RandomThoughts

I live in Staten Island, New York.

Some few weeks afterthe 911 disaster I stood on the outside of one of the old car boat ferrys. All the people were fixed in gaze straight ahead toward the St. George Ferry Terminal. I could not help but notice that the sun was setting over Jersey in a brilliant multi-colored Arizona sunset. And nobody but me seemed to notice.

It was at that point that I realized that too much was being devoted to the dead of 911. Oh, they deserved their memorial services. But there comes a point when mourning is too much. It is to be expected to be shell shocked or take our individual time to recuperate from trauma, but the experience of life is to be living.

In fact, the reason I was on the boat that day was because the umteenth Fireman's memorial Service was being held at St. Patrick's Cathedral and traffic was banned from Fifth Avenue and my Express Bus was somewhere, not there, and I took the Subway to the Ferry Boat.

And now they are fighting over putting a $500 million dollar spending limit on World Trade Center Memorial to the dead. I feel that Bloomy dropped the human ball in 2002 when newly elected when he did not condemn the land and sow grass seeds. Hallowed ground is hallowed ground nomatter how much you connive to make a "God" almighty buck in real estate.

By the time that this real estate fiasco is built, so many will have forgotten why we honor the people who died there. We honor them because they are victims of an American/Saudi energy war for global domination. And the money the specualtors have squeezed out of $70 dollar a barrel petroleum could be reduced tomorrow by $20 a barrel if the U.S. Justice Department went after the corporate speculators who want to turn everything in America into a parking lot or a hole in the ground like the former World Trade Center.

I do not want to make this blog too political but the balance of fairness in this once great land is tipped in favor of those that already have and against those who have to pay $3.50 a gallon at the pump for gasoline. And from this end of the spectrum it hurts. And who wants to hear multi-million dollar media mouthpieces tell us nothing anymore.

No matter where I turn in this city I keep running in to the ghosts of common people whose lives directly or indirectly were changed on that great day of American Defeat, that day we could not or would not defend our skys. I give partial blame to it all on Ronald Reagan and his trashing of the air controller's union a decade and a half before. All the senior guys or all the guys who may have had the backbone to push the Defense Department's buttons to scramble jets to New York's defense on 911, many of them were handed a pink slip, a Republican victory over labor unions. And the wusses that stayed on and those who stand there now know that there is no point in trying to do a stellar job of protecting our skys when management, the U.S. government only wants mediocrity.

That's what killed do many on 911. Lack of leadership in government, no backbone and a "it's good enough for government work" attitude of non-excellance rating of all things it touches. And all the Kings horses and all the Kings men could not prevent 911 or give a helping hand after Katrina.

In the name and memory of those lost on 911, it is time to massively downsize this national government. The lives we save may be our own.