P000445
Wednesday, February 06, 2002 9:35 PM
Comment on Victim Compensation Fund
After reading many of the comments on this site, it is sad to see the
idealistic virtues of those who died for others in diminished by those who,
like flies to a carcass, seek to feed off of the tradedy of others.
I was somewhat concerned that the September 11th fund, while gracious and
considerate, went beyond the legitimate mandate of government to provide for
the general, rather than individual, welfare. I had no expectation of
anything but gratitude for this exceptional effort by government to offer
charity to individuals not associated with official government activities.
I found it disheartening to see those same individuals biting the very hand
that had never offered such financial benefits to other victims of disasters
beyond immediate survival assistance and, in some case, low interest loans
to help them get back on their feet.
I find the whole September 11th fund both bad and improper precident to be
taking. The sense of entitlement from the *government* by those who are
already the beneficiaries of hundreds of millions of dollars already
collected by the private sector for their welfare is a grotesque reaction to
the bounty offered, even if improperly, of the people of the United States
through their elected representatives.
It is not the purpose of government to maintain the "lifestyle," rich or
less so, to which people are accustomed. It is a perversion of the
principles of democratic government to ignore the truly poor and listen to
the ugly whining of those who, through extremely unfortunate circumstances
to be sure, want to maintain their large houses or profligate lifestyles (as
so many who sadly died in the World Trade Towers were capable of providing,
and to whom I begrudge nothing).
Millions of people yearly go through the same heartbreaking death or
poverty-through-illness (myself included) without so much as a peep that the
government somehow required to provide us with our former level of
lifestyle. I, in fact, wrote my representative when the issue of disability
payments possibly being reduced many years ago by the government asking her
to vote in favor (despite the fact that I had paid the government enforced
premiums for the insurance that could have been better spent in the private
sector insurance market).
And my pain and suffering continue in a very real and physical sense, never
mind the pain and suffering from being completely isolated from the world of
accomplishment I used to know. Evidently the decade of greed declared to
have occurred in the 1980's is really only now beginning to accumulate real
momentum.
Individual Comment
Salt Lake City, UT