Any thoughts on the Anniversary of 9/11?

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by becca

. . . Things happen with nobody videotaping them in this world . . . .

I agree. I said this at the time (perhaps here) and got slammed as an uncaring jerk. I mean I feel horrible for anyone trapped in those buildings and I think there but for the Grace of God go I. But, when their heirs all started getting millions in hush money from the govt. and other sources, I was outraged. With no disrespect to any NYC firefoighter or police officer, how is dying there any different than dying in a burning building in a slum while trying to save a child. Both acts are equally as heroic and have all of my awe and appreciation. Yet, the 9/11 victim gets compensated like 10 to 20 times more just because it was 9/11. Same for the soldiers in the current wars. Why aren't they compensated like the widow of some poor soul who died when the buildings fell.

In the end, people were paid as hush money and not to sue. To me, that casts a somewhat bad light on the whole thing. Of course, I am a rank hypocrite because I would have taken the money had I sustained such a loss.

[irishgrl]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

But, when their heirs all started getting millions in hush money from the govt. and other sources, I was outraged. With no disrespect to any NYC firefoighter or police officer, how is dying there any different than dying in a burning building in a slum while trying to save a child. Both acts are equally as heroic and have all of my awe and appreciation. Yet, the 9/11 victim gets compensated like 10 to 20 times more just because it was 9/11. Same for the soldiers in the current wars. Why aren't they compensated like the widow of some poor soul who died when the buildings fell.

In the end, people were paid as hush money and not to sue. To me, that casts a somewhat bad light on the whole thing. Of course, I am a rank hypocrite because I would have taken the money had I sustained such a loss.

Jason, I was under the impression that the (individual) heirs got diddly! EDIT: I found corroboration, however many objected to the amount the Govt offered (in exchange for waiving the right to sue) see below:

Common Dreams NewsCenter

Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Published on Tuesday, December 23, 2003 by the Toronto Star
Families Sue U.S., Reject 9/11 'Bribe'
Ignore Deadline for Compensation
by Tim Harper


WASHINGTON—For some, it's blood money, a repugnant payoff they feel they have no choice but to accept.

For a handful of others, the process of claiming compensation is too painful: they find themselves paralyzed by grief and unable to reopen emotional wounds barely healed from the deaths of their loved ones in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

But as many as 73 families see the process of U.S. government compensation as an attempt to protect those who should be held accountable for what they believe was mass murder.

They ignored a midnight deadline last night, their last chance to apply for government cash.


It's almost like it's a payoff to save the airlines and not hold any of those people responsible for what happened.

Irene Golinski, 53, whose husband died in the Pentagon attack
And today, they begin a new stage in an arduous odyssey and will sue their government, airlines and state and local authorities.

"This may be uncharted waters, but I was thrown in a pool on Sept. 11, 2001 and had to learn to swim," said Monica Gabrielle, who lost her husband Richard in the World Trade Center attack.

"I am doing this for my husband. He was a gentle man, and he was alive, trying to get out of that building that day. The dead. The dying. The smoke. The terror. No one should have suffered like that. I want accountability. I need answers."

The compensation fund has been controversial since President George W. Bush signed it into law 13 days after the attacks. For those who lost family members, it was always about protecting airlines, federal, state and local authorities from billions of dollars of lawsuits.

To receive the federal money, recipients must sign a waiver giving up their right to sue anyone involved in the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history.

A late surge of claims on deadline yesterday meant close to 95 per cent of the 2,976 families who lost loved ones in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania were expected to finally take the money.

To get there, they had to accept a monetary value on the lives of those closest to them, after making a case based on birth and marriage licences, diplomas and degrees, even videos. They will, on average, receive $1.8 million (all figures U.S.) each.

Families of 24 Canadian victims are eligible for compensation and most have applied.

Brian Alexander, a New York lawyer representing a portion of the victims who have launched the lawsuit, said he knew of no Canadians involved.

He said those who have chosen to sue have put no dollar figure on awards and each claim will be individually tailored.

