“Whatever happened to private firefighters? The answer is that they are alive and well, just not around here.

Much of Arizona and a growing number of cities in the South and West depend on private enterprise for fire protection. Private fire companies range in size from one-truck operations to Rural/Metro Corp., which serves more than 400 communities in 23 states. Many of them are owned by former public-sector firefighters who became convinced there was a better way to run a firehouse.

[...]And the quality? In terms of saving lives, private companies match or outperform public fire departments. Compare Scottsdale, which covers 183 square miles, to Detroit, 140 square miles in size. During a recent five-year period, Scottsdale suffered only a single fire-related death while 18 citizens of Detroit died due to failed fire equipment or closed fire stations alone.”

http://www.firefightingnews.com/article-US.cfm?articleID=51807

I think ultimately capitalism does work, but it’s just we live in a system that is so far from that, a system that is so systemically flawed that it’s hard to imagine.

It’s something that I went through too. I watched “Money as Debt,” and “Masters of Money,” and those really opened things up for me. I saw how fractional reserve banking and having private central banks are a major problem, and that our world would look very different without them.

As far as “relying on the Republicans,” well, they weren’t relied on. This was passed without them. This was all Democrats, and one Republican, I think.

The answer is to take the profit out of health care – nationalize the entire industry (including the drug companies), but not under the control of the same government bureaucrats but under the control of the workers and patients themselves.

In any case, we will never get any sort of real reform as long as we rely on the Republicrats. It’s just like tax “reform”: Every tax “reform” measure passed in the last 50 years has resulted in lower taxes for the rich and increased taxes for the middle income earners. (See: “America, Who Really Pays the Taxes?”)

What we need is a mass political party based on working class people, not the corporations and the rich.

Here is a link to Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s position on the bill http://kucinich.us/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2806&Itemid=76

Here is a link to Congressman Ron Paul’s position on the bill http://www.house.gov/htbin/blog_inc?BLOG,tx14_paul,blog,999,All,Item not found,ID=091109_3598,TEMPLATE=postingdetail.shtml

I always say, whenever people are talking about root causes of problems, fractional reserve banking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC720Cl3N-0

That is one of the two videos that really changed the way I viewed the world. (The other one is Masters of Money, which is about central banking.)

Josh