The EV is on fire: Don't cut that orange wire

bob urz wrote in news:ihle5j$31t$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:

Nice to know, but not really "news".

First Responders have been educated on such things since 2001, the first year the Toyota Prius (274V battery) was on the market. The Volt isn't much different than the Prius in that manner.

Can't you find something actually /new/ to post?

The article is only a week old. And if, and I don't doubt you, this is old news, why is the gvt throwing almost $5M into this private companies hands to develop more training. Seems like they could have accomplished teh same thing with a couple videos on youtube and an email to the mayors of every city asking them to pass the info on to their local first responders. Gvt never does anything with an eye to saving money....

Ashton Crusher wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Good question. And I think you know the answer...

And most of us also carry the updated guides for ALL the alternative fuels vehicles. The manufacturers publish them and send them out free for the asking.

Orange is not the only color you don't want to cut...

Gee, The Government is tossing more of OUR money to a company to teach courses that are already out there and FREE! Gee what a shock...

Are just a few of the training and resource guides out there.

OH and the NFPA is great at developing guidelines that piss away money and cause no end to the grief for Emergency Responders. They are also REALLY good at coming up with ways to help companies make BIG money off the same people by ramming through legislation using friendly lawmakers that forces people to follow their "guidelines" (NFPA has NO AUTHORITY to write laws or regulations) by making it part of the state or federal laws.

Case in point. A new "guideline" now requires a FD to throw out turn-out gear after 10 years regardless of actual use. Doesn't matter if it was never worn in a fire or even taken out of the box. 10 years after it was sold by the company it HAS to be tossed out. Doesn't sound like much of a big deal until you realize they mean ALL of the gear, IE: boots, bunkers, coat, gloves, hood, helmet. Total cost of the lowest end set - around $1,500.00 per fireman.

Another standard wants fire engines, aerials and other vehicles replaced at 20 years, again regardless of use or condition, Average cost of one new EPA compliant Engine - $500,000.00 Care to guess how many of those will be getting replaced...

"Steve W." wrote in news:ihn4n3$cba$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:

I smell government employees trying to justify their department's existence and continued expansion...

Don't cut the orange wire, cut government budgets instead.

The NFPA LOVES to piss away money.

The latest stuff from them is going to add close to $60,000.00 to the price of a rig. And it will NOT improve firefighter safety one bit!!!!

But it will allow more intrusion into operations and funding options...

I grouse as much as, if not more than, anyone else about the government's waste of money. But there is also another side....if they REALLY slowed their spending very much, our sick economy would get even worse.

From a personal viewpoint, what does one do when he has spent beyond his ability to pay, cannot raise his income, and has his credit cards maxed out? We all know the answer, I think.

"hls" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

That may seem intuitively obvious, but think about where governments get their money from. They /produce/ nothing, remember.

They only have three ways of acquiring spending cash:

1) they can take it away from you (taxes); 2) they can borrow it from somebody else (debt); 3) they can invent it from scratch (new money).

1) If they take it away from you, then they're just moving money from one place to another. To the extent the recipient is richer, you are poorer. The dollar /you/ would have spent simply gets spent by /somebody else/ instead.

2) If they borrow it from somebody else, it needs to get paid back. Plus they're paying interest on the borrowing. And it's not like they ever borrow and spend just the once, they keep on borrowing so they can keep on spending. The debt mounts, and they ultimately end up needing to use #1 or #3.

3) If they invent it from scratch, they damage the cash that's already in the system. The economy remains exactly the same size, but all that new cash still has to fit inside it. This means that every dollar has to get a lot skinnier so they'll all fit into the same-size economy. It's called inflation, and you're the one most hurt, because you spend the dollar LAST.

I know the Keynesians talk about the "multiplier effect", but that's pure bullshit, and stands up not at all to any sort of rational thinking.

Friedman was right: "stimulus" does in fact spur the economy. But only in the short term. In the long term, "stimulus" always causes distortions and bubbles. Then it makes politicians afraid to be at the helm when the bubble bursts, so they do everything possible to keep the bubble inflated as long as possible.

But that's not the worst part : The worst part is that they then consider the /maximum-inflated/ size of the bubble to be the /baseline/. ANY reduction from the baseline is "contraction", or "deflation", or a "slow economy", and is really, really bad. The max-inflated bubble size becomes the baseline that must be maintained no matter how many new bubbles or distortions they create in the process. That, in a nutshell, is the situation today in the US. It's the cause of the Japanese deflationary malaise.

Government spending does serious damage to the economy in general, and it must be kept at an absolute minimum. But we're many leagues away from that absolute minimum these days, which is /precisely/ why we've got that "sick economy".