"A widow who is 80 years old is not in the same category as a widow who lost her husband at age 30 and has four kids at home," he said.

Some $1.5 billion had been paid from the government fund by the weekend. Compensation for individual deaths has ranged from $250,000 to $6.9 million. Those physically injured as a result of the attacks have received compensation ranging from $500 to $7.9 million.

"Only in America could there be a program like this," fund administrator Kenneth Feinberg told CNN yesterday.

"You wouldn't find a program paying an average $1.8 million tax-free to eligible families. This is an unprecedented, unique program and exhibits I think the best in the American people."

Yet Gabrielle says it is a bribe by the government so victims can be coerced into washing their hands of the affair.

She is also resentful that the government is determining the worth of loved ones.

"This is about mass murder," she said. "I want to know who was responsible.

"No one has been fired. No one has been demoted. The same people who are guarding us today on an elevated security alert are the same people who were working that day."

Gabrielle said she is looking at a special 9/11 commission headed by former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean to answer the question of responsibility.

Kean has battled the White House, New York and aviation authorities for access to documents. He has a May deadline.

"There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed," Kean told CBS last week.

He said later he was talking of lower level officials, but Gabrielle and others want to know more about the safety of the buildings and airport security.

Even those who have accepted the money see it only as the lesser of two evils.

Irene Golinski, 53, whose husband died in the Pentagon attack, was still grappling with the decision to put 9/11 behind her or continue with a lawsuit.

"It's almost like it's a payoff to save the airlines and not hold any of those people responsible for what happened," she said.

Feinberg's office detailed some awards. The beneficiary of a 36-year-old project manager earning $231,000 and with one dependent was paid $3.48 million, while the beneficiary of a 26-year-old military officer with no dependents and a $44,000 salary got $1.84 million.

© Copyrighted 1997-2006
www.commondreams.org

[strandinthewind]

Here is an article

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionande...interview.html

[strandinthewind]

Also:

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/defens.../randon911.htm

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/terro...ion_12-20.html

The terms of the compensation fund for victims' families and survivors were announced today. The special master in charge of the fund said that those eligible will receive at least $300,000 in aid. The average award would be about $1.6 million.

____________________________________________________

To be clear - 9/11 was a horrible event and these people are victims and I hate that. But, people die of horrible events everyday and they do not get such compensation. What makes the death in the latter less relevant?

[irishgrl]

Interesting article on the anomalies of compensation:

Connecting the Dots

The 9-11 Passenger List Oddity
by Vincent Sammartino

As everyone who is involved in exposing the 9-11 cover-up knows, nothing concerning 9-11 is as it seems. Whether it's the magic jet that our government told us crashed into the Pentagon, the obvious missing jet at Shanksville (Flight 93), the three perfect demolitions of the World Trade Center towers, or the fact that Arab hijackers are still alive and their supposed ring leader Osama bin Laden has the ability to change his facial features at will. Nothing, I repeat, nothing about the government/controlled media version of 9-11 makes any sense.

So, let's get one thing straight and out of the way right now. There are no such things as physical inconsistencies in the world we live in. We can always depend on the laws of physics to be consistent and unchanging. Coincidence is a self-contained human concept; and the real world - the atoms, molecules and planets that whiz around - don't care if you understand them. Likewise, they aren't concerned if their movement happens to favor you or not. I say this because, as Victor Thorn and Lisa Guliani know (WING TV), this is the key to understanding what is real and what is contrived.

With that said, let me go back to sometime in February, 2004. At that time I had pretty much figured out that what had happened at the Pentagon and the WTC was a lie. I was still toying with the idea, though, that maybe (just maybe) our government had shot down Flight 93 in Shanksville in order to protect us from the real terrorists.

Then a few websites started to pop-up showing videos of what appeared to be a "pod" under Flight 175, along with an unexplained flash that happened just before the jet hit the South Tower. To me, this was just as damning as the Pentagon and the WTC collapses. There is no good reason for us to be seeing what we saw if the official government story was true. Think about this point for a minute. If what we saw was just an anomaly, then there must be millions of photos/videos of 757s taking off and landing at airports all over the world that look JUST LIKE THAT! If anybody has any jet photo anomalies they would like to share with us, please send them to Victor and Lisa at WING TV so we can clear this stuff up.

