Help Wausau Fire Fighters!

In Solidarity!

Recently the Village of Weston voted to disband the Weston Fire Department and replace it with a volunteer-only fire department.  This means that shortly after the holidays the full-time Weston firefighters will be without a job and community fire services will be decreased.

There is going to be a canvass this Saturday, December 7, starting at 11:00 a.m. in Weston at the AmericInn Hotel, 4115 Barbican Avenue, in order to educate the public on what is happening and take the fight for quality public fire services and safety to the community.


WHEN:  Saturday, December 7, 2013, 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.


WHERE:  Meet at 4115 Barbican Ave, Weston AmericInn Hotel, 2nd floor conference room (Near HWY 29 & Camp Phillips Road)

Wausau Local 415 appreciates your help!


For any questions, contact:
Local 415 President Jeremy Kopp (715) 432-4870  or
PFFW Executive Board Member Justin Pluess (715) 421-9652

- See more at: http://wisaflcio.typepad.com/wisconsin-state-afl-cio-blog/2013/12/help-wausau-fire-fighters-.html#sthash.s5PqU493.dpuf

Prescott, AZ - A Republican Case Study!

By Jeff Simpson

Welcome to Prescott, Arizona, "Everybody's Hometown".  It is a quiet little town, population 40,000 that votes a solid red, 63% republican.  In the most recent election, 64.5% of the voters preferred the Romney/Ryan ticket, and their message of the makers V takers! 

Prescott also recently(2009) elected a new Mayor - Marlin Kuykendall. 

What are the city's top issues? "We will continue to make sure that we preserve the water that has been awarded us by the ADWR (Arizona Department of Water Resources)," Kuykendall said, adding that the city would also work to "respect and honor the commitment" to the Verde River, and the "obligations to the people of the Verde."

Kuykendall also cited continued growth of the economy as a top priority. "We want to be a part of job creation," he said.

In addition, he said, he want to ensure "Prescott will always have the quality of life component, the neighborhood quality."

Prescott was also recently in the news for another reason.  The Granite Mountain Hotshots, American Heroes,  who all but one, lost their lives fighting the Arizona wildfires.  

Now, Prescott is known for something else.  Denying many of these families, their more than earned and previously promised survivors benefits! 

Andrew Ashcraft, a 29-year-old member of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, died beside 18 of his comrades when a wildfire engulfed them on June 30. The elite firefighters from Prescott, Ariz., were battling a wild-land blaze near Yarnell, which was sparked by a lightning strike. The fire quickly grew into an inferno that destroyed hundreds of homes and covered more than 2,000 acres. 

Only one member of the 20-person Hotshot crew survived the blaze, and the families of the 19 victims were promised a half-million dollars or more in government benefits and private donations. The city promised all families a one-time payment of $328,618 and lifetime survivor benefits.

But now the city of Prescott is retracting its promise, claiming that 13 of the deceased firefighters were seasonal employees, thus making their families ineligible for survivor benefits – including health insurance, a life insurance payment, and monthly lifetime survivor benefits that could amount to several million dollars in the long run.

Juliann Ashcraft, whose husband died fighting the blaze, has been told that she will not receive the benefits that she was initially promised. The city of Prescott told her that full family survivor benefits will only be awarded to the families of full-time employees. The city claims that Mr. Ashcraft was a seasonal employee, despite the fact that he worked 40-hour weeks and earned a full-time salary.

Not ONLY did they renig on their promise to take care of their local heroes who gave their lives for their community they were extremely cold about it!

 “As shocked as I was that my husband went to work and never came home, I’m equally shocked in how the city has treated our family since then,” she told CBS News. “…I said to [city officials], ‘My husband was a full-time employee, he went to work full-time for you.’ And their response to me was, ‘Perhaps there was a communication issue in your marriage

 Once again, the rest of America has to step up and pay the bills for the "fiscally conservative" republicans in charge of a Government.

For now, Mrs. Ashcraft will feed her family using private donations she received after her husband’s death.

“Quite literally, my bills are being paid by the good people of the world who are giving donations, because the city of Prescott isn’t doing anything for us,” she said. “Now I have four kids and myself, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

YOU can help by going to this website! 

This is how Arizona treats their public workers, who they apparently think of their families as "takers" and "love them" so much they are going to make sure they are not reliant on benefits and health insurance paid for by the taxpayers(those are reserved for the politicians)! 

At least they can justify it by it "being legal"(where have we heard that):

Deborah Pfingston, the mother of deceased firefighter Andrew Ashcraft, told AP that city officials initially promised to retroactively reclassify the seasonal, temporary employees as permanent ones, in order to be able to provide the survivor benefits. But now, the same city officials claim they cannot posthumously reclassify the deceased men.

“The city has fully complied with all of the laws and employment policies that direct survivor benefits,” the city said in a statement sent to CBS News.

If you think for a minute that the Wisconsin republican contingent of Scott Walker, Robin Vos, Scott Fitzgerald et al. would not do this exact same thing to our public workers, if given the chance - I pray you never find out(because i hate to say I told you so)!

 

Mitt Romney's Job Plan!

Mitt Romney keeps telling us that he will create 12 million jobs. He will not tell us how, but he will, we just have to trust him!

