On 8/15/2011 6:40 AM, HeyBub wrote:
harryagain wrote:
wrote in message
m...
Gordon Shumway wrote:

One point I should have made, but didn't, was that those government
jobs, in virtually every case, could be done with less cost, faster
completion time and more accurately by the private sector.


Well... well... What about firefighters, eh? What about them! As it
turns out 85% of firefighters are volunteers. Next.

Okay, then. How about police? Interesting. In my town there are
probably five times the number of private security guards as there
are police. The military? Probably most wars in history were fought by
some
concoction of mercenaries. If we have a war, we could probably hire
an army.
And where do these "volunteers" get their money from?
Come to that,where did you get your information from/
I have noticed your propensity in the past for producing a load of
**** and claiming it to be true.

Where do they get their money? I don't know. Perhaps the annual Volunteer
Firefighter's Spagetti Dinner?


When I was a volunteer firefighter, we were paid $15 a call out no
matter how long we were on the scene which sometimes were as little as a
1/2 hour or so for small grass fires to most of the day for fully
involved structure fires. That money came from a millage on our property
taxes.

We paid from our on pockets to a fund for donuts and coffee to have
during our monthly meetings and training sessions.

If we had a big fire where we had to be on the scene for several hours,
sometimes a few of our wives would get together and bring us water, pop
and some sandwiches.

We also did things like take a pumper (fire truck) and go sit on a hill
to watch for tornadoes during tornado warnings so we could warn the
community if we saw one.

I've also gotten up more than a few times in the middle of the night to
go out with a chain saw and clear trees off the road after bad storms.

For volunteer firefighters, there is barely enough pay to pay our
expenses and plenty of risk to our health. But we do it for our
communities and I've heard very few complain about it.