Economies do best when governments do least.

Maybe not what you are thinking of but where I would start would be to cutting spending on any "program" that buys "stuff" if that "stuff" is being made in some OTHER country. So if, for example, we are buying $60billion worth of land mines from Austria, we stop. Let the Austrians lose their jobs. You or whoever said it, is right, if we just "cut spending" without regard to where we cut there will be some significant negatives, like increased unemployment.

I'm not surprised. At the state level our safety people (don't know if they dreamed it up or it was some new regulation) said we had to replace ALL hard hats every two years and the interior suspension every one year. To have a couple guys climb over a guardrail and do a little work on a slope they wanted us to spend $32,000 on a "safety class" that would teach them to be safe on unstable ground. We had to spend $4000 with a hazardous waste company to dispose of 50 pounds of zeolite, which had been tested for asbestos and came back clean just because "maybe your sample missed the asbestos". The whole safety culture has gone well past the point of absurdity.

>>

The guys who sell helmets and the guys who run 'training' classes and the guys who are in the hazmat racket think it's all 'essential safety protocol'.

Did you buy a congressman or an EPA rules writer when the rules were being written? They did.

None of these sorts of things would pass on a referendum. It's all done quietly in government offices with 'expert testimony' skewed to the guys who show up. They make a great effort but the public at large cannot. Once the damage is done, reversal is much much harder.

Sounds like the law in NY requiring ALL Firefighters to have a bail out rope kit. The law was put in place after some NYFD guys got trapped in a building and couldn't get out.

At the time NYFD didn't "require" the crews to have bail out ropes, it was STRONGLY encouraged though. This crew didn't bother. The result ALL firefighters have to have the ropes or you're in violation of OSHA. The kicker, any department that serves a population over 1 million is exempt from the law!!!! Care to guess how many people live in NYFD jurisdiction... So the people who pushed for the law and rammed it through the legislature are exempt from it.

The law has a few things that does allow for exemptions IF you're SOP is written a certain way or you don't EVER send someone in the building you can get around it. BUT if you have interior training you have to have a rope, doesn't matter what your current job is either. For instance if you're on scene and directing traffic but could possibly be put into the fire then you need a rope.

The ropes - 50 feet of special NFPA rope, Carabiner, Descent device, belt or harness = About $500.00 each. For a device that will likely NEVER be used. You also need a second one that is used ONLY for training. the one you carry is a one time use item!

The problem is after the crash of 2008 nobody was inclined to spend anything. Without the massive US government spending there would have been another Hoover depression.

Personally, I would vote for a deep depression. The western world needs to be knocked on its ass because it has lost track of where its ass is

But you are going to have a hard time convincing the majority and get them to vote for that.

The real problem is not government and its debt. The government debt is small compared to private debt. Private debt has grown exponentially in the last 20 years. Government debt has in the past been higher than it is now but private debts has never been even close to this high

The value of private debt of western nations is several times their GDP and in comparison government debt seems puny

If the world's assets and wealth grow, but the money supply stays constant then what do you have?

The answer is the people who hold money increase in power and the people who produce goods and labor will work their butts off for little or nothing in return

Increasing the money supply as the economy grows is a given unless you want to return to middle age feudalism

So what rational suggestions have you made? You have proposed nothing rational you are just parroting somebody else's babble that you don't even begin to comprehend

The US voting public is not very bright but they have a pretty good sense that the libertarians would lead them where they don't want to go.

-jim

You are entirely incorrect on that last bit.

Governments produce public infrastructure such as:

- Roads / highways

- Parks and recreation areas

- Dams, levies, drainage and erosion control

- Navigation aids (marker buoys, GPS, air traffic control, etc.)

- Weather monitoring and hazard warning (NOAA / National Weather Service, weather satellites, Radar, weather radios)

- National defense (army, navy, etc.)

- Emergency management (FEMA, nat guard)

- Research and development (DARPA, NIST, NREL, etc.) Etc.

Yep, the government does indeed waste some of your tax dollars, however they do indeed provide a lot of infrastructure bits you take for granted.

+So...correct me if I'm wrong, but arent first responders equipped with insulated cable cutters? Seems like quickly breaking the high voltage circuit would make things safer.. Ben

That statement illustrates the vapid stupidity of your position. Your claiming that under your system everyone would be so destitute they couldn't afford to fight a war longer than 6 months.

Not a very convincing argument.

They also provide "infrastructure" bits that are neither productive nor wanted. Bridges to nowhere, and lots of others. They waste a LOT of our tax dollars.

"Government" has lost the ability to manage the affairs of the nation effectively, fairly, and economically. We need some downsizing.