Posted on 09/06/2006 7:18:13 AM PDT by beaversmom
Of course it is not a gift, and I certainly did not mean it in that way.
I'll use a thesaurus next time I post.
The average person is seldom prepared for the remifications of instant millions. Tales of woe are common.
Couple that with a trajedy, people arent thinking their best to begin with. There should be a better way.
I was simply stating my opinion that our outstanding military personnel who give the ultimate sacrifice defending our freedom have more than earned any compensation, adequate or not, that their survivors receive. I have profound respect and admiration for all who serve in the military. They are the best and the brightest. It never fails to bring a tear to my eye when I see the earnest faces in the pictures shown of those who have been killed.
The 9/11 widows' compensation was, indeed, a gift. It was not earned, and was not purchased in the form of an insurance policy. I feel slightly differently about the compensation for fire and police personnel.
SoS
LOL, spoken like a true scumbag. In fact, most of these stories are about greedy scumbags who want to sue somebody - - anybody - - who they figure might have "deep pockets".
The one thing that was particularly gruesome in all this, was how they calculated a persons worth.... A stock broker gets 8 Million while the Janitor gets 1 million. At least the military doesn't perform such gruesome calculations. A General killed on active duty gets the same as an E-1.
Also not mentioned in the article, particularly for the firefighter and the police officer..They were killed in the line of duty. Doesn't the city pay survivorship benefits? What about the poor schmuck officer shot dead by a drug dealer a few days earlier? How many companies paid survivor benefits on top of these generous settlements?
This whole thing set a bad precedent and was the Grim Reaper's lottery.
The ugly side of America....instead of turning to religion, people turned to money...more evidence of dying Society. What do families do when the main earner dies? THEY CHANGE THEIR LIFESTYLES...and usually not for the better. This is abhorrent to me, and it should be to everybody.
The Grim Reaper lottery..I like that.
These women were empty and vacuous long before they lost their husbands. It just wasn't as evident.
I agree with much of what you are saying, but you can't pretend that there wasn't some negligence on the part of the airlines (et.al.) that lead to the vast majority of the deaths on 9/11. Had they not allowed middle eastern men with box cutters, kept the cockpit door closed, etc., the planes wouldn't have flown into buildings or crashed. What the government was doing in the aftermath is saying, "we don't want the airlines and the economy crippled by suits where a significant chunk of the recovery will go to attorneys -- both Plaintiff and defense." Even as an attorney, I have to say the reasoning there is sound, even if there are problems with how they went about it.
True to an extent. Back in 1996 the families of the victims of Pan AM 103 forced the Government to take a look at Airline Security. A Commission was formed and headed by AlGORE. The recommendations from the Gore Commission contained many of the post 9/11 security improvements. The report was used as a door stop after the DNC received $700K from the airlines.
These ladies are complaining because they were offered millions of dollars?
No wonder they voted for Hillary.
The money has caused a post traumatic stress syndrome. They will now need more money to get over it.
LOL!!
My neighbor was a bank manager of a branch on the North Shore of Long Island. She told me about the number of wives who lost their stock broker husbands on 9/11 who came into the bank looking to withdraw funds from their accounts. They were shocked to find that there was no money and their home was mortgaged to the hilt.
Ping!
I was reading in the NY Post yesterday about all the 911 rescuers who are all screwed up physically, one guy who got his foot smashed by a metal beam who now has a scarred right lung and needs about $1000 a month for medication, yet lives on just $400 a month. Call me crazy, but there is something seriously wrong here when these guys who spent weeks sifting through hell, who are now dying as a result, are living on pennies while these broads are now fulltime multi-millionaire shopaholics.
If only she could have received several million more--John Kerry might have been interested in comforting her.
Very good point.
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