The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

The revenuers are at it again.   This time like the trash charged by the square feet of the building regardless of how much trash was generated was shot down by the court.  Now it is a $200 dollar per truck charge for the Tulsa Fire Department to stand by at a wreck.  Your insurance company will pay it.  That is the gross statement of the year.  The insurance only uses the money collected from the rate payers and we are the rate payers.  The fire department is a department of the services  budgeted by the city, paid from taxes  collected from the citizens.  Of course one half of the cities employees live outside the city and the promotion will be that these people will be the payers.  These employees living out-of-town pay about one half as much for their insurance so all increases will be in order for the citizen of the city. 

Does anyone believe anymore that the revenuers should concentrate on the old fashion idea that the city should learn to live within its means? 

Are they the same revenuers that showed how much money would be saved by buying the glass cube?

Do we really need to dispatch a fire truck to so many wrecks in the first place?  I understand in medical emergencies they can often arrive prior to an ambulance which might make the difference in survival on a critical call (no pulse, stopped breathing, choking, serious wounds) but I don't see the point in dispatching a fire truck on a non-emergency basis if there's no clean-up of hazardous fluids needed or threat of fire.

shadows just hates them there revenuers...ever since they axed his still. They just wasted all them corn-squeezins...

Every department of our over spending governments, City, State, and Federal are at it again.   We are going to privatize the auditing of the sales taxes assessed on the working poor. 

Why don’t we assess all printed and advertising materials(including news papers and other sources where listed items are for sale.) The millions of dollars in sales taxes lost from the sale of leases, rents, uniforms, cars, boats, apartments, etc are now under constant auditing by a group know as the IRS and when one tries to read and understand their booklets there is no way to do a complete and justifiable audit of the perks available to the upper-class while the working poor pay a sales tax on even the food he eats whereas the food he buys he pays the same taxes paid by the upper-class who in many instants write it off as an expense.

Tulsa, on the bottom line is that another hundreds of thousands of dollars will need to be set up to audit the auditors.  The federal government had to set up a grand jury in Arkansas to look at auditing of even the departments in the Tulsa.

Is not the solution for the city to set up a government they can afford?  And pay employee’s wages only equal to that of private industry.  Subject to their ability to perform efficiently the work in question.     

Hey, it's not your money.  Why should you care?  At least I believe that is the conventional "wisdom".

.....NEWS FLASH.....

The rich will now be exempted from paying sales tax on anything they purchase above the level spent by the working poor.  No more slight of hand required.  A new state agency will be formed, employing thousands, to determine the amount of sales tax paid by the working poor.  Those results will be used by accountants paid by the rich to make sure the rich do not pay any more sales tax than the working poor.

/NEWS FLASH
/sarcasm

My problem with the Fire Dept. being first responders to all calls is in them taking the 50,000 pound fire engine by default.  They have the smaller SUVs that I assume they just use when the engines are already out?  Why are those not sent to most situations?

When I was a volunteer fireman (near Phila, PA) each piece of equipment had a primary assignment. Examples include: structure fire, field fire, highway crash washdown, rescue. 

It's rare that a crash that gets the police called out will not also have spilled fluids, aside from hit and runs. Even then, they sweep up the debris, which is nice.

That was my whole point.  Why call out a truck if there's no hazardous fluids or threat of fire?  It's expensive to dispatch a 50,000 pound rig.

And there's a thingy on the back of cop cars called a "trunk".  You can fit a broom and dust pan into one of these things.

I'm a block from a fire station, so it costs 'em a buck fifty to send a fire truck over here. ;)

The trunk in that cop car is already chock full of stuff. Well, I don't specifically know about TPD (I've never had occasion to look in a TPD car's trunk), but the Arkansas State Police couldn't fit an overnight bag in the trunk of a Crown Vic with all the stuff they're required to carry. Firearms, extra ammo, tire chains, fluids for the car (ATF makes a great fire starter!), body armor, riot gear, the list goes on. God help them if they have to get at the spare tire. It takes an hour just to get all the junk out of the trunk. How they manage with the Chargers they have now, I'll never figure out.

Besides, the police officer(s) is/are too busy arresting the drunk or listening to the yelling or whatever may be the case.