Which brings me to Ellen Mariani: she’s the woman who lost her husband Louis on Flight 175 that crashed into the South Tower on 9-11. With the help of a lawyer named Phil Berg, she filed a lawsuit against President Bush and company under the RICO act. Also, she refused to take the hush money that was offered to her under the 9-11 Victims Compensation fund.

In addition, I had just discovered Black Op Radio earlier in the year and found an interesting show in their archives (# 156) on which Ellen and Mr. Berg appeared as guests. This may be the single biggest point concerning 9-11, and hopefully the last nail in the coffin of our government's lies. During this broadcast, Mrs. Mariani said that she was the only relative of all the passengers that died on Flight 175 that crashed into the South Tower. Her lawyer, Phil Berg, repeated this statement.

I listened to this show over and over again and couldn't believe what she had just said. Everything came together at this point. That’s when it dawned on me that not only had our government lied about the physics of 9-11; they may very well have taken it one step farther by faking the number of people that died that day. I believed what she and Mr. Berg had just said. Nothing about 9-11 made any sense. Why should it start now?

Not knowing then what I know now, Ellen and Phil believed that for some reason the government was holding back the names of the people that had died on Flight 175. She had tried to get in touch with the relatives of other family members, but to no avail. You see, she and her lawyer believed, just like most other people believe, that four jets had been hijacked by Arab terrorists and crashed into buildings and into the ground at Shanksville. I, on the other hand, had already swept those lies aside.

Their statement also gave credence to the Fox News reporter who said that the jet which crashed into the South Tower had no windows. Hey, this jet appeared to have a "pod" under it anyway. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to fit.

Now, we come to most interesting stuff - the Social Security Death Index, and thanks to Victor Thorn's idea, the September 11th Victim’s Compensation Fund. After all, it's one thing to say that the flight lists are not on the up and up, but it's another thing to prove it.

The Social Security Death Index (SSDI) (Social Security Death Index) is a privately-owned website that is not affiliated with Social Security. It boasts an accuracy rate of about 83% (e-mail them any questions you may have). Anyway, to check its reliability, I inputted the names of people I knew that had died in my family, along with friends and neighbors. Being a true skeptic, I had no way of knowing whether they were telling the truth or not. With the exception of a cousin, I found everyone I was looking for. (Be sure you have the person's true first name - they may not be listed by the state they last lived in, but can be found in the state where their social security number was issued.) By all means try it yourself.

Which brings us to the 9-11 Victims Compensation Fund (also known as the Shut Up and Take the Money Fund), which most of you have heard about.

9-11 Victims Compensation Fund

This is where our government opened up the Treasury and gave family members of those who lost their lives that day lots of money. In return, these families were basically told to shut up about anything else concerning 9-11. (Considering all the lies surrounding this horrific event, you can see why.)

At this point there is one thing we should never forget, and that is how powerful the notion of human greed is. Remember this concept as you read the number of victims whose family members sought compensation.

The names of the victims can be found on the CNN website.

Here are the results:

Flight 11: of the 92 people who are listed as dying on this flight, only 20 are listed in the SSDI (22%)

Of these 20 people, only three are on the 9-11 Compensation Fund list:

Judy Larocque
Laurie Neira
Candace Lee Williams

=======================================

Flight 77: of the 64 people who are listed as dying on this flight, only 14 are listed in the SSDI (22%)

Of these 64 people, only five on the 9-11 Compensation Fund list:

William Caswell
Eddie Dillard
Ian Gray
John Sammartino
Leonard Taylor

=======================================

Flight 175: of the 65 people who are listed as dying on this flight, only 18 are listed in the SSDI (28%)

Of these 65 people, only three are on the 9-11 Compensation Fund list:

Michael C. Tarrou
Gloria Debarrera
Timothy Ward

=======================================

Flight 93: of the 45 people who are listed as dying on this flight, only 6 are listed in the SSDI (13%)

Of these 45 people, none are on the 9-11 Compensation Fund list:

No one

=======================================

Have you noticed anything strange yet? Of the passengers and crew of Flight 11, 77, 175 & 93, only 22%, 22%, 28%, 13% respectively are in the SSDI.

