A National Disgrace

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, in his infinite wisdom, has decreed that no first responders or clergy will be allowed at the 9/11 memorial service this Sunday.

In our darkest hour, they gave us hope—the firefighters of September 11. In the chaos at the World Trade Center, the rigs pulled up, the men climbed out, retrieved their roll-up hoses and marched stalwart to the towers. Carrying nearly a hundred pounds of equipment they climbed the stairs; flight after flight after flight. A woman in the North Tower, descending from the 89th floor said, "When I saw the firemen I knew we would be all right."

When they arrived at the base of the towers, there were jumpers by the score. Two firefighters, terribly, were struck. "There is no other way to put it," an EMS who witnessed it said, "they exploded."

And still they went in.

In the lobby of the towers the men gathered, awaiting their orders. Outside the bodies rained down. Before a blown out elevator lay two victims, their clothes burnt off, their bodies charred. The huge pane-glass windows were shattered, the stone walls cracked. There was a report that more planes had been hijacked; they were headed to New York.

And still they went up.

In the North Tower, four office workers, two young men and women, were crossing the lower lobby, heading for the exit where a firemen waved.

Then the South Tower collapsed.

Its debris blew into the North Tower, killing FDNY Chaplin Father Mychal Judge and destroying the lower lobby. The ceiling caved in and the lights were knocked out. Now injured and bloodied, the four office workers climbed out from beneath the debris. Breathing dust, they gazed about in the pitch blackness. They had made it all this way only to die steps from escape. Then they saw the light. The fireman at the exit was still there, waving his small flashlight. The four headed for it and made their way out.

As they crossed the plaza into the daylight, one of the men looked back. The fireman was still there, standing his ground in case others needed help. And there he undoubtedly was when the full 110-story tower came down upon him.

It wasn't just the firefighters. Police and clergy responded as well. And died as well. And are excluded from the service as well.

In fairness to Bloomberg, there is limited space, and many of the victim's families want to attend. But if you were to ask them, I'm sure they would agree to make a little room for at least a representative contingent of first responders. And if you were to ask the first responders, I'm sure they would say that they don't want to take the focus off the victims and their families. All they want is a little acknowledgement that they were there that day, they did their jobs, and they paid a heavy price. 

The firemen, being who they are, would never complain or bring attention to themselves. I, however, am not a fireman. Just the son of one and the brother of another. To deny the firefighters and our first responders—these most humble and dedicated servants of New York—the opportunity to honor, at Ground Zero on 9/11, their lost brothers and sisters is atrocious.

Count the number of publicity-seeking politicians and their boot-licking sycophants who are in attendance tomorrow, and then tell me that some of them couldn't have been excluded and that space used for those who truly deserve it.

Staring with that hypocritical anti-American spineless weasel currently wasting space in the White House.

It's disgraceful.

And speaking of disgraceful, does anyone know how long it took to build the Empire State building?

The answer: 27 months from architectural concept to completion--the actual construction time was 1 year and 45 days.

So why it is that ten years after 9/11 - 10 YEARS - there is still nothing there but basically a big hole in the ground?

 View of Ground Zero on July 25, 2011

Ground Zero update:

What will be completed on the tenth anniversary? A large portion of the memorial plaza is scheduled to open on Sept. 11, marking the first completed piece of the rebuilding. The plaza features open space on which trees surround two large square waterfalls that resemble the footprints of the Twin Towers.

When will the rest of the site be finished? It will be an active construction site for quite some time to come. The museum under the memorial is slated to open up next year, but some of the larger parts of the site (office towers, a new station for the PATH train and retail) won’t begin opening until the end of 2013, running through 2015.

What’s taken so long? Conflict has been a big theme of the rebuilding. There have been battles with insurers, wars between agencies, and repeated fights between the public sector and private developer ... There is a laundry list of public agencies involved, and historically they hadn’t been great at communicating with each other.

In other words, there is so much bureaucracy and government red tape involved that work on the site has ranged from slow to non-existent. Now apply this at a national level and you begin to get some sense of why the economy is being strangled and job growth killed.

That's a national disgrace of a different kind...