing for example, to prevent the county, in cooperation with the municipal fire departments, from dividing the county up into divisions where existing fire departments provide coverage.
They are already apparently doing that in order to supply fire fighting protection to subscribers. There is nothing in that arrangement that would create internecine battles between competing fire chiefs - just a simple extension of their jurisdictional boundaries.
As part of that, one would expect the same kind of reciprocal arrangement that fire departments have now where they operate very well cooperatively - South Fulton firefighters recently assisted an adjoining fire department to put out a fire, not long after this.
These departments are apparently already showing up, to make sure no lives are lost; now they would be compensated for those calls.
That fire departments are using their equipment and volunteers to respond to calls for houses belonging to non-subscribers - like the Cranick's home - which, btw, is reported to have greatly distressed at least some of the volunteer firefighters - suggests to me that this is not reflecting a fair return for those calls that compensates these municipalities, even WITH the $75 subscription fee.
The other expectation I would have about a county-wide service is that there would be some provision made for those areas that currently don't even have subscription service fire fighting.
Imho, this is an opportunity for the normal growth process of a substantially less rural area now, where it previously perhaps was sufficiently rural to have used this arrangment as a reasonable alternative. The key to that would be - as you pointed out- better math, by everyone.
ToE,
ReplyDeleteI understood your point about him having made his choice, property, and your characterization of him as "whining" the first time through.
There are two areas where I don't agree. First, we don't allow people to drown who make the "stupid" decision to go in the ocean when they don't know how to swim, yes, that's a life or death question, but it's one of proportionality. The point being, the loss of property (in this case) FAR outweighs the cost for action SINCE THEY WERE THERE.
Second, while I respect your opinion, I do not agree with your opinion about whether the owner signing a binding agreement to pay for the services rendered (even at cost rather than the insurance fee) - it's done ALL the time for ambulance services, and I don't for a moment buy the duress argument, as you say, this is just property. Further, the person asking him to pay isn't the one coercing him or benefiting from his action.
Lastly, while perhaps even allowing for the fact that he might not pay, this community certainly could also arrange for a charity to cover the costs of those who legitimately cannot pay or some other funding arrangement - because in the end it costs the community far more than the cost to put out his fire. House fires have become very rare, the expense to communities to have volunteer fire departments is quite low and the impact to the community at large of covering this cost in the rare event someone who didn't pay winds up with a house on fire and not paying AGAIN, is likely miniscule. Frankly I think he could be foreced to pay - no question - but even if he didn't, the proportional cost is too high.
these people might be too petty and foolish to get along well enough to stop houses from burning down
ReplyDeleteNot sure about too petty 'n foolish to keep fires at bay, but maybe too petty 'n foolish to have the optimal solution. This happens at all levels of society, both in government and the private sector.
There is nothing for example, to prevent the county, in cooperation with the municipal fire departments, from dividing the county up into divisions where existing fire departments provide coverage. ...
These departments are apparently already showing up, to make sure no lives are lost; now they would be compensated for those calls.
Good point.
I do not agree with your opinion about whether the owner signing a binding agreement to pay for the services rendered (even at cost rather than the insurance fee) - it's done ALL the time for ambulance services, and I don't for a moment buy the duress argument, as you say, this is just property. Further, the person asking him to pay isn't the one coercing him or benefiting from his action.
I agree with that. I have a friend who was a city planner in Portland, Oregon, and they had an issue with their FD serving people living in unincorporated areas. At the time, Portland wanted to annex these areas, and was facing some resistance.
So, every time they sent a fire truck to a house in an unincorporated area, the homeowner would have to sign a "consent to annex" form before the firefighters would do anything. Pretty clever, I thought, and quite fair. You want our services, then you pay our taxes.
Two more points to make:
1. The county's report on the issue (linked in one of my earlier posts) doesn't explain why they can't collect even half the per-call fees. I suspect it might be because the legal costs of collection outweigh the benefit, but that's just a guess. It's an open question whether having people sign a contract will change that.
2. On the broader question of the right to fire service, and compassion, it needs to be noted that the United States is currently in an economic depression. The Obama administrations stimulus package has helped states and cities mask the worst effects on their operations, but that program is drawing to a close, and we are going to see a gigantic squeeze on governments across the board, top to bottom.
The sad fact is that the American standard of living is about to take a real nosedive here. As it happens, we're going to find all kinds of situations like this one, even in the cities -- some of which have been reducing their universal fire coverage to risky levels.
People are going to be doing more for themselves. As a lifelong Democrat and liberal, I don't like it one bit. But what I don't like plus a couple bucks will get me a cup of coffee at whatever Starbucks don't close up shop.
Hate to say it to Gene Cranick, but the day will come -- and soon -- when you or your counterpart elsewhere will look at a $75 annual fire subscription as a bargain. The margins for error at all levels are going to be a lot tighter, and the pencils are going to get a lot sharper.
Compassion? Like everything else, that one depends on how much you've got to give.
(DG wrote)"these people might be too petty and foolish to get along well enough to stop houses from burning down",
ReplyDelete(Jake wrote)Not sure about too petty 'n foolish to keep fires at bay, but maybe too petty 'n foolish to have the optimal solution. This happens at all levels of society, both in government and the private sector.
And yet it is the essence of democracy that we at least aspire for a meeting of the minds which arrives at the optimal solution - even if it takes working through petty bickering as a facet of human nature as an additional challenge in the process.
While we have the growing abyss, not mere gap, in the small amount of wealth in the hands of the majority, and the concentrated large amount of wealth in the hands of a very few, the problems you describe with providing services will continue, and grow worse.
What those who favor the measures, including the tax cuts to the wealthy fail to understand, is that the kind of thinking which wants few or no government services, and few or no taxes, is short-sighted and is killing the goose that laid their golden egg. They are going to find themselves living not in the most successful and innovative country in the world, where hard work and ingenuity provides upward mobility. They are instead going to find their greed has created a country of mediocrity that better belongs to what we think of as third world.
The Cranick fire is a microcosm of that challenge.
@dog gone, at least with respect to me, you're preaching to someone who has been saying all of that stuff for the past 20 years.
ReplyDeleteBut you know what? No one paid any attention while we had the time to turn it around. I'm afraid that the situation is now very different: We will simply have to learn how to sleep in the bed that's been made for us.
Economic cycles typically run for 16 years. The last one should've ended in 1998, but the Federal Reserve lacked the courage to let it go.
The first batch of money caused the Internet and telecom stock frauds. Remember the NASDAQ over 5000? Have a look at it now. The second batch caused the residential real estate bubble.
The third batch (in '08) was a bandaid that did nothing but save the banks and put off the day of reckoning for a couple years. The longer you delay these things, the worse they get.
That's the big picture. The down-home result is that there are going to be a whole lot more Gene Cranicks, and a lot of them will be much less culpable than he was. Get prepared, folks, because this is going to be a hell of a storm.