Regardless, if some dumbass drives his or her car into another car or a tree or whatever, I've got no problem billing them for a couple hundred bucks to clean up the mess they leave. In fact, I strongly prefer that to leaving their debris everywhere. At least in this case it literally is a bill for services rendered.

My insurance couldn't get much cheaper, despite having limits sufficient to pay for a 30 car pileup, so I can't get upset from that angle, either.

I will admit it was excessive to have two fire trucks and four police cars in front of my house when some drunk hit a car parked across the street. One fire truck and two police cars would have been perfectly sufficient. You're not going to convince me that it's not a good idea to have people trained in first aid available at a crash, though. They often can't know whether or not they're actually needed until they arrive and assess the situation.

..and that was a nice ramble..

I used to live not far from that fire station.  I was awakened many times in the middle of the night when they'd go on their runs.  Or some tool leaving the Hurricane Lounge with their open pipes ripping up Harvard at 2:15.

I really don't miss the noise around 15th & Harvard.  I get some sound being north of the BA where I am now, but I don't hear it indoors.

Maybe I got a warped perception from watching the show "Emergency" as a youngster, but is seems like there should be a reasonable alternative to sending out a fully staffed pumper truck to every minor two-car accident.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW_hM_azojU

Dodge Chargers, Crown Vics aside, the Fire Dept SUV could still carry cleanup supplies could it not?

A fire truck should respond to FIRE.  The homeless guy who ate a bad egg salad sandwich does not require 3,000 gallons of water to be present on the scene of his collapse.

You ever see the cleanup needed after a homeless guy eats a bad egg salad sandwich?

The area should be roped off and declared a Super Fund site.

Time was when it took the trunk of the Tulsa police car just to hold the two-way radio equipment.  It was replaced with the small uniform attached two way radio.  Now the cell phone that can fit in a shirt pocket is more adaptable. Then the trunks were equipped with fire extinguisher’s but in a very short time they were unable to find one when boats were required to carry them.  Then it would be a rare occasion to observe and officer changing a flat tire on a police car when his two-way -radio is working.  From the earliest days of Boston the lamp lighter and the street sweeper were visible. Tulsa spends hundreds of thousands  of dollars for street sweeping machines and spends multimillion dollars of fire protection to sweep the streets.  They spend millions for the automatic switch to turn on the light.

There is a solution to this whole problem.  Just increase the taxes on the food needed by the working poor, assess more taxes on them to be given to the ever expanding  bureaucracies, then make fun of anyone that thinks the city should live within a budget.

Be sure that we encase the hornets nest in concrete because by simple arithmetic there is a time when they will abandon the nest to stand in the way of our progress.     

Now you done did it. Countdown to the smartest man in the universe to criticize your post 3...2...1

You are too kind.

 ;D

+1

That was pretty shocking. Shadows made a post that was possible to parse as something other than the output of a random word generator.

At least it didn't read like a passage from the King James version of the Bible.

I got my card in the mail this last week stating that internet diplomas were now available for $25.00 and up.  It allows one to assume that the need by the administrators in city hall has been fill or exhausted and new sources must be opened.

Being not a student of the order of King James to rewrite segments of the Bible, nor the destruction of Rome in the 3rd century, the church failure in the East, revitalized by the crusades by England, which contributed to the United States conquest, as possibly predicted by John in his wittings, predicting the days of the Apooaslypose of which we seem be living today.

As is predicted our lives are numbered as the sands of the sea and so were the numbers in past histories of bureaucracies, liken the 1,000 thousand year old calendar of the Mayan’s that ends in December of 2012.  Could our date be written and overlooked?  No nation has survived over 200 years 

Got to go now to see what internet diplomas are available in the $100.00 range.

I want to understand the changing of the city charter where people will vote away their right to elect their leader and leave that up to permit office holders to appoint one of the good-old-boys to a possible lifetime positions to wear the crown.

     

OK, I retract my above post.

I don't seem to remember the days of the Apooaslypose.

I had planned to ride an appaloosa to Lolapoluza but got stuck in a little pollution in the Appalachians.

That goes to show you that us’n working poor can only spend $10 dollars for one of those internet diplomas and it does not cover typo’s.  Iff’n the president will get some more well-fare money printed we will try  to upgrade to one of those $25 dollars internet diplomas required on these posts.

Quite right. The cost of internet diplomas is a travesty.  The government should offer a program where the working poor can receive their internet diploma for free.

