This hearing on the air quality in New York City in the days and weeks following 9/11 would have never taken place. Christie Todd Whitman wouldn’t have had to sit at a table and answer questions under oath. She wouldn’t have had to view tapes of her statements attesting to the safe level of contaminants in the air on the days following the attacks, and wouldn’t have then been challenged with the conflicting scientific readings acquired by the city’s own environmental agency during that same time period. There would be no justice for the citizens who trusted the government’s word, breathed the air and now suffer from debilitating respiratory illnesses, some of which insurance will not cover.
And how about “The Hero”, Mayor Guliani? Republican blood surely runs through those veins, as his contribution to this lingering tragedy has been to “write a letter urging Congress to pass a law capping the city’s liability at $350 million”. Not a single hearing was held on the aftereffects of 9/11 while Republicans ran the Congress. How can a government lie about the air quality in NYC, allow thousands of workers at the site to operate without respiratory gear, and then refuse to even investigate how such a thing could happen? The photo ops were really all that mattered to the leaders who were in charge during this time, and if they are allowed to just skate on the abdication of their responsibility for ensuring public safety, what hope is there for us?
Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone Magazine) wrote a scathing piece on Rudy Guliani about a month ago, and really manages to sum up the issue here in a single paragraph:
Although respiratory-mask use was mandatory, the city allowed a macho culture to develop on the site: Even the mayor himself showed up without a mask. By October, it was estimated, masks were being worn on site as little as twenty-nine percent of the time. Rudy (Al: and the EPA) proclaimed that there were “no significant problems” with the air at the World Trade Center. But there was something wrong with the air: It was one of the most dangerous toxic-waste sites in human history, full of everything from benzene to asbestos and PCBs to dioxin (the active ingredient in Agent Orange). Since the cleanup ended, police and firefighters have reported a host of serious illnesses — respiratory ailments like sarcoidosis; leukemia and lymphoma and other cancers; and immune-system problems.
That’s the bottom line here, and not a single leader who played a part in this has had the courage to simply tell the truth or (God forbid) offer an apology to the thousands of real heroes who were too busy removing human remains from the pile to consider whether or not their government was holding up its end. Now those very same people are too busy dying, with medical bills they’re unable to pay and a body that is unable to work for a living.
If the Americans who voted in November hadn’t sent the Republican Party packing, those heroes who can’t afford to feed their kids or purchase the medication they need to have a fighting chance for survival, would have been ignored for another two years! We’d never have had video clips like these: Rep. Bill Pascrell (NJ-08) questions Whitman on the EPA Inspector General’s report:In a second round of questioning, Rep. Pascrell questions Suzanne Y. Mattei, Former New York City Executive of the Sierra Club and author of a book on this subject, about some of the claims of EPA officials, particularly the claim that it was dangerous “on the pile” but safe “off the pile”:
Chairman Jerrold Nadler gives opening remarksRep. Anthony Weiner of New York City gives opening remarks
Pingback: If Republicans still controlled Congress…
I lived 7 blocks away from Ground Zero on 9/11, and moved 3 blocks closer a year later.
No respiratory issues to report here.
I did wear a simple particle filter in my neighborhood for a couple weeks afterward the terrorist attack in my neighborhood. I bought it at Home Depot.
The tragedy of all this…you bought a mask at Home Depot and today you’re healthy. On the actual pile, into the second week of clean-up, only 27% of the workers were wearing masks.
It is unforgivable. And sadly, with the ideological pre-requisite needed to serve in the Bush administration, the term ‘air particles’ probably made these bureaucrats cringe, tell a joke about lawyers, then turn the ‘spin’ switch inside.
Death and destruction have never impeded this regime’s urge to bullshit one iota!
Al, I try not to blame others for my well-being, or lack thereof. Rather, I try to take primary responsibility for it, and temporarily for my children.
I don’t think either of us blame Bill Clinton much for letting Bin Laden prance around after the 1993 WTC bombing. Both sides of the aisle looked at the same fact patterns and (somewhat faulty) intel.
Hindsight’s a bitch on any president. Even FDR’s New Deal grace period is finally close to over, despite the academia-statist education complex.
I assume that you’re implying something like, “the 9/11 workers are responsible for their own poor health and/or deaths”…is that right? By this application of the ‘personal responsibility’ mantra, one would be advised to distrust the government in times of emergency. When the government advises people to do A, B & C – the “responsible” citizen does the opposite.