Remember human greed? Of the 266 people that we were told died on these jets, only 11 relatives applied for compensation. Can you believe that not a single relative from Flight 93 applied for compensation? I can't. Were all the relatives of the victims so rich that they weren't eligible to receive compensation? No, that's not it. (The minimum federal award was $250,000, and the average pay-out was about $1.8 million. The recipients only had to make agreement: they couldn’t sue the airlines.)

You should also know that most lawyers told their clients to take the money and run (which is what most lawyers would do - take the sure money). Ellen Mariani clearly elaborated on this point during her appearance on the radio show mentioned above.

Finally, during the past week, thanks to Lisa Guliani's insatiable quest for the truth, the 9-11 Victims Compensation Final Report has come to light.

9-11 Victims Compensation Final Report

Oddly, but consistent with everything concerning 9-11, the actual complete list of the people who benefited has been omitted from this report. Even without this, it does contain an interesting fact. According to the report, 98% of all the people who suffered a loss on 9-11 took the fund money. The average payment was $1.8 million.

But here's where it gets strange. According to the government, here are the number of people who accepted the compensation fund:

Out of a total of 92 people on Flight 11, only 65 accepted the 9-11 fund (71%)
Out of a total of 65 people on Flight 175, only 46 accepted the 9-11 fund (71%)
Out of a total of 64 people on Flight 77, only 33 accepted the 9-11 fund (52%)
Out of a total of 45 people on Flight 93, only 25 accepted the 9-11 fund (56%)

Does any of this seem a little odd to you? Or is it possible that not only were the jets on 9-11 magical, but their passengers as well?

So there you have it; yet another glaring 9-11 inconsistency - just maybe the biggest of them all?

Skeptically yours,
Vincent Sammartino

[irishgrl]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Also:

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/defens.../randon911.htm

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/terro...ion_12-20.html



____________________________________________________

To be clear - 9/11 was a horrible event and these people are victims and I hate that. But, people die of horrible events everyday and they do not get such compensation. What makes the death in the latter less relevant?

Jason I edited my post because I found corroboration. Please see my later post re: the anomalies of compensation and the notion of "hush money"

[irishgrl]

$116TRILLION Lawsuit filed

$116 trillion lawsuit filed by 9/11 families

August 16, 2002 Posted: 8:16 AM EDT (1216 GMT)
"It's up to us to bankrupt the terrorists," said Deena Burnett, whose husband was aboard the hijacked Flight 93 that crashed September 11.
Save a link to this article and return to it at www.savethis.comSave a link to this article and return to it at www.savethis.com
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Acknowledging the odds are against them, relatives of the September 11 attacks filed a 15-count, $116 trillion lawsuit Thursday against the company run by Osama bin Laden's family, Saudi Arabian princes and Sudan.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by more than 600 family members, plus some firefighters and rescue workers.

Calling themselves Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism, the plaintiffs are suing seven international banks; eight Islamic foundations, charities and their subsidiaries; individual terrorist financiers; the Saudi bin Laden Group; three Saudi princes; and the government of Sudan for allegedly bankrolling the terrorist al Qaeda network, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.

The Saudi bin Laden Group is the construction company operated in Saudi Arabia by Osama bin Laden's brothers. Fifteen of the hijackers were Saudi Arabian, the FBI has said.

Deena Burnett, whose husband, Tom, was killed on hijacked Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, expressed optimism about the challenge at a news conference.

"It's up to us, and I think we can do it," she said. "It's up to us to bankrupt the terrorists and those who finance them so they will never again have the resources to commit such atrocities against the American people as we experienced on September 11."

