February 26, 2008
by Sherman Yellen
Reproduced From:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_sherman__080226_betrayed_again_3a_how_.htm
It’s amazing. Just when you think there are no new depths of
shamelessness and betrayal of trust to which the Bush administration
can sink, they manage to sink deeper into unchartered infamy. Hold
on now, I’m not even mad yet. I’m talking about the seventy seven
percent cut in the medical assistance for 9/11 first responders in
the current federal budget. Gravely ill firemen, police, and other
workers who labored at that site, workers who have come down with
life threatening cancers and respiratory illnesses linked to their
heroic efforts at ground zero are being shafted once again.
In the name of full disclosure, I am not writing this from some
disinterested “good citizen” viewpoint. I have a young nephew, John
McNamarra, a heroic fireman who worked as a first responder at that
site and who later volunteered for rescue work after Katrina in New
Orleans. For the past few years he has been suffering from various
cancers resulting from that work for which he is currently under
treatment at Sloan Kettering.
Last weekend he called me to talk about the government’s new
betrayal. As the father of a one year old son, Jack, John is
fighting the battle of his life, and there is no godly reason why
men such as John have to fight the government as well for proper
medical care and compensation. One pill – yes one small pill that
reduces the agonizing nausea of his chemotherapy costs as much as a
thousand dollars. Okay, I can rail about the greedy drug companies
and their obscene profits, but my first concern is our government’s
ingratitude and cruelty, something which the congress must address
and remedy to help all these men and women.
As Representative Carolyn Maloney writes, “It’s shocking that the
president would use his final budget to take an axe to 9/11 health
care programs.” Ms. Maloney is a wonderful representative but her
use of shocking seems naïve. Are you shocked? After Katrina? After
Walter Reed? Not me. I recall that first lie told by the federal
government about the risk at ground zero to workers, one that came
through the Bush mouthpiece, Christie Todd Whitman, then head of the
Environmental Protection Agency, now a lobbyist for nuclear power.
This former New Jersey governor claimed that anyone in the area of
ground zero, meaning not only the workers who worked in the rubble
trying to rescue the buried and reclaim body parts, but the
residents of the apartments in the area, were safe from the toxic
fumes that filled the air for days, sometimes weeks. According to a
later report of the New York City Department of Health “The collapse
of the Twin Towers brought 200,000 tons of steel, 5,000 tons of
asbestos, 12,000 miles of electric cables and 425,000 cubic yards of
concrete crashing down into lower Manhattan… The combustion produced
a toxic cauldron of concrete, dust, glass fibers, and cancer-causing
asbestos, as well as particles of lead, chlorine…24 gallons of jet
fuel, and burning plastics released carcinogens including dioxins
etc.”
As someone who lived more than eighty long city blocks north of
ground zero I could smell the bitter, toxic air coming in through my
bedroom window for days.
The first Bush betrayal was the unscientific, false reassurances
which endangered so many; and according to John and others, was not
the result of ignorance but done by design. It seems that the
federal government and the city wanted to reopen Wall Street
quickly, fearing the economic repercussions of 9/11. In order to do
so they had to reassure the public that the area was safe, without
having any scientific evidence that it was indeed safe. So the
health of many thousands was put at risk, thousands of ground zero
workers and ordinary citizens who would have taken greater
precautions to guard their lungs against these toxins had not the
government told them that this was unnecessary. How many babies
living in that area at the time of 9/11 are doomed to serious lung
disease in the future thanks to George W’s reassurance? We won’t
know about future ramifications until years from now, but right now
there are thousands of people who might otherwise be healthy today
who are suffering from some form of respiratory disease or cancer,
thanks to the Bush government’s criminal reassurance, and continuing
negligence.
Over 3,000 firefighters sought respiratory treatment since 9/11.
In the year after the attacks city firefighters as a group lost lung
function equivalent to twelve years of aging. There are other
appalling statistics for the police and similar statistics for
construction and iron workers. I could go on, but we get lost in
numbers, at least I do, and this isn’t about statistics, it’s about
simple justice for these men and women, medical and financial
compensation, and human decency. The decency part is not now
possible. We won’t get it as long as George W is president, and we
can only hope that these valiant first responders will not be
forgotten by the next administration. When you add this to the
atrocious way our wounded Iraqi soldiers and vets have been treated
it is a panorama of governmental malfeasance verging on atrocity.
It is hard to forget that this is the Republican government that
profited politically from the fear of terror brought on by 9/11,
both on the national level through Bush’s red alert re-election, and
on the local New York level in terms of that B movie ghoul who
impersonates a human so ineptly, Rudy Giuliani; a man who built his
fortune on other men’s misfortune from 9/11.
ABC TV had scheduled a full report on the health crises faced by
the first responders in 2007. But then that nut in the Philippines
falsely confessed to the killing of Jon Benet Ramsey so that
critical report was replaced by perp shots and the usual sad
pictures of the murdered child in her beauty queen paraphernalia The
ABC in depth report on the 9/11 first responders and their health
problems was never aired. So much for the concerns of the MSM for
anything but the last murder or the next scandal.
John will be speaking in Washington today, February 26th, on the
steps of the Capitol, together with a group of men and women
suffering from 9/11 related health injuries. Wouldn’t it be
wonderful if somebody listens to them and then, does something about
their critical problems? I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. In the
1920’s there was a mantra promoted by the French psychologist and
self-help guru, Emile Coue, that suggested one should rise in the
morning and say, “Every day in every way, I get better and better.”
And you would. We might bring that up-to-date for the Bush
administration by rising in the morning and saying, “Every day in
every way they get badder and badder.” And they will