Case in point – you were told that the air was alright to breathe, yet you bought a mask and wore it anyway. In this instance you were wise to do so. Now if the residents of New Orleans decided they didn’t have the means to leave the area prior to Katrina, then they too were doing the opposite of what the government advised them to do. So it’s not an exact science, this deciding of when to disregard government statements concerning your personal safety.
The real solution is for the government to make a scientific analysis, and present to the public the exact findings that were gathered. Several separate groups then take readings in the same areas day after day to gauge whether or not the levels are subsiding and at what rate. The wrong answer in this situation would be to make a determination prior to consulting scientific experts, and then decide to express that determination regardless of the consequences.
I can get on board the political ‘personal responsibility’ trolley quite often depending on the situation, but when my tax dollars pay for an entire agency that is staffed and equipped to (among other things) gather and analyze data in regards to contamination…I EXPECT TO GET THE RIGHT ANSWER TOLD TO ME BY THAT AGENCY!
I don’t see what Clinton or even Bush has to do with this. Whitman was pressured by the White House, and all communications had to funnel through the national security adviser’s office. So what? If the scientists that worked for her determined one thing, and the White House told her to say another, then she should have done the right thing and told the truth.
I have a hard time believing that a former governor is going to naturally abdicate all responsibility in this situation and bend to the will of someone telling her to lie to the public. I don’t see this as political, besides the fact that if we didn’t have Democrats in charge of Congress, there never would have been hearings on this issue. Well, that and one of the GOP nominees (Rudy) urged Congress to cap damages that could be paid to 9/11 workers due to their illnesses.
In both instances, Whitman and Guiliani were responsible for something VERY important, and if they had acted ethically and professionally, those people wouldn’t be so sick. The speed of the recovery wouldn’t have been the primary concern, and the urge to “not freak out” the public wouldn’t have been either.
The New Deal created America’s middle class. Is that not a fact? Didn’t the existence of our robust middle class provide the production and consumption that fueled our economy into the stratosphere?
I don’t get what the term “academia-statist education complex” is supposed to mean. I get that the right-wing hates academia, but the politicians they support are the most ideologically statist gaggle ever assembled in Washington DC! How was the prescription drug bill not a piece of statist legislation?
I think that you are confusing the essence of statist philosophy to mean that it is only applicable when an individual is sustained through the unearned capital divested to them by the state. That isn’t correct, as it applies to businesses that do the same thing…actually, when you analyze it in terms of scale, the corporate statism is even worse than the case of the individual…
Why? Because an individual will put that money back into the market, whereas the corporation’s fixed price or subsidy will be funded by the taxpayers, and pocketed by the top stockholders in the form of a special dividend or an acquisition that further diminishes the specter of competition.
The loose rhetoric does not apply in either situation…not with the air quality in NYC after 9/11 or the idea that statism is somehow gone once the New Deal (and the middle class along with it) is done away with.
In “Conspiricy of Fools” a book about Enron thier is one part where Ken Lay thinks that all he needs to save his company is for the EPA to relax enviromental rules, this seems to be the cnservative mind set. In Lays’ mind it didn’t matter that everyone at the company was stealing from it or that they made billions of dollars in bad investments, it was all the EPA’s fault.
The sitaution at ground zero is very similar, it doesn’t matter that Rudy had no dissaster plan and had let the communication systems become antiquated; in Rudys’the only reason the city could not fix the situation is those EPA rules(he probably wanted to blame social security as well). When you talk about blaming others for your problem it is worth metioning conservatives seem to blame the evil government for everything they do wrong. Even though Rudy and his pals managed to ignore laws and endanger people it still took a very long time to clean up the area and find survivors, mostly because of their incompetence not because they had to comply with the law.
If the government is so inept (like you and I are apt to agree), why put more dependency on it?
i would agree cav, thats why I dont understand the logic of thinking
Govt= inefficient
Solution= >Govt
Paradox? yes, but to Karl and Al its the solution. But what would I know, I may not be educated enough (though if we were to add up degrees/credits between me and Cav, we would smoke them)
Government is as good or bad as the people running it. If FEMA had been run by a competent persoon, New Orleans would not still be rocovering from a dissaster that hit two years ago. If New York had been run by a competent mayor chances are they would have updated their communication system and perhaps saved a few lives. A competent administration may have prevented 9/11. At the least a competent mayor and governing body would not have lied about the dangers in the areas, which is exactly what Rudy and his pals did. Conservatism starts with the idea that government is incompetent and proceeds to prove it by electing buffoons like Bush and Cheney, and now the new favorite Rudy.
