Rhode Frog: Woonsocket to Lay Off Firefighters

The firefighters and their union were given a choice by the cash-strapped city of Woonsocket: a 5% pay cut, or lose your job. There was foot-stamping, a court date, and now 11 firefighters are out of a job.

I never thought I'd say this, but I agree with city officials. The state has a 10% unemployment rate. In this economic situation, where do these firefighters think they can go now? Another town? Every town is cutting fire staff. The firefighters in North Providence realize this, and are acting wisely.

Woonsocket still has 114 firefighters, enough to keep residents safe, so why should any of us be concerned any further. I'm sure that, given the choice, most people would have had the maturity and humility to take the tiny pay cut. Certain people in this world need to learn that you don't always get your way, and the alternative can be much worse.

You guys have fun waiting for you first unemployment check.

Bits & Pieces

Senator Al Franken has proposed a "Pay for War" resolution that would require Congress to raise taxes and/or cut spending before authorizing new acts of war, so that American foreign adventures can't contribute to the national debt.

In "The Long Road Home," historian Ben Shephard tells the neglected story of the refugee crisis the Allies faced when, at war's end, millions of displaced persons -- among them prisoners of war, slave laborers and survivors of concentration camps -- had to be repatriated to their homelands or resettled somewhere else.

For most of the last century, talk of secession, nullification and the rest of the extreme states-rights lexicon were relegated to the fringiest parts of the political fringe. But since Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009, mainstream Republican rhetoric and proposed legislation at the state level have both warmed to the hoary idea that state governments can take their relationship with the federal government on what amounts to an a la carte basis or perhaps abandon it altogether.

Is the tantalizing dream of a universal library dead? Some scholars and librarians across the country fear it may be, now that a federal judge in New York has derailed Google’s bold plan to build the world’s largest digital library and bookstore.

...the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office... finds that a large part of the supposed savings from spending cuts would go, not to reduce the deficit, but to pay for tax cuts. In fact, the budget office finds that over the next decade the plan would lead to bigger deficits and more debt than current law.

...Republicans in Mississippi are divided over a wholly different wedlock issue: interracial marriage.

Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz writes in this month's Vanity Fair about the corrosive, self-reinforcing wealth concentration that has hijacked American politics, in which the America's future is sacrificed to give ever more money to an ever-smaller group of oligarchs.

Woonsocket to Lay Off Firefighters

No comments:

Rhode Island Links

Massachusetts

Be the Change You Wish To See in the World

News, Politics, Magazines

Words, Books, Thoughts

Geekery, Images

Blog Archive