Here is a case study in the downside of the privatized, out-sourced free market systems the GOP tea party is advocating to replace America’s current socialized services:
Imagine your home catches fire but the local fire department won’t respond, then watches it burn. That’s exactly what happened to a local family tonight.
A local neighborhood is furious after firefighters watched as an Obion County, Tennessee, home burned to the ground.
The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn’t do anything to stop his house from burning.
Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton. But the Cranicks did not pay.
The mayor said if homeowners don’t pay, they’re out of luck.
This fire went on for hours because garden hoses just wouldn’t put it out. It wasn’t until that fire spread to a neighbor’s property, that anyone would respond.
Turns out, the neighbor had paid the fee.
“I thought they’d come out and put it out, even if you hadn’t paid your $75, but I was wrong,” said Gene Cranick.
Because of that, not much is left of Cranick’s house.
The right wing has gotten a lot of mileage out of scarifying the word “socialism” since Pres. Obama was elected. Not because he is a socialist — he’s actually a regulatory capitalist, just like George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Bill, Clinton, Jimmy Carter and every president going back to Teddy Roosevelt, at least — but because they needed a label that would be easy to demonize among their barely literate base and the word “liberal,” which they had turned into smear in the 1980s, no longer worked.
The reality is, socialism is as much a part of the American tradition as mom and apple pie. Socialism, as it is practiced in the United States, refers to government systems in which taxpayers agree to band together to provide a public service. Many of America’s most revered institutions are socialist, including federal programs like public pensions (Social Security), health-care for the elderly (Medicare) and the Interstate highways, among many others, as well as local services like public schools, libraries, hospitals and emergency response — police, rescue, EMT and fire departments.
The driving force in American socialism is enlightened self-interest, meaning that by funding schools, highway construction and emergency response systems collectively for the greater good, individuals and families ultimately benefit.
The alternate credo of American socialism is the free market system being promoted by the GOP tea party, under which services are privatized and outsourced. Under privatized systems, companies charge individuals separately for services like education, road building and maintenance and emergency response.
The downside of an everyone-for-themselves system comes when people don’t pay their share, either because they can’t afford to or refuse to. Ultimately, the community suffers when children go uneducated or their illnesses go untreated — or as happened in Tennessee last week, when fires are allowed to burn out of control in residential areas.
Update: In an interview on MSNBC’s “Countdown” tonight, Cranick told Keith Olbermann that his three dogs died in the house during the fire.
My first real job was as an insurance underwriter in San Francisco. The company I worked for got its start by blackmailing SF residents into purchasing their insurance. If they did buy it, they got a plaque to put on the front of their home. If they did not, no plaque, and the fire department would not put out a fire. So this scam is as old as fire insurance itself.
This is all part of the Republicans plans to privatize everything.No fee,no service and you see the results.Now imagine if the Republicans get their way to privitize schools,roada,water supplies.hospitalization.Republicans say if you don’t have hospitalization and you can’t afford it you deserve to die.Toll roads in Indiana and Chicago have gone up 200% since private investors bought the roads paid for by your taxes.Republicans say we don’t need taxes and you see the results all over.
OMG! These poor people are homeless because of $75.00!!! How horrible!!!
This article says the exact opposite of the truth:
The problem here was that it’s a government/socialist fire department, not a capitalist one.
It was the South Fulton City Fire Department. The victims of the department’s ire had failed to pay a $75 TAX. The sociopathic policy of letting your house burn if you are behind on this tax is over two decades old, from the peak of big government in the early 1990s.
What’s more, the home owner offered to pay ALL of their expenses, and anything more they wanted. Any private, capitalist fire fighting company would have accepted that money for their own profit. It’s only the soulless bureaucrats of government that are sociopathic enough to just stand by and watch it burn to punish the taxpayer, even when he’s offering to make it right.