FFLieu

Notice how this typical Bloomberg BULLS**T comes out AFTER the election.

It is real. Hokie, yes, but also real. As far as ranks are concerned, that's not too much of an issue, depending on the department's staffing. In a municipality as close as Englishtown, NJ, where there are only 8 cops in the entire department (covering an area of 1.5 Square Miles), it is not an uncommon sight to see the Chief out there, as well. As far as the qualification and taser, it's TV, bro...

OK, here are my thoughts: If the airbags didn't depoy, indicating that he was driving less than about 30 MPH, then why did his wife have to take a golf club to the window in order to "extricate" him? Either the Escallade is a POS and pinned the doors in a low velocity crash or there is more to the story, maybe because she was PO'd that he was getting a little side action and decided to do a Britney Spears on the car. Sorry, but I'm calling BS. If alcohol wasn't a factor, then what was? Has he been reading John Daly's playbook and taking his own notes? Again, I call BS.

As far as service, Verizon is probably the best, followed closely by T-Mobile; I'm not a fan of the service provided by S**t/Nextel or AT&T. As far as customer service, T-Mobile has Verizon and the others beat.

I'm sorry that he's destitute and living in a bunkroom at the Salvation Army, but when you're in a public safety position, there is generally zero tolerance for drug addiction and abuse after it comes to light second to mandatory testing. Chances are, the department or the union would have "done the right thing" if he would have been proactive about his addiction and sought help for it, either by checking himself into rehab or approaching the agency's employee assistance unit. It's unfortunate that he learned that lesson too late, but personally, I'd rather have one extra homeless person on the street than have anyone in the field of public safety conduct his or her job while under the influence of any controlled substance, whether it be alcohol or narcotics. That may sound cold-hearted, especially since the Holidays are upon us, but it's a cold reality that should serve as an example to the rest of us in this field.

Whether or not the Southern District of New York is the appropriate venue, what I can say is this: The United States Attorney's Office could indict and prosecute a ham sandwich if they so chose, so I highly doubt some "lib lawyer" would get this guy off.

Since the written exams are available in languages other than the Queen's English, yet the road signs are not, when will someone realize that there's something a little counter-productive in all this pandering?

Tuna, I'm picking up your sarcasm. But, as M'Ave said, the fire service (nor the police service, nor any other unified "paramilitary" organization with a clearly designed chain of command) is a democracy. So OK fine, the flag can stay. What about the next exception? What if there were a member of that department who was of perhaps Iranian or Iraqi or Afghani or Paki decent and wanted to celebrate his or her heritage by displaying that country's flag on the front of the locker? Now the department has to rule in favor of that flag otherwise it could open itself up to litigation for being discriminative. And so it goes that since they made one exception, they may very well have to make others, which could ultimately lead to the failure of the original directive and department policy that nothing shall be displayed on the front of a member's locker. That's why everything means everything. Department Chiefs and Commissioners seldom make rules for the sake of making them; there's generally an underlying reason for the creation of such a directive, and in this case, it was that the department in question wanted to control what was being affixed to their property.

Except the issue is not about the display of the flag; it's about a member not following a department directive. He does not own that locker, and therefore has no right to affix anything to the outside. It would be a whole other issue if perhaps the locker belonged to him in that he brought it into the fire house, but such is not the case here. Quite honestly, if he had some nudie picture posted and not a flag, none of us would probably be having this discussion; but since it's a flag, it's very easy to have judgments clouded and a lack of sight into the real issue of the guy not complying with a directive to remove EVERYTHING from the front of the locker.

So move the flag to the inside of the door where most people post their personal effects, anyway, and you won't be sitting at home, on your duff, collecting no money. Common sense should tell you that you don't own your locker, your department does, and to those ends, you must comply with the established department policy. It was never about un-patriotism; but it was always about insubordination.

Speaking of Q's, what is up with Engine 74? Their Q sounds like a cat being very badly abused...lol.

Those salaries mentioned do not include locality pay and LEAP Pay (Law Enforcement Availability Pay), which is a required OT in that you work a 10-hour day. In your first year, depending on where you are stationed, you could be clearing as much as 70k or better.

Maybe so, but since every single one of us on this board owns a piece of GM, we should all be outraged at this colossal waste of our tax dollars. It's not a new car and I highly doubt that they'll be able to turn a profit. Even if they use much of the same tooling as the former Pontiac line, it's counter-productive; Pontiac doesn't exist anymore for a specific reason, so re-badging the same tired old POS isn't going to help Chevrolet gain any kind of foothold in the marketspace left by the Crown Vic's exit. It's nice to see that after all the months of crying about how they needed taxpayer assistance, the same lack of creative ideas and poor engineering are still running rampant throughout General Motors.

Typical crappy GM engineering. And it's not a new car, either; I liked it the first time when it was called an IMPALA.

