Here’s a tribute to a few Republican senators who find comfort and advantage in invoking the heroes of 9/11 but refuse to give them health care.
Shame Shame Shame!
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“Since when does the Republican party make 9/11 first responders stand over in the corner with the gays and the Mexicans?” asks Jon Stewart. What are they thinking? First Responders should be taken care of before anyone. Many are sick. Many are sick after they were assured the air was healthy. This situation is a national disgrace and there are just too many opportunistic hypocrites out there.
It must be the calendars.
Time for the Republicans and Democrats to go the way of the Whigs.
Just as long as they deny benefits to the 9/11 first responders….all will be well.
The one chance they have to agree on something controversial…and the Republicans don’t back it? Give me a break.
The R’s might want to think about how certain classes of people got more of a pay out than others after 9/11. The widows of the stock brokers got millions and the garage attendants and food service employees got thousands. That should have been fair warning. I don’t believe the pentagon people got jack.
At the risk of introducing some facts into the conversation. There are two different funds involved (actually there is a third that isn’t relevant.)
The big one was the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. It was open to the families of everyone killed in the September 11th attacks, not just the attacks on the World Trade Center towers. Over $7 billion of Federal money was paid out in exchange for victim’s families agreeing waive their rights to sue over the attacks. (there was a lot of potential exposure for airlines, security screeners, Federal government, building architects, etc.)
The payouts were based on expected lifetime earnings. That’s standard in the life insurance business and the annuity formulas are pretty standard. You may not like that it means some people are “worth more” than others, but that’s the way life insurance works. In fact, there was an appeal that the fund didn’t follow industry accepted annuity formulas and short changed the families of victims who had high earning potential to award more to the families of victims with lower earning potential. The average payout was about $1.8 million and 97% of the victim’s families accepted the fund payouts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11th_Victim_Compensation_Fund
The second fund is the World Trace Center Captive Insurance Company. A $1 billion fund was set up to compensate the approximately 11,000 people who worked at the Ground Zero site and suffered physical or mental health problems resulting from it. There have been some lawsuits that have delayed payouts but the WTCCIC is expected to pay more than $700 million in benefits early next year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center_Captive_Insurance_Company
Lastly, I believe the Republicans in Congress are not against additional payments to WTCCIC, but want offsetting spending cuts elsewhere.
So who is being denied benefits again? The group that got $7 billion or the group that is getting $700 million?
Everyone is free to ignore these facts though if they interfere with the scheduled Two Minute Hate.
For anyone to look at what this lame duck congress is trying to do with tax rates, abhorent runaway spending, and over 6000 earmarks, to pick this out for scrutiny is the very height of ultra-left-wing (they call it “independant” ’round here) partisanship.
@FA, because the insurance industry ‘does something’ doesn’t make it right or moral. So who was at fault? The airlines? The government? Those same people might have gotten nothing. And I don’t believe in determining payout by earning potential. That is far too speculative for me. Dollar amounts on people’s lives is repugnant.
I doubt seriously if the many service people who lost their lives in the Pentagon got much more than service life insurance. I am not certain those civilians got all that much. Last I checked they were chopped liver.
2 minute hate? So everything that is said against the sainted Republicans is hate? How ever interesting. It wasn’t but…it sure could turn in to that with a few more statements like that.
If the Republicans weren’t against additional payments, then they would vote to fund additional help for 9/11 responders.
Two Minute Hate is a reference to George Orwell’s 1984. I’m sure that if he wrote 1984 in modern times he would have called it something like The Daily Vent, as that is how best to describe it. It’s vitriol for the sake of riling people up, and to be honest that’s exactly what your original post was.
Notice how your criticism has shifted. Originally, it was that the Republicans “refuse to give them health care” Now it’s that they are against “additional payments”. Neither you, nor your comedian source, have shown that the $700+ million in the WTCCIC is inadequate, particularly when you keep in mind that WTCIC is supplemental to the health care coverage these workers already received as part of their jobs. The $700+ million was to make sure that any health claims from the Ground Zero cleanup were covered even if they were rejected by the health insurance provider for the workers. Considering the WTCCIC funds haven’t even been spent yet, it might be premature to save that more money is needed. More money may be needed in the future, but there is no reason to open up claims until 2031 this week.
So you don’t like the concept of actuarial tables. That’s fine. But it’s not the fault of the Republicans or Democrats that actuarials are standard in the insurance industry. Insurance has been using the concept of actuarials since ancient Greece. Don’t like it? Feel free to invent something else. But the fact that 97% of the September 11th victims’ families accepted the settlement suggests that it was a fair settlement. There are plenty of rascals in government, but Ken Feinberg isn’t one of them. This country would be a much better place if more people like Ken Feinberg were making decisions over politicians in either party. (And for the record, I believe Ken Feinberg is a Democrat given that he was once Chief of Staff for Sen. Ted Kennedy.)
