“When people think we’re going to get $1.65 million and we’re still complaining, they think we must be greedy,” said Steve Push, treasurer of the organization Families of September 11 and widower. “What they don’t realize is that many families are going to get much less.
When people think the families are going to get $1.65 million and theyre still complaining, we think theyre greedy because they are. They do not have a right to charity. They are not entitled to anything more than the life insurance, pension and Social Security benefits that a widow, widower or orphan would normally receive. And when they refuse to display even a hint of gratitude to the millions of Americans who tossed a few pennies in the woe-is-me bucket, they shouldnt be surprised that their benefactors are wondering why they bothered.
“The typical victim is a widow at home with two young children who’s been out of the labor market for five years,” Push said. “She’s going to be lucky if she has $40,000 a year to spend. Yeah, she could sell the house and move into an apartment. She could put the kids in day care and get a job. Why should she have to do that in order to subsidize the airline industry?”
The airline industry intolerable though it often is — is a necessity for the American economy. We can agree that airlines brought many of their problems on themselves due to mismanagement and ignoring their customers needs, but if the victims families are allowed to sue them into oblivion or irrelevance for actions that not even our intelligence agency could foresee, it will be a more serious blow to our economy than the collapse of the WTC. We need the goddamnmotherfuckingpieceofshitIcantbelievetheplaneisdelayedagain airlines. Your husband or wifes demise isnt that important to society. Youll miss them. I wont. I will, however, miss reasonable airfare and the convenience of traveling 2000 miles in five hours rather than two days.
The widow with two children is lucky if she has $40,000 a year to spend, and if the figure is that low, one can assume she didnt know how to play the system for all its worth. Shell have access to a pension, life insurance, Social Security payments, charitable donations, government funds and legislation that erases the federal income tax liability for most families from 2000 and 2001, with a provision that ensures a minimum of $10,000 in tax benefits to each family. Not only that, the new law shields from taxation employers’ death benefits, charitable payments to the families and creditors’ debt forgiveness. It exempts the first $8.5 million of a victim’s assets from the federal estate tax.
According to the Census Bureau, the median household income in the United States is $35,000 putting the widows slightly above what the average working-class family earns at actual places of employment. Normal people who lose breadwinners scale back on their lifestyles because there are few avenues that allow them to maintain the same standard of living. They sell the Ford Expedition and buy a slightly used Honda Accord. They sell the $250,000 5-bedroom colonial and purchase a $140,000 3-bedroom cape cod. They get jobs, and they put their kids in daycare.
And they do this because the government isnt fearful that Joan Smith and her cancer-widow cronies will bring a billion-dollar industry to its knee due to their unending greed. Our tax dollars are supporting you, Mr. Push, Ms. Boehm and Ms. Matuza, because the alternative is years of lawsuits and the consequences thereof. The government is giving you this money to spare the rest of us from your protracted whining and foot-stomping, and if the million-dollar payday means Ill never open the paper again to the tragic tale of a 9/11 widow trying to support her 10 kids on a firemans pension, its money well spent.
You’ve become the creepy aunt no one invites to dinner because conversation invariably turns to Daniel, the 7-month-old fetus that was stillborn due to horrific birth defects … 20 years ago. There comes a point where one has to accept reality and move on. So, open your wallet, shove the million dollars in there and kindly shut the fuck up.
© The Misanthropic Bitch, 2002
I got this here. And could not have put it better myself.
Will
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