The Fat Lady Has Sung
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
NYT
A small news item from Tracy, Calif., caught my eye last week. Local station CBS 13 reported: “Tracy residents will now have to pay every time they call 911 for a medical emergency. But there are a couple of options. Residents can pay a $48 voluntary fee for the year, which allows them to call 911 as many times as necessary. Or there’s the option of not signing up for the annual fee. Instead they will be charged $300 if they make a call for help.”
Welcome to the lean years.
Yes, sir, we’ve just had our 70 fat years in America, thanks to the Greatest Generation and the bounty of freedom and prosperity they built for us. And in these past 70 years, leadership — whether of the country, a university, a company, a state, a charity, or a township — has largely been about giving things away, building things from scratch, lowering taxes or making grants.
But now it feels as if we are entering a new era, “where the great task of government and of leadership is going to be about taking things away from people,” said the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum.
(More here.)
NYT
A small news item from Tracy, Calif., caught my eye last week. Local station CBS 13 reported: “Tracy residents will now have to pay every time they call 911 for a medical emergency. But there are a couple of options. Residents can pay a $48 voluntary fee for the year, which allows them to call 911 as many times as necessary. Or there’s the option of not signing up for the annual fee. Instead they will be charged $300 if they make a call for help.”
Welcome to the lean years.
Yes, sir, we’ve just had our 70 fat years in America, thanks to the Greatest Generation and the bounty of freedom and prosperity they built for us. And in these past 70 years, leadership — whether of the country, a university, a company, a state, a charity, or a township — has largely been about giving things away, building things from scratch, lowering taxes or making grants.
But now it feels as if we are entering a new era, “where the great task of government and of leadership is going to be about taking things away from people,” said the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Interesting question … and one that I hope Governor Pawlenty doesn’t consider … should government charge for 911 calls.
A similar question was posed in a LTE by Dave Becher of Morrstown. The story is that during the week after Christmas, on a below freezing morning, he went outside to pick up his newspaper and noticed a car stuck in the ditch – lights on and motor running. He approached the car and saw a man inside. He went inside and called 911. Quickly three sheriff cars arrived. Seems the man got stuck and just fell asleep waiting for help. Mr. Becher than received a call from one of the deputies complaining that they had rushed to an “emergency” that wasn’t. His LTE asked, “when do you call 911” … well if it costs $48, I suspect there will be a lot less calls.
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