I don’t know where you get the concept that I think the Republicans are “sainted”. I have voiced numerous criticisms of Republican presidents, and the GOP Congress. Off the top of my head, I remember posting my agreement here with former Treasury Secretary Rubin that the GOP was about 85% responsible for our current fiscal situation. I’ve voiced my support for many of the social welfare programs and that my primary motivation for wanting to make moderate cuts to them now is to put them on sounder financial footings so that they can continue to exist for future generations. Have you ever seen me post something defending any of the local Republicans in PWC? Heck, in this post, I just stated my praise for a former Chief of Staff for Ted Kennedy. Obviously, I’m back to my “Republican Operative” tricks again.
I chose to wade into this subject because this line of criticism is not factually based. It is motivated purely by sympathy. But reason and need still need to be factors in any debate, especially when it is a financial decision. A large part of why we are in the fiscal mess we are in today is that as a country we make far too many decisions based on emotional appeal vs. economic reality. If you want to allocate more money to WTCIC, then say where you are going to take the money from.
In the meantime, there are plenty of reasonable things to criticize Republicans on. This isn’t one of them. Pick another. My own recommendation would be the tax deal, which I do not support. (I have previously posted my preference for letting all the Bush tax cuts expire, but there I go defending my “sainted” Republicans again.)
@FA, I believe you left out a few facts. Additionally, there are people involved in 9/11 clean up who aren’t covered sufficiently. I might just take a free five minutes of hate to speak out in favor of righting this wrong.
Just out of curiosity, has any republican ever done anything wrong?
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/99821-mandatory-healthcare-for-911-
@FA, I believe you left out a few facts. Additionally, there are people involved in 9/11 clean up who aren’t covered sufficiently. I might just take a free five minutes of hate to speak out in favor of righting this wrong.
Just out of curiosity, has any republican ever done anything wrong?
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/99821-mandatory-healthcare-for-911-
There’s no point in any further response. If you are asking me “has any republican ever done anything wrong?” as a response to a post in which I specifically listed two areas (the recent tax deal and having 85% responsibility for our current financial mess) it is obvious you are either unwilling or incapable of understanding what I am saying. I very clearly retain the Scarlet Letter of “Republican Operative”. I wonder if I’m still not a “real Virginian” either?
I think I’m going to be an even less frequent visitor here in 2011. There’s just no point in trying to have an honest debate here.
What attracted me to this place was the tagline “A Place for Civil Debate: not your typical ideologue blog” It is now clear that this is meant ironically. No one can seriously claim that there is not a strong ideological bias here. Perhaps not in favor of a particular ideology, but very clearly against one.
People with conservative leanings here are held to a much higher standard for conduct than others. Compare the admonishment one person got for “Congressman Moron” vs. the regular diet of “Kookinelli” “Captain Soundbite” and other derisive names that apparently are only to be used against Republicans. Civility is apparently not due to Republican office holders.
Moreover, despite the GOP being the minority party in government, with little ability to control the political agenda, the overwhelming number of stories are posted about subjects that portray the GOP in a negative light. I would be hard pressed to name a single thread that has been critical of the Democratic majorities in Congress or the Obama administration. If Ken Cuccinelli were to fart in church, there would be a thread here in seconds, but you’ll have to look long and hard to find a discussion of Joe Biden’s gaffes. Even when they are substantive, such as a debate about “Recovery Summer” and the failure of ARRA to meet the economic goals the White House said it would.
Thirdly, arguments against conservatives with no proof are regularly taken at face value while similar claims against Democrats are rejected without strong evidence. A pair of examples: the acceptance that there must have been people hurling racial epitaphs at Rep. Lewis at the Tea Party rally in March is accepted without evidence because of the size of the crowd. Far more rigorous proof is demanded in arguments against more favored groups. Such as your demand that I site specific racial attacks by Klansman turned Senator Robert Byrd. I have to somehow produce 60 year old records from an illegal organization for credibility, while no one is asked to provide video from a public rally in March held on the Mall with thousands of reporters covering the event. To claim that is a fair burden of proof is laughable.
As I’ve always said, this is Moon Howler’s blog, and she is free to post whatever she wants, but I’m tired of the double standard. Why don’t you just come out any make this blog explicitly about bad social conservatives are? You can complain about Fox News, Sarah Palin and Corey Stewart to your heart’s content. There probably would be very little change here on a day to day basis. About the only difference I can see would be that people like me wouldn’t be fooled into thinking this was a place for genuine debate.