For Rich, Concierge-Level Fire Protection

The Skinny: Insurance Company AIG Battled Blazes In Tony Zip Codes, For Profit

(CBS)  The Skinny is Keach Hagey's take on the top news of the day and the best of the Internet.

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The Los Angeles Times offers a glimpse this morning of yet another way in which the rich are different from you and me and a few hundred thousand other homeowners in Southern California.

Meet Firebreak Spray Systems, which partners with the insurance company American International Group Inc. to, as the Times puts it, "protect the mansions of the moneyed."

About 2,000 policy holders, who pay premiums of at least $10,000 a year and own homes with a value of at least $1 million, can call up Firebreak and have them rush to the scene to coat their meticulously clipped hedges and rooftops with foam that stops advancing flames. The company is, in a way, the Blackwater of the firefighting business, private contractors hired by those who can afford it to do the jobs everybody else leaves up to the government.

The services are not available to just anyone willing to shell out. AIG's Wildfire Protection Unit, part of its Private Client Group, is offered only to homeowners in California's most affluent ZIP codes - including Malibu, Beverly Hills, Newport Beach and Menlo Park - and a dozen Colorado resort communities.

The insurance company says the program, started in 2000, is just good business. One saved home covers the cost of the whole program. (Firebreak claims to have sprayed retardant on 160 homes in Malibu, Lake Arrowhead and the hardest-hit areas of Orange and San Diego counties last week, saving at least a dozen homes.)

But others say it's just another way for the wealthy to buy their way around cash-strapped, understaffed public services. Firefighters across the region have complained this week that they simply did not have enough trucks, helicopters and airplanes.

"What we have is a dangerous confluence of events: underfunded states, increasingly inefficient disaster response, a loss of faith in the public schepe . . .and a growing part of the economy that sees disaster as a promising new market," said Naomi Klein, whose new book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" looks at the response to Hurricane Katrina.

"You can't fault business for seeing an opportunity, and you can't fault individuals for wanting to protect their property. Pretty much anyone who could afford it would want it," she said. "But survival shouldn't be a luxury item."

Hillary Clinton As Manager

Disorganized people, relax! You can still be president. At least as long as you're really, really charming.

That's one of the morsels tossed out of the New York Times' look at Hillary Clinton's management style, which of course is introduced in contrast to her husband's.

"She is very smart and very organized," said Leon Panetta, the former White House chief of staff. "Bill Clinton was very smart and not very organized."

Mrs. Clinton is described as "organized," "methodical" and "disciplined" -- all words that the author notes were never applied to her husband. "It is indeed likely that a Hillary Clinton White House would be more punctual, precise and process-oriented than her husband's," the Times reports.

Clinton confirmed this hunch in an interview. "My husband has extraordinary leadership ability," she said. "But he was also not as interested in the day-to-day management. He was much more focused on our goals and objectives: how you do the politics, how you do the persuasion. I'm trying to meld leadership and management in a way that really suits me."

She's evolving, though. She's gotten over her perfectionism a little bit - the kind of obsessiveness that led to the doomed 1,342-page health care document in the '90s - and replaced it with qué será, será. That showed up when news surfaced about the criminal record of Norman Hsu, a Democratic fundraiser. In the past, she might have been more "lawyerly," the Times reports, digging in her heels and saying little. This time, she just refunded the donations and tried to move on.

But some qualities, like her punctuality, it seems she'll always keep. The Times notes that "Mrs. Clinton ended the interview about her management practices precisely on time."

It Turns Out Some People Actually Do Hate The Troops

The photograph in the Times requires a double take. But yes, there it is, a huddle of protesters, some children, holding unmistakable block-letter signs: "Thank God For Dead Soldiers," "God Is America's Terror," and "God Hates Your Tears."

The protesters are from the Westboro Baptist Church, a tiny fundamentalist group based in Topeka, Kansas, the New York Times reports. They like to wave these signs at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan because "church leaders assert that God is killing soldiers to punish America for condoning homosexuality."

Such are the unpleasant things that can walk through the door left open by the First Amendment.

But one father of a Marine killed in Iraq, whose said his son's funeral was turned into a "media circus" by the protesters, isn't going to take it. He sued the church in the U.S. District Court in Baltimore claiming invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

"My son should have been buried with dignity, not with a bunch of clowns outside," he said.

Experts say the case is a test of the limit of free speech. "The dangerous principle here is runaway liability in a way that would put the first amendment in serious jeopardy," said Ronald Collins, a scholar at the First Amendment Center in Washington.