GM is failing financially because of two reasons. One, they deviated from building cars to writing mortgages. GMAC, which used to be strictly for financing a GM vehicle, got into the mortgage industry, and when the bottom fell out, so did they. Two, the American people know that GM makes nothing but garbage, anyway. GM was a victim of it's own hubris.

And now I hope, in light of this new finding, that the families of the occupants of the other vehicles sue the ever-loving hell out of Shuler's estate.

Yes. I go every year to walk around the convention and then get positively briogged at my buddy's condo... NJ has CT beat by a long shot.

3rd That. P&L is garbage. Who here has P&L or Rescue1 apparatus that has major electrical problems?

Just goes to show that if they could come up with a plan to avoid these type of "doomsday-type" cuts, maybe it wasn't "doomsday" after all. Yet another case of how Bloomberg consistently talks about how bleak things are, then after some "tense, 11th-hour negotiations with all parties involved," he saves the day and avoids the originally forecast bleak outlook. I guess that's his way of doing business so that it can give the appearance that he's actually doing something worthwhile instead of screwing everyone just to make yet another buck. Personally, I think we should take him and throw him out. Then, take all the City Council members who cow-towed to his majesty Napoleon Bloomberg, and throw them out, too. Get Rid of Incumbent Politicians. And while we're at it, get rid of Albany, too.

Said the wise one, like the true, old sage that he is.

So this past weekend was Memorial Day Weekend, and not only does that signify the un-official start of the summer, it's also the un-official start of parade season. I was in two parades yesterday with my EMS squad, one in Freehold, NJ and the other in neighboring Englishtown, NJ. The Freehold parade was nice since it's more or less the Monmouth County parade, and departments from all around the county marched through the center of town (for those not too familiar, Freehold is kind of like Smalltown, USA,) and up past the court house. The Englishtown parade is a little more quaint, as it's a shorter distance and stops at two memorials that lie on the parade route. Personally, I think that parade is nicer since it honors our past and present veterans, and really takes the true meaning of Memorial Day to heart. However, I saw something yesterday that honestly turned my stomach. I was marching behind a fire department from a neighboring town which is in the next county over. They sent a Chief's car as well as an engine. There were four individuals inside the engine and another four ON THE TOP HOSEBED who were casually drinking Miller Lites as the chauffeur had to cut the truck on an angle several times throughout the parade to avoid hitting such things as tree branches that would have ordinarily cleared the top of the truck but for the fact that there were four idiots riding on top. To make it worse, while there was a small ceremony occurring up front at the first monument, a parade-goer who must have been an acquaintance of someone on the truck, came over with two six-packs, passed one through the window and then gave the other to one of the individuals on top. Now I know that this issue has been raised several times before, and there have been threads about it in the past, but this, to me, is a serious issue. Not only is it an attention grabber to see people riding in a place where you wouldn't ordinarily see them, but it's stupid - not to mention illegal - to consume alcohol in that particular instance. Compounding that, it's disrespectful to the veterans and all the other parade-goers, and I was absolutely appalled, especially since one of the people on the truck tried to justify it by saying that it was "only one can, which is a heck of a lot better than the keg that they wanted to bring." We all need to have some common sense when we're at a public event like that. We may be members of the community who volunteer or who serve as part of a career or both, but we all must remember that we're driving around in a huge billboard that's owned by the taxpayers, not us. Whatever goes on at the firehouse is our business because that's our place; but whenever we're in public, we represent the public and their intrinsic trust of us as the people who they call in an emergency. And I know I might be ranting a little bit, but I figured that it would be better for me to come on here and vent a bit than to say something to the Chief and put my foot in my mouth.

Turpentine, a scrub brush, and copious amounts of water works, too...lol.

Except the difference is in the quality. Chevy may make a hybrid, but just like all things GM, it's probably a piece. Suffice it to say, Japanese cars are of better quality. That fact isn't new either; the big 3 knew it as far back as the 1980s, yet over the last 20-odd years, they did nothing to change it.

I grew up down the Shore and these people always pi$$ed me off. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, they ruin my favorite bar! BENNIES Go Home!

This is such BS and quite frankly, I am sick and tired of groups like the Vulcan Society for one, crying foul every single time a department initiates the hiring process. There is no discrimination in testing; it just so happens that, statistically speaking, more whites take FD entrance exams than minorities. It's not like departments go around saying that those groups cannot apply; they follow the rules regarding exam announcements as well as exam administration and exam composition. Just because a majority of the applicant pool happens to be of a particular makeup does not necessarily mean that the examining department precludes from applying those applicants who are not statistically equally represented in the pool of eligibles. (Taking the logic of the topic at hand, does this mean that women's groups have a valid discrimination claim since most of the FD applicants nationwide are male, or is this issue simply superficially based on skin color since it seems to be the topic du jour as of late?) As we discussed in a prior thread, my opinion is that race (or gender) doesn't belong anywhere in the application process, whether it's for initial application or for advancement. Whatever happened to hiring or promoting the right individual for the job?