Let's get something straight. Firemen are no more heros than the man or woman who gets up everyday and works for much less than firemen to feed and shelter his or her family and does so with little or no benefits.
Firemen work two days a week. Oh, but they're at the station for 24 hours you say? Yes they are and eight of those hours are spent sleeping and the other sixteen hours are spent just hanging out at the station or taking the 2 miles to the gallon fire-truck to the Home Depot to shop.
We need firemen, but like everything in America, it's over sensationalized. Like calling ball players heros. Heros my ass! Being a firemen is a damn honorable and very well paid job. It's gov't employment with all the benefits.
Statistically, the average construction worker has a much higher average of exposure to injury and death than firefights and police. Yet, noone calls them heros. If it wasn't for the construction workers you'd live in a hole in the earth or a thatch hut that you'll build yourself. As would the firemen and their families. If it wasn't for construction workers, there would be no buildings to put fires outs in or a building for them to while away the days. Be a hero, go to work everyday like everyone else for appropriate pay.
My nephew is a new fireman in the state of Washington making $75,000.00/yr. with benefits and works 9 days a month. That's bullshit when everyone works five or six days a week for a fraction of that pay and no benefits.
However, I must say this. They get that pay by sticking together in solidarity and say to all "I need this much pay, because I'm worth it!" And because they are smart enough to stand together and believe in their own selfworth, unlike the public in general, they get what they ask for.
The American public shrinks from that self assurance and makes no peep. Afraid of the Government and afraid of the boss. I tell you that the boss needs you (the collective you) more than you need him. Consequently, I suffer from being enmeshed in a sea of disfuctional missfits. The missfits who work for little to nothing and not make a peep. So I, who values my worth, must discount myself like a cheap crackwhore.
For a nation that produces 1/4 of the worlds GNP, we are impoverished. For a nation that produces 1/4 of the worlds GNP, we can not take care of our own. The government is taking care of the world. The United States is a disfuctional family!