The judge hearing the case told the jury that there are limits on free speech protection, including vulgar, offensive and shocking statements, and instructed the jury to decide "whether the defendant's actions would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, whether they were extreme or outrageous, and whether these actions were so offensive and shocking as to not be entitled to First Amendment protection."

The church has about 60 members, the Times writes, "most of them related to the founder, the Rev. Fred Phelps. In testimony, one of the members said she would not apologize, saying that the slain soldier was "fighting for a nation who has made God a No. 1 enemy."

A NOTE TO READERS: The Skinny is available via e-mail. Click here and follow the directions to register to receive it in your inbox each weekday morning.

[l8c6]

It seems so sad that you are such a downer.
Posted by drivelphobe

And therein lies the big lie of the right wing. The right wing opiate of the people is to send them to church and be brainwashed that to not submit to the rhetoric is negative, a "downer"

[l8c6]

Stop the complaining and let those who have worked hard enjoy the fruit of their labor, or inheritance.

Posted by drivelphobe

Ever here of a caste system you traitor to the visionaries of this nation? People who fled the old world did so not seeking religious oppression any more than they were fleeing tyranny of an elite ruling class.

[l8c6]

18c6....

Those days might be gone for you, but millions of hard-working Americans are living the dream now because that''''s what they want. Discipline, focus, education, and tireless work will get you whatever you want.

You''''re making a Halloween joke, right with the pumpkin carriage remark?

It seems so sad that you are such a downer.


Posted by drivelphobe

Your dream is likely an illusion. Most americans think they are in great shape. When the sh*it really hits the fan, and it is unless something changes. People like yourself, living the dream on a credit card are going to be eating crow for dinner.

[l8c6]

18c6....

The nation is not dividing the people, the illegals are. Go back to England. It''''s so solid back there.

Posted by drivelphobe

Evolution takes care of fools but not quickly enough. My home is paid. Unlike many of these americans you speak of living the dream, I have literally no debt. Most americans don''t get the concept of ownership and buy the ruling classes rhetoric--like you do. I''m not from England. Where the hell are you from? People like Arnold are trying to radical change this country. People like Arnold''s family screwed up Germany but when Germany got its dithers back the ghouls had to flee to other countries like here to try and pull off their old world sh*it. This is why anchor babies and people like Arnold S. should never become president. Such people have values that go against the grain of this nations founding principles. Foreigners are running what americans think are "american" corporations and with their unregulated ability to muck with our government they are stealing our representation as a sovereign people.

[sharncedar]

It''''''''s a PRIVATE Enterprise and does not receive any public (tax) funds.

Posted by gunnerv1

Gee, stupidity and shameless rear-end kissing go hand-in-hand. Must be something about having your noggin up the back end of a pompous thief that makes yer brains go sour.

They do indeed spend "tax dollars" on this service. Where do you think the rich get their money? Most of it comes from complex investment vehicles, which means it comes from the Fed, through the banks, and into their pockets without them contributing to society. That is our money, stolen from us through what Alan Greedscam rightly called the most pernicious kind of tax - the unwarranted expansion of the money supply. Even the paltry "tax" we ask themn to pay on money they are stealing from us is too much for them. This drains what government service we have left, impoverishing our governments at the state, federal, and local levels. What money the federal government does collect, much of it is given directly to the richest Americans and foreigners, either in the form of interest payments on the debt they have run up for us.

We are infested with a plauge of leeches, a plague of parasite scum, who must be burnt out root and branch.

[drivelphobe]

18c6....

The nation is not dividing the people, the illegals are. Go back to England. It''s so solid back there.

[drivelphobe]

18c6....

Those days might be gone for you, but millions of hard-working Americans are living the dream now because that''s what they want. Discipline, focus, education, and tireless work will get you whatever you want.

You''re making a Halloween joke, right with the pumpkin carriage remark?

It seems so sad that you are such a downer.

[sharncedar]

So with the money they didn''t pay in taxes they pay private companies to provide government services for them ... nice.

[l8c6]

In today''s america poor youth are finding money in drugs and prostitution because exploiting ones self is increasingly the way to american success. Hard honest work isn''t achieving the goals it once did.

[l8c6]

If making more money and having more wealth didn''''t offer access and priviledge, no one would work. Our system is great and anyone who wants money and wealth can earn it.

Stop the complaining and let those who have worked hard enjoy the fruit of their labor, or inheritance.

Posted by drivelphobe

silly immature child mind...the elite just love little fools like you who dream of riding around in a pumpkin carriage. Yeah, just work, and work, and work. Those days are gone bubba. That was yesterdays america.