RESOURCES
Complaint: Burnett v. al Baraka Investment and Dev. Corp. (FindLaw document, PDF format)


Co-lead counsel for the lawsuit is attorney Allen Gerson, one of the attorneys who negotiated a $2.7 billion settlement between the Libyan government and families of 270 people killed when Pam Am Flight 103 was blown up over Scotland in 1988.

Among the allegations in the complaint, said attorney Ron Motley, are that certain members of the Saudi royal family have been active supporters of and helped fund al Qaeda and bin Laden.

The attorneys and investigators were able to obtain, through French intelligence, the translation of a secretly recorded meeting between representatives of bin Laden and three Saudi princes in which they sought to pay him hush money to keep him from attacking their enterprises in Saudi Arabia, Motley said.

Burnett's father in law, Thomas E. Burnett Sr., who also spoke at the news conference, said the group was "taking unprecedented legal action against those whose money financed the unspeakable evil that occurred on that tragic day."

Matt Sellitto, whose 23-year-old son Matthew died at the World Trade Center, told reporters: "His loss is incomprehensible to me. My heart continues to ache and will ache for the rest of my life."

"If the odds are stacked against us, we will beat them," Sellitto said. "And we will pursue this action until justice is served and terrorism is stopped."

Matthew Sellitto worked at the Cantor Fitzgerald brokerage house on the 105th floor of One World Trade Center.

-- CNNfn Correspondent Allan Dodds Frank contributed to this report.

[strandinthewind]

They will never win it and even if they do, the company will never pay as the US will likely grant it immunity - and somewhat rightly so as I am unsure the company has any exposure.

In the end, I feel horrible for these victims. I really and truly do. I just do not think my tax dollars should enrich them tenfold when people die from horrible mean things every day and receive no such compensation.

On edit - and then only hetero married people got it despite Hillary's somewhat valiant effort to get it for gays and others. This is a prime example people of why you need to have an iron clad will, to wit:

http://www.workingforchange.com/arti...m?ItemId=13001

Feinberg rules

Kenneth Feinberg, the Special Master of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, laid out the Administration's position regarding the families of gay and lesbian victims of 9/11 on the March 10 edition of NBC's "Meet the Press":

"[Gays and lesbians are] left out of my program to the extent that their own state doesn't include them. I cannot get into a position in this program, which has a one-and-a-half or two-year life, [and] start second-guessing what the state of New York or the Commonwealth of Massachusetts or the state of Virginia or New Jersey, how they treat same-sex partners, domestic live-ins, etc. I simply say this: What does your state law say about who is eligible? If your state law makes you eligible, I will honor state law. If it doesn't, I go with the state. Otherwise, Tim, I would find myself getting sued in every state by people claiming that I'm not following how the state distributes money. I can't get into that local battle. I've got to rely on state law."

Stick with me here. This is going to get a little complicated. Aravosis says that Feinberg's explanation is basic Washingtonese -- a little misleading. "In layman's terms, the money goes to the estate of the Sept. 11 deceased, and state law dictates how that money goes to a family. If the deceased had a will, and the will designated the partner as getting a portion of the estate, they're covered. But most people in America do not have wills. That's why they have to rely on state law. And almost no state recognizes the gay partner of the deceased.

"In fact, even in some states that recognize domestic partners who register, like California, if you don't have a will, your gay partner will still not get any money from your estate. As there are only three states that in any way recognize such partners --California, Vermont, and Hawaii, as well as Washington DC -- I have been told by lawyers representing gay and lesbian survivors that they expect some survivors will not get benefits. The state of Virginia, for example, has already sent a letter to the 18-year partner of one woman who [died] in the Pentagon that as her 'friend' she won't see a dime."

In essence, in a rather complicated and convoluted decision, families of gays and lesbians will not be given federal compensation unless they have wills, or the states they live in have laws recognizing domestic partnerships, which of course most states do not.

