Kerry JacksonEditor’s note: This has been excerpted with permission from the Pacific Research Institute. To read the entire report, click here.
California has become the “Can’t Have State,” as in can’t have plastic bags, can’t have plastic straws and utensils, can’t have a new gasoline-powered car 10 years from now, can’t have a long of things that would make up a list too long to go into here. The next “can’t have,” if a bill reintroduced in Sacramento becomes law, are private firefighters.
Assembly Bill 1075 would require the Office of Emergency Services “to develop regulations prohibiting privately contracted firefighters from hooking up their equipment to public water sources.”
Politico says the legislation is intended to stick “it to Rick Caruso’s private firefighters.”
That was in the headline in the Feb. 26 article. The first paragraph is laced with even more sharp barbs.
“Los Angeles Democrats and the largest firefighter union in the state have joined forces on a proposal making public fire hydrants off limits to private fire crews, such as the ones billionaire developer Rick Caruso hired when wildfires were devastating the region.”
So better to burn than to upset one of the strongest public employee unions in California. As PRI Free Cities Center director Steven Greenhut says, “how dare anyone protect their own property.”
Or as the Cato Institute’s Doug Bandow puts it, “some critics apparently prefer that buildings burn publicly rather than be rescued privately.”
Democratic Assemblyman Isaac Bryan, a cosponsor of the bill along with Democratic Assemblywoman Tina McKinnor, justifies shutting out private firefighters, who often work for insurance companies that sell wildfire coverage, by appealing to a standard that surely sounds high-minded.
“Firefighting is a public good,” Bryan, whose 55th District is centered in Culver City told Politico. “It is a public resource. It is something that we all invest in and we all derive benefits from.”
Hard to argue with that. But by effectively outlawing property owners from protecting themselves with private efforts by barring them from connecting to public water service puts the public at risk. Unionized firefighters can’t be everywhere at all times. Better to have a private fireman than no fireman at all.
“Private fire departments can fill gaps when public fire departments aren’t able to meet the demands of their local communities,” says Frontline Wildfire Defense.
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It’s just like a “Progressive” California, Democrat. Let everything be destroyed-that way everyone is equal.
It is shameful that not only do the people we think of as pillars of our society (ie the legislative state body) can promote, in effect, “Burn, baby Burn” without blushing; but also the citizens of that state vote who put such con men and fools in the California legislature keep voting them into office.
What amazes me is that the legislator who introduces the idea proudly, actually and seriously introduces it; no one asks how in the world did a legislator come up with such a daffy idea to solve a problem that was instigated and made worse by the State Government.
And he introduces it AFTER the California wildfires-where the only still non-ravished property was saved by using private firefighters.
This is the same logic that is used by our wonderful NEA in the educational field. Since students are appreciably less proficient, instead of upping teaching standards, the solution is getting rid of grades or grade on the curve.
That way, the students may still be dumbed down, but now everyone will be dumbed down equally. And no one will most likely notice the NEA’s fingerprints on this sordid plan.
There was a short story in the 1950’s where the Government made everyone equal by, for example, putting shackles and chains on the strong and fast citizens.
The legislator introduced the same thing. The California Government was ineffective in fighting the fire, so the solution is to get rid of those fire fighters who were effective.
Perhaps, one day, California will shackle itself out of existence. (Just, hopefully, remember to leave the buildings).
Every body equal but themselves and the elites that finance them/pull their strings. That is the sad part because the “useful idiots” that keep voting for them don’t understand that they will be left behind.
I think they should start putting the Eco-Freaks on the fire so they can learn some Responibility