I is a lawyer now!
(http://top10kid.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/mug1.jpg)

Just wondering, have I been band from this board or did that Telo company who’s computers seem to want to charge for 14 months on internet in a one year period actually disconnect their service?

You've obviously not been banned if you're posting.

The rest of your post however makes little if any sense to me.  Are you afraid to name the 'Telo' company?  If so, why?

He meant Telegraph. He not only has trouble spelling, it just is made more difficult when you have to remember all the dots and dashes.

Good buddy that is not a misspelling but used to distinguish the telephone from the telegraph.  I have held a ham license for over 50 years.  I could key 40 words per minute when I was using it. The language is a combination between “ Short Hand” and code language.  When the 11 meter band was given to the “CB’er” which could get a license without examination and the development of cell phones laid to rest the experimental functions of persons who did develop much in electronics used today.

A electronic conversion of a check to a electric company, paid by the bank in September, and the check was destroyed leaving no record except on the bank statement, was credited to the electric bill this last week after having paid a late charge.

As far as naming the phone company the incident is just as ridicules in computer error. It was billed for a late charge and a flag on the internet account that saying it was closed whereas I sent a signed note with a check telling them not to reopen the internet account.  They have kept billing since October the monthly charge of the account and they sure deposited the check.  The contract expired 10 years ago and I have been unable to get a hard copy print out of the checks they had received last year.

I have now applied for poverty status so I can get one of those $1 month phones and waiting for stimulus money to come through to pay that $100, per month package charge to qualify for the $1 per month phone.     

40 words per minute in Morse code?  Holy smokes!

To take the written exam it required performance to the examiner that one could send and receive 25 words per minute.  A lot of hams could work in the 60 plus range.
       

Does TRRL still exist, and do they still do the annual drill where they would set up a station, usually it was the scenic overlook on the Keystone expressway, and try to see how many othe HAM's they could contact over a 48 hour period? (And yes I have a working SW radio, and a scanner that picks up 2 meter HAM)

TRRL?  My dad was a Ham.  I remember ARRL.  I don't remember how many wpm he could send/read.  At one time I knew most of the code (slowly) but never finished learning.

I wanted to be a ham for a while, but then I realized I couldn't grok morse code. A few years back they eliminated the morse code requirement for all but the top license, and to my continuing shame I haven't bothered to take the exam and get a license.

I thought there was one. I think now that I have more time I'm going to take the test and get my license. I just keep thinking that with all the technology out there, when it falls down old fashioned HAM radio still works.

But the only people you can talk to are the other HAM radio people.

There was a reason that this technology failed. Nobody who used it ever had any interesting to say.

According to my dad (gone 10 years now):
Ham radio was not intended to appeal to the masses.  It was intended for radio nuts.  When my dad started, there was not much in the way of off-the-shelf equipment.  The Hams often designed and built their own rigs.  My dad did in the 1950s.  CB (Chicken Band) was intended for the people that just wanted to talk on the radio.  However, the days of winding solid 10 ga copper wire around an orange juice can to make the right size inductor are probably long gone.  The big purple glowing final amp tubes are mostly gone too.  Before he died, dad bought a computer controlled receiver and transmitter set (3 pieces, computer, receiver, and transmitter).  I hooked it up for him and he enjoyed talking to his brother and some other ham friends until he couldn't sit at the station. 

I am not aware the technology was lost at much was incorporated in the electronic evolution of today.  Time was when the spectrum above two meters was open for experimental ham nuts, now used by many government agencies and others including the TPD. 

The standard code can be sent by any source.  In a total disaster even beating a hollow log with a stick.  If the aligning of the planet predicted in 2012 were to create the predicted disaster the only commutations  would depend on these ham nuts.

RM: aware of your role on correct spelling and word usage, why do you not check the your wording before posting? 

AWESOME

The last key operator for Western Union in Tulsa (and I watched him) send/receive well above 60 words a minute, carry on a conversation vocal and write it on a typewriter, while in communications with ship key operators all over the world.

The story of a nut ham was told that the police department was sent out because he was striking the telephone poles along the alley with a sledge hammer.   It seemed that there was a wire that was not tight on the post and the arcing sent out a signal.  He was trying make it fuse back together.  Even the police had a hard time believing his story.