Given Feinberg's pronouncement, the president's much vaunted "compassionate conservatism," seems more like "dispassionate convolution." In many cases, the life partners of gay and lesbian victims of 9/11 will be getting screwed.
_________________________________________________________________

But, apparently some compensation was given:

Second Class Survivors
Gay and Lesbian Partners of 9-11 Victims Struggle to Receive Their Benefits

by Andy Humm
November 14 - 20, 2001









George Cuellar, who lost his partner of 20 years: Social security told him, "Don’t even think about it."
Photograph by Pak Fung Wong
George Cuellar lost the love of his life on September 11—"a nightmare," he says. Had Cuellar been able to marry his partner, he would now be entitled to a wide array of government and private benefits. But because his partner, Luke Dudek, was another man, their 20 years together counts for nothing to the federal government.

Cuellar says the people at the Family Assistance Center have been "wonderful. They treated me with nothing but respect. But when I went for Social Security, they looked at me and said, 'Don't even think about it.' "

No federal program benefits domestic partners. But the 9-11 disaster has changed a lot of things. Whether the new spirit of unity will apply to gay and lesbian survivors depends largely on John Ashcroft. The attorney general will decide, reportedly over the next few weeks, which survivors are entitled to relief under the Airline Stabilization Act. Congress put up $15 billion to sustain the industry and offer settlements—probably $1 million—to each survivor who forgoes a lawsuit against the airlines. As of now, the wording of the resolution leaves the fate of gay and lesbian survivors unclear.

"I let everyone out there interpret the phrase 'families of victims' accordingly," says Justice Department spokesperson Charles Miller. He refused to state explicitly that domestic partners were welcome to apply to the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The late Luke Dudek, who was food and beverage controller for Windows on the World, spent the last week of his life helping Cuellar with their flower shop in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. Now trying to put together the pieces of his life, Cuellar faces a mixed and shifting landscape, especially if he tries to access programs funded by Washington. He will fare better as he navigates the various relief agencies.

For the first time since it was founded in 1881, the American Red Cross is explicitly offering disaster relief to domestic partners left behind. Gay groups like New York's Empire State Pride Agenda immediately lobbied the agency. "The minute it happened, we knew there would be surviving partners," says Matt Foreman, ESPA's executive director.

Gay groups also lobbied Governor George Pataki, who was about to keynote ESPA's annual dinner, to amend his September 11 emergency executive order by redefining a "dependent person" eligible for relief from the Crime Victims Board—up to $600 a week with a cap of $30,000—to include those showing "mutual interdependence." Only a few years ago, the state-run board had fought successfully in court for the right not to treat domestic partners the same as spouses, as city law would require. "We can learn a little bit from September 11," Pataki told the ESPA crowd.

State Senator Tom Duane, a leader of the gay community, has written Pataki asking him to go further and make domestic partners of uniformed workers who were killed eligible for pensions and other benefits. Edgar Rodriguez, a gay cop, asked the governor's counsel about this at the ESPA dinner and was told that Pataki "wanted to work on it."

Things are clearer when it comes to city benefits. Safe Horizon, the new name for the city's Victim Services Agency, offers survivors, including domestic partners, up to $1500 every two weeks, to a maximum of $10,000. A spokesperson for the group said they can even help unrelated roommates who have proof of interdependency.

As the partner of someone who worked in the food, beverage, or hospitality businesses at the twin towers, Cuellar can also apply to the Windows of Hope Family Relief Fund. However, like most charities set up by Trade Center firms, it does not specify coverage for domestic partners.
Voice calls to the scores of funds listed at the World Trade Center Relief Web site found that most—like Cantor Fitzgerald, Carr Futures, and Marsh & McLennan—will cover unmarried partners. But this arrangement isn't mentioned on any of their Web sites. And while domestic partners in New York City have certificates as proof, those who did not or could not register—like the suburban Cuellar—will have to negotiate over the legitimacy of their relationships. "We're setting up guidelines," says Darlene Dwyer of Windows of Hope.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The most sustaining forms of relief are the fed's Social Security and state pensions and worker's compensation, all of which would require new legislation to include domestic partners. Gay lobby groups are not seriously attempting to lobby for this change now. "We don't even have civil rights protections in New York," notes Foreman. Neither Pataki nor state senate leader Joe Bruno's office returned calls asking whether they would support new legislation on gay rights.

