Reaping What We Sow IAFF-MDA began in Boston with Local 718 in 1952 when they instituted a community-wide fundraising effort. It started with a selfless appeal to help a single family and evolved into a North American effort involving tens of thousands of IAFF members. That original selfless act has turned into a for-profit entity […]

$1,385,000 I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that a few folks actually can’t bring themselves to believe that the IAFF Executive Board shakes down MDA for just about $1.4 million dollars each year. One commenter suggested it must be for banners, bags and buttons. Indeed. $1.4M is a lot of money. I bet IAFF leaders […]

More Revenue Than The IAFF Financial Corporation This Labor Day Weekend when thousands of IAFF members hit the streets for MDA, little will they know that a nickel of every dollar they collect will be skimmed off and siphoned back to the coffers of the IAFF to help support the champagne lifestyle of our leadership. […]

Let’s Hope It Was At Least The Grand-Daddy Size Mr. Schaitberger’s distinct preference for Grey Goose Vodka is legendary. Less well known is how much of your money he would pay to have a bottle of it delivered to his hotel suite. The vast majority of folks staying in a hotel who want a drink […]

Living the High-Life, On Us I’ve never spent $795 in a restaurant in my life. Even when I treat friends and family I can’t remember it costing more than $400. I guess it’s the restaurants we go to and what we choose to eat (and drink.) I don’t think I’m any different than other firefighters […]

Gangsta’ GP East to West and North to South, Harold Schaitberger, longtime General President (GP) of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), a nearly 100-year-old trade union, is travelling about (first-class, no doubt) telling all who will listen, and some who would rather not, that he is out to “catch the rat.” Is that […]

And, ACTION Scene one takes us through the meteoric and apparently pre-ordained ascension of “Edzo” from embryo to the Jupiter of Jakes. He is fairly begotten, not made; a super-hero descended into our midst. In the telling he smotes both fire and city hall even giving birth to Martin Walsh, current mayor of Boston. Scene […]

Is There a Spine in the House? The IAFF Executive Board has hired a company to spy on email and other communications of our union’s staff and (presumably) elected officials to find the “rat” as Harold Schaitberger terms it. That’s right–the spineless board will allow Harold  Schaitberger to search their own email and communications in […]

Greater London is about 600 square miles with an estimated 2015 population of 8,630,000. As perspective, New York City has essentially the same population in roughly half the area. The Brigade is staffed up with about 5,100 operational firefighters assigned to 103 stations. They are not dispatched on emergency medical calls but could provide some […]

Tale of the Idiot American First, a weather report, especially for my east coast friends:  65 degrees with the sun in and out of the clouds, just cool enough to need a light jacket. Sorry, I had to do that. I returned to the hotel at about 6PM and happened to notice that the coffee […]