If you want it, you pay for it.
How about, as a way to thumb our noses and/or give the finger to the Taliban, we give the people of this country more freedom?
How about we let law-abiding Americans keep and carry guns?
How about we give Americans freedom of choice in schools?
How about we let Americans donate as much money as they want to the political candidate of their choice -- just like the First Amendment says?
How about we call American servicemen home from godforsaken places like Kosovo and Bosnia?
How about the federal government's Taliban-style bureaucrats get out of our faces, and stop telling us we can't eat eggs sunny-side up, or flush our toilets only one time, or set the rules for private golf associations.
How about the mullahs of the federal government regulatory agencies at least let Americans have steak knives with which to eat their dinners on airline flights?
What good is throwing up a pair of stupid buildings to show we're not afraid -- when meanwhile we're actually so scared that we won't trust our own citizens with steak knives? Don't you think the Taliban will get the message from that?
Instead of throwing up a pair of stupid buildings, why not build a spiritual monument to freedom -- by actually making Americans freer?
One way to do that would be to give tax rebates for the $20 billion you wish to spend in rebuilding the WTC. That would run about $250 per taxpayer -- about the size of Bush's rebate check, by the way.
Let's do it next year, and let freedom ring.
Take that, Taliban!
I was merely saying, as someone for whom downtown Manhattan has been a part of life since birth, that I do not want to surrender it, even symbolically, to the bastards.
Private developers will fight each other for the OPPORTUNITY to invest in a new structure. And free enterprises will pay BIG bucks for the privilege of being in it.