First of all, I browsed the 2007 City of Erie budget posted on
Erie Blogs. Wow. Um... Wow. In response to the post about the amount budgeted for healthcare. $115,969.
For 7 people! That works out to $16,567 for each person. And they have the nerve to ask everyone else for a little help and to take money out of their pockets to help pay. Does anyone else feel that city council has earned to have everything handed to them? Well wait a minute...Of course it makes sense. They sit behind a desk, making rules for the people out on the front lines. Police department, fire department, they all know about that. Being in a public safety field, I have friends in the fire and police departments and from what I have heard, and from my own opinions, it seems that all the fire department is doing is following an agreement that they had from the
city. Could they steer away from that and put in a little bit? Sure. Emergycare, who provides emergency medical services for the city, pays into their insurance. However, they also are not city employees, but none the less, would it really hurt for them to pay even a little bit?
Also along the same lines, when the fire union won their grievance and brought back all of the fire dispatchers that were layed off, they had to pay them all back pay, you get the point. Was there anything wrong with having the police dispatchers cross train? I know for a fact that a couple of them already had experience dispatching fire departments and the majority of the police dispatchers had no problem dispatching the fire department as well. So they didn't get sent out by the same people. Oh well. We don't always get what we want. Life is about give and take and although I am glad that the fire department does what it does, we all have to change. Whether we want to or not, everything at one time or another, must change.
I just love this picture. First saw it in an e-mail that someone sent to me a while back and then after reading the story in the paper about Erie County Department of Health is working on a trans fat ban. Are you serious? I guess that no one has the flu, and all of the citizens are STD free, and there are no other health problems to worry about. How can a government ban trans fats? I understand that they are looking out for the health and well being of everyone in the county, but if people want to die fat, and that will make them happy, then let them eat all the trans fats that they want to. Let people eat what they want. It seems that 50 years ago, people were generally happier not worrying about what they ate and, oh well. Who cares. Our tax dollars hard at work!
The next thing I read in the
Erie Times News was a story about kids, being referred to as "Generation @", and how Christmas lists are becoming more high-tech. One was about a boy who was six years old who wanted a "sell phone." Before you even ask, yes- he is six. And no- that was not a spelling error. That is how he put it on his Christmas list. "Sell" phone. You have got to be joking. And wait..the list gets better..he also wanted an MP3 player, a computer (not a game, the whole computer), along with an Xbox 360 and the Sony Playstation 3. When I was six, I wanted a Nintendo. For younger readers, not a Nintendo 64, or a Sega Genesis. An 8-bit Nintendo. Now in the last 15 years, has technology become a bigger part of the American way? Absolutely. But give me a break. Give me one good reason why a six year old would need a cell phone? I didn't get one until I was going off to college. The day I turned 18 I got a cell phone, but I had a good reason. I was going to be away from home more than I was going to be home. Where does a six year old go? I remember when I was six, the only place I was without my mother there was to a friends house for a sleep over. She knew the number. She knew where I was. No need for a cell phone. Next thing, who is going to pay for it? He can't get a job (although I did see someone at the McDonald's at W 12th & Sassafras St. dishing up my Chicken McNuggets who was no more than 10 - but that's another story for another day), so he obviously can't pay for it himself. Any parent that would be stupid enough to buy their six year old a cell phone deserves to be, flat out, punched in the face. End of story.
That's it for today kids! My fingers are tired! More to come later!
