In this pic posted at Daily Kos, there is a lot of irony.
In fire-devastated Washington state, the gentleman on the right is thanking exhausted, hard-working fire fighters for saving his house, while wearing a tee shirt that says, “Lower Taxes + Less Government=More Freedom.
Presumably the gentleman is one of those free market freeloaders who hates the government, hates taxes, but wants to drive on the roads, fly safely in the skies, use the internet, get weather data from satellites, have clean water to drink and safe food to eat, to keep poison tainted toys away from his children, and send them to good schools, but who apparently thinks all these services, including, when needed, police and fire protection, and for that matter, climate protection, will come for nothing, provided by untrained people who work for sub-minimum wages.
Next time there’s a fire, and there will be a next time, perhaps he will ponder whether he can fight it with his garden hose, or form a bucket brigade with his neighbors…
Well said..
Awaiting the Libertarian reply to
Don’t tax you, don’t tax me,
Tax that man behind that tree.
My version:
Don’t tax you
Don’t tax me
And when society fails
Go hide in a tree
So amass your guns
To protect your buns
Because anarchy will not make you free
I object to robbing Peter to pay Rand Paul.
As our cousins on the other side of the ever-warming and ever-rising big pond would say, I am gobsmacked by the pure mindlessness and ignorance of the wanker wearing the shirt with that slogan. This is beyond irony. And did anyone read down the comment stream and catch this one?
“There are two types of Republicans, the rich and the stupid. The rich ones strive to keep the stupid ones stupid and the stupid ones strive to keep the rich ones rich”. (And Libertarians are stupid).
“Lower Taxes + Less Government=More Forest Fires”
There. Fixed that for you.
I hear President Obama is going on a Green Forests Initiative to help nudge the transition from centralized, distributed forest fire control to a cleaner, greener, more decentralized, and more freedom-filled system by incentivizing businesses and homeowners to play a larger role in controlling their own forest fires.
“Spokesmen for the Green Forests Initiative emphasize an element of the 21st-century environmental shift that is often overlooked in debates about our forest and woodland future: namely, that tomorrow’s forest fire control won’t just be cleaner or more efficient, it is also likely to be less concentrated in the hands of government agencies and more distributed among everyday citizens across the country.”
“We are seeing the beginning of this transformation,” Interior Secretary Ernest Moniz said in a press call unveiling the initiatives Monday, “and we see a huge opportunity to expand it rapidly.”
Progress!!
“9-1-1 police emergency”
“Please help – my house is on fire!”
“Great! We’ll be happy to help you with that!”
“What type of credit card will you be using today?”
You are joking, but in the enlightened state of TN, that is not a joke. Folks who didn’t pay the $75. annual “fire services” fee in a certain county watched their houses burn to the ground (so did the firemen who came to make sure the fire didn’t spread to surrounding “paid up” properties). Read this article—-in some places you can pay the firemen on the scene (if you managed to get your checkbook or credit card out of the burning house, that is—-if not, perhaps they might take your first-born child as payment?).
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/12/07/9272989-firefighters-let-home-burn-over-75-fee-again