Price Gouging at the Pump A Threat to Volunteer Emergency Services
It has become increasingly apparent that the pr ice gouging at the pump is becoming a threat, a potentially life threatening threat to not only volunteer emergency services workers, but those they serve as well. My department is fortunate to be able to get the diesel fuel needed for the trucks from the Village fuel supply. That the price at the pump has been allowed to spiral out of control is ample proof that George W. Bush sure as hell ain't no friend of the fire service as far as I am concerned. He and that band of NeoNazis seem to think starting wars around the world is more important than the well being of the fire service and the emergency medical service (ambulance corps). I am concerned that these sky rocketing fuel prices will cause some volunteer fire departments to have to shut down, leaving large areas without fire protection, particularlly those departments that have to make do with trucks 30 years old or older and equipped with engines and/or pumps for which parts are no longer made or available. Grant, Bush is far from alone in this conspiracy to drive fuel prices up for there is plenty of help coming from traders in the New York Mercantile Exchange and other commodities exchanges. Thanks to Bush' s depleting some volunteer firefighters' ranks by sending those who are in the National Guard to be blown up by roadside bombs in Iraq, California's firefighting resources are almost at the breaking point. I am thankful that New York State is not in that situation, though that could very easily change. It seems that any and all National Guard members who are also volunteer firefighters, ambulance personnel or police officers, should have been exempt from Iraq duty, or Afghanistan for that matter. Hopefully things will change with the next election. Someone ought to send a message to both presidential candidates that we need our troops HOME, not in some hellhole that George W. Bush has sent them to.These people are part of our emergency services and other essential professions too.
