[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Mary Hart’s Legs *
Last time I checked, the legislated difference between what a household is and what a Corporation is were profound.
Relevance?
Your statement is on its face inaccurate. Many corporations, including many with the need for emergency services, are non-profit. Non-profit hospitals come to mind.
Furthermore, if I allow a fire to start in my home due to negligence, I will be liable to my neighbors if the fire spreads to their properties. In essence, I am attempting to secure protection from potential liability on the backs of the taxpayer.
Relevance?
If a home employs an au pair or a cleaning service, should that home be required to pay for their own emergency services?
A home that employs au pairs, etc., must provide a safe workplace;
A private residence may not endanger or create a nuisance to neighbors. In terms of fire, etc., this operates as the equivalent of safe workplace requirements.
Please explain - this statement is massively overbroad. “Due diligence” has many different legal meanings, and I cannot discern which one you are referring to. If you mean the negligence standard, with limited exceptions that do not apply here, both corporations and individuals are held to the same “reasonably prudent person” standard.
Again, this assertion is massively overbroad (not to mention a grammatical travesty).
Then it would be the responsibility of labor to negotiate with management for in-house emergency services, if labor feels it is a priorty for them.
Uh, uh. That’s not how this works. I’m not going to do your research for you. You are the one asserting that corporations are screwing the poor taxpayer through public provision of emergency services. You are the one who has to demonstrate this. And, quite frankly, you should have done this research before you wrote the OP - otherwise you started a debate without any factual basis, and you wouldn’t do that, now would you?
What an interesting thread. I had never thought of these things. Oh, and the corporate tax rate is much lower than for real people.
And each class of postage is supposed to pay for itself, first class (what normal people use) is not subsidized by any other class. But I sure would like all this junk mail that comes my way to do something other than provide material for recycling, like subsidizing first class or medicare or something.
And corporations are owned by real people (AKA “shareholders”, AKA “pensioners”, AKA"mutual fund investors" AKA “the large majority of the American populace”). In the end, the same people pay the taxes - us.
I do understand that the number of fires are down, I said as much in my post. My stats include the number of calls the the fire departments responded to. You seem to think that people are calling the fire department and saying, “there is a fire in my toaster, but don’t worry my roommate just put it out.” I think that people only call the fire department when they feel that a situation is beyond their ability to handle. Also, so what if 1.5 million calls were for garbage can fires that you assume may be self-extinguishing? That would still leave 200,000+ “real” fires. Would you have them burn unattended?
Are you serious? You come in and start a debate that you will not bother to support. Now, you ask me to find support for your position? I think you might need to review the definition of debate.
Regardless, I doubt the evidence exists because I feel that you are just making up your claims as you go along.
**
Given what I just said above, I assume that it is futile to ask you to support this claim.
Ok lots of issues here I’m going to try and hit them all
You missed one of the biggies fire prevention inspections.
Every major FD I have heard of has regular crews doing inspections on low hazard businesses to augment regular fire inspectors. This is usually at least a few hours a day.
Many full time fire inpsectors these days have advanced degrees in chemistry to be able to properly assess problems in places like refineries, chemical plants, etc. So they save the knowhow for the places that need it. Don’t need a PhD to find too many plugs on a circut.
Also hydrant testing/maintenance, at least a few hours a week.
Many FD’s encourage fitness heavily and a small part of their day is devoted to physical fitness training.
Also every FD worth its weight in water spends tons of time on training. When you never know what you’re going to face when you roll, it pays to have as much practical knowledge as possible.
They have expanded out of necessity[sp] The fires they face now are in many ways far more dangerous animals then they were 50 years ago. Many of their roles did not traditionally exist.
Todays firefighter is well versed in issue pertaining to but not limited to:
Hazardous materials response
Fighting fires involving: flammable metals, water reactive chemicals, poisons, corrosives, commercial aircraft, and large scale petroleum storage.
You ain’t seen nothing till you’ve seen a good aluminum fire
Emergency medical treatment is new with the last 30 years or so. Hell paramedicine is only about 30 years old.
If anything we get a lot of “value added” features in major departments these days.
As to the corporate giants milking the system. Many companies do select some cities because their higher quality departments give much lower insurance rates. Fire insurance for a big building is not cheap and is a guarenteed constant expense. Many times however it works the other way around. Developers usually have to build new fire stations in CA if they put up a new neighborhood and the response times warrant it. They pass the cost on to the home buyers. Businesses often want an area for a specific reason. Lets take Bakersfield, Ca for an example. Oil fields. The fire departments down there are large and in charge. They get what they want because the oil companies can’t just “move away” because of FD safety demands.
Many companies do have their own in house emergency personell. They are required by the local departments to have people and procedures for handling special issues pertaining to their business.
Yes many companies do get concessions but its generally because the city has done the math and they would rather have another $x in taxes from 3,000 more working citizens than $x*.5 in property taxes on the business site. Plus a large employer invariably spills over into other areas, restaraunts in the area at lunch, etc. They pay taxes too.
Simple, because when you really need them, you can’t have enough of them and they never arrive too soon. Stretching fire dept response times = dead people and destroyed buildings. Hit up your local dept and ask if you can watch a live fire excercize. Its very sobering to see how far a fire can develop in just 2-3 minutes.
In a nutshell, yes but more often than not they pay for it.
