The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    jollyroger's picture

    The high cost of Christie Whitman's casual corruption

    By jollyroger on Fri, 06/08/2012 - 7:02pm |

    We are painfully reminded this day how much damage can be done when a poorly placed political hack elevates the propaganda needs of her party over the demands of public safety.

    Adding fifty cancers (50!) to the myriad other conditions likely to afflict those exposed to the world trade center dust cloud ought to occasion reflection of how poorly we were served by an EPA chief who famously substituted soothing for science.

    It is clear in retrospect that Manhattan below 42nd street and northern Brooklyn should have been evacuated like Fukushima after the meltdown.

    Instead, abusing the credibility accruing from her position, Christie Whitman, mere days after 9/11, put forth the monstrous lie that the air at and surrounding ground zero was "safe to breath".

    The 4.5 billion dollar Zadroga Fund will barely be the smallest fraction of the economic consequences.

    The price in future suffering will be incalculable.

    Comments

    Jolly, Anyone who has worked in industrial safety knew the dust was bad. It don't take many parts per million to do damage over a period of time. That damage may not show up for decades. The sad part was the general population did not have a clue.

    by trkingmomoe on Sat, 06/09/2012 - 6:10am

    At least two elementary schools. Stuyvesant High. All to prop up an administration scrambling in panic at its egregious failure...

    by jollyroger on Sat, 06/09/2012 - 9:15am

    The panic was over Wall Street being shut down. Get it back up and running and reassure the investers so they would not panic as quick as possible. Money not people was their main focus.

    by trkingmomoe on Sun, 06/10/2012 - 7:20pm

    I wonder what the correlation between levels on the corporate pay scale and duration of time away from downtown offices would show. I'll bet nobody over junior partner came within five miles of the WTC before Easter 2002...

    by jollyroger on Sun, 06/10/2012 - 9:59pm