The whole personal respoonsibility dogma may sound good but ultimately it is just an excuse to blame the government for everything that goes wrong, all the while just expounding a bumber sticker idealogy.
well, you didnt take either bait i was hoping you would and instead choose to turn a blind eye to the human condition and the incredible wisdom of our founding fathers that built this nation on the beleif of the shortcomings of man.
Seems like the foundingfathers recognized the failures of man by building in checks and balances, I don’t think they were against government so much as they were against too much power in the hands of any one person or group. The Katrina debacle or the Iraq debacle for that matter. In both cases the conservative president had a conservative senate and congress looking over his shoulder, in other words their was no oversight and in the end both sitautions have been a complete dissaster.
Ultimately this is why the conservative/authoratarian model practiced by the republican party is failure. The republicans spend most their time attacking the other branches of government(for example the attacks on the judiciary branch) in attempt to stop anyone from disagreeing or providing oversight. The end result is dissaster after dissaster caused by misinformation group think.
karl, you are either extremely young and naive; never had any experience/knowledge of organizational structure; or just plain stupid. sorry, the stuff you spew in your last post is group think. the founding fathers had the checks and balances in the system to keep the govt from growing out of control or too powerful. ideology has nothing to do with a person being competent, there are competent people that subscribe to both ideologies, i can only come to the conclusion you are a college student with too much time on his hands with no real world experience/knowledge.
Seems like government has in fact grown out of control over the last 6 years, isn’t that one of the problems most conservatives have with Bush? Part of the reason that government has grown with such reckless abandon is that until just recentely the house, the senate and the presidency were all controlled by the conservative party. The only thing that prevented a complete one part system was the judicial branch, just like the people who founded the country intended.
Seems like the constitition has worked just fine for the last 231 years I don’t get why the conservatives seem so intent on undermining it by weakening the judiciary or asserting that the president has imperial powers, or suggesting that christianity should be the official religion of the US.
As for our differencing levels of experience and education, I don’t doubt you have more college credits than me and perhaps more experience in the “real world” but that does not change the fact that the last 7 years have been a complete dissaster for this country and perhaps my naivete leads me to think that the US can be a better place and that the failures of the last 7 years can in fact be avoided in the future. Maybe, at some point, life will beat me down to the point where I call a thousand deaths after a hurricane an example of success or where I accept war without end is just how it should be; maybe I will get to the point where I can blame all my failures on the government, until then I think I will stay bullish on america and the ability of America to overcome the mismanagement of Bush Cheney. If that is being young and foolish so be it.
BTW
In your response to your comment that I have too much time on my hands, I am pretty sure that anyone who spends time commenting on blogs has too much time on their hands.:)
caveat bettor says:
If the government is so inept (like you and I are apt to agree), why put more dependency on it?
I don’t assume that the federal government is going to be as politicized and stuffed full of hacks from top to bottom like it is right now, when the next President takes over.
PLENTY of governments around the world manage to do right by their citizens.
I get that Grover Norquist is happy when government fails, because he is able to say what you guys just said above, but our society NEEDS scientists who can take air samples and have their findings reach the public. To turn this into an opportunistic philosophical debate over big/small government is indicative of the desire to dodge most of what I’m saying here.
Both of you seem to be using a variation of the Chewbacca Defense.
It seems that you’re taking a situation where thousands had their lives stolen from them unnecessarily, and using that fact to try and convince me that…what? The free market should have been left to decide what to tell those workers on the site? That there’s no way a government could possibly get it right? That this administration is automatically considered the best we can come up with, right out the gate?
karl- govt has grown astronomically since the beginning of the 20th century, this has alot to do with your ignorance of history. the education bait was only a ploy to get you to buy into the fact that a degree only sybmolizes that you have in fact taken x amount of courses. it has nothing to do with how smart you are. its only a certification. and yes you are young and stupid if you believe the past 7 years of our country have been terrible, because they have not been. you have no reflection of what it was like in the clinton years because you were too young and or/did not pay attention. because during the clinton years we were dealing with the exact same issues, and yes, lots of people died from extreme flooding during that time period as well as other deaths related to the environment that could have been related.
al- if you dont assume that the govt isnt going to be stuffed full of political hacks then you havent been paying attention long to the United States government nor the other govt’s of the world. govt will always fall short of someones expectations, its a matter of life. you are upset with the current govt, i am quite alright with it except for the immigration deal. but i never expect the govt nor assume the govt will help me, i dont need a nanny. nor do i always feel the need to blame someone/something if unfortunate or bad things happen. no wonder liberals are so depressed all the time.
