In the first century BCE, the Roman triumvir, Marcus Licinius Crassus made his money in a way that was a little, umm, evil. From Wikipedia:
Most notorious was his acquisition of burning houses: when Crassus received word that a house was on fire, he would arrive and purchase the doomed property along with surrounding buildings for a modest sum, and then employ his army of 500 clients to put the fire out before much damage had been done. Crassus' clients employed the Roman method of firefighting—destroying the burning building to curtail the spread of the flames.
Outrageous, right? Well, not exactly. As you can see from the Countdown clip up top, it's happening in America. Follow me over the flip.
Firefighters in rural Tennessee let a home burn to the ground last week because the homeowner hadn't paid a $75 fee. Gene Cranick of Obion County and his family lost all of their possessions in the fire, along with three dogs and a cat.
"They could have been saved if they had put water on it, but they didn't do it," Cranick told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.
The fire started when the Cranicks' grandson was burning trash near the family home. As it grew out of control, the Cranicks called 911, but the fire department from the nearby city of South Fulton would not respond.
"We wasn't on their list," he said the operators told him. (MSNBC)
Mr. Cranick even offered to pay whatever was necessary for the firefighters' help. But no dice, it wasn't until a neighboring house caught on fire that the department began to fight the fire.
Of course, this is the point of government services. They are best done by spreading the risk across all of us. Having fire departments is an expense that for years, we have all been willing to pay through our taxes, yet now we see that these services are coming in the crosshairs for Norquistian "drown the government" calls. The irony is that the right-wing calls of property as sacrosanct comes into conflict with their anti-government tendencies.
We all lose when government is dysfunctional. And to some extent, the Tennesee community made its bed by consistently electing politicians who told the community that this is exactly what they should expect, a smaller and worthless government. At some level, you get what you pay for, and if you tell your politicians that you don't want to pay for government, that's exactly what they'll give you. A broken government. But, we're not that hard up in California, are we? Well, we're getting there:
Drivers in California who cause crashes may find their pocketbooks dented as well, courtesy of local fire departments.
More than two dozen fire agencies, struggling for ways to boost sagging budgets, have begun tallying service charges at crash sites and sending bills to drivers or their insurance companies.
Is a pumper truck called to the scene? That'll be $400. Traffic cones and flares needed? Another $20. An incident commander to oversee? That's $75 an hour.
Roseville, Woodland and at least a half dozen smaller Sacramento area fire districts have imposed such fees in the past year. The city of Sacramento expects to start this fall. And, beginning July 1, Placer County Fire will charge non-local drivers or their insurance companies for crashes that require fire agency response.(SacBee 6/25/2010)
We shouldn't be surprised at just how far our own government has come to resemble the lack of structure that the Romans faced 2100 years ago. That's exactly what much of the state is asking for here too. Of course, this is just a more dramatic example, but the same situation is cropping up in the context of health services, where we are telling people that we won't provide them in-home services anymore, or cutting off prescription coverage, or eliminating MediCal coverage. These things matter, and they are a matter of life or death for some in our state.
There isn't a fire crew going around trying to buy up "fire sales" that I have yet heard of, but is that really that far away?