Luckily for us, Mitt Romney has been running for president for the last 8 years so we can go back and see what he has had to say about jobs:

 And working conditions for those jobs??

Thanks Mitt, I knew you would tell us the details eventually!  

Why I Endorse President Obama!

If you think there is no difference between the two candidates or parties, and you are thinking of sitting out this election, please give me two minutes of your time! 

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B: One candidate/party mocks firemen and wants to cut back on them and the other calls them heroes AND helps make sure they get insurance!

On a a recent trip to Colorado Springs, the president was apparently moved by the men and women firefighters he met, senior administration officials said in an interview.

When he returned to Washington, he told his cabinet that he wanted to "find a solution" for the hundreds of workers toiling in dangerous conditions without the option to buy in to federal insurance

The 15,000 or so temporary seasonal workers who descend into fire zones are usually young people who work sundry outdoor jobs, depending on the time of year. Some pick up contract work removing trees in the fall or they work at ski areas in the winter.

Many are college students. But because they are not full-time U.S. Forest Service employees, before Tuesday's announcement they did not have the option of purchasing federal health insurance.

Under a directive that will be made in the "near future" from the Office of Personnel Management, this group will get that option by the end of this month, White House officials said.

Mandatory Corporate Welfare

In the previous post, my colleague, Jeff Simpson, pointed out to yet another incident of a house being allowed to burn to the ground because the home owners didn't pay the $75 fire fighter fee. There was a similar incident in the same county just two years ago. Apparently, these teahadists are slow learners.

While Jeff shows righteous outrage at the fact that the moronic, selfish teahadists would let an entire community burn for a measly $75 bucks, I think he misses the more sinister, more troubling and more outrageous part of the story.  From his story, he cites this passage:

Bell told KFVS-TV she didn't pay the fee because she didn't have insurance, which she told the station is a requirement in order to subscribe to the firefighting service. "I'm not mad at the city, I understand," said Bell.

The station reported Bell told them most of her neighbors in the trailer park did not have insurance because they are not eligible.
Bell says she's more concerned about how she's going to put her life back together now that she and her boyfriend, Brian Gilbert have lost everything.

Did you catch that?

In order to receive public safety services, they have to buy insurance first.

In other words, to receive a service that most people receive just by paying their taxes, the residents of Obion County have to first give their money to an insurance company, and then if they have enough left, they can buy the public service.

This isn't about saving money. It's about forcing people to give their money to a private sector business before receiving something they should automatically be getting as a citizen and as a taxpayer. It's mandated corporate welfare.

I thought this was the sort of thing that the teahadists were against. Or is that only when an African-American president does that sort of thing?

How much do you want to bet that the politicians that came up with and passed this law got a little something something from the insurance industry?

And to show the absurdity of this kind of law, here is a video which I had posted three years ago, which really shows you how low the teahadists' learning curve really is:



What part of public safety don't the teahadists understand?

The other kicker is that these same people who will whine and gripe that they have to pay taxes so the firefighters can put out a fire in someone else's home are the same people that will call and bawl out their alderman if their street isn't plowed as soon as the last snowflake falls.

Another thought that occurs to me is what if there were fires at two different locations at the same time? Would the two homeowners have to get into a bidding war to see who would get the services they've already paid for twice, once to the insurance company and once to the fire department? Would the loser's insurance company refuse to cover their claim because they didn't take the steps to insure fire protection, such as outbidding the other homeowner?

See how absurd their stance is on all of this?

Solidarity Floats

A couple of weeks ago, the local paper, in an ongoing series of attacking public sector workers, pointed out a story in which the Racine firefighters union chose not to expend its limited resources for a non-union float, even though said float was originally designed to honor the victims of 9/11.  It's not that they were opposed to it, but they felt that they could spend their time, money and manpower more effectively on other things.

As one might suspect, the usual suspects, right wing radio squawkers and their echo chambers, chose not to present the situation honestly but rather to conflate it to try to make it look like the unions were against the 9/11 victims and thus against America. Then again, honesty has never been a friend of the right, especially for radio squawkers.

As one might imagine, the float did just fine as people gathered in support, either to genuinely honor the victims, or to take advantage of the publicity to promote their own event or their image.  

Ironically, one of the people that came out to "support" the float was Vicki "Wolf on back, snake on chest" McKenna, nee Pyzynski.  This is the same woman who took to calling the firefighters thugs, despite their hero status, just because they simply opposed the Republicans' abuse of office and unilateral stripping people of their rights.

But how do the victims of 9/11 fell about this whole thing?  Are they mad at the unions for dissing them? Do they feel that the unions were wrong for standing up for their civil rights like that?

Apparently not, according to this news story:



Did you notice that the firefighter highlighted in the clip, claimed to be a Republican? Did you catch when he said that the GOP's attack on the working classed superseded politics or the union/anti-union debate?

So why are right wingers like Charlies Sykes so anxious to make this such a big deal? The answer is simple. They know that they are, once again, on the wrong side of history. So they conflate and exaggerate a non-story in an effort to distract the public from what's really going on.

And thus they make themselves truly the ones that are disrespecting those they pretend to defend.

Cross posted at Whallah!