Yes, things were great under Koch and Dinkins when I arrived in NYC. All that murder, crack epidemic, gang violence. Great times.
And even more recently, the federal government was a place of greater violence:
http://etherzone.com/body.html
sorry, the clinton years had the internet bubble where tons of people ended up losing large sums of money, terrorist attacks against US interests occured yearly, Saddam consistently thumbed his nose at us, the Balkan peninsula, AIDS, etc. thats what you dont get, the 90s were a great period too as well as the past 7 years. The US has enjoyed a very nice stretch of prosperity and blessings since the early 80s. Bad things happened, but far more greater things were the norm.
Karl, as far as the feds bungling Hurricane Katrina, you really ought to brush up on the Posse Comitatus Act. Fed cannot go marching into a state without that state’s express consent. Governor Blanco didn’t express it.
I wasn’t down in NO after Katrina, but I was in NYC after 9/11. Giuliani seemed to be more competent than Nagin.
But yeah, Rudy has lots of ‘splainin to do.
I refuse to believe that this is the best we can achieve. Political hacks in government are of course a mainstay, but from mayors on up to governors and on the federal level, it is the practice of our most tallented leaders to place their hacks where they have the potential to cause the least amount of damage.
Responsible leaders do not allow patronage to dominate their most crucial staffing decisions. I think you’ll find this in both Democratic and Republican administrations on the city and state level, from one side of the country to the other. The Directorship of FEMA is not equivalent to an ambassadorship of Austria…that is my point.
you are upset with the current govt, i am quite alright with it except for the immigration deal. but i never expect the govt nor assume the govt will help me, i dont need a nanny. nor do i always feel the need to blame someone/something if unfortunate or bad things happen. no wonder liberals are so depressed all the time.
I think that we (as is the case with liberals and conservatives in general) are talking past one another here. The assumption that I’m upset about my government based on how much assistance (zero) I’m receiving from it is 100% wrong. I’m an Army vet, worked my entire life, and that will never change.
My main interest in the criticism I aim at our leaders has to do with the condition of the systems they inherited and what condition they will be in once they are handed over in 2008. Career professionals from across all agencies have been squeezed or forced out. Scientists at NASA are dictated to and edited by a mid-20s hack who lied about graduating from Texas A&M with a bachelors.
In terms of our justice system, it has been corrupted well beyond anything I’m aware of in our modern history. Our military is decimated, both in terms of personnel and equipment, and that goes for our states’ own units (Kansas, Louisianna). The veterans have been treated like any other federal agency getting reduced by a certain percentage on a spreadsheet year to year, even as the numbers of those returning from war in need of services is on the rise.
This 9/11 example is replicatable on issues where the EPA has had to take a position on environmental issues since the start of Bush’s presidency. This regime has no interest in these systems working properly.
Since the 1980s, the middle class has shrunk, as has our manufacturing base. The distribution of wealth has shifted to a wider gap between top earners and the rest of us than has been seen since before FDR regulated our markets. Corporate consolidation has been allowed to take place without restrictions, and the overall power of labor in America has been greatly dinimished.
The dot-com bubble…those investors who bought in on stamps.com (or one of the thousands of others) at $125 a share…I know that I’m oversimplifying the matter, but the markets were doing their thing here. Print was on board, and an assumption that it would never end was prevelant. In the long run, it has made us better, as did the 89 crash and our subsequent recessions.
When we’re spitballing blame for such things, I don’t know how a President, any President can prevent an overvalued market from being effected by gravity.