However, the House of Representatives did take a small step toward equality when it voted recently to allow the District of Columbia to implement domestic-partner benefits for some employees. Gay activists are buoyed by the vote, but they are not optimistic when it comes to securing benefits nationwide. Right-wing leaders like the Reverend Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition have already charged that gays "are taking advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda." It seems unlikely that conservatives will stand for a redefinition of the family, despite the plight of survivors like Cuellar.

The Human Rights Campaign is lobbying the administration to include domestic partners. "The fact that the language of the relief bill is open is helpful," says Barney Frank, the House's senior gay member. But expecting Congress to pass gay-inclusive language is "wildly optimistic." His strategy: "I will focus on the attorney general."

Senator John McCain wept as he eulogized his former campaign volunteer Mark Bingham, the gay rugby player who went down with United flight 93 in Pennsylvania, and may have helped bring down the plane before it could hit Washington. "I may very well owe my life to Mark," McCain said. But he did not return calls about whether Bingham's partner would deserve any consideration as a spouse.

New York senators Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer support gay partnership rights, especially for September 11 survivors. Schumer wrote to Ashcroft urging compensation for domestic partners. "Preliminary vibes are not as bad as we'd think," the senator told the Voice. But Clinton is concerned about "political blowback" from "the more ideological House GOP leadership."

There was one piece of good news last week: Gerald Ford became the highest-ranking Republican to endorse equal treatment for gay couples. "People are more receptive to the basic human story of gay and lesbian families after 9-11," says Evan Wolfson, a longtime advocate for equal marriage rights. But survivors like Cuellar are still far from being treated equally when they need it most.

http://www.villagevoice.com/generic/...1tJmlkPTI5NzE1

__________________________________________________________________________

I suppose the fags got what they deserved and God does not want them compensated as much as the unrepentent cheating hetero spouse who died or survived, which surely occured. I mean if we are going to judge sin as a basis for compensation, I think the hetero marrieds should have to prove they too were without sin rather than assuming their marital state is de facto.

[irishgrl]

The whole thing stinks Jason

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by irishgrl

The whole thing stinks Jason

It is just one more thing - and the fact that the vast majority of voters approved no gay marriage just means it is not just the neocons - though they are the ones who start the fight as I do not think the D's would promulgate the legislation sua sponte.

The moral of the story though is to get a will. That way, the channel of the compensation mostly cannot be argued.

[estranged4life]

Gee, I remember when OKC bombing survivors/heirs of survivors asked for compensation (Most to help pay medical bills and/or funeral expenses) and received NONE.

So what exactly is the difference between the terror attacks that caused survivors of one to receive compensation and another to not?

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by estranged4life

Gee, I remember when OKC bombing survivors/heirs of survivors asked for compensation (Most to help pay medical bills and/or funeral expenses) and received NONE.

So what exactly is the difference between the terror attacks that caused survivors of one to receive compensation and another to not?

None. Political exploitation IMO.

[SuzeQuze]

Originally Posted by estranged4life

Gee, I remember when OKC bombing survivors/heirs of survivors asked for compensation (Most to help pay medical bills and/or funeral expenses) and received NONE.

So what exactly is the difference between the terror attacks that caused survivors of one to receive compensation and another to not?

Omigod, they got nothing? That's rediculous. I guess OKC has been largely eclipsed by 9/11 and that sucks.

O'Reilley admitted on his show last night that going to war on flawed intelligence was wrong. Although he said he felt Dubya probably didn't know the intelligence was flawed at the time.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by estranged4life

Gee, I remember when OKC bombing survivors/heirs of survivors asked for compensation (Most to help pay medical bills and/or funeral expenses) and received NONE.

So what exactly is the difference between the terror attacks that caused survivors of one to receive compensation and another to not?

To not compensate those people in any way is unconscionable.

[estranged4life]

about Flight 93...but be warned, it will make you cry:

No greater love - Dateline NBC - MSNBC.com

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14789502/