I saw an excellent example of local government services waste earlier this week.
As I walked through the lobby to leave my fitness club, I saw through the large windows that a paramedic ambulance was parked outside the main entrance. This occurs occasionally when someone has been injured or suffered a medical problem while exercising.
However, parked nearby was not one, but two local police cars. And, as I drove out of the parking lot, yet another emergency medical vehicle was pulling up to the building.
Being of a certain age, my immediate thought were the lyrics from Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant, which I can't quote, because of copyright issues making them unavailable online. But, to paraphrase,
'The cops were busy using all their cop equipment which they never get to use otherwise.....'
You see, the towns out my way in north-central New Jersey have very little violent crime. Or much crime at all, for that matter. Getting onto a local police force in any of these towns is the equivalent of being paid to drive a car all day while listening to the radio. Oh, yes, and they get to carry guns to intimidate the citizenry. Let's not even discuss what their pensions will be after a mere 30 years, likely without ever drawing a weapon.
So seeing two police cars with four members of the local town's police force visiting a fitness club for someone's medical issue was more than just over the top.
It's emblematic of our society's overspending nanny-state nature.
Meanwhile, taxpayers footed the bill for the needless police time and expense, and probably the extra medical vehicle, as well.
One wonders how much of the local police budgets are padded for staff to handle unnecessary calls of this nature.
It's a small, simple story of local government excess, purchased with tax dollars. But multiply it thousands of times, many days per year, and you get some idea of why our society is costing ourselves so much more than it did mere decades ago.
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Since this is an older post, I doubt it or this comment will receive much attention.
This morning I received a comment purporting to be from an EMT. Not surprisingly, the reader took issue with my post and reprimanded me,
"It always amazes me then people criticize when they know not of what talk."
That's a partial, but verbatim quote. I refrained from publishing the entire comment because the grammar was so bad I just don't think it merits being read in its entirety by educated people.
Suffice to say, would you expect a public-sector and/or emergency aid worker to respond differently? Of course they believe the more public resources available, the better.
For them, there's just no price tag for what they do.
Which is, as I observed in the post, we are in the public spending and debt mess that currently exists.
-CN
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