“94% of state and government-sponsored funds” It recently emerged that staid Fairfax County, Virginia, has three pension funds with cryptocurrency exposure, one to an astonishing ten percent of assets or about $150,000,000. That’s according to Edward Siedle, pensions forensic expert, writing in Forbes magazine. Siedle took issue with comments made…

Sounds like the IAFF Ed Mullins, longtime NYPD officer and president of their 13,000 member Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA) evidently thought that crime pays. But Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District proved otherwise, saying Mullins scammed the union out of $600,000 with “a scheme to steal hundreds of…

Case Closed? Finley is heard yelling at Moore [the patient] to get up and walk out to the ambulance. “You’re gonna have to walk ’cause we ain’t carrying you!” she says. “I am seriously not in the mood for this dumb sh*t.” (CNN) Earl L. Moore later died after he…

Timothy Vaughn and Damar Hamlin Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest after being hit during an NFL game; many called him, and the episode generally, “heroic” but police officer Timothy Vaughn was having none of that. Vaughn wrote, “The [hero] narrative compares “football players” to our soldiers and police officers”…elevating “football…

Silence = Consent It may be 2023 (almost) but you’ll never see better evidence (below) that killer culture is alive and well, at least in some fire departments. Word for word it may be the most inane (and dangerous) prescription for emergency operations we’ll see. Calling it a prescription is…

Dishonorable discharge President Ed “Edzo” Kelly and “right hand man” Pat Morrison sacked Elizabeth Del Re last week, she was a senior IAFF manager. The Edzo/Morrison action is reminiscent of the Schaitberger days when managers or other “at will” employees would be called in, as if to a Kremlin trial…

What passes for progress Laura Kavanagh, the forever “acting” commissioner of FDNY, has chosen Kwame Cooper, a long serving city of Los Angeles fire official, to be the Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer for the department. The Diversity Officer “is responsible for creating, implementing, assessing, and gaining support for diversity…

Don’t let the old man in I’ve been spending some time down at the National Mall with my “Lock Him Up” sign, sitting quietly on the steps as an unofficial greeter. My goal is to spend an hour there for each and every “Let’s go Brandon” hat I have had…

Annandale FD and the house that was. Annandale is in central Fairfax County, Virginia, a few miles southwest of Washington, D.C. It sits at the intersection of Columbia Pike and Little River Turnpike, (Columbia was once a “turnpike” too.) A turnpike was a private road with tollhouses to collect the…