Show Me The Money

Congress passed a special Christmas time legislative measure in the lame duck session which will provide a total of $4.2 billion dollars to compensate police, firemen, and other so-called “first responders” to the 9/11 World Trade Center terror attack. That’s four thousand two hundred million federal taxpayer dollars; enough cold cash to reward 4,200 “responders” or their surviving families with $1,000,000 each.

I wonder if it cost that much money to build the twin towers in the first place. And I wonder if there really is that many or more worthy “first responder” recipients – at least 1,700 more than the 2,500 souls who perished in the immediate aftermath of the attack. The families of those victims received a total of $7 billion dollars (about $1.8 million per family) in an earlier congressional give-away scheme in exchange for their agreement not to sue the airlines involved.

According to our most noble senators and congressmen, i.e. the government Authority!, this newest gigantic give-away law resolves a “national moral issue.” We are all “morally obligated” as a nation to do this for our valiant “American hero’s” who responded so bravely to the disaster of 9/11, declared the Authority!

Well, of course, most reasonable people agree that police and firemen, (or any other workers for that matter), should be fairly compensated for doing what they do. If some of them got sick or died because of the conditions they were exposed to while doing their duty, they or their families surely deserve fair compensation. And they did get fair compensation here before this law.

Police and firemen in the city of New York have long been represented by powerful labor unions. They are well paid and enjoy generous life insurance, health insurance, workers compensation, and other valuable fringe benefits packages. Their union recently settled with the city of New York over sickness benefits totaling at least $625 million for claims arising out of the same incident. An additional $103 million will come from settlements with other parties.  

Police and firemen have always faced risky jobs involving exposure to all kinds of dangers and hazards. They are not infrequently killed, injured, or sickened in the line of duty, and, of course, are well aware of these risks when they sign up for the job. Compensation for legitimate claims is routinely provided by their public employers in the local jurisdictions where the incidents occur.

The federal government is not responsible, nor does it normally pass special give-away laws, to compensate local city employees in such instances. The family of a NYC fireman, for example, killed while responding to a routine house fire will not get special federal compensation legislation, though he is certainly just as brave and just as dead for his heroism as any 9/11 responder.

So, why do the 9/11 responders hit the federal money jackpot? Why is it a “national moral issue” for them in which we are all “morally obligated,” but not for John Q policeman from Heartland USA, shot to death by a bank robber while responding in the line of duty? Why doesn’t his family get a million dollar windfall from Uncle Sam?

There is a sort of national knee–jerk emotionally charged jingoistic hysteria hyped atmosphere in this country associated with the 9/11 terror attack; a collectivist deception phenomenon which causes otherwise normal, reasonable, logical, intelligent individuals to lose all perspective, good judgment, and common sense. That’s why.

We see it in the endless government “War on Terror.” We see it in the many schemes of politicians who constantly invoke 9/11 terrorism to tap into a Pavlovian like response from their deceived constituents. We see it in the TSA’s invasive body searches of every passenger at airports, and in the acquiescence of the traveling American sheep. (See below)

We see it in unbelievably trivial matters such as the so-called “ground zero mosque controversy” in which many Americans are in an apoplectic uproar over an Islamic Community Outreach Center to be located fully two blocks away from the 9/11 terror attack site. The center was planned long before 9/11/2001. But Americans have been conditioned by the government Authority! to foam at the mouth over the mere mention of 9/11; to see terrorists hiding behind every tree, and imagine the entire Islamic population laughing at us inside their mosques.

Americans have become paranoid over the “War on Terror,” and the New York City police and firemen’s unions have plainly cashed in on that paranoia at the expense of all Americans.  As one of their union rep spokesmen candidly said after the announcement: “This will be the best Christmas of my life.”

Osama Bin Laden must be chuckling in his cave.