Al- “When we’re spitballing blame for such things, I don’t know how a President, any President can prevent an overvalued market from being effected by gravity.”
it is was kind of my point about the clinton years that despite him being in power, many things were out of control. yet you so easily now seek to blame Bush. fyi- the middle class has not shrunk, its grown into the next class, feel free to check out http://www.optimist123.com and dig around. and hardly can the case be argued on placing poltical hacks where they can cause the least amount of damage be limited to Bush. Clinton fired ALL DA’s when he came in office, INCLUDING those that were investigating corruption/drug trading in Arkansas that Clinton potentially had ties to. So, what I have been saying is that it is not limited to one party, it is both; you have argued it is only the GOP, which is outright false (also, if you talk about the militry being drawn down that would be during the Clinton years). It is undeniable we as a country are living in the most prosperous time of a nation in HISTORY, yes there will always be some disparity, but the poorest of the poor here live as kings compared to the world. Yes, I also believe we can do better with elected officials, but I believe they either a) make the situation worse or prolong it or b) are the cause. I believe that local govts are more effective and I believe that private citizens know whats best for them, not someone in DC. My whole point is that centralization is not the answer and that liberal=good/conservative=bad nor vice versa. I disagree with the majority of liberal views because I do not agree with its philosophical and ideological tenets, nor do I care to live in that type of govt. Whereas you may have the same feeling about a conservative govt, that is fine. All im sayin is stop knee-jerking about Ds or Rs next to someones name. There is nothing new under the sun, im not saying it is acceptable in washington, but beyond my senators, president, and rep it is out of my control (I love my senators and old rep Jeb) and I live in a state that reflects my views for the most part. I am newly married, have a house, been out of college for a couple years, am in the middle class, life is grand, if you can’t make it now happiness-wise, you never will.
The ultimate conservative debating point, “Clinton did it” Can’t argue with logic like that.
Our military personnel, including reserves, matches the 2 million strong Chinese army. Our equipment, though not perfect in quantity or quality, is the best in the world.
We have committed 20% of our forces to the Middle East though, because rather than using our forces to destroy, we are using them to protect and build.
Karl, would a “conservative” in your mind say this:
how good a democrat president Bill Clinton and treasury secretary Robert Rubin were
http://caveatbettor.blogspot.com/2007/06/blackstone-kkr-ipos-not-sign-of-top.html
Caveat Bettor:
So you are a Clinton fan? I remember reading a paper in school where Clintons head of the SEC was trying to crack down on some of the corporate accounting gimmics that led to the tech bubble and some of the other problems. If Clinton had a weak spot in his economic policies it is that he did not follow through with some of these SEC suggestions or get behind them. Although, at the time he was dealing with a partisan an hostile congress and was probably limited in what he could do against what was a very powerful accounting lobby.
At the time the accounting industry argued that if they made them implement certain rules it would be the end of the profession, in the end not implementing some of those rules was the end of firms like Arthur Anderson. The accounting industry seems to be thriving now and in fact I have heard employees more people now than before the all the extra rules were implemented, which makes sense as it takes more people to accurately and fairly audit a company. The accounting industry is a great example of how additional government regulation can not only help protect the public but can also benefit the industry.
BTW in answer to your question, I think any reasonable person, whatever they call themselves would recognize that Clinton was a good president.
I wouldn’t trust Bill with my wife or daughters, but he did some good things (and avoided doing some bad things). I am definitely a fan of Bill over Carter, LBJ, and FDR.
But some of the things you accuse Bush of, Clinton is guilty also. For instance, did he go before the UN before initiating military action in the Balkans? At least Bush and Powell did, before initiating actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. And all of Clinton’s associates believed the same intel on which Bush acted–why else would he launch 75 missiles against Bin Laden.
How do you explain something like this away:
http://caveatbettor.blogspot.com/2007/06/gore-angry-at-bush-for-minimizing.html
It seems likeley that Gore was right in 1992 that Iraq was potentially dangerous, Clinton/Gore dealt with Iraq in an effective manner, sanctions and strategic strikes. By 2003 the Clinton Gore policies showed their effectiveness in that Iraq did not have any WMD’s. Clnton and Gore managed to disarm Iraq without casualties and for much less.
Bush/Cheney have somehow managed to take the victory that Clinton and Gore and yes Bush Sr achieved over Iraq and turn it into a defeat.
I really don’t know enough about the history of the Balkan conflict to comment on whether or not the US should have gone there. One thing is for certain, the US is not still fighting there, so Clinton must have handled it better than Bush has handled Iraq and Afganistan.
Karl, I see the sand around your head is indeed warm and comforting.