For example: Valley Childrens Hospital Madera, Ca. They wanted to build a huge brand new hospital in the boonies. IT massively exceeded Madera FD’s ability to handle a fire there. They had to pay for the construction of a new station and the fire engines. In addition they are paying Fresno FD an annual fee for aerial ladder coverage because IIRC they were unwilling to kick down the funds for the heavier equipment in Madera. So if a fire call goes off at VCH they big ladder trucks are rolling from about 6 miles south of their location :gasp: Were talking 12-15 minutes for the big boys to arrive. For comparison Fresno Community Hospital is about 4 minutes from a fire station with aerial ladder capability.
Yax,
I consider myself the only required source on the matter given my understanding of the issue…if you don’t believe that I am all knowing, support your refute with better references than I.
I am aware of jurisdictions in North America in which individual firefighters have worked 20-30 years without attending a working fire so, how many is too many or, is this a good use of taxpayer dollars?
Once again I will ask for a cite. You will have to forgive me for not accepting you as an expert in this, or any field.
I suspect the problem is that you posted this in the wrong forum. WAC (wild ass claims) are nothing more than OPINIONS. You may want to ask a moderator to move this thread to IMHO.
I included fire inspections when I spoke of prevention generally.
If I understand your reply, you think it is appropriate for an industrial plant to waive the responsibility regarding their specific chemical, mechanical and structural issues because the fire dept. houses the “experts”?
That’s absurd! Take a company like 3M. Many of 3M’s industial sites have the chemical capability to kill 10000’s of people in the plant and the surrounding areas if the right kind of accident happens. If you were to ask a fire dept. “expert” about how predict the specific risks of the chemicals housed in a plant as decribed, there would be no appropriate answer. In fact, some of the chemicals used at these plants are military/govt. classified and if the plant in-house experts are killed in a spill there are no immediate answers as to how to provide an appropriate response.
Ask the population of Bhopal or chernobyl if their fire dept. handled their tragedies with expertise.
Actually, firefighters work for no salary at all. This is why you see “volunteer” in front of many firestations. There is no corporate involvement; these brave people simply like helping others. Your point, Mary hart’s Legs, is thus decimated.
Oh, I won’t be swayed by cites to the contrary, since I alone am a sufficient required source of knowledge on this, and all, issues.
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Sheesh. No, MHL, that’s not the way DEBATE works. A gratuitous assertion may be equally gratuitously denied. You make a claim, it’s on you to provide the proof of that claim. You may not make a claim without proof and then demand others refute it.
Fortunately, there is a place on this board in which posters are permitted - nay, encouraged - to post their opinions.
Here in Great Debates, however, you must substantiate your claims, or receive well-deserved ridicule and scorn from those on either side of the issue.
There should be no confusion here, as due diligence has a very precise legal meaning is our discussion.
You are correct to suggest that this refers to the “negligence standard” that being:
doing what a reasonable entity would do in the circumstance being described
2)affording a level of care or attention which is appropriate to the caregivers title
There is a VERY different standard between what a member of the public provides in response to an emergency and what a corporation would provide.
So some poor bastards actually get hit twice with taxation to support the corporation?
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Nothing interesting about the logic, MHL - it’s real basic stuff. Despite whatever delusion you may have, corporations are not magical entities that have appeared out of nowhere. In the end, the real owners are real people, people like you and me.
And no, stockholders don’t get hit twice with taxation to support the corporation - instead, stockholders get hit twice with taxation on money they earn from the corporation. I’ll explain, and I’ll use small words.
Evil Corp. earns $50 million in profits in 2001. By sheerest coincidence, Evil Corp. has 50 million shares outstanding, so Evil Corp. earned $1/share. Joe Bricklayer owns 50 of those shares through his union mutual fund plan.
But Mr. Bricklayer’s stock is not worth 50 more. Evil Corp. must pay taxes. They are relatively low, let's say 20% for this exercise. So the after-tax profits is .80/share, and Mr. Bricklayer’s stock is actually only worth $40 more. Mr. Bricklayer has been taxed.
Mr. Bricklayer could get that $40 in increased value in many ways, but two common ways are dividends or an increase in the stock price. If it is all passed through in dividends, it is taxed again, let’s say at 25%. So Mr. Bricklayer ends up pocketing $30. If no dividend is given, and the stock price increases, Mr. Bricklayer will be hit with capital gains taxes when he sells the stock, at 28%. In this scenario, Mr. Bricklayer ends up pocketing $28.80 of the original $50.
'Course, if the $50 had been wages, Mr. Bricklayer would have been taxed at the higher personal rate, let’s say 30%. In that case, he would have pocketed $35.00.
You are a riot, MHL. If you believe that what you just wrote is in any way related to legal reality, the only explanation I can think of is (a) you no legal training whatsoever, or (b) you went to law school at Harvard. In truth, (a) and (b) are the same thing.
Average citizen as a shareholder will be taxed their regular income tax, they pay out property tax, they pay out in sales tax, they may pay luxury tax, they may pay toll booth tax, they may pay inheritance tax and capital gains tax. Dependant on the jurisdiction some or all of these tax revenues will be directed back to supports the infrastructure of emergency reponse to the Corporation.
The “support” refers to where the tax dollars eventually go not, by what means they are being taxed.
Lemme get this straight. Of all the possible things that corporations do that might piss someone off, MHL is upset over the possibility (I say ‘possibility’ because she has presented NO evidence) that they may not pay their way for fire prevention?
Well, I estimate that about 0.5% of my personal tax burden might actually make its way to my local firefighters, if that. If I am indeed paying a bit extra, excuse me if I don’t get too worked up over this particular issue.
And MHL, just to add my voice to the chorus, if you open a thread in this forum, you are obligated to back your premise up with a fact or two, if you expect to be taken seriously. It’s not up to everyone else to make your case for you.